Reviews

  • The Intervention (2016)

    The Intervention (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2020) There are a few actresses out there that may not be household names, but have attracted my attention one way or another. I make a half-hearted effort to follow what they’re up to, especially when they leave the world of big-budget movies to do smaller movies. The Intervention not only brings together four of those actresses, but is also written and directed by none other than Clea DuVall, an actress whose first decade in the business was filled with roles in big-budget pictures, and then switched to lower-profile projects and TV series. With The Intervention, she works on both sides of the camera and delivers what could be called a Hollywood home movie: a low-stakes drama set in a secluded location, featuring an ensemble cast of characters played by friends and acquaintances. As a strategy to become a writer-director, it’s a clever one: the budget stays low, the friendships between the actresses translate into screen chemistry and the film can be approached as an actor’s showcase without the logistical complication of big costly sequences. The flip side of Hollywood home movies, however, is that they often feel similar: As with a theatrical piece, we get a first half of growing complications, and a second half of detonations. The camera moves in traditional ways, the script is good enough to provide a template, and the focus is on the performances. The Intervention does not escape the mould and, at times, feels like half a dozen other movies. Still, it does have its advantages. It’s set in Georgia rather than in the Hollywood Hills, and the cast is filled with recognizable names. You may not care as much as I do about Melanie Lynskey and Natasha Lyonne (here reuniting with DuVall seventeen years after the classic But I’m a Cheerleader!), or Alia Shawkat and Cobie Smulders, but here they are playing off each other. I found the overall result more interesting than entertaining, but it’s true that I’m far from the target audience for the film. I wish the film could have taken more cues from theatre plays in setting up and then playing off its interpersonal conflicts: there’s a tendency here to pull back from confrontation that I found annoying, but only in the context of wishing for a harder-hitting piece. If DuVall wanted to deliver something softer, then it’s up to her, and The Intervention accomplishes those objectives.

  • Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

    Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) In some ways, Gold Diggers of 1933 is very similar to the other top musicals of the period: It was a time, only a few years out of the silent film era, when you could still feel the giddiness of film producers in wowing audiences with dazzle-dazzle singing and dancing. The story takes place on/near Broadway, as many musicals of the time did, in order to provide audiences a familiar frame of reference as to how the music was integrated in the film. Recognizable names such as Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers and Dick Powell are in the cast, as the story focuses on four women trying to marry rich and make it big. Perhaps more interestingly to modern audiences, it’s a pre-Code film, meaning that it features scantily-clad women and a playful attitude toward risqué subject matter that wouldn’t fly even two years later. (Indeed, its direct sequel Gold Diggers of 1935 would be far tamer in that regard, the Hays Code having taken over Hollywood by then.) While Mervyn LeRoy directs the comedy material of this musical comedy, the dance numbers are directed by Busby Berkeley, whose touches become more and more apparent as the film goes on. “We’re in the Money” kicks things off with a memorable tune sung by Rogers, “Pettin’ in the Park” is pure pre-Code hilarity, but the film really reaches its apex during “The Shadow Waltz,” especially during a moment where the dancers carry neon-lit violins and the overhead camera shot practically turns to animation. “Remember My Forgotten Man” concludes things with fewer pyrotechnics, but more striking result. Worth noting is how, in a decade known for escapism, the Great Depression is an integral part of the plot (and the songs, given that “We’re in the Money” imagines an end to the Depression), giving us a tiny glimpse at life outside Hollywood fantasies. Being like the other musicals of the time isn’t a bad thing when most of them still hold up nicely today, and Gold Diggers of 1933 does have a few added qualities.

  • It’s Alive (1974)

    It’s Alive (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) I had semi-high expectations going into It’s Alive: writer-director Larry Cohen often worked in B-movies, but he usually had an extra spark of imagination that made them worthwhile regardless of budget. In It’s Alive, you can see his intention of doing something weirder than usual, but also the limitations of his approach. In a premise fit for the ages, this is a film about a mutant baby that goes on a murder spree from birth (an experimental drug is involved, in classic mid-1970s post-Thalidomide fashion), and the efforts of the police forces and his new father to track it down. It sounds crazy enough and, to be fair, the film does a lot of mileage out of that premise. Unfortunately, the film is not all that pleasant to watch: the gritty New Hollywood style compounded by the low budget means that the film is ugly from beginning to end, and that’s before getting into the gore inherent in the premise. In typical Cohen fashion, it’s got more on its mind than just murder, and you can have a relatively good time decoding the various themes and issues that the film touches upon beyond the horror premise. Still, it doesn’t make It’s Alive any more compelling to watch—call it a half-miss or a half-hit, depending on how generous you feel.

  • Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1967)

    Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Whew, that was a wild one. By modern standards, Spider Baby isn’t all that wild—it’s about a family of killer children, the man taking care of them, and what happens when there’s an intruder into their well-regimented lives. But by 1967 standards, it’s something else. Two or three factors conspire to make the film feel even older (and wilder) than it is: Obviously, the black-and-white cinematography at a time when most movies were shifting to colour. (This is not entirely accidental—Spider Baby was shot in 1964, but not released until years later due to the producers’ bankruptcy.) Then there’s the presence of none other than Lon Chaney Jr. as the girls’ caretaker, harkening back to a much older tradition of horror films. The result, of course, is not straight horror: there’s enough dark comedy here to echo the Archers/Hammer British film tradition. But much of the film’s interest is in just seeing what the script throws up on screen in an effort to make viewers uneasy or better yet queasy. I can’t say that the result is all that good: there are a lot of meandering tangents here that take away from the main story, and Spider Baby isn’t exactly focused on narrative when there are so many creepy sequences to lay out. Still, it’s an experience, and it straddles an interesting period in horror looking back at the classics and anticipating much more disturbing things to come.

  • Deathsport (1978)

    Deathsport (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Maybe you, like me, have heard about Deathsport and made associations with Deathrace or Rollerball as a Science Fiction sports movie of the 1970s. But let me break that link right now because Deathsport is nowhere as good as those two other movies, even if you don’t happen to think too highly of those. What it does have in common with them is a loose (that is to say: bad) understanding of SF plot devices as filtered through a limited budget, except that Deathsport happens to have a much, much lower threshold than the others. Set in a future post-apocalyptic dystopia that sometimes looks like a crystal-infused utopia, Deathsport can’t be bothered to set any rules for itself, nor stick to them. The titular deathsport unexplainably has circa-1970s motorcycles and death rays that instantly vaporize their targets, except when the riders go head-to-head fighting with crystal swords. It’s boring and ridiculous. Those two qualities don’t necessarily always go together, but Deathsport feels like every single bad trend of 1970s Science Fiction blended into one movie, with all of the energy sucked out of it. It feels like an over-the-top film, except that there’s nothing to send over the top. The result is just to be avoided—even as an illustration of 1970s SF movies, I can think of much, much better examples.

  • The Turkey Bowl (2019)

    The Turkey Bowl (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) There’s a straightforward earnestness to The Turkey Bowl that compensates for a multitude of sins, perhaps the biggest one being that the script seems made of three familiar formulas thrown in a blender. You’ve got the young urban professional of humble origins getting a few second thoughts as his marriage to an upper-class fiancée approaches. You’ve got the return to a Midwestern town complete with the old flames, old friends, old rivals and old home with old bedroom intact. Finally, you’ve got the football game subplot, a fifteen-year-later attempt to recapture glory whose outcome is never once in doubt. Shot and set in Oklahoma, The Turkey Bowl often gives the impression of having been conceived there as well: There’s a notable lower-budget lack of polish to the result, whether it’s the dull cinematography, merely adequate actors, or slack editing. It’s not a bad film, but it’s a wholly average one, with very little to strike out as being distinctive one way or another. The formulaic nature of the plot means a few things: it allows casual watchers to drop in and out of the film to go make themselves a sandwich without fear of losing much of the plot, and, more importantly, it offers a lot of comfort to viewers. In that way, it’s not too dissimilar to a Hallmark channel romance: we know how it’s going to end, we know how it’s going to get there and there’s little active participation involved. There is certainly a public for this kind of thing, and every those who would turn their noses up to such populist filmmaking have to admit that it works even if it doesn’t exceed any expectations. Writer-director Greg Coolidge does just fine with what he has in hand, and there’s plenty of merit in turning in a good-enough movie. The Turkey Bowl may play best in a situation reminiscent of its title: A thanksgiving afternoon filler, with the family resting from a heavy turkey lunch and not wanting anything too challenging to interrupt the digestion.

  • The Pirate (1948)

    The Pirate (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Gene Kelly and Judy Garland worked together five times through the ebb and flow of their careers (She helped him on his first film; he helped her on her last MGM picture,) but you can argue that The Pirate was the most ambitious of their movies, and perhaps the beginning of the end for her. Little of the film’s troubled production shows on-screen, as we’re taken to a fantasy version of the pirate-era Caribbean, as a lothario actor (Kelly) is convinced to play the pirate and charms a young woman (Garland) in the process. Many musical numbers ensue, and since this is an Arthur Freed production, the quality is about as high as any musical of the era. Bright colour cinematography helps a lot, but the costumes and sets show where the film’s budget was spent. Kelly is having fun aping the Fairbanks and Barrymores of silent serials, his role enabling him to play the athletic dancer, the romantic singer (“Niña” is quite funny) and the entertaining swashbuckler—this is his movie, and it’s fun to hear the relish through which he tears through his better-than-average dialogue. He also gets to sneak in a bit of ballet. Garland is actually quite nice here, and I say this as someone who usually considers Garland a liability to most of her movies—but in The Pirate she looks healthier than many of her later films, sings well, dances well, emotes well and even looks stunning in a number with her hair down. The bit in which she spends a scene throwing most of the scenery decorations at Kelly’s character is one of the many highlights of the film. Elsewhere in the film, I now understand the fuss about the similarities between “Be a Clown” and Singin’ in the Rain’s “Make Them Laugh.” But the number that everyone has to watch is the dancing sequence featuring Kelly and the Nicholas brothers—a high-energy production in which Kelly barely manages to keep up with the spring-loaded energy of the brothers. The Pirate starts well, has a bit of a mid-movie lull but comes back strong—there are better movies in Kelly’s filmography, but it’s still quite a fun musical. I suppose I’m getting to be knowledgeable about MGM musicals by now, because I had a really good time reading about The Pirate after watching the film and finding out how its commercial failure led to 1949’s Easter Parade.

  • The Kissing Bandit (1948)

    The Kissing Bandit (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Movie history is not kind to The Kissing Bandit: It’s recognized by Wikipedia as “one of the least successful musicals in MGM history,” and “an acknowledged low-point in the careers of Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson.” Is it such a terrible film, though? Of course not. While almost obscure these days, it’s quite entertaining to watch if you’re a fan of Technicolor MGM musical. Gorgeously shot against California mountains with very colourful costumes, the film clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously. The premise alone does a lot of mileage out of blending Robin Hood with Zorro as a Boston-educated young man comes back to 19th-century California to take over his father’s inn, only to discover that he’s expected to step into his father’s true occupation: leader of a masked gang, otherwise known as “the Kissing Bandit” for his habit of, well, kissing female victims. That premise wouldn’t fly today for obvious reasons, but even then—the film seems determined to minimize any unpleasant connotations this may have: our hero spends nearly all of the film shying away from any kissing, and the film spares no means (opening titles joke, comic sound effects, overacting) to let us know that this is a big broad comedy and nothing bad is ever going to happen. A young Sinatra with relatively long hair does well in the lead role, while Grayson is simply lovely as the governor’s daughter. Still, I’m burying the lead here because the single best reason to watch the film as far as I’m concerned is a single number toward the end of the film that has two of my biggest MGM crushes, Ann Miller and Cyd Charisse, in billowing dresses dancing a number with none other than Ricardo Montalban—whew! Let’s not argue that The Kissing Bandit is a great film—it has trouble with tone, and the rather promising opening act somehow doesn’t quite lead to a satisfying middle before the film picks up again toward the end. But it’s fun, funny and offers some great Hollywood stars doing some singing and dancing. Its relative obscurity may even mean that even fans of the era haven’t seen it yet.

  • The Greasy Strangler (2016)

    The Greasy Strangler (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) There are a few horror subgenres that seldom work well for me, and The Greasy Stranger seems intent on combining two of them. For one thing, it’s a horror/comedy, which often ends up making me wonder why I’m supposed to laugh at horrible people doing terrible things. Then there’s the aesthetics, which (as the title suggests) wallows in an oily mixture of grime and awkwardness. (If movies smelled, I wouldn’t want to see this one.) The story has to do with a serial-murdering father, his son and the woman that comes between them. Taking liberally from the deadpan Midwestern-gothic style of movies like Napoleon Dynamite and the ultra-gore of video nasties, The Greasy Strangler is a film that, on paper, looks sure to irritate any possible indulgence out of me. While I’m still not too fond of the final result, even I have to admit that the film occasionally works better than I thought. There’s an over-the-top nature to the result that sands off the edge of the gore, while the humour does get understandable after a while. The serial killer bit (slathered in grease, popping eyes out via strangulation, cleaning himself in a car wash) is overdone to the point of being almost funnier than gross. The Greasy Strangler is really not a movie for everyone and it certainly relies on that specificity in how it builds its story. It holds nothing back either in gratuitous nudity (male and female), gross moments and overall lack of morality. I was ultimately defeated by the too-nihilistic ending, but for the longest time, the film played better than I thought. Still, this is more of a one-time joke than a kind of film I’d like to see more often.

  • House (1985)

    House (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) I may need to watch House a second time, because what I got from it was not at all what I was told I would get from it. Various sources say it’s a horror comedy, and, on paper, it’s got a few things that I should love: a writer protagonist, a haunted house, and plenty of gooey 1980s special effects. But in practice? It feels dull, featureless, repetitive and ordinary—just about the base level of what a haunted house film should be, except without any wit or humour. The integration of Vietnam War trauma into genre horror is intriguing but falls flat, and much of the family drama seems overly serious for what’s supposed to be lighthearted. I don’t know—maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for House. Maybe I’ll have another look at some other time. Until then, though, I can’t recommend it.

  • Bell Book and Candle (1958)

    Bell Book and Candle (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) The ridiculously charming Bell Book and Candle combines a few of my favourite things: James Steward, Jack Lemmon, witches, cats and a supernatural romantic comedy. Pairing-wise, there is a nice contrast between Kim Novak’s glamorous sophistication and Stewart’s down-to-Earth affability, and the film doesn’t skip an occasion of making good use of it. Lemmon (and Ernie Kovacs) brings more overt comedy in the film’s subplot. Even the cat has a role to play—and it all takes place in Manhattan’s Beatnik-central Greenwich Village. Shot in very enjoyable Technicolor, Bell Book and Candle is both a fairly standard romantic comedy and a very cute one. [November 2024: Let it be recorded that, inspired by this film, I tried for months to get my cat to stand on my shoulders. I occasionally succeeded, which is not bad given the nature of my cat. The pandemic was weird.]

  • A Woman Rebels (1936)

    A Woman Rebels (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) If there is no Katharine Hepburn biography titled A Woman Rebels, then it’s a missed opportunity for the ages. The film of that name is so very much a 1930s Hepburn film, featuring her headstrong personality and embracing surprisingly feminist themes roughly three decades before everyone else. In Victorian England, a woman shows her independence by raising a child out of wedlock, and by becoming an activist for women’s causes -an ideal role for the iconoclastic Hepburn. Often blunt but nonetheless fascinating, A Woman Rebels is an illustration of just how good Hepburn was in the 1930s—a mesmerizing beauty, a ferocious screen presence and a canny performer. Alas, the film flopped and led to a near-career-death experience for Hepburn, who took years to get back on top as box-office performer. File this one under “the future knew better.” Also worth noting: Van Heflin in his film debut. While A Woman Rebels is not that good of a film (a bit fuzzy, a bit jumbled, a bit overlong), Hepburn easily overpowers those flaws to make the film worth watching, especially for her fans or anyone interested in film progressivism.

  • Easy to Wed (1946)

    Easy to Wed (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Considering that Libeled Lady is one of the great comedies of the 1930s, I wasn’t sure that a decade-later remake could be all that good. But Easy to Wed turns out to be one of those remakes under the form of a musical comedy, and a much more farcical tone thanks to actors going for laughs over fidelity to the first film. Van Johnson, Esther Williams and Lucille Ball sing and strut their stuff (in and under water, in Williams’ predictable case) to end up making something so pleasantly different from the original that it becomes its own thing. As a bonus, you can see in Ball’s scene-stealing performance the kernels of her later Lucy character. If you like musicals, Easy to Wed is not a bad remake—but be sure to see Libeled Lady for a better movie.

  • The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

    The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (TubiTV Streaming, September 2020) Films like The Kentucky Fried Movie are best appreciated as portents of better things to come. The number and later pedigree of people involved in its production is incredible—sophomore feature film from John Landis, first movie script by the legendary Zucker-Abrams-Zucker trio, appearances by George Lazenby, Henry Gibson and Donald Sutherland… all in semi-related comedy sketches relying on a lot of sudden crudity, silliness and bare breasts. The problem, though, is that if The Kentucky Fried Movie is amusing, it’s not quite as frequently funny—there’s a sense that it’s all juvenile and not quite ready for prime time, even as it does its best to get laughs. What may be funnier now than it was upon release is the deluge of references to a variety of 1970s pop-culture, politics and sports: either watch the film with Wikipedia in hand, or enjoy the even stranger sense of jokes flying over your heads. The Kentucky Fried Movie would have many inheritors—it’s an early prototype of a style of comedy that would become Airplane! and Top Secret! and The Naked Gun, but it’s not quite cooked yet. (It’s still funnier than any of the spoof movies of the 2000s, though.)

  • The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

    The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, September 2020) This may count as my second viewing of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, except that my first viewing, decades ago, left me with disconnected, confused memories. Not that this second viewing is any different because this film really feels as if it’s a mashup of about six different movies thrown in a blender, with the protagonist somehow inheriting the characteristics of all six leads. Buckaroo Banzai, after all, is a physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot, and rock star whose various specialties (and equally diverse collaborators) are ideally suited to detecting and countering an alien invasion of Earth. Filled with non sequiturs, outrageous contrivances, deadpan humour and bizarre combinations of tossed-off awesomeness, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is a cult classic in the purest sense: It’s going to be incomprehensible to most, and beloved by a few. I’m firmly but not obsessively in the second camp—this is brilliant, off-beat stuff, the likes of which only the 1980s were capable of producing. Peter Welles is unflappable in the lead role, while Jeff Goldblum is hilarious as a supporting player, and John Lithgow chews all the scenery he can find in what feels like an audition for 3rd Rock From the Sun. Even its dearest fans will tell you that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension has the flaws of its qualities: that it’s ridiculously undisciplined and that at least another script rewrite to bring it all into focus would have produced wonders. But when it works (or rather, if it works), then it really works. The biggest surprise, frankly, is why there hasn’t been a remake since then—this strikes me as the ideal fixer-upper; the best Doc Savage film ever made under another name. Even thirty-five years later, we still stare at it in awe.