Reviews

  • Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

    Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) Nearly every single successful horror film of the 1990s spawned a sequel whether it was appropriate or not. The temptation to do a follow-up to Candyman was predictably irresistible: Not only was the film successful, it also fascinated audiences by weaving a complex mixture of social protest, urban decay, black representation and the undeniable presence of Tony Todd as the titular boogeyman. Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh predictably devolves by ramping up the horror elements at the expense of the social commentary. Leaving the concrete apartments of Chicago for New Orleans is a miscalculation even if it lets the filmmakers explore the Candyman legend to its origins. But then again—overexplaining what should have remained mysterious is the hallmark of ongoing horror series. What’s less forgivable is how the thematic concerns of the original are muted to the point of being nearly inconsequential: this film is about the iconography of the series (the hook, the bees, the mirror calling) more than the meaning of those icons. Perhaps the most surprising thing is how Farewell to the Flesh is directed by Bill Condon, who would progress to much brainier fare with his subsequent Gods and Monsters, and then further on to tentpole Hollywood productions. Not much of his talent is on display here, though—the direction is as mechanical as the script’s reliance on carefully spaced murders to qualify as a genre horror sequel. If nothing else, Farewell to the Flesh is another chance to see Tony Todd at work, and it’s not irremediably awful—merely useless.

  • Show People (1928)

    Show People (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I have a sharp interest in Hollywood movies about Hollywood, and it turns out that there were many of them –even in the early days of Hollywood! Many of them are not so good, but Show People does have a few things going for it. For one thing, it’s directed by King Vidor, a capable director who clearly knew what he’s doing. For another, and perhaps more visibly, this is a film that actually gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the way a silent film studio operated. The story itself is archetypical but holds up—an ingenue from the Midwest goes to California to become a movie star, and is dismayed to succeed first in slapstick comedy (getting hit in the face with seltzer water), but loses her way when she turns to prestige drama. There are many cameos—notably Vidor and lead actress Marion Davies as herself—but you’re going to need a good working knowledge of late-silent era Hollywood to know who they are. Show People is a fascinating piece of archival history of Hollywood’s silent era, and the emphasis on comedy means that it’s remarkably easier to watch than many other dramas of the time.

  • The Lady Vanishes (1979)

    The Lady Vanishes (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Trying to remake Hitchcock is such a pointless exercise that it probably shouldn’t be attempted. We already have the (admittedly interesting) Gus van Sant version of Psycho to tell us that, but Anthony Page’s earlier remake of The Lady Vanishes should have been evidence enough. Oh, the film is watchable enough—and if you asked a viewer used to contemporary films to watch either one of them, the remake is more accessible. Updated elements include colour cinematography, the presence of more recent actors such as Elliott Gould, Cybill Shepherd and Angela Lansbury, as well as resetting the setting to explicitly take place in Nazi Germany rather than the ersatz substitute used in the 1938 film. Most of what people remember from the original is in the remake as well: the two football-fan comic reliefs, the sense of paranoia, the climactic shootout and the final whistled tune… but it’s not quite Hitchcock, nor is it a marvel of technical innovation as the original was. If nothing else, it’s a decent-enough suspense with Nazis losing at the end, which isn’t too bad already. But it doesn’t help anything thinking that they can remake Hitchcock pictures with impunity.

  • Street Trash (1987)

    Street Trash (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) Part of the fun of Street Trash is discovering how truly insane the film is willing to become, but for everyone else who may want some advance notice, be warned that in some circles the film is considered a masterpiece of the “melt movies” subgenre. You shouldn’t have asked what those are, because now you’re cursed with the knowledge that there are people out there seeking films in which people, well, melt. We’re not talking climactic melting à la Raiders of the Lost Ark: we’re talking about films in which people’s bodies graphically melt down through some horrific mean. In chunks. So it is that in Street Trash, we find ourselves among the homeless of Brooklyn, as a case of old booze is sold to those who can’t afford any better, and they dissolve in colourful pools of goo. The poster is terrible enough, but the film itself is a carnival of vomit-inducing liquefaction, and that’s not even getting into the dirty atmosphere of the film in its entirety. Cheerfully racing past “gritty,” “grimy” and “dirty” as adjectives, Street Trash is simply visually filthy: every scene, every costume, every character has dirt, grease, human fluids or liquid goop attached to them. Abstractly, it sounds terrible, maybe even unbearable—I certainly would not recommend the result to anyone without a strong stomach and a tolerance for the kind of dark humour that genre 1980s horror could dive into. But on the screen, the result is so consciously over-the-top that liquefying hobos have never been so, well, funny. It’s still stomach-churning, but it’s not nearly as hollow as it could have been—and scenes in which street bums play around with a dismembered phallus are, well, curiously tolerable once you play into the film’s twisted logic. Obviously made by director J. Michael Muro and screenwriter-producer Roy Frumkes to freak out the mundanes, Street Trash remains, even today, the kind of film that becomes part of every twisted horror cinephile’s conversational repertory: “Oh, you think that’s bad, but have you seen…?” It’s definitely one of those movies that has to be seen to be believed. But if you show it to friends, you’re responsible for providing the barf bags.

  • The Front (1976)

    The Front (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Unusually enough, The Front features Woody Allen in a pure acting performance—within a film that he neither directed nor wrote. But you can understand why Allen would accept the project when you take a look at what the film is about—set in the 1950s, it’s about screenwriters put on the blacklist who hire the services of a store clerk (Allen) as a front to present their scripts to entertainment executives. The film’s aims are clear once the credits roll and a good chunk of the film’s topline crew (starting with director Martin Ritt, screenwriter Walter Bernstein and lead actors Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, and Lloyd Gough) have their names accompanied by a note telling us when they were placed on the blacklist—and of course, those who know about Dalton Trumbo’s career will recall how he kept working under various pseudonyms, even winning Academy Awards as someone else. Parts of The Front are quite funny: helped by Allen’s nerdy charm, the film coasts a bit on his ability to portray a sympathetic loser. But as befit the topic, the film has some less amusing turns toward the end, as the illusion dissipates and the film goes for a well-deserved “take that!” at the idiocy of McCarthyism. While not necessarily well known these days, The Front is a welcome act of reclamation by blacklisted Hollywood people, acting as a marker and a bit of wish fulfillment by those who were sidelined by the excessive paranoia of the time.

  • Terror in the Aisles (1984)

    Terror in the Aisles (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) I’m favourably predisposed toward anthology films—handled correctly à la That’s Entertainment, they can combine an educational quality with some great entertainment matter. But Terror in the Aisles does seem to miss its target. Supposedly an exploration of horror cinema narrated by Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen as if they are in a movie theatre watching a horror film (a conceit that doesn’t quite work), it features excerpts of films from the 1930s to the early 1980s. Unfortunately, the chatter that accompanies the excerpts is definitely introductory material: While the film features footage of Hitchcock providing his well-known explanation of the difference between suspense and surprise, the rest of the film seems satisfied with familiar platitudes. The choice of the excerpts can also be suspicious: There’s a lengthy excerpt from Nighthawks that did make me want to see the film, but seems out of place in a film about horror. Much of the material is loosely grouped along thematic lines, which does add to the sense of wasted opportunities: by 1984, horror cinema was fresh from a decade of radical change after the rise and crash of slasher movies, the hybridization of themes (as with Alien, equally at ease in horror and SF), and the far-gorier material made for an increasingly distinct horror audience (à la Italian horror wave). Very little of this is covered in Terror in the Aisles, and one can’t really blame the lack of perspective when those trends were already obvious years before. I really would have enjoyed an assessment of the horror genre circa 1984, but this isn’t what this is meant to do—it feels closer to a mainstream cash-in on the horror craze of the time, not digging too deep for fear of losing their non-fan audience. For those who are knowledgeable about the genre, there is some value in being reminded of better movies and playing “name that movie” when the film doesn’t. Amusingly enough, the most interesting section of Terror in the Aisles is the one about horror spoofs because it features films that, to put it bluntly, have not withstood the test of time, and thus qualify as unfamiliar fresh material for anyone watching from the twenty-first century.

  • House of Wax (1953)

    House of Wax (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Despite having seen enough movies to know better, I thought that having seen the 2005 remake of House of Wax meant that the original wouldn’t have many surprises in store. I was happily mistaken—it doesn’t take a lot of time to realize that the “remake” is as far apart in plot from the original as “movies about a wax museum created by a psychopath using live persons” could be. This version stars none other than the unique Vincent Price as a genius-level wax sculptor who, in the opening moments, sees his labour of love being burnt down. When he reappears, he’s got a few people working for him with designs far darker than before, and it’s up to the investigators to piece together the rebirth of his museum, the mysterious disappearances around the city and the reports of a horribly disfigured figure prowling around. House of Wax does feel a bit more daring than usual for a 1950s horror film—the prestige colour cinematography does help a bit, and Price does help make any material compelling. It’s a decent film in its own right, and much more interesting for those who have seen the remake.

  • Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

    Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) Abbot and Costello movies don’t deal in subtleties, and so their chance to meet the Mummy (third in their trilogy of Universal Movie Monsters team-ups) is a full-bore excuse to indulge in as many Egyptian stereotypes as possible. The comic intent of Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy helps make it as inoffensive as possible, although we’re once again deep in pyramids, European expat clubs and old-school adventurer hats. It’s also an excuse for them to run through variations of their comic routines, where it’s the “pick/spade” verbal jousting that echoes their famous “who’s on first” number, or the “slipping the mickey” routine from an earlier film. There’s a nice mixture of comedy levels here, and the result is easy enough to watch even if it’s seldom as clever at it could have been (or as the first “Frankenstein” film). The character of the Mummy is comically altered, but still recognizable from its classic roots. If you like Abbott and Costello, if you’ve seen the two other films in this sub-trilogy, if you’re looking for the authorized comic takes on the Universal classic monsters, then Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy will fit the bill. It may even be a good pick for Halloween night viewing with the kids.

  • The Far Country (1954)

    The Far Country (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) Never mind the western, here is the northern: The Far Country is distinctive in how it is set in Alaska (but shot in Alberta), featuring an adventurer bringing order to the north. There are numerous points of comparison between this and Thunder Bay in semi-awkwardly featuring James Stewart as an outdoorsy adventurer, and that was before I discovered that both movies shared the same director Anthony Mann, who made many other 1950s films (especially westerns) with Steward. The ingredients are similar, what with an adventure story made distinctive by its procedural description of a slightly unusual setting. The Far Country is not that distinctive nor that good, but it’s watchable enough in how it transposes familiar Western themes to an underused environment. There’s a little bit of Canadian and French-Canadian content in here (largely due to the location and to Corinne Calvet’s performance). Still, the film is not all that memorable, and there are better choices out there for Stewart fans looking at his 1950s filmography.

  • Humoresque (1946)

    Humoresque (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I’m not a big Joan Crawford fan, but she’s the single best element of Humoresque, a dour and dark romantic drama that rests on her performance as a damaged woman dragging a young and inexperienced violinist (John Garfield, fine but no more) in her self-destructive spiral. In many ways, this is an old-fashioned weepie, with characters fated to bad ends through their own flaws. There are not a lot of opportunities for levity or jokes here (placing supporting actor Oscar Levant at a disadvantage, as his later roles would demonstrate), reinforcing the all-orchestral swell of melodramatic intensity that goes with the ending. There’s a little more to it than just a melodrama in how the film delves, especially in the first half, in the universe of classical music performance. This enables the film to spend a lot of time featuring good music (and for Levant to play a bit of piano), lending additional respectability to the result. Humoresque is not exactly a good movie, but Crawford is compelling here as a woman who knows she can’t be redeemed, and if the result is overlong, it’s not to be dismissed easily.

  • Birthmarked (2018)

    Birthmarked (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) It’s really not a good sign if you make it to the end of a film wondering when the good stuff will start. You can call Birthmarked a slow burn, and that’s fine. I’ll just call it a film without a clear reason to exist. It attempts to be darkly funny in describing how two scientists raise kids contrarily to ideas about their “nature,” but that’s already a shaky start considering that few people will subscribe to that central thesis in the first place. It gathers no point for a restrained direction and a rather dull narrative. While Birthmarked does acquire a pulse very late in the process, by that point we’re in a sunk-cost kind of situation, as it’s easier to let the film play and see how it ends than stopping watching already. I should feel more positively about the film: after all, it’s a Canadian production shot not too far away from Montréal, and it’s a bit more subtle than usual. But there’s subtlety and then there’s having no perceptible point, and Birthmarked doesn’t do too well in that area. The premise called out for wilder screenwriting and much more stylized direction—what we got instead is simply too dull to be interesting.

  • Downhill (2020)

    Downhill (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) I never watched Force Majeure, the Swedish film that inspired Downhill: Being the story of a father who has to face down his family after fleeing an impending disaster, it felt too far away on the awkwardness scale. After watching Downhill, however, I’m curious to see how it did better than its remake because the American version just feels pitiable. Featuring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in one of their least funny performances in ages, Downhill sinks humiliation “comedy” to new depths as it charts the disintegration of a marriage following an act of cowardice by the father of a family of four. Taking aim at the traditional “protector” role of the father, Downhill never goes beyond that, nor does it allow its characters a redemption arc. It just gets more and more uncomfortable until we’re left wondering, “and then what”? I don’t always agree that movies should be rated on the effectiveness in fulfilling their intentions: I think that, at some point, we should also rate the film based on how we feel about those intentions. So Downhill means to be uncomfortable and is uncomfortable and then what? What for? I can be hideously uncomfortable on my own, thank you very much. Despite a few amusing moments, many of them in Louis-Dreyfus’ vicinity, Downhill is the kind of film where you start wondering why it exists. The ending (exception made of the final kicker meant to show that everyone jumps under the right circumstances) comes too quickly to have any sense of meaningful dramatic progression: if the lesson is that their marriage is doomed, then that lesson could have come an hour earlier. OK, that’s it: I’ve got to see the original to see how it did better than that.

  • Across the Wide Missouri (1951)

    Across the Wide Missouri (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) One of the main reasons why I dislike westerns as a genre is often its treatment of Native American tribes as nothing more than savage enemies. It took a long time for Hollywood to come around to the idea that there was more to them than violent antagonists, and you can feel the shift beginning with Across the Wide Missouri, which tackles a Dances with Wolves kind of plot in 1950s Technicolor. Featuring none other than Clark Gable as a fur trapper who heads to Blackfoot territory with mercenary intention but is gradually seduced by their way of life, taking up a wife and raising a son. The film steadily shifts from a comedy to more serious drama as it goes on, creating some easy sympathy for its characters before moving on to more serious lessons. I’m not going to pretend that it’s a particularly progressive film by twenty-first century standards: in-narrative, the “romance” between our protagonist and his indigenous wife starts off as a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme, and the perspective resolutely remains that of a white man despite a Metis narration. Out-of-narrative, most characters are played by actors of inappropriate ethnicity, meaning Ricardo Montalban as a Blackfoot warrior and María Elena Marqués as a Native American princess. But it’s the thought that counts for a 1951 film, and Across the Wide Missouri does feel far more humanistic than other westerns. The stunning colour cinematography remains an asset, and I was pleased to see the film making some space for French-Canadian trappers, especially one played by Adolphe Menjou (some of his French is fluent, while some of it is borderline incomprehensible, including a rendition of “Alouette” that manages to mangle every single gendered article). I’ll further note that this is not a western film in the cowboy-and-gun sense as much as it’s one of wilderness and fur trappers—I don’t have to ask myself for long why the second sort is far more interesting to me as a French Canadian. In other words, I got quite a lot more enjoyment out of Across the Wide Missouri than I expected—it’s a surprising Western, and one that does much to reconcile me with at least a subset of the genre.

  • Merton of the Movies (1947)

    Merton of the Movies (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) My primary interest in watching Merton of the Movies was to find out if this remake of the 1932 film Make Me a Star (itself one of many adaptations of Harry Leon Wilson’s novel Merton of the Movies) was any better than the rather disappointing original. That objective took a backseat the moment I saw Virginia O’Brien’s name appear on-screen: O’Brien has become a favourite of mine following a few striking musical/comedy supporting numbers, and one of the happy surprises of Merton of the Movies is how she gets a rare leading role: no singing, no dancing, just looking gorgeous and acting as a foil for Red Skelton. While I’m far from having seen all of Skelton’s movies, I’m struck by how many of them are remakes of earlier (often silent) movies – something facilitated by his friendship with Buster Keaton. This being said, I’m not complaining because Merton of the Movies fixes nearly every single complaint I had about Make Me a Star: the script improves nearly every aspect of the story from the finale to the budding romance, the pacing is much better, Skelton’s take on the character is immensely more likable, and O’Brien is a more distinctive performer. Most of the original’s strengths in taking us back to the silent film comedy era are also preserved. The upgrade of the character alone is worth the remake—while the original sad-sack protagonist was too dumb to live, Skelton plays his character as situationally dim-witted, and occasionally shows flashes of cleverness. O’Brien gets a chance to prove what she could do outside her usual comedy singing routines, and she nails it—if nothing else, her take on the “thirty kinds of kisses” scene is just wonderful. I’m not going to maintain that Merton of the Movies is a great movie: it’s obscure even in Skelton’s biography and the version shown on TCM is one of the poorest transfers I recall seeing on the channel. But it’s good fun; it’s a redemption act for the previous film and it showcases O’Brien as more than a novelty act.

  • Au revoir les enfants (1987)

    Au revoir les enfants (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) There’s a familiar quality to the blend of elements that Au revoir les enfants uses so intently — this isn’t the first film to confront the innocence of kids to the horrors of war, or to take less-obvious means to talk about the holocaust. But that doesn’t take away anything from the success of the result. Written and directed by Louis Malle from autobiographical experience, much of the film is set at a French boarding school during the Nazi occupation of France, as schoolboys in their early teens learn to deal with new schoolmates that are eventually revealed to be Jewish. Much of the film is about the growing friendship between the protagonist and a Jewish boy until, inevitably, the Gestapo comes knocking to take them away. For a movie in which not much happens during most of its running time (with much of it soberly directed as well), the ending is unexpectedly powerful, even more so given its restraint: We all know what’s going to happen to those Jewish kids and their older sympathizers, and the very final voiceover (by Malle himself) only drives the point home. There have been many movies revolving around the same topic, but Au revoir les enfants still packs a punch.