Reviews

  • Debug (2014)

    Debug (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2021) When it comes to Canadian Science Fiction films, a few things almost always hold true: the low-budget production values, the limited casts, the unadventurous premises and the Telefilm Canada logo. To be fair, the increased affordability of visual effects has done a lot to improve the scope and execution of Canadian SF movies in the past decade — but I still have to grade on a curve, forgiving a few too many things and focusing on the most interesting elements. When it comes to Debug, the premise is not without interest: As a group of six convicted hackers boards a spaceship to debug its computer systems, the ship’s AI starts fighting against them, and it fights dirty. So far so good — and while the film’s special effects are sometimes subpar, they do get the point across. Having hacker convicts as characters means that there are flaws and past traumas to exploit by the antagonist, and having that evil AI played in over-the-top fashion by Jason Momoa is really not a bad starting point. The script and direction occasionally show flashes of quirky interest, whether it’s a medical AI turning on a character and dismissing him as “junkie scum,” or using effective blocking to minimize the expense of a gory death scene. Three out of the four main female characters end up in their underwear (not complaining, just appreciating), and the set design is frequently quite good within the limits of the budget. There is a dollop of naughtiness to the film that could also have been used more effectively. The male leads are a bit bland (except for Adrian Holmes, doing his best but saddled with a badly-written character), so I won’t apologize for spending more time noticing the work of Jeananne Goossen, Sidney Leeder and Jadyn Wong. Alas… I think I’ve reached the end of this film’s strengths and promises. As with many low-budget efforts, Debug doesn’t have what it takes to stick to a science fiction approach, and lazily resorts to horror devices in order to make it to the end. The reason why there are six characters is providing enough fodder for death scenes until the end of the film, and the film quickly goes from 2001: Space Odyssey aspirations to slasher-movie execution. Momoa is badly underused as a villainous character without compelling motivations. Much of the dialogue is unacceptably clunky, some of the plot points are just stupid (such as when a character is rescued from a terrible situation only to be immediately killed) and the intellectual ambitions of the film quickly melt away in a flash of horror tropes. It’s possible to make better science fiction movies, and the newest crop of recent Canadian SF does get there from time to time. But Debug is just lazy and disappointing in how it really can’t think of anything better than a killer ship AI as a main plot driver: there are dozens of tangents that the film could have taken but chose not to. Too bad — I still think that the film is borderline watchable (which is a compliment considering the alternatives), but more often as an example lesson on what not to do than in demonstrating actual qualities.

  • Alfie (2004)

    Alfie (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2021) I wasn’t all that interested by 2004’s Alfie back when it was in theatres or during its most active video lifecycle, but a recent look at the original 1966 film featuring Michael Caine had me suddenly interested in the later version. Jude Law was among the best choices to measure up to Caine, but this newer take updates and tweaks so many things that it hardly feels like a remake, and more of a companion work. What has not changed is the conceit of having its irremediable cad of a protagonist (suggested to be the son of Caine’s character) regularly address the audience to boast about his philosophy of life: As a British man deliberately expatriated in New York to improve his chances of hooking up, his life is a tightly optimized machinery for meeting, bedding and discarding girls. The first few minutes of the film are all in good fun, but consequences come in the form of a worrying medical diagnostic, the end of a longer-term relationship and, most dramatically, a fling with a friend’s on-and-off girlfriend, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. Shifting from insouciant cad comedy to a more serious recognition of his flaws, Alfie does follow the original’s dramatic arc, but rearranging and updating the material to make for a decent watch by itself. Law strikes just the right balance in being charmingly arrogant and showing the capacity to reconsider his life after multiple setbacks. He does remain a cad, but at least a marginally forgivable cad. A strong supporting cast has its own merits, from Marisa Tomei to Omar Epps to Nia Long to Sienna Miller and Susan Sarandon. The soundtrack includes many down-tempo pieces sung by Mick Jagger. It’s obvious that 2004’s Alfie can’t have the same epochal resonance as the 1966 Swinging London one — it’s a different time and place, and no one can match 1960s Michael Caine. But the remake is interesting enough to live on its own terms, even for those with recent memories of the original.

  • Cake (2014)

    Cake (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2021) Like many actors best known for comic fare, Jennifer Aniston makes a play for dramatic applause every few years. Cake didn’t get as much attention as 2002’s The Good Girl (which did include more comic elements but was a novel attempt to move away from the “Friends” legacy), but it is an unabashedly dramatic story, featuring Anniston as a suicidal grieving mother engaging in self-destructive behaviour. It’s perhaps too successful a portrait: by the time the first half-hour rolls by, the main character is so unpleasantly written that it’s hard to actually like her. It eventually gets better, but don’t be surprised to find Cake an unpleasant piece of work. It’s best to approach it with the right set of expectations: This is a low-budget, independent drama featuring characters going through trying experiences. Daniel Barnz’s low-key no-nonsense direction is in keeping with the script’s straightforward approach. Cake does feel a bit too long at 102 minutes, but that has as much to do with the unpleasant subject matter as the sometimes-repetitive script. It’s not a bad film, and you can see the obvious appeal here for a comic actress trying to expand her range.

  • The Legacy (1978)

    The Legacy (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2021) If you absolutely have to pick a reason to watch The Legacy, the best is probably the lead casting — young Katharine Ross and Sam Shepard (with dark hair and moustache!) in the film where they met before getting married a few years later. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of intellectual nourishment or entertainment satisfaction in the rest of the film. In a convoluted tale of how a British aristocrat turns to occult satanic practices to keep up family traditions, director Richard Marquand is at his best in creating an atmosphere, and at his worst when turning to generic death sequences as a structural device. (No, but seriously: kill off all the sacrificed at once rather than go through individual risky death sequences — no fuss, no trouble and you’re done. But that doesn’t make for a feature-length horror film.)  The Legacy feels a bit more old-fashioned than its production date — although technology does deliciously intrude over the gothic atmosphere in what is perhaps the film’s most intriguing scene. Ross and Shepard spend most of the film running around screaming, and while the ending does bring everything up a notch, it’s too late to make The Legacy more than a passable curio for dedicated horror fans.

  • Soul (2020)

    Soul (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, February 2021) I’m hardly the first reviewer to note that Pixar’s past few years have not been very satisfying: Their 2010s filmography featured eight sequels to four originals, and while the overall quality remained high, there was a spark missing compared to earlier fare. One of the biggest exceptions was Pete Docter’s Inside Out, which dared use a family film to explore theories about human emotions and consciousness. Both of Pixar’s 2020 movies were original productions, and Soul seems like the thematic sequel to Inside Out. Here, Docter boldly sets out to examine questions of life, its meaning and what comes before and after. Ambitious stuff — and focusing the film’s main conflict around a middle-aged music teacher struggling to achieve his dreams stretches the definition of a family film. (Better leave the easily-confused under-eight set at home for this one — this could be rated PG-13 for mature themes.)  The first half-hour of the film feels insanely expansive, as the film sketches a theory of the afterlife (and the beforelife) with mentors guiding young souls. Fortunately, Pixar never forgets that entertainment is their business, and the jokes fly fast and thick. Great voice work (most notably by a well-cast Jamie Foxx and Tina Fay) complements a terrific attention to detail and some astonishing animation: once again, Pixar opts for a “realistic background, stylized character” approach with great results. As usual, the thematic underpinning and tangents are exceptionally well made: “Soul” here has two obvious meanings well explored, and firmly tied back to Pixar’s first African-American protagonist. As with the best Pixar films, Soul feels both surprising and inevitable: the script zig-zags between originality and satisfaction, never quite settling for mere formula when it has cosmic ideas to play with. It’s a strong film — but time will tell whether it will age well and if it announces a new stronger decade for the studio.

  • The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)

    The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Some films have far more curb appeal than actual polish, and The Two Mrs. Carrolls is a fine example of those. It’s hard not to get intrigued by a film featuring no less than Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck in a domestic thriller. But there’s a reason why the film is far less often mentioned as those two stars’ best work: it ends up being a clunky mixture of miscasting, undercooked screenplay, dull direction and its own inability to stick to a gothic presentation. None of this applies to Stanwyck: She owns the film’s best moments, and while she’s playing a naïve character far away from her usual tough dames, she plays her with the kind of elegant dignity she could lend to any dramatic role at that point in her career. Sadly, Bogart doesn’t do so well, and much of it has to do with a double mismatch with the screen persona he took up in the 1940s — his shtick was a roguish but ultimately honourable man’s man, not the insane gothic villain painter that the script requires him to be, all the way to an over-the-top conclusion in which he crashes through a window with a murderous look in his eyes. He simply doesn’t fit the requirements of the story — a similar problem that many domestic thrillers of the 1940s found in casting likable leading men in darker roles (such as Cary Grant in Suspicion). It really doesn’t help that The Two Mrs. Carrolls is saddled with an unsatisfactory script: adapted and beholden to a stage play, it piles on the implausibilities and incoherences, with a female protagonist who should have figured something well before she laboriously pieces everything together. The film always seems to be holding back — perhaps due to its stars being unwilling to commit to a truly gothic take on the Bluebeard tale, perhaps by elevating director Peter Godfrey beyond his competencies at the time. The result is far from being unwatchable — but The Two Mrs. Carrolls’s interest is how odd of a film it is, and how it simply doesn’t meet its own objectives. Further reading on the film’s troubled production history reveals more of the backstory: Filmed in 1945 but held back for a variety of possible reasons until two years later, it suffered from a cavalcade of issues, not the least of which being a too-strong similarity with similar evil-Bogart vehicle Conflict.

  • Behemoth the Sea Monster aka The Giant Behemoth (1959)

    Behemoth the Sea Monster aka The Giant Behemoth (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Not all monster movies are created equal, and it’s useful to keep Behemoth the Sea Monster in mind as a yardstick as to how… average this kind of film can be. To be fair, Behemoth belabours under a few significant limitations: it’s a low-budget, black-and-white effort propelled by an imitative impulse: it’s essentially a redo of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (also by director Eugène Lourié) with about a tenth of the wow factor. It’s also British, at a time when the British were not necessarily known for their horror/SF movies. (I’m sure it’s been done before, but I have a sketch in mind featuring stiff-lipped, cup-drinking Britons tut-tutting as a monster rampages through London during teatime.)  Perhaps worst of all is the somewhat limp execution that doesn’t do much while waiting for the late-coming special effects segments. The result is not particularly good — derivative, dull and forgettable, Behemoth the Sea Monster has the distinction of not being bad (a significant distinction when it comes to monster movies of the 1950s), but not being any good either.

  • Kaijû sôshingeki [Destroy all Monsters] (1968)

    Kaijû sôshingeki [Destroy all Monsters] (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) As someone who’s sympathetic to the Godzilla movies but hasn’t seen all that many of them, I’m half-entertained, half-puzzled by Destroy all Monsters. This late entry in the original Godzilla chronology does have the distinction of moving things along to a near-future of space travel, a “Monster Island” hosting the kaijus and bright colour cinematography. (I obviously missed a few films in-between the original Gojira and this.)  It all gets wilder once our human protagonists discover an alien plan to mind-control people and monsters alike to destroy the world or some such nonsense. The script is promising but ultimately unsatisfying, as good ideas are not executed particularly well, and as the pacing of the film varies considerably. Even the highlights, such as the film’s sole urban-stomping monster fight, are seemingly inserted without much impact on the plot. Much of the ending has various monsters curb-stomping an evil alien monster in a one-sided fight that would probably mean more if I knew more about that alien monster. (I also suspect that I would hate mini-Godzilla —sorry, “Minilla”—even more if I’d watched more of the series.)  Still, much of Destroy all Monsters is endearing to a surprising degree. Adding goofy eyes to Godzilla helps a lot, but even the now-obvious miniature work doesn’t fail to be impressive. The film has a charming quality to its goofiness, even (or especially) when all-female aliens looking like a K-pop band are trying to destroy earth. In the Godzilla chronology, this may represent the best of what the original series has to offer, and the monster team-up, colourful cinematography, quaint special effects and near-future imagination do a lot to make Destroy all Monsters still fun.

  • Where the Boys Are (1960)

    Where the Boys Are (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I’m uncomfortable calling Where the Boys Are a sex comedy, even though it’s most commonly described as such. For one thing, the moniker “sex comedy” as applied to 1960s films means something very different than when applied to its much coarser post-1975 equivalent: Even in movies squarely taking a look at the changing nature of sex in a liberating society, 1960s sex comedies were usually charmingly restrained by today’s standards. The second, most fundamental objection is that Where the Boys Are may start as a sex comedy with boys and girls heading to Fort Lauderdale in order to you-know-what, but the film steadily slides into a dramatic register, with a sobering ending that kicks the joy out of nearly all of the characters thanks to a rape sequence (largely off-screen, but still disturbing) that punctuates an increasingly disillusioned arc. If you think that circa-1960 films were innocent, you may be confusing the execution with the fundamentals: As our characters, both male and female, head to the beach, everyone is acutely aware that boys prey on girls and that nice girls must learn to say no — the girls who escape the worst have developed defences against common come-ons, honed by constant practice. If that’s not a damning, timeless lesson, I’m not sure what is. It does put Where the Boys Are in an uncomfortable spot, though: if you stopped watching at the three-quarter mark, you’d probably recall the film as an amiable, naughty, clever sex comedy examining the burgeoning spring break culture among college students heading south for a week of fun. There’s some truly funny material here, whether it’s physical comedy, girls accumulating more and more floor-sleepers in their hotel room every passing night, some satirical material about “dialectic jazz” and unusually kind police officers. The cast is also pretty good, what with a slim George Hamilton, lovely Paula Prentiss, cute Yvette Mimieux and funny Connie Francis, along with Dolores Hart playing band leader to this clever merry bunch. But then there’s the letdown of the film’s last few minutes that, ironically, saps the comedy but sharply increases the interest of the film for modern viewers—as a shining demonstration that people of the 1950s–1960s, despite the neutered contemporary depictions of their times, knew perfectly well what it was all about and what was going on. It feels like an inevitable tragedy that the films inspired by Where the Boys Are, most notably the Beach party series, were considerably lighter to the point of fluffiness — but they made money and offended no one.

  • Cheaper by the Dozen (1950)

    Cheaper by the Dozen (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2021) Considering that the Steve Martin remake version is far more familiar nowadays than the original, I went into the first Cheaper by the Dozen expecting a much sillier and funnier film than it is. Compared to the remake, the original takes on a substantially more serious tone, being framed around a grown woman’s memories of her father, an efficiency expert whose eccentricity dominated a household with a dozen children. There’s an added nostalgic quality to the film, as it takes place in the 1920s as filtered by the late 1940s, adapted from real people (four of them have their own Wikipedia pages!)  Much of the film’s humour comes from the atypical reactions of the efficiency-minded expert — but it’s fairly gentle humour. Director Walter Lang doesn’t go for big slapstick, and the film hums along pleasantly until the unexpectedly elegiac ending. The affectionate tone of a daughter reminiscing about her father makes the film different enough from its silly remake to be interesting, and the historical nature of the film’s episodes is also distinctive. It’s well worth a look even if you’re not a big fan of the remake.

  • The Food of the Gods (1976)

    The Food of the Gods (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) The badness of some movies transcends space and time, and so The Food of the Gods can still, in 2021, be showcased along the worst of the worst, an infamous Golden Turkey that combines the downbeat apocalyptic leanings of 1970s Science Fiction films with the most ill-conceived special effects imaginable. The premise is as simple as it is moronic, as a mysterious substance causes animals to grow several times larger than usual. Our “hero” discovers the development on a farm on an isolated island where it’s being used to grow chicken to human dimensions… and where, yuck, grubs are big enough to put up a fight. The hysterically funny stuff begins once the rats also grow to gigantic size, and the “special effects” are shots of regular rats hanging around a miniature house. Awful doesn’t begin to describe it, so in-between the awful script trying for an ecological lesson and the terrible special effects, the film has at least two strikes against it. It’s all the most dismaying to see the legendary Ida Lupino as a supporting player in what would end up being the penultimate movie of her career. The drawn-out coda is meant to be terrifying but feels silly, which reinforces the impression left by the entire film. See The Food of the Gods only if you dare — it’s the kind of film that Mystery Science Theater 3000 was designed to mock.

  • Ce soir, je dors chez toi (2007)

    Ce soir, je dors chez toi (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) When it comes to romantic comedies, two attractive leads can do a lot to compensate for script problems if they’re likable and interesting enough. But there are limits to what they can do, and when it comes to Ce soir, je dors chez toi, neither the likable Jean-Paul Rouve nor the very cute Mélanie Doutey can help salvage the film from banality. It does start promisingly, though, as a commitment-phobic writer fears his girlfriend moving in with him. Convinced that living together means the end of romance, he convinces his editor to move in on spurious pretences and block her from executing her plans. Predictably enough, the lies and misunderstandings only spin out from there, leading to a second half in which even viewers will grow unconvinced that they’re meant to be together. From a relatively solid opening, the film spins out of control. Some of it is intentional—Being French, Ce soir, je dors chez toi has little qualms about breaking staid Hollywood conventions—by mid-film, the characters have graphically described affairs with others, and the ending has the protagonist discovering his ex in a relationship with another man. But there’s a price to pay in playing with romantic comedy expectations, and that price here is a lack of trust in the suddenly happy finale. We somehow go from a protagonist being spurned by his ex-girlfriend to them getting back together — but since the film is largely from his perspective than hers, the change of heart remains ill-motivated. Various other tangents and subplots don’t necessarily add up to much (such as an abrupt trip to Manhattan, in the mirror image of New York City movies ending in Paris for a romantic climax), and the result is a bit of a mess, barely held together by Rouve’s jeune premier charm and Doutey’s attractive looks, even in a script determined to turn her into an antagonist. Too bad — and let that be a lesson to anyone deviating from the tried-and-true formula for romantic comedies.

  • Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

    Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I don’t think I’ll ever lose my sense of amazement at what can come up once you start poking through movie archives. Battle Beneath the Earth, produced in Great Britain by Irish director Montgomery Tully, is not a good movie—but it does have the kind of premise that sticks in mind: nothing less than the invasion of the United States by Chinese renegades through tunnels dug under the Pacific, and then in three tunnels spanning the United States. To say that it’s a crazy premise is understating things, but to its credit, the film does work overtime in trying to provide a halfway-plausible rationale. It also manages to tweak its premise in such as way that we get a warning from a scientist who’s not as crazy as everyone else thinks, early spectacular sequence and (thanks to a Hawaiian volcano and nuclear weapons) a way to end the threat in time for the end credit. No one will be surprised to realize that the film is incredibly racist in a variety of ways. Never mind the identity of the invaders when their leaders are played by actors in unconvincing makeup, and the film repeatedly lingers ominously on Asian extras. Paranoid doesn’t begin to describe the attitude of the film when it openly screams that invading hordes could literally spring from the ground. Battle Beneath the Earth is quite terrible and slightly enjoyable at once: the entire thing is just crazy enough to be interesting, and while it’s no surprise if the film has largely been forgotten today, it’s also a bit amusing to rediscover as a relic from an earlier time.

  • Test Pilot (1938)

    Test Pilot (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) It’s interesting to note that movies predate aviation by only a few years — the medium was there to chronicle the way humans learned to fly, and even by 1938, aviation was barely in its third decade as more than a research endeavour. For some reason, I have an enduring fascination for aviation movies, especially the heroic age of aviation. That would be reason enough to watch Test Pilot, which is still widely hailed for its mostly realistic treatment of its subject. But then there’s the classic Hollywood touch: The film features no less than Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy, in addition to being built as a classic melodramatic blockbuster according to the timeless standards of the genre. (Fittingly, it was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award.)  The result is not exactly the most unpredictable of movies: As our cocky protagonist (Gable) keeps getting into self-inflicted trouble, barely held back by the intervention of his level-headed friend (Tracy) and the love of a good woman (Loy), it’s not astonishing when he ends the picture a changed, more responsible man. Test Pilot may have been directed by Victor Fleming, but the script is recognizably from Howard Hawks. In between, well, we get a good look at the state of late-1930s American aviation, with bullet-shaped barnstormers and a peek at the B-17 bomber about to get good use during WW2. The special effects still come across as credible. The result is about as old-school Hollywood as can be imagined, but not in a bad way: high technology, melodrama, manly men, and a sex symbol… who could ask for more?

  • La mala educación [Bad Education] (2004)

    La mala educación [Bad Education] (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2021) While I wouldn’t call myself a fan of writer-director Pedro Almodóvar’s work, I rarely miss a chance to see movies of his — he can usually be relied upon to show us something new, interesting and provocative every time. There are few boring Almodovar films, and Bad Education is not of them. The story of a director reuniting with a past flame soon turns to cross-dressing, impersonation, murder and melodramatic confessions. There’s seldom a dull moment along the way, and Almodovar keeps us on our toes with a non-chronologic structure that may simply be excerpts of the film being made along the way (echoing his later Pain and Glory). The film relies on the performances of Gael García Bernal and Fele Martinez and both actors prove up to the challenge. The cinematography is very colourful and, as usual, the film mercifully does not stick to a formulaic narrative. Bad Education may feel a lot like other Almodóvar movies, but like all of them, it’s also a voyage of discovery in what he can do with a film.