Movie Review

  • Dementia 13 (1963)

    Dementia 13 (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) If you’re into that whole “first film by famous filmmakers” thing, then Dementia 13 should be on your must-see list: it’s the directorial debut of writer-director Francis Ford Coppola, and it already shows his cinematic flair. The story itself isn’t anything special — a psychological thriller avowedly made by producer Roger Corman to cash in on the success of Psycho: There’s murder, gothic intrigue, gaslighting and a psycho killer. Where Dementia 13 does rather well, however, is in the execution: Director Coppola is markedly more ambitious than writer Coppola, and far more than producer Corman: Accordingly, his 70-minute potboiler thriller is elevated by atmospheric direction that almost takes the film into classic-horror territory rather than exploitation chiller. There’s no real way around the fact that Dementia 13 remains a cheap horror film, executed on a threadbare budget by someone with more ambition than means. But it’s that ambition that keeps the film intriguing today — you can trace a line from this to the atmosphere of Coppola’s 1992 take on Dracula without hesitation.

  • I criminali della galassia [The Wild Wild Planet] (1966)

    I criminali della galassia [The Wild Wild Planet] (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) If you’re interested in smart, solid Science Fiction cinema, there’s not a lot to recommend in The Wild Wild Planet — it’s a futuristic equivalent to the C-grade sword-and-sandal peplum tripe that the Italian film industry was churning out in the 1960s. If you’re willing to place it in the history of the SF film genre as a whole, though, it’s a fascinating footnote. What happened was that, over a two-year period in the mid-1960s, director Antonio Margheriti (“Anthony Dawson”) worked with American SF writer Ivan Reiner to develop the “Gamma One” series of four (some say six) related movies that would be shot more or less at the same time, reusing not only actors and sets, but sharing a coherent future background and characters. The Wild Wild Planet is the second of the four. Being from mid-1960s Italy, the result is far more colourful than expected, with shoddy special effects, ramshackle plots and rampant sexism actually helping the entertainment factor. There’s some effort made in terms of worldbuilding, audacious art direction, mildly intriguing premises (with the fourth film of the series, The Snow Devils, even poking at intentional climate change) stereotypically square-jawed heroes and lovely damsels in distress. The Wild Wild Planet is representative of the entire quartet — rough, offensive, ramshackle and yet bizarrely entertaining. I can’t quite recommend it without a long list of reservations, but if you’re looking for interesting Science Fiction films of the 1960s, the entire Gamma One series is a bit of a bright spot.

  • Evidence (2013)

    Evidence (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) It would be very, very tempting to call Evidence a bit of psycho-killer found-footage trash. Coming at the end of the big found-footage boom of the late 2000s/early 2010s, it exasperated reviewers and viewers alike with its blend of various footage sources, a twisty script enamoured of its killers, and aggressively unpleasant shakycam low-budget style. On paper, it sounds like the kind of film I specifically hate to watch. But, in a shocking but inane twist worthy of the film itself, you can’t always predict how things will play out, and I found myself kind of amused by the central gimmick of the film, in which a variety of unprofessional video sources are used to piece together a mystery. Now, let’s be careful — I don’t particularly like Evidence, but I was pleasantly surprised at how it introduced some structural fillips into the usually stale style of found-footage horror movies. There’s some dumb stuff here, but also some clever touches that could have been harnessed into something more interesting. Director Olatunde Osunsanmi and writer John Swetnam had the kernel of something better in their hands, and while it’s disappointing that they let it get away from them, Evidence isn’t quite ready to be dismissed as quickly as many other similar films.

  • Gemini (2017)

    Gemini (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) Much about Gemini should work better than it does. Suggest a neo-noir thriller at the age of the social media panopticon and my ears will perk up; play up themes of the power dynamics between a star, a fan and an assistant and I will be intrigued; state that Zoe Kravitz will play a burnt-out young star and you will definitely get my attention. But upon viewing, Gemini is far limper than expected. Writer-director Aaron Katz doesn’t really seem interested in delivering a pure genre piece — his stylized direction is elliptical and scattered, while his script doesn’t commit to the ethos of genre mysteries or noir itself. By the time a central tenet of the film’s premise is nullified in the conclusion, many viewers will be tempted to cry foul — and not just from the basic implausibility of the twist. There is no narrative rhythm here — the scenes fall flat, the dialogue is banal, there’s little buildup of suspense, and as the conclusion suggests, Gemini isn’t even really interested in conventional storytelling. If you find yourself watching it, I suggest not getting overly involved —the film itself will keep you at a distance. It would be tempting to chalk this disappointment up to different expectations, but Gemini misses so many opportunities that it crosses over from a disappointment to being an honestly underwhelming film.

  • The Players Club (1998)

    The Players Club (1998)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) Sure, you say, we’ve got plenty of movie male fantasies of belonging to organized crime, living large, sleeping around, managing the best local strip club and always staying one step ahead of the law — but what about the female viewpoint on that fantasy? And by that, I don’t mean the easy crutch of gender-swapping protagonist so that there are gangster girls with guns — I mean what if you had a female look at that bling-bling fantasy? Now, before going any further, let’s acknowledge the obvious limits of The Players Club in representing the female viewpoint: this is a film written and directed by Ice Cube. It’s not going to be particularly authentic nor all that credible. But still — for late-1990s black cinema, The Players Club still earns some distinction, and it’s amusingly stuck at a crossroad between being socially conscious, yet giving viewers the glitz they’re expecting. Much of the story revolves around a young woman who gets seduced into a seedier, more lucrative life — except that she’s asked to strip rather than deal drugs. Much of the film’s structure will be instantly familiar — the appeal of fast money, the grander-than-life figures at the periphery of the protagonist and the progressive descent of the characters into darker material until they reach a point where they either retreat or die. This protagonist ultimately makes the smart choice (well, helped along by the strip club burning to the ground) but otherwise The Players Club is determined to present a distaff perspective on familiar material. That’s what still makes it distinctive twenty-five years later — but let’s say that a true female perspective on the same story elements would be a very different film. But Ice Cube doesn’t do all that badly — some material still packs a punch, and for a film apparently modelled heavily on Showgirls, The Players Club hits most of its intended marks. The cast isn’t to be missed either — Sure, LisaRaye and Monica Calhoun look terrific, but then there’s Bernie Mac, Ice Cube and smaller blink-and-you’ll-miss-them roles for Jamie Foxx, Terrence Howard, Faizon Love and Michael Clarke Duncan. It has aged rather well, all things considered, even in an era not quite so enamoured of the gangster lifestyle or its equivalents.

  • Pick a Star (1937)

    Pick a Star (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) I have a big soft spot for the Hollywood-insider movies of the 1930s, selling a fantasy version of “Hollywood behind the scenes” that usually featured a young woman arriving in Los Angeles with big dreams, and various people helping her out to stardom. Pick a Star is made slightly more notable by two sequences—comic sketches, essentially—with none other than Laurel and Hardy, either breaking bottles over each other’s heads or playing abdominal harmonica. There’s the requisite (and reliably enjoyable) glimpse “behind the camera,” a few cameos of celebrities long forgotten, a mostly innocuous heroine (Rosina Lawrence, who exited Hollywood two years later and, I’m amazed to discover, was born in Ottawa!), an implausibly-motivated heroic male (Jack Haley) and an amiable atmosphere despite the constant threat of not making it in Hollywood and having to return home for a good solid life away from the cameras. Pick a Star definitely belongs to a specific Hollywood subgenre, but it rises to the standards of the form and it’s hard to ask for much more than that.

  • Apur Sansar [The World of Apu] (1959)

    Apur Sansar [The World of Apu] (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Considering Satyajit Ray’s reputation as a foremost figure of Indian cinema and the very high esteem enjoyed by his Apu Trilogy as a whole, being less-than-impressed by The World of Apu is tantamount to heresy. So, I’ll be a heretic—but a self-professed one: I have a hard time getting into classic Indian cinema. The only Ray film I half-enjoyed was The Big City, and I still can’t explain why it interested me. This being said, The World of Apu is more interesting than most of his films — featuring a young man going through incredible hardship, it has effective dramatic hooks and a likable protagonist. You can easily watch it without having had much of an interest in the previous two instalments of The Apu Trilogy — The World of Apu works well as a standalone film, and builds to an effective climax. I’m sure that this half-hearted recommendation will be a disappointment to many, but at this point of my exploration of Ray’s filmography, that’s a lot better than I was expecting.

  • Odd Man Rush (2020)

    Odd Man Rush (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) As a Canadian, I’m more or less morally obligated to watch hockey movies. Odd Man Rush is a bit of a weird one in that it takes place almost entirely outside Canada, but was co-produced in Canada and deals with topics that are of passing familiarity with many Canadians — the grind of the minor-league players who enjoy the sport, who are relatively good at it, and yet will never make it to the big leagues. They only have so many years before reality catches up to them, and Odd Man Rush, in describing how an American finds himself in Europe playing in lower-tier leagues, tackles that moment of realization that, beyond the thrill of playing on the ice, everything eventually ends. Based on a book telling minor-league player Bill Keenan’s autobiography about playing hockey in Europe (adapted to the screen by the author himself), the film lets go of sports tropes to focus on the sometimes-dramatic, sometimes-comic, sometimes-romantic aspect of living life far away from the spotlights. The film has the qualities and vices of its virtues — it’s a heartfelt kind of movie, but one that doesn’t deal in big drama either. It ends on a whimper, and its low-budget production from a first-time screenwriter means that you won’t find much in terms of soaring dialogue or transcendent directing: it’s very much a by-the-numbers affair, a down-tempo escapade from more triumphant fare. That’s not necessarily bad, but viewers may be forewarned about the gear shift if they’re expecting Odd Man Rush to be more in-line with hockey movie expectations.

  • Traffik (2018)

    Traffik (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) It would be an exaggeration to put Traffik in the “when bad movies happen to good actors” category — I like Paula Patton a lot, but I have seen some less-than-stellar performances from her. Nor would she be the only one to slum in this bad movie: Considering that Traffik sports an intriguing cast that includes such notable character actors as Omar Epps, Roselyn Sánchez, Luke Goss, Missi Pyle and William Fichtner, there are plenty of resumés skipping over their involvement in Traffik these days. A more appropriate category for the film would be “exploitative garbage that attaches itself to a Serious Issue in an unconvincing bid for respectability,” because while it tries to be about human trafficking, it’s nothing more than a cheap sensationalist thriller/horror film. Ignore the meaningless “based on a true story” and the equally meaningless inflated statistics that close the film — Traffik is really about that old Hollywood chestnut: the woman in danger from cartoonishly evil antagonists. The set dressing may be contemporary (Patton plays a journalist who gets embroiled in a sexual trafficking ring led by—what else?—racist bikers) but the plot beats are as old as exploitation itself. The point here is cheap horror-movie scares, not particularly well executed by writer-director Deon Taylor. This is exceptionally familiar stuff if you’re used to the bottom tier of the horror genre: the only thing of note is the better-than-average cast. Which, yes, does bring us back to “when bad movies happen to good actors” as a shorthand for Traffik — maybe not Oscar-calibre actors, but ones that definitely deserve better. The added lesson here is that if you’re going to wrap your film in hot-button issues, you better bring something more to the table than exploiting those issues for thrills.

  • Just Cause (1995)

    Just Cause (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) Often, you don’t realize what you would miss until it’s gone. In retrospect, the 1990s were a golden age for glossy crime thrillers: They were a regular part of the Hollywood release schedule, offered decent roles to big stars, benefited from great production values and featured acceptable plotting (usually adapted from best-selling novels). This is no longer the case — the frequency of releases has dropped in favour of special effects spectacles, production values have dropped and the results have grown more forgettable. A good middle-of-the-road example of what was regularly available in the mid-1990s can be seen in Just Cause: An adaptation of a John Katzenbach novel, featuring a decent cast headlined by Sean Connery (who did a lot of those thrillers during that decade), Laurence Fishburne, Kate Capsha, Ruby Dee and Ed Harris (plus a child role for Scarlett Johansson). It takes place in Florida and doesn’t skimp on the location shooting or the atmosphere, goes for broke on second-half plot twists and director Arne Glimcher keeps it looking gorgeous at all times. Yes, you can criticize the film’s descent from atmospheric character study in the first half to an often-incredible accumulation of plot twists in the second half — but frankly, that’s one of the most endearing aspects of those 1990s twisty thrillers. And I miss it.

  • Cléo de 5 à 7 [Cléo from 5 to 7] (1962)

    Cléo de 5 à 7 [Cléo from 5 to 7] (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) Once you’ve seen thousands of movies, it’s perfectly natural (perhaps inevitable) to develop a fondness for formal experimentation. When you’ve seen uncountable examples of the same plot template, repetitive genre entries and overused formulas, it can be a breath of fresh air to see a film that gleefully tries to do something different with cinema. Nouvelle Vague writer-director Agnès Varda was never one for more-of-the-usual, and so Cléo de 5 à 7 is about what it says in the title, following a young woman from 5 to 6:30 (in apparently real time) as she awaits news of a medical exam. While clearly structured and planned, the film does give the impression of flitting from one episode to another like a butterfly, capturing 90 wandering minutes as the protagonist muses about mortality and the meaning of life. There’s other material too — the French war in Algeria weighs heavily over the film, and it’s impossible to see the film as anything other than a feminist text as it examines the place of women in early-1960s French society. Cléo de 5 à 7 is not made to be exciting, but it’s not dull either and while I’m in no hurry to watch it again, it remains an interesting demonstration of how to do cinema slightly differently.

  • Wolf (1994)

    Wolf (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2021) Jack Nicholson plays a mild-mannered book editor who becomes a werewolf in romantic horror Wolf and, well, that’s really all you need to know. Now, I’m not going to suggest that Wolf is your run-of-the-mill Hollywood film — helmed by Mike Nichols (in an atypical choice given his filmography) and co-written by Elaine May (making this a reunion between a legendary creative pair), it’s a blend of very light horror with romance, drama and some comedy as well. It doesn’t really all fit together, but the attempt is both more restrained (in horror) and more ambitious (in drama) than what used to be shown in the mid-1990s — although considering the evolution of genre-crossing since then, the premise may be less special nowadays. Michelle Pfeiffer does add a lot, as does James Spader as the antagonist, but this is really Nicholson’s occasion. It does get silly from time to time—watching near-sixty-something Jack hunt a deer with his new lycanthropic powers can’t be otherwise—but Nichols’ sure-footed direction helps ground the film where a less-experienced director may have flopped. For a long-time Science Fiction reader such as myself, there’s a big surprise in the editorial boardroom scenes — the shelves behind the characters are filled with early-1990s Tor hardcovers, many of which I have on my own shelves. The Tor logo is immediately recognizable on the book spines, and Tor founder-publisher Tom Doherty is credited at the end of the credit, most likely for lending use of his offices as a shooting location — although it’s arguably even weirder to see the inside of Los Angeles’ famous Bradbury building being used to portray a Manhattan-based publisher. Still, back to the basics: Wolf isn’t particularly memorable or striking, but it does have just enough weirdness to it to make it a decent watch even today. It’s not quite “the same boring werewolf movie” it could have been even if it doesn’t quite manage to become something special.

  • Her Man (1930)

    Her Man (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) There isn’t much to Her Man in terms of narrative — it’s about a Havana prostitute who gets a shot at escape when a kind sailor walks into her bar, but first she’ll have to dispose of her knife-wielding “protector” with a penchant for casual murder. Largely taking place in a rough-and-tough bar where fatal stabbings are common enough, Her Man is clearly a Pre-Code film — half the cast plays prostitutes, a third plays would-be clients and the rest are the usual denizens of low-rent bars. There’s a bit of a tonal mismatch between the film’s drama and its comic relief, but the real highlight of the film is Tay Garnett’s direction — from evocative opening credits etched in sand and washed away by waves, to evocative tracking shots to establish the atmosphere, to a very credible portrayal of people in desperate circumstances, in punches above its weight in terms of early-sound era cinematography. Helen Twelvetrees alone is remarkable for her portrayal of an aging prostitute who may or may not be able to get away from it all. While Her Man isn’t quite a classic, it’s a better-than-expected drama with some thriller-like moments and a harsher attitude than the following decades of Hays-neutered films.

  • So This Is Paris (1926)

    So This Is Paris (1926)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Isn’t it fun when movies upset our preconceptions? Prior to seeing So This is Paris, I would have been tempted to associate Ernest Lubitsch with wonderful dialogue. I would have been likely to dismiss the very idea of a silent musical. I could have argued that sophisticated ironic comedies were non-existent in the silent era. But then there’s So This is Paris, compelling at a whip-tight 80 minutes that takes on the idea of a married couple having affairs with another couple. It all gets complicated when one of the men is arrested and sentenced to jail and identities get mixed up. Comedic on a far more intimate scale than the Chaplin or Keaton movies of the era, it’s a film that clearly anticipates the witty sound comedies that Lubitsch would go on to direct — there’s more than a few well-placed gags, ironic commentary (all the way to a final title card that gets a big laugh), protagonists that certainly aren’t virtuous, a mature outlook on sex and marriage, all wrapped up in self-confident directing that doesn’t waste a moment. Most amazing of all is a lavish musical number featuring a contemporary depiction of the Charleston — we modern audiences are gifted with a rhythmic soundtrack that practically makes us hear the dancing performers, but let’s appreciate the sheer gall of a musical number in a silent film. For a 95-year-old film, So This is Paris is spry and surprising — and it’s nearly enough to make you curious about what else gets (unfairly) dismissed as “a silent film.”

  • Princesse Tam-Tam (1935)

    Princesse Tam-Tam (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Movie reviews can lead to anything, such as when the reviewer starts looking into background information about the film and falls deep into a rabbit hole of a fascinating subject. So it is that, after an hour of reading about Josephine Baker, I’m back to report that everyone should at least have a look at Baker’s Wikipedia article—I was aware of the name and some of the highlights about her life, but the complete story is amazing on so many levels that it defies description—poor black American girl becomes a singer, emigrates to France, makes a few movies, becomes a cultural superstar, has romantic liaisons with a jaw-dropping list of famous men and women, spies on the Nazis for the French Resistance, raises a large family, gets involved in the American Civil Rights movement, and dies in bed literally surrounded by enthusiastic newspaper reviews of her 50th showbiz-anniversary show. Whew. One great way of getting an introduction to Baker-the-performer is to have a look at Princesse Tam-Tam, a mid-1930s French musical that’s interesting for all sorts of reasons. Baker here plays a Bedouin girl befriended by a French novelist looking for inspiration in Tunisia. Taking her on as a Pygmalion-like project, he educates her and brings her back to France, where her close relationship with the author brings her into the spotlight of the Parisian scene. The highlights of the film all focus on Baker — incredibly gorgeous, wonderful singer (even in her second language), energetic dancer and a true star in the sense of compelling attention at every moment. You can make a fair argument that the film does rely on her exoticism, but that would be missing the point that she is the star, and that this reflects her status in 1930s Paris when her very exoticism made her famous (oy, her nicknames…). Baker had been a major star for years at the time of Princesse Tam-Tam’s production, and the film clearly plays on that, especially when she wows the Parisian upper-crust through sheer charisma. Her accent is rather lovely here, and the film does act as more than a star vehicle — 1930s French directors such as Edmond T. Gréville were often more poetic than their Hollywoodian counterparts, and the film does manage not only some terrific Berkleyesque dance numbers, but a compelling twist ending that’s both a bit disappointing and wonderfully ironic. You could read the final minutes as racist — the Caucasian actor in blackface doesn’t help, nor does the “return to savagery” thing—, but then there’s the final shot taking aim at the very idea of civilization that makes everything far more nuanced. Short at 77 minutes but crammed with several wonderful moments, Princesse Tam-Tam has an interesting and not particularly uplifting history in the United States: Produced in France, it was shown in New York but quickly ran afoul the newly enforced Hays Code that forbade interracial relationships and thus was limited to black theatres. Largely forgotten over the decades, it was rediscovered in 1989 and recently restored in 4K. It’s definitely worth a look — and it makes me curious about Zou Zou, the film that inspired it and was Baker’s true breakout film role. If a movie like Princesse Tam-Tam can motivate someone more than eighty years later to learn a compelling slice of African-American history, then it more than served its purpose.