Reviews

  • In & Of Itself (2020)

    In & Of Itself (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) One of my pandemic hobbies has been to learn a lot more about magic — specifically, the tricks of the trade, advice to magicians, elementary card tricks (including how to cheat) and the basic elements of most magical performances. You don’t need to be worried about me being a pest the next time we meet — I don’t have the patience, the training time or the drive to become even an amateur magician. But learning about how the tricks are performed has led me to one big conclusion: Magic is not as much about the trick as the patter surrounding the tricks and the atmosphere in which people want to believe the trick. There won’t be a better illustration of this as In & Of Itself, a filmed version of the intimate off-Broadway show that Derek DelGaudio performed 552 times (we’re told) in Manhattan from 2017 to 2018. Calling it a magic show is both true and appropriately deceptive because DelGaudio creates an elaborate narrative frame around the dozen illusions he performs, and does so with disarming charm, getting closer to his audience in order to pull the rug from under them. A superior card trick is placed within the frame of a biographical episode in which he’s warned about the dangers of appearing to cheat at cards. A prodigious feat of memorization is placed within the frame of defining identities for ourselves. It’s a heady mix of philosophical references, storytelling, personal recollections delivered in a raw manner, a sense of continuity from show to show, and creating an electrifying atmosphere for the live audience that translates surprisingly well to the screen. (Director Frank Oz, who helped stage the live show, effectively uses duplicated footage from several shows in order to give screen audiences an idea of how the same effect played out over several performances.)  It’s all very effective, largely because of everything surrounding the illusions — I’m relieved that DelGaudio isn’t a cult leader, because I could recognize several of the techniques used to manipulate small audiences into fast intimacy and frenzies of belief. Still, as a show, it’s quite a show. The painstakingly crafted illusions are delivered effectively (even in throwaway bits, such as the visual shocker at the very end) and while I suspect that I know how many of the tricks were performed in a general sense, that takes nothing away from what remains a great performance piece.

  • The Long Good Friday (1980)

    The Long Good Friday (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, March 2021) As with many gangster films, The Long Good Friday doesn’t do anything new, but it does it with some style and period flourish. Definitely a product of the late 1970s, it’s a gangster narrative set in London, featuring intrusions by the IRA and prescient ideas about the place of London as the financial capital of Europe. The standout performances here are from Bob Hoskins as a gangster trying to transform himself into a respectable businessman, as well as a young and attractive Helen Mirren as his girlfriend. Barrel-shaped Hoskins is well-suited to the role in all of his charm and inherent menace. Mirren doesn’t have as much to do in a more conventional role, but it’s a welcome reminder of the stone-cold fox she was in her early years. The gritty atmosphere of the film fits well with the New Hollywood aesthetics of the 1970s, even though The Long Good Friday isn’t above a few spectacular sequences when it feels like them — most notably a sequence near the end where a shootout leads to several car crashes in a lunatic comedy of errors. It does feel like a British Scorsese film at times, which is probably the best compliment we can give it nowadays. The period atmosphere is all-enveloping and the narrative moves steadily forward. In other words — The Long Good Friday may be unsurprising, but it’s a really good viewing experience made even better by Hoskin’s command over the film.

  • Turner & Hooch (1989)

    Turner & Hooch (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, March 2021) Coming toward the end of Tom Hanks’ first comedy-focused period, Turner & Hooch sees him paired up with a dog, in keeping with the trend at the time. He’s a policeman in a small city longing for a more exciting life, but the best he can do at short notice is getting saddled with the dog of a murder victim. A big, rough, ugly, drooling mastiff running roughshod over his carefully-organized life and apartment. Fortunately, there’s a murder case to solve, antagonists to defeat, and a cute veterinarian (Mare Winningham) to meet. In other words, you do have a good idea of where this is going, and the film does not disappoint expectations, although the ending is tweaked for a good cry. Hanks is a good sport about it all and his persona is very much in-line with his other films of the 1980s—but there’s only so much he can do with such conventional material. Turner & Hooch is not unpleasant to watch (I remembered the opening scene from a previous viewing decades ago, for instance), but it’s not a film built for maximum comic potential if you’re not in the target audience for wacky ugly dog antics. Looking at the film’s production history, I see that there’s finally confirmation that the original director, Henry Winkler, was fired thirteen days into the production due to conflicts with Hanks (really!?!) and that’s how Roger Spottiswoode ended up credited as director. No matter the off-screen drama, that result on-screen is somewhat innocuous, and certainly more intended toward kids than the rest of the family.

  • Foxy Brown (1974)

    Foxy Brown (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) For a screen legend such as Pam Grier, it’s surprising to realize that her famous early starring period was quite short — half-a-dozen films with American Pictures International from 1973 to 1975, after which the blaxploitation movement lost steam and so did her career. I’m sad to report that, in seeing Foxy Brown, I’m now left with one less of her films to discover. That sadness is somewhat offset by how, even though Foxy Brown is widely acknowledged as one of her better-known roles, it’s a bit of a step down from her slightly-more polished turn in Friday Foster. Here, she’s a grieving woman seeking revenge on drug dealers for shooting down her boyfriend. Her character also gets treated much rougher here than in other films: Disrobed, captured, drugged, raped and manipulated by the script in order to set up the revenge fantasy of the film’s final minutes, it’s far more clearly an exploitation film than Friday Foster was. Foxy Brown does represent that darker side of blaxploitation: while it features black characters proudly presenting themselves as part of black culture, it’s also rife in gory violence, sexual abuse and a lack of higher moral aspirations than revenge. The film can’t escape the gawking aspect of white filmmakers presenting black culture, and has aged a bit more poorly due to how Grier’s character is treated throughout. (Both Coffy and Friday Foster do better in that regard.)  Still, well, it is a film featuring Pam Grier from beginning to end, and she is, in the words of one character, “a whole lotta woman” — great period outfits, impeccable attitude and unarguable physical attributes make her a treat to watch (except when she’s being thrown in the deep end of the film’s exploitation pool of horrors). There are better Pam Grier films, but there aren’t a lot of them, so Foxy Brown still ends up as mandatory viewing for fans of the actress… even if they may regret it at times.

  • The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

    The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, March 2021) Like most of Disney Animation Studio’s 1940s output, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is a feature-film-length collection of shorter segments — the 35 minutes The Wind in the Willows featuring Mr. Toad (from the novel by Kenneth Grahame) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from the short story by Washington Irving. While I’d be willing to bet that what most people remember from this film is that terrifying shot of the pumpkinhead being thrown at the camera (a shot so good that it became the featured trailer stinger for Tim Burton’s 1999 live-action adaptation), the entire film is far funnier than you’d expect. The first segment, featuring Mr. Toad, is a compelling character study of a remarkable eccentric, while the second makes far more mileage out of Ichabod being a comic character than you’d expect from its sombre set-piece. The animation is quite impressive throughout—featuring a steady amount of physical comedy, and often technically superior to some of Disney’s later features of the 1960s–1980s. It’s pleasant to hear Basil Rathbone narrate the first segment and Bing Crosby narrates the second, with some crooning on the side. There’s some weirdness throughout, though: in-keeping with its production date, the gender roles are dated, and there’s a curious moment in which an overweight girl is meant to be shown as unattractive, which doesn’t match what we’re seeing. Still, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is quite effective, and for Disney historians it’s yet another reminder of the dire straits in which the studio found itself during the 1940s. Fun for the entire family, it stands above most of the Disney anthology films of the era as well.

  • The Comic (1969)

    The Comic (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) There’s a lot to like in The Comic for fans of early silent comedy — with Dick Van Dyke playing a silent comedian struggling to stay relevant in a world moving forward, the film ends up being a melancholic take on the careers of people such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, whose careers never quite adapted to the sound era. Still, let’s not read too much into the film’s character as a version of those two — the protagonist here is a terrible person marginally made tolerable by a talent for a very specific kind of physical comedy that became far less popular after the end of silent cinema. The rest of the film, narrated from the casket, doesn’t get any better for him — divorce follows his adultery, his son disappears from his life and a trip to Europe doesn’t improve his fortune at all. It’s not hard to understand why Dick Van Dyke is perfect for the role, as he plays the slapstick perfectly in silent film sequences faithfully re-created by writer/director Carl Reiner — aside from the too-good visual quality, you’d swear those were real silent films. There’s also quite a bit of more dramatic material for Van Dyke to play, as his character just keeps digging himself deeper into a hole and refuses to move on with the times while alienating everyone who does. (This is where the Keaton comparisons most definitely end — Keaton’s fall from grace had more to do with a bad contract that led to many damaging outcomes, such as alcoholism: he otherwise kept working until his death, including as a gagman to MGM and a mentor to younger comedians such as Red Skelton.)  This is another entry in the sad-films-about-comedians subgenre but it’s not entirely glum nor unjustified: the lead character is not admirable outside his performances, and the entire film feels closer to tragedy than humiliation. The post-mortem narration does help take the edge off, obviously, although I don’t think that the film quite closes the loop on that. Still, while The Comic is not as funny an experience as many would like (the final shot is a big sad statement), there’s quite a bit here for fans of Van Dyke, Reiner or silent cinema to chew on.

  • A Kiss in the Dark (1949)

    A Kiss in the Dark (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Short and perfunctory, A Kiss in the Dark works best as a showcase for David Niven and Jane Wyman, as he plays a concert pianist who discovers he’s the owner of a slightly dilapidated apartment building in Manhattan. Investigating the situation, he comes to meet the eccentric tenants and finds himself captivated by the cutest of them all (Wyman, obviously). As a comedy film, it runs a bit long even at 87 minutes — the narrative arcs are familiar, from the easily-resolved romantic triangle to the workaholic-no-more theme to the bellowing tenant tortured into submission. (Wait, what? Well, yes — the film does suffer from a bit of protagonist-centred morality in how a tenant is cruelly sleep-deprived. You’d argue that he had it coming by punching the protagonist in the first place, but that only raises more disturbing questions as to why the film seems so fond of its characters frequently punching each other in the face and why the police aren’t brought in for assault charges.)  This is not sophisticated stuff, although Niven’s stereotypically British persona and Wyman’s attractiveness will make anyone overlook most of the film’s flaws. It’s also fun to see Broderick Crawford in a supporting role as a cranky-and-violent antagonist. Still, there simply isn’t enough in A Kiss in the Dark (not the best title!) to stay interesting. Despite the building’s 53 tenants, the film focuses on too few of them and pads its comic scenes with too much repetition. There’s some chemistry between the leads and it’s all too likable to dislike… but this is an average comedy as best, one that just happened to star compelling performers.

  • Funny Man (1994)

    Funny Man (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) No one will ever mistake Funny Man for a good movie, but to recognize its value fairly, it does have the undeniable advantage of being so weird as to be compelling. The barebones plotting (a man moves into a house he just won at cards from Christopher Lee and discovered that it’s haunted by a jester-looking monster who slaughters everyone in sight) is just an excuse for eerie visuals, taking a jester archetype to its goriest extreme. There are plenty of stretched latex, slime, gore and overdone sound effects in the over-the-top death sequences, and the result isn’t disgusting as much as it’s surreal and far more imaginative than death sequences in tamer horror films. There’s clearly an intention to go all-out here, taking advantage of the jester figure to straddle a thin line between extreme horror and frazzled comedy. (Keep an eye out for a visual reference to Scooby Doo’s Velma.)  Lee barely has more than a cameo, but it’s a good cameo. Tim James has a lot more to do as the Jester (occasionally addressing the audience). Among the victims, Pauline Black does make a stronger impression than other actors as a “psychic commando.”  Witty and self-aware, Funny Man is a bit of a surprise — it’s not as well-known as many staider horror films of the era, but it has a confirmed loopiness that keeps it interesting long after it should have become repetitive. I’m not completely uncomfortable placing it in the same rough category as the Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson films of the 1990s, although there’s clearly a noticeable gap in quality between the two. Still, Funny Man is much better than its direct-to-video pedigree may suggest.

  • Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)

    Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, March 2021) At this point, it seems to be even odds that Will Ferrell (now 53) will keep playing man-child characters with poor impulse control until the end of his acting career. Despite a few welcome attempts to expand his comic repertoire, Ferrell often goes back to familiar archetypes, and his middle-aged singing dreamer in the Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is nothing new. Taking affectionate aim at the Eurovision Song Contest (which, to be fair, owes much of its current popularity to a semi-comic sensibility already), it does boil down to a familiar arc — lovable losers asked to surpass themselves in front of a large audience and work out their personal conflicts along the way. Ferrell plays a character who should be at least twenty years younger, but that’s how the Ferrell brand of comedy rolls and will keep rolling. While Eurovision does have its moments of mirth, it’s rarely as enjoyable as during its musical numbers — the highlight being a medley performance from several past Eurovision contestants. It becomes far more laborious when it stops singing and moves through a familiar narrative without too many surprises. Rachel McAdams outshines Ferrell by playing the straight woman to his more ludicrous character and committing herself to an acting/singing performance. (She’s dubbed, but it sounds good.)  Meanwhile Dan Stevens also earns some attention with a strong supporting performance. Still, the film’s saving grace may be that it’s joyous and colourful — even as it runs through the usual Ferrell narrative, it unleashes itself when it counts, which is to say during the musical numbers. That’s probably the bare minimum expected from this film, considering its pedigree — you go into Eurovision knowing what to expect.

  • The Raven (1963)

    The Raven (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Some movies should come with warnings along the line of “don’t watch this before you watch those other movies.”  If that was applied to The Raven, the prerequisite would probably include movies featuring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre just so you’d come into it expecting their screen persona. You would probably also want to include at least one of producer/director Roger Corman’s horror films of the period just to give an idea of what audiences were expecting. Finally, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to throw in a later film from Jack Nicholson to show how far he’d go from this film to superstardom, and probably a modern fantasy film just to highlight what happens when a genre becomes fully defined. But let me explain — Roger Corman, at the time, was adapting classical works of horror literature (many of them from Edgar Allan Poe) as pretexts for horror films. Price and Karloff were already horror movie icons, whereas Lorre was a fixture as “creepy guy” in a variety of films. Jack Nicholson was barely beginning his long career, and fantasy as a genre (not just as movie genre) was at least a decade from being codified. But The Raven tried something weirdly different, delivering a fantasy comedy based on Poe’s “The Raven” that allowed Price and Karloff to portray rival sorcerers trying to one-up each other. The poem’s “Lenore” is a traitorous harridan, while Lorre portrays The Raven, occasionally spitting feathers. It’s definitely a comedy, although modern viewers may want to temper their expectations regarding the density and impact of the jokes. Sometimes, The Raven seems to bask simply in how weird it is, without going the extra mile of making itself funny — but then again, I suspect that Corman’s idea of what’s funny wasn’t that of a conventional comedian. From modern lenses, the weirdness of the film also comes from working with unbuilt tropes — picture “wizard” in your head, and you won’t match the film’s vision of “wizard” because it came in ten years before the printed version of The Lord of the Rings and, in turn, the way wizards have been portrayed in fantasy literature since then. Any circa-2021 attempt to retell the same story would be far more overly funny, but would also deal in visual archetypes familiar to audiences from decades of fantasy films all going for the same iconography. Where that leaves The Raven for modern audiences is more akin to interesting experiment… as long as you’re familiar with the prerequisites of the film. Seeing Karloff and Price in a lighter register than usual is fun, but the film stops well short of hilarious. If you’ve seen the prerequisites, though, go ahead and have fun — The Raven is meant to be playful all the way to its closing lines: Nevermore!

  • Hangar 18 (1980)

    Hangar 18 (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2021) I distinctly recall watching at least the vivid conclusion of Hangar 18 as a teenager, meaning that I started this second viewing with the apprehension that I knew how it would all turn out. But as the film advanced, images from another film kept intruding: Capricorn One, which (three years before Hangar 18) also played with a conspiracy theorist’s view of the space program, shadowy officials prepared to kill as part of a cover-up and astronauts involved in car chases (with sabotaged brakes!) to find the truth. But whereas Capricorn One is a good movie, Hangar 18 definitely isn’t. Oh, there are a few interesting moments — the opening sequence set aboard the then-prototypical space shuttle is intriguing despite being ridiculously inaccurate, the car chase sequence has its moments despite basic staging issues, and the sombre machinations by ruthless government managers are enough to make any conspiracy thriller fans happy. Alas, a lot of indulgence is required throughout — the narrative never makes sense on a basic level, whether it’s getting a UFO in a government hangar, or the final flourish of trying to bomb the hangar to keep a secret. (!) The script is hampered by its ridiculous assertions that this is somehow based on a true story and as a result never bother distinguishing most of its characters — something further compounded by casting that largely sought out the same middle-aged white males. (If it helps, Robert Vaughn is in the film and he’s distinguishable because, hey, he’s Robert Vaughn.)  The expected ending feels like a bit of a murderous cheat considering that the white male characters live even as the more diverse supporting cast presumably bites it around them. There’s a sense that the film believes just a bit too much in its conspiracies to be able to create a believable narrative — it seems to address wide-eyed believers, assuming that they’ll accept anything. It’s too bad, because you can recognize here the elements that could lead to a much better film if they were handled with more wit. But instead, we get a B-grade version of a B-grade movie. Notwithstanding that memorable last shot, it’s really not enough.

  • All of Me (1984)

    All of Me (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) While it may not be mentioned as often as The Jerk or Roxanne or other Martin films between 1979 and 1988, All of Me is just as representative of Steve Martin’s earlier, funnier film performances. (Its lower profile probably comes from the fact that Martin isn’t credited with co-writing the script.)  While its body-possessing premise may not be as cheerfully absurdist as other Martin films of the time, it does let him perform several sequences of pure body comedy. Playing a meek man whose body ends up half-possessed by a rich heiress, Martin pulls out all the stops in showing a man half-controlling his movements, with the other half freaking out at the predicament. Much of the good stuff, however, takes place in the buildup of the film — perhaps sensing overexposure, the body comedy gradually leaves enough space for a strong comic narrative in tie for a satisfying ending. Martin gets some astonishing support from Lily Tomlin as the heiress whose possession plans ran amuck — Director Carl Reiner keeps her in the film long after her death by having her show up in mirrors to talk to Martin’s protagonist, leading to a final shot that becomes a likable romantic flourish on top of the entire film. The entire film is in a slightly different comic register than other Martin movies, but it holds up very well even today, and probably deserves a bit more attention — the best sequences are anthology-worthy.

  • Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

    Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Coming from the end of the classic film noir era, Odds Against Tomorrow does have one interesting wrinkle for an urban subgenre that remained surprisingly Caucasian-tinted throughout its first iteration: A black main character. While much of the story will feel very familiar and bridges the gap between classic noir and bank robbery thrillers, the race of the main character does bring something different and interesting to the results. Of course, much of this has to do with Harry Belafonte (who also co-produced the film)— always a charismatic performer, and fascinating to watch in a film focused on harder-edged crime suspense. Racism becomes a further source of tension between the men plotting the bank robbery and as things predictably blow up toward the end of the film, it does add an extra dimension of social commentary to a film not completely focused on genre mechanics. (The coda is not subtle about the essential meaninglessness of race in those circumstances, but it’s far better than avoiding the issue.)  Director Robert Wise was never an accomplished stylist, but he here manages to create an effective sense of tension, at least when the action gets started in the second half. Odds Against Tomorrow does falter when compared to other bank heist films of the 1950s, but the racial element alone distinguishes it from a lot of similar films, and justifies by itself a look at the result — if it’s not already on your viewing list if only for Belafonte’s presence.

  • The Story of Three Loves (1953)

    The Story of Three Loves (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) As much as we can admire classic Hollywood’s greatest hits, talk fondly about its actors and follow the filmography of its directors, not every film of the era leaves a mark, even when it does feature great directors and a cast of known names. That’s the case with The Story of Three Loves given its severe structural issues: an anthology film composed of three segments, it suffers from the usual afflictions of such movies. The actors are only there for a third of the time, the tone shifts all over the place, the segments aren’t equally interesting, and there’s less time to attach ourselves to the characters, which is particularly bad in discussing character-based romance. Accordingly, perhaps, each segment has its own gimmick — from ballet dancing to body-switching to trapeze. Alas, the three segments also feel like short takes on topics that would be best approached in better full-length movies such as The Red Shoes, Big and Trapeze, respectively. Sure, there’s Kirk Douglas tearing up the screen, Leslie Caron speaking French and James Mason’s distinctive vocal cadence. But they’re not there for the entire film — in fact, they’re in three different segments. Vincente Minnelli directs one segment but not the others. Perhaps inevitably, The Story of Three Loves doesn’t leave much of an impression, nor much to chew upon. It is an eloquent example of what early-1950s MGM could bring to bear on a project, but it’s not, by itself, something particularly striking.

  • Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

    Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Considering the gallons of alcohol apparently drunk on-screen during the Hollywood movies of the 1960s and the industry’s tolerance of the habit, it’s almost refreshing to see a film of the era squarely tackle the problems of alcoholism in a non-glamorous, often unsettling way. It all begins as our protagonist (Jack Lemmon, quite unlike other roles in his filmography) argues about the ethics of alcohol-fuelled schmoozing events with a likable secretary (Lee Remick, often quite good). One thing leads to another, and soon they’re not only married with a daughter, but chugging back heroic quantities of booze under the pretence of social drinking. He loses his job; she sets a fire to their apartment that almost kills her and their daughter. He realizes that he’s got no choice than to go sober — but she doesn’t see it that way. The initial breezy romantic comedy of the first few minutes eventually gives way to dramatic thunder-and-lightning dramatic scenes, glasshouse trashing and a runaway wife. This isn’t meant to be a comedy, and the haunting final shot suggests that the troubles are never going away. Lemmon is particularly interesting here, as his gift for comedy is used to get our sympathy, and then turn it inside out as his dramatic outbursts end up being even more striking because they feel out of character. Still, despite slightly misogynist notes in the screenplay, I think that Remick gets the best role as the teetotaller with addictive tendencies who gets overwhelmed by the overwhelming appeal of alcoholism — she goes from picture-perfect secretary to a wild-haired floozy in less than 90 minutes. (Both of them got Oscar nominations out of the film.) There’s some irony in seeing that the film is an early entry in director Blake Edwards’s filmography — alcohol fuels much of the comedy of his later films, but he himself became sober a year after wrapping up production on Days of Wine and Roses (there was apparently a lot of drinking going on during filming for him and Lemmon, who also went sober years later). While the film can’t resist exploitation and melodrama, it is unflinching about the cumulative damage of heavy drinking. The result is something that still has quite a bit of resonance today, and a welcome demonstration of what Lemmon and Remick could do with the right material.