Movie Review

  • The Last of Sheila (1973)

    The Last of Sheila (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) There’s something primal and timeless about a good murder mystery—the universal stakes of death being on the line, and the playful nature of the convoluted plotting that usually accompanies such films. The Last of Sheila has, to put it bluntly, not necessarily aged well: The muddy cinematography is clearly from the early 1970s, as are the sometimes-hideous fashions and the contemporary details that pepper the film. Here, a Hollywood mogul calls six “friends” for a Mediterranean holiday aboard his yacht. But what they discover early on is that the puzzle-obsessed mogul has fun and games in mind for them: Six days, six stops, six enigmas to resolve. But what they eventually discover is that the mogul has a much darker scheme in mind—a year earlier, his wife was killed in a hit-and-run, and the guilty driver is among them. Then it gets more complicated—all the way to an ending where the survivors all find killers and guilty consciences. The cast is interesting, what with James Coburn having far too much fun as the mogul, and guests played by a motley crew, including an old James Mason, a young Ian McShane, and Raquel Welch in the middle of her peak popularity. The script, from unlikely scribes Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim (who used to host murder mystery parties), is suitably twisty, witty and clever—I’m not too sure that the third act is as spectacular as it should be given its more intimate setting, but it satisfies well enough. Despite being visibly stuck in the early 1970s, The Last of Sheila is highly watchable—even more so for fans of the actors involved, but accessible to all, especially once the fun and games start.

  • That Hamilton Woman (1941)

    That Hamilton Woman (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) By most standards, That Hamilton Woman was 1941’s equivalent to a sure-fire blockbuster. Despite Britain being under siege by the Nazi regime, producer Alexander Korba was betting on a number of strong box-office factors: It’s a film that paired then-wedded superstars Vivien Leigh (still riding high on Gone with the Wind) and Laurence Olivier. It tackled a salacious affair involving revered eighteenth-century national hero Horatio Nelson. Lavishly produced, it features great costumes and impeccable technical credentials for the time. Despite being a historical film, it clearly made clear parallels between fighting the tyranny of Napoleon with the effort of fighting Hitler. In other words, That Hamilton Woman was the perfect thing to whip up popular fervour at a time that needed it. Alas, such virtues don’t always travel well across eighty years, and so to modern audiences it feels like a film constrained. Putting aside how 1940s period dramas haven’t necessarily aged well in terms of narrative pacing, histrionic melodrama or insistent soundtrack, this film feels limited by the censorship of the time, unable to portray the adulterous relationship at the core of its narrative with the honesty that modern audiences would expect. It doesn’t help that Leigh plays an exceptionally annoying character in the first half of the film, setting a bad tone from the get-go. In other words, I had a rough time getting through That Hamilton Woman—the strongest elements remain the propagandist nature of its narrative in whipping up fighting fervour in the Commonwealth. (On the other hand, I was primed for that, having just watched the documentary feature Churchill and the Movie Mogul a few days earlier.)

  • Monkey Beach (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) We usually talk about movie formulas as being bad things, but an underappreciated aspect of their nature is that to have a formula, you need to have enough examples of something to distinguish the formula. When it comes to underrepresented kind of cinema, the emergence of a formula can be the sign of a healthy subgenre. So it is that, in between Monkey Beach and near-contemporary The Incredible 25th Year of Mitzi Bearclaw (and the inverse of Through Black Spruce), we have an emerging formula: The young indigenous woman leaving the big city to return to the reserve, where her supernatural powers help untangle family problems, sentimental complications and her own maturation. Monkey Beach has a bigger budget and a literary origin: It’s adapted from Eden Robinson’s well-received novel, can boast of some amazing cinematography and can anchor itself to Adam Beach as a marquee name. Grace Dove is quite good in the lead role, with special mention of Tina Lameman’s performance as guiding elder Ma-Ma-Oo. The BC landscapes are gorgeously portrayed, and director Loretta Todd gives the film a strong atmosphere. Unfortunately, the film struck me as more technically successful but not quite as interesting as The Incredible 25th Year of Mitzi Bearclaw: far more leaden in its messages, not as charmingly odd in its presentation and a bit too serious for its own good, Monkey Beach feels like the staider, po-faced cousin of Mitzi Bearclaw. This being said, I couldn’t be happier that there are no less than two movies poking at the same topic in their own way—First Nations cinema in Canada is still too rare, although I’ve seen no less than six such movies in the past six months now that the airwaves are free to present something other than Hollywood blockbusters during the pandemic void. I really would like to see a third and a fourth example of this “back to the reserve” formula: counter-intuitively, there are representativeness and strength in formula.

  • Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2021) While most people associate the Hellraiser series with the grotesque Cenobites (including the pinheaded series icon), the first film doesn’t have them on-screen for long—it’s mostly about the teenage protagonist’s creepy uncle being resurrected from the dead by blood sacrifice. Sequel Hellbound tries to have more of the Cenobites and develop the series’ hellish mythology without losing track of the first film’s overall plot. Here, our teenage protagonist (Clare Higgins, as cute as in the first film) does her best to reunite with her dead father, and gets the means to literally go to (a) hell in order to pursue him, despite the efforts of her murderous stepmother, reborn through the series’ usual blood sacrifices. In trying to play with a mythology invented by someone else (Clive Baker only being peripherally involved in this instalment), director Tony Randel manages to deliver a thoroughly average horror film—while there are a few effective moments, especially in the first half of the film when the evil stepmother makes a skinless entrance, Hellbound is watchable without being particularly compelling… which counts as a failure given the fascinating untapped possibility of its premise. The moment-to-moment cohesion of the film is also frequently dodgy, given how it seems to skip from one visual set piece to another. Compared to other late-1980s horror movies, Hellbound is not bad—but the expansive nature of its premise means that the special effects limitations of the time do prevent the film from reaching its fullest potential. There are at least half a dozen supernatural horror movies of that era that are simply better in every respect. Although, after watching the subsequent instalment in the series, I’m surprised to note how much material introduced in Hellbound pays off in the next movie.

  • Rev (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) The sole distinction earned by Rev is being a GTA-set GTA. Or, to unpack this a bit, of being a Grand Theft Auto game set in the Greater Toronto Area. Unfortunately, Rev also has to contend with being an amoral low-budget film, both of which severely limit its effectiveness. Stuck without an action sequence budget, Rev muddles through a story that doesn’t include a single expansive action scene: don’t expect car chases or shootouts, because this is a film that exemplifies “look, but do not touch the expensive rented cars that we can’t afford to trash.”  The other problem is a lack of morals—Scorsese-style, the film is heavily narrated by its protagonist, a young man turning to crime because a steady job is too boring and he doesn’t have the basic skills required for customer service or managing his boss. His sole claim to being a hero has to do with being forced to work with the police, but he (in the tradition of such films—I don’t writer-director Ant Horasanli has a single original idea for Rev beside setting it in Toronto) eventually reneges on that. There’s a useful comparison here to be made with the Fast and Furious series that Rev is so intent on imitating—the Fast and Furious characters may not be law-abiding, but they have strong personal morals and likable traits that are completely absent here. Our protagonist loves making money, stealing his boss’s girlfriend (which goes over more smoothly than you’d expect in the end) and not working for The Man—making him of dubious likability if you’re not a part of the same sociopathic set. Low budget action plus rock-bottom morals make Rev easy to dismiss as nothing more than a wannabe close of much better films. It didn’t have to be like that—from a visual perspective, Rev stretches its budget as far as it can go with some really good cinematography, adequate acting (I won’t argue with Vivica A. Fox and Hannah Gordon) and dialogue that, from time to time, can be amusing. But it’s all in the service of something intensely predictable and completely meaningless, trivializing crime with a fairytale distinction between bad criminals and “good” criminals engaged in the proverbial “cool crime of car thievery.”  Rev is the kind of film that went wrong at the scripting stage, chasing an audience without understanding that it’s got to be about more than making money and running off on the beach.

  • Radioactive (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) I was, really, really primed to like Radioactivity. I’ve always liked the story of Marie Curie, and I’ve liked much of director Marjane Satrapi’s work in different media. But the result steadily slips sideways the longer it goes on, to a point where I can’t really recommend the results. This is the third film about Marie Curie that I’ve seen in the span of a year, and if it’s easily the more technically polished, it ranks a distant third behind the classic 1943 Greer Garson biopic, and the far more comedic 1997 Les Palmes de M. Schutz. Proudly going for the obvious angle of presenting Curie as a feminist icon, Radioactive overplays its hand to the point of becoming unlikable, distorting the historical records and losing itself in tangents. The entire film is a flashback from Curie’s death that eventually flashforwards to events occurring decades later, and while the effect isn’t confusing, it’s scattered in a way that diminishes the film. The romance between Curie and her husband gets far less screen time considering that at least half the film is set after her famous discoveries, and the film sufficiently deviates from the record to have Curie physically assault her husband in a rage that has no basis in history. To be clear: I am not opposed to movies taking liberties with history (as was the case in the two other films I keep comparing Radioactive to), but when a movie about a scientist released in information-rich 2019 starts messing with fact in order to hammer thematic points that are already perfectly obvious, my disenchantment overweighs whatever admiration I can have for other aspects of the film. Technically, it’s up to the state of the art, using CGI and editing to blur one period with another, move back and forth in time and present her heroine in the best possible light. Rosamund Pike is really good in the lead role, but the film shouts its themes over her performance to an extent that diminishes the good work she does. It’s a deep paradox that while Radioactive is all about Marie Curie, she’s far less likable or admirable here than in the other two movies about her.

  • L’amour en fuite [Love on the Run] (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) Wrapping up the Antoine Doinel series with a fifth and final instalment, L’amour en fuite once again follows the biography of François Truffaut’s celebrated alter ego, now in his mid-to-late thirties and picking up the pieces of his life after the divorce foreshadowed by the previous film and a successful autobiographical novel. But he’s still the same flighty lover hopping from one conquest to another, and things quickly come to a boil when, after a first half focused on him, the film allows two of his past flames to meet and compare notes. L’amour en fuite makes copious use of its kinship with the four previous films of the series by showing clips from those films to illustrate what characters are talking about, something that doesn’t feel like as much of a crutch than you’d think. Truffault’s somewhat humorous touch is still present, although the weight of the film is in characterization rather than flashy stylistic techniques or overly comic moments. As such, L’amour en fuite often feels like a staider film than its immediate predecessors—it’s inwardly reflective to the point of approaching hermetic self-containment, and its finality is more a matter of chronological evidence and Truffaut’s death rather than stemming from any kind of grand wrap-up. I still liked it, but I suspect that it’s more out of devotion to Truffaut and his idiosyncratic style than in the film itself, or when it’s compared to its predecessors.

  • The Turning (2020)

    The Turning (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) With the rise of digital post-production, it’s easier than ever to make pretty films without much substance, and that’s how The Turning is liable to impress most viewers with its atmosphere, while leaving them confounded on a narrative level. While the film can point to the Henry James novella “The Turn of the Screw” as inspiration, the actual story doesn’t go much beyond “governess of two kids in a gothic manor becomes obsessed by ghosts,” before giving up and offering two conclusions for its audience to digest. By the time the credits roll, there’s a sense of having been bamboozled by indecisive filmmakers incapable of choosing between an ending or another. The Turning isn’t the first film to play this trick, but others in the same vein (such as Savages) seemed far more deliberate about it—here it just feels sloppy. On the brighter side (not by much), the atmosphere of the film is generally successful, bathed in overcast days, spooking mansion nights and enough psychopathic behaviour from the kids to send anyone else screaming for the exit. Director Floria Sigismondi gets half-marks for managing at least half the film, while Finn Wolfhard is too successful at portraying a detestable kid. If it wasn’t for the inconclusive ending, there wouldn’t be much to say about The Turning—it follows a well-trodden path without offering much ingenuity, and after a while it becomes the kind of annoying film you just want to razz mercilessly. Looking at the production history of the film, it becomes amazing that such a protracted production history with a complete eleventh-hour reboot would end up with something so meaningless, but that’s often the case with projects so ill-conceived that they shouldn’t have been undertaken in the first place.

  • Baisers volés [Stolen Kisses] (1968)

    Baisers volés [Stolen Kisses] (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2021) An accident of DVR scheduling led me to watch Baisers volés after its immediate sequel Domicile conjugal, and that didn’t work in the film’s favour. Rather than a sequel to Les 400 coups that had viewers wondering if the protagonist will get together with the cute red-haired girl, it ends up being a “here’s how they got together” prequel that prefigures more sadness to come knowing how Domicile conjugal ends. On the other hand—or perhaps the same hand—the successful blend of drama/comic elements from the following film isn’t quite as nicely executed here: Baisers volés feels longer, duller, more laborious than its successor and probably would have felt fresher if I had seen first. Still, it’s not an unpleasant film. The protagonist of the series (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) is still a likable screw-up, here unable to hold on to a job longer than a few weeks following his dishonourable discharge from the army. Writer/director François Truffaut plays with form a bit—notably in expanding a small window into a full frame, or in having the character repeat names in front of a mirror for what seems to be an endless amount of time. If you see Baisers volés, make sure it’s in the series intended order.

  • The Dream Team (1989)

    The Dream Team (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2021) Michael Keaton spent much of the 1980s starring in various comic vehicles of varying interest, and it’s interesting to note that one of the least engaging of them, The Dream Team, was released the same year that Batman raised him to a different class of actor. Little superheroism shows up here as the film sets up its dicey premise: what if a psychiatrist took four patients from the asylum to a baseball game in the heart of Manhattan? What if, to make it even more interesting, he was suddenly incapacitated and his charges were left to roam the city? Fortunately, The Dream Team is a comedy rather than anything else, and so the film sets out to show how our characters can act sane in an insane city and do some self-therapy along the way. Mix in a criminal subplot and you’ve got the bare essentials of an unthreatening Hollywood mental illness comedy in which all you need is love and unsupervised time. The biggest problem with The Dream Team is that while it has the bare foundation for a comic film, it doesn’t have much more. There are few laughs, few comic set-pieces, and quite a bit of excessive sentiment that often gives the impression of trivializing the issues it touches. Keaton is fun to watch—especially given that the film makes sure that his issues are not too severe—and the film does benefit from such comedy notables as Christopher Lloyd and Peter Boyle. But the potential of the film remains largely unrealized.

  • Domicile conjugal [Bed and Board] (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2021) Ever since watching the one-two punch of La nuit Américaine and Hitchcock/Truffault, I’ve felt that François Truffault is my favourite of the French Nouvelle Vague writers/directors. His love of classic Hollywood, wry humour and fascination for the nuts-and-bolts of cinema are very approachable, and he’d be a good pick for any round of fantasy dinner-party guests. I suspect that it’s that kind of kinship that led to the auteur theory of filmmaking—if a director has similar motifs, obsessions and expressive qualities as you do, it permeates all aspects of their filmmaking and ensures that you’ll find something of interest in nearly all of them. (Strangely enough, my least favourite Truffaut film is Les 400 coups, one of his first and certainly the best known of them.)  That’s my long-winded way of saying that while Domicile conjugal deals in wholly unremarkable subject matter—the tough first months of cohabitation between a newly married couple—, it does so in a way that is frequently interesting. Great dialogues, striking scenes (including the bedroom shot shown on the poster), likable actors (Jean-Pierre Léaud, but especially the beautiful Claude Jade, even more attractive with glasses) and Truffaut’s subtle humour make the film far more interesting than a dry plot summary or description of its downbeat third act would suggest. There are plenty of odds and ends and small jokes along the way, along with a dispiriting affair portrayed rather more amusingly than one would think. Alas, I ended up seeing Domicile Conjugal before its immediate predecessor Baisers volés, so a few callbacks to the earlier film showing the two leads’ courtship were definitely lost on me. I normally tune out films dwelling largely on small-scale domestic issues, but Domicile conjugal hooked me to an unexpected degree, and I’m blaming it all on Truffaut.

  • Stronger (2017)

    Stronger (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) Despite good reviews, I passed on Stronger for years before finally deciding to see it. It’s the kind of film that you think you know simply from its premise: Here, the story of Jeff Bauman, a working-class Bostonian who lost his legs following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. It’s a tale that superficially classifies as one of those “overcoming great adversity” stories, mixed with the added resonance of a famous national-headline event. But it doesn’t take a long time to see how Stronger takes a more interesting approach than most similar films. Going a bit quickly on the terrible moments of the bombing (don’t worry—you’ll dwell on all the gory details later), it quickly establishes its lead character as an unreliable, somewhat immature young man thrust without warning in a terrible situation. But Stronger doesn’t sugarcoat any of it: stuck in the narrow confines of a lower-class apartment, our protagonist is ill-equipped to handle the media attention and the heroism conferred upon him. Bad incidents follow, along with a decidedly half-hearted approach to physical rehabilitation that would enable him to use prosthetics for walking again. Jake Gyllenhall stars as Bauman, bringing his usual charm to a role that often needs it. A similar performance comes for a de-glammed Tatiana Maslany as his on-and-off girlfriend, who takes on more than she can tolerate as well. The raw, gritty nature of the film can’t quite obscure a carefully orchestrated production that eventually gets back to the inspiring nature of such films—It’s as much a story of (literally) how to get back on one’s legs after tremendous setbacks, but also how to learn to accept the symbolism of heroism that others project onto you. Stronger is a clever film, clearly aware of genre clichés and working hard to go beyond them while still delivering the life-affirming message that viewers expect from such films. It’s manipulative, but not unpleasantly so.

  • Indian Road Trip (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2021) One of the better arguments for greater inclusivity in filmmaking (not merely casting) is that different perspectives will tell stories from viewpoints other than those that have dominated cinema since its creation. Indian Road Trip, despite obvious shortcomings, is a clear example of the fun to be had when formerly marginalized filmmakers reuse familiar formulas to their own ends. The film takes a risk early on by introducing us to its two native protagonists by showing them swindling a caricatural couple of white folks out for reserve tourism. The dodgy morals of our lead characters having been established, the film follows it up by showing how disliked they are by the rest of the reserve. Their punishment? Driving an elder to her sister’s house, a short-distance trip that turns out to be far lengthier given intentional obstacles and some magical interference. Ajuawak Kapashesit and Paul C. Grenier star in writer/director Allan Hopkins’s comedy, their charisma quickly winning us over to their side as they try to complete their quest despite many deviations. While the acting talent in the film is uneven, there are a few laughs from Dale Hunter as a cranky elder, and Evan Adams as a character that keeps popping up at the oddest moments (something that even the characters eventually pick up). Indian Road Trip doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it has the freedom to be playful rather than harping on more serious themes usually associated with low-budget Canadian native films set on reserves. The comedy shines through, which is not always obvious on low-budget productions, and many more serious thematic concerns sneak in on the edges of the film’s main comic plot. The film’s low budget is the stuff of legend—much of the film was shot without sufficient post-production funding, and it took extraordinary financing arrangements for the film to be completed at all—and shows perhaps most clearly in the washed-out cinematography that flattens the impact of the spectacular shooting locations of Merrit, BC. (Which feels like a shame considering that the film makes good use of drone footage and good-to-great composition.)  It’s impossible to be too critical of such a winning effort, though: the script has its share of good moments in between mixing up a family quest, magical realism, a Tarantinoesque subplot about a criminal hunting for lost money, and the two lead’s good-natured banter. The film simply feels fun—and simply endearing despite its flaws. I’m annoyed that Indian Road Trip, like many examples of a substantial wave of enjoyable Canadian movies from First Nations filmmakers, will probably fly under the radar of most filmgoers. It’s a welcome exemplar of what’s possible when even modest budgets find their way into the hands of non-traditional filmmakers, and I hope to see more of Allan Hopkins’s work soon.

  • Terreur cannibale [Cannibal Terror] (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2021) The early 1980s were a golden age for two detestable trends in horror movies: knife-wielding psycho slashers, and primitive-tribes cannibal movies. I despise both, but if forced to choose, I will usually prefer slashers: most of them are dull and unlikable, but cannibal movies could be repulsive to the point of unwatchability. Director Alain Deruelle’s Terreur cannibale distinguishes itself from most of the subgenre by first being a lone French effort in a mostly Italian sub-genre, but also by being a weird hybrid between a dull thriller and a disgusting cannibal horror film. The story does play on melodramatic elements by having two villains kidnap the young daughter of a rich man and head out into the jungle to hide her. But the horror elements quickly come back to the forefront with graphic cannibalism, rape and murder—don’t worry for the little girl (she escapes the film alive and untraumatized, which can’t be said about its audience), but the kidnapping rapist criminals are not fated to a happy ending once the rape victim aims the friendly neighbourhood cannibals at them. I am unfortunately jaded enough to say that Terreur cannibale feels like mere unpleasantness compared to the stomach-churning gore of Cannibal Holocaust. But that’s not a recommendation—it’s still an unpleasant film to watch, and a surprisingly forgettable one despite the hybridization of cannibal tropes with some thriller elements. Keep in mind that this assessment comes from an ultra-jaded viewer: anyone not used to the excesses of early-1980s cannibal movies will not find anything of value here.

  • My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) As much as it’s noble to want to separate content from presentation, it’s not always possible to do so, especially in cases like My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, where the form is an in-your-face repudiation of slicker approaches. To be fair, many factors lead to the film’s intentionally naïve take on animation: it’s a low-budget, high-concept, full-zany film that starts with a high school perched atop a California cliff from which a substantial earthquake sends everyone in the ocean. (It’s not a spoiler—it’s in the title.)  The art style used here is intentionally crude, with basic 2D figures set atop colourful backgrounds in a bid to show the film in an expressionistic fashion rather than a realistic one. On the upside, it allows writer-director Dash Shaw to deliver a spectacular high school catastrophe film on meager means, and to start playing with non-realistic storytelling devices. On the other hand, well, it’s a hard film to sit through. I had some success treating the film as a radio play by watching something else and listening to the (admittedly not bad) dialogue, but I’m not sure I would have lasted long had I tried to watch the entire film with my full undivided attention. Like it or not, I still think that competent animation is important when delivering an animated film, and this one intentionally doesn’t aim for that. The story has hit-and-miss moments—some of the writing is good, some of it over-the-top, some of it disappointing. The ending is a bit bland after the colourful melodramatic action climax, but that’s part of the joke. Alas, when the entire film is a joke, it places My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea in an uncomfortable middle ground, neither funny enough nor realistic enough to be entirely satisfying. Decent voice acting can’t quite save a film that looks terrible and only becomes tolerable through a conscious effort of will at not watching something else. When there are so many other good movies with decent presentation, why exactly suffer through something that doesn’t want to look good and accessible?