Movie Review

  • Official Secrets (2019)

    Official Secrets (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) It certainly takes a while for Official Secrets to heat up: Limited by its almost-documentarian approach to a true story, it leisurely sets up the elements of its narrative before getting to the good material, which is the aftermath of a whistleblower’s revelation of dirty tricks in the lead-up to the American invasion of Iraq. It’s not enough to tell the truth—the British law is set up to severely punish anyone who reveals classified information and creates a Kafkaesque nightmare along the way. The story is familiar and so is the era (anyone recall Fair Game?) but the message is worthy and the execution is competent. For director Gavin Hood, this feels more and more like a return to the realist thrillers he used to direct before a short Hollywood blockbuster interlude. In front of the camera, Keira Knightley does well in the lead role (is it too early to hail her reinvention in character-driven parts?), with such notables as Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans and Ralph Fiennes in supporting roles. After rather a lot of throat-clearing to establish the characters, the institutions and the way they interact, Official Secrets become far more interesting when the whistleblower and her husband are attacked by the British government, with newspapers and lawyers aligning themselves on different sides of the law, and the resolution going all the way to the justification for the war itself. Aimed at older, more patient audiences, Official Secrets eventually becomes as gripping as it should be.

  • Fear of Rain (2021)

    Fear of Rain (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) There’s a point, halfway in Fear of Rain, when I realized that whatever the film was going to do next was going to be disappointing. There was no possible escape. Either choice was bound to be underwhelming. Considering that this point came before a twist that I disliked, don’t expect this review to be particularly gentle. As the film begins, we get to know our young protagonist: recently released from a psychiatric institution, she sees things that aren’t there and hears voices that don’t exist. Quickly ostracized at school for obvious reasons, she finds some companionship in a quirky boy, but grows increasingly convinced that her next-door neighbour is holding a small girl hostage. Having already gone so deep in a psychological thriller, viewers know that there’s more to come. Either we’re going to go supernatural or not, either she’s going to be right about the neighbour or not. Heck, are we even convinced that all characters are real?—as the film itself points out, that new boyfriend seems too nice to be true. By the time Fear of Rain wraps it up in a flurry of imaginary characters, psychopaths, and self-reflective irony, I wasn’t exhilarated as much as convinced of three things: 1. Spending time inside a schizophrenic character’s head is not pleasant; 2. This is not the ideal film to talk about mental illness; and 3. The trend of movies with imaginary character needs to go away fast. The fast-paced ending does make up for some of the preceding dreariness, but not that much—Fear of Rain still feels overlong and unpleasant, and in the worst “psychological thriller” tradition pushes believability far beyond the breaking point. No matter what writer-director Castille Landon intended, she was limited by her premise—it’s not easy to deliver a satisfying story when it starts by acknowledging that not everything is real.

  • The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)

    The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2021) It’s not always a bad thing when professionals go slumming: In most cases, you end up with something competently done, watchable even if not particularly interesting. The starting point of The Magic of Belle Isle will feel very familiar, as an alcoholic writer moves into a summer residence and gradually gets acquainted with the next-door divorcee and her kids. Will they be able to bring him back from the abyss of self-loathing? Asking the question is answering it—especially considering the long list of movies in which nothing is more important than saving an alcoholic writer from himself. Oh, there are a few differences, of course: Morgan Freeman plays the writer, and the age difference between him and Virginia Madsen (as the divorcee) means that the romance is thankfully implied more than shown, and much of the film’s relationship-building goes between the protagonist and a girl with interest in writing her own stories. The Magic of Belle Isle is not a bad movie, but it’s an overly trite one: Writer-director Rob Reiner is not pushing himself here, and the actors are working within well-trodden material. At least it’s meant to be uplifting without being too dramatic about it, meaning that even the emotional manipulation is tolerable. As usual, Madsen does look terrific, and the cinematography reinforces the comforting impression of a summer spent in a quaint destination village. It ends exactly how you think it will end, and that’s it. The Magic of Belle Isle is a sub-par effort from Freeman, Madsen and Reiner, but it hits its modest marks well enough.

  • Slumber Party Massacre (2021)

    Slumber Party Massacre (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2021) As someone who’s most definitely not a fan of slasher horror films, I never asked for a Slumber Party Massacre remake and openly question why such a thing needed to exist. Why resurrect this misogynistic, exploitative, brain-dead genre? The first few minutes of the remake offer no answer—in fact, they ask the question more loudly, as writer Suzanne Keilly and director Danishka Esterhazy offer nothing more than a contemporary remake of exactly the kind of film I dislike, as a drill-equipped killer goes around ludicrously slaughtering three likable young women. But that’s far from being the entire film, and as the prologue goes past, the pieces are put in place for a far wittier follow-up. Twenty years later, the sole survivor of the massacre has a daughter, and the young woman is heading out for a weekend of slumber party fun with a few friends. Alas, the car breaks down, the creepy locals redirect them to a cabin around the lake of her mom’s massacre, and they strip down to their underwear… But hold your groans just a few minutes longer, because, as the unexpected fifth member of their party soon learns, they’re not there for alcohol and pillow fights: they have knives hidden underneath the pillows and are deliberately awaiting the killer to strike again so they can take revenge. This initial twist out of the way, this Slumber Party Massacre remake becomes far more interesting—although slightly too forced to be entirely likable. Oh, there’s some fun in having a few young men from across the lake step by the cabin to check if the girls are OK and being spooked by the knives lying around… just as there are more laughs to be had in having the girls go warn the guys about psycho killers while they’re having a good old pillow fight among bros. Then there’s a shower scene that flips the whole male-gaze thing on its head. But in trying to subvert, this Slumber Party Massacre often goes too far and too bluntly: The shower scene goes on and on after making its (hilarious) point, blunting its punchline. The dialogue also pushes its agenda with on-the-nose dialogue filled with buzzwords that no one would reasonably say in real life. The messaging of the film also distracts from some elementary problems in terms of staging and plausibility: Bringing knives rather than guns to a psycho fight is a stupid idea, and no amount of phallic meta-cleverness is going to convince me that a character can drive an inch-wide drill bit through another human body barehanded. Then there’s the fact that Slumber Party Massacre remains a slasher, and a gory one at that—there’s a limit to how far my appreciation can go when it’s still about violent deaths and unexamined assumptions about violence. (The film does hint at its awareness of its lead characters’ unsettling thirst for violent revenge, but doesn’t do much about it because it’s a slasher after all.)  Despite its female gaze, the film couldn’t keep me from liking Hannah Gonera and Schelaine Bennett in their roles as a dynamic mother/daughter team. I’m slightly amazed that the film was produced for TV (as a Syfy premiere, but widely available on a variety of other channels even up here in Canada) because this Slumber Party Massacre is easily better than the original—at least in the amount of cleverness that went into addressing the flaws of slasher films in a far less forgiving society. Don’t quit before the prologue is done, though—in fact, you may want to skip ahead to the title card and see how it goes from there.

  • Bones (2001)

    Bones (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2021) Good or bad, what you will remember about Bones is this: Snoopy Dogg, playing a pimp who comes back from the dead and reunites with his wife as played by Pam Grier. Doesn’t this sound like something worth watching despite the quality of the result? Clearly hailing from the early 2000s with its terrible cinematography, Bones does have slightly more ambition than most low-budget films in taking place both in the present, and in a yellow-tinged 1970s filled with afro hairstyles and period clothes. Dogg is killed and buried in the basement of a strange skull-shaped building, but the fun begins thirty years later as blood sacrifices resurrect him and he goes on a rampage of revenge. Some decent practical special effects are undone by a misguided directing style that puts clumsy digital effects where they have no business. The attraction here is Dogg trying an acting role, clearly enjoying the pimp aesthetics of his pre-mortem character and then the vengeful aspect of his resurrection. Besides him, Grier is never less than splendid. The rest of the film, unfortunately, pales in comparison: the young people supposed to be the protagonists are rather dull compared to Dogg and Grier, while the narrative can’t quite do justice to the other ambitions of the film. As a low-budget horror film, Bones is better than most, but not good enough to be considered a success beyond its novelty value. It’s worth a look if you’re partial to Dogg or Grier, otherwise not so much. As a side note, I was amused to hear the French dubbed version try to replicate Dogg’s distinctive soft-spoken vocal cadence: it’s no replacement for the original, but it’s certainly evocative of it.

  • Witchouse II: Blood Coven (2000)

    Witchouse II: Blood Coven (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2021) I liked the first Witchouse more than I probably should (but then again, cute witches are one of my secret weaknesses), so I’m disappointed to report that its sequel Witchouse II: Blood Coven does nothing much for me. The goofy haunted-house sexiness of the original is gone, replaced by nothing much more than found-footage segments supporting a dull story about academics investigating mysterious graves. It’s clear that this film was shot in the wake of the massively successful (and even more massively cheap) Blair Witch Project, considering the overuse of shaky VHS footage for no good cinematic reason. It dates the film more than anything else, and also sucks away any building interest. The return of Ariauna Albright is a rare highlight, but she’s not used particularly well in a film that lands with a thud. I wasn’t expecting much from a Full Moon Studios picture, but I was expecting more trashy fun than this. There’s apparently a third film in the series, but I think I will stop here.

  • La casa 5 [Beyond Darkness] (1990)

    La casa 5 [Beyond Darkness] (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2021) As film history has it, the first two Evil Dead movies were released in Italy as the first instalments of “La Casa” series, which was followed by three other unrelated haunted-house films released as sequels despite having nothing to do with the first two films, either in production, tone or continuity. La Casa 5 certainly needed the marketing boost because it has little to offer by itself. At heart a bog-standard haunted house story with a little bit of The Amityville Horror and The Exorcist as a centrepiece, it belongs to the school of low-budget, low-effort horror that thinks that simply throwing more stuff into the mix automatically makes it better. The result, alas, is a big messy blob with witches, killers, priests and flying objects—with a subpar execution sucking much of the fun out of it. Horror fans will note, but not be surprised, that it’s directed by Trolls 2 filmmaker Claudio Fragasso. Is there anything more to add after that?

  • Anna Christie (1930)

    Anna Christie (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) I really tried to stay interested in Anna Christie, but sometimes, the gap between what a film has to offer and what we’re willing to give is just too great. It doesn’t help that I have no specific fascination with Greta Garbo, as much of the initial hoopla about the film (and one of its distinctions to this day) was “Garbo Speaks”—the first sound film of one of the studio’s biggest silent film stars. The plot, adapted from a theatrical play by Eugene O’Neill, has to do with the protagonist having a dark past that she has difficulty sharing with her new fiancé. But Garbo is not that exciting a performer—she does fine, but doesn’t bring much compared to other actresses. Marie Dressler is more fun (in a grating way) as an older woman with coarser dialogue. Much of Anna Christie’s lack of interest comes from its early sound technique—while a prestige production at the time, it’s a rough film nowadays—although I was surprised to find a few complex camera movements so early in sound film history. Still, much of the story has lost its shock value (“Fiancé, I worked in a brothel for a few years” is still a dramatic plot device, but not what it was back in 1930) and the film has been technically surpassed many times over since then. Anna Christie is more noteworthy for what it represented upon release than for straight-up viewing pleasure right now.

  • Il bidone [The Swindle] (1955)

    Il bidone [The Swindle] (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) I’m not a big fan of Italian neorealism, but there is both a crime tinge and an ironic edge to The Swindle that makes it compelling viewing. Featuring no less than Crawford Broderick as a master con artist working with two younger men, this is a story of how people can grow too old for the criminal life, and what happens if they can’t find a way out. Much of the film’s infuriating centrepieces are descriptions of elaborate cons in which poor innocents are convinced to hand over significant amounts of money in exchange for little more than cheap trinkets and empty promises. Beyond those cons, however, we have the swindlers trying to live normal lives, either by lying to their wives (soon exposed), taking their criminal habits in unwelcome company (never try to steal at a master thief’s party), or reconnecting with estranged relatives. The Swindle doesn’t hold anything back in showing the consequences of a life of swindling—from living from one con to the other, to the real risk of coming face-to-face with past victims not inclined to forgiveness. The ending is tragic but entirely deserved, wrapping it all up with a few final ironies. The Swindle is not usually recognized as one of writer-director Federico Fellini’s finest films, but it does have in narrative what some of his other films often lack: a mixture of middle-age contemplation and sharp criminal details that wrap up an eminently watchable drama.

  • Gwai wik [Re-cycle] (2006)

    Gwai wik [Re-cycle] (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2012) It’s not unusual to find films turning into horror midway through (especially when the first half was merely camouflage), but it’s much rarer to find a horror movie turning into something else midway through. But that’s what happens in Re-cycle, as a romance novelist in search of inspiration suddenly experiences unsettling events… and is then transported in a fantastic realm. From spooky horror, the film shifts into a personal journey set against an otherworldly environment. It’s all directed with some skill by The Pang Brothers, especially when it comes time to integrate visual effects at the forefront of the film. The result isn’t some kind of unimpeachable masterpiece—the tone shift could have been more graceful, the lead character is often annoying and the pacing (especially in the first section) is far too leisurely. But things pick up once we get in the protagonist’s mind, as Re-Cycle also becomes something more ambitious than just another ghost story.

  • Pépé le Moko (1937)

    Pépé le Moko (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2012) Often presented as part of the proto-film noir corpus, Pépé le Moko has a surprising aura of modernity about it—almost as if it was a 1950s film sent back twenty years earlier. In many ways, it prefigures the French Nouvelle Vague and its preoccupation with crime stories as a framework for character-driven moments. Here, we spend the film in Algiers, specifically in the labyrinthine Casbah where our titular character hides from the authorities. Pepe is an underworld prince—a master thief commanding respect and the attention of authorities seeking to flush him out. As the film begins, our protagonist gets stir-crazy from being confined in the same surroundings with the same woman for nearly two years. At the same time, another attractive woman passing through Algiers makes his acquaintance and the attraction is immediate. This obviously won’t end well (Pépé le Moko intentionally pushes things to poetic tragedy), but the way to get there is filled with a fascinating environment, intriguing characters, some good set-pieces and an approach that still feels compelling three-quarter of a century later. Writer-director Julien Duvivier makes a few good choices along the way, starting with casting Jean Gabin in the lead role. I was fascinated by some of the supporting characters—particularly the unusual beauty of Line Noro, and Lucas Gridoux as a cleverly shifty inspector. The ending shifts from crime thriller to romantic tragedy, but it does make sense—Duvivier is working in the French poetic realism tradition, and you can see in Pépé le Moko a springboard from that to the Nouvelle Vague. But even if you’re not quite up to speed in historical film movements, Pépé le Moko has enough to keep you interested from beginning to end.

  • Slash (2002)

    Slash (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2012) As someone who’s definitely not a slasher-horror fan, I’m slightly surprised to find that that South African rural horror film Slash is actually… tolerable. There’s an interesting fusion between the farm location and the rock musicians of the cast that is more amusing than the norm, and there’s a comedic accent in the way the film deals with its characters and fake-outs. You wouldn’t know that the film is from South Africa if you skipped the credit—visually, it seems intent on passing itself off as American Midwest horror and the cast is filled with American actors. The premise is some kind of mixture between “city people stuck on a farm” and “folk horror with pagan roots” (i.e.: irrigate the land with blood), but it’s in the moment-to-moment material that Slash does better than the norm, whether it’s the banter between characters, a wholly unexpected rock band number toward the end, or the way director Neal Sundstrom plays to audience expectations. None of this makes Slash essential or overlooked, but it does make it a better experience than most other slashers out there.

  • Today we Live (1933)

    Today we Live (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) I got interested in Today we Live because I’m trying to complete my Howard Hawks filmography, but not every one of movies is a hit, and this early effort goes right in the bottom tier. On paper, there’s certainly plenty to like about the film and the people it involves. I mean: Directed by Hawks! Dialogue by William Faulkner! Featuring Gary Cooper, Joan Crwford and Franchot Tone! A big romantic WW1 epic! Well, sometimes the ingredients don’t take in the mix: Today we Live has an excruciating first hour of drawing-room conversations set against the WW1 backdrop, with a love triangle between the heroine and two officers laboriously constructed according to familiar conventions. It’s dull in a way that we rarely associate with Hawks movies (even previous ones, such as Scarface). The pacing issues are compounded by a dour tone that leaves no place for Hawks’ usual humour, and even less for capable, vivacious characters. Fortunately, the reason why Hawks took the project becomes more obvious in the second half, with some aerial combat footage (much of it apparently recycled from Hell’s Angels) and characters in peril. On the other hand, the abrupt change in tone and style does give further credence to the idea that the film is a botched blend of creative influences, studio interference and mid-flight corrections—reading about the troubled production history of the film is very instructive. In the end, what’s left is something that feels a lot like a lesser take on material done better in Wings or Hell’s Angels, and nowhere near what Hawks himself would do in later years.

  • The Father (2020)

    The Father (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, October 2021) Like many viewers, I saw The Father on the list of 2021 Oscar nominees, glanced at “Anthony Hopkins plays a man in the grip of dementia,” listened to the praise about Hopkins’ Oscar-winning performance and jumped to easy conclusions—this would be another Oscar-baiting sensitive drama about the ravages of aging, aping so many other movies in a similar vein. I’d get around to it, eventually and unenthusiastically. Well, that was a bad take because The Father is something else: a horror film in the guise of a drama about aging, a unique take on an overexposed prospect and a sure-footed blend of cinematography, acting, dialogue and direction in service of a unique film. This doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it—but you won’t easily forget it. The key to The Father is that it dares try the impossible: showing the cognitive decline of dementia from the inside. It starts cleanly enough, as a daughter visits her father and explains how he needs assistance in his old age. A few matters are discussed and easily put aside as minor. But the weirdness escalates in subsequent scenes, as details don’t add up, people show up with different faces, the apartment decoration keeps changing, and we, as viewers, realize we can’t trust our own memories. The protagonist’s rationalization works overtime to convince him (and us) that this is all normal, but The Father is one of those films where you can’t trust the current moment without measuring it to everything that’s happened before or is about to happen. As the film advances, we realize we can’t trust its chronology, as past and future blend into the present in a jumble of things that have, have not, never did or haven’t yet happened. By the end, we piece together a very sad story of decline, hospitalization, abuse and regression. Hopkins is, as advertised, utterly terrific here—a great performance (in a career of great performances) that turns on several emotional dimes, and plays both to the moment and to what it may mean in the bigger story. Still, I’ll argue that the star here is playwright-writer-director Florian Zeller, in a film directing debut where even the smallest detail feels perfectly assured. Watching The Father is unlike any other film—you can’t trust your usual bearings and can’t coast on the assumption that the usual guideposts are trustworthy. It’s certainly not a fun film—but it’s quite a success in telling a depressing story in something approaching an exhilarating form.

  • Transsiberian (2008)

    Transsiberian (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2021) Between cinematic strengths and weaknesses, there’s a whole spectrum of mediocre annoyances that will strike some viewers as trivial and others as irritants. So it is that while I’m not ready to condemn Transsiberian as a terrible thriller, it’s just annoying enough that I can’t bring myself to recommend it. Coming from the dark era of the late 2000s, where ugly cinematography was the rage, the film follows an American couple (Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson playing an intellectual) as it travels from China to Moscow on the Transsiberian railroad. Of course, it’s a thriller, not a travelogue, so before long they’re stuck with sordid travel companions, drug trafficking and a sinister police officer (Ben Kingsley, effective but clearly slumming it). The suspense is mildly effective, but the film plays a strangely divided game between this ugly, quasi-monochrome cinematography and a lurid storyline that’s about as far away from the grittiness of the visuals. The characters are annoying, and the film doesn’t help by turning them into bloodthirsty killers. A slow start saps initial goodwill, and an overextended finale clearly shows how much it has overstayed its welcome by that point. The train setting is familiar, but the film doesn’t seem to be using all of the opportunities at its disposal to crank up the tension and stick to some kind of spatial unity. Writer-director Brad Anderson’s filmography is incredibly inconsistent, going from the best (The Machinist) to the worst (The Vanishing on 7th Street) and it’s not Transsiberian that makes it any better or worse.