Movie Review

  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) From our twenty-first century perspective, we routinely complain about remakes … but the truth is that the early decades of cinema were just as rife with movies being remade. Of course, back then they did have better excuses, as the state of the art in moviemaking kept progressing at a pace that would astound us today. Take the leap between the 1920 and 1941 versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: One of them silent, crude and garish while the latter one being more nuanced and controlled. Spencer Tracy delivers a truly good performance in both eponymous roles, relying on sheer acting (and hairstyling, and makeup) to distinguish between the two characters. The direction is more ambitious, the story a bit more sophisticated, the portrayal of evil not quite as comically quaint as in the previous film. As a result, the 1941 version can be watched today with far fewer obstacles between the film and the viewer—sure, the colour is missing … but not much more. Where the 1941 version suffers a bit, especially when watched as a double-feature with the 1920 version, is that it has fewer surprises to offer in telling the same story. In a way, that frees the viewer to appreciate the execution and Tracy’s more impressive performance largely bereft of prosthetics.

  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) According to my notes, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the oldest movie I’ve ever watched to date. While I wonder at the idea of a movie that has travelled in time nearly a hundred years to be watched today, I’m also tempted to put Science Fiction fan beanie on my head to point out that, of course, a genre film is more durable and memorable than then-contemporary drama. Genre is fun, genre is interesting and genre, all things considered, travels pretty well through time. The basic Jekyll/Hyde story, after all, is a pumped-up illustration of the duality within all of us, torn between our basest instincts and our better natures. Here we have John Barrymore (grandfather to Drew Barrymore, if you want another link between then and now) playing both lead roles: an upstanding citizen who, thanks to scientific experiments and hilariously ill-advised nudging by his future father-in-law, sees his inner beast unchained and free to act badly. One aspect of watching a 1920 film trying to tackle debauchery is the curiously tame nature of the excesses (ooh, an ankle) and yet the film does manage to make its point come across clearly. The hideous transformation of Jekyll into Hyde is well handled through prosthetics and makeup, and the rest of the film is decent enough. I’m not that charmed by the entire film—as with other silent movies, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde seems to last forever, exhibits only a rudimentary understanding of modern cinematographic grammar and is simply too foreign to be watched transparently when the title cards brutally remind you that there’s an entire audio dimension missing. Still, I’m still impressed that this nearly hundred-year-old artifact can still be watched and make us care about the story it has to tell.

  • War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

    War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) Nobody expected the 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes reboot to be worth anything after the increasingly campy tone of the first series or the dumb 2001 remake. So it’s a surprise to conclude, after watching War for the Planet of the Apes, that the new trilogy has managed to exceed all expectations to deliver one of the finest, most sustained film series of the decade so far. After nailing a surprisingly realistic tone for the first film in the series, the two others managed to head in the same direction. It helps a lot that the series has been a high-water mark for CGI character creation: Entirely digital “Caesar” is a memorable character with numerous emotional moments and the film is nearly flawless in how it portrays him on-screen. The trilogy tells how humans cede the planet to apes and this third instalment describes the final battle of the changeover, with enough perfidious humans to make us feel better about the succession. (If there’s a theme to this decade’s finest Science-Fiction, it’s that from robots to apes, humanity is ready to accept that we may be supplanted by something more human than itself.)  Writer/director Matt Reeves leads the film with a sure hand, adding depth and sentiment to what could have been a noisy spectacle. War for the Planet of the Apes wraps up the trilogy in a way that almost makes us feel not asking for one more for fear of tainting the impact of the three films so far. Who could have expected that only a few years ago?

  • The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

    The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) Perhaps the best thing about 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood is how it doesn’t feel like a 1938 film at all. You can credit the colour for that: One of the first big movies shot in Technicolor with decent image detail, it’s visually distinct from other movies of the time and would remain so for nearly two decades as colour took until the early sixties to truly become the standard. As a result, the film does feel as if it’s from the 1950s, something that director Michael Curtiz’s fast narrative pace helps support. The fantastic Errol Flynn plays the lead part with bravado and wit—the sequence in which he first confronts the enemy in their castle could be transposed with few modifications a modern superhero movie. Olivia de Havilland is nearly as striking as Maid Marian, but let’s be honest—this is Flynn’s film. The other reason why The Adventures of Robin Hood still feels so modern is that it has been endlessly re-used in other modern movies. Nearly every take on Robin Hood (notably the 1973 Disney version, 1991 Kevin Costner vehicle and 1993 Mel Brooks parody) has been inspired by this one, often to the point of re-creating scenes. It does make for a film that can be readily re-watched today with a considerable amount of fun, especially for audiences (kids, for instance) where black-and-white could be an obstacle.

  • Gaslight (1944)

    Gaslight (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) The term “gaslighting” seems to be everywhere these days thanks to the truth-denying efforts of the current US administration, so why not go back to the source that named the issue? Fortunately, there’s a lot to like in Gaslight beyond the terminology—this story of a woman being deceived and endangered by her husband remains a really good thriller today. Ingrid Bergman is as attractive as ever as the heroine, while Charles Boyer handles the transformation of his character from attractive stranger to an abusive husband very well. An 18-year-old Angela Lansbury shows up in a small role. The film’s cinematography is notable in that it gradually transitions from a brightly lit romance to a stark chiaroscuro Gothic (or noir) thriller as the story evolves. The suspense is gripping, and the use of mystery does help propel the narration forward. Director George Cukor is best-known for comedies, but he was equally adept at adapting novels to the screen and Gaslight is a perfectly acceptable thriller. There were a fair number of women-in-domestic-distress thrillers during the 1940s but Gaslight holds its own against most of them.

  • Red River (1948)

    Red River (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) Yee-haw, little doggies! No, wait, what’s the appropriate expression for a cattle drive? Get it ready because Red River is a western focusing on a very long trip from Texas to Kansas, driving cattle to the market. Beyond the various obstacles along the way, we have a rivalry between an older man (John Wayne) and a younger man. The dramatic tension is obvious and developed in a straightforward fashion, but Red River remains a memorable western largely due to its scope and clean directorial style from Howard Hawks. Wayne is better than usual as an unsympathetic lead confronting his adopted son throughout the picture. As a western, it doesn’t try to reinvent the form, although the focus on a cattle drive is a bit unusual. (Sadly, the usual Native American prejudices are along for the ride).  Those who don’t like westerns won’t necessarily be convinced by Red River, but the film does have its share of thrills for genre fans.

  • Death Wish (1974)

    Death Wish (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2018) The mid-seventies really weren’t a cheerful time for popular entertainment in general, or New York City in particular—Hollywood was still churning out reactions to being unshackled from the Hays Code, whereas NYC was experiencing unprecedented levels of crime. People wanted quick and simple solutions, and so a vigilante character stepped in, incarnated by Charles Bronson. Death Wish itself has spawned so many imitators—the basic story is visceral and easy enough to do on a low budget—that it does feel dull by today’s standard: The story moves along at a plodding pace, and the film feels long even at 94 minutes. Bronson is too old (and far too menacing) to play the part, but who cares—it’s the idea that counts, or more specifically the fantasy of taking complete revenge upon irremediable criminals. It would be easy enough to regret the normalization of revenge fantasies in pop culture (so much so that the 2018 remake of Death Wish passed along almost unnoticed in theatres) but that’s shouting at a horse long after it has left the barn. What matters most is the film’s keystone place in the landscape of mid-seventies cinema, and how it acts as the apogee of a dark-gritty-violent trend that would create an appetite for escapist fare along the lines of Star Wars. In many ways, there’s no need to see the original Death Wish—it’s been redone so often since then that it’s almost superfluous.

  • The Italian Job (1969)

    The Italian Job (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2018) If you thought that having seen the 2003 remake of The Italian Job negated the need to see the original, think again, because the original is about twice as inventive and ten times as cool as its remake. It’s off to a roaring start as its protagonist (played with impeccably charm by Michael Caine) gets out of prison and straight into London’s Swingin’ Sixties: In-between the cool car, cool clothes and entourage of beautiful women, he’s living the dream and sharing it with us. The film gets more ordinary as it explains the subsequent caper and assembles the team of specialists to see it through. Noteworthy is the script’s emphasis on a primitive form of computer hacking, as traffic signals are trafficked as part of the caper by a computer expert (played by no less than Benny Hill). Cool scenes abound (“You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”), culminating in a demented car chase through Turin featuring three of the original Cooper Minis and a spirited singing of “Getta Bloomin’ Move On.”  The only real flaw of the film comes at the ending, which famously ends on a literal cliffhanger and deprives the audience of a truly satisfying ending—although it does trade it for a heavy dose of irony. It doesn’t matter all that much, as The Italian Job remains great good fun from beginning to end. Heck, writing about it makes me want to watch it all over again. 

  • The Enforcer (1976)

    The Enforcer (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2018) Third entry in the Dirty Harry series, The Enforcer is clearly running on autopilot, much of the film being a copy of previous material bordering on self-caricature. Callahan himself is introduced in gosh-wow fashion, first ending a liquor store robbery through excessive property damage, and then having a few regressive choice words about affirmative action once he’s asked to participate in a board to hire female police officers. (One of them is assigned as his partner. You can imagine the rest.)  Once reassured that we’re dealing with the stock image of Harry Callahan, the film then goes through the motions of a stock plot involving domestic terrorists and half-heartedly ties it to a criminal project. There’s a detour through black militantism that feels just this ride of outright racism, although it’s often hard to distinguish between the series’ reactionary bend and the overall attitude of the time. The result, though, remains a half-hearted success at best—while the atmosphere of mid-seventies San Francisco is interesting, the film itself is by-the-numbers and leans too heavily on violence and dispensing of its most interesting character as a motivation for Callahan. Every film in the Dirty Harry series is a bit worse than its predecessor, and The Enforcer starts straddling the line between acceptable and forgettable.

  • Quo Vadis (1951)

    Quo Vadis (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) I have dim memories of watching Quo Vadis as a kid (especially the last shot of the film) but watching it now is more an exercise in historical Hollywood than an enjoyable viewing in itself. Historically, Quo Vadis was the first big success of an era in film history where Hollywood headed to Rome in order to film epic movies on a smaller budget. You can see the result on-screen with a lavish production with countless costumes, credible historical re-creations and an ambitious Bible-related subject matter palatable to international audiences. Quo Vadis is a deep dive in Roman history in the decades when Rome fought the newly popular Christianity. It’s not particularly historically accurate, but it does revel in the imaginary imagery of the era, combining swords and sandals and political/religious conflict alongside a big dash of family melodrama. It’s tedious and impressive at once, especially when you try to keep up with the very large cast and equally long running time. It does help that the film features actors such as Robert Taylor and Peter Ustinov, alongside captivating actresses such as Deborah Kerr and Marina Berti. A long list of notables had small roles among the cast and crew, but the film’s biggest impact was financial, both in terms of revenues (it reportedly saved MGM from bankruptcy) and legacy (it paved the way for very similar epics). It’s not quite as good as many of the films it would spawn, though: the highlights are few and far between, while the film’s connection to the bible is tenuous at best. It does make for an impatient viewing experience—well-known but not particularly enjoyable, Quo Vadis is a bit of an imposed viewing … unless you like that kind of thing, of course.

  • Radius (2017)

    Radius (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) I’ve been watching so many high-budget movies (both new and old) lately that I had almost forgotten the particular pleasures of ingenious low-budget films. The small discoveries best exemplified by Canadian production Radius, for instance: An intriguing premise that makes the most of a limited budget in featuring unknown actors, next-door settings, an intriguing mystery and a premise that seeks to make the most out of its concept. The subject matter is grim enough that the film doesn’t exactly qualify as fun (an amnesiac discovers that everything that comes within a small radius of him dies instantly, except for a mysterious woman able to neutralize this effect), but there is an undeniable pleasure in seeing the film gradually illustrate then explore the consequences of its premise. As is tradition, the setup is quite a bit better than its resolution—by the time we’re down to the answers, a great deal of the infinite possibilities of the film’s first half-hour has evaporated to one single story, and it’s not quite as good as anything we may have imagined. Revealing an extraordinary secret about the characters also means robbing the film of its everyday man quality, to its detriment. The ending also takes the easy way out in addressing the problem, cutting off a number of grander-scope possibilities. Still, there’s no denying the ingeniousness of the low-budget approach (being Canadian watching a film shot in Manitoba means recognizing very familiar house styles and small-town settings) as well as some particularly well designed set pieces, such as the hospital sequence in which the characters have to surpass themselves not to be too far from each other. Radius isn’t a great film, but it does make for relatively entertaining genre material and a further entry in the “clever Canadian SF&F” ledger. 

  • Despicable Me 3 (2017)

    Despicable Me 3 (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) It’s never a good sign when you look askance at the screen and wonder why a specific creative choice was made. I’m not here to bury Despicable Me 3, which is more or less in-line with the series (including the Minions spinoff) so far: it’s a serviceable new entry in the franchise, not quite as interesting because it needs to move forward. If the three little girls were the heart of the first film, and the character of Lucy was the comic highlight of the second film, this film feels forced to expand the family a little bit and get an eighties-themed villain. And that’s when the askance glance at creative choices comes in: Gru’s new brother isn’t particularly funny, and neither is former child-star villain Balthazar Bratt. In fact, they’re so perfunctory that it’s easy to feel disappointed when it becomes clear that, yes, this is the direction in which the entire third film will go. The girls are relegated to the background, Lucy doesn’t get much to do and we’re stuck with a pair of new characters that are clearly less interesting than the filmmakers think. Oh, there’s still enough fast-paced comedic action to keep things interesting (although the amount of Minion stuff is appropriately kept in check) but the film suggests that the series is on a path of steadily diminishing returns, creatively speaking. Of course, finances trump creativity in this blockbuster age of film, so you can reliably expect Despicable Me 4 in three to four years. So it goes. No amount of askew glaring will change that.

  • Magnum Force (1974)

    Magnum Force (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2018) Considering how the first Dirty Harry movie made nearly everyone uncomfortable with how it glorified the vigilantism of its protagonist, there is something almost hilarious to see sequel Magnum Force try to distance itself from this position by pitting Harry Callahan against even worse rotten cops. From the first few moments of the film, with a credit sequence lovingly focus on the titular gun, it’s clear that this sequel regrets nothing and doubles-down on its assets. (Unsurprisingly, it was written by noted gun aficionado John Milius.) Here an entire group of killer cops is uncovered and while Callahan does get a few choice words about their methods, the film wants you to know and understand and appreciate that he’s nothing like those killer cops because reasons, that’s why. Or rather Callahan will gun down those that he determines to be bad rather than being told by some other guy. Or something. Perhaps it’s better to pretend that Callahan is the good guy and appreciate what he does in order to catch the designated bad guys. To be fair, Magnum Force does have its moments. The film isn’t as polished as the mean thrills of the original, but it does have Clint Eastwood (always an asset), Hal Holbrook as a no-fun superior antagonist, a detecting sequence that sees Callahan in a shooting contest with his enemies, and an interesting motorcycle chase climaxing on an aircraft carrier. The atmosphere of mid-seventies San Francisco is always worth a look even though the film itself is hum-drum. Magnum Force does build upon the first movie, though, so you might as well keep going through this one if ever you have the choice.

  • Knock Knock (2015)

    Knock Knock (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) There are stories that men tell each other in order to keep themselves in line. Don’t crush on crazy; don’t crawl inside the bottle; don’t run with criminals; don’t stray outside your marriage; don’t neglect your kids. Elementary life lessons, but worth repeating, often with maximal effect, in order to feel better about an ordinary life. When those morals are handled through genre methods, they become high-impact morality tales. Think Fatal Attraction. And if you give the story to a horror director like Eli Roth … well, you end up with something like Knock Knock, in which a good husband/dad finds himself powerless to resist the advances of two women when they show up at his doorstep when his wife and kids are away. What follows is a pair of steamy sex scenes. But what follows what follows is a merciless takedown of the man’s life using video and social media. The moral of the story here is clear enough: Destroy Facebook. Japes aside, does it work? Well, yes and no. Famously stoic Keanu Reeves is a curious choice as a good husband/dad, given that his innate reserve doesn’t really help him reach the emotional extremes required by the script. On the other hand, Ana de Armas and Lorenza Izzo are good picks as the ruthless temptresses—fortunately enough, since much of the Knock Knock’s credibility (or what passes for it given that it’s a quick-and-dirty exploitation film) depends on them—de Armas is particularly good, which explains why her career has taken off since then. Otherwise, though, the film does feel as if it doesn’t have enough depth to sustain its straightforward warning. It ends limply, in perhaps the tritest possible way. As a horror-erotic take on the home invasion genre, it sits uncomfortably between two very different genre—I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one (or fifteen) XXX-rated parodies focusing on the eroticism, and we’ve already seen an entire pure-horror home invasion subgenre come and go and come again. For Roth, who straddles the line between mainstream and extreme filmmaker, this is curiously tepid stuff—he’s obviously daring enough to feature two very explicit sex scenes, but the rest of the picture goes nowhere. As a result, Knock Knock doesn’t unnerve as much as it annoys, and that’s a fatal flaw in the kind of moral lesson it almost tries to be.

  • Fanny och Alexander (1982)

    Fanny och Alexander (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) There may have been dragons, aliens, global conspiracies and vampires in Fanny och Alexander but I’ll never know because it seemed that I slept a thousand nights during the film’s running time and yet things never seemed to change. This is director Ingmar Bergman reflecting upon his childhood in a small Swedish village, and so you can imagine that the film is low on spectacle—while there’s some heavy drama involving kids being abused by their step-father, and someone being burned alive in an attempt to escape, the film spends far more time creating an atmosphere (most notably around a rather lovely Christmas celebration). To be fair, there are ghosts and nudity and violence here, but most of them come rather late in a duration time for more than three hours—at which point I simply didn’t care about much else than making it to the end of Fanny och Alexander even through brief comatic episodes. So it goes when I’m placed in front of much European art-house stuff—I’m easily bored.