Reviews

  • It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)

    It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Generally speaking, the best Christmas movies are both about the typical values of Christmas (family, generosity, kindness) while having other things on the go than simply waiting for December 25. Such is the case with It Happened on Fifth Avenue, a film that doesn’t necessarily revel in the pageantry of the season, but does its best to showcase Christmas values. The story has, over the years, acquired a patina of period-specific characteristics, as veterans returned from WW2 can’t find places to stay due to a housing crisis, and see themselves left on the margins of society even as able-bodied, skilled people. A solution offers itself to the protagonist of our story, as he’s told about a rich man’s mansion left unoccupied while the owner winters over in another state. Two homeless men living in luxury seems like an ideal arrangement until the daughter of the owner shows up and passes herself off as another vagabond. Then the father comes back and also pretends to be a homeless person in his own house… Pretty soon, the film is awash in romance, hidden identities, crucial choices, a makeshift micro-society in an opulent house, and Holiday cheer as Christmas draws closer and closer. Director Roy Del Ruth does a good job keeping everything humming along, which is supported by Don DeFore as the protagonist, and the very cute Gale Storm as the disguised owner’s daughter. While It Happened on Fifth Avenue is not specifically geared toward being an outright comedy and thus suffers from a few lulls, the entire film is quite charming and Christmas-adjacent enough to be worth a look even if you’re burnt out by Christmas Eve. It’s a crowd-pleaser in the most classic sense, and hits its marks no matter when you see it during the year.

  • Spotlight on Christmas aka Starring Christmas (2020)

    Spotlight on Christmas aka Starring Christmas (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) By now, the formulaic nature of Christmas romantic comedies made in the Hallmark/Lifetime tradition is so well-defined that even my local middlebrow radio station had a segment about it. (There was a local connection — my hometown of Ottawa is a major player in the Christmas movie production market considering that there’s usually more snow here than in any other filmmaking centre.) Take an urban career professional, send her back to her hometown in time for Christmas, have her meet a single hunk (bonus points if they were high school sweethearts), have them spend some time together with our urban professional bringing some of her professionalism for a local cause and the rest of the film writes itself. The amazing thing is that even by 2020, the formula is still followed precisely: Spotlight on Christmas distinguishes itself from the pack by making the heroine a famous Hollywood actress, but otherwise sticks to the formula as if it was deathly afraid of any deviation. Given my interest in all things Hollywood (even funhouse distortion of it) and the current December Christmas spirit, I thought I’d give it a chance and see if I had any fun watching it. It must have been the magic of the holidays, because I did – although I have to admit that I left the film playing while doing something else: This is not meant to be dense filmmaking, and the nature of the formula means that you can take five-minute breaks and still follow what was happening perfectly well. Still, the failure mode of Christmas romantic movies is nowhere near that of other genres: They’re upbeat, charming, not meant to be taken seriously and innocuous, even at their worst. The barrier for success is low and the crews working on those films are practised enough that it’s hard to mess up the recipe. Complaining that Spotlight on Christmas is strikingly unrealistic in its portrayal of an actress’ life is completely missing the point, as is any comment saying that their relationship won’t make it past Easter. It’s meant to be a comforting blanket with as few real-life reminders as possible and by that metric, Spotlight on Christmas is neither better nor worse than other movies made in that genre. It’ll rerun for years and be forgotten within days, that second characteristic feeding into the first one. It is exactly what it is.

  • Hip Hop Holiday (2019)

    Hip Hop Holiday (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) One of BET television’s 2019 Christmastime offerings is Hip Hop Holiday, a romantic comedy set during the holidays within the world of Hip-Hop showbiz. Trina Braxton stars as an initially unbearable diva who gets a gradual personality change thanks to the reappearance of an old flame. As is often the case with those bad-girls-redeemed-by-good-men tales (or the gender-flipped reverse), there’s a feeling that everything that made the character interesting is gradually stripped away by the ongoing romance, until, at the end, we’re left with a near-lobotomized version of the person we started with. That’s not being against personality growth in movie narratives – it’s wishing that something more interesting would replace the abrasive hellion that we start with. The same goes for the film in general: while the world of Hip-Hop makes for a decent backdrop to the action, this too gradually disappears throughout the film to focus almost exclusively on the mini-universe of the romantic couple. This doesn’t help Hip Hop Holiday overcome the usual problems with Christmas romances – the foreordained conclusion, slap-dash dialogue, lower production budget and heavy reliance on audience goodwill. Hip Hop Holiday is certainly acceptable (especially as background noise), but there’s nothing here to warrant sustained attention.

  • USS Christmas (2020)

    USS Christmas (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) The Hallmark Christmas movie behemoth leers toward the American military-entertainment complex in USS Christmas, a transposition of the brand’s usual serving of holiday romance to a military setting. The plot has to do with a journalist taking a tiger cruise, encountering a mysteriously seductive Grinch (it’s his call name) and digging into a romantic mystery in the ship’s archives. While the aircraft carrier makes for a more intriguing than usual backdrop to the romance, the film pretty much plays to expectations. If you’ve seen a Hallmark Christmas romance movie, you‘ll be right at ease here – the intent is comfort, not surprise or shock. Alas, this also means that the film gets away with the usual problems of the brand: cute-but-not-sexy leads, mismatched chemistry, outrageous plot holes and, specific to USS Christmas, a very long list of inaccuracies from mismatch between stock footage and shooting location to being fuzzy about service distinction, to the characters simply not acting like officers would. (Thanks to a very well-informed American audience, there are long and hilariously detailed lists of the film’s mistakes.) Whether USS Christmas works will depend on your expectations. Just want something to throw on the TV while wrapping gifts? That’ll do. Expecting anything more? Skip to the next film, any next film.

  • To All a Goodnight (1980)

    To All a Goodnight (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) As a representative example of the golden age of slashers and an explanation as to why the subgenre crashed and burnt two years later, To All a Goodnight makes for an eloquent demonstration. Classic to the point of feeling like a grotesque carnival of clichés, it sees a group of girls isolated in a boarding school during the Christmas Break, having sex with their sneaky boyfriends and being brutally murdered (along with said boyfriends) by someone in a Santa suit. If you’re looking for the most average slasher, it’s hard to do better: the film is cleanly structured as a slasher with regularly scheduled kills no matter if they make sense or not; a whodunit that’s not really surprising (although there’s an additional fillip that presages many such twists in future films); and matter-of-fact direction by David Hess. Everything that one can hate about slashers, from rampant misogyny to cheap narrative to terrible dialogue to excessive levels of violence, can be found here – conversely, fans of the form may find just enough here to make them happy for an evening. To All a Goodnight (good title, though!) is not the best, not the worst, but as a mediocre example of 1980s slashers, it’s exactly what it tries to be.

  • Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

    Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) I’ll go easy on remakes if the director of the original is the one remaking it, and here we have Pocketful of Miracles, Frank Capra’s remake of his own 1933 romantic comedy Lady for a Day. The story of a mob boss transforming a street vendor into a society madam for the purpose of impressing her marrying daughter remains the same, but some aspects of the film have been upgraded – the colour cinematography is easier to take in for modern audiences, and the camera has a greater degree of freedom here than in the early 1930s. The acting talent here is also quite a bit better: It’s hard to argue against Bette Davis as the Pollyannaed street vendor, and the cast (which also had Glenn Ford and then-girlfriend Hope Lange) includes an early appearance by Peter Falk and a screen debut for Ann-Margret as the vendor’s daughter. Still, it’s not hard to prefer the original version: Capra’s early enthusiasm is not reflected in the more workmanlike execution of the remake (which would end up being his last film) and the story, even as a conscious 1930s period piece, seems to fit more closely in Depression-era America than the early-1960s. This remake is also far too long for its own good at a staggering 137 minutes. Still, if that’s going to be Capra’s swan song, then it’s not a bad one: Pocketful of Miracles still manages to exhibit the writer-director’s faith in the ordinary Americans and his compassionate touch.

  • Capharnaüm (2018)

    Capharnaüm (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2020) If you’re wondering what’s the barest minimum “recommended” review I can give, I suppose it would look a lot like this take on Capharnaüm – a strong film that I did not enjoy watching and have no intention to ever watch again. Taking up deep into the misery of children surviving at the bottom of the slums of Beirut, it follows the hardscrabble life of a hardened 12-year-old living on the streets and trying to take care of even younger children. There is a cinematic plot of sorts, having to do with the young man wanting to sue his parents for neglect, but the heart of the film is in the near-documentary footage shot in abominably poor conditions, describing the daily reality of a nightmarish existence. Writer-director Nadine Labaki doesn’t quite control the high-level construction of her film, but certainly lets the images speak for themselves in creating an atmosphere and establishing character. But Capharnaüm is absolutely not entertaining to watch – more like a harrowing two-hour documentary than a piece of narrative fiction. I can certainly understand why it got the acclaim it received (all the way to an Oscar nomination) but I had a hard time making it to the end, and can go live a happier life now that I don’t have to do so again.

  • Dumbo (2019)

    Dumbo (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney+ Streaming, December 2020) Et tu, Burton? What dubious privilege it is to see the brightest minds of our generation enslaved in service of The Mouse’s insatiable pursuit of profit, pilfering its back catalogue for inspiration as if originality was blasphemous. The latest victim is Tim Burton, whose “imagination” (as falsely claimed in the trailer) is servile to the recreation of Dumbo’s familiar story. To be fair, it’s easy to understand what could attract him to such a project: the thought of recreating a 1920s circus in big-budget glory must have been irresistible, and playing into such a classic sandbox must have had its appeal. Part of Dumbo does work: the visual polish of the production is lovely, and there’s some occasional cuteness to the CGI Dumbo. The actors also do decent work (Michael Keaton and Danny Devito, in particular), but the heart of the film is missing – an overstuffed script takes away from the linear simplicity of what could have been, and it takes forever for the film to get somewhere interesting. I suppose there’s something meta-ironic (or something) in having the film explicitly talk about the commodification of wonder in search of ever-greater profit. Not that it worked – like many of the latest Disney live-action adaptations, Dumbo barely made any money considering the magnitude of the investment. Not that we’re any closer to an end to them – the end game is probably to offer a live-action equivalent to the entire animated catalogue on Disney+. It will keep going as long as Disney exists as a for-profit entity.

  • A Christmas Carol (1984)

    A Christmas Carol (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Surprisingly, some of the best depictions of Scrooge and the classic Dickens story A Christmas Carol have come by way of television movies – the 1999 Patrick Stewart one, for instance, or even this 1984 George C. Scott version. While visible shot on a smaller budget and with a simpler visual style, this version succeeds based on performances (Scott being a leading one), atmosphere and a certain straightforwardness at only 100 minutes running time. Quite faithful to the original, its deviations are few and acceptable – it sticks to the smallest amount of fantasy possible to tell the story, and director Clive Donner finds a balance between establishing atmosphere and being efficient about the narrative. If you’re in the mood for an efficient, old-school presentation of a classic, this version of A Christmas Carol is it – it still feels modern enough to be easily watchable (something that’s not always true of the black-and-white versions, alas) while sticking close enough to the foundation to avoid the distinctiveness of other versions.

  • La morte viene dallo spazio [The Day the Sky Exploded] (1958)

    La morte viene dallo spazio [The Day the Sky Exploded] (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) In my travels as an apprentice Science Fiction film historian, there are wonders that cannot be enjoyed. Such is the case with The Day the Sky Exploded, which has the dual distinction of being the first Italian Science Fiction film, and the first film directed by later legend of Italian cinema Mario Bava. I did like the techno-thrillerish premise of targeting asteroids heading for Earth, but the execution here is bargain-basement clearance value – ramshackle sets, unconvincing actors, plenty of stock footage and an atrocious script, even in translation. So let’s file The Day the Sky Exploded under “historically important, otherwise unbearable” and move on.

  • Remember the Night (1940)

    Remember the Night (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) It’s hard to go wrong with Preston Sturges, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, even if Remember the Night is a portent of better things to come for all of them. An incredible contrivance is at the heart of the story – a District Attorney taking an accused shoplifter with him on a long car trip to spend Christmas with his parents. It’s a splendid excuse for a romantic comedy, though – with Stanwyck as the corrupt temptress and MacMurray as the letter-perfect officer of the law, working at tempering their differences and gradually falling in love along the way. (Their climactic kiss takes place in front of Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side.) This was the last film exclusively penned by Sturges before he took up directing (Mitchell Leisen directed this one), and it’s filled with great moments, good dialogue, clever plotting and well-sketched characters. Remember the Night manages the impressive trick of being both archetypical enough to summarize quickly, and has a stuffed plot to make the moment-to-moment watching of the film engaging enough. It’s both a Christmas film and something that can be watched any other month of the year: when it’s funny, it’s very funny, and when it’s romantic, it’s very romantic. And yet, all three major players here would go on to bigger and better successes, sometimes even with each other – Stanwyck and Sturges in The Lady Eve, Stanwyck and MacMurray in Double Indemnity, and, of course, Sturges by himself with an extraordinary series of films over the following few years.

  • Los amantes pasajeros [I’m So Excited!] (2013)

    Los amantes pasajeros [I’m So Excited!] (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2020) No one writes and directs films like Pedro Almodovar, and certainly no one can write an airplane thriller comedy like him. Largely taking place aboard a flight from Madrid to Mexico City that develops technical problems that may lead to a crash, I’m So Excited! takes a campy, comic, and very queer approach to its material, with lusty gay flight attendants trading barbs, sharing sexual exploit stories and drugging passengers to keep them quiet. The contrivances and complications inevitably reach Almodovarian proportions, enough to remind us that nothing here is meant to be serious or credible. While colourful and comic, I’m So Excited! is also overly broad and lightweight – and perhaps a bit dull when compared to its own best moments. The paradoxical result is that while bits and pieces of the film are great good fun, there’s too much of the not-so-much-fun material to keep a consistent tone. Another thing that really does not help is a female-on-male rape that’s played for laugh and singlehandedly slaps down the film’s good-natured charm by a full star or more. The last act also loses steam at a crucial moment where it should get crazier, and it doesn’t leave the film in the best shape in viewers’ minds as they take it all in. There’s clearly some potential here in having Almodovar go big, broad and colourful – but there are too many false notes (some of them honkers) in here to be completely acceptable.

  • Charlie’s Angels (2019)

    Charlie’s Angels (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, December 2020) No. Just no. I’ve had it with misandry promoted as female empowerment. True equality is not a film in which all men are portrayed as evil, duplicitous or incompetent. This Charlie’s Angels’ self-satisfied assertion that this is, like, the first time anyone has even thought about having female action heroes is immensely grating, and the script goes out of its way to be actively unpleasant in matters of male-bashing. The thing is, I don’t actually hate the entire thing: Despite some fun-killing wrong notes, writer-director-star-producer Elizabeth Banks (who deservedly earns every good and bad comment about the film) can direct a few good sequences even if her writing is repetitive and bland. Ella Balinska is a joy to watch, and Kristen Stewart is surprisingly compelling here. With a few tweaks to tone down the stridently misandrist tone (and a few more viewings of McG’s previous Charlie’s Angels films to understand why they were actually fun), this could have been much better. And if all of this makes me a reactionary… so be it. But I have a feeling that this is going to age badly enough that everyone, male or female or other, is going to see this Charlie’s Angels in twenty years and roll their eyes. That is, if anyone remembers it.

  • Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)

    Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney+ Streaming, December 2020) If you’ll allow me to be cranky for just a moment, let me rant for a hundred words on how I dislike the current trend of not allowing villain to remain villains. You don’t need to remind me that there aren’t that many self-acknowledged villains in real life – everyone has their reasons, and all can rationalize them. But in fiction? Let me have some evil people running amok, making life difficult for the heroes. Don’t go digging into their backstories, making them misunderstood sad sacks, or rewriting their heinous acts as good-faith errors. Alas, that’s the entire point of Maleficent and its sequel Mistress of Evil: shift perspective to the antagonist and show that, aw, she’s really a good girl after all. Or at least not as bad as the other girls. Whatever. But (twist!), this excessive humanization of the antagonist isn’t the worst aspect of the film – that would be the overstuffed yet unsatisfying story, which muddles its own morals and crams so much material in what should be a simpler (and shorter!) film that it loses its interest at every new complication. The weak script is partially offset by strong performances (none as impressive as Angelina Jolie’s return in the title role) and phenomenal special effects, but not enough to bring the film to an acceptable level. Disney’s live-action looting of its library doesn’t necessarily get better when it starts spinning off “original sequels” to the riffs – it just underscores how desperate the Mouse can be for sure hits. And no, I don’t want to humanize The Mouse’s actions at this point.

  • Croisières sidérales [Sideral Cruises] (1942)

    Croisières sidérales [Sideral Cruises] (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Oh! Oh! As a budding Science Fiction historian, I always get a thrill whenever I discover a forgotten piece of SF history. Croisières sidérales certainly qualifies as such, considering that it’s probably the first film to tackle general relativity… and it comes from nowhere else but Vichy France. The technicalities of the film are ludicrous, as a hot-air balloon takes its passengers to Venus (!) and then back to Earth (!!) except that for them the past 15 days have been equivalent to 25 years on Earth (!!!), which makes for significant changes as they return to see their loved ones. That’s right – a full half-century before Interstellar, there’s some time dilatation used for dramatic effect. If the hot-air balloon thing hasn’t aged well, the film’s last section, in which our astronauts must compose with suddenly grown-up children and aged relatives, is quite nice in its own way. Now, I wouldn’t want the film’s cutting-edge ideas to overshadow its far more disappointing execution: the film’s production values are not good, it badly blends disparate tones from poetic realism to musical comedy, and the pacing is often very, very slow. But that’s the price to pay to discover a film that is almost entirely absent from the histories of Science Fiction film. To think it was made when Nazis controlled the French film industry is even more amazing. It’s frankly not worth a watch if you’re just a casual SF fan, but it’s essential for those who are serious about studying the field. After all, Science Fiction was nearly absent from Hollywood during the entire 1940s – this makes Croisières sidérales, almost by default, one of the best SF films of the decade.