Reviews

  • Stardust (2020)

    Stardust (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) There are a few entertainers whose public persona is so polished, so distinct, so otherworldly that it can be a shock to be reminded that they once were (and very well still may be) ordinary people struggling with self-doubt and how to create that self-assured image. David Bowie is one of those almost-alien concoctions that it’s hard to remind ourselves that he was once David Robert Jones, arguing with his publicists and journalists and audiences as to what, if anything, set him apart from other musicians. Much of Stardust takes place during Bowie’s first American tour, back in 1971, as he struggled with various personal issues to end up creating the Ziggie Stardust persona (and, along the way, the David Bowie persona as well). Multiple flashbacks take us to previous times in Jones’ life, providing a simplistic but still somewhat effective portrayal of how someone ends up creating themselves. Now, Stardust does have its share of issues — as a low-budget Canadian production that didn’t have the rights to use Bowie’s recordings (and apparently wasn’t fondly received by the singer’s family), you can sense writer-director Gabriel Range being limited by what he can afford to do. I’m also limited as a reviewer to comment too deeply on the factual accuracy of the film or its relationship to the character — I have a sympathetic but superficial understanding of Bowie’s career that prevents me from being all that insightful about it. Still, in between the occasional lulls and sheer weirdness to see a portrayal of Bowie at a formative stage, there’s quite a bit to like here. The atmosphere of a gruelling low-budget tour is not badly portrayed, and the film is often best seen as an origin story rather than a full-blown celebration of Bowie-Superstar. I have no doubt that such a film is coming up eventually, and maybe then Stardust will be best seen as a prequel.

  • The Bet (2020)

    The Bet (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) I continue to be dumbfounded by filmmakers who think that drawn-out awkwardness is an acceptable substitute for comedy. But as The Bet shows, sometimes that’s exactly what they want. It doesn’t take a long time to figure out that the film will be a drawn-out exercise in discomfort and dumb plotting, as it begins with a sequence in which a bored estranged married couple makes a bet that she can get the next person to walk in the restaurant to eventually propose marriage to her. Never mind that it is both implausible and too depressing for words —The Bet is determined that this is the plotting hook that it will develop, all better ideas to the contrary be damned. One implausibly quirky character entering the restaurant later, we’re off to the races in a story with terrible people, ludicrous plotting, constant coincidences and far more frowns than laughs. To be fair, I don’t think writer/director Joan Carr-Wiggin ever intended The Bet to be a comedy — it barely qualifies by virtue of not ending horribly (well, except for the secondary characters whose marriage explodes along the way of servicing our loathsome protagonists) but it’s clear through the mirth-free duration and false victories quickly taken back that the film is not interested in anything close to a romantic comedy. It’s a portrait of marriage that does much to discredit the institution, although it’s so clear that its protagonists are so ill-suited to each other than they’d be better off with mutual vows of celibacy. I watched The Bet out of a sense of worn-out resignation — it was such a regular fixture for months on Canada’s Super Channel that I ended up giving in to its constant scheduling, reasoning that it probably played for a good reason. Alas, this reason was nothing more than CanCon requirements — and there are far better Canadian picks than this one. The Bet is sad, depressing, irritating and unlikable by design, and while my puzzlement can’t do much to change the film, at least I can vow never to watch it again.

  • Battledogs (2013)

    Battledogs (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) I’m at a point where even seeing “The Asylum presents” in the opening credits of a film can be enough to make me think about shutting it off and watching something else. But the remote was too far away and I was doing something else and what was the worst that could happen, right? Well, as it turns out, Battledogs is still not a good movie… but it’s not as bad as what I was expecting. This tale of werewolves/zombies/monsters/whatever running rampant over Manhattan is executed with more skill than I expected from yet another made-for-Syfy production. There are a few known names in the production (Dennis Haysbert, Ernie Hudson, Ariana Richards and Wes Studi), but the film’s most distinguishing characteristic is the energy in which it executes its rote plotting of monster attacks and military super-soldier nonsense. Its quantity-over-quality approach to special effects is defensible (how else are you going to get an exploding helicopter on a budget?), and the actors don’t do too badly. There’s even something that looks suspiciously like non-CGI effects here. But please understand that I’m grading on a curve here, and even saying something like “this isn’t the worst Asylum/Syfy film I’ve even seen” is far from being an absolute compliment. Still, we all rate films according to expectations, and mine were exceeded in watching Battledogs.

  • Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

    Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on-Demand, April 2021) When watching Wonder Woman 1984, it’s difficult to escape the thought that we’ve been spoiled by recent superhero movies. While we were perfectly fine taking in merely competent ones in the 2000s (because there were so many bad ones), the bar was raised once Christopher Nolan and the MCU entered the game. Now that the DCU has levelled up, notably with the first Wonder Woman film, expectations have risen (explaining lukewarm reactions to even to the recent-and-improved Zack Snyder’s Justice League) and the old way of sorta-kinda stumbling into something slightly satisfying is no longer impressive. Wonder Woman 1984 does signal its problems early on, as one overstuffed character introduction is followed by another overstuffed introduction of the same character. The script is at the foundation of all problems, with numerous issues and a lack of depth everywhere you look. The film fails any kind of plausibility — even at the surface level, nearly every minute brings a new and unsatisfying questions on top of a pyramid of implausibility, lazy plotting and half-baked developments. Perhaps most horrifying is a subplot about bringing back a character from the previous film by having him take over the body of Some Random Guy with a stunning lack of awareness in addressing the troubling issues inherent in that development. But Wonder Woman 1984 is just as incoherent in justifying its world-changing events or its individual character moments or its leap from one implausible plot point to another. The execution repeatedly stumbles over trite lines and ordinary moments, leaving a strange impression of a film that could have used another rewrite, shortening it to something snappier than two and a half meandering hours, and not painting itself into dumb corners along the way. Fortunately, it’s not a complete waste of time: Gal Gadot is still quite good as the lead character, and it’s an inspired choice to see Kirsten Wiig unlock her potential beyond awkward comedy. Pedro Pascal has his moments as a surprisingly likable villain, and the film’s action sequences occasionally work. There’s a really fun cameo slightly in the credits and the look at the 1980s can be fun. But it all comes at the price of being irritated throughout the film by a litany of mistakes big and small. But then again, we’re been lucky in terms of superhero films lately—so even middling efforts like Wonder Woman 1984 can feel like disappointments.

  • 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.