Movie Review

  • For Colored Girls (2010)

    For Colored Girls (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Adapting a theatrical play that relies on the strengths of that medium to the big screen in a risky exercise, and writer-director Tyler Perry doesn’t make things easy for himself in choosing to impose his vision on a fiercely feminist work. You can certainly feel the clunkiness at play when the film shifts gears from a rather straightforward (if harsh) melodrama to flights of eloquent soliloquies as the characters give voice to their innermost thoughts. As an ensemble movie with many ongoing subplots, For Colored Girls gets both the benefits of the form and its drawbacks — it can boast of a stellar cast in Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington and Whoopi Goldberg, plus a pre-stardom Tessa Thompson… I mean, wow. On the other hand, with no less than ten lead characters, the development of the subplots can be abrupt and sketchy. Coupled with Perry’s intentional lack of directorial flair and sometimes on-the-nose writing, it does make the film creak in places, and the accumulated melodrama (which gets absurdly dark in places) flirts dangerously with unintentional amusement. The biggest irony is that the film truly becomes magical in its most theatrical moments, as the women give voice to the stage soliloquies and unload the meaning of the stage play’s original title for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. (You can read some of the soliloquies, but they’re far from being as effective as when heard from actresses who get the cadence of the words.)  If nothing else, the film will make you wonder if you can find and listen to the original. It would be easy to focus on the film’s structural and directorial shortcomings — there’s something in Perry’s traditionalism that feels out of place (it’s hard not to notice that the film’s sole gay character is a self-loathing liar who gives AIDS to his wife — yikes) even as the film is a powerful progressive work by itself. Some of the weirdness even comes from the original play — it makes sense for all of the male characters (at one minor exception with little screen time) to be evil and destructive, considering the intent of the work to focus on women’s lives at their lowest point. Still, I rather like the result: It’s a wonderful showcase for the actresses involved, and when the film takes flight, it does carry the power of the original work. Even a decade and many more black-women-focused films later in a far more diverse cinematic landscape, For Colored Girls still packs some punch.

  • Sl8n8 [Slaughter Night] (2006)

    Sl8n8 [Slaughter Night] (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) As far as slashers go, Sl8n8 is slightly better than most. Blending an unusual environment (an abandoned mine with plenty of macabre legends) with a plucky heroine and some fast-paced direction, it remains firmly within the bounds of the familiar formula but executes things semi-competently. Coming from the Netherlands (the title makes more sense once you know that it’s a stylization of Slachtnacht), it offers a slightly different take on the usual. A rather slow start seems paralyzed by indecision whether it’s going to go for psycho slasher or supernatural thriller. In the end, it doesn’t matter very much, as writer-directors Frank van Geloven and Edwin Visser follow the codes of slashers all the way to the heroine remembering something said earlier in the film and using it to slay the villain. Slightly overlong at even just 90 minutes, Sl8n8 nonetheless avoids most of the pitfalls of lesser slashers, but without quite distinguishing itself from the pack. It’s not my kind of film, though.

  • Campanadas a medianoche [Chimes at Midnight] (1965)

    Campanadas a medianoche [Chimes at Midnight] (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) The idea of Orson Welles taking on Shakespeare’s Falstaff as writer-director-star is almost irresistible. Seeing him show up as a grotesquely rotund lead (underscored with the roundest armour suit even seen) is a good start, and his intention to combine plays, deliver an ambitious battle sequence and blend a bit of comedy with the drama is laudable. The problem is: I have to be in a very specific frame of mind to appreciate Shakespearian dialogue (I have written about this before — I find Shakespeare more approachable in French translation), and today was not one of those days. I made it to the end, but reluctantly. I think I can see enough reasons to come back to this later on, but for now I’m going to rate the film as not quite interesting enough.

  • Tennessee Johnson (1942)

    Tennessee Johnson (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) I firmly believe that Hollywood movies can be very educational about history, but not by watching them — that would be silly. True education is attained only by fact-checking the Hollywood film against other sources. In the grand tradition of biopics, Tennessee Johnson sets out to produce a proudly nationalistic biography of Andrew Johnson, the first American president to be impeached (but not convicted). For political junkies with a historical bent, it’s weird to see Van Heflin take on the role of Johnson in the middle of a script that can’t stop praising him. After all, Johnson is not particularly well-regarded these days — the expression “one of the worst presidents” is often associated with him for good reason: Acceding to the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, he mishandled the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. While he managed to keep the nation together after its trauma, his blunt racism led to continued white supremacy in the southern states. His reputation has sailed the ebbs and flows of American racism: After some damning assessments in the early twentieth century, he was partially rehabilitated in the 1930s–1950s as American racism rose, only to be re-condemned following the Civil Rights era. Tennessee Johnson is clearly from the crest of his better-regarded period — he’s heroically portrayed as coming from very humble origins, learning to read late in life, gathering popular support, making a mistake during his inauguration (in real life: showing up drunk after self-medicating typhoid fever with alcohol –a then-common practice—and making a spectacle of himself), avoiding assassination and then stepping up as president after Lincoln’s death. Then the film focuses on his impeachment, focusing its anger toward a clearly defined antagonist trumping up charges against him and having Johnson make an impassioned speech in its own defence (which never happened). Once not convicted, the film blips forward to show him returning to the US Senate after the end of his presidential term. If the film ends there, it’s because there isn’t much more to say: he died after a few months as a senator. But what’s missing from this? Then entire racial question, for once — the very reason why he’s widely reviled as the president who won the war but failed to enact any meaningful change in the southern states, thus prolonging southern segregation for nearly a century. This is Hollywood at its most hypocritical in whitewashing biographical figures, ignoring the worst, making excuses for the dubious and hyping the rest. I had a severe case of cognitive dissonance watching the film: Johnson is best seen, even today, as a complex man who had good traits but made terrible decisions and that would make a fascinating miniseries, as a film is probably too short to do justice to its topic and leads by design to unsatisfying results. Taken at face value, Tennessee Johnson is not that bad a movie: in the heroic-biopic mould, it clearly presents its subject, cleanly gives reasons why he’s admirable, and goes through the historical (or, ahem, pseudo-historical) events with some steady rhythm. Heflin does well in a role that asks him to go from peasant to president, and the film becomes even better once Lionel Barrymore makes an entrance as Johnson’s opponent. But I don’t quite believe in assessing films at face value, especially when they deal with specific, well-documented history. Watch Tennessee Johnson if you want, but make sure to keep Wikipedia nearby as you do.

  • Nightmare Alley (1947)

    Nightmare Alley (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Among film noir fans, Nightmare Alley is perhaps best known for being a rare A-list production with first-rate stars and a decent budget — most crime thrillers we now associate with the noir tradition were B-grade productions, not meant for prestige nor posterity. But this film had one of the most famous actors of the time, Tyrone Power, and the production crew required to do justice to its ambitious setting, from the underworld of carnival shows to Chicago high society… and back. If the essence of noir was poking at traditional American values and pressuring its characters until they did unspeakable things, then Nightmare Alley couldn’t be more representative — our hero chooses to be a conman and associate with others who share his lack of morals. This all backfires a few times, and the film clearly patterns itself along the lines of a classical rags-to-riches-to-rags tragedy, the hero doomed by his own personal failings. Power is better than average here, with such notables as Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray and Helen Walker providing good supporting performances. It’s not pleasant stuff (although the ending isn’t quite as dark as it could have been) but the heightened nature of the carnival environment does lend a welcome off-kilter quality to the result. The other role of the carnival is to create parallels between it and larger social issues — viewers will easily make the parallels between the carnival’s naked artifice and how it’s more honest than Chicago high society about its deceptions. It’s not surprising to learn that the film was not a hit upon release, but that its critical reputation has considerably improved since then. It remains somewhat harsh and merciless, which is a flavour of cinema that’s better digested today — not to mention that only confirmed classic Hollywood fans know much about Power these days. In any case, the film remains worthy of a look, and is set in the coming months to get a big-budget remake as an enduring homage.

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, March 2022) The streaming debut of the 2021 Nightmare Alley remake was not only an occasion to watch a new Guillermo del Toro film, but also have another look at the classic original film, often hailed as one of the best film noir of the classic era.  Much has been written about the film’s unusually respectable pedigree: Lead actor Tyrone Power was one of the top box-office draws of that era, and he wanted something much more interesting than the matinee idols he had been playing until then.  His passion project was an adaptation of a gritty novel detailing the seedy underbelly of con-men and carnival swindlers – and how that mind-set could be turned against far more respectable targets than the rubes.  The result is, indeed, a film that stands the test of time: It’s remarkably glum about American society, fully embracing its film noir nature to an almost sweeping degree.  It’s not without its faults – I found the last few minutes too long for their own good, even if I’m curiously favourable to the not-entirely-bleak ending tacked on by the studio.  Still, I found Nightmare Alley even better this second time around – knowing that it doesn’t neatly slot into the noir framework and better anticipating the film’s steady descent.

     

  • Love Me Tonight (1932)

    Love Me Tonight (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) If you’re looking for the state-of-the-art of what musicals were in the early 1930s, there’s Love Me Tonight to offer a counterpoint to the Broadway revue musicals that were also in vogue (and, alas, about to send the genre into eclipse due to overexposure). The always-compelling Maurice Chevalier stars in a story of a commoner falling in love with royalty, with the usual deceptions and complications that this kind of romantic fantasy usually entails. Jeanette MacDonald ably goes up against Chevalier as the princess, with Myrna Loy in a supporting role. This film was reportedly a technical marvel at the time, with one musical number cutting through several characters and locations. More significant is the film’s place in history as the first “integrated musical” where the songs are tightly integrated in the plot. (Something obvious to us now, but not quite as practised at the time.)  Director Rouben Mamoulian would go on to direct many more musicals, and Chevalier would star in several funnier films, albeit not necessarily better ones. Still, Love Me Tonight has lost some of its lustre: It doesn’t have the immediate appeal of the comedies that Chevalier would make with Lubitsch et al., and the wow-factor of the Broadway revues isn’t there either — as a result, many of the innovations pioneered by the film now go unnoticed. (Although that opening sequence is still really good.) But Chevalier is a charmer no matter the film, and that alone still justifies seeing Love Me Tonight.

  • The Professionals (1966)

    The Professionals (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2021) I’ve seen too many undistinguished westerns lately to expect much from yet another one, but The Professionals gradually won me over. The casting certainly gets things rolling in the right direction: with Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster sharing the lead as mercenaries going into Revolutionary War Mexico, you’re in good hands — but then throw in Claudia Cardinale and Jack Palance and it just gets better. The film also cranks up the action by featuring an explosive-heavy plot with a demolition expect (Lancaster, looking suitably ragged-down) as a rich American asks them to go south to rescue his wife (Carnivale, lovely) from a Mexican warlord (Palance). Many explosions pepper what happens next, plus a slightly-twisty plot that could have been taken from a film noir. This already sets the film apart from so many other westerns, but the execution more than supports the premise. There are really interesting parallels to be made between The Professionals and the spaghetti westerns that were emerging as renewal engines for the western genre — A Fistful of Dollars had come out in 1964, but the clearest parallels in terms of explosive Mexican Revolution action are with the later A Fistful of Dynamite (1971). Still, compared to many American westerns of the 1960s, The Professionals has more energy, more distinctiveness and more fun to it. No wonder I liked it a lot more than the usual western of the time.

  • Saturday’s Heroes (1937)

    Saturday’s Heroes (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) At a length of barely 60 minutes, I’m not sure that Saturday’s Heroes should be called a movie — I’m sure it must have been commercially viable back then (perhaps as part of a double-bill?) but by today’s standards it straddles the line between feature and featurette. There are two reasons to watch it, though: The first being Van Heflin in one of his earliest starring roles as a star college football player. Heflin is in good form here, showing some of the quiet assurance bordering on arrogance that would mark some of his best turns later during his career. But it’s the second reason to see the film that’s perhaps more interesting. Rather than offer a sanitized, unquestioning, wholesome picture of American college football as the pride of the nation, Saturday’s Heroes gets interested in the exploitation of amateur student-athletes (barely able to survive without scalping tickets) even as the university makes plenty of money from their efforts. That’s a contemporary viewpoint far more modern than the football pictures at the time, and there’s some quiet surprise in encountering a 1937 film that is already poking at that thorny issue. Otherwise, well, it is a 60-minute film: not quite enough to do justice to its various subplots and characters. Still, this is a great pick for Heflin fans looking at the actor’s earliest featured roles.

  • Three on a Couch (1966)

    Three on a Couch (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) One of the lesser-known Jerry Lewis vehicles of the 1960s, Three on a Couch sees the shameless comedian play five roles — or rather an artist who starts impersonating fictional people in a convoluted attempt to get his girlfriend to come spend a year in Paris. The complications arise from the fact that the girlfriend (played by Janet Leigh) is a psychiatrist with three female clients and she can’t leave them until they’re cured of their hang-ups about men — so naturally his best course of action is to impersonate their ideal mates, get them cured and then they can go to Paris. As I said: convoluted. Inevitably, the identities converge and the whole scheme explodes, but in the meantime, we get Lewis play four other roles spanning a variety of archetypes, plus some cross-dressing thrown in for good measure. The 1960s sex comedy aspects have not aged particularly well, but it’s hard to get worked up about it when it’s such a transparent way to get Lewis up and impersonating. Lewis isn’t just an actor here — he also directs and must shoulder some of the blame for the lacklustre result. It’s not that Three on a Couch isn’t funny; it’s that it’s not funny enough: given the premise, the talent and the era of much better sex comedies, Three on a Couch feels like a limp effort, so determined to get its plot points in order to the big role-switching finale that it doesn’t seem to have thought about the moment-to-moment fun of the film. It’s watchable enough if your tolerance for Lewis’ mugging and showboating is up to it. But I can think of half a dozen comedies of the time (some of them also starring Lewis) that are significantly more entertaining.

  • We’re No Angels (1989)

    We’re No Angels (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) On paper, We’re No Angels sounds unusual enough to be interesting. A remake of a 1955 film I’m unfamiliar with, it stars Robert de Niro and Sean Penn as two convicts who, during the 1930s, travel north to Canada but end up in an upstate New York monastery (shot in British Columbia) through a set of unusual circumstances, where they are mistaken for priests and develop a conscience. The big names are on the creative side as well: script from David Mamet, directed by Neil Jordan, with the female lead played by Demi Moore and an unbelievably young John C. Reilly in a minor role. Alas, the result quickly becomes underwhelming. Shot in dull shades of brown to assert that they’re not romanticizing the period, We’re No Angels feels duller, dumber and far less interesting than it should be. It’s not quite a religious film and yet not a religious film either. For a putative comedy, it feels slow, laborious and (fatally) unfunny. It meanders like its characters, vaguely bidding its time until only so many minutes are left before the epiphany that announces the ending. We’re No Angels is too slickly produced to be terrible, but it’s still not all that good.

  • The Divided Brain (2019)

    The Divided Brain (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so when The Divided Brain takes its intriguing findings about the left/right hemisphere divide and starts applying them to society at large, the leap from evidence to conclusion is just too high to follow comfortably. Much of the film is adapted from the works of psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist (specifically his book The Master and His Emissary). McGilchrist is notably not a neuroscientist but his review of available evidence should be familiar enough: The left hemisphere of the brain is focused on details, while the right hemisphere is focused on the whole. The film (unlike, apparently, the book) doesn’t spend a lot of time on those neurobiological fundamentals — it’s far more interested in the second and far less convincing part of McGilchrist’s thesis: That western society, in general, has grown far too detail-centred at the expense of looking at the whole picture, and that state of affairs is squarely to be blamed on… wait for it… the divided brain. Now, I’m open to new ideas — I have a regrettable tendency to latch on to new cool concepts and apply them indiscriminately to all sorts of different areas as long as they give me the impression of knowing something that others don’t yet. (Fortunately, I have resisted most conspiracy theories so far.)  But there’s a leap in The Divided Brain that I find suspicious — and it’s reinforced by some curious choices that make the thesis seem all the more superficial. By the time the interviewees blame all of western society’s ills on the divided brain (while predictably praising other modes of more primitive thought), they all sound like cranks moaning and complaining about what they don’t like about life, and latching on this single idea as a universal explanation. Adding John Cleese as an interviewee and colour commentator makes the film funnier but not necessarily more credible when it’s already dubious. I may end up being more favourable to the thesis if ever I read the book, but I’m not feeling like it: Having looked at my general impression of the film rather than focusing on its details, I’ve come to an intuitive whole-picture skepticism about The Divided Brain.

  • Thrill of a Romance (1945)

    Thrill of a Romance (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) If my notes are correct, Thrill of a Romance is the first film in which MGM had a better idea of what to do with swimming sensation Esther Williams — after being introduced in Bathing Beauty, she here had the benefit of being a proven quantity: an Olympian-level athlete who looked good enough to headline in a new and very specific genre: the aqua-musical. Accordingly, she’s here paired up with Van Johnson (in the first of four films together) and you can see the specific elements of her subgenre being put together. Other than the swimming sequences, the film is a comedy with a few songs added to please musical fans. Opera signer Lauritz Melchior shows up (he’d pop up again in This Time for Keeps), there’s a handsome military officer to act as love interest, and the film goes to the luxurious hotel Monte Belva for much of its shenanigans. Williams herself is captivating under water, acceptable enough above it — she’s not bad (an achievement by itself considering that she wasn’t trained as an actress) but several other stars at the time could have given more personality to the role. Still, it’s an agreeable enough musical — made as World War II was wrapping up, so still very much intent on raising morale on the home front. It’s pleasant and amiable, with Johnson and Williams proving an effective pairing. On the other hand — Thrill of a Romance is not particularly memorable, especially if you’re in the middle of a Williams marathon where they all start feeling like the same movie.

  • The Sea Wolves (1980)

    The Sea Wolves (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) There’s an unmistakable aura of nostalgia surrounding The Sea Wolves, both in concept and execution. Not only taking 1980 Great Britain audiences to the glory days of World War II, it also features a variety of actors who peaked years before. Oh, sure, Roger Moore was at the mid-Bond tenure prime of his career at the time — but he was well into his fifties, and the other players in the film are none other than Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Patrick Macnee — all great actors, but all running on past glories. The plot has to do with older and semi-retired military personnel taking on Nazi radio transmissions off the coast of India, under the guise of being lost fishermen. The presence of Moore, not really playing much of a variation on his debonair persona, does lend some additional sense of adventure to the film, but it’s the older actors who are asked to carry much of the humour and adventure. There’s even a little bit of post-colonial wistfulness in taking in the Indian setting. While the story is adapted from a relatively obscure real-life incident, everyone will acknowledge the rather large liberties taken with the fact. The Sea Wolves does amount to a decent WW2 adventure in a somewhat classical mould — virtuous allies, perfidious Nazis, stiff upper-lip and a rather happy ending without anguish. It fits the bill for pleasant, not-too-demanding viewing, echoing other, somewhat better works from the actors involved.

  • Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! (1966)

    Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead! (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) James Bond derivatives were hot properties during the 1960s — as other studios tried to match the debonair secret agent, they went for imitations, comedic takes, parodies and outright Bondsploitation. The complement of that was the kind of thriller (often tragic) about innocent men abroad getting caught up in intrigue and discovering substantial inner strength. Our Man in Marrakesh stars Tony Randall playing slightly against type as an ordinary tourist getting caught up in a spy operation in (where else?) Marrakesh. Executed with a slightly comic tone that avoids veering into parody, the film is clearly meant for mass-market fun rather than moral lessons, and so we get the usual overlapping plots, romantic interest, action sequences and other standard components of the genre. Rather good Moroccan scenery is defeated by the not-so-good image quality of the version I saw. Surprising character actors fill up the cast, going all the way from the blonde menace of Klaus Kinski to the joviality of Terry-Thomas. I suspect that the film isn’t as remarkable today given decades of variations on similar approaches, but it does offer a touch of 1960s exoticism, Randall in fine form and enough adventure plotting to keep you busy until the end credits.

  • Basket Case 2 (1990)

    Basket Case 2 (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) I approached the first Basket Case as a slasher horror film and was surprised to find that it was much weirder than that, with a final revelation taking the film into body horror. By the time I sat down to watch the sequel, I had figured out in-between Frankenhooker and Bad Biology that writer-director Frank Henenlotter was after outrageous fare. Basket Case 2 clearly shows that trajectory when measured against its prequel: it’s weirder, funnier, slicker, and gorier. It multiplies the deformed freaks (paying homage to the 1930s film along the way) in landing the protagonists of the first film into an environment where they are welcomed, and then have to defend it from the outside. It’s honestly not that great of a film, but it’s quirky and outrageous in the fun way that happens when horror fans let loose for their own enjoyment. Basket Case 2 feels a bit scattered at times, with makeup effects taking precedence over the story. I’m not sure I’ll rush to see it again, but it’s not that bad—especially if you’re up to what Henenlotter is going for.