Reviews

  • The Seventh Victim (1943)

    The Seventh Victim (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) It’s interesting to go back in time and see some of the earliest examples of clichés. Sure, Satanist cultists are a dime a dozen in today’s horror films, but you can go back to 1943’s The Seventh Victim to see an early version of the trope, as a young woman goes hunting for her missing sister in New York City (that den of perversion!) and finds her indoctrinated in a cult. I have to admit that I had a very, very hard time getting into The Seventh Victim, my attention constantly wandering away from it — I had to restart it three times before it stuck, and even powering through the movie netted not much more than an abrupt, unsatisfying ending. But I was surprised to find out, doing background research for this review, that the film has a rather enviable contemporary reputation — it’s not just a precursor to Satanist cult horror, but its shower scene is thought to prefigure the one in Psycho, and its homosexual undertones (which I barely noticed) now bring the film under the queer cinema umbrella. I strongly suspect that The Seventh Victim, often mentioned as one of legendary horror producer Val Lewton’s most intriguing features, is heavily dependent on mood — if you’re up for subtle gothic horror, unconventional dread and some missing narrative pieces, then you will probably have a better time with it than I did.

  • The Hot Rock (1972)

    The Hot Rock (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) The amiable good humour of Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder novels carries rather well to the big screen in The Hot Rock. It’s a comedy, but it doesn’t go for the obvious laughs: instead, the fun comes from the mounting absurdity of the situations, and the way nothing is truly threatening or dramatic. Robert Redford stars as master thief Westlake, recently released from prison but almost immediately recruited into a scheme to steal a previous stone on behalf of its original African nation. Putting together a crew for the heist proves simpler than completing it, and much of the film’s distinction in the pantheon of heist movies is how complications eventually force the execution of not just one heist, but four of them with escalating degrees of difficulty. A little bit of plot helps put it all together with an extra curlicue at the end. It’s all quite amusing, and the period detail of early-1970s New York City does add quite a bit to the result. Redford is in fine form, with some good support from George Segal and Zero Mostel. The Hot Rock is the kind of film that has a tendency to disappear from popular memory, not because it’s bad but because it’s just good enough to entertain without making much of a mark. It can, however, be quite a bit of fun to revisit for a simple evening’s entertainment.

  • Pet Sematary (2019)

    Pet Sematary (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, September 2021) Stephen King’s Pet Semetary is often called his scariest novel and while there’s a bit of marketing in that moniker, it’s not completely undeserved. Part of its appeal is how it completely engages with some extreme, universal terrors: the death of a child, for one, and then the temptation to cheat nature and somehow reverse death. While the novel is a bit of a slow build, emotions eventually run high at a level that readers can understand: what parent, after all, wouldn’t go to extremes to bring back their child? It’s an incredibly strong concept, and it led to a first, perfectly serviceable movie adaptation in 1989. Nobody was really asking for a remake, but Hollywood has a logic of its own and that’s why we got one anyway thirty years later. Surprisingly, this Pet Sematary makes a few unusual but calculated bets that expect viewers to have seen the previous version. The slow build of the original is gone — the directors have crammed as many jump scares as possible in order to keep audiences from getting antsy. More significantly, the film is replete with foreshadowing, ominous portents and thematic call-forwards, suggesting to viewers familiar with the first film that the film expects them to hang on for the ride. Even better: this Pet Sematary makes a few changes that don’t deviate from the central atmosphere of the original, but keep viewers on their toes. The cat brought back from death is overly (almost ridiculously) evil; the kid that dies is not the same; the ending makes explicit the suggested bleakness of the original finale. In other words, if you’ve read the novel or seen the first film, you will have a sense that this version is in constant dialogue with the original works, and those who experienced all of them. It doesn’t necessarily make for a particularly better movie — at times, this Pet Sematary becomes irritating with its refusal to let the tension build naturally, not to mention its more formulaic nature—but it does add a bit more interest to what could have been a mediocre result. Jason Clarke’s not bad here in the lead, but it’s a bearded John Lithgow who gets some attention as the crusty old guy warning them (not very efficiently) about meddling with forces they don’t understand. But, of course, we know what is going to happen — it’s in the nature of the genre. In the end, this Pet Sematary ends up neither better nor worse than from the original, most visibly exemplifying the differences in approaches between the late 1980s and the late 2010s.

  • F9 aka Fast and Furious 9 (2021)

    F9 aka Fast and Furious 9 (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on-Demand, September 2019) Regular readers will remember that I’m an undying devotee of the Fast and Furious series of vehicular action movies: Even after ten movies in twenty years, they remain one of the most dependable experiences you can have at the movies, with an ensemble cast of characters enduring death-defying stunts in service of evermore-ludicrous stories. While I have a feeling that the series may have peaked around instalments 5–7, ninth mainline entry F9 is still operating in the same vein, with the same cast and top-line crew at the helm. Ludicrously powerful (and selective) magnets power the film’s last-half action sequences in a fender bender of practical effects and unapologetic CGI. Oh, and two characters go to space aboard a rocket-powered Pontiac Fiero, but that’s almost to be expected considering the style of the series to date. Once again, F9’s plotting brings a new episode’s worth of melodramatic soap-opera-worthy revelations, this time resurrecting another character from the dead and uncovering a long-forgotten brother who proves to be a match for the protagonists. Never mind the late-sequence revelations — the fun here is in believing that Vin Diesel and John Cena can play halfway convincing brothers without the rest of the crew cracking up. Not that the film is that far away from self-commentary, as it dawns upon one character that far too much has happened to them without serious harm that they must be freakishly invincible. One of the keys of the series has to be the cast — not necessarily in terms of fine acting (even with Helen Mirren showing up for a brief and delicious car heist-and-chase sequence with her at the wheel), but in terms of sheer likability. As much as I like Nathalie Emmanuel’s usual curly bob, for instance, she here looks adorable with twin Dutch braids… but best of all, she gets a lead role in an action scene of her own playing off the series’ presumption that every character is a superior driver. Cena is his usual charismatic self — there’s never any doubt that he’s meant to join the family by the end. Meanwhile, Diesel looks a bit off, perhaps as a side effect of making the series too much about him. Fortunately, F9 is the kind of film that just keeps getting better and better. I would have been disappointed at the halfway mark (too much soap opera, not enough action), but the ending sequence redeems it all. It’s amazing that we’re ten films in a series at this point, so I’m inclined to be lenient about the creakiness of the “revelations” at this point. Let’s face it — as long as we’re having fun in the action scenes, this series still has plenty of miles left in it.

    (Second viewing, Streaming, December 2025) Not everything works in F9. In fact, much of the first half of the film teeters on the edge of being a let-down: despite the welcome return of director Justin Lin, the film strains credulity with ever-more-ludicrous plot twists reaching into the characters’ back-story and reconning some plot developments again. (Also, Han with short hair isn’t all Han.) But the second half of the film does a few interesting things with all of it, from pushing the characters into a metafictional existential crisis to welcoming John Cena in the family to having a final action seuqence through the streets of Tbilisi that was far better than I remembered. While not returning to the heights of installments 5-7, F9 is slightly better than the eighth film, and still a reliable popcorn film if you’re looking for pure action fun.

  • Designing Woman (1957)

    Designing Woman (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) At this point of my cinephile journey, I’ve seen the landmark movies, the classics, and the box-office sensations. All that’s left is a deeper and more scattered journey through the rest. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: “the rest” includes a number of solid commercial and critical successes that many people have enjoyed, even if they haven’t necessarily remained references throughout the decades. From time to time, you even get something that’s a lot of fun. Such is the case with Designing Woman, a cleverly subversive romantic comedy that pokes at 1950s clichés and offers enjoyable second-tier performances by a well-known cast. In this case, we have Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall (stepping in for, we’re told, Cary Grant and Grace Kelly — a downgrade for Grant-to-Peck, but an improvement for Kelly-to-Bacall) as a sports writer who meets an alluring woman while covering a golf tournament in California. They get married within a week (as often happens in classic Hollywood) only to then discover upon returning to New York City who they are. Or, crucially, that she’s a fashion designer with more money, class, clout and well-connected friends than he does. The resulting loss of panache from the male protagonist is very amusing, and the rift only gets bigger once they start entertaining their respective circles of friends (his: working-class schlubs; hers; insanely well-connected artists) in her-now-their apartment. That’s more than enough to fuel the first half of the film—the rest is taken up with old flames and threats from mobsters that have him lie and flee to protect her, and her suspecting the worst from his lies and his disappearance. Director Vincente Minelli can’t quite manage to make the second half as convincing and amusing as the first (especially with an ending that’s too abrupt to be satisfactory), but the entire film does work quite well. Peck sells the undermining of masculinity in hilarious fashion, while Bacall is an icon of elegance throughout. The framing device of “talking” to the characters after the fact does add a bit more comedy and suspense to the story, further showing that this was a film with clear and bold intentions. In other words, Designing Women is worth recommending — it’s another proof that the 1950s were far more self-critical than we think, and a great example of a Technicolor romantic comedy with more bite than expected.

  • Swamp Thing (1982)

    Swamp Thing (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) I dimly recall seeing Swamp Thing on French-Canadian TV as a kid, but revisiting the film decades later is a very different experience. It’s nowhere near as scary as it felt, for instance, and Adrienne Barbeau is far more interesting than she was then. On a larger level, the film is now noteworthy for adapting a comic book superhero after Superman but before the twenty-first century boom of the genre. It remains a Wes Craven film even if not being much in terms of horror—except perhaps in its nods toward The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Much of the story is going to be very familiar — scientists studying an unusual creature, industrialists trying to weaponize their findings, the protagonists falling in love, action and adventure as the beast helps the beauty, etc. — and you can draw a few parallels with the (much later) Oscar-winning The Shape of Water. The atmosphere of Southern-USA swamps is very nicely portrayed, and the somewhat campy tone of the film is often more interesting than an overly serious take on the story could have been. Still, Swamp Thing feels like a more ordinary film than I remembered: whether that’s due to me being far less impressionable in middle age or the film remaining of the 1980s, I can’t say.

  • Cocoon: The Return (1988)

    Cocoon: The Return (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) The worst sequels are those that end up negating the point of their predecessors, and Cocoon: The Return does come perilously close to doing that at times. It’s clear that the money-making imperative is the only thing driving this sequel forward because within minutes (and a strangely tasteless “comic suicide” attempt) the retirees who definitely-completely-absolutely-no-backsies left Earth in the first film are all back and enjoying the sights, giving them another opportunity to change their minds, and some of their friends to have a go at leaving with the aliens. Meanwhile, one of the alien cocoons has been found by a research institute and Steve Gutenberg is bringing down the sequel to his usual level of quality. Many of the performances from elderly actors are quite good, but there’s not denying the feeling of repetition and uselessness of Cocoon: The Return, which is merely another drive around a very familiar block.

  • Population 436 (2006)

    Population 436 (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) There’s a moderately intriguing premise at the heart of Population 436 that, sadly, never gets fully realized. It’s right there in the title: a rural town in the American Midwest in which the population has remained at 436 inhabitants for a century. Jeremy Sisto plays an unlikely hero of a census worker sent over there to clear up the mystery when data analytics flag this consistency as suspicious. As it turns out, they have no idea how suspicious it is, because once our protagonist is stuck in town thanks to a car breakdown, he gradually comes to pierce together the horrible truth: that, through a mixture of supernatural phenomena or citizens taking matters into their own hands, the population is made to stay at 436. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t quite know where to go after that — maybe it’s a curse, maybe it’s a deal with the demon, maybe it’s folk horror, maybe it’s something in the ground, maybe it’s the inhabitants taking matters too seriously. Singer Fred Durst shows up in a minor role, but his performance feels like stunt casting in order to get the picture made more than an appropriate choice. Fortunately, the film remains interesting despite not going to the conclusion of its premise: there’s a nice rise of hysteria as the protagonist pieces together the occult conspiracy and it does conclude with a few shocks. Still, file Population 436 under intriguing premises with mediocre execution.

  • Double Happiness (1994)

    Double Happiness (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) As someone who’s had a movie crush on Ottawa-homegirl Sandra Oh for a while, it naturally took about half a second for me to record Double Happiness on the DVR, considering that it’s one of the few films in which she holds the leading role, and if often considered her breakthrough performance. Here she plays a Chinese-Canadian young woman (never mind that Oh is of Korean ethnicity) torn between her traditional upbringing and more western cultural values, trying to please her parents and find her own way. This isn’t groundbreaking material — although it was considerably more novel back in 1994—but the affectionate execution makes it all worthwhile. Writer-director Mina Shum clearly knows what she’s going for, and manages to deliver a film that still feels reasonably fresh even decades and many similar movies later. Oh herself is the film’s biggest asset, delivering a great performance that asks a lot in presenting a double life. If you’re one of her fans, this ranks as one of her essential performances — fairly early in her career, and yet already self-assured.

  • Vox Lux (2018)

    Vox Lux (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) All right, Vox Lux: You have all the rights in the world to be as unpleasant as possible from the get-go (that is: graphic footage of a likable teacher getting gunned down in a school shooting during the film’s opening scene) and then being all mysterious and incoherent until the end… but that doesn’t force me to like you. Writer-director Brady Corbet certainly aims high enough to be considered pretentious, with a two-act structure that seemingly leaves much of the story in the backstory. Part one, beginning in 2000, has to do with a school shooting survivor becoming a national sensation for a song penned in the aftermath of the attack and then becoming a star. The second act picks up sixteen years later as our protagonist (now played by Natalie Portman), in her full-blown egomaniac mode, prepares for a concert and goes lunching with her daughter. It ends at a concert with the possibly-supernatural revelation that our protagonist made a deal with the devil for survival in exchange for perverting the world. Now that’s a premise… too bad it’s a tossed-off line after what feels like an hour of prologue and forty-five minutes of tangents. There are many fascinating things in Vox Lux, from the slightly alternate reality it plays with, to William Defoe voicing an unsettling narrator, to some visual ideas and directorial panache in setting up single-shot sequences. Too bad that it’s so incredibly scattered — thematically, narratively, visually, the film goes everywhere and nowhere at once, not quite understanding the power of focus… or even in following up with the ideas it has. Want to do a film about a deal-with-the-devil singer ruining the twenty-first century? I’m so there. But gallivanting in small-scale fame-building (albeit with Jude Law!), describing a European trip that turns out to be meaningless, glancing off September 11 as a personal tragedy, skipping over much of the dramatic meat of a decaying sororal relationship, playing with the idea of terrorism being inspired by her work, stopping to take a look at diva-like behaviour… Vox Lux is so undisciplined that it begs the question as to what purpose the film intended for itself. It’s just messy, overlong, underwritten, and afraid to poke at its own demons. It’s unconventional all right, but that means that the safety zone for a successful landing is practically non-existent.

  • Next Day Air (2009)

    Next Day Air (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) I have some fondness for those small low-budget comic thrillers with mostly black casts — they’re often a lot of fun to watch even if they’re hardly essential, and it’s that category that I’d place Next Day Air, alongside such titles as All About the Benjamins, Bait, Blue Streak and a few others. The plot is more convoluted than complex, but it deals with an important package being delivered to the wrong address and the efforts of various groups to find it again. A few moderately known names (Donald Faison, Mike Epps, Mos Def) anchor the cast, but much of the film lives on the script rather than the performances. Director Benny Boom apparently has some fun managing the proceedings, although he seems hesitant to either go big on the comedy or the action. There are still a few good moments (including a crime-speak translation) and an eye-catching performance from Yasmin Deliz. Moving briskly at less than 90 minutes, Next Day Air works fast and works well as long as your expectations don’t run particularly high.

  • Doll Graveyard (2005)

    Doll Graveyard (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2021) As I’ve mentioned before, I’m steadily going through horror writer-director Charles Band’s filmography, and I’m at the point where I’m recognizing various motifs. The creepy-doll thing, for instance, is so prevalent as to qualify as an obsession in his work, showing up in at least seven of his movies. In Doll Graveyard (and no one will be blamed if we’re confusing them), a family is besieged by a supernatural menace from beyond the grave, possessing four dolls (or action figures) that kill people in a variety of creative ways. If you’re familiar with Band’s Full Moon catalogue, you know the drill: premise better than the execution, but still with a kernel of interest. The mood is not overly sombre considering the subject matter, although few will be tempted to call it a comedy. Doll Graveyard is mildly entertaining (perhaps best as background viewing) without being all that good which, in the horror genre, qualifies it as more of a success than you’d guess.

  • Guns Akimbo (2019)

    Guns Akimbo (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Prime Streaming, September 2021) I quite liked writer-director Jason Lei Howden’s debut feature Deathgasm, so my expectations ran high for his follow-up Guns Akimbo. It does not disappoint too much. Set in the same irreverent, gory, raunchy and fast-paced style as the previous film, Guns Akimbo focuses on a young video-game developer (Daniel Radcliffe, not bad at all) who, after going troll-hunting on the comment section of a popular deadly livestream series, wakes up to find two guns bolted to his hands and a featured role in the next instalment of the series. Pitted against an extraordinarily competent assassin, he quickly realizes that there’s no one else to turn to. It’s probably useless to complain (even as a formality) that the result is far too violent for its own good. Still, the breakneck pacing of the rest of the film helps in making up for it. Howden gets to the action quickly and lets his camera fly to keep us involved: it’s all frantic in trying to keep up with the convoluted plotting, but the approach will make videogame fans feel right at home. There’s a valid criticism that the film is a lot of flash and not much substance, but then again — Guns Akimbo is more comfortable on a shelf next to Crank and Hardcore Henry than anything else more respectable.

  • Meet the Browns (2008)

    Meet the Browns (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) As is customary for early Tyler Perry movies, there are a lot of familiar elements at play in Meet the Browns: A single mother struggling to keep her kids out of trouble; a suddenly deceased father; a return from Chicago to the south in order to reunite with a family she didn’t know; a tall-dark-handsome romantic prospect with a troubled past; an ex that just won’t stay in his place; street gang drug dealing; and Madea for not much more than a cameo. In execution, it all feels slap-dash: the tone jumps from comedy to drama to romance, the film fails to capitalize on many of its assets (the house renovation, which could have been a powerful thematic device in other hands, is here completely glossed over) and the dialogue can be dryly ordinary. But that’s not necessarily the case throughout: For instance, a sequence in which the patriarch enumerates all of the deceased father’s “hoes” is their scandalous diversity in front of his surviving family is a delightful comic highlight. Angela Basset looks amazing and gives life to her role as the lead; and the morals of the film are in the right place. Sofia Vergara also shows up in a pre-stardom role. I did like the ensemble of characters quickly sketched in straightforward scenes, and the romance is crudely effective in its own way. It makes for likable if imperfect viewing, the kind of thing that works best in a series (as in: “Tyler Perry movies”) than by itself, where it feels slightly too small and incomplete. Case in point: The Madea cameo feels gratuitous and disconnected by itself, but is meant as a lead-in to the next film in the series. On to the next one, then…

  • Lucky Grandma (2019)

    Lucky Grandma (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) One of the best compliments I can make about a film is praising the way it immerses us in another way of living, rarely shown on screen — maybe a historical period, maybe another country, maybe a marginalized group. This praise is usually understood to be an accessory to a sustained narrative: that it complements the story. Lucky Grandma chooses to invert the proportions: It’s primarily a character study, and then only accessorily (and disappointingly) a story. Our protagonist is an unusual figure in American cinema: an elderly woman of Chinese ethnicity, living in New York City’s Chinatown. She speaks English but prefers Cantonese, lives by herself despite her progeny’s concerns, and gets her thrills by going on group outings to Atlantic City casinos. In keeping with writer-director Sasie Sealy’s desire to keep the camera on its protagonist (Tsai Chin, in a remarkable performance) as long as possible, the plot gets going fairly late, as she comes into possession of a duffel bag filled with mob money after an unsuccessful gambling run. She gets involved in a bit of a mob dispute and it ends more realistically than you’d expect. Still, the point here is an American film set in NYC and featuring a majority of Chinese dialogue, in which the English-speaking characters are usually portrayed as intrusions. It’s an unusual mixture — By most standards, it feels slack, slow, and not as much fun as expected. But Lucky Grandma wasn’t designed to be either fast, tight or fun. It does get the atmosphere right, though.