Reviews

  • Speak Easily (1932)

    Speak Easily (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) The more I see of Buster Keaton’s MGM movies, the more I understand why generations of critics haven’t been so kind to them. It’s not as if he’s not funny—you can reliably count on Keaton to get laughs in a split second (such as when he frantically tries to stuff a coat hanger in a suitcase—a split-second gag in a busy scene, and all the more effective for it), through facial expressions or simple physical gestures in the middle of otherwise ordinary sequences. But there’s a feeling, especially in Speak Easily, that he was being forced into a comedy straightjacket that really constrained what he was capable of doing. Much of the initial lack of sparks from Speak Easily comes from the premise—playing a sheltered academic doesn’t quite get Keaton to the kind of comedy that he understood best, and it takes much of the film to get to the point where we get the classic Keaton anarchistic physical comedy… even if Jimmy Durante is there to help shoulder the comic load. Keaton’s passage to the sound era was easier than most—his voice is pleasant and he could deal with dialogue decently enough, but the spark of silent movie years was gone. It doesn’t help that he seems to be playing a character of an ingrate age—his silent films as a young man are very funny and I really enjoyed his cantankerous persona in the last decade of his career, but here he seems in an awkward stage ill-fitting his persona. I still liked Speak Easily—the look at the tribulations of a travelling troupe of comedians is something that I always find interesting—but it really is a shadow of Keaton’s best work.

  • Night Flight (1933)

    Night Flight (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) The most interesting things about Night Flight are all about the movie than in the movie itself. Taken at face value, it’s a decent-enough adventure film about the heroic age of aviation in South America, featuring efforts by a company led by an American to establish trade routes through the treacherous Andes, especially when life-saving medication is involved. The technical quality of the film is rough by contemporary standards, reflecting Pre-Code era films’ limited ability to portray complex adventure stories. It’s interesting, and the cast (John Barrymore, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Myrna Loy and Helen Hayes) is amazing enough… but it’s hard to watch it without pining for Only Angel Have Wings, a very similar 1939 film with much better direction, script and production values. It’s when you start digging into the film’s production history that the most fascinating aspects of the film appear: Based on an Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novel, the author did not like the film and, through contractual shenanigans, had MGM take the film out of circulation in 1942… until 2011, when Warner Bros struck a deal with Saint-Exupéry’s estate to have the film shown again. That’s kind of amazing in itself—that a somewhat popular film starring well-known actors could disappear for nearly seventy years and become available once more to twenty-first century cinephiles, while their parents and grandparents would not have been able to see the film. The movie itself may not warrant that much devotion, but as an illustration of how contemporary film buffs have it much better than any previous generation of movie fans, it’s almost unparalleled.

  • The Dark Horse (1932)

    The Dark Horse (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) As I sat down to watch The Dark Horse, a Pre-Code political comedy featuring a simpleton being groomed for high office, the United States is experiencing the last drawn-out spasm of an incompetent federal administration led by another kind of simpleton. My tolerance for fictive portraits of such people put in position of power is at an all-time low considering the excess mortality rates south of the border during a worldwide pandemic, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like the result all that much. Happily, the film often exceeded my expectations. It certainly helps that the candidate at the heart of The Dark Horse is an amiable, harmless kind of simpleton—not the kind of person you’d want as a governor, but not the kind of spiteful, destructive idiot found in reality. It also helps that the dull character is not at the centre of the film: that honour would go to a sharp politician operative dealing with grooming his charge, while also managing his ex-wife and new flame during the election period. Bette Davis co-stars as his would-be second wife, but it’s Warren Williams who grabs most of the spotlight as a genius-level political operative. Some of the script is a bit blunt and repetitive, but there are a handful of very funny moments, and a third act that keeps escalating out of control even from the protagonist’s capable mind. You can see in The Dark Horse the somewhat freewheeling attitude toward marriage and divorce that characterized many 1930s romantic comedies (something that would ironically grow even bolder after the imposition of the Code), but you will especially recognize the timeless nature of political campaigns, even despite very different tools at the disposal of campaigns. The Dark Horse thus finds a place in the very, very long list of American movies about American politics, often being far more idealistic than reality, even despite their comic cynicism.

  • The French Line (1953)

    The French Line (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) There have always been Hollywood star vehicles designed to feature specific actresses’ ample assets, but The French Line’s dedication to showcasing the great Jane Russell is exceptional by any standards. Produced by Howard Hugues, this is a film that explicitly set out to capitalize on Russell’s considerable sex appeal. Not only is it a film that revolves around her character, not only is it a film that shows her off in surprisingly skimpy outfits during dance numbers, this is a movie that was shot in 3D mainly to show off her curves to a thirsty public. (“J.R. in 3D—Need we say more?” bluntly goes the poster.) Legend goes that Hugues had a very personal interest in Russell, and designed many of the film’s outfits. He arguably overstepped—the film was judged so salacious that it was refused a production code seal of approval, earned scathing ratings from the era’s moral guardians, was banned from a few cities/countries and had to have an entire musical number trimmed before being shown in other territories. Today, of course, it’s quite tame—you can see more revealing numbers in PG-13 films. And once absent the titillation element, The French Line becomes another ordinary musical, once whose similarities to the previous year’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes become a handicap more than a selling point. Oh, it’s watchable enough: Jane Russell became a sex-symbol for good reasons, and they go far beyond skimpy outfits. She gets a few good numbers as a Texan oil magnate looking for love at sea and abroad—While the infamous final number “Looking for Trouble” gets most of the attention, I really enjoyed “Any Gal from Texas.” The tone is amiable, and there’s enough going on around the edges of the supporting characters to be interesting: Mary McCarthy looks good, and Arthur Hunnicutt gets his fair share of smiles thanks to a grander-than-life Texan character. Still, there’s no denying that The French Line is about Jane Russell and little else: it’s her film, curves and all.

  • Executive Action (1973)

    Executive Action (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) As far as JFK assassination conspiracy fantasies go, nearly everyone remembers Oliver Stone’s bravura 1991 masterpiece JFK, but 1973’s Executive Action has faded from memory. I’m not necessarily saddened by that—As I’m editing this review in early 2021, the United States is experiencing an alarming tribal epistemology crisis, with truth taking a distant second place to political affiliations. (And lest you think that I’m making a “both sides” argument, let me set you straight: The right wing’s acceptance of nonsensical conspiracy theories has little equivalency on the other side of the aisle.) The result is thousands of excess mortalities in a national pandemic, an attempted political coup (incompetent because fantasy-based, but a coup nonetheless), a disturbing dismissal of norms and significant damage to American institutions. So, you may excuse me if my tolerance is nonexistent for such intentional blurring between fact and fantasy for political gains. At another time, I probably would have enjoyed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s skillful blend of fact and fiction, describing a shadowy cabal planning the assassination of JFK and subsequent coverup: the film is a masterclass in dramatization of a wild conspiracy theory, playing on universal fears and prejudice to tell all about men in control rather than a lone nut sending everything in chaos. From the opening narrative scroll to the final error-filled one, Executive Action is about sowing doubt, blocking objections and suspending disbelief. It can rely on strong actors such as Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan, a sober execution and a surprisingly modern kaleidoscopic approach to its subject. In other words, it’s quite intriguing from a technical perspective and in its execution. But I simply cannot, right now, bring myself to feel any sympathy for its goals. I’ve had it up to there with conspiracy fiction now that I see it blend in the real world with people unable to make the difference between truth and politically motivated manipulation. Maybe I would have been more sympathetic five years ago. Hopefully, I will be able to be in five years.

  • The Passionate Plumber (1932)

    The Passionate Plumber (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Buster Keaton heads to France in The Passionate Plumber, one of the less-than-impressive movies he did at MGM in the sound film phase of his career. This period is not usually well regarded by film critics, and the step down from his silent era movies is clear. Most of the blame for Keaton’s decline during these years is usually attributed to studio interference—Keaton couldn’t get as much creative freedom working in the MGM system, and his comic setpieces are clearly less ambitious. This being said, you could still see remnants of Keaton’s creative genius even in the MGM films, and The Passionate Plumber does have its shares of flashes.  Taking place in France (but suffering from near-unintelligible French dialogue), the film takes longer than expected to accumulate the comic elements of its climax: Keaton plays an American inventor who runs into another American played by none other than Jimmy Durante, and you can see the film split the comedy between the two: Durante gets the verbal material, whereas Keaton gets the physical—and most of the time, it works: Even in throwaway gestures, Keaton remains supremely gifted in getting laughs out of nothing (including repeatedly slapping people with a glove)… and that’s not even getting into the bigger set-pieces of the film. There’s a really good shot in which he is pursued by a crowd of men going up a staircase, and it somehow resolves by him reversing course and running away downstairs. It’s in those moments that you can still recognize the silent-era Keaton, despite the heavier demands of the inconsequential plot and the lack of opportunity for him to guide the entire film’s comic choreography. I still liked The Passionate Plumber—it’s got its moments despite not being up to Keaton’s silent films. But it’s one of the movies where you most clearly see the missed opportunities in Keaton’s MGM years.

  • Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

    Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) If you stopped watching Kiss Me Deadly twenty minutes before the end, you’d probably be forgiven for thinking about the film as a well-done example of the muscular hard-boiled detective, and nothing more. Aside from the occasional odd mention of scientists being involved in the nebulous plot uncovered by our protagonist, little would prepare you for the right turn taken by the film minutes before the end, as the anxieties of the nuclear age crash dead into the foundations of film noir. Ralph Meeker plays legendary private detective character Mike Hammer with relish, especially as he slaps, punches, maims or otherwise brutalizes a long string of uncooperative witnesses. The story gets going with a chance meeting with a woman escaped from an asylum (played by no less than Cloris Leachman), but before long we’re zigzagging throughout mid-1950s low-rent Los Angeles in search of clues, revelations and occasional clashes with villains. One highlight is a lengthy shot set in a boxing ring, highlighting the film’s noir credentials. This being said, Kiss Me Deadly is late-period classic noir, right before it evolved into self-aware neo-noir: it’s very much playing according to specific aesthetics, and that’s probably why it felt empowered to take a radical turn into techno-thriller territory by the end of the third act. It’s an explosive choice, and one that does much to distinguish the film from many similar other films. Other than that, we can also see other examples of technology creeping into the traditionally conservative setting of film noir: Hammer has a reel-based wall-mounted telephone answering machine in his apartment, for instance, and you can almost feel the coming rush of the sexual revolution in the relationship he has with his secretary. You can read a lot of thematic richness in the film’s final minutes, and one wonders how much of the ending of the first Indiana Jones film comes from some of the most striking images from the penultimate sequence. Kiss Me Deadly is one of the most intriguing films to come out of the classic noir era, but you really have to watch it until the end to understand why.

  • All Joking Aside (2020)

    All Joking Aside (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Considering my fascination for stand-up comedy, I’m probably going to see every single film about stand-up comedians sooner or later. While All Joking Aside often feels similar to Standing Up, Falling Down in studying a close mentor relationship between aspiring and experienced stand-up comedians, it quickly becomes its own film. Raylene Harewood makes for an incredibly appealing heroine as a young woman with family issues, health concerns and a drive to become a stand-up comedian in a notoriously unforgiving field. Brian Markinson is her foil as a bitter washed-up veteran who wasted his potential and lost his own family along the way—they meet when he heckles her during her first open mic and it’s a long way to building the intergenerational friendship that the film eventually relies upon. You can make a case that All Joking Aside plays it too safe—but I don’t think that you can fault the film for it. It’s meant as a moderately realistic take on stand-up comedy apprenticeship, and I appreciate that it doesn’t take too many wild leaps of absurdity or aggression along the way. Like many other films about stand-up comedy, it’s not all that funny when it’s not taking place on a stage: it focuses a lot on the pains and trials of the comedians in between the punchlines. The result is amiable enough—Harewood is a promising actress, and Markinson does credibly step into the shoes of a once-legendary comedian. It makes for a nice package—familiar, for sure, well telegraphed in its plot beats but likable all the way through.

  • Spinster (2019)

    Spinster (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2019) It takes a while to get used to Spinster’s specific brand of melancholic humour –a romantic comedy that explores the virtues of staying single and aging gracefully despite all the encouragement to the contrary. Chelsea Peretti plays a Halifax-based caterer who, at 39, discovers herself single and unsatisfied with her life, but not necessarily eager to jump back into another relationship. Thanks to a cast of strong supporting characters, Spinster spends a year in her life as she puts it back together, but not necessarily with a significant other. The awkwardness of the comedy means that it’s lighthearted but seldom funny—the down-to-earth cinematography also reinforces the low-stake, low-intensity nature of the script. Peretti does well in the lead role, carrying the film on her shoulders with some aplomb as soon as we get used to the specific rhythm of the film. There isn’t much to the film that screams about it being from the East Coast until the very end—for a while, I thought it was set in Toronto through sheer inertia of believing every English-Canadian film is set in Toronto. Still, it’s an amiable film, more of a journey of self-reconstruction than anything more conventional.

  • Working Man (2019)

    Working Man (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) There’s a difference between interest and entertainment (or even satisfaction), and watching Working Man is a clear illustration of that. Before working hard at dismantling fairytales, this is a film that starts in very low-key fashion, as a blue-collar worker shrugs off being laid off by still going to his closed-down factory every day, cleaning up the place until a colleague with the required audacity manages to get the power back on. Before long, this colleague has put back the old crew together, telling them that if they can power through the rest of the inventory, they can sell their stock and attract investors. So far so good—despite the resolutely gritty and low-energy tone, it’s the kind of film we’ve often seen already, a feel-good myth for a society in its post-industrial phase. It’s immensely forgettable, and then comes the third act: the idea that some things are too good to be true, and that the Pied Piper leading the march can be delusional. That’s when Working Man becomes more interesting than entertaining: in-keeping with the naturalistic cinematography and soft-spoken characters, the film gets a bad case of fantasy dismantlement in which everyone learns a lesson and nobody gets the triumphant ending that they want. It’s a gutsy choice, and it does bring to mind older movies à la Norma Rae, embracing blue-collar labour activism, unflashy lives and serious character drama. It’s fortunate to be able to depend on some key actors—Peter Gerety plays an impassive protagonist, but he gets the right notes. Billy Brown has a trickier character whose likable bluster becomes something much darker later on, and anyone wondering what Talia Shire has been up to should have a look at her solid supporting performance here. Working Man is not spectacular, intentionally irritating and very much a throwback to 1970s cinema. It’s interesting… but don’t expect to like it very much.

  • Wendy (2020)

    Wendy (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) In retrospect, I should have just stopped watching Wendy after five minutes, so quickly does the film establish its tone and technique in a way that I fundamentally dislike. I’m not against the central concept of the film—reimagining Peter Pan in a gritty semi-realistic contemporary take halfway between magical realism and low-budget filmmaking. Writer-director Benh Zeitlin impressed many with his debut feature Beasts of the Southern Wild, and you can see the similarities here. Alas, the way Wendy is handled immediately rubbed me wrong, with languid pacing, twee-ethereal music, an irritating lack of medium shots and insistent innocence-of-childhood themes that quickly grate. I don’t like the original Peter Pan story all that much, so it could have gone either way—I have no attachment to the original story and would have enjoyed a different take, or it could have stuck too closely to the worst aspects of the original story. Unfortunately, while there’s some interest in seeing how the film recreates the familiar elements of J.M. Barrie’s story, it does stick to the aspects of it that annoyed me the most, almost going the Lord of the Flies route as it describes kids without adult supervision. Add to that the dirty handheld cinematography and I was clawing for the exits long before the film concluded (which, thanks to the interminable pacing, takes forever). It happens—most movies aren’t made for everyone, and it can happen that it strikes you wrong. Still, I did not enjoy my time with Wendy, and I’m going to be happy not every seeing it again.

  • Dolittle (2020)

    Dolittle (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) You can watch up to a few minutes’ worth of Dolittle without feeling that anything is wrong, but then, at semi-regular intervals comes the Dumb Thing. That Dumb Thing can take many forms, whether it’s a bit of amateurish staging, a flow of very contemporary slang uttered by talking animals (and I’m not merely talking modern slang in a Victorian context—I mean 2010s slang) or dubious comic ideas, such as performing a two-fisted colonoscopy on a dragon. Yeah… Considering that this is the third disappointing Dolittle film in three generations, it’s quite possible that there’s a curse of some sort on the property—or that, in attracting actors with a healthy ego in the lead role, the projects doom themselves from inception. If forced to choose, I’ll still pick this one as the best of the three—from a contemporary perspective, it’s not as plasticky or atonal as the 1967 Rex Harrison one. Nor is it as aggressively stupid as the 2001 Eddie Murphy version. On the other hand, its imagination seems severely stunted compared to the fantastic creatures of the Harrison version, and it’s not as clearly made for kids as was the Murphy version. But it has top-notch special effects for the animals, and a rather likable Robert Downey Jr. playing a variation on the ultracompetent overconfident persona that his current career phase has focused upon. Still, the succession of Dumb Things grates quite a bit, especially when they’re coupled with clear signs that the film was directed by committee and most likely redone in post-production: Much of the live-action dialogue is uttered without seeing the actors’ faces, the editing is unusually herky-jerky (often compressing what feels like minutes of action in a few dozen seconds), and the directing often doesn’t have crucial connective tissue: It makes for a very strange, subliminally upsetting viewing when the film can’t even achieve narrative fluency despite what looks like a very, very expensive production. Most of those suspicions are confirmed by rumours, then documented articles about the film’s unusually troubled production history (shades of the 1960s version right there!), including as many as three well-known directors involved in principal photography and extensive reshoots. We’ll probably know more about the film in a decade or two, but, in the meantime, we can probably tip a hat to the heroic efforts of those involved in Dolittle’s post-production odyssey, considering that they managed to turn out something that, for entire minutes at a time, feels watchable. Well, aside for the two dozen Dumb Things.

  • The Rare Breed (1966)

    The Rare Breed (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) It takes some audacity to even think about making a western about livestock, but that’s what The Rare Breed goes for. James Stewart here plays an adventurer hired to ensure the safety of a lovely widow (Maureen O’Hara in her red-headed glory) as she brings a prized British heifer out west for breeding purposes. There are a few complications, including a lustful rancher, competing clans, budding romance and intergenerational tensions. It all culminates in a happy ending tempered with a little bit of sadness. Steward here has a tough outdoorsman role more akin to his many 1950s westerns, albeit tempered by age and a slightly softer attitude toward women and cattle: If you’re lived this long without seeing Stewart carry a calf in his arms, then this is the film for you. The focus on cattle warms my former farmhand’s heart, and still feels unusual for the western genre, despite cattle being such an important part of the wild west. (But cattle don’t carry guns, so that doesn’t make them as interesting to filmmakers.) Otherwise, I’m somewhat muted in my appreciation for The Rare Breed—I like Stewart, the bull, the ending and O’Hara, but the rest of the film feels a bit inert to me compared to the high points. Ah well—at least it concludes with cute calves galloping around.

  • Carmen Jones (1954)

    Carmen Jones (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) A recent refresher about Dorothy Dandridge’s rather sad biography made it essential to view her career peak Carmen Jones. Despite a long history of systemic racism, Hollywood has, from time to time, made features with all-black casting. Carmen Jones is one of them, and it’s unsurprising that it would come from noted iconoclast Otto Preminger. Adapting the classic Bizet opera (perhaps the only opera featuring two numbers that regular people can hum) to the WW2-era was already something, but setting it in an all-black cast was the kind of decision to make people stand up and notice. The result has aged remarkably well as a period piece: It helps that the film opens with a scorcher of a number in “Carmen” as Dandridge vamps her way across a mess hall and takes aim at the lead male character, setting in motion the tragic events that follow. Dandridge fans know that Preminger’s interest in Dandridge was far from purely professional, and that may have helped in elevating her terrific lead performance in Carmen Jones: she looks nothing less than fantastic here even if her voice is dubbed, playing a femme fatale in a non-noir context. (That said, the film noir comparisons may not be all that far off: The entire story is a tragic cautionary tale about fate destroying you, with the hero experiencing a downward spiral eventually bringing him to that beloved noir common ground of a boxing hall.) The other big hummable number is the classic “toreador song,” here called “Stan’ Up an’ Fight” and led with gusto by Husky Miller. Dandridge often overshadows her co-star Harry Belafonte, but he’s equally impressive as the protagonist led to perdition—although, once again, the very idea of him being dubbed over is amazing to modern viewers used to his long musical career. It’s not a perfect film—what’s the progressive appeal of an all-black cast if they’re portrayed as “shameless vixens” and weak men destroyed by lust? Still, I’d rather have a Hollywood with Carmen Jones in its archives than without—considering that we’re still dealing with representativeness issues today, any tiny step forward is not to be discounted from today’s perch. From a more conventional perspective, I’m not a big fan of much of Carmen Jones: many numbers drag, and the film is not equally interesting. But Dandridge is terrific and so is Belafonte—and the big numbers are delightful.

  • Follow the Fleet (1936)

    Follow the Fleet (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) I’m watching Fred Astaire films in rough decreasing order of acknowledged importance, and it’s not a bad approach—his persona is best defined by his most popular films, and once you start plumbing into the lesser-remembers ones, you can hit some weird variations on his usual characters. I’m not going to forget a drunken Astaire smashing a bar in The Sky’s The Limit, but there’s something almost equally strange in seeing him play what’s supposed to be a rough-hewn Navy sailor in Follow the Fleet: Astaire’s persona was pure ballroom, not boiler room (although, yes, I also remember that scene in Shall We Dance), and it’s a very curious choice to structure a film (a peacetime film, no less!) around him being a swabbie at the service of Uncle Sam. Somehow, Ginger Rogers makes her way into the plot as a gifted hostess employed in a San Francisco ballroom -at least until Astaire barges in and gets her fired. There’s a B-romance as well, but we’re here for Astaire and Rogers and, fortunately, Follow the Fleet delivers on the dance front: There’s a ballroom duet sequence early in the film to reassure us that they’ve still got it. Later on, the action moves to ship decks in time for an Astaire solo tap number with sailors surrounding him. The third act has the big guns: A piano solo from Astaire, a deliciously funny duet (“I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket”) in which Astaire and Rogers intentionally dance out of step and then—as a big finale—an anthology-worthy return to pure class in “Let’s Face the Music in Dance” where we once again have a glamorous version of the duo doing their best in front of a very stylized art-deco backdrop. Nonetheless, Follow the Fleet isn’t quite better than the sum of its parts: while there are some great moments, the film as a whole seems less funny, less tight (at 110 minutes, many of them dedicated to a lacklustre narrative) and less purely enjoyable than other 1930s films featuring the duo. I still liked it based on its individual numbers, but I also liked their other films of the decade better—most notably Top Hat, The Gay Divorcee, Swing Time and Shall We Dance. But even a substandard Astaire still has moves impossible to duplicate by anyone but Astaire: let’s treasure what we’ve got.