Reviews

  • I Am Sam Kinison (2017)

    I Am Sam Kinison (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) I can certainly see why Sam Kinison would be a good subject for Network Entertainment’s “I Am” series of documentary biopics: He was a grander-than-life entertainment figure, he died young at 38, and he had many well-known friends willing to sit down and talk fondly about him. But unlike the subjects of other films in the series, Kinison’s legacy hasn’t necessarily aged as well — most of his career as a shock stand-up comedian lasted from 1985 to 1992, leaving little trace in permanent medium. His two movie credits include a little-known action film and a small (but memorable) turn in Back to School. His style of aggressive, misogynistic comedy may have been a revelation at the time, but it’s been overtaken and then marginalized by the zeitgeist since then. As the documentary clarifies, Kinison’s public persona was unfortunately close to his private one. Born in a preacher’s family, Kinison did get some experience as an ordained minister before turning to comedy — but an appetite for drugs and two bitter divorces didn’t leave him the most well-adjusted person. The documentary is perhaps at its most interesting in delving into the Los Angeles stand-up comedy scene of the early 1980s, as Kinison lived hard and put together his reputation as a comedian’s comedian. His rockstar-lifestyle (not an exaggeration in his case, as he dabbled in rock music and consumed unbelievable amounts of drugs and alcohol) does lead to enjoyable moments of utter debauchery in the vein of well-known life-fast-die-young narratives. The affection of his friends (Bob Saget, Jay Leno, Joe Rogan, Tommy Chong and Charlie Sheen among them!) is still obvious even decades later — leading up to one of the film’s most vexing characteristics, albeit one shared across the entire “I Am” series: Perilously close to hagiography, it’s a documentary that seeks to minimize the issues surrounding a controversial figure. Kinison’s well-documented misogyny and homophobia are repeatedly given a pass, and the paradoxical consequence of this is that we’re not given a lot in order to appreciate what made Kinison so well-known: For modern-day viewers, much of his shtick is just weird and not funny. The film provides the building blocks to describe how he failed to achieve his potential — in particular, his lackadaisical work ethic and penchant for confrontation that got an entire Hollywood film project shut down barely into shooting. But I Am Sam Kinison is far more concerned about interviewing friends and excusing his behaviour with a now-irritating series of “boys will be boys,” winks. Interestingly, this minimizes the central irony of how the film presents Kinison’s death—that after hard-partying years, he cleaned up, met a woman, was on his way up to a second act—and then died in a freak car crash, not at all like everyone expected him to die even a few years earlier. It’s certainly an interesting film, and one that does much to create interest in a figure that has passed into obscurity. But I am Sam Kinison is far from being the most accurate documentary possible on Sam Kinison.

  • I Am Heath Ledger (2017)

    I Am Heath Ledger (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Another entry in Derik Murray’s “I am” series of biographical documentary features about deceased celebrities, I Am Heath Ledger offers a sometimes-surprising look at the short life and even shorter career of the Australian actor, who earned strong reviews from his opening performance to the last. One of the biggest surprises of the film is the belated realization that for all of the good press and solid hits he played in, Ledger had a Hollywood career of barely nine years, from 10 Things I Hate About You in 1999 to his death at 28 in 2008, even as that year’s The Dark Knight led him to a posthumous Oscar. His filmography has many exceptional roles, and anyone can only imagine what else he could have done had he lived longer. The other, more documentary-specific surprise is the demonstration that Ledger had been an incredibly creative artist and budding filmmaker — I am Heath Ledger showcases numerous short movies and other examples of his always-bubbling exploration of arts. (There’s a short film, possibly shot by himself over a few minutes, that shows terrific craftsmanship in building suspense out of a relatively mundane walk outside.)  Ledger was clearly aiming to become a director — and that, too, only leaves anyone to wonder what else he could have done had he lived longer. As with other “I am” entries, this is a film clearly meant to praise its subject—family members are interviewed, the filmmakers clearly had privileged access to Ledger’s video archives and the film sometimes mentions but really does not dwell on less positive aspects of his life—the drug use, controversies, scattered interests, burn-fast personality and numerous relationships. Most notable is significant ex-partner Michelle Williams’ absence from the footage, even though she reportedly gave her blessing to the project. But while I am Heath Ledger may not give a full picture of its subject, it does remain an uncommonly affectionate recollection of him. Nearly every interviewee seems uncommonly wistful about him, and the result—even with its deficiencies—is an intriguing look to someone gone far too soon.

  • The Bookshop (2017)

    The Bookshop (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) I can recognize a strong, strong bibliophilic wish-fulfillment aspect to The Bookshop, largely by virtue of being a bibliophile myself. Taking place in a 1950s backwater coastal English town, it’s about a woman (Emily Mortimer) bringing civilization to the unenlightened masses by opening a bookshop in a poorly maintained property. But things don’t play out harmoniously, as she comes in conflict with an influential local woman (Patricia Clarkson, unusually malevolent) who had her own plans for the property… and the prejudices of the local population. This being an adaptation of a book aimed at readers, we’re meant to nod in recognition, as some of the time’s literary sensations become plot elements:  One stuffy character’s enthusiasm for Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 immediately brands him as a likable character (well, he is played by Bill Nighy), while we know that Nabokov’s Lolita is going to cause some trouble for the protagonist. Where The Bookshop does distinguish itself from expectations, however, is in the somewhat less-than-triumphant finale where the forces of (literary) enlightenment don’t win the fight. You can certainly argue that the defeat reinforces the “you, dear readers, are terrific!” message in showing what happens when the ignorant masses get their way. It’s not necessarily the conclusion we might have hoped for, but it is announced by somewhat austere cinematography that doesn’t miss a chance to show how damp and drafty the setting can be. The Bookshop is meant as a quiet and perhaps even contemplative film — don’t expect any big confrontations, as even the head-to-head arguments between characters are handled with quite a bit of British restraint. It may be manipulative, but it’s not an unpleasant watch: It plays a lot like a rainy-afternoon kind of book.

  • Too Hot to Handle (1938)

    Too Hot to Handle (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Aviation movies were big in the 1930s, and Too Hot to Handle was at least Clark Gable’s second go at the topic after Test Pilot, also reuniting him with Myrna Loy as love interest. Somewhat more lighthearted than the first film, it’s about an unscrupulous newsreel journalist (Gable) faking his way to spectacular footage and having a lively romance with a pilot (Loy). It’s not a bad premise nor a bad execution, but I found myself a bit underwhelmed by the result. Oh, Gable and Loy bring everything they’ve got (which is a lot), the period atmosphere is enjoyable and the adventures keep piling up, alongside a jaundiced look at the news business. But I may have seen just enough similar movies lately to keep me unimpressed — I may have to revisit Too Hot to Handle later on for a better look.

  • Then She Found Me (2007)

    Then She Found Me (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2021) When I say that I’m intrigued by movies where actors become directors, I probably have to specify that the results so far have been more interesting than satisfying: It’s fascinating to see actors, often known for a specific persona, pick a specific project that speaks to them and presumably get the opportunity to do things their way rather than being directed by someone else. Alas, the track record of actors becoming directors is often disappointing: The films can be dull, meandering, and focused on performances rather than story or visual style. Actors often reach for small-scale drama and it can be a challenge for the films to distinguish themselves as being more than “the directorial debut of X.”  All of this applies to Then She Found Me, the directorial debut of Helen Hunt, who also produced, co-wrote and starred in the film as a middle-aged teacher who (let’s take a deep breath) is left by her milquetoast husband, sees her adoptive mother die, meets her biological mother (who’s also a locally famous talk show host), gets in a relationship with the father of a child in her class and discovers that she’s pregnant with her no-good husband. Adapted from a novel, the script is simultaneously busy and empty, with an accumulation of underwhelming events taking up the space of witty dialogue or any dramatic buildup. Not helped along by a not-meant-to-be-likable protagonist, the third act feels like a carnival of bad decisions motivated by an intrusive author rather than the resolution of the plot threads. At least Hunt is not too bad, and she has brought her friends along for the experience: Matthew Broderick is deliciously slimy, Colin Firth plays another one of his rock-solid romantic protagonists, and (most remarkably) Bette Midler has a substantial role without taking over the entire film in the way she could have. Then She Found Me is certainly watchable, although the lack of distinctiveness to the result is liable to leave anyone wondering if that’s all by the end of it. Which is a surprisingly common reaction to films hyped as directorial debuts of well-known actors.

  • Abraham Lincoln (1930)

    Abraham Lincoln (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2021) It doesn’t take a lot of knowledge about early Hollywood history to understand D.W. Griffith’s importance in the evolution of American cinema: He was one of the pioneers who moved his troupe out west from Fort Lee to Los Angeles, thus precipitating the creation of Hollywood as we knew it. His two best-known films are acknowledged silent cinema landmarks, even if the most reprehensible of them presents the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. But D.W. Griffith’s place in the sun did not survive the arrival of sound in movies: He only made two sound features, and when they’re compared to other films of the era, they definitely show Griffith being overtaken by younger directors more comfortable with the audiovisual possibilities of cinema. Griffith’s innovation in putting together feature-length films and innovating the grammar of cinema was long Hollywood convention by 1930, and the step back in cinematography due to the cumbersome nature of sound-recording equipment is quite obvious here. The camera shots are largely static, filmed like a play rather than the kind of more dynamic camera movements that even contemporaries were using at the time. As far as the portrayal of Lincoln goes, the film is more entertaining early on, as it shows Lincoln as a young man living a tumultuous life than later on when Lincoln becomes a quasi-saintly figure doomed to assassination after freeing the slaves. Not being a Lincoln scholar, I’m told that the film gets more wildly inaccurate as it goes on. But historical accuracy takes a back-seat to the rough technical aspects of the production: ironically, the fact that it’s a talking picture means that our appreciation of the film is more based on decades of sound movies rather than the short period during which silent films were the norm. The melodramatic style, stilted dialogue and stiff filmmaking technique don’t really help in making the result any more interesting. Walter Huston is interesting in the titular role, but the film itself is a chore to get through even at barely more than a 90-minute running time. There’s a sobering thought that by 1930, there were still Civil War veterans who could watch the film, but from 2021 the result is of historical interest far more than straight-up film entertainment.

  • Double Wedding (1937)

    Double Wedding (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) By 1937, both William Powell and Myrna Loy were seasoned Hollywood veterans: they were familiar with making movies, familiar with their personas, and familiar enough with each other to play off a mixture of comfort and looking for something slightly different. So it is that, in Double Wedding, Powell plays a bohemian bon vivant living in a mobile home in order to avoid being tied down to anything or anyone. Opposite him, we have Loy as a controlling business owner. They meet and clash over their respective advice to her sister, who’s being courted by an unimpressive young man and can’t quite decide whether to marry him. Double Wedding certainly enjoys playing with classic romantic comedy tropes: there are few surprises along the way here, but it’s a delight to see the two actors delivering exactly what’s expected to them — and a climactic conclusion that ends with the promised double wedding. Behind the scenes, the film wasn’t such a happy experience — Powell’s fiancé Jean Harlow died during shooting, and his grief was shared by Loy, who was a friend of the couple. Accordingly, the mood on the set was sombre — it’s a wonder that little of it appears on-screen. Still, notwithstanding the off-screen drama, the film itself is a perfectly serviceable illustration of what magic Powell and Loy could do together — him taking his debonair persona in a bohemian direction, her carrying her self-assurance in an ice-queen kind of role. Double Wedding is good without being great, but it’s already great when it features those two leads.

  • Book of Blood (2009)

    Book of Blood (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) Films adapted from Clive Barker’s stories are not assured of greatness, and so there’s a meta-textual suspense element to a film daring to tackle Barker’s celebrated Book of Blood series: Will it do justice to it? As it turns out, writer-director John Harrison’s Book of Blood is nowhere near perfect, but it just about inches its way across the “not bad” finishing line. Substantially more stylish and moodier than other comparable horror films, it does delve into Barker’s usual mixture of body mutilation, violent eroticism, free-flowing blood and supernatural scares. After what seems like a lengthy set-up, the film finally gets going in its last twenty minutes or so, finally unlocking the post-mortem horror that it’s been building toward. A few of the film’s main ideas don’t make sense: the scars and inscriptions “telling the story of the dead” are not quite convincingly executed on-screen, and the film does overreach by going both for exploitative gore and for uplifting afterlife expiation at once. Still, as far as tone and execution are concerned, there have been some much, much worse movies to come out of Barker’s work and Book of Blood is intermittently interesting from time to time. It’s not a big success, but it’s better than many similar movies and that’s already not too bad.

  • Once a Thief (1965)

    Once a Thief (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) There’s a hit-and-miss quality to Once a Thief that steadily brings the film close to a good movie, then retreats and repeats. It does set itself an impossible high bar with a very modern-feeling opening sequence blending a great jazz piece with a robbery sequence. It soon settles for a much less flashy drama — the story of an immigrant (none other than Alain Delon!) trying to forget his past criminal life in order to settle down with his son and wife (none other than Ann-Margret!) but keeps getting dragged back into the criminal life. If you’re going to talk about a cast, this film has a pretty good one, with other roles played by Jack Palance and personal favourite Van Heflin. Ann-Margret’s red mane is wasted in the film’s black-and-white cinematography, but she gets quite a showcase for dramatic intensity with wild hair and screaming sequences. While Once a Thief came too late to be considered a classic film noir, it does have the advantage of its late production date: it’s socially conscious to a degree that would have been unusual in the 1940s and 1950s, concerned as it is about the immigrant experience and the way marginalized people are punished beyond fair retribution. The ending is quite harsh even by the standards of the genre, which paradoxically makes Once a Thief age better than its contemporaries.

  • Crisis (1950)

    Crisis (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Cary Grant steps away from romantic comedies to a thriller in Crisis, a film in which he plays a surgeon coerced into performing a life-saving operation on a South American dictator. Grant is impeccable as usual, but even he can’t quite slip into a role absent most of his strengths as an actor. Still, it’s not an uninteresting film — the buildup to the main narrative is not bad, what with a rich American and his wife getting dragged into their holiday destination’s politics without their consent, and then being forced to operate. There’s a strong medical ethics drama forced on the protagonist, as even an imperceptible slip of the fingers could change the course of an entire country — alas, the film doesn’t quite fulfill this premise, as other events prevent an honest resolution to this dilemma. Still, there’s some tension to the proceedings, especially in the increasingly thornier second act. This is not Grant at his finest, but it does feature him in a style close to his Hitchcock thrillers and dispensing with most of the acting tricks in his usual repertoire.   As such, and considering that most of the film generally holds up reasonably well, Crisis remains a good pick for seasoned Grant fans, if only to see him tackle something slightly different, and dispense with most of what made him such a fan favourite.

  • Promise Her Anything (1966)

    Promise Her Anything (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) I suppose that “a romantic comedy written by the author of The Exorcist” is not the best way to sell Promise Her Anything, so try something like “Warren Beatty plays a Greenwich Village nudie film director who is stuck babysitting the toddler son of a love interest played by Leslie Caron.”  There! Much better—although not that appealing. Infused with the very particular atmosphere of a 1960s sex comedy but saddled with some messy romantic comedy complications, this is a film that doesn’t quite know where it’s going, and certainly can’t hit a mark that it doesn’t know exists. If you’re in the business of selling romantic fantasy, you’re also responsible for selling a simplification of life. Once we’re deep in the female lead picking husbands, one of her picks being a kid-hating paediatrician and the other making adult movies while the kid is watching… well, that’s not exactly reassuring at all. (Even the “adult film” portion is toned down, as per 1960s comedies, to nothing worse than swimwear.) Beatty is stuck in a light comedy not suitable for his talents, and the same can also be said for Caron, although she does get to wear an amazing body-hugging white lace two-piece outfit that’s easily more alluring than the half-naked girls showing up in the naughty films. It’s all acceptable if you’re in a forgiving mood, but it’s not in any way exceptional even when you compare it to other 1960s sex comedies. It either doesn’t try or try too hard, and as a result it settles for nothing much. Promise Her Anything is slightly interesting if you’re looking to catalogue the evolution of film comedy in the 1960s, but by the point it becomes relevant, you’ve already seen all the better ones.

  • Meat the Future (2020)

    Meat the Future (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2021) If you want a better future, there aren’t very many better areas of research than cultured meat — the very real process through which we can grow meat in factories, without mass animal breeding. Even speaking as a proud omnivore who worked dozens of summers on a family farm and deeply understands the way animals are transformed into meat, you’d have to be willfully blind not to understand the appeal of mass cultured meat: lower costs, far smaller ecological footprint and near-eradication of animal slaughter. (I’m not that receptive to the idea of farming as being inherently cruel, but modern factory farming is nothing like the bucolic family farm I grew up on.)  Once economies of scale are realized, once customers get used to the idea of cultured meat, once chefs and nutritionists get their hands on what’s possible with cultured meat, it’s going to be here to stay — and the cheap meat it’s going to replace will not be mourned. Meat the Future shows the technology at the end of its proof-of-concept stage: possible and edible but before its mass commodisation. It’s still a time when basic elements of the future are being discussed — as per the debate between calling it “clean meat” moving on to the more neutral “cultured meat.”  Quite a bit of time is spent humanizing the various people working toward the acceptance of cultured meat for their own reasons — most notably Dr. Uma Valeti, whose values as a child raised in India prove essential to his drive as CEO of Memphis Meat. There’s a bit of sausage being made (if you’ll pardon the expression) in seeing how policy is created in Washington, with near-caricatures of meat industry lobbyists opposing cultured meat to protect entrenched interests. Despite a topic matter that could make a few viewers squeamish (hopefully they never get a look at what’s going on inside modern factory farms), writer-director-producer Liz Marshall’s Meat the Future is among the most optimistic films I’ve seen in a while — It’s clear-eyed about the promise and challenges of cultured meat, and it does a great job at presenting the topic in an interesting manner. Frankly, it made me a bit hungry.

  • Too Big to Fail (2011)

    Too Big to Fail (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) I have a great deal of admiration for films like Too Big to Fail, which attempts to tell the abstract story of a financial system on the brink of collapse and somehow manages to make it interesting, gripping and human. Fictionalizing the events of the 2008 financial crisis, it’s a film that features a dizzying ensemble cast of known actors playing bite-sized parts, showing up for mere moments in order to deliver some pieces of exposition. The script is admirable in how it boils down complex ideas and esoteric notions into short punchy scenes, making the final result fit in substantially less than two hours. Director Curtis Hanson somehow keeps it all intelligible, even as characters come in and out of frame, with helpful subtitles to tell us who they are playing. William Hurt plays the film’s designated hero, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, as a man inheriting a problem of historical proportions, and trying to find unthinkable ways to save the system from blowing up. It’s all surprisingly witty, tense and even admirable in how various schemes are put together in an attempt to control a system that few understand. The flip-side of the film, of course, is that it makes heroes out of situations where there was a lot of blame to go around — unlike The Big Short, it’s not really interested in assigning blame, working itself up in righteous anger or examining the opportunity cost of a situation where “the system” was saved but no one important was punished. (Meanwhile, homeowners and lower-level employees…)  It’s a film that’s partly about capitalism back-patting itself for how it has captured the regulatory and legislative process: there’s probably a really smart and venomous progressive critique of Too Big to Fail out there that I haven’t yet read, and it’s just as valid a take. Until then, I can’t help but be half-amazed at how much stuff the film manages to fit in 98 minutes, whether it’s featuring the character of Nancy Pelosi, portraying ultra-high-level conversations, having a glimpse at how international policy is made, brainstorming with the bright kids providing assistance or the personal toll that crises take on even Very Serious People. It’s all playing on a very different registry than most films, and perhaps for that alone Too Big to Fail is a truly fascinating piece of work.

  • King of Kings (1961)

    King of Kings (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) I’m not sure there’s anything really interesting to say about King of Kings. One of the last big epics of the wave that began in the 1950s, it tackles perhaps the biggest story in the Western canon—The Passion of the Christ—and gives it the maximalist treatment that blockbuster films went for at the time. It’s melodramatic, unsubtle, garishly dependent on Technicolor and almost exactly what we can imagine from hearing “The Passion of the Christ as filmed in 1960.”  I’m almost sure I watched the film a few times while attending Catholic grade school, and as a result I’m almost disarmed as a reviewer in trying to find anything else to add about the film. It’s an Easter Weekend film staple for a reason — despite relying on acclaimed director Nicholas Ray, it’s one of the most basic takes on its topic, and by the same token one of the most innocuous. I’ll take Jesus Christ Superstar over King of Kings most days of the week, but I can’t deny that it’s one straightforward take on an incredibly familiar story.

  • Rising Sun (1993)

    Rising Sun (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) There are movies worth a look because they are not good, original, timeless or kind-hearted. Rising Sun is one of those. Adapted from a typically hysterical Michael Crichton novel published the previous year, it shamelessly exploits the anti-Japanese rhetoric of the time, at a point where Americans were convinced that the Japan Inc. juggernaut was unstoppable — that it would gobble up companies, dominate manufacturing, steal secrets, control politics and make Washington regret that unfortunate Hiroshima/Nagasaki business. There’s an instructive history lesson in watching Rising Sun’s characters ponder the inscrutable yet all-powerful ways the Japanese are poised to rule, and the reality of what happened later on — enough to make you look twice at any similar prediction made today. But so it goes — Rising Sun is, from its first moments onward, a film made to fan fears. Made in the form of a buddy crime thriller, it features an incredibly American cop (Wesley Snipes, not yet full of himself) paired with a veteran ex-cop (late-career Sean Connery in a rather good interpretation of a bad role) with a deep knowledge of Japanese culture and norms. Connery plays the voice of authority here, confidently instructing us in how exactly the Japanese escape American norms and laws in their all-conquering path. It all feels ridiculous thirty years later, but the point it — many people believed it, and believed it for a long time. The rest of the film is slightly better once it lays off the xenophobia and embraces its familiar nature as a buddy-cop techno-thriller: in keeping with its source novel, Rising Sun peeks at some of the gee-whiz technology of the time (such as real-time surveillance video editing) and occasionally scores a few better moments when it focuses on suspense sequences rather than anti-Japanese racism. (It feebly attempts to distance itself from racism by featuring “good” Japanese characters and a Caucasian villain… but nobody’s fooled.)  Tia Carrere and Steve Buscemi have short appearances. By itself it’s not a very good film — its xenophobia is embarrassing, and so is the way it’s integral to the plot. But the way the film has aged poorly (That other Michael Crichton film of 1993 was… Jurassic Park) should be a hard-hitting lesson to all — racism is bad for all sorts of reasons, one of the longest-lasting of them being how it just makes you look stupid to later generations.