Movie Review

  • Phoenix Forgotten (2017)

    Phoenix Forgotten (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) It’s almost redundant at this point to declare annoyance with yet another found footage horror movie—we’ve reached that saturation level years ago, and at this point you have to wonder why anyone would think it’s a good idea to adopt that style. Still, there’s a point in writer-director Justin Barber’s Phoenix Forgotten where it almost works for more than fifteen minutes: As a 2017 young woman directs her own documentary about the disappearance of her older UFO-obsessed brother back in 1997, there’s something almost compelling in the blend of HD footage with VHS-quality flashbacks, a growing mystery, unexpected clues and something that looks like a familiar but intriguing blend of UFO lore, military conspiracies and still-grieving parents. A few structural refinements are enough to keep up interested … and then the film nosedives. Hard. The final 20-minute sequence of the film is a very long and tedious Blair Witch Project-style wilderness video log with constant screaming, VHS glitches, characters growing mad and blurry stuff moving quickly on the screen in a mistaken attempt to make us think something is happening. The film ends where it began, with visual suggestions that the brother was indeed kidnapped by aliens. Nothing more. There’s no getting back to the present-day documentary, nor going beyond an obvious conclusion that was affirmed in the early moments of the film—which is after all a genre movie. While there are a few good moments here and there earlier in Phoenix Forgotten, the last act is a spectacular disappointment and the abrupt ending feels like cheating. This film certainly won’t change the minds of those who insist that found-footage movies are now in a creative dead-end.

  • Easy Money (1983)

    Easy Money (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) I have a growing suspicion that Rodney Dangerfield is best used as a supporting character (à la Caddyshack) than a leading man, and here comes Easy Money to reinforce my theory. It doesn’t take a lot of Dangerfield in this film to get tired of his blue-collar loser antics, straight-up early-eighties slobs-versus-snobs cheap comedy. The premise is simple enough to make you wonder why it hasn’t been re-used elsewhere: a man is promised a significant inheritance if he can just shape up for a year. Of course, that’s really a clothesline to hang a series of gags about an ordinary guy trying to control his ordinary-guy urges. It doesn’t always work but the film does hand him a victory at the end. (Dangerfield being Dangerfield, there’s no suspense as to where the coin will fall; plus he looks the same at the beginning of the year-long improvement plan than at the end.) The result is not exactly bad, but sometimes Dangerfield gets to be a bit too much, and Easy Money would be better with less of him in it—a curious thing to say about a star vehicle, but then again there are stars for whom the movie works in spite of them.

  • Free Fire (2016)

    Free Fire (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) When I say that Free Fire isn’t quite as successful as it could be, this isn’t as bad a review as you’d expect. For one thing, it actually tries something somewhat ambitious: a genre thriller in which an ensemble cast sustain an extended shootout inside a run-down warehouse. It takes a lot of cleverness to stage such a lengthy sequence while keeping it intelligible, visually exciting, differentiating the characters and yet sustain the action over nearly ninety minutes. That the film doesn’t quite succeed does not invalidate the work required to bring it there. Alas, there’s a feeling that for all of writer-director Ben Wheatley’s inventiveness, there’s something missing from the result. The film doesn’t quite create the compelling viewing that such an exercise would suggest. Being unbelievably violent, it’s not joyful in the least (the high body count, including two lamented late-movie deaths, doesn’t help), and for all of the script’s rather good writing, there isn’t as much cool dialogue as could be hoped for. In short, Free Fire is not bad but it’s still a fair way away from the genre classic it could have been: the characters are bit bland — Brie Larson and Armie Hammer do well as the only competent ones in the place; the other cast members not so memorably—and the action doesn’t quite capture the full mayhem that could have been. I still consider it a good time viewing, but it could have been much more.

  • Peppermint (2018)

    Peppermint (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) In the spirit of gender equality, let’s agree not to give a free pass to gender-swapped bad movies such as Peppermint, taking on a hackneyed tale of vigilante violence that was tiresome when it was called Death Wish and only making it distinctive by putting Jennifer Garner in the lead role. Now, I’ll be among the last to complain about Garner getting steady work, and I will admit that her performance here is as ferocious and convincing as any other female actress. But there’s no getting around the idea that Peppermint is a terrible premise wrapped in even worse execution: If you can make it past the overwrought first fifteen minutes (in which an ordinary mom sees her family gunned down, then the murderer set free by a corrupt judge and herself committed to a mental asylum) without rolling your eyes helplessly, well, you may be ready for the rest of the film in which that ordinary mom resurfaces five years later after a self-imposed worldwide combat training tour. Her rampage of revenge is as predictable as it is tedious—we know where it’s going, and not even director Pierre Morel’s journeyman direction can dissipate the stone-cold ennui of seeing that same damn story play out once more. The film, as befits our morally corrupt social-media era, is not conflicted as much as it’s tacitly approving of the violence perpetrated by its so-called heroic character—there’s little exploration of the corruption of the heroine and quite a bit of cheering for revenge, and hopefully nobody innocent gets killed in the crossfire. As you can guess, I’m getting really tired of those kinds of dress-up medium-budget exploitation movies, no matter the gender flip. In fact, the gender flip may even make it worse—there’s a lot of material to explore in traditional nurturing notions of female strength being sent up through vigilante violence, but Peppermint can barely conceive of such an argument, much less explore it. What a waste. At least Garner should be able to get herself a few action movie roles now that she’s got Peppermint on her resume, not exactly erasing Elektra’s shame as much as updating it.

  • Just Getting Started (2017)

    Just Getting Started (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) There is, buried somewhere in Just Getting Started, everything required for a serviceable comedy. Nothing too ambitious, nothing too difficult, just the basic elements of a film you see, enjoy, perhaps recommend to friends and family. It’s a comedy set in a retirement home, with capable actors such as Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones and Rene Russo, with a little mix of mob-driven action and old-person comedy. Heaven knows that there’s a small list of those movies already. But this is not the film that Just Getting Started is now. Because what we’ve got here is a waste of everyone’s time and talent, a mixture of juvenile gags that feel worse when played by retirement-age actors. The romantic rivalry between the two male leads is wholly manufactured (and then quickly dismissed) and while there’s some fun in seeing Jones strut and wager through a character created to be perfect, the film doesn’t know what to do with the energy of his performance. Neither can it find a good place for Russo, nor make the most out of Freeman’s comedy. The cinematography is uneven, at times making good use of its southwestern scenery and at other being nothing more than flat comedy-grade images. Just Getting Started often stops and sputters, occasionally stumbling upon a good idea but never completely going to the fullest extent. What a shame. Fortunately, there are other similar movies that succeed much better.

  • Since you Went Away (1944)

    Since you Went Away (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) Some movies are more interesting as time capsules than stories, and the nearly three-hour ordeal that is Since you Went Away often feels more like time travel than entertainment. Taking us back to WW2 America, it’s a film meant to portray the sacrifices of a nation and bolster morale along the way. It’s occasionally fascinating in how it portrays the minutiae of the 1940s Midwestern-city life and courtship rituals, but the sheer duration and large scope make it feel more like a miniseries than a focused film. I’ll defend its place as a portrayal (however idealized) of the times and how legendary producer-writer (From the opening credits: “Script by The Producer”) David O. Selznick wanted to immortalize it. If you feared an excess amount of sentimentalism, you’ll be half-pleased: there’s a lot of melodrama in Since you Went Away, but the film rarely pulls its punches when it comes to show the deaths awaiting some characters going overseas. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the actors (including a teenage Shirley Temple, and a rather grouchy Monty Woolley), but there is nothing in this film that justifies its excessive length, complete with an intermission. In fact, the repetitiveness of the subplots (so … many … dead … soldiers) and the lack of forward narrative does start working against the film after a while. The endless harping on the same theme gets exasperating the farther we go past the two-hours-and-a-half mark and onto the film’s final staggering 172-minute running time. I’m sort of glad I’ve seen it and can scratch it off my best-picture nominee list, but I’m not sure I’ll ever volunteer to watch Since you Went Away again.

  • Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

    Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) We’ll get to the crux of the Woody Allen Problem in a few sentences, but Magic in the Moonlight, taken at face value, is ordinary late-period Allen, gentle and romantic and icky and a bit ordinary even as it’s perfectly enjoyable. The biggest strengths of the film are its actors, especially Colin Firth as a skeptical magician being asked to unmask a suspected fake psychic, and Emma Stone playing said psychic. Both are quite good, even though they may not necessarily belong in the same story. But criticizing Woody Allen for older-man-much-younger-woman romance is like taking Spike Lee to task for a focus on race relation (well, or would be except that Lee’s agenda is actually socially admirable)—what else needs to be said? Still, the story isn’t that stunning—the focus on magic has been done in other Allen movie, and this one feels like a fairly limp attempt to tackle matters of faith and skepticism. The humour is more comfortable than hilarious (the biggest laugh of the film comes from a character revealing himself from behind a chair) and the dialogue is cute without being particularly revelatory. It feels like discount Allen from Allen himself, retreading familiar ground without extending himself. This being said, the film is visually remarkable—the portrait of the 1920s French Riviera is lush enough that we wish we could go there for a holiday, and it’s bolstered by some better-than-average cinematography for an Allen film. Substantial qualms about the rote intergenerational romance aside (and I’ll grant you that it takes a considerable amount of willpower to put it aside), Magic in the Moonlight is a serviceable film, not unpleasant but not worth harping about. It may help viewers wean themselves off Allen as he becomes older and less acceptable. As of five years later, Allen finally seems marginalized by the industry, with distributor troubles and a more irregular production schedule. (2018 was, if I’m not mistaken, the first year since 1981 in which there wasn’t “a new Woody Allen movie” in theatres.)  Like an occasionally amusing guest who keeps pestering young women, Allen may finally have overstayed his welcome … and it’s about time.

  • Married to the Mob (1988)

    Married to the Mob (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) I’m not sure if my mood or my expectations were off, but I found Married to the Mob considerably more ordinary than I had expected. I’ll allow for the possibility that the subject matter, a mob wife, has gathered considerable exposure in popular culture since 1988, with even a moderately well-known reality-TV show on the topic. Of course, nobody in real life looks like Michelle Pfeiffer, who here plays the suddenly-widowed wife of a mobster (Alex Baldwin, whom we would have expected to last a bit longer in the movie) who tries to walk away from the criminal lifestyle. Of course, it’s not that simple, with mobster and FBI agents weaving a tangled web of romantic intentions around her. Married to the Mob is a comedy not through outrageous laughter, but by dint of ending well for the nice people and focusing rather a lot on the more ridiculously quotidian aspects of its plot (i.e.: love and lust bringing down mobsters) than trying for Godfatheresque grandeur. Still, it does feel curiously staid, pulling back on its satirical potential rather than fully exploring it. Of course, it’s necessary to repeat that the cultural landscape of 2019 is very different from the one in 1989—Italian mobsters have been endlessly heralded, deconstructed and mocked since then, so it’s natural not to feel as impressed by an early exemplar of the subgenre. What remains is Pfeiffer, a genial tone and some timeless screwball hijinks. Married to the Mob works, but it’s far from being as interesting, amusing or witty as I had expected. But, then again, mood and expectations have a lot to do in these kinds of judgments.

  • The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

    The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) Few biographies have as much naked contempt for their subject matter as this unexpectedly fascinating biography of famed comedian Peter Sellers. After all, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers exposes Sellers as an unstable, gluttonous, credulous, and self-hollowed figure, cruel to children and lovers, unable to depend on a solid inner core and all-too-willing to escape through his characters. I suspect that my admiration for this film has as much to do with its willingness to break down the structure of typical biographies than my growing knowledge of Sellers’s work (It’s a lot of fun to see the film recreate and nod at movies of the period, even some Sellers-adjacent ones in the Kubrick repertoire—the 2001: A Space Odyssey reference is blatant, but there’s a not-so-subtle one to The Shining as well). Structurally daring, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers reinforces its thesis about Sellers taking on roles as a substitute for his inner life by having Sellers occasionally portray people around him, delivering monologues that either reflects these people’s opinions of Sellers, or Seller’s best guess at what they thought of him—it’s not rare for the film to step in and out of sound stages, further breaking the thin line between fiction and moviemaking. The all-star cast helps a lot in enjoying the result: Geoffrey Rush is surprisingly good as Sellers, the resemblance between the two getting better and better as the film goes on. Other notable actors popping into the frame include Emily Watson and Charlie Theron as two of his four wives, John Lithgow as Blake Edwards and no less than Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick. The tone and look of the film shift regularly to illustrate Sellers’s state of mind, his circumstances or simply the movies he played in—as an expressionist take, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is frequently surprising, delightful and rewarding the more you know about Sellers. It did cement my unease with Sellers’s work (you’d be surprised at how many Sellers movies I don’t particularly like—click on the Peter Sellers tag to know more) but it informed my half-grasped notions about his life. Now I’ll have to read a biography to know more. [June 2019: And I did! As it turns out, the real story is even stranger, even worse for Sellers and just as disdainful for its biographer.]

  • My Stepmother is an Alien (1988)

    My Stepmother is an Alien (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) Considering the continuous parade of dumb movies coming out of Hollywood, it’s probably unfair to single out the 1980s as being a particularly stupid decade. This being said: Wow, the 1980s were a particularly stupid decade, and you don’t have to look much farther than My Stepmother is an Alien as a mortifying example of that. The production history of that film is wild—the first draft of the film, written four years earlier, was meant to be a horror film as an allegory about child abuse. Good luck detecting any of that original intention in the deliberately idiotic result as it appears on-screen, though: Here we have a Science Fiction comedy in which no less than Kim Basinger plays an alien being sent to Earth to seduce a nebbish scientist (Dan Aykroyd) who accidentally holds the key to her planet’s survival. It’s already unpromising, and you haven’t experienced the execution of it all yet. The film squarely feels as if it’s been written for the kids’ market, and not the smart kids’ market. I’d like to talk about the film’s charm, but that’s a stretch—at best, there’s a nod of appreciation at Aykroyd playing a good-dad scientist (to Alison Hannigan, in her first movie role). Then there’s a Basinger, as a naïve (yet incredibly old) alien unaware of the effect she’s having on everyone else. There’s maybe a good film struggling to get out of this mess, but it’s not one we can get from what’s on-screen. The 1980s have produced some memorable films, and some infamous ones, but My Stepmother is an Alien is neither of them—it’s just dumb and forgettable.

  • Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)

    Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) Clearly rushed into production to capitalize on the success of a first film released the previous year, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit makes the most out of Whoopi Goldberg’s appeal but can’t quite overcome a slap-dash script and a by-the-numbers production. Trying to recapture the preposterous premise of the original is ridiculous, but they give it a try even if it’s a lazy way to get an up-and-rising singer “back in the habit.”  The result feels like a re-thread of Dangerous Minds despite predating it by two years, as a tough teacher manages to turn around the life of her inner-city students through the power of creation, expression … and gospel singing. But it may be presumptuous to ask too much of the film considering its intentions as a hasty sequel to the original. The point here, like all musical comedies, is music sung loud and clear after a few initial setbacks. The students are fine (with standout performances here by young Lauryn Hill and Jennifer “Love” Hewitt) but the standout star remains Goldberg, floating above the film through sheer energy and comic talent. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit will do as a mediocre follow-up to the original … as long as you don’t expect too much.

  • Steel Magnolias (1989)

    Steel Magnolias (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the target audience for Steel Magnolias—I imagine it being best suited to a cross-generational selection of female viewers, the closer to its southern setting the better. But no matter who you are, the film is a feast of great acting and excellent dialogue dunked in a warm bath of gentle southern-USA atmosphere. I had a lot of fun watching the first two thirds of the film, what with such notables as Dolly Parton, Julia Roberts, Olympia Dukakis, Sally Field, Shirley McLaine and Daryl Hannah at her arguable peak. It’s not an entirely cheerful film (the third act focuses on a character’s death and the other characters’ subsequent mourning) but it’s often very funny—especially once you factor in the combination of gifted actresses biting into theatrical dialogue. The last third of the film will work either better or worse depending on the audiences—while the point of Steel Magnolias is to show how the tightly-knit community reacts to the death of one of their owns, the film does milk those moments as hard as it can, and does feel overly manipulative at times. That’s not enough of a problem to stop recommending the film, though: the quality of the dialogue and the relationship between the characters remains the best reason to see the film, even if you think it won’t appeal to you.

  • The Buddy Holly Story (1978)

    The Buddy Holly Story (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) “The Day the Music Died” happened sixty years ago, more than a decade and a half before my birth and I still get unaccountably forlorn about it. Watching The Buddy Holly Story so soon after La Bamba only magnifies the sense of loss in seeing three immensely capable musicians (Buddy Holly, but also Richie Valenz and Big Bopper) disappear—what could have they had made had they lived? There is a timeless finality in death, of course, and The Buddy Holly Story clearly leans into ennobling its main character, highlighting his uncompromising approach to making music, his innovative genius, and his moral righteousness as he eschews the excesses of the rock-star lifestyle. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the film to contemporary audiences is seeing Gary Busey as a credible Buddy Holly, lean and young and smart to an extent that seems difficult to reconcile with his latter-day persona. Otherwise, the film is a standard music biography—good reprise of hits, a loose adherence to the truth, a sticks-to-fame story here strengthened by a tragic ending (that is portrayed through an end text, overlaid over a mute portrayal of Valenz). Watch La Bamba immediately afterwards for a more elegiac and perhaps more interesting take on the same event—plus a far better treatment of Valenz than his mute walk-in appearance at the end of this film. Otherwise, the film will be good to remind anyone of Holly’s place in rock-and-roll history, as well as a medley of his greatest hits, especially during the climactic end sequence when the film quickly does his best-of. The Buddy Holly Story isn’t hard to watch, and fans of 1950s pop music will get a kick out of bringing back those years to life (even if the liberties with the real history are annoying even after a quick Wikipedia fact-check).

  • The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)

    The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) Not every film has to be a high concept of startling originality, but even by the standards of low-stake crime drama, The Pope of Greenwich Village struggles to be interesting. Best described as a crime drama featuring two young Italian-American friends trying to make enough money to get out of their stifling NYC neighbourhood, this is a film about scams, hustles and crimes not turning out like they should. Of course, our characters won’t settle for education, good boring jobs and saving enough money on their own time—it must be a get-rich scheme to get them out of there, and it’s not as if the film will seriously question this assumption. Or call out as one of the characters starts by being obnoxious, and then keeps on making life miserable for everyone else involved—including the putative protagonist. There’s a fair case to be made that the film isn’t about anything more than being an actor’s showcase, in this case for Eric Roberts (as the obnoxious one) and Mickey Rourke (as the likable one). (The film started as being for De Niro and Pacino, but things changed along the way.)  I have to say that this is probably the most sympathetic character I’ve ever seen from Rourke. The atmosphere isn’t bad, but everything simply feels dull—occasionally enlivened by a comic moment, but not leading to a convincing or satisfying ending. There are occasional attempts to reach for Godfatheresque grandeur in its depiction of the Italian-American community experience, but let’s not be ridiculous—The Pope of Greenwich Village doesn’t even make it halfway there.

  • The Nun (2018)

    The Nun (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2019) The nice thing about having been raised Catholic is the appreciation that as a religion it’s got some excellent potential for horror worldbuilding—having the Vatican as an authority keeping tabs on demonic possession around the globe is by itself worth a few movies’ worth of material. The Nun is one of them, even if it’s not particularly good or bad at it. Efforts to tie the film to the overall Conjuring horror universe are perfunctory at best (and frankly, I think I’ve lost track of what The Nun is supposed to be: a prequel to The Conjuring 2 which was a sequel to a film based on a true story that has now spawned another series of spinoffs? Or something like that.)  The setup is, as usual, much more compelling than the execution: the idea of an Eastern Europe abbey leaking evil since it was bombed during WW2 is not bad at all, but what the film does with it is far more pedestrian. There are a few nice touches—Having Taissa Farmiga play in a spinoff of a series starring her sister Vera is kind of interesting, for instance, even if the film doesn’t do anything with that. Don’t peek too closely at the details either: While it’s satisfying to hear a character defiantly growling out “I’m French-Canadian,” his accent is pure European French. Oh well… The Nun feels like so much of other 2010s horror films—high concept, by-the-number execution with a few arresting visuals made possible only through a lot of CGI substituting for clever writing. It works as your slick weekly horror movie if you’re looking for that kind of ride, but it doesn’t strike a nerve either in lasting scares or conceptual audacity.