Movie Review

  • Marius (1931)

    Marius (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) Unusually enough, it’s Marius’ remake Fanny that makes the original adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s play both interesting and disappointing. As a romance set on Marseilles’ waterfront, Marius still carries some appeal, at least for French speakers: the very distinctive accent and slow-paced lifestyle espoused by the characters are still rather charming. Much of the story is set in a small bar overlooking the Mediterranean, and as the characters focus on their small-scale romantic troubles, it makes for an immersive plunge into a quasi-mythical way of living. Alexander Korda became far better-known as a producer, but his directing here is pretty good for the time. Alas, those who have seen Fanny will be disappointed by its progenitor: Not only is Maurice Chevalier missing, but so is the last and more interesting half of the story told more efficiently in the remake. (The explanation for this is that the remake adapts two linked stories, whereas the original only adapts the first.)  Much of the dramatic interest of the remake is replaced by a far more linear and simplistic love story — Marius is not bad, but not quite to the level set by the remake. Still, it’s not a bad watch nor a bad listen if you’re able to distinguish the melodic accent from more traditional French.

  • Follow Me aka No Escape (2020)

    Follow Me aka No Escape (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) I don’t usually think that “dated” is a particularly good criticism — especially when you take the long view and see films years or decades later, causing the whole question to collapse on itself as “dated” becomes “period.” But in the here-and-now of 2021, a film like No Escape lands with a tired thud because it often feels like a mash-up of once-trendy elements and plot points stuffed into an overly familiar mess. Consider the premise in which an {influencer} goes to {eastern Europe} to participate in an {escape room} where he discovers that it’s {not a game} and tries to save himself and {his friends}. If you’re tired just reading these keywords, well, you haven’t seen the perfectly predictable ending, nor the nothingness that the film does with this obvious revelation. At this time, those past-prime trendy buzzwords are more annoying than anything else, and they’re not really excused by what will remain a lacklustre execution from writer-director Will Wernick. No Escape feels like a sad copy of the “vacationing Americans are stuck in a house of horror” subgenre, except with more emojis. (In other words, don’t expect viewers from 2050 to react any better to the film even if the “dated” element is made historical by accumulated decades. Although maybe they’ll laugh.)  There’s a modest amount of fun to be had watching in the film’s first act, as Keegan Allen plays an influencer with a decent amount of charisma, having fun in Moscow before the games begin. But once the characters are stuck in the usual industrial warehouse with the usual traps, No Escape’s already shaky interest disappears completely all the way to its wet thud of a conclusion. Technical credentials and visual quality are slightly higher than you’d expect from a low-budget horror rip-off, but make no mistake: this is still a horror rip-off.

  • 8-Bit Christmas (2021)

    8-Bit Christmas (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) As the cultural zeitgeist slowly moves to 1990s nostalgia according to the thirty-year window, we’re probably in the last gasp of the late-1980s homages and so 8-Bit Christmas takes us to December 1988 for a tall tale of how our adult narrator (Neil Patrick Harris, on the other side of a Wonder Years setup) got his much-coveted Nintendo after an eventful holiday period. The framing device has him telling his story to his daughter, leading to more than a few CGI-enhanced disconnects between the tale and what we’re shown. Much of the story plays off trials and tribulations of a young teenager, with plenty of era-appropriate (or era-adjacent) cultural references meant to immerse (or possibly drown) viewing in a past generation. Surprisingly enough, it rather works: Once you get past the signposts and references of the era and the prodigious Nintendo product placement, it becomes not just a nostalgic throwback, but a Christmas film and a heartfelt generational drama. The conclusion is both more comically devious and dramatically strong than anyone would have expected from the beginning of the film. 8-bit Christmas makes for decent-enough Christmas viewing with a more effective wrap-up than the film’s direct-to-TV pedigree (if that still means something) would suggest.

  • Pig (2021)

    Pig (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) On a conceptual level, there’s something that looks like a heavy parodic intent to Pig’s overarching plot: Here we have Nicholas Cage going on a rampage after his truffle-sniffing pig is stolen, straight into the underworld of the Portland restaurant scene — and all for naught at the end. It sounds like a dark parody of John Wick’s dog-avenging quest, with a final subversion at the end. But there’s nothing funny about Pig on a moment-to-moment basis: Directed with melancholic sadness by Michael Sarnoski, the potentially silly premise becomes a character study of grief wrapped in loose genre clothing. Executed with some precision, it’s undoubtedly a slick film from someone who knows what he’s doing. Whether it works will depend on your tolerance for such a thing: in Cage’s filmography, this is closer to Joe than Mandy, even if Cage does get to go from a finely dramatic performance to a bit of a late-film freakout. The slow, glum pacing frequently runs at odds with the plot’s genre demands — and the intentional disappointment of the conclusion will deflate whatever interest the film will have to audiences not quite expecting Cage to go as dramatic as usual in a deliberately misleading film. At least Pig remains a welcome reminder that Cage can still be an unpredictable and dependable actor — unlike many of his generation struggling for relevance, he’s still going from one wildly different thing to another, and still giving it all he’s got.

  • Back to the Goode Life (2019)

    Back to the Goode Life (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) Urban protagonists moving back to their childhood hometown are a staple of romantic comedies, and Back to the Goode Life plays the trope to the hilt. This time, our heroine is a New York executive who finds out that her latest promotion lands her squarely in the target of a fraud investigation. (If that feels like a familiar set-up, maybe you’d seen Madea’s Witness Protection recently.)  Her accounts frozen and seeking a way to stay out of the spotlight, she heads back to the Georgian countryside to live with her parents, hook up with a past flame and save the local restaurant from going bankrupt thanks to her business skills. Like, you know, half of daytime romantic comedies on the air these days. The Hallmark formula is spreading everywhere, and the only half-sane response is to sit back, let the familiar plot wash over us and focus on the performances and the details of the execution. Writer-director Tamika Miller doesn’t bring much to it, though: the script is lazily put together (to the point of barely connecting the narrative, relying on dumb “I can explain!” moments such as the shitless restaurant office scene, and not doing much more with the formula than strictly required. Lead actress Kyla Pratt similarly delivers a disappointing performance — enough to hold the film together, but not particularly funny, engaging or sexy. (The supporting actresses are more interesting to look at, although to their credit they only usually have to walk in, do something more outrageous than the heroine, and walk away.)  The plot is loose to the point of incompetence with a six-month skip that copies one of the worst tendencies of the formula that it so slavishly (but badly) apes. To be clear, I didn’t hate Back to the Goode Life — it’s just sweet and good-natured enough to be not worth any hate. Hey, you can even smirk once in a while as you’re watching it as background noise. But this is a disappointing showing even in its subclass.

  • It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

    It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) Few films have been perceived so differently over the year as It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Upon release, it was a fairly ordinary Science Fiction film featuring astronauts battling a monster in a spacecraft — a hermetic, claustrophobic version of the typical 1950s monster movies, not executed with any kind of sophistication by director Edward L. Cahn, but good enough for drive-in thrills. By the early 1970s (if it was seen at all at an age prior to home video), it must have been a quaint relic at a time of New Hollywood, as movies became increasingly realistic and the rift between what audiences expected and the shoddy execution of the 1958 film became more apparent. But then something very strange happened: Alien, a film that pushed horror where it had never gone before by borrowing quite a lot from It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Consider the crew of a spaceship landing on a strange planet and carrying back a dangerous visitor within the confines of their ship. Attempts to kill it through conventional means fail, as it keeps killing crewmembers, forcing the survivors to flush it out of the airlock. Isn’t that Alien or what? After a few decades in which comparisons must not have been kind, watching It! The Terror from Beyond Space is surprisingly fun now because we’re probably approaching it from the other end: What if Alien had been made in the 1950s? Well, it’s not a thought experiment or a retro-pastiche: Here we have the real thing, an authentic vintage interpretation of one of the ur-stories of horror/SF cinema. It’s almost enough to make you want to send modern movies back in time to see what they would have done with the concept, the limited means and the self-censorship prevalent during the 1950s. Oh, I won’t qualify It! The Terror from Beyond Space as conventionally good: there’s a fair bit of ironic distancing going on while watching the film, and Alien really should be a prerequisite to watch. Our “blue collar” crew plays chess, really… But movie experiences are not always the ones intended by the filmmakers, and if a modern reading uses other sources to create enjoyment, well, that’s better than no enjoyment at all.

  • La femme aux bottes rouges [The Woman with Red Boots] (1974)

    La femme aux bottes rouges [The Woman with Red Boots] (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) In watching a Buñuel movie, I expect weirdness, and weirdness is what I got with La femme aux bottes rouges — although I didn’t get the Buñuel I expected. Writer-director Juan Luis Buñuel is the son of Luis Buñuel, but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell the difference considering how closely does this film seem to stem from the same place as Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie. Having the beautiful Catherine Deneuve in the lead reminds us of Belle de Jour, and the controlled surrealism of the film clearly owes much to Buñuel père. The story, as much as can be gathered without an explanatory guide, has to do with a young woman (Deneuve) being courted by an elderly rich gentleman (Fernando Rey, remarkable), leading to rifts with her current lover, lust from another man who ends up shooting his wife in a hunting accident, and artists gathering at a retreat. But that’s not the weird part yet, because our heroine is a woman with the power to change reality, to make others do her bidding and create passageways out of paintings. What’s rather charming in La femme aux bottes rouges as it flirts with fantasy is the decidedly low-tech approach to its magic: Things appear, disappear or change after editing cuts: a low budget, low-effort approach that does enhance the eeriness of the fantastic by leaving the magical unseen. It’s really up to the viewers to pay attention and realize unnatural changes even though there are no showy special effects calling attention to themselves. (Speaking of special effects, I had to laugh at one scene in which Deneuve’s character briefly reveals herself naked to the elderly gentleman — she’s wearing a “naked” flesh-coloured bodysuit, and not a subtle one at that.)  As for the rest, well, weirdness abounds: Rey plays his mysterious character with quiet panache, while Deneuve remains enigmatic throughout. It’s a trip throughout art, dreams, semi-pretentious dialogue and people acting bizarrely. Frankly, it took me two attempts to get through La femme aux bottes rouges: I started the first attempt expecting something I could watch out of the corner of my eye and was mystified when the film resisted such a divided-attention approach: it worked much better when watched carefully, especially given what happens in between its cuts. It’s not necessarily recommended for everyone, but if you’re at the end of the Buñuel père’s filmography, consider this one a bonus.

  • Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

    Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2021) Bringing back a movie franchise after a decades-long hiatus is always a risky prospect, no matter how many commercial imperatives and fannish demands justify it. Bill and Ted being such a creation of their circa-1990 era, bringing them back nearly thirty years later -in an environment saturated with nostalgia—seemed wrong. But Bill & Ted Face the Music isn’t like most thirty-year-later remakes — perhaps the single key difference being that the core creative team behind the franchise is also back: crucially screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon (who became a celebrity screenwriter in the meantime), but also Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in the two lead roles. This probably explains why the film is so comfortable taking the story thirty years later, with our visibly aged protagonists having daughters and struggling with a life that has not lived up to their youthful expectations. When further time-travelling shenanigans suggest that the fate of the universe rests on a crucial music performance, it’s off to the races in recapturing the charm of the earlier films. It, surprisingly, generally works: There’s a certain wit to the script, some funny takes on time-travel elements, and the two leads recapture their performances with some gusto. Better yet, the film’s secret weapons are Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as Bill and Ted’s daughters, each of them clearly taking after their fathers. Lundy-Paine is particularly amusing channelling Reeves’ specific tics as Ted. The rest of Bill & Ted Face the Music has ups and downs: recruiting past musicians is a good idea, as are the visits to increasingly older and more desperate version of themselves, but some of the other material is more laborious — a subplot involving a terminator robot with serious self-esteem issues sputters as often as it works. Fortunately, it does build to a rather nice conclusion that wraps up Bill and Ted’s story while opening the door just widely enough for the next generation to take over. Not that they have to — sequels aren’t mandatory, after all.

  • The Fuller Brush Man (1948)

    The Fuller Brush Man (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) At some point in the future, I will be tempted to get all of the Red Skelton movies of the 1940s I can get (or maybe wait for a TCM marathon) and see if my impressions of a repetitive streak are correct. In how many titles does he play a good-natured semi-simpleton dragged into a crime comedy? I realize that’s not exactly a weird premise nor much of a stretch from his usual persona, but The Fuller Brush Man has, beyond the unusual nature of its titular job, some overly familiar elements. Of course, this is a film that came well into Skelton’s career, so playing to his strengths was the natural course of action. Now, I do like Skelton’s shtick most of the time and this film does it quite well — although I like him just a bit better when he’s not handicapped by an overly naïve protagonist: in Ship Ahoy, or the Whistling series among others. The Fuller Brush Man ends up being a decent but unspectacular effort for him — pleasant enough to watch, but not necessarily a highlight. He does what he does well, and that’s not bad.

  • Bachelor Party (1984)

    Bachelor Party (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) Considering Tom Hanks’ persona as America’s everyman, universally loved and respected and so on, it’s occasionally good to go back to the first phase of his film career and take a look at the kind of stuff he was starring in as a younger man. Oh, there’s plenty of broad sentimental material here — Splash, Big, The Man with One Red Shoe, Turner & Hooch, etc. —but then there’s some more interesting material in there and I’m not sure there’s anything more surprising than seeing Hanks leading a raunchy sex comedy in Bachelor Party. Not that raunchy of a sex comedy, mind you: Despite the promise of a wild sex-and-drugs-fuelled bachelor party and the ominous presence of a donkey (don’t worry), the film flirts with naughtiness more than commits to it, all the while building up a committed relationship between our baby-faced Hanks protagonist and his fiancée (Tawny Kittaen, in fine form) on the eve of their wedding. There are clichés and dumb jokes that wouldn’t pass muster today (including as hysterical a case of transphobia that could be put on film in a 1980s comedy, which is a lot) and they do harm to the film. But the rest of it is strong enough, in a somewhat conventional way that tips its hat to the classic 1980s comedy slobs-versus-snobs archetype. Still, the most interesting aspect of Bachelor Party to a twenty-first century audience may be the spectacle of Tom Hanks partying it up wildly in between strippers, donkeys, drunken Asian gentlemen and a trashed hotel suite. I’m not sure we’ll ever see something like that again in his filmography…

  • Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962)

    Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) As much as I wanted to like Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, there’s so much wasted potential in the milquetoast result that it starts to grate. Of course, that may be an overreaction — the film was obviously built by director Henry Koster to be an innocuous broad-public comedy, and isn’t meant to sustain more elaborate expectations. Still, as a family goes to a beach house for an extended vacation, the film skirts the edge of something more interesting but never gets there. James Stewart remains the film’s best asset as a harried father driven nuts by the entire family vacation (the framing device has him narrate a very funny exasperated letter, his drawl making everything even better — a shame that the finale of the film never quite goes back to it.), and having Maureen O’Hara play the mother is not a bad choice at all. Occasional set-pieces involving a persnickety steam heater, or a steam-filled bathroom, hint at a better film. (And the two references to a father purchasing a Playboy magazine for his son are… surprising.)  But for most of its duration, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation ends up being a curiously tame affair, content to let Stewart run exasperated at everything going wrong during his vacations. It works fine in the way many subsequent family vacations films do — a bit of humiliation comedy, a dash of comic contretemps, and a heaping of traditional values at the trip brings the family back together as one unit. Familiar stuff, perhaps tamer than expected by modern audiences, considering how the envelope has been pushed since then. I can’t, in good conscience, call this a bad movie, but it’s certainly disappointing — although one notes that it led to the somewhat better Take Her, She’s Mine the following year with the same director/star combo.

  • Dead Silence (1997)

    Dead Silence (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) As far as low-budget made-for-TV thrillers go, there’s something halfway interesting in Dead Silence. After all, this is about psychopathic criminals taking a busload of deaf children hostage in a farm, as the police surround the area and negotiations begin. The disability angle adds interest to what would otherwise be a rather run-of-the-mill thriller. Casting adds some more as well, with veteran James Garner playing the lead hostage negotiator and Marlee Matlin as a schoolteacher. The low-budget imperatives of the film create a nicely restrained setting around the farm. The last element of note is a wild third-act swerve that creates more questions than it answers, but makes for a sudden late burst of energy in a film that needed it. The result is still not all that good, but it is not quite as bland as it could have been — the proof being that Dead Silence is still playing on TV twenty-five years later, even if on a Canadian channel focused on accessibility issues.

  • Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)

    Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) I’m not a big fan of Abbott and Costello in the first place, so I find myself curiously unmoved by even what others call their best films. (Star vehicles are wasted if the stars leave you indifferent.)  Jack and the Beanstalk has a good reputation as one of their more ambitious late-career movies, away from the “Abbott and Costello meet…” boilerplate and it’s easy to see the higher polish compared to many earlier efforts. There’s a clear ambition to go beyond the gags of their first films and deliver an experience supplemented by a sustained story, special effects and even musical numbers. It’s shot in colour, which was still a financial risk in the early 1950s (although one notes that the film was produced outside studio financing). There’s even a cinematographic device used to enhance the framing device, as opening and closing segments of the film are presented in sepia monochrome. But little of this amounts to a lasting impact — Jack and the Beanstalk runs through the motions of the fairytale while adding very little of interest. Costello takes the leading role, not leaving much for Abbott to do (which may be part of the issue, as I usually prefer Abbott). The simplistic singing and dancing reinforce the kid-friendly intention behind the film, which may be fine for some but left me wanting more in terms of imagination or comedy. Ah well — as with most comedy vehicles, this is for the fans.

  • Three the Hard Way (1974)

    Three the Hard Way (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) When people praise the fun of blaxploitation, they often talk about Shaft, but I think they really mean films like Three the Hard Way. I suppose there’s some irony in that Shaft, from Gordon Parks père, is a studied, rather serious cool, while Three the Hard Way, from Gordon Parks fils, truly plays into the exploitation elements. Macho male leads, sexy actresses (go ahead and try to pick between Sheila Frazier and Marie O’Henry), Kung fu fighting (making explicit the connection between two strains of exploitation films), more action sequences than was the norm in the mid-1970s, some delicious urban style and an elaborately ludicrous premise. We’re way beyond the usual inner-city crime thrills here: This is a film about defeating a white supremacist plot to kill non-white Americans through a genetically engineered virus. Fortunately, Three the Hard Way goes about it in such an over-the-top way that it’s much easier to cheer for the systematic slaughter of dozens of white racists than to be too upset about the idea. Led by Jim Brown and supported by Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly, the cast is not just about preventing genocide, but looking terrific while doing it. Martial arts moves are supplemented by an arsenal so large that it takes a plane to carry it all. The action scenes, explosions and fights are numerous, although Parks’ low-budget, early-days-of-the-action-genre direction has more old-school charm than real immersion: it’s all too easy to spot where cuts are meant to masquerade bad staging… and even easier to spot where the staging doesn’t work even with careful cutting. (There’s a jeep explosion filmed from two angles that’s supposed to be two separate explosions, for instance…)  But this is not a film made for technical prowess: it’s a slam-bang exploitation film done with generous means for the subgenre and an accordingly larger scope. The three leads are quite likable, leading to considerable sympathy for them as they mow down scores of unrepentant white supremacists. But it’s really the period feel of mid-1970s black Los Angeles that makes the film work: the style, fashion, and attitudes are something that has been parodied often (Undercover Brother owes a deep debt to Three the Hard Way) and integrated into an entire aesthetics, but it’s great good fun to get back to the source of it all. The copious amount of sex and violence means that it’s not a film for all audiences, but blaxploitation fans will recognize the pure undiluted thing here.

  • Blade Violent—I violenti [Women’s Prison Massacre] (1983)

    Blade Violent—I violenti [Women’s Prison Massacre] (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) Even by the exploitative standards set by “women in prison” movies of the 1970s–1980s, Women’s Prison Massacre seeks the bottom of the barrel and stays there. Naked women, brutish men, grimy setting, lesbian sex and generous gore — those are the ingredients and notorious exploitation director Bruno Mattei (who worked both in porn and horror, giving you an idea of the pedigree brought here) doesn’t hold back. The good news is that the breathtaking Laura Gemser stars as a character named Emanuelle (alluding to her work in the Black Emanuelle series, even though most films in that series were nowhere near as violent as this one); the bad news is that her character gets subjected to terrible things, undercutting almost all of the enjoyable aspects of her presence. Pushing the women-in-prison genre in gory horror is not an endearing move: whatever enjoyment you can get from the nudity is nullified — and then some — by the brutish violence and horrific blood-letting. It doesn’t make Women’s Prison Massacre worth remembering, except as a warning not to watch again.