Reviews

  • Indecent Proposal (1993)

    Indecent Proposal (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) I thought I would enjoy Indecent Proposal. The subject matter is off-putting by design, but who could imagine that a film with Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Robert Redford could go wrong? To its credit, the film tells you almost from its first thirty seconds that it’s not going to be fun, as a couple reflects on what they had together. One flashback later and we’re quickly off to the celebrated premise of the film as our young couple struggles with money problems and Redford steps in as a billionaire playboy so smitten with her that he offers them a million dollars for a night with her. (In the mid-nineties, this became a popular party question.)  But for such a saucy premise, Indecent Proposal soon sinks in preposterousness and boredom. Directed without much energy nor precision by Adrian Lyne (from a script that reportedly toned down much of the novel’s ambiguity), it’s a film that quickly becomes a feat of endurance as we move from one obvious set-piece to another, the resolution never in doubt even despite the misleading prologue. The longer it goes on after delivering on its premise, Indecent Proposal multiplies the double standards, attempts to make heroes out of obnoxious characters and showcases retrograde ideas about, well, just about everything linked to sex and women. Harrelson is miscast as an intellectual, Moore’s beauty isn’t equalled by an equivalent acting talent, and Redford himself can’t use his charisma to hide the smarminess of his character. It’s all a bit sad, and most fatally, interminable. It took me only a few minutes to lower my expectations, and they stayed there for the rest of the film.

  • The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954)

    The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) British film history is rife with movies with a very peculiar sense of humour, turning dramatic subjects in excuses for unusual comedy and oddball characters. The first iteration of The Belles of St. Trinian’s wasn’t an original movie concept (it was based on a series of comic drawings), but it certainly embraces the counter-intuitive appeal of the concept: A finishing school for girls where, in the series’ most defining quote, “At most schools, girls are sent out quite unprepared for a merciless world but, when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared.”  Our mildly delinquent fourth-form girls here have to fight against the overly delinquent sixth-form girls as their actions threaten the school. Horse kidnapping, nitroglycerin-making and overall mischief are involved. It’s all delightfully amoral, testing the boundaries of conventional boarding school movies and leaving plenty of space for solid British deadpan comedy. While the formula is a bit unformed (later St. Trinian’s movies would pit the school against outside opponents), it’s a good one and there’s little wonder why the film series was rebooted in 2004.

  • Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)

    Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) There are movies that you must see merely because of their titles, and Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! certainly qualifies. Can anything measure up to the promises of the title? Well, maybe. In this case, we get Bob Hope as a middle-aged married man who accidentally gets his phone call connected (back in the time of operators who could mess up the cabling) to a runaway Hollywood bombshell desperate to stay away from the limelight. Many hijinks ensue, all the way to the police thinking he murdered the woman. It’s all complicated by the meddling of his maid, played as performance art by the irrepressible exploded-haired Phillis Diller. Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is not what we’d call a refined or subtle comedy: The reactions are all exaggerated as if this was an extended sitcom episode, and the film barely makes an attempt to smooth in Hope’s usual one-liners or Diller’s over-the-top antics. Both of them easily outshine Elke Sommer, playing the bombshell and filmed as provocatively (in a bubble bath) as a 1960s film could get away with. The plotting is elementary, but the film strikes a chuckle every few minutes, and it’s amiable enough to be charming in its own way. (I’ve seen the film mentioned a few times as the “worst” of this-or-that category and that seems an exaggeration—perhaps the title was too imposing for those reviewers.)  All in all, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! is a happy discovery—and it does live up to its magnificently silly title.

  • 42nd Street (1933)

    42nd Street (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) Backstage musicals have been a part of movie history DNA since the invention of sound, and 42nd Street was part of the genetic mutation that made it so. Adapted from a forgotten (and much racier) novel, it’s a film that codifies several of the clichés we associate with movies about putting on a show, including the last-minute replacement, dying director, casting couch shenanigans and other assorted gags. (Including the writer quibbling about insignificant line readings choices.)  It’s a bit technically rough but still quite watchable, although for much of its sprightly 90-minute duration you could be forgiven for thinking that 42nd Street is a well made but not exceptional comedy. Then the “show” begins and we get three Busby Berkley numbers in rapid succession that blow the doors off the film. Suddenly, we’re deep in Berkley’s impossible-to-stage-without-movie-editing numbers, with exploding stages in “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” kaleidoscope imagery in which humans become mere abstract figures in “Young and Healthy,” and a dizzying “42nd Street” number making stunning use on an expansive set and a rapid-fire succession of comedy and tragedy. That’s when the film becomes and remains an absolute classic. To riff on the film’s best-known line, 42nd Street began the show as a young example of the musical form and finished as an all-time favourite. The Pre-Code status of the film can be seen in subtle but pleasant touches: the risqué costumes, allusions to casting couch, daring cynical lyrics (“Shuffle off to Buffalo” is particularly funny) and suggestive subplots. Fans of musicals shouldn’t miss it.

  • Malaya (1949)

    Malaya (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) Sometimes, casting is enough to make a film interesting. So it is that Malaya, now an obscure 1940s adventure film, is now worth a look simply because it features both Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy in fine form as the protagonists of the story. Set in the early days of WW2, the story is fuelled by the rubber shortages of the time, and the desperate efforts of American officials to build up the national supply. Suddenly, a journalist (Stewart) walks in with a hot tip: a vast deposit of rubber in Malaya, available to the highest bidder. But it’s not an entirely above-board transaction and so a convicted felon (Spencer Tracy, playing a harder character than usual) is asked to help out. Many adventures follow, especially once the urbane Stewart is out of his element in dangerous Japanese-controlled territory. Malaya isn’t a great movie, but it does have two great actors interacting in ways you wouldn’t necessarily predict from their screen persona, and enough eventful scenes to keep things interesting. The atmosphere of a United States newly embroiled in war is interesting in the film’s first act, then it’s off to a Hollywood-studio’s idea of what Malaysia felt at the time, complete with what we’d euphemistically call a folkloric depiction of the local population. It does end with a bang, and perhaps a plot point that we wouldn’t expect from those actors. Malaya won’t necessarily be interesting to anyone who’s not a fan of Stewart, Tracy or near-contemporary WW2 movies, but it’s serviceable enough as it is.

  • Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991)

    Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2019) For posterity, let us note that the French title of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is Faut pas dire à maman que la gardienne mange les pissenlits par la racine (“Don’t tell Mom that the babysitter is eating dandelions by the roots”) which adds all sorts of added hilarity to it. Still, the title is probably funnier than the film itself—which isn’t as harsh a judgment as you’d think considering that its plot springs from the titular macabre situation to deliver an amusing coming-of-age story with more heart than dark humour. The first few minutes quickly set up the frame: A single mom leaving for Australia for the entire summer, leaving her four kids under the supervision of an elderly babysitter. Two or three scenes designed not to make us sorry for the babysitter’s titular death follow. But then what? The kids don’t want to admit to their mom that the babysitter’s, well, you know—and the babysitter took a summer’s worth of money with her in the grave. With an admirable lack of sense only found in 1990s movies made for teenagers, the kids have no one to call for help and so resolve to get jobs in order to pay for their groceries. One magnificent bluff and a trick of luck later, our protagonist (Christina Applegate, then at the height of her Married with Children fame) finds herself hired as an executive assistant with no idea on how to actually do the job. But the paycheck, and access to the petty cash, is more important. It all predictably explodes, but not without a late 1980s-style take on the corporate world, some mistaken-identity material and a climax that brings all facets of the protagonist identities imploding on themselves. There’s a rather heartwarming lesson at the end. Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead is not great art but it’s decently entertaining … even if it doesn’t have any intention of living up to its very specific title.

  • The Young Stranger (1957)

    The Young Stranger (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) I only watched The Young Stranger because it was legendary director John Frankenheimer’s debut feature film, and at times it felt as this remained the only reason to watch the film. Completed shortly after Rebel Without a Cause’s success, it’s about the listless ennui of a teenager ignored by his father, which leads him to a scuffle at a movie theatre and then to further issues at the police station and the family home where he seems intent on not accepting a shred of humility or contrition. It quickly leads to a confrontation between the stern father and the rebellious son. (I’m more disturbed than anyone else by the idea that I now identify far more firmly with the father than the teenager.)  The teenage protagonist does his best throughout the film to act in an intensely unlikable fashion, compounding one exasperating display of attitude by another. And yet The Young Stranger somehow ends up taking a curious milquetoast position that everybody should learn to understand each other through the curious device of the teenager assaulting an older man a second time. The film is clearly aimed at the teenage audience, and the ways it champions its adolescent agenda is off-putting—it jumps far too quickly to redemption. Still, the film’s technical qualities are better than its muddled message: Frankenheimer keeps control over his tone, and the result is a bit less melodramatic than the James Dean classic, a bit more grounded than other teenager movies of the time, and not a bad watch as long as you can get over the protagonist’s crummy behaviour. Which, admittedly, can be a high bar to clear.

  • Children of a Lesser God (1986)

    Children of a Lesser God (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) I’m not entirely convinced that romance has anything new to tell us, but sometimes it’s all in the context and that’s where Children of a Lesser God succeeds brilliantly. Romantic dramas about mismatched lovers trying to work out their differences are a dime a dozen, but even thirty-five years later the setting of this film still stands out: taking place at a school for deaf children, it follows a young energetic teacher as he meets his students and develops feelings for the antisocial janitor, an attractive alumnus of the school who refuses to talk out of past trauma. Setting can be a character of its own, and the fascination exerted by Children of a Lesser God quickly develops from learning about an entirely different world set alongside our own. As our guide in this world, John Hurt has the ingrate task of explaining to hearing audiences what’s going on (through his constant audible translation of signed language), even during intensely intimate moments. Opposite him, however, is the formidable Marlee Matlin, who steals the entire film in a ferocious, layered, compelling performance. Far from being merely a love interest, she plays a fully formed character defined by far many other things than her deafness. She deservedly walked away with an Oscar for her role, and it’s easy to see why even today: this is a performance that, for many, still redefines the frame that we use to evaluate good acting. In between the subject matter and Maltin’s performance, it’s easy to see why Children of a Lesser God remains a striking film even today.

  • The Killers (1946)

    The Killers (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) There’s a lot to love in The Killers for fans of classic noir, whether it’s the unusual structure, archetypical characters, glum script, or good dialogue. Burt Lancaster makes his film debut here, and Ava Gardner ignited her career thanks to her performance. It’s all very twisty with a man consenting to his own murder and the film flashing back to what could possibly explain such an event. The opening moments of the film (directly adapted from a Hemingway story) are immediately absorbing, with manly pursuit such as boxing and robbery being touched upon on the way to the end. In many ways, The Killers is pure noir to a fault—if you’re a fan of the genre as I am, you won’t need anything more to appreciate the film, while those who don’t care for noir (is that possible?) won’t see anything here to make them change their minds.

  • For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

    For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) You could be forgiven for thinking, at first glance, that Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls are the same movie—after all, aren’t they both Hemingway novel adaptations featuring Cary Grant as a man who fall in love with a woman during wartime? Well, yes, but there are more than a few differences. For Whom the Bell Tolls, having been made ten years later, features colour cinematography, numerous exteriors, Ingrid Bergman (with short hair), more grandiose wartime sequences, fewer classical-Hollywood touches, and more assurance in how it presents its story. As a long (…very long…) look at the life of rebels during the Spanish Civil War, it spends quite a bit of time detailing life in the bush, tensions between combatants and the love story between our two leads. Cary Grant is his usual solid yet unusually bland self, playing opposite Ingrid Bergman but with both of them being outshined by Katina Paxinou’s harsh-talking hard-living character. (Paxinou won an Oscar for the role, and you can immediately see why.) Given that our protagonist is a dynamiter, there are a few explosions to make things far more interesting. Alas, the film will try anyone’s patience at nearly three hours complete with introduction and intermission.  In trying to adapt a novel as faithfully as possible, the script forgets that movies work differently and the entire thing feels far too long. Still, it’s well executed, occasionally moving, explosively exciting at times. But For Whom the Bell Tolls could have been shorter. And it does end on a note very similar to that of Farewell to Arms, triumphant Hollywood cues outshining tragedy and all.

  • Stardom (2000)

    Stardom (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) The interesting cinematic conceit on which Stardom is built remains intriguing twenty years later: What if we saw the rise and fall of a supermodel entirely through camera lenses, as if a mad fan collected her TV appearances and home videos in a compilation video? Jessica Paré convincingly stars as a Cornwall (ON) hockey player plucked out of obscurity to become a fashion supermodel, loving and leaving a trail of men in her wake (including a restaurateur played by Dan Aykroyd). Executed at the turn of the century and taking place in a media-saturated environment, Stardom has aged significantly more than many other movies of the time, but it’s already showing signs of being a period piece rather than being dated: the references dwell in the late-1990s, and a circa-2019 take would have more cell phones and social media than we could stand. It does take a few minutes to get used to the collage aspect of the film (save for a brief introduction and a quiet epilogue, we get “in the camera” early on and escape the structure of a typical narrative), but its effectiveness does start to build, especially when we realize that the years are accumulating and the scope of the story is going from Cornwall to New York and places beyond. Could it have been better? Well, yes—as much as it’s enjoyable to piece together the narrative of the protagonist’s life through indirect and often misleading footage, it’s not much of a story. The satire is fine but typical (news reports from the past two decades have made the same point over and over, cutting away from mass tragedy to celebrity gossip) while stock characters abound. Writer-director Denys Arcand does know what he’s doing, though, and the mixture of French-Canadian and English-Canadian actors (plus notables such as Frank Langella) is interesting in its own right. Intriguingly, Stardom does have its built-in distancing mechanism: as interesting as it can be for movie geeks to see a film told through surface footage, there aren’t that many pathways to what the character is thinking or feeling: This is akin to a second-grade biography made of media clippings rather than interviews with the subject. Our protagonist is often used by other people making their own points, which is part of the lesson. Still, Stardom is more than worth a look on a purely experimental level, as an exploration of what cinema can do once it gets away from its own conventions. I’m a bit surprised that the film remains obscure outside Canada, but that’s the nature of non-stardom.

  • Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

    Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2019) Despite what you may think, Adventures in Babysitting isn’t a John Hughes film. On the surface, it sure looks like one: The story goes from the Chicago suburbs to the big city itself with middle-class teenage protagonists getting embroiled in adventures in the big city à la Ferris Bueller, alludes to cartoonish villains of Home Alone vintage and spends a significant amount of time making its characters grow up in absentia of any parental supervision … like much of the Hughes oeuvre. But it’s a Christopher Columbus film made from a David Simkins script, and the differences do start to become obvious once you look closer. It tries to have a broader appeal than Hughes film with protagonists going from 8 to 18, is far less structured in its one-thing-after-another approach. (Call it a “picaresque journey through 1987 nighttime Chicago, sanitized for family entertainment”) and it doesn’t hit the sentimentalism as hard as Hughes does. (But do remember that Columbus and Hughes would soon collaborate on 1990’s Home Alone.)  The result, spearheaded by Elisabeth Shue with noteworthy early roles for Vincent d’Onofrio and Penelope Ann Miller, is a bit scattered but amiable enough: it’s not trying to make a grand statement, but the way things quickly spin out of control from a simple premise is amusing enough. Clearly geared toward family entertainment, Adventures in Babysitting remains watchable even thirty years later—there’s some timeless material here about teenagers getting away with awesome thrills while their parents aren’t looking in their direction, and just enough excitement without falling into danger.

  • Crypto (2019)

    Crypto (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) There’s something worth exploring in the ways Crypto uses the mechanics of a connected world to bring international intrigue to a sleepy upstate New York small town. As our protagonist (a genius financial mind) gets demoted and sent back to his hometown for “compliance matters,” he conveniently becomes embroiled again in family drama just as he discovers money laundering shenanigans close to home. Fans of cryptocurrency shouldn’t count too much on this film to give an even-handed or even insightful depiction of those here—it’s used strictly as a plot device to get dark Russian money in a small town so that heroes and villains can have an excuse to wave their guns around. It’s actually a pretty good idea for low-budget filmmakers, who can now use USB keys to heighten the drama of what can happen away from big cities. On the other hand, we’re kind of stuck with the consequent budget and reduced ambitions: Despite known actors such as Kurt Russell, Liam Hemsworth and Alexis Bledel, Crypto is nothing more than direct-to-video fare, not badly executed but lacking in the kind of added value that a great script or direction could bring to the premise. The small city setting looks bland and gray, while the actors have trouble getting the technological exposition out smoothly. The characters are a bit dull (despite the “weaponized autism” crack, the lead character feels a bit bland) and their situations feel taken out of small-town Cliché Central. Even then, Crypto is not bad, not good, somewhere in the middle with only a bit of added conceptual interest in what it attempts to do. As of now, though, the collision of global threats in small town remains a fertile ground for someone else to have a go at it. While Crypto focuses on Russian mobster operating through a Canadian intermediary on the shores of Lake Ontario, there’s clearly more to be done with the idea.

  • Isn’t it Romantic (2019)

    Isn’t it Romantic (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) Considering my surprising fondness for romantic comedies and my interest in meta-fictional conceit, I really thought I’d enjoy Isn’t It Romantic more, especially as it explicitly takes on the rom-com as a target for satire. The Big Idea here is to have our deeply skeptical protagonist put in a coma and thrust in the middle of an alternate romcom-focused reality of her own life. As she wonders at how things are now colourful and nice and convenient, she also complains at all the clichés around her. It should work … except that as a star vehicle for Rebel Wilson, Isn’t It Romantic starts sharing some of the same annoyances that her comic persona can create. Nothing is subtle here: the film makes sure to underline each joke three times, setting it up with blatant exposition and then having characters comment once or twice about the same thing that viewers caught moments earlier. It starts feeling like a desperate comedian convinced he’s bombing after a while, as the film thrusts each joke in our face and makes sure we acknowledge its existence. The film, like Wilson herself, could use a bit of self-respect and restraint…. Although that’s a near-impossible request considering what Wilson does in one movie after another. (She’s one of those comedians who work far better as an ensemble cast member than a lead.)  No matter the reason, I usually found myself more annoyed than charmed by the result, and I’m not even holding the film’s embrace of the clichés it portrays against it. The musical numbers feel forced (and I usually love musical numbers), the careful worldbuilding is brought to the forefront time and time again, and the dialogue takes pleasure in being as obvious as possible, even in a metafictional context. Despite liking most of the actors here (and Chris Hemsworth does once again affirm his talent for comedy), Isn’t it Romantic is more annoying than anything else—a waste of a good concept that makes even the flawed They Came Together look far better in comparison. I may not have been in the best of moods in watching the film, but there’s something more than just not feeling it—it’s a film with significant issues of its own.

  • #cats_the_mewvie (2019)

    #cats_the_mewvie (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2019) I went through an entire spectrum of emotions while watching #cats_the_mewvie, but I’m not sure they’re the emotions that the filmmakers intended. As a cat owner and charter member of the non-academic web (check this web site’s copyright notice), I was intrigued by the promise of a film exploring how and why cats have become the Internet’s favourite pet, launching feline celebrities (!) and countless memes along the way. This Canadian documentary film does manage to deliver what it promises: a look at Internet-famous cats and their owners, along with shallow musings on why cats are awesome and the nature of animal Internet celebrity at an age of influencers. But it didn’t take long for my cynical nature to start poking at the film’s argument—while #cats_the_mewvie does nod in the direction of some of the cyberfelinosphere’s less savoury aspects (“I would never use my cat merely to make money” protest owners who do exactly that, but not like those people) it doesn’t spend a whole lot of time there, instead moving on to the kinds of unarguable platitudes that kill any critical thought. Yes, some people are actively chasing fame and notoriety, celebrating every dozen new followers as if it was important. It’s a treadmill without a point (as briefly acknowledged by some clips), but it’s about cats and cats are cute and that’s all we really need to know, right? Suffice to say that #cats_the_mewvie is made for popular appeal, not scholarly questioning. Still, by the end of the film we do get the usual uplifting envoi and I found myself begrudgingly conceding a few points: The point of cats on the Internet isn’t cats (which cuts both ways: cats don’t care about follower counts, but their owners do), it’s about people connecting through cats and having something cute to see as a chaser to the horrible things competing for our attention through the same app or browser window. The documentary itself is competently made, with a propulsive mixture of likable cat owners, Internet historians, cat footage, photos and screen captures. Still, as I stroked my cat (an unremarkable tabby with no special skills except being a cat–don’t expect a picture of her on any social media any time soon), I ended up thinking that #cats_the_mewvie could become an exhibit in another kind of documentary, one about our relationship with the Internet that, clearly, we still don’t have the tools or perspective to tackle yet.