Movie Review

  • The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019)

    The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) As someone who’s constantly fascinated by the modern art world, it was easy to slip into The Burnt Orange Heresy’s opening scenes, as the worst kind of art critic (the lying kind) begins an affair with a whip-smart woman who is pretty good at naked bedroom repartee. He’s played by Claes Bang, whose good looks and turn as an art curator in The Square clearly prepared him for the role; she’s played by Elizabeth Debicki, who gets steadily more interesting with every film. But what begins as a chilly romance soon becomes something else and then something else again, as they are invited to the estate of a multimillionaire that also acts as the residence of a reclusive artist. That pair is played by the unlikely duo of Mick Jagger and Donald Sutherland, bringing additional interest to the result. A second act delving into more art-world intricacies follows, helped along with Sutherland’s easy likability. But then The Burnt Orange Heresy finally cashes in on its vague forebodingness by turning into a thriller in which many characters die in not-very-believable ways. It’s ironic that I, an at-times over-strident genre fiction fan, would bemoan the film’s turn into murder — after all, it’s adapted from a novel and it’s not as if we’re led at any point to assume that this is going to be a frothy romantic comedy. Still, the murdery section of the film isn’t nearly as interesting as what comes before it, and it’s by that metric that I allow myself to be disappointed by the third act. It doesn’t make The Burnt Orange Heresy any less interesting, but it does give it a scattered, inconsistent impression that lingers on long after the credits roll.

  • Vengeance: A Love Story (2017)

    Vengeance: A Love Story (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) It’s easy to razz Nicolas Cage for turning to a string of low-budget efforts in his late career — here is an actor of incredible power, unafraid to go big, once lauded as a top box-office draw now churning out half a dozen low-profile movies per year. But here’s the thing: Cage once had serious financial problems and the economics of movies no longer favour performers like him. Given this, he seems reasonably happy being employed full-time, he occasionally still turns in memorable performance (I mean, Mandy, man…) and he usually gives everything he’s got to a movie. He’s got gravitas when needed, he’s credible as a protagonist and he’s, by all accounts, a true professional on set. What’s more, reviewers seem to have turned around on Cage’s career — embracing his newfound status as the king of weird willing to try anything. Vengeance: A Love Story is a bit of an antithesis to the screaming, frothing Cage roles that seem to attract attention. Here he plays a Niagara Falls (USA) policeman who goes on a revenge rampage once the rapists of a local woman walk free from their trial. As could be expected from the plot summary, there’s quite a bit of exploitative manipulation to the way the plot is manipulated to justify vigilante justice. Adapted from a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, the film does have an extra depth that many similar films don’t — characters in the orbit of the villains are developed significantly more than usual, for instance, and there’s usually an extra complication or two added to the straightforward narrative. Still, this merely makes Vengeance: A Love Story a bit cleverer about how it goes about it rather than be outright original. Meanwhile, Cage here doesn’t go for the usual histrionics — there’s clearly something distant in his character, and he keeps it that way. Missed opportunity? Maybe, or not — Cage was once attached to direct the film and it doesn’t take much effort to imagine him accepting the project as an opportunity to depart from his usual persona. As for the film itself, any appreciation will depend on where you’re starting from. Expecting a Cagesploitation wild-out? Disappointing. Expecting your usual trashy B-movie? A bit better than expected. Looking for a sophisticated dramatic thriller? Eh, you may want to recalibrate your expectations. Still, Cage is interesting in his restraint here — and it’s a further example that he’s usually the best part of whatever movie he takes on.

  • Inside Man: Most Wanted (2019)

    Inside Man: Most Wanted (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Considering that I consider Inside Man to be one of the best Manhattan-based thrillers ever made, you can imagine that my reaction to a low-budget no-name sequel would be somewhere between offence and interest: Inside Man is a film that does not need a sequel, yet I would be intrigued to see another movie playing along the same lines. Alas, Inside Man: Most Wanted is not the sequel to Inside Man that was discussed on-and-off since it came out — it’s a watered-down direct-to-streaming effort with thin replacements for (more or less) the same characters, with dubious needlessly convoluted plotting. Still, I liked it more than I expected. Let me explain: It doesn’t start all that badly. Robbers invade a bank, take hostages, the police get involved and the negotiators are called in. So far so good. Perhaps even better than good considering that Aml Ameen seems to be channelling Will Smith both in demeanour and appearance, bringing some energy to a film that seems to be dealing with calm and collected characters. M. J. Bassett’s direction can be nervy at times, and there’s a big sequence two thirds of the way through that has characters dealing with a flooded bank vault, which is a bit more visually interesting than what you see in those kinds of films. But even with the best of intentions, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Inside Man: Most Wanted is a mere copy of the first, with weaker versions of the characters, a plot that could have used some streamlining (by the time everything is explained, we barely care), and a director who can’t possibly be asked to do better than Spike Lee at his crowd-pleasing best. The climax is weak, and the incoherencies are so numerous that even a casual viewer is bound to notice them. Inside Man: Most Wanted is still a bit better than many, many direct-to-video thrillers that riff from better-known films… but I would have had a better time rewatching the first one.

  • The Gravedancers (2006)

    The Gravedancers (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) You would think that a steady diet of mediocre horror film would be a terrible thing, but it’s actually not too bad in recalibrating expectations. After getting used to the lower common denominator, anything that even inches its way above minimum competence is good enough. So it is that The Gravedancers doesn’t seem particularly promising at first — another story about three young people breaking taboos (in this case, dancing in a graveyard — haven’t they ever seen a horror movie before?) and getting supernaturally punished for it. But the execution does have something going for it; the plot isn’t as linear as we’d think (hello, ghosthunters; what’s that, an evil ghosthunter? ) and there’s even a welcome surprise in seeing Tchéky Karyo in a supporting role. The third act goes get quite a bit better, leading to a better finish than anyone would have expected from the slow first act. The Gravedancers is not that good, but it is better than average and at this point that’s what I’m looking for.

  • Under Western Stars (1938)

    Under Western Stars (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) As far as 1930s westerns go, Under Western Stars is remarkable for at least two reasons. For one thing, it’s the debut film of Roy Rogers, who would go on to become an icon of mid-century America. For another, and far more interestingly, it’s a western with strong political themes, and from a populist dirt-bowl perspective at that. For someone so closely associated with capitalistic Hollywood, it’s a bit of a surprise to realize, early on, that all-virtuous Roy Rogers is fighting against the security guards trying to prevent farmers from opening the gate to a dam restricting the flow of water to their ranches. The stage is thus set for Rogers to run for congress, win the election and get influential backing for a bill aiming to fairly distribute the common property. Interesting stuff, considering the easy clichés that dominated westerns at the time. Rogers himself does have a likable presence, and the film makes a lot out of the singing-cowboy persona he was groomed for. (Legend has it that Rogers got the leading part because the studio wanted to give a lesson to the previous singing cowboy Gene Autry when he held off for more money.)  There are more musical interludes than you’d expect from a western, and the then-contemporary setting of the film is also a welcome departure from wild-west history. Under Western Stars is really not the film I was expecting from its description as “a 1930s western,” and its politics alone are well worth a look.

  • Night of the Hunter (1991)

    Night of the Hunter (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) It’s really not fair to compare a mediocre made-for-TV remake to an all-time classic, but it can be instructive. 1955’s Night of the Hunter, for classic movie fans, is the case example of how a film can be a commercial disaster upon release, only to become an acclaimed masterpiece later on, with the added tragedy that the commercial failure was so severe, and the recognition so late in coming, that the director (legendary actor Charles Laughton) never made a second movie. Even today, the original Night of the Hunter’s sense of style remains an exceptional example of film noir blended with eerie fairy-tale surrealism, the likes of which we wouldn’t see in cinema for quite a while. Considering that the other main asset of Night of the Hunter are the memorable performances of Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish and Shelley Winters, it’s a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of film that requires a high bar for a remake — you’d have to find a gifted director and just as memorable performers and even then, the result would be unlikely to strike the same extraordinary combination. That’s why I’m ghoulishly fascinated by the thought process that went into authorizing a remake as a made-for-TV low-budget production with flat aesthetics, a director (David Greene) almost exclusively known as a TV-movie specialist, and a lead actor (Richard Chamberlain) who was past his prime at the time. How else could it have turned out but a humdrum suspense drama, perfunctorily shot and largely disposable? Almost custom-designed to be unfavourably compared to the original, this remake clearly fetishizes the original (as per the focus on the LOVE and HATE knuckle tattoos) but never even tries to strike its own way in exploiting the material — it’s undistinguishable from countless other bland TV movies striking exploitative notes (such as child endangerment) but without any of the additional charges that great acting and directorial flair could have brought to the result. Compare, contrast and despair.

  • Wake Wood (2009)

    Wake Wood (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) What kind of grieving parents would be so stupid as to accept a pagan warlock’s offer to resurrect their daughter under some very specific rules… and then proceed to break those rules? Clearly, anyone dumb enough to have never seen any horror movie in their lives, no matter whether it’s Pet Semetery or any “deal with the devil” kind of thing. But the parents in Wake Wood haven’t and so they behave in ways that inevitably bring about the film’s gruesome and unforgiving third act. It’s all quite tiresome from a narrative standpoint, even though the execution is not that bad and at least there’s Aidan Gillen playing another morally compromised character, and Timothy Spall as the warlock. Still — it’s hard to care at all, and by the time the extra-sadistic ending rolls around, it comes with a free shrug. Wake Wood is the kind of film that may play very differently based on viewer indulgences toward well-worn premises with obvious complications and idiot-grade characters. Those who don’t mind that will find the result more acceptable than those who do.

  • Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)

    Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Despite the good reviews, I still wasn’t too sure what to expect from Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar: Featuring the acknowledged queen of awkward comedy Kristen Wiig, it starts with exactly the kind of one-note humour that passes for comedy these days: Two middle-aged women stuck in a small town with small hobbies and small ambitions. It’s very beige and reeks of Midwest gothic caricature. But keep paying attention, because the film shifts gears once its two heroines make it to Florida in an attempt to do something different for once — the initial impression left by the film is challenged by escalating moments of absurdity and ridiculousness. Suddenly, there are musical numbers, talking animals, triple-subversion plot developments and more silly comedy than we deserved. Even our Midwestern heroines get progressively more sympathetic as Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar advances. Cult favourite lounger singer Richard Cheese shows up a few times, the bright neon colours of the cinematography don’t go away (except when to make a comic point) and the film honestly gets a few laughs. Wiig and frequent collaborator Annie Mumolo make for an effective writing/producing/starring duo and the entire thing is simply a lot of fun. It’s the kind of comedy that eventually revs up to a joke-every-fifteen-second kind of rhythm, not really minding if it stays in a realistic, absurd or outright surreal comic register. Perhaps best of all is that the film is very, completely, exceptionally good-natured. The characters are chirpy, potentially difficult situations are defused with a laugh and even the villain gets a heaping, overwhelming dose of friendship to make everything all right. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is a bubbly, not particularly substantial movie, but it’s exactly what it needs to be.

  • The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

    The Pumpkin Eater (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Terrible people generally make for more interesting movies than good dull people, but it’s a fine line in dosing the awfulness of characters and keeping audience sympathy. It’s especially challenging in films that don’t have much else going for them — neorealist black comedies like The Pumpkin Eater featuring a woman with a high-but-unspecified number of kids from three marriages wedded (for the third time) to a man juggling multiple affairs. The pacing is slow, the structure bounces back and forth in time, the epiphanies are small and the characters are more irritating than anything else. Fortunately, there are occasional moments to draw us back in. Cinephiles will have fun seeing James Mason in glasses and a moustache playing an utterly despicable character. Or seeing a young Maggie Smith play the homewrecker (even if the home was self-destructing anyway). Or the fight that triggers the third act. And then there’s Anne Bancroft, who got some critical attention at the film’s release for playing a terrible person, a woman with substantial mental health issues who has kids as a form of self-therapy and otherwise wanders aimlessly through the film. Oh, I’m aware that The Pumpkin Eater can be read on a few levels as a story of a woman forced into a role she did not want — but that hardly excuses the dull, bloodless way the film deals with its material and the almost innate revulsion these characters cause. They are terrible people—maybe not entirely through fault of their own, but they are terrible people. The film will probably be more interesting to those who like to witness self-contained character drama, abstracting notions of “likable” characters. For everyone else, though, The Pumpkin Eater may be a mixed bag.

  • Summer of ’42 (1971)

    Summer of ’42 (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) The subgenre in which Summer of ’42 takes place is a tricky one — the adult memoir, looking back upon a teenage coming-of-age episode. It can be universal and specific at once, relatable or dull depending on your own perspective. At times, Summer of ’42 feels like a prototype — an early example of something the baby boomer generation would later crank out by the dozens in the 1980s about the late-1960s, early-1970s period when they had their own awakening. Familiarity does dull the senses in this case — no matter how groundbreaking this sexually charged film could have been in 1971 (it was a substantial box-office and critical hit), it feels creaky and repetitive fifty years later. These are no longer the early days of New Hollywood, where franker depictions of suggestive material were changing the nature of cinema. In the 1980s alone, the “lads wanting to lose their virginity” subplot would become an entire genre, while more mature recollections of boyhood would impress in works such as Stand by Me. There’s also the aspect of a young man lusting after an older woman — try gender-flipping the roles and I’m not sure that the film would be so acclaimed these days (although 2009’s An Education comes to mind as a counter-example — I’m guessing that execution matters a lot). None of this makes Summer of ’42 a bad film. But it does make it a bit over-familiar, especially the condom-buying sequence that seems to have been copied everywhere in later years. While director Robert Mulligan one got there first, there have been many, many movies like it since. Although I suppose that the 1940s setting remains more original than a 1960s one.

  • This Land Is Mine (1943)

    This Land Is Mine (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) It took an exiled Frenchman to credibly portray the horrors of Nazi occupation to an American audience, and that’s why This Land is Mine still ranks today as one of the finest WW2 films made during WW2 itself. Narratively, it shows the Nazi occupation of France on a very personal level by focusing on a small town and some of its inhabitants. A great set of actors is up to the task — George Sanders as an informer, Maureen O’Hara as a teacher but especially Charles Laughton as a cowardly teacher who finds hidden reserves of courage under adversity. Clean directing from Jean Renoir and a striking script do the rest of the work. Renoir resists the temptation to get caricatural about both the French and the Nazis, and the result is something this lives on as something more than propaganda. The entire film works pretty well, but the ending is suitably poignant. This Land Is Mine remains a mild surprise and a great discovery.

  • Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

    Theodora Goes Wild (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) A slight but amusing comedy, Theodora Goes Wild introduces Irene Dunne to comedy, a field in which she’d encounter considerable success in the following years. The plot, rich in lies, half-trues and misunderstandings, has to do with a small-town Sunday School teacher who moonlights as the writer of a salacious novel that has all the town’s busybodies clutching their pearls. (There’s probably some commentary about the Hays Code in there.) The fun escalates once someone from Manhattan discovers her double identity and follows her back home to make her life difficult — especially when she has no other choice but to introduce the stranger as her gardener. The expected romance ensues, even when the action moves back to Manhattan for much of the third act. It’s all a bit silly, sometimes quite arbitrary, and Melvyn Douglas isn’t always the best as the male lead… but Dunne is quite good in an Oscar-nominated performance. If you’re looking for a better-than-average 1930s comedy with some good set-pieces and a solid lead performance, Theodora Goes Wild is a really good choice.

  • Always a Bridesmaid (2019)

    Always a Bridesmaid (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2021) This probably won’t reflect well on me, but I’m always game for a BET-broadcast romantic comedy if the heroine is cute, and I certainly got what I was looking for in Javicia Leslie as the lead actress in Always a Bridesmaid. You can probably write a good chunk of the script from the title alone: Perennially single female protagonist suddenly looking for love, with a few obstacles on the way. As such, the film plays to its strengths by focusing on its likable heroine — capable, kind-hearted, obviously popular with her friends but somehow not in a relationship. Her exploration of the contemporary dating scene is good for a funny montage, but she soon finds The One (Jordan Calloway, also likable) who will stick with her for the rest of the film, through temporary breakups and other artificial obstacles. The film sticks very close to its PG rating and it’s not a bad thing — it keeps the humour leashed to a family-friendly format. Always a Bridesmaid is innocuous, but innocuous is what I was looking for after a recent diet of heavy Oscar-nominated dramas and terrible horror films — a nice romantic comedy with an attractive lead is exactly what was needed. I would, in other circumstances, have some reservations about the narrative decision taken along the way — the straightforward lack of romantic tension in knowing how (let alone if) the two leads would end up together, the awkward time skip at the very end of the film, the bland complications, the idiot characterization for what’s supported to be an intelligent character… but as with most romantic comedies, Always a Bridesmaid is much better in its details, subplots, moments and side conversations than it is in overall structure and plotting. I didn’t care much about its flaws, even as I was constantly mentally rewriting the script along the way — it’s sweet enough as it is, and Leslie has such a winning screen presence that I was happy enough with the results. As written by co-star Yvette Nicole Brown and directed by Trey Haley, Always a Bridesmaid is not a great or even a good movie, even focusing on the black-cast romantic comedy sub-sub genre that is BET’s bread-and-butter — but sometimes you don’t need good or great: you’re just happy with something average and pleasant.

  • Resistance (2020)

    Resistance (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) The only thing weirder that Jessie Eisenberg taking on the role of famed French mime Marcel Marceau in Resistance is the realization that Marceau was an active member of the French resistance and rescued kids along the way. It’s a premise that holds up reasonably well against the historical record (even if most of the specific events feel invented for dramatic purposes) even if, as viewers, we’re left to wonder if there’s any aspect of WW2 that has not yet been put on-screen by now. The centrepiece of the film is Eisenberg, who reportedly trained quite a while to be able to convincingly portray, well, the most famous mime in history. It may or may not be the best possible casting (there’s quite a bit of Eisenberg showing through — with the role fitting in his career-long interest in Jewish characters). The rest of the film feels like a generic WW2 film, set against nice European backdrops and juiced up with evil Nazis and heroic plot points. It’s reasonably entertaining even when we find ourselves sensing that Marceau’s real story is being hammered to fit a standard Hollywood formula. Ultimately, though, I expect Resistance to fade away, like very many very similar films about resistance against the Nazis — even after seeing the film, the mime angle pay works more like a punchline than an actual element of distinction.

  • Strike up the Band (1940)

    Strike up the Band (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Fifth in a series of ten movies that paired Judy Garland with Mickey Rooney, Strike Up the Band uses the couple’s most frequent formula: a series of contrivances leading them to put on a show in order to save something or someone or other. Clearly patterned on Babes in Arms (same stars, same premise) but with a slightly bigger panache to wow the audiences, the film is clearly meant to be familiar to the audiences at the time. Early-1940s Garland and Rooney had plenty of youthful sparkle and the camaraderie that came from working together so often. The plot itself is bland, but some of the numbers are still well worth seeing: with Busby Berkeley at the helm, it’s no surprise if the lavish, complicated dance number “Do the La Conga” is the film’s highlight, with plenty of dancers moving to a catchy rhythm. (There’s also a fun number with instrument-playing fruits — and it’s announced by the opening credits.)  It’s an early production of the Arthur Freed unit that would go on to make many of MGM’s most celebrated musicals, so there’s clearly the spark (if not quite the polish) of later well-known productions. For film buffs, Strike Up the Band is a bridge between Garland/Rooney’s “Andy Hardy” teen movies and the musical super-productions she would later star in. It’s amiable enough to be worth a watch — and some of the numbers are memorable.