Movie Review

  • San Francisco (1936)

    San Francisco (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) One of my working hypotheses in my Grand Unified Theory of Hollywood is that everything was invented during the 1930s, and we’ve been running variations on a theme ever since. San Francisco is another validation of that statement, as it credibly sets up the template that later disaster movies would follow closely. Set during the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco features no less than Clark Gable as an atheistic saloon owner and gambler. Then popular singer Jeanette MacDonald is the love interest, while Spencer Tracy has an early role as a Catholic priest fit to act as the protagonist’s conscience. Much of the early film is spent showcasing the city as it existed at the turn of the century and setting up the dramatic conflicts that will be settled definitively by the earthquake. For modern viewers, there’s also another kind of suspense: How, exactly, are the filmmakers going to portray the impending disaster on-screen? Is it going to look effective to our modern CGI-jaded eyes? That question is answered convincingly two thirds of the way through with an utterly thrilling sequence in which real-world sets are split apart. It’s a long and still-impressive moment in the movie as characters scream, building crumble and even the era’s limitations in special effects technology can’t quite diminish the importance of the moment. Once the disaster is over, it’s no surprise if our atheistic character had found God and his love interest, affirming San Francisco’s Phoenix-like endurance. The slightly historical nature of the film, looking backwards twenty years, actually gives it an interesting weight that the speculative disaster films of the 1970s can’t quite match. While primitive by today’s SFX standards, I found San Francisco surprisingly enjoyable when it gets on with the show, and prescient as to how it creates a template for an entire subgenre to follow.

  • Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

    Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2019) OK, world, I admit it. Revenge of the Pink Panther has pushed me over the edge, and it forces my hand. I have to come clean, even if you’ve seen it coming from the hints I’ve left all over the place. Are you ready? Here goes: I’m not that much of a Peter Sellers/Inspecteur Clouseau fan. I have accumulated enough data points by now to realize that I like the original The Pink Panther best because Clouseau is a support player to Niven/Cardinale/Capucine. By this sixth entry in the series, Sellers/Clouseau has become an all-engulfing, all-self-indulgent ego monster around which the entire series revolved. The plot revolves around him (it’s all about attempts to kill him, something that director Blake Edwards must have had on his mind at the time), the direction puts him centre stage and the editing can’t bear to cut away from his antics. The silly story hits many familiar plot points in the series, and can’t stand still by going from England to France to Hong Kong. While the budget is obviously bigger than previous instalments and there are a few comic moments along the way, the constant bumbling, perplexing fixation on costuming, graceless stumbling upon the truth, have become more grating than amusing—and that applies equally to the criminal and the romantic plot. Revenge of the Pink Panther was the last of the six “main” Pink Panther movies, and it clearly shows the reasons why it was quickly running out of steam by that point. Or maybe even at any point past the first movie.

  • Kings Row (1942)

    Kings Row (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) If anyone wants to illustrate the ways in which the Hays Code stunted the emotional development of American movies for thirty years, a comparative study of racy novels adapted to the big screen would make for a nice case study. In the tradition of the later Peyton Place, Kings Row takes an almost sadistic glee in revealing the sordid underbelly of small American towns. This depiction of a turn-of-the-century Midwestern town starts off slowly as it introduces its young main characters, then turns to the good stuff as they age: Going deeper and deeper in twisted melodrama, we end up with murder, suicide, insanity, fraud, destitution, malicious amputation, class warfare, and so on. The original novel was far wilder (what with incest, nymphomania, euthanasia and homosexuality), but the film does stand out by Hays Code standards even in its adulterated adaptation. (It had a rough view of psychiatry, but that’s to be expected from Hollywood films of the time.) Much of the enduring draw of Kings Row is found elsewhere, though—it’s usually cited as Ronald Reagan’s best performance, and one of the last he did before his military service. Reagan’s career was never quite the same after this interruption due to WW2, and Kings Row is enough to make anyone wonder if he would have gone on to a more successful career as an actor had he not left. He does have a strong role here, and carries much of it on sheer likability. Kings Row will work better if you’re in the mood for some rough melodrama—from today’s perspective, it’s far less objectionable as it once was.

  • Top Hat (1935)

    Top Hat (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) From 1933 to 1945, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made nine movies together, revolutionizing the movie musical along the way. While I think that The Gay Divorcee is the funniest of those movies and Swing Time the best from a dancing standpoint, Top Hat is usually mentioned as the most successful of those nine pictures. It certainly gets a lot of mileage out of the classic “Cheek to Cheek” number, but perhaps the best thing about it is how it distills the Astaire/Rogers formula to its purest: A romantic comedy, with catchy music and terrific numbers spanning the gamut from funny to classy. There’s a solo tap-dancing showcase for Astaire, there are gorgeous costumes (wow, that feather dress!), there’s screwball comedy of mistaken identities, there’s an astonishing multi-storey set meant to present a fantasy version of Venice and, of course, there’s the idealized couple dancing away. With that formula, it’s a guaranteed fun time. The comedy is formulaic to the point of having miscommunication naturally escalates to good-natured slapping, which is in-keeping with mid-1930s comedy. If the Astaire/Ginger partnership worked so well compared to some other Astaire partners, it’s because the age difference between the two was a “mere” 12 years, but also because Rogers could keep up with him better than others. (If you’re paying attention to the other perennial issue in Astaire movies, that of consent in romantic pursuits, it’s still here but not as blatant as in other films.) Top Hat may not be all that substantial, but it remains exhilarating entertainment in the classic Hollywood glamour tradition. Since seeing the film, I managed to find a DVD copy—just so that I can watch it at any time.

  • Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

    Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2019) Christmas classics don’t always age as well once you remove the nostalgia factor. While I think that The Charlie Brown Christmas Special remains a timeless classic, I was quite disappointed by How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Fortunately, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is closer to the first than the second—it has aged better than many other classic Christmas TV specials. Much of it has to do with its chosen stop-motion style: it has a wonderfully tactile feel, and the felt creatures are too cute for words. Burl Ives narrating also adds a lot. Plus there’s the thematic underpinning, digging into discrimination and coming out of it with a positive message. (Yes, I’m aware of the controversy in conflating a happy ending with “being useful for something”. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.) The songs a good, headlined with the omnipresent title number. Oddly charming and sympathetic today, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer still deserves its regular rotation in the holiday schedule.

  • Slap Shot (1977)

    Slap Shot (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2019) In hockey-mad French Canada, Slap Shot has become a bit of an unintentional classic for reasons unforeseen to the original producers. As legend has it, the dub for the Quebec release was handed over to someone who unusually decided to translate it into French-Canadian street joual—as far away from proper grammatical French as it can be. This was a rarity back in 1977, and an entire generation grew up on the vulgar patois proudly heard in the dub. While the cultural omnipresence of the film has waned somewhat in recent years, it’s easy to see why Slap Shot would prove to be a smash hit in Quebec. For one thing, it makes no pretence as to the nobility of hockey: Taking place in the rough-and-tumble minor leagues, this is a sports comedy in which skating is accessory to fist-fighting, taking a very populist stance toward the sport. Then there’s the French-Canadian factor: Taking place in the world of northeastern hockey, it’s natural that some of the characters end up being French-Canadian (featuring snippets of French here and there even in the original English dub), and that some known French-Canadian actors would be featured in the film—such as Yvan Ponton, who would find later celebrity headlining the hockey-focused TV series Lance et Compte and playing in Les Boys series. It does help that the script (written by Montréaler Nancy Dowd) effectively creates striking characters. Paul Newman pleasantly looks out of his element here, his good-natured personality clashing with the gritty and vulgar late-1970s blue-collar environment. While billed as a comedy, the ending is more bittersweet than anything else, although there are a few funny moments along the way. Looking at the film’s release date, it does occur to me that you can draw a straight line from Slap Shot to the underdog comedies (sports or otherwise) of the 1980s, making this film feel even more than a precursor to a much larger movement. The consequence, of course, is that Slap Shot certainly doesn’t feel as fresh or shocking as it must have back then—but that’s the price of success.

  • Shine (1996)

    Shine (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) The obvious knock against Shine is that it does, at times, seems like the most Oscar-baiting of all the Oscar-baiting films. While it doesn’t qualify for Nazi bonus points, it does feature a down-and-out disabled musical prodigy who, thanks to the love of a good woman, regains his talent and his ability to live normally—and it’s based on a true story. It went on to be nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning Geoffrey Rush an Oscar for Best Actor. If it seems to you that you’ve seen quite enough of those movies already, you’re not wrong: it’s a formula, and even the best-executed formulas can still feel overly similar. Still, this is all understating that Shine is, by most standards, a really good movie. Rush gets a flashy role as a musical prodigy hampered by an overbearing father and his own brain’s chemical imbalances—it’s not subtle acting, but it’s the kind of off-beat grand performance that earns notices. The point being that this is the kind of film that allows actors to take centre stage. The focus on music allows Shine to feature better-than-average editing and scoring, further making it feel substantial. As far as formulas go, it’s a successful implementation. There have been far worse Oscar nominees.

  • Die unendliche Geschichte [The NeverEnding Story] (1984)

    Die unendliche Geschichte [The NeverEnding Story] (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2019) We’re more now than a decade into an era where fantasy movies have become commodified into meaninglessness. Everything is possible with CGI and dozens of films over the past few years have offered fantastic visions on-screen that have been consumed and forgotten shortly afterward—nothing is special any more. In that context, watching 1984 big-budget fantasy film The NeverEnding Story is interesting: the special effects are creaky, used sparingly and the film seems amazed that it can pull them off in the first place. Alas, this veteran fantasy adventure hasn’t aged particularly well along the way—from a purely narrative perspective, the film’s few good ideas are strung along an exhausting hero’s journey where it’s just one adventure after another until we get to the point of the film and its conclusion. There are, to be fair, some very ambitious moments along the way: the film doesn’t hold back on what it tries to do with its imaginary world, and there’s a lot of fantastic material in here. I liked aspects of the ending quite a bit, but the film doesn’t quite go all the way with them (possibly because it only adapted the first half of the original novel). Alas, The NeverEnding Story can be too dull to be entertaining: at times, it starts to feel like an obstacle course until the end. I’m not sure if the film has simply been outclassed by wilder fantasy movies or if it was dull to begin with, but it’s obvious that the film simply doesn’t play the same way today as it did back then.

  • 2036 Origin Unknown aka Or1g1n Unknown (2018)

    2036 Origin Unknown aka Or1g1n Unknown (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) The good news for Science Fiction movie fans lately is that special effects are cheap, SF devices literacy is high and there are plenty of non-theatrical distribution channels for low-budget SF movies to reach an audience. The not-so-good news are that given all three previous factors, it’s easier than ever to stumble upon a big cube of nonsense. I think that there are a few good ideas in 2036 Origin Unknown. Too many of them, in fact: By the time we’re past a Martian expedition, an Artificial Intelligence taking over a mission, a cube of mysterious origins, then we’re off into the usual 2001-inspired special effects mysticism, virtual reality reboot, the destruction of the human race and an AI that learns the true magic of friendship. That’s a whole lot, and by the end of the film it feels as if it’s been clearing its throat for 75 minutes before getting to what it really wanted to say. Not to mention an ending that pretty much trivializes what’s come before it, a high-tech fillip very much in the tradition of the venerable “it was all a dream” dodge. Still, despite 2036 Origin Unknown final flop, there are a few intriguing elements in the mix. There’s a striking structural audacity in having most of the film being Katee Sackhoff interacting with computer displays, slick special effects taking over much of the heavy lifting in describing a much bigger story outside the confines of the (essentially) single-room set. The technobabble is ambitious but remains technobabble—and it’s all too easy to find mistakes in the illustrating special effects, even in the first few minutes. The writer clearly has a lot of his mind—it’s too bad that he couldn’t quite cull and select what he should have focused on, or gone beyond many of the obvious ideas in his premise. There’s a bumper crop of those low-budget imaginative SF movies lately, and they should be encouraged: they’re significantly better than what Syfy-special “low-budget SF movie” used to mean even a few years ago, and from time to time you get one that hits it out of the park. 2036 Origin Unknown isn’t one of them, but you have to play the averages.

  • Patient Zero (2018)

    Patient Zero (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) Medium-low budget films about the zombie apocalypse are a dime a dozen these days, and Patient Zero doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from the undead pack even when it pretends that’s not really a zombie story. This is one of those films that posits that the humans are the real enemy, and the inevitable degradation of the bunker environment feels like another retread of Romero’s Day of the Dead. Struggling with having anything to say, Patient Zero hovers around I am Legend thematic concerns without quite making the leap into the advantages of the replacement solution. I’ll be honest: Most of my motivation in watching the film was in seeing another role for Natalie Dormer, and while she does make for a fine leading couple along with Matt Smith, it’s really Stanley Tucci who steals the show, no doubt relishing the opportunity to play a ripped zombie leader and earn some muscular action antagonist credentials. The script is where the problems start: In trying to show a world where zombies are creating their own language, the film barely creates the scaffolding of an intriguing premise (is it a new or modified language? Does it lead to a distinct culture? How much of it is different from human?) before giving up and wallowing into the clichés of the genre. Of course, there’s a trigger-happy colonel who relishes shooting nearly every promising character, existing solely for making things more difficult. Of course, there’s a quasi-magical antidote-from-Patient-Zero nonsense, something that even the film doesn’t believe even if its (so-called smart) characters do. A better screenwriter would have been able to do better, but I’m not sure that the end result would have been much improved considering the uninspired direction from Stefan Ruzowitzky. From its very dull generic beginning to a disappointing Adam-and-Eve conclusion, Patient Zero constantly threatens to become better without never actually doing so. Some of the action sequences almost work well, but they’re not enough. I strongly suspect that the film was abandoned by its studio: Shot in 2015 with then-popular actors, the film was ultimately dumped without fanfare in 2018 almost as if they wanted to wash their hands off the result and let it fade among so many other similar movies.

  • Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

    Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) With the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty, this is my third take on the same story in less than a year, which is to say that it’s less about the incredible story and all about execution at this point. Using the 1935 and the 1984 as a comparison point, this middle version does act as a natural progression in a series. It’s in colour, it’s less sympathetic toward mutineer Fletcher Christian, and being a major studio film from the end of the Hays Code era, it has strategically placed leis and hair to ensure that we don’t see the nudity of the 1935 or the 1984 version. On the plus side, this film (which cost a relative fortune of $22M in 1962 dollars to produce, spanning two years and two directors) clearly throws a lot of money on-screen in re-creating 18th-century ships and spending time on a lush tropical island. It feels like a lavish film, and the historical recreation is impressive. The colour cinematography is splendid, as are the terrific costumes and set design. But production qualities aren’t sufficient in ensuring a good movie. For one thing, it’s unbelievably long … not just in terms of events, but in the pacing of those events. The film alternately dawdles and rushes through plot points, not quite mastering its narrative rhythm. There are other narrative issues as well: It’s an interesting choice to have the botanist narrate the story … even if he’s not there for all of it. Factually, this Mutiny on the Bounty is better than the 1935 version but nowhere near as nuanced as the 1984 one: There are clarifications on a few breadfruit-related plot points, but Captain Blight is still portrayed as an outright sadistic villain. Then there’s the Brando Problem: The more I see of Marlon Brando past his two Oscar-winning roles, the least I like him—it doesn’t help that his character is initially presented as a foppish cad, but there is something about Brando himself (no doubt tainted by his later performances) that just rubs me wrong. It certainly limits the film’s appeal as much as its duration does. Let me put it this way: the 1935 version has the advantage of staging a big spectacle at its time; the 1984 version has a half-dozen terrific actors. This 1962 version, in comparison, is merely there. It has now been thirty years since the latest major version of Mutiny on the Bounty—ample time for a new version even closer to reality.

  • The Wiz (1978)

    The Wiz (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) The 1970s were a dark, sad decade for movie musicals, and The Wiz does nothing to change my mind about it. This musical remake of The Wizard of Oz uses black actors and a modern-day urban setting, but seems determined to waste both its premise and its potential. There was a lot of it to start with, what with a cast that starts with Diana Ross and then goes on to Richard Pryor and Michael Jackson. The surprisingly slow start sets the tone for the disappointment to come, what with Ross looking far too old to play a teenager, and a film that appears determined to suppress any of her natural sex appeal. It gets better once she starts to sing, but not all that much. Michael Jackson fares much better in what is probably his finest screen role, nearly unrecognizable as the Scarecrow, but with his very distinctive voice shining through. Meanwhile, Pryor is in-keeping with the impact of the movie, a disappointment as the Wizard that undermines even an already-undermined character. As a clone of its original inspiration, The Wiz isn’t all that good: Occasionally too scary for kids, far too dull for adults, it also takes many of the original film’s most satisfying (but not necessarily the most realistic) plot points and blurs them into meaninglessness. The production design can be imaginative and ambitious at times, but it’s not successful at what it does. The ending is exceptionally disappointing, running three musical numbers too long and delving into cheap pop philosophy to overstate what was perfectly obvious in the original. The only musical number that works, both on a musical level and a narrative one is the insanely catchy “Ease on Down”, which is worth saving from the rest of this overlong misfire. Reading about the film’s complicated production history is instructive in understanding why it ended up being so disappointing, but this is the result we’re stuck with. (Even Xanadu was more fun than this, if not necessarily more coherent or less dated to the disco era.) Alas, the damage done by The Wiz didn’t stop at the movie itself or its audience: Historically, this film was a notorious flop in every way, and is seen as having led to the end of the era for black-focused films as reinvigorated by the blaxploitation movement. If that’s correct, The Wiz has a lot more to answer for than for wasting more than two hours of everyone’s time even forty years later. (Minus five minutes for “Ease on Down”, because it’s that good.)

  • Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

    Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) I’m not a very forgiving viewer when it comes to dramatic silent movies. Still, spectacle is spectacle no matter which decade you hail from, and so Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is still worth a quick look today, and as more than the film that led to the much better known 1959 version (or the already-almost-unknown 2016 one). It’s silent, it’s epic and it’s spectacular. Never mind the well-used special effects (Bethlehem star! Earthquake! Jesus-featuring scenes shot in two colours!): despite a much heavier emphasis on the nativity compared to later versions (it’s in the title!), the point of the movie are the epic action sequences: the sea galley battles are quite good and measure up to much later films. The chariot race is overlong but thrilling: action-packed, featuring thousands of extras and innovative camera angles for the time. Trivia tells us that this Ben Hur was the most expensive silent movie ever made and one of the highest-grossing ones as well. All that money can be seen on-screen, and that’s the kind of blockbuster moviemaking that endures well—the film reportedly went quite a bit over budget, but made MGM’s reputation as a major studio. Deeply influential over the 1959 version, and thrilling in its own right, this 1925 version of Ben Hur is surprisingly fun to watch … although you may want to skip over some of the quieter drama moments.

  • Sayonara (1957)

    Sayonara (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) Considering that Sayonara is a late-1950s film about Japan, it’s inevitable that it would be somewhat romanticized—although, notably, not as whitewashed as it could have been. A rather annoying Marlon Brando is featured in the lead role as a very stereotypical American getting seduced by the Japanese way of life (and, obviously, a Japanese woman). Much of it becomes a romantic drama heavily playing off social expectations with the unsubtle style of the time. From today’s perspective, Sayonara isn’t much to talk about: it’s long, melodramatic, plays into some strong clichés of interracial relationships and has a mumbling Brando. It’s very much an adaptation of the James Michener novel, better suited to the page than the screen. While it’s better than many other Hollywood movies of the period in having ethnic-appropriate casting for the white men and Japanese women, it does have Ricardo Montalban play a Japanese man … oh well. And so on. But if you dig down into that the film represented in 1957, then you can understand why the film was nominated for a few Oscars: At the time (and for a few more years afterward). It was one of the few sympathetic and compassionate representation of Japan and to fairly represent interracial relationships. Miyoshi Umeki became the first Asian (and, to date, the only) Asian actress to win an Academy Award, while comedian Red Buttons got an Oscar of his own for a very dramatic role. It has aged, but as a compassion-driven film it had aged far more gracefully than other, more hate-driven ones. While the result definitely feels trying today, Sayonara is a film worth putting in context. I still wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but those trying to complete their list of all Oscar-nominee pictures … but it does have its strengths.

  • Slender Man (2018)

    Slender Man (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) In theory, I find it fascinating that the internet is creating a new mythology for our ages, with creepy copy-and-paste material defining new monsters. But my respect stops somewhere along the line in which they’re co-opted in unimaginative Hollywood horror movies. There’s quite a lot of potential in the “Slender Man” creepypasta (even leaving aside that the film is at least ten years past the curve in tackling the now-hackneyed idea of a memetic virus), but very little of it survives the transition process that leads to a dull teen horror film, one so pedestrian that it sucks all life out of the idea. Slender Man is a corporate product in more ways than one: not only does this Sony film feature characters with Sony phones, it also goes straight to the least common denominator in execution. In an effort to try as much weird stuff as he can, some of what director Sylvain White (who did so well with The Losers) attempts just look silly and laughable. The indifferent execution cares so little about whatever it’s doing that it’s careless at all levels: Slender Man is badly lit to the point of being difficult to understand, which is not helped by editing that makes characters disappear from the film without explanation with viewers uninterested in being incensed about it. (Scenes were reportedly removed from the final film, although the kindest cut would be to skip the film entirely.) When all the scary stuff ends up being hallucinations or dream sequences, it’s hard to get worked up over yet another meaningless scene. The ending, as obvious and unsatisfying as it can be, merely makes viewers hate the film even more. What’s perhaps worse is that you can still see a glimpse of what a much more unnerving movie would have been. I liked the emphasis based on the female protagonists—for a time, we’re taken in their world and it’s different from the usual horror material. The lead actresses are likable (although the most intriguing one disappears first, and then the second-most interesting one disappears second and so on until the survival of the dullest) but they’re not quite good enough to save the film. There are glimpses at something better, but the execution never capitalizes on it, and ends up repurposing the Slender Man mythos to a generic horror product with an arbitrary mythology. I’m not sure I’d characterize Slender Man as a letdown because, frankly, who actually expected this to be good? But it’s still a failure.