Movie Review

  • What Price Hollywood? (1932)

    What Price Hollywood? (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) This is it: the granddaddy of the A Star is Born series, and reportedly one of the first successful movies that Hollywood made about Hollywood, warts and all. The story follows a young girl determined to make it big in Hollywood, as she gains fame and must deal with the consequences. If you’ve seen the later remakes, this will initially feel familiar, although the film does play with its plot elements in a different way than the later movies. This being said, we’re still working from the same playbook here: rising female star, declining male star, the corrosive impact of media attention that makes people into fictions, alcoholism, handlers, and so on. It still works nearly ninety years later—it’s a tale old and yet always true, melodramatic but still understandable despite old-school gender roles and dated technology. This was, after all, made barely five years into the sound movie era, and the film does make the most out of the “fan magazines” that existed at the time. The Pre-Code status of the film can be most clearly seen with a dressing scene with nylons that wouldn’t have passed muster even five years later. George Cukor directs with occasional flair, effectively demonstrating the skills that would see him direct movies for the next forty years. Perhaps the best recommendation one can make about What Price Hollywood? is that it’s an early take on A Star is Born, except sufficiently different to keep it interesting, and with a very distinctive early-thirties view on the early thirties Hollywood—which, to be clear, was barely twenty years old at that point.

  • Multiplicity (1996)

    Multiplicity (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2019) The premise of Multiplicity sounds like a joke gone wrong: Let’s put two of my favourite actors in a single movie, and then add more of the same. That is: Let’s see Michael Keaton married with Andie MacDowell, and then let’s clone more Keatons. (Alas, there’s no cloning of MacDowell, which seems like a wasted opportunity.)  This being a Harold Ramis comedy, things are bound to get funnier, so as our overworked protagonist clones himself first to handle his job and then to handle family duties, things get complicated—especially when he inexplicably doesn’t tell his wife about it, leading to further complications. The added comic touch comes when the clones clone themselves, resulting in a dangerously stupid copy-of-a-copy that provides a lot of comic relief. This being Keaton’s show, he gets to play off four characters often interacting in the same frame (the chest-bump shot is particularly effective), playing off a base character, an exaggerated-macho version, an exaggerated-sensitive one, and a terminally stupid alter ego. The plot frequently doesn’t make sense (with clones seemingly losing knowledge of what they knew prior to their cloning), but this is a comedy meant to play with a familiar SF device, not a rigorous extrapolation. Multiplicity is amiable enough, with enough thematic depths about the multiple roles that we’re all asked to play being literalized in a silly comedy.

  • Bad Taste (1987)

    Bad Taste (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) The mid-1980s were a golden age for movie-obsessed geeks picking up a camera and deciding to make a movie of their own with friends and family. Peter Jackson was one of those, and from the depths of New Zealand came a most unusual film in Bad Taste, an incredibly over-the-top gory horror comedy featuring four operatives taking on a murderous alien invasion in a small town. The production values are threadbare, the acting is terrible, the camerawork is frantic and the whole thing doesn’t make a lot of sense … but it’s still a striking movie. The buckets of gore and blood (and alien vomit) are easier to take when they’re wrapped up in a gloriously absurd comedy. This is, after all, a film in which a protagonist stuffs part of his brain back in after falling off a cliff. (And if that’s not disgusting enough, he later uses alien brain fragments to do the same.)  It’s not that funny, but it’s not that disgusting either. (I have a much harder time with gore effects in deadly serious horror.) Certainly not for the faint of heart, Bad Taste nonetheless earns some sustained viewing attention thanks to some in-your-face stylistic camera moves, showing Jackson’s aggressive moviemaking techniques even with a near-zero budget. If you can, try to watch the contemporary making-of documentary “Good Taste made Bad Taste” (it’s on YouTube), which features a very young Jackson talking about the four-year shooting schedule of the film, his impressive garage-made special effects and his overall enthusiasm for making movies. The documentary adds quite a bit to the film itself. Our knowledge that Jackson would pick up an armful of Oscars not even two decades later also adds tremendously to the film.

  • Stage Fright (1950)

    Stage Fright (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) If there was one wholly mediocre Hitchcock film, then Stage Fright would be it. It’s not necessarily notable for being so ordinary, but for being ordinary in 1950, before and after some far more successful efforts from the legendary director. The film is notorious among Hitchcock fans for being among the first to outright present footage later revealed to be a lie, something that didn’t go over well then but doesn’t necessarily do any better today. But there are a number of other issues with the film, ranging from severe tonal shifts (“lucky duckies”) to not quite knowing what to do with Marlene Dietrich as she overpowers the rest of the cast but doesn’t have much on her plate. The Hitchcock wit is still present, but seem diluted compared to movies made before and after. It does wrap up in a perfunctory manner, good enough to offer closure, but not well enough to satisfy. No surprise if Stage Fright is consistently ranked in the middle-to-lower tier of Hitchcock movies, considerably lower than you’d expect from his chronology.

  • Lost Horizon (1973)

    Lost Horizon (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Good lord, that was terrible. I had heard that the 1973 remake of Lost Horizon was awful but I still watched it anyway, out of curiosity as to how it would compare to the 1930s original. I should have known better—While the first few minutes of the film aren’t completely terrible, the film soon takes a straight dive off the ridiculousness board by peppering the action with … musical numbers. Bad, forgettable, uninspired, disjointed musical numbers that couldn’t be more useless if they tried. I’m normally a fan of musicals, but not of 1970s musicals for exactly how Lost Horizon is so incredibly misguided. I’m not sure who thought adding musical numbers to the story would help, but it brings me some comfort to think that they’re probably dead now and unlikely to ever strike again. The 1970s were a low point for musicals (even the next two decades without musicals were better than the ones made during the 1970s) and this film couldn’t demonstrate it more clearly. I would say that removing the musical numbers would dramatically improve the film, but that’s not entirely true: Even simply aping the 1930s film is a bad idea given how it doesn’t revisit the horrifying orientalism clichés of the original—you could find the original racist and yet kind of old-school charming, whereas this one definitely should have known better. But Lost Horizon gets worse the closer you look at it. By the end, I was openly laughing at the ineptness of the staging in which a character (played by Michael York in a career-low point) causing a deadly avalanche, suddenly discovering a cavern three metres ahead of him (with wobbly icicles!), and then thankfully jumping to his death. It’s that kind of film with that kind of effect, where the characters are so painfully dumb and detestable that you openly cheer for their demises. Lost Horizon is almost forgotten today, and a rare recipient of a Wikipedia page that acknowledges that it was a critical and commercial bomb back then and that its current reputation hasn’t gotten any better. Even the decades of jokes about Lost Horizon (including a great one from Woody Allen himself) are better remembered than the film itself. As it should be.

  • Back to School (1986)

    Back to School (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On TV, August 2019) “Rodney Dangerfield goofing off” seems to be the plot summary of most of Dangerfield’s movies, and the same holds true for Back to School. As the title suggests, this is Dangerfield heading back to academia to deliver his usual takedown of authority, pompousness, and higher education. As a (very) rich entrepreneur who goes back to college in order to foster his bonds with his son, Dangerfield gets the chance to oppose his brand of rough common good sense against the stuffy professors. Slobs versus snobs again, with expected results … including romancing a younger professor (only 16 years’ difference between Dangerfield and Sally Kellerman—could have been worse), getting in fights with pompous enemies and partying with the coeds. I saw the film a long time ago and only remembered two scenes (the protagonist bringing some real-world knowledge in an economics class, and the final diving sequence), so much of it was relatively fresh to me. Adrienne Barbeau has a small but appreciated role as a philandering trophy wife. Still, much of the film actually works well. Dangerfield, playing a rich guy, doesn’t get to overindulge in his “I get no respect” shtick, and his motivations approach nobility at times. As a result, his character feels more sympathetic and so does Back to School given how closely it depends on him.

  • Ziegfeld Follies (1945)

    Ziegfeld Follies (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) For fans of golden-age Hollywood musicals, it’s easy to get excited about Ziegfeld Follies from the get-go, as the names pile up the opening credits: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Lena Horne, Lucille Ball in the same movie? Well, yes, but don’t expect a full narrative: As the opening number makes clear (featuring William Powell reprising his titular role in the Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld, looking down from paradise and wishing he could assemble another revue), this is a series of unconnected musical numbers and comic sketches featuring some of the era’s biggest stars. First number “Here’s to the Girls/Bring on the Wonderful Men” gets going with a bang, with Fred Astaire introducing Cyd Charisse leading to Lucille Ball in full grandiose Ziegfeld choreography, with a cute and very funny spoof from the deadpan Virginia O’Brien to wrap it up. The comedy numbers that follow have nearly all aged poorly—the comic style is broad, repetitive and laid on far too thick. The exception is the half-comedy, half-musical number “The Great Lady Has an Interview” in which a great-looking Judy Garland sings and charms her way through a satire of interviews—the number concludes with an extended comedy/dance/song tour de force from Garland. Still, there’s a lot more: Astaire features in three other numbers in the film, all of them quite different. “This Heart of Mine” starts on a conventional note with Astaire as a gentleman thief sneaking his way in a jewelry-heavy ball, where he dances with Lucille Bremer—but then the floor under them becomes a pair of treadmills and then a giant turntable and we see Astaire’s gift for innovative dance choreography take flight, leading to a cute conclusion. “Limehouse Blues” is something different, billed as a “dramatic pantomime” with a tragic storyline that takes Astaire (in yellowface, alas) through a vividly imagined Asian-inspired dance. But the kicker is “The Babbitt and The Bromide,” the sole golden-era joint performance by Astaire and Gene Kelly: the number plays up both the sincere admiration and the playful audience-imposed rivalry between the two screen legends. It’s everything such a joint performance between the two should be. For fans of more classical dancing/singing numbers, Esther Williams, Lena Horne and Kathryn Grayson all get standard numbers showing both their beauty and talent. A few other numbers and sketches round the film, perhaps the only other highlight being a half-funny comic sketch featuring Fanny Brice (one of Ziegfeld’s original 1910s girls) with Hume Cronyn (an actor still remembered in the 2010s for roles in 1980s films)—an astonishing duo. Disconnected, uneven but very impressive at times, Ziegfeld Follies is a real treat for golden Hollywood musical fans.

  • Look Who’s Talking Too (1990)

    Look Who’s Talking Too (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2019) Sequels shouldn’t aim to deliver exactly the same as the previous film. You want something like it but different (and hopefully better, but let’s not ask too much), otherwise the feeling of déjà vu can overpower the built-in advantage of reprising characters. So it is that Look Who’s Talking Too is so much like the first film (down to the opening credit concept), that it doesn’t have anywhere to go. Romantic comedies should, as a rule, never have sequels and let the characters live happily ever after. Here, the birth of our lead couple’s second child is merely the first salvo in a deteriorating relationship, and there’s nothing funny in seeing them separate even if we know it’ll get better by the end of the film. The babies voiceover thing isn’t as cute as the first film, even if the addition of a second voice can vary things a bit. Overall, the film feels like it’s cruising without much effort: Kirstie Alley and John Travolta make for a fine lead couple, but the film makes a mistake by focusing on them when going after another set of character would have broadened things a bit. Even at barely 90 minutes, Look Who’s Talking Too causes restlessness more than anything, which is not the kind of thing you’re aiming for in a sequel.

  • White Zombie (1932)

    White Zombie (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) There’s an undeniable first-mover advantage to White Zombie in that it was, at least to my knowledge, the first feature-length horror film to head to the Caribbean for its zombie thrills. Obligatory precision: These are old-school voodoo zombies and not the Romero flesh-eating ones—meaning that mysterious plants and hypnotic suggestions lead to an undead-like state. In this context walks in a loving couple about to get married, and a local count who covets the woman. It escalates as it should, with none other than Bela Lugosi as the voodoo master doing his lord’s bidding. The atmosphere approaches Caribbean Gothic at times, although that really oversells it: as times, it feels as if they simply transposed some vampire story to Haiti and didn’t file off the serial numbers. Coming barely five years in the sound film era, White Zombie still feels like a silent film in many aspects, and most specifically in the melodramatic acting carried wholesale from silent movies. While the film was modestly influential in its own way (this is where Rob Zombie got his band’s name from), it feels bland compared to other horror movies of the era, or even other takes on similar material. For instance, I can’t say enough good things about I Walked with a Zombie (1943) when I compare it with White Zombie. It’s worth a look for horror historians, but I’d be hard-pressed to suggest it as decent entertainment when there are better options out there.

  • Terror Train (1980)

    Terror Train (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) The early 1980s were thick with slasher horror films, in which one psychopath took on a dwindling number of teenage characters. One of the more unusual of these was the Canadian co-production Terror Train, which set the murders aboard, well, a train. A teenager-filled train travelling during winter (this was filmed near Montréal), which severely limits the option of stopping the train. Jamie Lee Curtis once more stars as a screaming young woman fighting back against homicidal evil, but the draw here is the restrained setting, the stylistic experimentation from director Roger Spottiswoode and the thematic emphasis on magic, featuring none other than David Copperfield as a magician entertaining the teenage audiences. (Yes, he gets killed at some point.)  Despite those few points of distinction, Terror Train itself isn’t particularly fun or entertaining to watch: it quickly falls into the same boring morass of murder sequences, each death being slightly more annoying than the last. By the end, we’re just relieved that even at barely more than 90 minutes, it’s over and we can watch something else.

  • True Crime (1999)

    True Crime (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2019) One of the strongest arguments for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States may be the incessant stream of message movies taking it as a premise to be denounced. The Player laughed about a last-minute stay of execution climax in 1994, but True Crime played it absolutely straight in 1999 (and The Life of David Gale would subvert it in 2003). Other examples abound, but the point still stands: The death penalty can be a cheap tool in the wrong hands, and even the best-intentioned filmmakers can fall in the trap of excessive melodrama. Granted, Clint Eastwood’s film has other problems, and one of his worst ones here is to cast himself in wildly inappropriate roles. Here we have Eastwood directing 69-year-old Eastwood as a two-fisted rogue reporter who regularly steps out of his marriage to have affairs with wildly inappropriate (and much younger) partners. Knowing what we know about Eastwood’s personal behaviour, we have to ask: Wish fulfillment or acting from experience? The problem is that we never believe Eastwood in the role of a clearly much younger (as in: forty-something) protagonist. Even as he goes beyond the expected article to investigate the events leading to an impending execution, we know where this is going. If you manage to set your disbelief aside for a moment, however, True Crime does actually manage to turn into a decent potboiler thriller, with the death penalty as the big consequence everybody runs against. The ending is as predictable as it’s mildly hilarious if you have fresh memories of The Player. With Eastwood’s no-nonsense style, it becomes a serviceable thriller with a few basic script issues, one unforgivable miscasting and an over-the-top conclusion that couldn’t have gone any other way.

  • Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

    Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) There are a few movies out there that are best reviewed after reading about their production. A first uninformed look at Hollywood Shuffle is invariably going to come across as being too harsh on the material. This can be explained by the film’s extremely low-budget, writer-director Robert Townsend’s overriding satirical intentions, and sheer underdog nature of the project (which was financed through credit cards and acting gigs, and took two years to complete in guerilla-style filmmaking conditions). It’s clearly didactic in how it really wants you to understand the problems that faced black actors in 1980s Hollywood, and unapologetic in the ways it gets in your face about it. The result is unequal. With Keenen Ivory Wayans writing part of the script, the humour is very uneven, ranging from classic sequences (such as the one where he imagines a hostile press berating him for not being black enough, or the fantasy movie-review sketch) to more humdrum material. It’s also (especially in hindsight) imperfect in how it tackles inequality—loudly advocating for fewer black stereotypes while indulging in other kinds of stereotyping. I do have a sneaking suspicion that the film is funnier if you know all about life in 1980s Hollywood for black actors: that it’s an inside joke that happened to have wider appeal. Still, in the evolution of black cinema through the decades, there’s clearly a place for Hollywood Shuffle as an eloquent capture of a specific time and place—not that things are necessarily perfect now, but that by the 1980s you could see black cinema go from the superstars à la Eddie Murphy (explicitly referred to here) to a more accessible brand of black cinema. Consider that Spike Lee had just come out with She’s Gotta Have It in 1986…

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, July 2022) A second viewing of Hollywood Shuffle, better-informed about the state of Black Hollywood cinema in the mid-1980s, reinforces my gnawing suspicion that the film was much funnier if you were then paying attention to how Hollywood was presenting black actors at the time. I’m not completely saying that it’s inside-baseball … but it is quite inside-baseball. Part of writer-director Robert Townsend’s success in completing this showbiz satire (often bending rules and maxing out his financing to do so) is that the world eventually caught up to his criticism: Black representation in Hollywood has considerably improved since Hollywood Shuffle, and the obstacles he describes are slowly, thankfully fading away. As a time capsule, his film remains quite effective: the portrait of a struggling actor fighting to have more than low-life roles or Eddie Murphy imitations is scattershot but considerably enlivened by sketch comedy moments that make the comedy far more overt. I like it quite a bit, even if I feel as if I’m not the right person at the right time to get the laughs. I’m sympathetic to the cause but ultimately an outsider, and Hollywood Shuffle is very much an insider’s sarcastic laugh at an industry that’s fading away.

  • The Painted Veil (1934)

    The Painted Veil (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) It’s completely unfair to compare a film with another adaptation made decades later, but here we are—I can help but measure the 1934 version of The Painted Veil with the 2006 adaptation of the same novel by W. Somerset Maugham, and being overly critical of the earlier film. There’s some logic to it, though: as a tough drama taking place in a picturesque location, this is a story that benefits from the increased technical sophistication of twenty-first century cinema. The colour cinematography, ethnic-appropriate casting, enhanced sense of place and ability to squarely tackle topics without skirting around censors and impressionable audiences (especially in a film focused on an affair) are undeniable strengths of the later film. What this version has is Greta Garbo in the lead role (admittedly an advantage only if you really like Garbo) and an ending that could be described as a happy one, avoiding the tragic finale of the novel and later adaptation. I’m normally someone who likes happy endings—even to the extent of defending some of the most outrageous ones imposed by Hollywood adaptations—but I can’t muster much enthusiasm for this one, so integral does the tragedy feel to the work. There’s also a fair point to be made that this version seems to be all about Garbo, Garbo, Garbo to the extent of minimizing the work it’s supposed to adapt. It does make an interesting contrast, though—between the studio-bound techniques of the 1930s versus the unlimited palette offered to 2000s filmmakers, between a cast-member taking over the story versus a team effort, between the emphasis that a version can place on sections of the story compared to another. I would have written another review had I not seen the 2006 adaptation of The Painted Veil first, but again—here we are.

  • Welcome Danger (1929)

    Welcome Danger (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Considering that comedian Harold Lloyd’s career just about straddled the silent and sound era, Welcome Danger is a fascinating case study in how he was forced to transition from one style to the other. He did so reluctantly—after encountering so much success with silent movies, Lloyd could be forgiven so thinking that sound filmmaking would harm his usual fast-paced, visually centred approach to comedy. So it is that, according to the film’s production history, Welcome Danger was first shot as a silent, then (after Lloyd convinced himself that there was no other choice) edited down, partially re-shot and entirely re-dubbed so that it could be presented as a sound film. His qualms were not unjustified—most of Lloyd’s enduring classic films were made during the silent era, with the rest being considered an appendix to his silent body of work. Accordingly, Welcome Danger feels like a decent film, but nothing more—as Lloyd’s “Glasses” character travels to San Francisco to help fight against organized crime, the film mixes in the usual physical comedy, romantic subplot, and specific set-pieces. There’s something not entirely comfortable in the film constantly bringing up San Francisco’s Asian population as the origin of the crime wave—even if, ultimately, the film blurs the cards when it comes to the crime boss. Welcome Danger does remain watchable enough—it may not be a terrific Lloyd film, but it’s fun, “Glasses” is up to his usual likability and if there aren’t any big physical stunts to wow audiences, everything is wrapped up nicely.

  • Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

    Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Like many cinephiles, I was quite impressed when Melissa McCarthy suddenly became a comedy superstar thanks to a remarkable comic performance in Bridesmaids. It was an overnight success years in the making, thanks to several well-regarded supporting appearances in various projects, but it cemented her comic persona as that of an obnoxious loudmouth. That kind of comedy based on deliberate irritation, as many others can testify, is only good until you get overexposed and suddenly becomes a liability. So, it’s smart for McCarthy to try to switch her image before it’s too late. She went in that direction with her supporting role in St. Vincent, but it’s with Can You Ever Forgive Me? that she really takes the chance of a lead role in a very different register. Here she plays in a docu-fictive drama about Lee Israel, a difficult and down-on-her-luck writer who turns to celebrity letter forgery as a way to make money. It turns into a nice revenue stream, but ambition eventually gets the better of her as the forgeries are exposed and the FBI closes in. Where I found the film most fascinating, though, was in its immersion in the Manhattan literary culture of the 1980s, made of collectors, authors, editors and associated personalities. I was very, very amused to see an actor portraying Tom Clancy (as an insufferable bore, no less) show up in the middle of a party scene, and charmed at the depiction of the written-word ecosystem exposed bare. McCarthy is superbly restrained here, taking a frumpy middle-aged character with finesse and dignity. Considering the times we’re in, this won’t be the last film about fakers and con artists, but I can definitely stomach this one, and being able to like McCarthy’s work here is a good chunk of it.