Movie Review

  • Horse Feathers (1932)

    Horse Feathers (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, November 2021) Alas, it is with a mournful tone that I announce having reached the end of the Marx Brothers filmography. Oh, I still have a few odds and ends to follow-up, and a few more standalone Groucho roles to see, but Horse Feathers marks the last of the Paramount Fives. It may also be the least of those Fives — taking place in the still very familiar environment of college football, it features Groucho as a college president, Zeppo as his football-playing son, Chico as a semi-underworld figure and Harpo doing whatever Harpo wants to do. The plot purports to have something to do with hiring pro football players to help a college team win, but no one ever watches Marx Brothers films for their plot: it’s all about the gags and jokes and simply seeing the Brothers do their own thing, whether it’s a string of non sequiturs, harp playing or pure vaudeville gags. It’s all quite funny, although not quite as funny as their other films of the period: there isn’t much in terms of sustained comic sequences or memorable sight gags: even the dialogue is amusing without being striking. There are a few musical numbers (most of them thankfully more comic than heartfelt, unlike their later MGM efforts) and some intriguing period detail — the presence of a “college widow” as a significant supporting character led me to a trip in the dusty hallways of outdated tropes. Still, Horse Feathers is not a dull movie: there’s nearly always something going on, and the Brothers’ way of hitting several comic registers in quick succession remains one of their more remarkable traits. If Horse Feathers is a goodbye film, then it’s not a disappointing one. It’s not their best… but not their worst either.

  • Her Husband’s Affairs (1947)

    Her Husband’s Affairs (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) Before becoming The Lucy of I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball spent more than a decade working in movies, honing her comic timing in a series of vehicles that made good use of her skills. It’s interesting to see her progressively transforming throughout the 1940s, from a funny but still-generic debutante to the blend of tics, hairstyles and stares that would make up the more fully formed Lucille Ball of the 1950s and beyond. Her Husband’s Affair comes from the latter half of that process, at a time when Hollywood was beginning to understand what an asset Ball was, and was shaping scripts to her strengths. Here, she plays the level-headed foil to Franchot Tone’s eccentric husband, eventually rescuing him from a murder accusation but not before suffering through a long series of comic set-pieces loosely focused on wild and crazy inventions with unforeseen impacts. As far as even light comedies go, there’s a surprising lack of impact to Her Husband’s Affairs. Despite the proto-Lucy Ricardo flair to some of her material, Ball isn’t quite as interesting as she should be — there’s a sense that her character is being held back from the lunacy she could portray. Meanwhile, the same can be said about everything else in the film: despite its potential, Her Husband’s Affairs merely exists contently, getting a few smiles where there should be chuckles and laughs. It’s amiable enough and not a complete waste of time, but there are several much better films from the same time and genre. See it for Ball, maybe, but there’s not much else.

  • There Was a Crooked Man… (1970)

    There Was a Crooked Man… (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) I’m far from being the world’s biggest movie western fan — it’s a genre that easily falls into repetition and cheap dumb machismo. But hearing that There Was a Crooked Man was a creation of witty urbane dialogue-heavy director Joseph L. Mankiewicz definitely had me interested, an interest that only grew once Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda (and Hume Cronyn) showed up in leading roles. The plot is a blend of hidden treasure thriller, prison procedural and ensemble drama all wrapped up in lighthearted direction except when people start dying. Douglas is particularly interesting as a bespectacled ruthless thief, and him going up against Fonda is a good screen pairing. Still, while There Was a Crooked Man has its moments of interest, the overall impression isn’t quite as strong as its pedigree or elements would suggest — it fades away more easily than you’d think, and doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from so many other westerns. Too bad — I can see, here and there, how a better western could have been put together with those elements. Douglas and Fonda remain worth a look, though.

  • Tristana (1970)

    Tristana (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) I know just enough about Luis Bunuel’s filmography to expect the unexpected — from the wild surrealism of his earliest films to the more controlled comedy of his last, to the melodrama of his Mexican period and the satire of his Spanish years, who knows what you’ll get with each new film? In Tristana, I certainly got bits and pieces of nearly everything else in his career: intense melodrama with perverted material, social critique, distasteful cruelty, a battered protagonist, and restrained direction despite the lurid subject matter… it’s a surprisingly quiet (even glacially-paced) film but it has quite a bit of material to chew on. Catherine Deneuve is interesting here, zigzagging her own image as a beautiful woman in various ways that run counter to what viewers may expect. I can’t say that I liked Tristana (can one really like Bunuel films?) but it’s intermittently interesting and certainly one of the purest expressions of Bunuel’s lifelong obsessions as put on film.

  • My Favorite Wife (1940)

    My Favorite Wife (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, November 2021) At this point, I’ve seen most of Cary Grant’s post-stardom filmography, and that’s no cause for celebration: it just means that there are fewer and fewer of his films left to appreciate his screen presence and comic timing. Due to some strange rights issues, My Favorite Wife often features on the TCM American schedule but not the Canadian one — as a result, it was one of the last well-known Grant vehicles that I hadn’t seen, and it took some grey-market ingenuity to import an American DVD edition. I’m happy I did — while it’s not a first-tier Grant vehicle, it contains enough good laughs and able demonstrations of Grant’s comic timing to make anyone happy. Its comedy all stems from a simple but ridiculous situation: what if, after getting his missing wife legally declared dead so he can marry another woman, a lawyer saw his first wife walk in perfectly healthy? (Played by Irene Dunne, no less.) It’s the kind of thing that classic Hollywood comedies could easily milk for 90 minutes, and that’s indeed where My Favourite Wife takes us, from misunderstandings and feeble attempts to hide the truth to more heartfelt reunions and a wild second courtroom sequence where no one will blame the judge from being confused. There’s a notable lull toward the end, where (in a fashion typical of many comedies of remarriage) the high energy takes a back seat to a much slower-paced bedroom reconciliation, but that’s not enough to harm the film. Tangentially: My Favorite Wife is often used by queer-cinema commentators to illustrate the matter of the Cary Grant / Randolph Scott relationship (roommates, or more?) and there’s a sequence in there that appears hilarious in bite-sized gifs (read this — all of it)—but it’s even funnier in context given that it’s meant to illustrate Grant’s character taking in Scott’s character as a formidable romantic rival for his first wife’s affections. It adds just a bit more interest in the film for Grant fans and those who read his latest biography.

  • A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child aka Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (1989)

    A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child aka Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu-Ray, November 2021) By this point in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, five instalments deep, the films were almost operating on autopilot, and so will my review. Once again in The Dream Child, Freddy Krueger is slaughtering an entire finishing class of students brought forth as slasher fodder. Once more, a plucky heroine triumphs over near-impossible evil. Once more, the film’s strongest moments (and the series’ chief claim to distinction in a crowded 1980s slasher-horror field) come from the disturbing oneiric sequences where reality and dream logic crash into gory sequences. Once more, the film undermines its own potency by having antagonist Freddy Krueger spout a stream of nonsensical one-liners, simply stringing puns one after the other — it’s hard to make a credible horror film when the antagonist acts like a terrible stand-up comedian. It all combines to create something that is frustrating, but admittedly still more interesting than most of the slasher horror films of the time — a mixture of special effects, gothic weirdness, call-backs to the series’ mythology and some darker imagery to go with the provocative pregnancy motif of the film. Still, you have to be a fan (or at least tolerant) of the series to make it all the way to The Dream Child — it’s more of the same.

  • Held (2020)

    Held (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) For the past few days, I’ve been overdosing on single-location horror films featuring a cast of a handful… so it’s not an exaggeration to say that I wasn’t particularly happy with Held, as it featured, once again, a minimal cast in a single house. The action gets going when a married couple on a last-ditch getaway wakes up to find themselves implanted with pain-causing implants, and led by a mysterious voice (and some electroshocks) through a sadistic couple’s therapy. Even the dullest viewers will notice that the “therapy,” especially at its bloody climax, only serves the husband’s interest — leading to an entirely expected third-act twist tying Held to The Stepford Wives. It’s not a terrible film — some images are quite nice, and there’s an effective element of set decoration (especially accompanying the twist) that shows that, from a technical perspective, the filmmakers are on to something. Alas, this is not always reflected elsewhere, and looking at the cast and crew does offer a clue: Of the three featured cast members, Jill Awbrey wrote the script, Travis Cluff co-directed and yet Bart Johnson is the most likable actor of the three of them. Awbrey’s lack of screen charisma aside, I’m very disappointed by her script — by the time the obvious twist is confirmed, the film stops making any effort as we default to the woman (an adulteress, the reasons for which are not really explored) being the plucky heroine in mortal danger and the husband flipping personalities to be a complete psychopath. (Plus, an infomercial to drive the point that, in this film’s reality, all men are complicit and no one ever notices women featuring rictuses of mortal terror.)  I can appreciate a good feminist thriller any day of the week, but you have to put some effort into it rather than lazily fall back on familiar genre tropes, and there’s a sense that Held is conceptually slapped together with clichés and received ideas that are never questioned. Even a better ending wouldn’t have excused the awkward first act, or the tediously repetitive second act. In the end, Held still manages to avoid complete failure, but it stays obnoxious in how it claims righteousness without earning it.

  • Spell (2020)

    Spell (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) There’s something almost interesting in Spell’s blend of folk horror, evil hoodoo and deep-Appalachian setting. After some rather meaningless throat-clearing, the film starts in earnest after a small plane crash brings a middle-aged black family man (Omari Hardwick, nod bad) into the care of a backwoods witch doctor (Loretta Devine, surprisingly good) who places a lot more emphasis on being a witch than a doctor. This is all very spooky, of course, especially considering that the man’s family (which was also in the plane) is nowhere to be found, that he’s got a debilitating foot injury and that our witch doctor seems to have perfected the art of dark magic. The result does have its moments (including two gruesome scenes of body horror —ugh, that nail—that harken back to the obvious Misery comparisons) but they remain moments — there’s some horror, some dark humour, some suspense, and some drama, but they feel like bits and pieces of a first draft before the work begins to make the entire thing cohesive and tonally consistent. While it’s almost a relief to see the all-black cast evacuating the racial question, the result is so limp that you have to wonder if Spell would have benefited from some obviousness, or being more daring in tackling social issues. There’s this impression that director Mark Tonderai is barely holding all of this together, so scattered does he seem to be going from one element to another without a focal point. The repetitiousness of the middle act doesn’t help and the ending seems curiously familiar, not really bringing any of the plot threads to a satisfying conclusion. (Bizarrely, the script is from Kurt Wimmer—who’s usually a far more energetic writer.) In other words, the promising elements of Spell never comes into focus, and the result is disappointing no matter which angle you prefer. There’s a much better film to be made out of this, but this isn’t it.

  • Funhouse (2019)

    Funhouse (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) As much as movie reviewers would like to claim that they approach every film fresh and on its own merits, that’s almost never the case. Sometimes you’re not feeling in a specific mood, and sometimes you’re fresh off a run of similar films that get you thirsting for something else. So it is that Funhouse is the fourth film in my 2021 “Blood in the Snow” (BITS) mini-festival, as facilitated by Super Channel. Alas, BITS specializes in low-budget Canadian productions, and that often means small casts, tiny budgets and consequently restrained productions. We’re literally talking about single-location shoots, less than a handful of characters and an intimate approach to small-scale topics. It’s often interesting… but after a few of those, you start thirsting for more. So while Funhouse is largely a single-location shoot, it does feature nearly a dozen characters and most crucially it goes well beyond its single location through stock footage, reaction shots and news reports meant to expand the scope of the story being told from inside a hidden bunker. The essential plot is not that original: In the past ten years, there have been many horror films about darknet snuff reality shows, so Funhouse doesn’t strike new ground when it brings together a bunch of reality-TV celebrities in a bunker for a violent last-person-standing web-broadcast. But its execution often compensates for familiarity in other areas: the script is rather good in its moment-to-moment execution, keeping us interested in what’s going to happen next and how the predictable rhythm of a show where people are killed every three days is going to be upset by the next plot development. It also helps, at least for male viewers, that the cast has been selected for attractiveness — Initially picking favourite characters on look alone (while waiting for the character development to kick in), I was pleasantly surprised to see Khamisa Wilsher and Amanda Howells have more to do than expected in the film’s third act. It’s also a great idea to regularly get out of the bunker for world-wide reaction shots, cable-TV reactions and stock footage expanding the universe of the story to a global perspective. Now, let’s be careful — I don’t think Funhouse is all that good. It’s overly gory, not quite as upsetting as it could have been in its depiction of people kept alive by popular approval (although there’s a predictable hidden factor here that makes this moot), a bit schematic in how it presents its characters and suffers from a dull coda that lands with a so-what thud. Writer-director Jason William Lee does well, but he could have done better. Still, compared to many other films of its class, Funhouse is more fun, more expansive, sexier, and more interesting to watch from one scene to the other. Obviously, I was coming to it with a specific mindset… but it felt good to break away from three-people-in-a-house movies with even something just slightly more ambitious.

  • 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)

    47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2021) I wasn’t a big fan of the first 47 Meters Down—Despite the rather nice suspense of characters being attacked by sharks while caged underwater, I am growing averse to the “imaginary character” trope and I suppose that the best thing about it is that I kept expecting its sequel 47 Meters Down: Uncaged to feature a fictional character. (In vain, as it turns out.)  No, this sequel would rather focus on more sharks and more claustrophobia, as it sends four teenagers in an underground Mayan temple to fight sharks that don’t need eyes to see their prey. It’s about as straightforward as shark movies come, with a steady diet of victims for the sharks, and thrills that don’t stop until everyone is out of the water. Sophie Nélisse and Corinne Foxx headline the film as the plucky half-sisters fighting it out (if you’re guessing the other characters are expendable, well, you’ve seen enough shark films), although it’s nice to see Nia Long looking gorgeous in a very small role. The Mexican scenery is nice when above the surface, but since much of the film takes place underwater, you can expect more shades of blue than lush greenery. The climax does keep something in reserve even after exiting the underground temple, so don’t go reaching for the remote at the sight of sunlight. While I won’t argue too much with those who maintain that the first film is better, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged at least dispenses with hallucinated characters, and that makes it preferable in my book.

  • Motherly (2021)

    Motherly (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) Hey, I’m all for horror films, or low-budget filmmakers getting their shot at making their films, or twists and turns. But there’s a point when there’s too much horror, too little budget, and too many twists and turns. By the time Motherly ends with its sadistic revelations, I was ready for a plane, asteroid or UFO to crash on the barn where the action takes place so that everyone in the cast could die. Before we get there, however, we have a lot of narrative and mysteries to get through—a woman keeping her daughter isolated at home, her trying to seduce an older man, a couple breaking into the house to attack mother and daughter while claiming that they’re responsible for the death of their own daughter… and that’s not getting into the criss-crossing affairs that characters may or may not have had or be having. It’s all built over a central deception that eventually becomes clear in the film’s last few moments, but not before nearly the entire cast gets killed in increasing gruesome ways. Despite the vivaciousness of the script and a rather effective execution from writer-director Craig David Wallace, Motherly eventually becomes more exasperating than satisfying. Fans of twist endings may feel otherwise, but there are so many lulls during the film’s 90 minutes that it exhausts rather than invigorates.

  • The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

    The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) I went into The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It with very low expectations. After a brilliant first film, the series produced so many uninspired sequels and spinoffs that I’d lost track of them all (after checking, there are three Conjuring films, three Anabelle spinoffs and two other semi-related entries so far), and couldn’t really bring myself to care about a new instalment. The first few moments of the film don’t really help, as it once again drapes itself in the silly clothes of having been “inspired by real events.” The Conjuring series is at its best when it abandons any claim to realism and goes all-out on the movie horror stuff, and that’s what eventually happens… in the third act. Until then, the laborious set-up has the series lead Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by the very likable Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson) turning up as supernatural investigators trying to prove demonic possession in a court of law. That silliness contaminates much of the film’s first half, but things get better as the shape of the plot gets clearer. Not merely facing supernatural possession, the Warrens eventually find themselves faced with a physical antagonist running around, casting spells and curses, and eventually driving the spouses against each other. The climax is as spectacular and non-realistic as any horror film laden with special effects and slow-motion shots, as the Warrens join forces once again and take on their physical opponent. From a humdrum beginning, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It ends up climbing its way to adequacy—a step up from the rather dull second entry, and a clear improvement over most (all? I don’t care to remember) of the films in the “Conjuring Cinematic Universe.” It’s not much, but it’s enough to make me more partial to a fourth film, especially now that we’re getting into the 1980s and getting farther and farther away from being overly reverential to the real-life material from the Warrens’ lives.

  • The Righteous (2021)

    The Righteous (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) It’s amusing that what could be seen as a worrisome warning sign ends up being one of The Righteous’s main assets. I’m talking about the decision to shoot a sparse low-budget rural horror film in black-and-white, of course—often an announcement of pretentious intensions artistiques, it actually works really well after a while: writer-director-star Mark O’Brien knows what he’s doing, and the combination between the black-and-white cinematography and the dreamlike imagery is not accidental. The film does take a very long while to get going, though, as an older man burdened with grief sees his tranquil rural existence disturbed by the arrival of a wounded young man who starts questioning him and making things happen in a very disturbing fashion. It takes too long to set up the mystery—even at 97 minutes, The Righteous is too slow for its own good. But there are a few great moments along the way, as the nature of what’s going on becomes obvious and the film somehow ends up in apocalyptic territory in time for a grand-visual finale. Henry Czerny is quite good as the protagonist, his presence helping viewers forget that it’s a low-budget film with a handful of characters and a very constrained shooting location. Still—the images are quite nice at times, the black-and-white cinematography doesn’t simply look like an absence of colours, and the dramatic duel between the two main characters earns our attention. The Righteous is still somewhat of a niche film when it gets into spiritual discussions in a world that doesn’t quite make sense (and thinking too hard about that does nullify a bit of the dramatic weight of it all), but it’s not badly executed.

  • Don’t Say Its Name (2021)

    Don’t Say Its Name (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) First Nation cinema is super-hot in Canada at the moment, and national cable channels are scrambling over themselves to showcase it. As a low-budget horror film, Don’t Say Its Name plays things cleverly with an invisible monster attacking its characters, leaving blood traces but not much more as the local police try to figure out what’s happening. Shot and set on a reserve, with an underlying rationale that touches upon mineral exploitation, it features a mostly-First Nations cast with two female protagonists, checking off all the possible diversity boxes along the way. It’s not exactly a great movie, but even an average horror film can be fun to watch when it’s efficiently handled, set in a somewhat different setting and stamped with the CanCon seal of approval. Writer-director Rueben Martell keeps things going at a steady pace despite a few sputters along the way and a coda that I found deeply unsatisfying. It would be easy to primarily see this film as a First Nation horror novelty alongside Blood Quantum and Rhymes for Young Ghouls—that’s pretty much the tack this review has taken so far, and I see nothing wrong to put Don’t Say Its Name on my list of recommendations for people wanting more inclusive Canadian cinema. But it’s a decent-enough horror film in its own right, with a good unseen monster and some capable action beats for its heroines. All the better for it—this is going to play for years on Canadian cable TV channels.

  • A Thousand Words (2012)

    A Thousand Words (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2021) Having a high concept is nice, but you still have to make sure that it can sustain a film for its full duration and not trip upon itself along the way. The big joke in A Thousand Words is having celebrated motormouth Eddie Murphy being stuck in a character fated to die after saying a thousand words. Some of the material is indeed amusing (even in French dub, nullifying some of Murphy’s specific cadence), although getting Murphy to grimace and gesticulate wordlessly throughout much of the film’s second half feels like a waste of comic potential. But that’s nothing to the troubles that the script gets into once it has to provide a justification, emotional weight and consistent rules backing up the conceit. Either you learn to go along with the jokes driving the logic of the film, or grit your teeth at the way nothing really makes sense in the rules the film sets up and then ignores for itself. It gets even worse when the script desperately wants to ground the comedy in heavy mortal drama, with somewhat over-familiar character motivations acting as lame last-minute emotional manipulation that never quite works. It’s not a great movie—released four years after production, it was unanimously panned and rarely comes up anywhere any more—but it’s probably not as bad as you can imagine. Not high praise, but considering the high concept it started with, A Thousand Words should have been quite a bit better.