Movie Review

  • The Sheik (1921)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, June 2022) I started watching The Sheik fully intending to have something to say about its lead Rudolph Valentino (for whom it was one of the highlights of a surprisingly short career), but by the time the film was over, I had more to say about another film released a hundred years later – the critically panned but immensely popular erotic thriller 365 Days. If you haven’t seen 365 Days, don’t worry, because what I have to say also applies to 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight or many, many other movies released between 1921 and 2021, and the likely history of film going forward. None of the twenty-first century films I have mentioned have been favourably reviewed, and there are some perfectly valid reasons for that. But there’s another reason that is far less respectable, and it’s this idea that movie critics are ill-equipped to deal with films having to do with female desire, especially if said desires don’t reflect a progressive outlook. From The Sheik to 365 Days, a perennial female fantasy has to do with power and reluctance. A story exploring what happens to a woman when she’s reluctantly held by a powerful man intent on conquering her is not respectable… but apparently it worked a hundred years ago and still works today – audiences swooned at the sight of Valentino as a sheik with a crush on a headstrong woman, and many swooned (sometimes secretly) about more modern depictions of the same archetype. (And if you think The Sheik invented it, I have news for you – it’s based on a bestselling romance novel published a few years earlier… exactly like Twilight, 50 Shades of Gray and 365 Days.)  There are many ways in which the film is not so impressive today – blunt-force plotting, refusal to allow the protagonist his ethnicity (as he is revealed to be a British aristocrat raised in the desert, clearing the way for a happy ending) and shaky technical production values. On the other hand, you can see what charmed audiences about Valentino, and there are some impressive desert battle sequences in the mix. Still, what’s perhaps most notable about The Sheik is another reminder that nothing is really new, and while the setting may change, the same human quirks are what drive stories. Women have long been intrigued by the idea of being seduced by powerful men and will continue to do so well into the next century and beyond. (Important note — then, now and forever: Non-rich, non-powerful, non-attractive men should not apply, because what’s hot in a lavish fantasy setting becomes creepy horror when it’s in a mundane suburban basement.)

  • How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) At this point, I’m pretty much committed to eventually seeing all Dean Martin films – despite his late-career laziness in picking unchallenging projects, a little Martin charm goes a looong way. In How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life, he clearly gets a role at the measure of his public Vegas show persona as a boozy womanizing bachelor – the kind of thing he could play without making much of an effort, but with remarkably good return on his effort. The film uses his character as a launching pad for further complications, as he sets out to save his married buddy from an affair by seducing the girl before his buddy does… but mistakenly romancing the wrong girl. As with many late-1960s films, there’s clearly a malaise here about the way American society was changing, and the role left to old-school males like Martin. Unlike other better-remembered films of the era, however, How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life doesn’t quite know what to do about it except playing up the absurdity of mistresses asking for a pension plan. Some better-than-average dialogue makes this characteristically chaste 1960s sex comedy go down easy – even if Martin looks too old and dishevelled to be perfectly credible as a romantic lead, his suaveness dominates the screen and makes the entire thing feel better than if another actor had been in it. A good measure of star power, even if the film itself isn’t particularly memorable nor striking.

  • How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Even though it’s dated 1967, I have more fun associating How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying either with the poppy bright optimistic style of the early 1960s, or the surprisingly satirical films of the 1950s taking aim at the way post-WW2 American society had restructured itself. This is not accidental, nor much of a stretch considering that the film is based on a 1961 stage musical that was itself based on a satirical 1952 book. Tony Randall (a fixture of both eras) would have been right at home here, but it’s Robert Morse who gets one of his two iconic roles (the other being on the Mad Men TV show, obviously inspired by this one) reprising his stage performance as a young man making his way to the top of a corporation. The opening moments of the film are nothing short of irresistible, as our protagonist shoots up from the mailroom to an executive position thanks to an improbably prescient book and ambivalent morals. (It’s both a strength and a problem of the film that we’re never sure if there’s a shred of sincerity to the way he acts.)  Bright colourful backdrops and musical numbers satirize the way big Manhattan-based corporations were seen in the popular imagination, and this broadly comic approach has helped the film age remarkably well: even when it’s depicting some horrifying sexism, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying feels as if it’s laughing at itself and the elements it wants to showcase as terrible. There are some very funny bits (although my favourite part, when the protagonist is confronted by someone who has read the same book, is a bit short) and the film keeps some energy even in its inevitable third-quarter lull. Michele Lee is quite good in the female role, but it’s Kay Reynolds that I liked best as a supporting character. I’m picky about 1960s musicals but How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is one of the good ones of the era – even if it’s not quite as well known as it should be, either as a colourful example of its era or as a remarkably enjoyable film by itself.

  • Demon Wind (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) In the sub-basement of bad movies, Demon Wind clearly earns an uncontested place: the film seems put together by writer-director Charles Philip Moore with twine and mercenary intentions, with unexpressive actors, a nonsensical script, medium-low production values and an indifferent execution going for speed rather than competence. But there’s also a craziness to it that makes it more watchable than many films in the same category. There’s an intention to ape Evil Dead’s subjective camera work, for instance, or a bunch of twists and turns that owe more to incompetence but still make the film more fun to follow than the same boring old approach. Definitely getting chummy with the “so bad it’s good” category, the film’s obvious shortcomings in matters of acting, writing and production can be entertaining in their own right… at least for a certain audience in the right frame of mind. I wouldn’t necessarily call the film worthwhile: after all, why waste time chuckling at substandard dreck when there are just as many good-to-great films yet to watch? But everything is relative, and in-between the prospect of watching Demon Wind ironically, or laboriously making your way through yet another dull by-the-numbers monster horror film (or worse, a slasher), there’s no doubt what’s more enjoyable.

  • Female Trouble (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) I started watching Female Trouble with a troubling question– while I really liked the John Waters’ films that I had seen, those (Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Cecil B. Demented) were toward the bigger-budgeted, mainstream end of his career rather than the earlier, most transgressive era: What would I think of such fare as Pink Flamingos and Polyester? Well, if Female Trouble is any indication, I’m in for a few more great viewing experiences. Female Trouble is as camp as camp can be, deliberately heightening the ridiculousness of its execution, the extreme nature of its plotting and the melodrama of its ill-fitting actors. Some of it depends on having drag queen character actor Divine in the lead role, but not as much as you’d think – the particular nature of the character just becomes one more thing in an entire film built on self-conscious ridiculousness. I don’t think every viewer will be a good audience for this kind of material – but if you can make it past a particular point early in the film in which what’s essentially the worst thing in the world is shown in a way that makes you laugh, then you’re good to go for the rest of the film’s descent into pure lunacy and a final act of filicide that just caps it all off. Female Trouble is quite something, and rarely less than engrossing despite the bargain-basement budget and actors playing decades younger or older than their age. It has aged very well – but of course, what was transgressive back in 1974 is almost mainstream these days, and I’m not sure that the more-or-less-exact same film made today would be as remarkable. No matter – Waters’ iconoclastic sense of demented humour serves him well here, and I’m feeling upbeat about seeing the rest of his filmography.

  • Earthquake (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2022) In the pantheon of 1970s disaster movies, Earthquake is certainly not the first (Airport), not the best (The Towering Inferno), not the funniest (Airplane!) and it’s not the most ridiculous (The Swarm), but there’s a good case to be made for it to be the most disaster-esque. It understands the very specific form of the subgenre better than most – the high-concept, almost inevitable premise (an earthquake ravaging Los Angeles) acts as the main event, but there are plenty of portentous mini-crises and subsequent aftershocks to keep things hopping throughout the entire film. The usual ensemble cast of such films, bringing together new actors with Classic Hollywood stars, is also top-notch: In between Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner on one end, and George Kennedy and Richard Roundtree in the middle, and Genevieve Bujold and Victoria Principal toward the younger end, we get as much opportunity for star-spotting as an L.A. bus tour – including Walter Matthau in a very funny uncredited drunk role: yes, it’s him! The special effects keep going between credible and amateurish, with a specific mention of a cartoonish blood splash punctuating an elevator crash. The entire plot is handled with enough over-the-top craziness that it carries the film even when the rest of it doesn’t make sense. The vignette-oriented ensemble approach of the plot means that the film was put together in bits and pieces with plenty of reshoots and last-minute cuts. Some of the material apparently resurfaced in a longer, more complete TV version but the DVD edit doesn’t have that luxury: the film brings characters in and out of the plot without bothering to give everyone a satisfying climactic resolution – and if you think the biggest names are going to be at the happy ending, then you’ll feel Earthquake running out of steam moments before crossing the finish line. The rather disappointing ending doesn’t quite erase the discomfort of one of the main plotlines – with Heston’s character clearly telegraphing his intention to leave his age-appropriate wife for another woman twenty years his junior. The ending tries to be moral about this but only manages to feel cheap, which is at odds with the rest of this no-expense-barred extravaganza. Director Mark Robson has a multi-ring circus of destruction to manage but the scattered result would have escaped all but the best directors. What we’re left with is still a highly watchable (although increasingly unconvincing) disaster film and a time capsule of mid-1970s Los Angeles, often more promising than successful.

  • Angst essen Seele auf [Ali: Fear Eats the Soul] (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) I wouldn’t dare criticize a filmmaker for wanting to do a Douglas Sirk-style melodrama if that’s what catches their creative fancy. But Sirk-style melodramas aren’t to everyone’s taste, and once you’re past the initial shock of recognition that, yes, this is what writer-director-producer Rainer Werner Fassbinder is going for in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, the film goes into very familiar territory. This intergenerational, interethnic romance between an older German woman and a Middle Eastern man hits most of the expected plot points – familiar disapproval (featuring Fassbinder himself as a surly bigot), social ostracism, cultural differences, jabs from outsiders not understanding what’s going on, and self-doubts. The only suspense here is whether love will prevail, and that’s not necessarily a given, since Fassbinder goes for his usual morose style throughout the film. The cinematography clearly aspires to gritty realism, something reinforced by the working-class surroundings and naturalistic acting. The film was reportedly shot in two weeks as an in-between project between two other bigger films and you can feel the go-for-broke energy of how it’s slapped together. Fassbinder fans will probably like it – Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is very well-regarded in general, and among Fassbinder’s filmography as well but for those who may not like the German director’s approach, there won’t be anything here to flip them over.

  • A Very Honorable Guy (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) The nice thing about comedies is that they don’t need to be great in order to entertain – sometime, even a middling execution can be good enough for a few laughs and a good time. So it is that A Very Honorable Guy manages to get a few chuckles despite its messy execution. Rubber-faced Joe E. Brown stars as a man who, during the film’s abrasive opening sequence, gets everything wrong – to the point where, destitute, depressed and desperate, he sells his body to science while still alive. The doctor, strangely enough, gives him a tidy sum of money and thirty days, after which he’s to come back and gulp a fatal dose of poison to complete the agreement. (This is clearly a Pre-Code film.)  It would be easy to take the money and run, but our hero is honourable to a fault, and his money ends up snowballing as he wins the lottery, pays off his debt, gets the mob off his back and wins back the affection of his fiancée. Something is clarified right before the thirty days are up: the “doctor” is a psychopath with designs on his fiancée, explaining quite a lot about the initially ludicrous plot. It all wraps up neatly. Alas, the execution is rough – the curiously slack script doesn’t make the most of its assets, starting with Brown. It’s amusing all right, but it takes a while to get going, seems to waste its time in useless tangents, and doesn’t quite extract as much comedy from its odd ideas as it could have. This may serve to explain A Very Honorable Guy’s relative obscurity despite having Brown in the lead – it’s merely interesting even it could have been more.

  • Brigadoon (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, June 2022) All right, this is it – not that I think anyone will care, but this is the final film from legendary MGM musicals producer Arthur Freed that I hadn’t yet seen. Compared to the other last few titles of the Freed Unit filmography, Brigadoon is not all that racially problematic, lower-budgeted or stuck with unfamiliar actors. In fact, it’s also one of the last few musicals featuring Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse that were left on my list. No, if it took that long, it’s because the film somehow isn’t legally available for broadcast in Canada – TCM regularly shows it for the American market, but substitutes other titles for its Canadian simulcast. No other channel or streaming site seems to have it. The version for sale on Amazon is said to be Region-2 only. So, I had to be inventive in how I saw it. Alas, I can’t say that the result was worth the trouble. Surprisingly dull and twee, the film features Kelly as an American tumbling upon a fantastic village in the depth of the Scottish highlands, a village bound by complex romantic rituals that is set to disappear for another hundred years within days. The film’s lavish number of dancers doesn’t manage to make it feel any more real than its soundstage shooting location – something even apparent in the film’s best moments, the anthology-worthy dance duet between Charisse and Kelly to the tune of “The Heather on the Hill.”  Despite some moments where the film becomes mildly intriguing, much of Brigadoon feels as flat as its soundstage backdrops – forgettable songs, a few set-pieces, overdone Scottish mythmaking and a contrived fantasy narrative that’s just an excuse for “We don’t need to justify a happy ending.”  It’s tedious more often than not, and increasingly drawn-out as the third act gets underway. It’s a surprising dud for Kelly, Charisse and director Vincente Minnelli as well – a project that was launched with care and hopes, but failed to rise to meet expectations. Brigadoon is not a particularly good way to end my trip through the Freed filmography – but, hey, at least there’s no blackface in this one.

  • Frankenfish (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) As I accumulate decades as an avid film-watcher, it’s interesting to look at the careers of a few people, and see whether (and how) they made it or didn’t. I was rather charmed by China Chow’s debut performance in the forgotten 1998 Mark Wahlberg action comedy The Big Hit, for instance – and thought she’d go on to have a decent follow-up career: after all, wasn’t she cute, funny and young? Well, it turns out she became Wahlberg’s girlfriend following this film, and apparently wasn’t all that interested (or interesting) enough in acting to stick it out: As of today, her filmography as an actress barely stretches over ten titles in the decade following The Big Hit, with a few other assorted odds and ends since then. That happens! As unbelievable as it may seem to non-cinephiles or filmmakers, not everyone means to be a big movie star. Aside from The Big Hit, her other noteworthy film is Frankenfish, and it’s not much of a highlight – a rather standard creature feature in which mutated fish terrorize a dwindling cast of characters in the Louisiana Bayou, it’s the kind of horror film that seems made for casual consumption and immediate forgetfulness. Chow shows up for half the film and gets a horribly striking death scene (she’s not the final girl) but otherwise there’s not a lot more to say. Some of the English-language dialogue is amusing, but you wouldn’t know it from the French dub. The scenery is above average for a film of that type, although the CGI is clearly cheap and from the mid-2000s. Even for those rare filmgoers still curious about Chow, there’s not a lot to recommend here – Frankenfish is more or less what anyone would expect from the stock premise and budget level.

  • Panama Hattie (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) My interest in Panama Hattie was in watching one of the last performances from Virginia O’Brien that I hadn’t yet seen, but there’s something charming about the overall film –a frothy musical comedy that heads over to a stage-bound Panama hotel for sailors yukking it up (led by Red Skelton, up to his usual standards), songs (with the screen debut of Lena Horne, and O’Brien actually not going all-in on her deadpan shtick) and a bit of romance featuring star Ann Sothern. An early production of the famed Freed Unit, it’s a Broadway musical with elements of MGM’s roster. The plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and the tone keeps changing all over the place, but the fun of Panama Hattie is in the bits and pieces loosely strung together. O’Brien is a hoot as always (notably in “Did I Get Stinkin’ at the Savoy”), while Skelton and his two pals clearly play to a specific comedy register. Horne is never less than compelling, and Sothern is good enough in this middling vehicle to make anyone wonder why she wasn’t a bigger star. The final cherry in the blend of elements is a rousing final war-propaganda musical number that clearly sets the audience in a WW2-fighting mood followed by the usual exhortation to go buy war bonds. Behind the scenes, the picture was rescued from disastrous test screenings by musical number reshoots directed by Vincent Minelli, who added much of what’s still remarkable about the film, albeit at the expense of the film’s overall tone and continuity. Panama Hattie is not a good film, but it’s enjoyable if you know what you’re getting into, and especially if you’re deliberately trying to complete the filmographies of its stars.

  • Dracula (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) As far as I’m concerned, Dracula is up there with The Three Musketeers and Sherlock Holmes (and A Star is Born) in the pantheon of stories that become more interesting for the particularities of their various film adaptations than their cinematic substance. I know the original story more or less from beginning to end and I’m not that interested in seeing the perfect adaptation of it – I’m more likely to pay attention to the differences between various versions, or, if you’d prefer, the specific characteristics of each version. The 1979 version of Dracula (which makes an interesting contrast to Warner Herzog’s 1979 version of Nosferatu) comes with some pedigree – directed by John Badham (an interesting choice!) and featuring such notables as Frank Langella, Laurence Olivier and Donald Pleasence, it’s already interesting before it even gets started. The other initial surprise is that the film begins well into the events usually covered by adaptations of the story – skipping over the initial Transylvania segment to skip directly to the ominous arrival of Count Dracula in England. Things get weirder after that – working from a stage version of the story, the film focuses on romantic themes and inexplicably switches the names of Mina Van Helsing and Lucy Seward (the director thought it sounded better). While the colour cinematography looks good, the film feels choked in a characteristic late-1970s kind of foggy horror cinematography – not necessarily a bad thing if you’re looking to differentiate the various versions of Dracula, but not necessarily a good thing by itself. I enjoyed watching this Dracula even if I didn’t enjoy the film itself—it’s a diversion from the usual versions of the story, even if hardly the best one.

  • The Night House (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) As a movie reviewer, I don’t often play the ”Totally saw the ending coming!” card. It’s cheap, it undermines my conviction that execution trumps concept, and most movies are predictable anyway. But once in a while, there comes a film that really annoys me in trying to set up an absurdly predictable mystery, then wanting us to act surprised when it reveals its twist. This is all the more regrettable in that I went into The Night House with the best of intentions – if nothing else, it stars Rebecca Hall, one of the most intriguing actresses in the business today. It starts on a pleasantly mysterious note, as a teacher grieving her dead husband discovers that he harboured dark secrets. By the turn of the second act, however, the film tips its hand too obviously, and the true nature of the dead husband’s actions becomes crystal clear… to everyone except the oblivious heroine spending the next hour chasing down a patently false path. The low density of plotting doesn’t help matters, as the film is slow enough to allow viewers to measure each new “revelation” against what we know will suspect. That quickly becomes the film’s second problem, because The Night House has a bad case of protagonist-centred morality that is punctured by anticipating the ending. To put it bluntly and with spoilers, her dead husband may have had the best intentions at heart for her, but he’s still a mass murderer and the film is too consumed by the revelation of his love for her that it skims over the most damning bit. Each good facet of the film (such as some intriguing work with silhouettes emerging from specific camera angles) either becomes overused or is balanced by some deeply dumb stuff (such as a mistress seeking out the wife). The deathly dull pacing further compounds the film’s other issues, and the ending really isn’t as effective as it thinks it is. In the end, director David Bruckner’s The Night House is a dud. An occasionally ambitious, intermittently effective one (largely thanks to Hall’s typically good performance) but a dud nonetheless. I shouldn’t have been this way, but the intense predictability of its “twist” undermines it and then the interminable pacing finishes it off.

  • Candyman (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) I’m usually the last to call for remakes – especially of horror films – but I was definitely curious about a Candyman remake for a few reasons. The first being that Candyman remains one of the good horror films of the 1980s, using horror to discuss racial issues decades before it was cool to do so, with a couple of strong assets – not the least being Tony Todd and Virginia Madsen – in service of its thrills and themes. The idea of revisiting such charged territory in the 2020s, with black filmmakers able to make good use of the material, was impossible to resist. But even I was more than pleasantly surprised at the remake’s impact. This newest Candyman is a top-to-bottom success, artfully tackling themes in ways that make the film far more about social justice than gory thrills. Writer-director Nia DaCosta (with some assistance from co-writer Jordan Peele) delivers a film that’s rich in visual motifs (Bees! Candy!), social issues, carefully restrained filmmaking technique and expressionist moments. It starts well with Sammy Davis Jr.’s “The Candy Man” song over mirrored studio logos and goes on all the way to an eloquent end-credit sequence using shadow puppetry. One of the most striking elements in the tapestry is that, despite the copious amount of blood and violence, it takes until the very end of the film for a death to be graphically shown on-screen – and even then, it’s in soft focus in the background of the lead character doing something else. The script cleverly integrates the first film as a mythological construct that adds depths to the result, and even picks the best elements of the disappointing sequels (a focus on the art world) as part of its script. There’s a real thrill to see the material being presented with visual flair and horror being used not as an end in itself (despite how effective it is) but as a springboard for larger-scale discussions. Teyonah Parris is quite good in the real protagonist role (after an initial focus on Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, also quite good) – and her character even speaks a little bit of French. In many ways, Candyman is an exceptional film, an exceptional remake, and exceptional horror. It steps in Get Out’s footsteps more assuredly than Us, and even crams storytelling into the fabric of its execution.

  • Princess O’Rourke (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Even the least consequential movies can poke at big issues, and what’s interesting about Princess o’ Rourke isn’t as much the incognito-princess romance, but the way the film makes backflips in order to fulfill the twin dualities of the American character. To wit: many Americans like to think of themselves as fierce independents of exceptional character, but at the same time roll over like subservient pets whenever confronted with an authoritarian figure. Yes, sure, I’m talking about the crazy turn that the right-wing has taken toward authoritarianism over the past few years, but I’m also referring to how monarchic figures still inspire romance. In Princess O’Rourke, the humble-class male lead is a supporting player to the female protagonist (Olivia de Havilland, beautiful and clearly in a star vehicle made for her) who passes herself off as a humble maid rather than an authentic princess of unspecified European origins. The fun begins when the commoner discovers that his newest crush is of aristocratic stock and finds himself uneasy at the decorative role he’s meant to play. That rugged American individualism must manifest itself! That’s when the backflips from writer-director Norman Krasna come in – Princess O’Rourke’s climax is set in the White House, with the character making a big speech about what it means to be American and no less than Franklin D. Roosevelt himself and a Supreme Court judge intervening to ensure that the happy couple gets married in a way that allows the lead to get a princess for himself while not compromising his American character. Whew. There’s more interesting material in the film’s making-of and legacy – most notably in de Havilland using the film to sue Warner Bros and get a landmark decision that would chip away at the studio system—but it’s all around a trifle of a film that ends up playing with concepts much bigger than it intended to pursue. It makes for fascinating viewing, especially for non-American viewers who aren’t as close to American Exceptionalism as the film’s intended wartime audience. Propaganda was strong in WW2-era Hollywood, and it manifests itself in more entertaining fashion here than in the overtly militaristic films of the same era.