Movie Review

  • I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

    I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) Our post-Romero definition of a zombie is significantly different from the classical old-voodoo-school zombie, so don’t be misled by I Walked With a Zombie’s title: This is about Caribbean drugs-and-maybe-magic zombies rather than the living dead. But it goes a little bit farther than that—sometimes described as “West Indian Jane Eyre”, the film turns out to be far more interested in family conflict than jump scares, with a nicely textured result that’s equally psychological horror and foreign xenophobia. The atmosphere of the film remains quite unusual, and it does have a notable dramatic engine underlying the horror component. There are also a few cute surprises in the opening segment: A script by noted SF&F writer Curt Siodmak; a disclaimer about persons “living, dead or possessed”; and an opening scene “set” in my native Ottawa, with snow falling outside the window to set the plot in motion as a Canadian nurse (Frances Dee, looking good) is sent to the Caribbean to take care of an invalid patient. The film has aged well except when it hasn’t—as you can suspect from the production year of the film and the Caribbean/voodoo premise, there’s quite a bit of racism in the way the black characters (some of them eating what looks suspiciously like fried chicken) are portrayed—although, by the same token, they are shown as having some agency and power, even if it’s scary-to-white-people power. Overall, though, even those issues make I Walked With a Zombie interesting in its own right. Director Jacques Tourneur keeps things moving and imbues the production with a quality that was not a given under producer Val Lewton’s supervision. It could have been much, much worse, as a look at most contemporary horror films would show.

  • A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)

    A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) Considering the stress and obligations that the Christmas season places on mothers, it’s no wonder that A Bad Moms Christmas would take on the season to be merry as its follow-up excuse to show moms behaving badly. (It’s even a mini-trend, considering that Daddy’s Home 2 mines the same holiday and intergenerational issues.)  While Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn remain the lead trio of the film, the added interest here comes from seeing their moms (Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines, and Susan Sarandon) descend upon their hometown for the holidays. The themes of the film consequently shift from women/men relationships to mothers/daughters, magnified by the pressures to make Christmas as perfect as possible. A Bad Moms Christmas is formulaic, uncomplicated, intensely predictable in at least two ways (following the conventions of both R-rated women’s comedies and Christmas movies) and not particularly difficult to watch thanks to the actresses involved. The direction zips by, relying once again on snappy editing and pop music. There really isn’t much more to say about it—fans of the first film will be fine with the follow-up, enthusiasts of women-behaving-badly R-rated comedies will get their six-month fix, and nobody will remember the film next year. (Even as a Christmas movie, I don’t see A Bad Moms Christmas as having any staying power—it’s far too dependent on the non-Christmas prequel.)  I watched it, I laughed a few times, and that’s it.

  • Hawaii (1966)

    Hawaii (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2018) Box-office success is fleeting, and you just have to go back fifty years in Hollywood history to find Hawaii, then the second-biggest-grossing movie of the year and now almost entirely forgotten by history. Adapted from a single chapter in James Michener’s eponymous novel (far too long to entirely adapt to the big screen), it’s about the adventures of a missionary trying to settle in wild Hawaii with his new bride. If you’re expecting a rousing adventure story, though, temper your expectations: The film is heavy on religious fervour leading to dumb decisions leading to characters dying—to the point where the film’s religious credentials become almost suspect. The ending is particularly bittersweet. It has not aged particularly well: the movie is ponderous, moralistic, scarcely entertaining to watch and clearly belong to the Old Hollywood era that would be annihilated barely a year later. Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews star as the lead couple, but neither of them are particularly well used. It technically qualifies as an epic film by dint of taking place over decades and a staggering 186 minutes, but there isn’t much spectacle nor complex plot in the film. Frankly, it’s an ordeal to watch these days—although the treatment of the Hawaiian population and myths is slightly more respectful than you’d expect. What will reviewers think of today’s box-office hits in fifty years?

  • Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)

    Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, In Theaters, July 2018) There is so little to say about Hotel Transylvania 3 that it leads directly to asking why the film was needed. There isn’t much more here than, indeed, a vacation episode with a little bit of romance for the lead character. The film spends almost no time at the titular hotel, instead taking refuge on an ocean liner for monsters and various stops along the way. There’s some antagonism between Dracula and the Van Helsing family, a dance-music-dominant finale, and an opponent-to-lovers arc (well, as much as can be included in a kids’ movie). Returning director Genndy Tartakovsky keeps thing running with more or less the same level of energy than his previous two instalments, with Adam Sandler once again turning in a better-than-usual voice performance to anchor the piece. As a film, it’s okay—not good, not bad, just sufficiently in-between to be acceptable family entertainment. I’d complain about missed opportunities in not going with a bigger idea, except that I’m not sure there is a bigger idea to be had—the Hotel Transylvania series is looking as if it’s settling in for cruise control and much more of the same. At least it’s not painful to watch, which is already better than many other kids’ movies these days.

  • High Society (1956)

    High Society (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) Considering the high esteem with which I hold The Philadelphia Story (Hepburn! Grant! Stewart!), you may think that I wouldn’t be so happy about its musical remake High Society. But that’s not the case! I like musicals, and High Society is a great musical, justifying its existence by doing things that the original film couldn’t do. The fun starts early as the film features Louis Armstrong and His Band introducing the setting in song before turning to the audience and winking, “End of song, beginning of story.”  I like my musicals self-aware, and the tone thus having been settled, we’re off to the races as Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra end up forming the triangle at the centre of the story. Kelly plays her princess-like role well enough—not up to Katharine Hepburn’s level, but the irony level is off the chart considering that this would be her last film before becoming a member of the real Monaco royalty. Crosby and Sinatra are effortlessly charming as usual—“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” is sensational, and “Now You Has Jazz” has Armstrong taking centre stage for a welcome encore. The film is at its weakest when running through the motions of repeating its inspiration, and at its strongest when it goes off in song and dance numbers. I really enjoyed it—especially as a musical.

  • Guess Who (2005)

    Guess Who (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2018) I may not be a big fan of the original Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (which has aged poorly in some respects), but I can certainly respect the fact that it dared tackle a then-difficult subject with some wit and poise. Decades later, we’re thankfully past the point where interracial relationships are scandalous—but that doesn’t mean that a race-switched remake had to go so strongly for dumb comedy. Of course, with Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher, you get what you pay for. At least a pre-stardom Zoë Saldaña looks great in an underwritten role. To be honest, Guess Who isn’t so bad once you get past the sacrilege factor: Kutcher does have his charm, Mac is a strong presence, and the comedy is so strictly formula that it’s guaranteed to be acceptable for a wide variety of focus group members. (I jest, but at least one scene goes a bit farther than it needed to in having Kutcher tell a few racial jokes to a black audience, and them finding them pretty funny—at least until the last one goes over the edge.)  The rest of the film is merely fine, and errs more often on the side of romantic comedy rather than racial commentary. Which is understandable enough given the soft-sell approach it takes. Every era gets the movies it deserves, and so the mid-2000s got their mostly innocuous race-relationship movie.

  • Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011)

    Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) Contemporary reviews of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close were fairly clear and unanimous: this was schmaltz of the highest grade, cynically manufactured to bait audiences and perhaps even the Academy Awards. As a jaded reviewer, surely I didn’t need to watch it and so decided not to. (I was also busy with a newborn.) But what if it worked? Years later, running down the list of Oscar-nominated pictures I hadn’t yet seen, I ended up starting Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close with low expectations and a considerable amount of built-in reluctance, leaving it in the background as I was doing something else. It really doesn’t help that the opening moments of the film hammer the premise home: Here’s the semi-autistic kid of a good man who died in 9/11, and he’s still having trouble coping. Buzzword bingo.  From a conceptual standpoint, the film is still disastrous and a masterwork of manipulation. But as it unfolded and I kept interrupting what I was doing to pay attention to the film, I realized that the execution of the whole preposterous thing was gradually seducing me into accepting its reality. It helps to have good actors—Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are exactly the screen persona that the posters promise us, but then there’s Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, John Goodman and Jeffrey Wright in small roles. But the real draw of the film is Stephen Daldry’s inventive direction, which takes us into the dynamic mind of its young protagonist, and treats the edges of the screen as mere suggestion—there’s a lot of image blending here, flights of fancy from strict realistic mimetism and to see this after a few weeks spent deep in classic film was a reminder of how the state-of-the-art in terms of direction has considerably evolved over the past decade, with unprecedented ability to make reality malleable. Of course, the film is far too often too much for its own good: Daldry piles on the weepy triggers by the end of the film and if some of them work, the others feel far-fetched. I’m almost sure that my reaction in 2018 is far more positive that if I had seen the film in 2011—at the time, the film was pitched as a sure-fire Oscar candidate, tied to the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and still playing with raw wounds. Seven years later, well, the first kids without direct memories of 9/11 are finishing high school, we have more pressing urgencies to think about and the film has retreated into semi-respectability as “one of those Oscar nominees”. As a result, it now feels like a discovery more than an imposed viewing and that does make quite a difference. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the film needs a critical revaluation (I mean: it is still schmaltzy), but it’s probably quite a bit better than critics said at the time.

  • Black Christmas (1974)

    Black Christmas (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2018) Perhaps the most noteworthy detail about Black Christmas is the date at which it was produced—1974, four years before Halloween (to which it has a clear kinship) would popularize exactly the kind of film that Black Christmas is both in subject matter, attitude and technique. Some of the filmmaking is limited by its low budget, but most of it reflects almost shot-for-shot the kind of films that slasher horror filmmakers would churn out for years after John Carpenter’s success. A made-in-Canada success story, Black Christmas does feel in advance of its time, although it certainly does not escape from its own subgenre. This being said, there are performances here by Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea and a young Andrea Martin, plus an energetic directing style from Bob Clark. Unusually (and unsatisfyingly) enough, the film does not reveal the identity of the killer nor punish him, reinforcing its futility. Alas, the flip side of anticipating the slasher subgenre is that it can and does feel like more of the same … which doesn’t help if you don’t like the kind of movie that it launched. 

  • The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

    The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) When they say that The Bride of Frankenstein is one of the best sequels ever made, they’re not kidding: Even if the original Frankenstein is not a bad movie, it’s so familiar that it can feel underwhelming. While the cultural impact of The Bride of Frankenstein is significant, much of the film feels fresher, more challenging and more imaginative than its predecessor. There are some brilliant special effects here and there, the story is far more morally ambiguous (I mean—the monster is likable, but he actually kills a young girl!) and it doesn’t merely go through the motions of the Shelley story like the first one does. There’s a clear articulation of a mad scientist rivalling Frankenstein, making the stakes ever more complex. This being said, I was surprised to find out that despite the iconic nature of the titular bride, she only shows up for a few moments—and her plot purpose seems to be to reject Frankenstein so that he’s motivated to go kill himself. Hmmm. Nonetheless, I had a much better time watching The Bride of Frankenstein than its predecessor, and its unusual nature is a significant part of it.

  • Frankenstein (1931)

    Frankenstein (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2018) The great things about the handful of classic Universal Monster movies is that they’re iconic enough to be worth a watch at any time. The not-so-great thing about them is that they’re so iconic that they’ve been remade, ripped off, sequeled, and nodded at so often that we often know exactly what will happen even if we’ve never seen the movie. So it is that this 1931 version of Frankenstein is pretty much what we’d expect from a Frankenstein film. There’s Bela Lugosi in traditional makeup, there’s the mad scientist, there’s the lightning-powered machinery, there are the villagers … it’s extremely familiar and while it’s good, I don’t think there’s any surprise to it. I still enjoyed watching it, but I’m having trouble actually finding anything worthwhile to say about it.

  • The Stepford Wives (1975)

    The Stepford Wives (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) One of the problems about watching originals after their remake is that the remake is often, despite other problems, more in-tune with current tone and attitudes. So it is that the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives took a tongue-in-cheek tone to better distinguish itself from the original’s cultural ubiquity. After all, it’s not as if the idea of replacing wives with obedient robots can be taken seriously, right, right? I found the remake unsatisfying for many reasons, but the choice of tone seemed defendable. So, going back to the original, it’s a bit of a surprise to find that the concept is played here absolutely straight—as a slow-burning horror movie in which, yes, wives are replaced by obedient robots. I found the horror to be found not so much in the replacement (although that black-eyed simulacrum toward the end—eek!) as in the eagerness of so-called husbands to replace the one they’ve chosen to marry. The other big change of pace between remake and original is, well, the change of pace—this 1975 version is incredibly slow by today’s standards, and doubly so when you consider that is spends its time building to a punch that is already familiar: characters take forever to get to what we already know even before watching the film. Taking everything together, I enjoyed the original The Stepford Wives far less than I was expecting. It hasn’t aged gracefully at all (even in its portrayal of mid-1970s affluent small towns) and is often a slog to get through. Can we ask for a remake of the remake?

  • Cleopatra Jones (1973)

    Cleopatra Jones (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) Blaxsploitation movies will always have a special place in my cinephile’s heart, and Cleopatra Jones feels like a particularly fine example of the form: not overly known, yet featuring pretty much everything we’d expect from the subgenre and sporting a terrific heroine in the lead. Tamara Dobson stars in the title character, a glamorous undercover agent for the US government. Coming back home from an anti-drug foreign intervention, she gets to clean up her neighbourhood from dealers with a fair amount of kung-fu. But the plot isn’t the point of a film fostering black solidarity against drugs, promoting ways to work within the system to resolve troubling issues and doing so with an overwhelming sense of style. Dobson is so spectacular that she doesn’t need to disrobe to appeal to audiences—her sheer presence and fashion sense are enough. It’s almost satisfying to hear the characters in the film echo the same conclusion: “Black is beautiful” indeed. From a contemporary perspective, there is often a disconnect between the historical near-hysteric reactions to Blaxploitation movies from conservative circles and the film we see from today’s perspective—especially notable here is how staid and law-abiding the film feels, with a standard anti-drug message and some complementarity between Jones and the White establishment—some racist cop antagonists aside. Cleopatra Jones doesn’t feel particularly subversive nor dangerous, but that does give it a very specific charm even today.

  • Paths of Glory (1957)

    Paths of Glory (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) There are movies that are going to be seen no matter their subject matter, simply by dint of being part of someone’s filmography. You can watch Paths of Glory because it’s one of Kirk Douglas’ better roles as an officer stuck between loyalty to his men and duty to his superiors. Or because it’s one of Stanley Kubrick’s most humanistic movies, with great battle sequences and a powerful ending. Or you can watch it because it’s a terrific film, at once indignant about war and decent in its depiction of characters forced in impossible circumstances. Some sequences already showcase Kubrick’s film mastery: The lengthy uninterrupted shot through WW1 fortifications is a thing of beauty, and the editing of the film is top-notch even by contemporary standards. It has endured today not simply because of its pedigree or its exceptional performance, but perhaps because its perspective on war—as an incredible waste that makes monsters out of everyone including the most principled—stands sharply at odds from other war movies of the era. Blending it with a legal drama (even a pseudo-legal drama) adds more opportunities to explore its theme than a strictly combat-focused film would have. Comparisons with other war movies of the era are instructive. Well worth watching today, Paths of Glory is the film where the Kubrick magic starts happening and it still stands as one of the director’s strongest features.

  • The Blob (1958)

    The Blob (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) To put it bluntly, The Blob is not a good movie. And yet it endures even today, frequently showing up on retro movie channels and ranking high on the list of quintessential fifties movies. Part of it is certainly due to this being Steve McQueen’s first film—a 28-year-old actor playing a much younger teenager trying to save his town from alien invasion. McQueen being McQueen, the film largely revolves around his innate charisma, and it’s not a bad thing to see him as young as he gets in movies. The titular Blob almost steals the show … but not quite. Special Effects limitations being what they were, this is a fifties sci-fi horror film that is definitely not horrific even as some characters get dissolved by the alien menace. (The amusing title song is worth a listen.)  Aside from MacQueen and a rather droll tone, The Blob is perhaps most remarkable as a gentle visit to mid-fifties small-town America, where the grocery store and the local movie theater are important landmarks and the local police chief harbours small grudges against specific people. It’s not good, and perhaps it still works because it never was. A rather inconclusive ending takes on a new meaning sixty years and one climate change crisis later.

  • Shanghai Express (1932)

    Shanghai Express (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) There’s a remarkable amount of exoticism on display in Shanghai Express, which follows a few characters are they board a train from Pekin to Shanghai and get caught up in the Chinese civil war. Trains are good for taking characters a long way while remaining in manageable locations, and so the movie does feel far more expansive than its limited sets suggest. (Although there is one notable outdoors sequence showing the train leaving Pekin.)  Notably helmed by Josef von Sternberg before the Hays Code crackdown began, Shanghai Express features a courtesan as heroine, opium dealing, forced sex, civil war dealings and one big murder. Marlene Dietrich is spectacular as the morally compromised “Shanghai Lily”, with a then-rare leading role for Asian-American performer Anna May Wong. While the first half of the film is a bit melodramatic and seems content to see its ensemble cast just chat away, the film gets far more interesting as a thriller once the train is stopped by government forces and the characters are kicked out of their comfortable berths. Great cinematography helps propel a morally ambiguous subject matter that still feels decently modern. It wraps up satisfyingly, which is true for the film as a whole: Made in 1932 but almost just as interesting today, Shanghai Express is a welcome reminder that the basics of cinema were all understood even as early as the early thirties.