Movie Review

  • The Wrong Missy (2020)

    The Wrong Missy (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2021) In making a romantic comedy film centred around an obnoxious character, there’s a tricky balance between irritation and, for lack of a better word, redemption: how far can you push the actions of a character before making them completely unlikable for the rest of the film? Part of it has to do with skillful screenwriting and the other has to do with competent casting. A good actor can make the best even out of standard material written by mediocre craftsmen. So given that The Wrong Missy has to do with a middle-aged businessman (David Spade, looking his age) on a Hawaiian holiday getting swept up with a hyperactive woman with poor understanding of consent and boundaries, well, you have to get a strong actress in that part. Fortunately, the film had the good luck of stumbling on Lauren Lapkus — someone with a proven track record of making the best out of poor material (in Watson and Holmes, namely). In her hands, the “wrong” Missy keeps a thin edge of likability even through the worst possible actions of the film’s first two acts, even when bluntly handled by director Tyler Spindel and the rest of the Happy Madison production crew. This is really not a sophisticated film: the humour is crude, scatological and borderline repulsive. (Those consent issues? Yeah — a gender-flipped take on the same story would be incendiary.)  But Lapkus owns The Wrong Missy’s best moments and makes the worst tolerable until the third act gets down to more conventional likability. That’s not much of a recommendation, but it’s more than the film would have deserved with a lesser lead actress.

  • I vitelloni (1953)

    I vitelloni (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) I’m a big fan of early-phase Fellini— too mimetic, too dull, too realistic for my tastes. I vitelloni, being the adventures of four young men yearning to get out of their small Italian town, is clearly in the neorealist vein, but you can already see some of the flamboyance that would characterize and distinguish later-phase Fellini. As a slice-of-life kind of film (until the protagonist gets a revelation and acts on it), there are fun parts and not-so-fun ones. My appreciation for I vitelloni is limited, but that goes for pretty much all of Italian neorealism.

  • Lust in the Dust (1984)

    Lust in the Dust (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) As far as western comedies go, Lust in the Dust hits a very specific and rather sweet spot of camp flamboyance, ribald naughtiness and over-the-top absurdity. Divine stars as a rotund dancehall girl lost in the desert, where she encounters a taciturn cowboy (Tab Hunter, no less) and goes treasure hunting with the help of strategically tattooed maps. As comedies go, this one combines a dumb premise with weird characters, unusual situations and good one-liners even if the rhythm is uneven throughout. Still, Divine does well as the unravishable heroine (and the cross-dressing aspect hasn’t aged as badly as you’d think), while Lainie Kazan and Gina Gallego provide much of the nudity and raunch that make the film even funnier. By the time the film works itself off to a mutual stand-off above a treasure, well, we’re satisfied. Director Paul Bartel’s filmography is all over the place when it comes to comedy (Everything from Cannonball to Eating Raoul) and Lust in the Dust doesn’t clarify anything about his approach. While the result can’t be called a great comedy, it’s watchable and funny enough to be worth a look.

  • The Tender Trap (1955)

    The Tender Trap (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) Even from sixty-five years later, it’s easy to see the hook of The Tender Trap. No, not the catchy title song that became a Frank Sinatra signature tune, but the concept of a proto-sex-comedy opposing legendary womanizer Sinatra with pure-as-snow Debbie Reynolds in a battle of the sexes on the way to matrimony. Sinatra plays the bachelor of many men’s dreams, with a high-paying job allowing him to afford swanky clothes and a killer Manhattan bachelor’s pad. Such is his appeal that when a friend decides to leave his married Midwestern life behind, he immediately heads over there to crash as he figures out what to do, and takes advantage of a few female friends feeling neglected by the protagonist. Said protagonist is only too happy juggling numerous conquests, except when one of them, an ultra-organized monogamous gal (Reynolds), seems worth giving up everything. It’s all pleasant enough in a Mad-Men-inspiration vein — even for a film explicitly dealing with an unrepentant bachelor and a wayward husband, the tone is so resolutely restrained that it seems almost likable. There’s an interesting line to draw from The Tender Trap to the more freewheeling sex comedies of the 1960s — in fact, many viewers may have trouble believing it’s not a 1960s film. Sinatra is just as compelling as usual, and there’s a rather good scene in which Reynolds, then Sinatra, then Reynolds again take on the title song, each time making it richer and more interesting in its delivery. David Wayne (looking a lot like Daniel Craig!) is also a highlight as the married man taking a holiday — although the film certainly does not dwell on what he’s up to when he takes one of his friend’s regulars on late-night dates. It’s all quite amusing (as long as you can buy into the fantasy of a Manhattan playboy, that is), bolstered by Sinatra and Reynolds at their most charming and some clean crisp 1950s colour cinematography. The Tender Trap certainly paved the way for more daring films to follow, and fits comfortably in the string of New York City-set sex comedies of the following decade and a half.

  • Adam Had Four Sons (1941)

    Adam Had Four Sons (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) No one will ever mistake Adam Had Four Sons for anything but the straight-up domestic romantic thriller it aimed for — with a lovely governess (Ingrid Bergman, looking gorgeous) filling in for a dead mother and sniffing out a gold-digging harridan putting her claws into an easily flummoxed son. The story stretches over a few years, although much of the second and third act settles down in a shorter period after an extended opening featuring a great-looking Fay Wray as the soon-to-be-deceased mother. Then Susan Hayward takes centre stage as the adulterous, deceiving, booze-swilling, money-grubbing outsider who comes to steal the family fortune and seduce whoever she can to fulfill her role. (Meanwhile, our heroine is utterly chaste — but she does, as expected, ends up with the family patriarch once everything has been cleared up. The three lead actresses are unusually attractive here, but even that doesn’t do much to make up for the rather obvious script. This being said, there’s still some fun to be had even when knowing where it’s going: Hayward is deliciously evil here, and anticipating the melodramatic (melodomestic?) plot beats is almost as much fun as being surprised. Adam Had Four Sons is all rather pleasant in the end, with the bonus of seeing Bergman in an early Hollywood role—playing a Frenchwoman!

  • Eye of the Cat (1969)

    Eye of the Cat (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2021) As a very happy cat owner, I’m always dumbfounded when otherwise-likable people profess not liking cats — how can you not? But as it turns out, cats are probably the scariest of common pets and movies like Eye of the Cat certainly play on it, with the result outdoing a number of horror films of the era. The decently-budgeted production takes place in San Francisco, and at least one scene takes full advantage of the location, with director David Lowell Rich pitting a wheelchair-bound character against the steep hills of the city. Otherwise, the script plays with familiar elements — rich eccentric cat lady planning to give her inheritance to her cats; money-hungry relatives hungry for the inheritance; and groups of cats intent on killing bad humans. It’s ridiculous to see the usual tricks being used to make the cats look evil, and the script doesn’t rise much above some obvious material. It may be worth a look by cat-haters and cat-lovers alike, but just one: it’s more interesting as a diverting curio than a conventionally good film. Considering that Eye of the Cat wasn’t the first nor the last cat horror film, there’s probably a filmography to put together for feline friends and fiends.

  • Calamity Jane (1953)

    Calamity Jane (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) A common criticism of classic Hollywood westerns and musicals alike is that the most average of them all blur together in one indistinct mass. That’s certainly an issue in the first act of Calamity Jane — even in its specific niche as a western musical focused on a female sharpshooter, it feels almost too much like Annie, Get Your Gun (whose commercial success directly led to this film) to be wholly distinct — something reinforced by the tomboy presentation of both brassy heroines and male romantic interests coming from the same factory. It does get slightly better as the film goes on, as it focuses on an actress visiting a small western town and getting into shenanigans with Jane. Clearly comic and certainly not historically accurate, Calamity Jane eventually acquires its own distinction — especially, as other commentators have pointed out, when the film’s two female lead characters start cohabitating and we find ourselves in proto-queer cinema territory. More conventionally, Doris Day is fine (but no more) as the lead, while Howard Keel is surprisingly bland as the male lead and Allyn Ann McLerie gets one of her most noteworthy roles as a maid passing herself off as an actress — she does look terrific onstage. Some comic set-pieces work well, even if the film feels too long (especially in the first act, before all characters are introduced). By the end, Calamity Jane has done enough to distinguish itself and even pass itself off as a middle-tier musical. I doubt, however, that I’ll revisit this one any time soon, except if I forget that I’ve seen it in the first place.

  • Rebecca (2020)

    Rebecca (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2021) As someone with a surprising fondness for the original Daphne Du Maurier novel Rebecca and some admiration for the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film, I was curiously ambivalent about the idea of a remake. Maybe there should be a statute in the Academy Awards that Best Pictures should not be remade. Maybe, on the other hand, a modern look at the classic gothic romance would be interesting in itself. This 2020 version of Rebecca, as it turns out, is somewhere in the middle. Director Ben Wheatley established himself as a director of oddball projects, so he wasn’t necessarily a bad choice here… but the result seems beneath what one could expect from him. I have some appreciation for how the film adapts and changes its tone and visual language as the story advances — surprisingly light, sunny and colourful in the first act as our heroine meets a rich man and falls in love with him during a whirlwind vacation romance. Then, as the story moves to the unsettling Manderley domain, everything gradually darkens and becomes grimmer, all the way to the late film’s murder and incarceration subplot. By the third act, we’re deep in gothic suspense, queer cinema subtext, our heroine doing her best to free the man she loves and the final, celebrated finale. Rebecca works and doesn’t betray the original novel, but the result is likely to be forgotten remarkably quickly — it’s decent but hardly exceptional.

  • Ningen no jôken [The Human Condition I: No Greater Love] (1959)

    Ningen no jôken [The Human Condition I: No Greater Love] (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) There’s a lot to like in The Human Condition I: No Greater Love — at least in theory. The story of a Japanese pacifist being recruited as an instrument of warfare during the early days of WW2, it’s a story that works best in detailing the efforts he makes to improve the conditions of the prisoners, even going against his superiors in order to do so. The fragile peace he brokers involves prostitutes, prisoners, work quotas and the support of his loving wife. As I said — interesting stuff… if it wasn’t for the backbreaking, patience-sapping three hours and a half running time, half of it redundant or useless. But director Masaki Kobayashi is not interested in snappy storytelling: he’s halfway into art-film territory here, with a focus on the leisurely examination of the themes of the novels from which the story is taken. As the title suggests, this is the first part of a nine-hour trilogy — and things are not set to improve for our protagonist. I’m sure I’ll see the other films… but I’m not in a hurry to do so.

  • Liebe ist kälter als der Tod [Love is Colder than Death] (1969)

    Liebe ist kälter als der Tod [Love is Colder than Death] (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) Oh well. It looks as if I’m going to have to add Rainer Werner Fassbinder to my list of writers-directors that are formally interesting, but not particularly fun to watch. Love is Colder than Death, his debut film, is often mentioned as part of New German Cinema and is clearly reminiscent of other New Waves across the globe:  The bare bones of the story are a blend of romance and crime elements, but it’s the execution that sets the film apart — in this case stark black-and-white, with moments of sparse cinematography: actors shot against a pure white background, or an uninterrupted camera following petty criminals as they shop and shoplift in a supermarket. Violence is used in between tepidly paced romantic twist and turns — clearly the kind of film debut meant to impress by a responsible use of a limited budget, simple genre elements and an overall artistic vision. Love is Colder than Death is not uninteresting, but I gather that it’s more interesting to Fassbinder devotees or students of the various New Waves of cinema across the globe.

  • The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

    The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) There’s an admirable intellectual ambition to The Phantom Tollbooth that does much to set it apart from other ordinary animated films aimed at younger audiences — a love of knowledge, fun with wordplay, and ideas that reach above the usual family movies. There’s a live-action framing device to go around the animation, and much of the plot has to do with a boy trying to reconcile a fantastical kingdom divided in words and numbers. It doesn’t make the result a phenomenal film nor even one worth revisiting: the animation is TV grade and doesn’t have much charm, while some of the writing seems without grace. Still, it’s unusual enough to be interesting. Don’t ask me to compare Norton Juster’s book with the film adaptation, though — I read the novel more than twenty years ago, and don’t remember much beyond it being unusual and clever. That’s likely to be my assessment of the film in a few years as well.

  • Christmas Encore (2017)

    Christmas Encore (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) Cinema, most of the time, aims to share its values with the widest possible audience. The morality of mainstream film is basic, uncomplicated and comforting in its obviousness. But, from time to time, audiences may have their own idiosyncratic reactions to innocuous fare, and as Christmas Encore unspooled, I felt myself annoyed that the heroine was making all the wrong choices. Of course, this is a Christmas film, and a Hallmark Christmas film at that — realism or even pragmatism are not part of its vocabulary. So when, in the opening moments, we see a young woman (Maggie Lawson, only slightly better than Hallmark heroines usually are) clearly having no success at all as an aspiring actress in Manhattan, an offer from a best friend (the very cute Mercedes de la Zerda) to get a safe corporate job back home in Chicago seems like the obvious choice — you go, girl, have a nice life and make your own happiness. But no: this is a film about art and following dreams and chasing the dragon of success atop the boom-and-bust model of fickle theatrical productions. (It gets worse once the financial backer of her latest production pulls out, putting the entire thing in jeopardy, at which point we’re all there shouting, “TOLD YOU SO.”)  One more thing that doesn’t work in Christmas Encore’s favour is that it has so little going for it in terms of direction, dialogues or acting that even milquetoast objections loom larger and more crucial. Of course, it all gets resolved at the end — her colleague turns into a lover, her uncaring patron turns out to be generous (one last time?), the play is a success and nobody dwells on how it’s all to be repeated as soon as the seasonal production wraps up (especially since we get very few hints as to her longevity in a business where young actresses go out of style very quickly). Yes, I know: The point of such romances is to avoid thinking about any complications. Even an actress coming up with a Christmas play concept after Thanksgiving is somehow not a problem. But Christmas Encore doesn’t have the spark needed for such a sleight of hand. The protagonist isn’t the only one making all the bone-headed choices:  The romance is perfunctory, the lead actor feels bored, director Bradley Walsh’s execution is unremarkable and the entire thing is far closer to annoyance than innocuousness. In the absence of anything interesting, even the usual flaws of its subgenre become surprisingly effective irritants.

  • Eskimo (1933)

    Eskimo (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) It’s tempting to see Eskimo (their word, not mine) as a talkie remake of Nanook of the North. Indeed, there are numerous points of similarities between both movies, and they all run along the lines of other remakes:  The story remains an exploration of Inuit communities up north as they live their lifestyle and meet Caucasian people. The film is presented with an anthropological intent, as we follow the characters living in the arctic circle, going hunting and taking in the unusual landscape. But the two films are not particularly alike once you look closer. Clearly coming from another source (a novel), Eskimo heads for Alaska rather than Hudson’s Bay, and seems put together with a Pre-Code lasciviousness that doesn’t spare a lot of time in highlighting the looser sexual mores of the “primitive” people (their word, not mine) and how sexual favours are routinely traded for material goods. Truth in cinema, for sure, but the angle is more exploitative than the rest of the film. In terms of inclusivity, Eskimo does about as well as any film could have been expected in the early 1930s. Much of the dialogue is not in English, and it is presented through title cards rather than subtitles. The Inuit characters are portrayed by director W. S. Van Dyke as having agendas and personalities, with the Caucasians not coming across are particularly likable. Still, the film rankles from the title onward, clearly presenting an exotic, sometimes exploitative vision of “the other.”  Obvious rear-projection work damages the effectiveness of some hunting sequences, while taking a look at the cast list belies the idea that this is in any way authentic. There are ample reasons to prefer Nanook of the North.

  • One Crazy Christmas (2018)

    One Crazy Christmas (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) The only thing better than a BET-broadcast romantic comedy is a BET-broadcast dysfunctional family holiday dramedy, and there’s just enough of that in One Crazy Christmas to make it worth an undemanding look. The story starts on a weird footing, as we’re introduced to a divorced lawyer presented as a de facto protagonist without making us care for her — even her hatred of her ex-husband seems contrived without much of a rationale. Events accumulate, she spends the weekend with a much younger man and that’s that — the story skips ahead a few weeks. While inelegant, this first act sets up the ludicrousness of the rest of the film as Christmas rolls around, her daughter comes to visit and the boyfriend she brings along is… the man she slept with. Like a good theatrical play, the tensions and dissimulation keep piling up until a glorious conflagration, with all supporting characters having their say in the proceedings. There’s a solid core to One Crazy Christmas, but it’s not necessarily supported by a competent execution. The dialogue is blunt, the writing is sloppy and the acting doesn’t rise much above the workmanlike directing or cinematography. Even the entertaining supporting characters (or the beautiful Terri Abney in a too-small role) only hint at the potential of what the film could have been in better hands. Writer-director Greg Carter gets the story going but doesn’t do much to get it past the finish line: there’s little style, not enough wit and a clear lack of audacity in developing such a premise into something that could have been fully satisfying. At least the tone is amiable, and the Christmas atmosphere is almost custom-designed to disarm reviewers who would like to be too harsh about it. It’s clearly within the usual levels of BET-broadcast films, and their audience would be happy with One Crazy Christmas.

  • Saturday the 14th Strikes Back (1988)

    Saturday the 14th Strikes Back (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) No one in their right minds is going to call Saturday the 14th Strikes Back a good movie, and even describing it as funny would be a stretch — for a parody of early 1980s movies, it’s not witty, not very well executed and seldom laugh-out-loud funny. The low budget of the product is immediately obvious, and while the script does wrap up its parodies and homage into something of a real story, it doesn’t score any particularly good jokes along the way — other than the impromptu vampire musical segment, that is. While it’s a sequel to Saturday the 14th, it’s not really necessary to have seen the first film. Still, what Saturday the 14th Strikes Back manages to create — and this isn’t as obvious as it may sound — is a good-natured goofy atmosphere in which everything and anything is just off-the-wall crazy. The casually amusing lines are tossed off without grace, but they create a film in which absurdity reigns and is executed with a great deal of earnestness. While the laughs are infrequent, the smiles are almost constant, considering that the film does its best to entertain without quite managing to take it to the next level. It leaves a slightly better impression than the first film did, and writer-director Howard R. Cohen just keeps cranking up the goofiness until a climactic supernatural battle that’s quite unlike anything else. I’m not saying that you should have a look at Saturday the 14th Strikes Back. But if you do, well, chances are that you will be intrigued by its craziness.