Movie Review

  • Girl (2020)

    Girl (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) I don’t particularly like Girl, but there is something admirable about how crazy it’s willing to become in order to deliver thrills on a budget. Shot in Sudbury and set in AnyNorthernSmallTown, North America, it’s a thriller whose minimalist execution contrasts with its sensational plotting. From the first few moments, it’s obvious that this won’t be like most other movies: As a girl gets off the bus at an isolated stop on a two-lane road and walks to the nearest town, we’re set to understand that this is not meant to be a fun film. And yet, as the minutes advance, the screenplay seems at odds with the directing. The absurdities and implausibilities accumulate, such as the girl finding her father dead and being angry that she didn’t get to finish the job. It gets weirder as the film advances, as she discovers not one but two hitherto unknown uncles, who coincidentally end up being the two men she’s spent the most time antagonizing since the beginning of the film. It gets even better, what with a hidden treasure, the sudden arrival of a missing character, a small-town conspiracy, capture, torture and escape. Girl features revenge, fiery death, a fatal stabbing and near-universal abuse by and to all characters. It could have been an exploitation film, but it’s not always directed as such. Other than a dynamic laundromat fight and some suspense sequences, much of the film plays at a slow, gritty pace, somehow going for grimy naturalism when it should go big and wild in order to match its script. A few more characters may have helped round off the unreality of the result, but I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. The cast somehow includes Bella Thorne as the titular girl and Mickey Rourke as the final antagonist — both do well but not that well. There are some fitful attempts to go for big philosophical material throughout, but it’s clear that the film is most at ease in the suspense and action department — a rewrite could have leaned a bit more in that direction. As a result, I’m generally cool to Girl — there are promising elements here, but they seem mishandled in such a systematic way that I’m even wondering if writer-director Chad Faust understood the kind of film he was making, or the kind of film he could have made.

  • Paydirt (2020)

    Paydirt (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) The best-case scenario in writing a bad film according to formula is that the formula will carry much of the film on its shoulders, compensating for other flaws by sheer force of familiarity. I don’t have any issue with admitting that I like Paydirt’s formula a lot — the idea of putting together a crew of hoodlums (especially ones known for their nicknames) for one last score, the sunny California setting, the booming use of music during montages, nestled flashbacks, the gorgeous women, the final twists and turns that transform a defeat into a complete victory— this is all good stuff as far as I’m concerned, and Guy Richie alone has probably forgotten some of his own movies following this formula. Paydirt clearly follows it blindly, all the way to the predictable twists at the end. It really does not have the wit or the finesse to make it look natural — everything looks laboured, deliberate and almost exhausting even when it’s mechanically assembling the pieces it needs. Writer-director Christian Sesma dictates it as if he knew what works, but only being half-right about that. Many people attack formula films by saying it’s all gloss, but Paydirt doesn’t even have that: it operates at half-throttle all the time, going through the motions of something compelling without actually being compelling itself. Luke Goss is, in keeping with the rest of the film, fairly bland throughout. Val Kilmer impresses for all the wrong reasons in a supporting role: He looks really old and overweight here, no doubt a result of his recent health problems. But the problems are everywhere in this film, and the worst are in the script. The sloppy plotting can’t be bothered to convincingly nail down the details, and by the time the coda laboriously explains with a self-satisfied wink what we’d guessed anyway due to (again) the formula, it all feels even more contrived than usual. Despite all of these flaws, I still half-enjoyed Paydirt: it should be much, much worse, but thanks to the formula, it manages to paddle hard enough to keep its head above water. That’s not exactly a ringing recommendation, but at least it got halfway there.

  • Storage 24 (2012)

    Storage 24 (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) I like it when movies work better on-screen than on paper, even if the starting point is low. Storage 24, at first, looks exactly like the cheap horror movie it is, with a handful of characters stuck in a cheap shooting location. Here, a few friends are in a vast storage facility on the outskirts of London when something falls from the sky into the facility. Before long, yes, you guessed it, a dangerous alien creature starts slaughtering the cast in reverse credit order. This is incredibly familiar horror fare, the kind of which can be found by the screenful at the cheapest streaming site. Clearly, this won’t win any awards — but the question is, is it competent enough to be entertaining? Fortunately, yes — barely (don’t expect to remember much of the film in the morning) but yes. There’s been much worse using that plot template, and writer-director Johannes Roberts has the good sense to provide just enough of a happy ending before going full Science Fiction in time for the final shot. As a low-budget Alien clone, Storage 24 holds its own chiefly through its actors and better-than-expected dialogue. Again: nothing refined, but just enough to rescue the film from terminal awfulness. Noel Clarke is not too bad in the lead role, although what’s written for him could have used an extra dose of likability. It’s just enough to relieve anyone expecting the very worst. It could have been better with more wit or humour, but let’s not ask too much of something clearly produced out of laziness and convenience. It is better than most SyFy movies, though, if that gives you a yardstick.

  • Open Graves (2009)

    Open Graves (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) I had a bit of trouble making it to the end of Open Graves without falling asleep. Let’s see if I do any better describing it to you. A straight-to-video release from 2009, Open Graves has to do with a few surfer post-teenagers who discover a strange old game that… zzzz… okay, that didn’t take long. As I said: an old game in which the order in which they die in the game is reflected in what happens to them soon afterwards, as if the screenwriter threw the Jumanji script in a blender with one of the Final Destination sequels. (Fun fact: every single review of this film elsewhere on the web makes the exact same reference to Jumanji and Final Destination. This review also obliges.) I’ll admit that this description almost makes Open Graves sound interesting (although many, many screenwriters have blended those two scripts before), but the film doesn’t quite have what it takes, either in the writing or the directing, to keep things interesting. The cool-blue cinematography and soothing rhythms soon make viewers… zzzz… right. Occasionally, the film does something halfway interesting, like throwing in a car stunt that makes no sense in terms of physics but at least shows some budget shown on-screen and/or CGI flames. Plus, there’s Eliza Dushku in a prominent role, which reassures us that she was at least alive at the time of the film’s production. (But seriously: Wikipedia tells us that her gradual disappearance from acting over the past ten years obscures a return to school and motherhood. Congratulations!)  Still, she’s very much not enough to save Open Graves from terminal boredom and cheap CGI overuse. This is the kind of by-the-numbers horror film featuring young adults being killed that you can plot in your sleep and… zzzz… well that was a trigger all right. Open Graves is really not worth any effort. Your finger may slip on the remote and you’ll end up watching it without much of a reaction. Thanks to director Álvaro de Armiñán, It’s not funny, it’s not overly gory, it’s not good, it’s not terrible: It just is.

  • The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)

    The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, April 2021) My typical commentary on horror/comedy hybrids is that the balance between the two can be incredibly tricky at times, and not all filmmakers can pull it off. Accordingly, perhaps the most suspenseful aspect of The Wolf of Snow Hollow isn’t as much the small-town police hunt for a werewolf, but the tightrope act that writer-director-star Jim Cummings has to navigate between the demands of horror thrills, comedy chuckles and his own idiosyncratic deadpan sensibilities. The result, fortunately, is a success — something too quirky to be embraced widely, but a more ambitious-than-usual take on familiar genre elements. Much of the attraction of the film comes from its lead character, a policeman in a tight-knit community who has ambitions to succeed his father as the town’s sheriff, but significant anger issues (to the point of repeatedly hitting colleagues), an alcoholic past and difficult relationships with his ex-wife and daughter. Any lesser movie would have done some sleight-of-hand to ensure that he is the killer being hunted (and the film does initially nod in that direction as a red herring), but instead we get a bit of alter-ego reflection between the dual nature of werewolves (here cleverly rationalized as misogynist men hunting women when it’s bright at night) and the hero’s own issues in keeping both aspects of his personality under control. A big dose of visual style does help, especially in grounding The Wolf of Snow Hollow’s sometime-anachronistic execution that rapidly jumps back and forth in time to show cause and effect. The result is as slick as the dialogue can be deliberately rough. Cummings does pretty well in the lead role, with some honourable mentions going to Robert Forster in his final role, and Riki Lindhome as another level-headed police officer. The dialogue is self-consciously “realistic” in all of its awkwardness, but it does help ground the reality of the film to its small-town atmosphere, where nothing of importance is ever supposed to happen. Still, much of the fun of the film comes not from the werewolf hunt, but the way the protagonist buckles under pressure coming from all sides. (The film is not subtle about it at all, with a whistling kettle taking over the soundtrack at least twice.)  The Wolf of Snow Hollow could have benefited from a few additional minutes to straighten out its second-half revelations and play a bit longer in the jumpy atmosphere of a small town terrified by an average police force unable to cope with a serial killer. But the result is still quite good as it is, and well worth a watch. It’s not your average horror film, and not your average horror/comedy film either.

  • Nomadland (2020)

    Nomadland (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, April 2021) Something very expected happened in the twenty-four hours between seeing Nomadland and writing this review — it won the Academy Award for the Best picture of 2020. Working from the theory that the Academy Awards are a gigantic Public Relation exercise in which Hollywood tells the world how it wants to be seen, it was an incredibly predictable win. In a year where the COVID-19 pandemic upended nearly everything about the movie industry, in which the number of major studio releases plummeted to nearly nothing, in which diversity became a rallying cry, in which economic anxiety peaked even more as millions of Americans slid into poverty, well — Nomadland seemed like a distillation of many, many things. A film (inspired by a growing trend) about a woman choosing to live in her van, going from one seasonal job to another, it seemed like a distillation of decades’ worth of gradual civilizational decline. Written and directed by Asian-American woman, visually composed to emphasize the widescreen aspect ratios of American landscapes, Dickensian in its depiction of people overcoming misery, Nomadland doesn’t just check off all the boxes — in such a miserable year, it seems almost tailored to make Academy voters think that this is the film that they want people to think about when they think about Hollywood. But now that we’ve explained why it won the Big Trophy, let’s get to the heart of the matter: it’s actually a good movie. Not the most enjoyable one, certainly not my own favourite of the nominees (currently a race between The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Mank), probably not a film that people will flock to over and over again, but a good film nonetheless. It is, admittedly, a slow burn. I wouldn’t blame anyone for overloading on the misery of the first half-hour, as our protagonist finds herself driven to a “houseless” lifestyle that would be intolerable to most viewers, as we’re once again reminded of the inhumanity of Amazon, as the cold blue winter cinematography makes everything feel so much worse. Things get a bit better as she starts making inroads in the nomadic community, getting tips and help about the lifestyle. As the film goes on, it becomes clearer that this rootless existence is a choice more than an obligation: she not only turns down two offers for a permanent residence, she starts taking in the freedom that comes with a moving dwelling, taking in the spectacle of America and finding her friends here and there. The film ends on a much better note than it began, and Frances McDormand’s performance is about as raw as the film can get close to documentary. The mixture of actors and non-actors playing “themselves” reinforces writer-director Chloé Zhao’s intention to avoid conventional filmmaking technique, something echoed in the script’s refusal to highlight pivotal moments and instead dwell in the spaces in between. It’s not a perfect film—characters have the grating tendency to explain themselves as if to a journalist, which is so very much not the protagonist—call it a holdover of adapting a non-fiction book. But even in its imperfect, often uncomfortable state, Nomadland (No mad land?) is a sobering reflection, hopefully not a portent, and a striking piece of cinema in its own right. It highlights something new, humanizes it and leaves us to consider the flip side of the situation. Yes, that’s the film that people will see when the open up those “Cinema in 2020” retrospective articles.

  • Bleed with Me (2020)

    Bleed with Me (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) The same elements of a film can be interpreted very differently by various people. What’s meant as a slow-burn psychological horror with an ambiguous conclusion to some can be perceived by others as meandering pile in indecisive mumbling with no clear point. Bleed with Me certain courts that ambiguity — a low-budget horror film with three characters isolated in a cabin, it deliberately multiplies hints and suggestions that either the unreliable narrator is going crazy, or her friend is a blood-sucking vampire. Riding the Todorovian Express until the end, Bleed with Me isn’t doing itself any favours with low-end production values and a hazy directorial vision. The film’s elements are incredibly familiar, and the grimy execution adds very little interest to the proceedings. Some will probably like it a lot more than I did, but to me it exemplifies a kind of hellish indie-horror experience where nothing much happens even as writer/director Amelia Moses keeps trying to nudge us with “see? See? Aren’t you supposed to be spooked right now?” Alas, this is painfully trite stuff, and the film never has the guts to deliver a real finale. When an entire film takes place in unfocused dream logic, it can’t even go for a strong conclusion, because it just trained us to doubt anything it has to show us. Bleed with Me probably has a receptive public somewhere — but it’s not me.

  • Who You Know aka All About Who You Know (2019)

    Who You Know aka All About Who You Know (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) I’m an enthusiastic and forgiving audience when it comes to movies about writers, but—wow—was that stance stress-tested while viewing Who You Know, a film which attempts to be a showy self-aware take on screenwriting romantic clichés by featuring a protagonist who’s himself a smarmy smarter-than-thou screenwriter. Production values are toward the low end, even though the cinematography is usually decent and the directing is better than the writing. But this is a film that lives and more frequently dies by its script. Dialogue-heavy to an unusual extent, it describes the romance between a young screenwriter and the daughter of an Oscar-winning filmmaking legend: he initially wants to date her in order to get closer to her dad and use his influence to further his career but (stop me if you’ve heard this before — oh, right). Obviously, a screenwriter arranging for romance will be acutely aware of genre clichés and do whatever he can to not fall into them. Now, as someone who was (and still is, less frequently) that kind of smarmy smarter-than-thou person, it pains me to say that the protagonist is completely insufferable. Intolerable. Even worse given the miscasting of baby-faced high-schooler Dylan Everett in the role. For a film entirely focused on the character, that’s a major problem. No amount of bon mots can compensate for the charisma void at the core of the film, even though Niamh Wilson escapes unscathed through a much better portrayal of the female lead. But it’s not solely a matter of a bad protagonist: Who You Know is constantly, exhaustingly tugging at your sleeve, asking if you recognize how clever and smart and unique it is. Having been that person, I can tell you that the only way to deal with such a situation is to pat them on the back and tell them that they’re the cleverest, smartest and uniquest. So: Well done, writer/director Jake Horowitz, you are the cleverest, smartest and uniquest. Of course, you will deny viewers the closure of a happy ending — after all, that would not be clever, smart or unique. Of course, you’ll throw in the cleverest, smartest and uniquest dialogue you can find. Except by the time the female lead (who, not to put it subtly, is far more likable than the male lead) explains she’s been on to his entire scheme, we don’t care. By the time they break up, we not only agree, but wish he’d die in a freak self-immolation incident. By the time the picture wraps up, we’re just relieved. I usually want to be positive and enthusiastic about low-budget Canadian movies that rely on strong writing, but I’m going to make an exception for Who You Know.

  • The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

    The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) It’s really no accident if Anthony Hope’s Victorian adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda was filmed two-and-a-half times: Once in 1937, a second time in a near shot-for-shot colour remake in 1952 (with James Mason) and again as one of the episodes in 1965’s The Great Race, although the pie-throwing bit in that last example was most definitely not in the original novel. It’s a very solid action-adventure romance hitting the full four-quadrant spectrum, what with an Englishmen being drawn, due to his close resemblance to the sovereign of another nation, into a web of romance, attempts to capture the throne and (crucially) impersonation of the incapacitated sovereign. It’s all quite good, and much of the fun in having several versions is in looking at the casting. Here, we do have an intriguing selection of 1930s stars, from Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ronald Coleman, Mary Astor and a very young David Niven. The inclusion of romance and fencing ensures that the film will appeal broadly, and remains an enjoyable piece of entertainment today. It’s technically acceptable by the time’s standards, but it’s the story that carries it even today.

  • Pride of the Marines (1945)

    Pride of the Marines (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) While the 1945 release date straddles the line, it’s not entirely true to call Pride of the Marines a post-WW2 film — it was conceived (from a biography), shot and released during the war. But in depicting the adaptation of a soldier blinded in battle and then brought home, there’s certainly a dramatic intent here that goes beyond the propaganda pictures of the war’s earlier years. It’s not quite to the level of The Best Years of our Lives, but there’s clearly an attempt to meld the war picture with an inspiring drama, even as the country was sobering up to the reality of disabled veterans coming back home at a time when victory seemed more certain than ever. The star of the film is John Garfield, whose performance carries the film from romantic innocent to depressed war wounded. Pride of the Marines is close to melodrama but not quite one, lending it a more absorbing quality than expected. It’s a more sobering war film than usual, but not a depressing one.

  • Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955)

    Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) There’s a quirky mixture of musical comedy and gangster film at play in Pete Kelly’s Blues, which uses 1927 Kansas City as a backdrop for a tale of speakeasies, mob bosses, and a jazz house band trying to maintain its independence—and keep its cut of the earnings. The film itself is a bit bland and misguided — in setting up the band leader as this person going toe-to-toe with organized crime, the film can’t find an appropriate tone between comedy or thriller. Mechanically, people get murdered, the band leader fights back, the boss is brought down but the film never quite narratively sparks to life. The setting itself is intriguing but never more than perfunctorily rendered — a rather common problem in 1950s movies trying to portray earlier decades, almost as if Hollywood couldn’t shake the stylistic weight of that era. Fortunately, plotting isn’t the entire film — there’s quite a bit of music, and that’s when the film hits its stride. A highlight includes a performance from none other than Ella Fitzgerald, and other musical numbers (including a really good opening sequence) briefly revive interest in the film. As directed by (and starring) Jack Webb, Pete Kelly’s Blues is a bit of a missed opportunity and, frankly, not much of a movie for most audiences. But its odd mixture of sensibilities may be just effective enough for jazz fans or gangster movie buffs.

  • Period of Adjustment (1962)

    Period of Adjustment (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Tennessee Williams left quite a mark on American cinema of the 1950s–1960s, but one thing he wasn’t known for was comedy—his focus was more on hard-hitting dramas, gay subtext and explosive confrontations. (Even at his most bowdlerized, modern audiences can still watch films like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and wonder, “Hey, is this character supposed to be…”)  While Period of Adjustment can’t very well be called an outright comedy with its focus on two couples having marital problems, it is considerably lighter than many other Williams adaptations. Featuring Jane Fonda and Jim Hutton, the story contrasts a newlywed couple with another with more mileage but different issues. It’s certainly atypical Williams — far looser and at least putatively funny. But even as a comedy, it’s a bit more serious than the norm, as it puts characters through a wringer they don’t especially appreciate (especially not in that typical-comedy fake annoyance way) before making it to the other end. On the other hand, there’s a happy ending and plenty of comic set-pieces, not to mention better-than-average dialogue for this kind of film and some interesting characterization in this tale of uncomfortable couples. Fonda is a southern doll here, which explains why this film is often mentioned as one of the ones that led her to stardom. The result is not exactly easy to classify — Period of Adjustment is not as intense as other Williams films, and it’s not as carefree as other romantic comedies of the era. But it’s got an interesting quality of its own, especially if (like me), you’ve started paying interest to Tennessee Williams through the films adapted from his work.

  • A Patch of Blue (1965)

    A Patch of Blue (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) There’s a completely unsubtle romance at the core of A Patch of Blue — a literal illustration of “love is blind” in which a blind white girl falls for a black man. For 1965, this was courageous stuff, but what saves the film for modern audiences is the utterly likable performance from Sidney Poitier, who carries the film without missteps even at this early stage of his career. The cast around him is quite good as well—Elizabeth Hartman is suitably sympathetic as the blind girl, while Shelley Winters is striking as her incredibly unpleasant mother. The narrative isn’t much—and for all of its progressive intentions, the film isn’t allowed to go very far—but the acting is great and the individual scenes avoid hammering the already-unsubtle nature of the narrative. It doesn’t take much more than that to transform A Patch of Blue from what could have been an overbearing Oscar-baiting film into something quite watchable.

  • Pacific Liner (1939)

    Pacific Liner (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) One of the things I like best about Classic Hollywood films is their depictions of things that, “thanks” to technology or economics, don’t exist anymore. A robust passenger train system with overnight berths. Bygone Manhattan elites enthusiastically indulging in their matrimonial shenanigans. Automats. Steam liners crossing the oceans. Much of this usually comes with a big, big dose of romanticism: I suspect that liner cruises from New York to Europe were seldom as charming as depicted. Pacific Liner is a welcome antidote to the romance of the high seas — much of it takes place in the boiler room of a luxury cruiser crossing the Pacific and dealing with a cholera outbreak. There’s a welcome shift of perspective away from the carefree lives of the passengers to the rough-and-gruff working men working below decks, especially as the epidemic rages on and working conditions become dangerous. (To say that this film has exceptional relevance in the middle of a COVID-19 pandemic in which minimum-salary workers are most exposed is understating things quite a bit.)  Victor McLaglen provides the film’s standout performance as a loud and tough engineer. Pacific Liner is a short 76-minute thriller, perhaps a bit too quick (one wonders if the upper decks could have provided a poignant counterpoint) but definitely refreshing. Amazingly enough, it’s significantly under-seen — but everyone who sees it will appreciate the unusual perspective it brings to familiar tropes and the no-nonsense pacing.

  • Volver a Morir [Wake up and Die] (2011)

    Volver a Morir [Wake up and Die] (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) At this point, I’m not even complaining whenever I see another film riffing on closed time loops à la Groundhog Day: I now embrace the subgenre and actively seek out any new example I can find. Wake up and Die takes a very horror-centric approach to the idea: what if a woman woke up to another man, obviously after a one-night stand, only to be killed by him… and wake up in the same situation? Admittedly, this doesn’t make for a very lengthy time loop, so the initial interest of the film is in seeing how this can be stretched to fill a full feature-length film. There is, to be fair, some distinctiveness to the result: The film doesn’t mess around in terms of violence (she’s killed three times in the first fifteen minutes) nor sex and nudity, as the film’s two sole actors spend much of the time nude and/or having sex. Writer-director Miguel Urrutia goes for style in an attempt to keep things visually interesting, and there’s something to be said for a made-in-Colombia film (I would have a really hard time even telling you about another Colombian film.). Unfortunately, being distinctive is not quite the same thing as being good, and once the novelty of the concept wears off, the film seems to have trouble deciding where to go, especially in resolving the inherently exploitative starting point. This arguably could have been better as an anthology segment than a full-length film, especially with the ending that it ends up choosing, not quite as good as the premise. The stylish approach is often more showy than evocative, and the film’s arthouse sympathies are not always in-line with what would best suit a strong narrative. While it’s true that I’d rather settle for imperfect distinction rather than dull mediocrity, there’s something missing from Wake up and Die that prevents it from being as good as it could have been.