Reviews

  • Waterloo Bridge (1940)

    Waterloo Bridge (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) I can’t say that I was all that impressed by Waterloo Bridge—playing from grand riffs on old-school themes such as a tragic wartime romance, it’s clearly meant to move audiences, give the filmmakers some space to stretch their “serious movie” muscles and (incidentally) court after the same audience that went flocking to the earlier 1931 film. By a stroke of good luck, the project attracted talent such as director Mervyn LeRoy, Viven Leigh and Robert Taylor, and the darkening news from the United Kingdom in the early days of the war added heft to the result. For modern audience, Waterloo Bridge plays as an old-fashioned weeper, perhaps a bit more daring than most considering that prostitution is a plot element of the heroine’s downfall and that the ending is a downer of significant proportions.

  • Destry (1954)

    Destry (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2020) Considering that I had Destry lying there on my DVR, even as I was watching the original 1939 Destry Rides Again, I had to take a look at the 1954 remake as soon as possible. Curiously, I’m not really disappointed. Sure, the original had none other than James Steward and Greta Garbo, whereas the remake has Audie Murphy and Mari Blanchard. Don’t look for additional plot twists, because this remake is almost shot-for-shot identical to the first film. But the story is fine enough that even another redo is a fun time. Blanchard is surprisingly good—to my eyes more animated than Garbo, which fits the character better. While Murphy isn’t Stewart, this very fact makes it easier to see Destry-the-character rather than the Stewart persona being called Destry. Plus, Destry is in colour—that’s not supposed to matter, but it does. The staging and cinematography are a bit less artificial, as per the evolving technical qualifies of filmmaking over two decades. While the original film remains quite good, there’s nothing specifically wrong with the remake either—as a portrait of a lawmaker out to pacify a town without resorting to excessive violence, it’s even inspiring.

  • Hollywood: The Dream Factory (1972)

    Hollywood: The Dream Factory (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) The more I dig into MGM’s history, the more it becomes even more fascinating. It’s hard to articulate how much of a movie factory the studio was in its heyday, although Hollywood: The Dream Factory does come close. Put together at the time of the infamous 1970 auction where MGM sold a very large chunk of its inventory, the film was also a chronicle of a studio that was a mere shadow of its former glory—As the footage shows, the back lots (also seen in the near-contemporary That’s Entertainment!) are run-down, grown to seed and not far away from its final 1974 sale. (Condos now occupy the space.) Hollywood: The Dream Factory is a mixture of shoddy video showing the 1972 auction and back lots, archival footage showing the studio’s heydays, and many clips from MGM films. Narrated with a wistful flair by Dick Cavett, it’s an excuse to dive in MGM’s back catalogue and explain why it was once an entertainment powerhouse. There’s some truly fascinating archival footage to go along with the narration—at its heights, MGM employed craftsmen in over 250 professions: everything required to create the illusion on movie sets. It was a star factory, betting on hopeful unknowns out of hundreds of applicants, signing them up in exclusive contracts and developing them through training and B-movies in the hope of capturing the next superstars—such as Clark Gable, as described here. Interestingly enough, some of the footage in the film looks comparatively terrible compared to what’s available there days (Singin’ in the Rain, for instance, or the deliberate downgrading of The Band Wagon excerpts in black-and-white to better fit in between other B&W films)—the art of movie restoration has advanced quite a bit since 1972, and we now see films in better shape than ever. Despite the obvious potential for hagiography, the film is not entirely self-congratulatory—probably an artifact of the cynical 1970s and not yet detached enough from the heydays to be nostalgic about it. It’s an incredible documentary for film buffs, although in retrospect, I would have liked to see more footage from the 1970 auction and studio backlot rather than the movies themselves—as The Dream Factory itself points out, the films are immortal and still available, whereas the documentary had a chance to document something very specific in history and I’m not sure it completely did to its fullest extent. Fans of classic films will further note that chunks of Cavett’s quasi-lyrical narration have been used as voiceover for one of TCM’s best promos: Let’s Movie 2017. “Once upon a time, in the place called California, there was an enchanted kingdom…”

  • Deathbed (2002)

    Deathbed (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) Once upon a time, in the wild carefree days of 2018, I was very amused to find out that there was one horror film, Bed of the Dead, that focused upon a killer… bed. Now, in this accursed year of 2020, I am far less amused to find out that in between Bed of the Dead, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats and Deathbed, there are three movies with similar premises. I haven’t yet seen The Bed that Eats, but this Deathbed is a contender for the title of the worst film of the trio. Made for TV (usually, but not always a bad sign for a horror film), this is a low-budget, low-imagination effort in which a young couple moving into a haunted apartment discover a locked room that opens up just for them, revealing a bed that, we already know, has been the scene for a gruesome kinky murder a few decades earlier. Considering its pedigree, Deathbed’s gore is slight, the nudity is tasteful and the plot is strictly by the numbers, although the finale does amp up the sex, the gore and the plot twists—not enough to compensate, but enough to be slightly out-of-touch with the rest of the film. Tanya Dempsey looks nice as the heroine, but that’s about it wherever acting talent is concerned. Danny Draven’s direction is barely adequate and sabotaged by its muddy cinematography but the rest of the film is simply not very good no matter what. While not out-and-out terrible, this Deathbed isn’t much either. I suppose that the only left to do now is to watch The Bed that Eats.

  • Contratiempo [The Invisible Guest] (2016)

    Contratiempo [The Invisible Guest] (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, September 2020) With thrillers, there’s always a danger in over-complicating things. Contratiempo squarely falls into that trap with a premise so convoluted that it only takes a second place to an even more delirious finale. Ironically, one of the ways to improve the experience of watching such movies is to spoil yourself rotten beforehand, so that the far-fetched developments don’t feel so implausible, and you can watch the craft through which the film puts its pieces together. I was generally aware that Contratiempo was a twisty thriller, and that did help—Suspiciously questioning everything in sight, I had anticipated nearly three-quarter of the finale, even though some other things had escaped me. The premise has to do with a couple having an affair causing the death of a young man. A few deceptive manoeuvres later, the woman coincidentally finds herself at the young man’s parents’ house, while the man is dumping a car in a lake. But the framing device, months later, has the man building a defence strategy with a high-powered lawyer who insists on knowing everything… and I’ve already told you enough to get you guessing accurately at elements of the conclusion. Despite Contratiempo’s very sober direction and cold cinematography, this is a wild script that throws in a locked-room mystery, impersonations, twisted relationships with a universe populated by only twenty people, and some subtext about rich people getting away with murder. The Spanish setting can be good for a change of pace from American productions, even though much of the story could be relocated anywhere else with little change. I hesitate to call Contratiempo a good movie—it’s slickly directed by Oriol Paulo with good acting and technical qualities and it will keep you entertained if you engage in narrative combat with the plot, but the script is perilously getting us closer to pure nonsense where anything and everything can happen regardless of whether it makes sense or has ever happened in the history of humanity.

  • All that Jazz (1979)

    All that Jazz (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) OK, all right, I was wrong. I was wrong to think of Bob Fosse as the single worst thing to happen to musicals in the 1970s. I was wrong to think, after Sweet Charity and Cabaret, that he singlehandedly killed the fun bouncy old-school Hollywood musical. Well, actually, the jury may be out on that last one—but my point is that All that Jazz isn’t just a depressing musical about death; it’s also a masterpiece. It sums up Fosse’s own life, roars with energy from one number to the next, boasts some terrific editing and actually has something fairly profound to say through the form of a musical. Semi-autobiographical, it’s a film about a chain-smoking, womanizing, cardiac writer-director who falls apart as he oversees editing on his last film and puts together a big ambitious Broadway show. The parallels with Fosse’s life during Lenny/Chicago are obvious, but All that Jazz also portends how Fosse would die of a heart attack not even a decade later. It’s not worth dancing around the spoilers here, especially given how the death of the main character is the point around which the entire film revolves—nothing makes sense thematically without it. For a movie about death, All that Jazz is surprisingly lively: the musical numbers are often upbeat, the rapid-fire editing gives life to the result and Roy Schneider is nothing short of astonishing as Fosse’s alter ego. It features some of Fosse’s best screen cinematography: “All That Jazz” is terrific, “Airotica” hilariously transgressive and “Bye Bye Life” caps it all off with an audience-slapping final shot. Let’s not discount the look at Broadway as well: the opening audition sequence is merciless, and the discussion about how to make money off a dying director is ultra-dark comedy. All that Jazz isn’t perfect (the third act drags, in classic Broadway fashion), but in retrospect it puts Fosse’s entire life and work in focus. It’s also a rare example of a downbeat modernistic 1970s musical that actually works for me—I truly expected to hate the film when I started watching it, and was a true fan by the end of it.

  • Lenny (1974)

    Lenny (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2020) Presenting shock comedian Lenny Bruce as a folk hero, a free-speech martyr, a drug addict, an impulsive contrarian and a troubled soul, Bob Fosse’s Lenny is a showcase for a young Dustin Hoffman, an artistic statement and, sometimes, a mess. Deliberately shot in black-and-white, it’s a biography executed as a three-ring circus: Biographical recreation of high moments in Bruce’s life, mock-documentary shots of his stand-up routines, and contemporary recollections of people who knew him. Some aspects work better than others: the testimonials don’t add much, the stand-up moments intentionally vary in effectiveness, while the biographical sketches can be scattered. Nonetheless, we get a good idea of Bruce’s self-destructiveness, his comic genius and his troubled conception of relationships. Hoffman stars, which is both good and bad—on the one hand, he’s able to deliver the grander-than-life performance expected of Bruce. On the other, he never disappears into the role: except for sequences with a bearded Hoffman, we never lose track that it’s clearly Dustin Hoffman rather than Bruce. But as good as he is, Valerie Perrine (as his wife) is even better. Best of all is Fosse, who juggles all sorts of elements and only drops a few of them along the way. Like him or not, Lenny Bruce did bring out the hypocrisy of an era, and Lenny clearly highlights it.

  • Viva Knievel! (1977)

    Viva Knievel! (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) The curse of star vehicles is that you have to like the stars, and while Evel Knievel was still a shorthand for “daredevil stuntman” when I was a young kid, 1977 was a year of highs and lows for him. On the low side, a failed jump injured him in January, and later during the year he was arrested for assaulting his promoter, leading to the end of his sponsorship deals. On the plus side (although that would be debatable), there was the release of Viva Knievel!, a film featuring Knievel as himself, acting in an ultimate star vehicle. Mere words can barely sum up the inanity of the result, which starts (non-ironically) with Knievel comforting kids at an orphanage by handing them action figures of himself and ends with Knievel freeing a woman and kid from the clutches of an evil drug dealer played by Leslie Nielsen. In between, we get Gene Kelly acting as his mechanic, a preachy anti-drug speech interrupting the action (It even interrupts the film’s plot summary on Wikipedia), a few daredevil jumps and an anti-feminist rant that’s supposed to charm the film’s romantic interest—and does because it’s a star vehicle. If that wasn’t enough, the 1970s fashions are showcased in eye-injuring colour.  Viva Knievel must be seen to be believed, but that’s overhyping it—much of the film is deathly boring, with only a few “that’s stupid!’ moments to enliven things along the way. It does serve as a warning signal of sort to anyone hubristic enough to play themselves in a hagiography—Sic transit gloria mundi and all. One thinks a death-defying stuntman should know better.

  • Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)

    Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2020) I somehow missed Looney Tunes: Back in Action when it was first released in theatres (it had the misfortune of coming out in November, a month where I wrote rather than watched: looking at the release schedule, I probably saw Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World that week), and I still can’t believe I waited so long before catching up. I’ve always had a fond spot for Bugs Bunny and his friends, so seeing them in a feature film was like unearthing a time capsule prepared just for me. The one thing that distinguishes Looney Tunes: Back in Action from most of the movies is the sheer pedal-to-the-metal pacing of the jokes—barely five seconds go by without some kind of gag, and the anarchic humour comes with an added dimension of metatextual movie humour. Highlights include a reference-crammed visit to ‘Area 52,’ closely followed by the technical marvel of a painting-hopping sequence set inside Le Louvre. Brendan Fraser does well in the lead role, with some decent assistance from Timothy Dalton (playing off the Bond archetype) and an ensemble cast of supporting players. I’m not so happy with Jenna Elfman (wow, remember her?), who’s used more like a clothes rack for a suspiciously high number of outfit changes rather than an actress with comic timing (although that Paris outfit—whew). The animated characters do better, but then again, they could be redrawn until perfection. Yet, for all the nice things I can say about its pinwheel of gags, Back in Action isn’t quite what it could have been. Director Joe Dante has spoken cryptically about being heavily constrained during production, which is probably inevitable considering the special effects requirements and the characters being one of Warner Bros’ crown jewels. Still, there’s a stiffness, rarely technical but nonetheless perceptible, that stops the action from being as involving as it should be—some annoying characters are given too much time (yes you, Steve Martin) and some sequences don’t play as well as they should. Still, I liked much the result, and would have liked to see it upon release… even there’s some value into discovering something so long after.

  • Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965)

    Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Even if 1967 is generally regarded as the year that movies changed forever (finally moving past the Hays Code and embracing a more naturalistic style), you can see a steady evolution of American movies throughout the 1960s, from black-and-white to colour, and slowly tackling modern issues in increasingly frank fashion. While Bus Riley’s Back in Town is not an exceptional movie in any regard, you can use it as evidence of how things were changing. Here we have a young man (Michael Parks) coming back to his hometown after three years in the Navy, trying to reconnect but feeling more alienated than ever. As a small-town domestic drama, the stakes are low but the plot is character-driven, what with him being seduced by an ex-girlfriend (Ann-Margret, playing a bad girl) now married and bored, his unwillingness to settle for a good but boring job as a mechanic, and his lack of acknowledgement that things keep changing. I was drawn into the film by Ann-Margret’s name, but her mid-1960s screen persona is here used for clearly dramatic effect, as she incarnates the temptation and regression that the main character must move past. Bus Riley’s Back in Town is not spectacular, but it’s considerably more intriguing than I expected, and as a slice of small-town America in the mid-1960s, it’s far more credible than many wilder and better-known movies.

  • Sweet and Low-Down (1944)

    Sweet and Low-Down (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Few things get me thinking about the changing nature of pop-culture as much as seeing Classic Hollywood movies presenting band leaders as celebrities. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Kay Kyser have each played or been played in major Hollywood productions of the time, and if Sweet and Low-Down has any claim to enduring worth, it’s in presenting Benny Goodman playing Benny Goodman in a fictionalized story about a band leader (Goodman, naturally) taking a young musician under his wing. There’s more conflict than you’d expect, especially at the end, but the story of the film is almost inconsequential when compared to having captured Goodman and his band doing what they did best. The music is particularly good if you’re a fan of jazz and swing (or even swing revival genres such as swing-house, which samples a lot of this material)—there’s a really good jam session in there that’s worth a listen. Goodman himself plays a mean flute in one of the film’s highlights. The film’s lack of narrative makes a bit more sense when you realize that it was made as counterprogramming for heavier military propaganda films on the home front, and as entertainment for the troops abroad. While Sweet and Low-Down is practically obscure these days (most people are more likely to associate the title with the 1999 Woody Allen movie—I know I did!), I really enjoyed the look at pop culture as it existed then. Benny Goodman is an immortal, though, and we’re insanely lucky to have preserved on film some of his charm and musical talent.

  • The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)

    The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) There are two ways of making a movie about an inanimate object, and The Yellow Rolls-Royce has picked the worst one. The best way is to depict the object as a character that has a beginning and an end, with several related trials along the way—it gets purchased, used, damaged, repaired, liked, lost, etc. The second way is far looser and consists in loosely stringing a few unconnected stories that all happen to feature the object. The Yellow Rolls-Royce would have been a lovely excuse for a multi-decade story about a car. Unfortunately, it ends up being the common thread between unconnected stories, taking us from the English aristocracy to a vacationing mobster and his moll, to revolutionaries in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. There is very little connective tissue nor progression between the three stories, which appears to be excuses to get as many stars in the film. To be fair, the cast is quite good: Rex Harrison and Jeanne Moreau get the ball rolling, as the Yellow Rolls-Royce is purchased by a pompous English aristocrat as a birthday gift for his wife. George C. Scott, Shirley MacLaine and Alain Delon push the ball even further in Venice, as romantic shenanigans complicate a summer holiday. Finally, the film hits its stride alongside Ingrid Bergman and Omar Sharif as she, a rich American widow, helps him, a resistance fighter, cross a national border and fight the Nazis. The Yellow Rolls-Royce can be worth a look if you’re a fan of these actors, or if you choose to focus on the third story and the very beginning of the first. Otherwise, it does feel like a disappointing mishandling of a potent premise. Too bad—I’m sure there’s still a heck of a movie to be told about the life of a car.

  • Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

    Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2020) I’m slowly warming up to the Abbott and Costello comedy team—every successive film, I get a better sense of their approach to comedy, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet the Invisible Man is no exception. Made at a time when Universal was trying to extend the life of two of their most popular franchises by merging them together (if my count is correct, it’s the third of five ‘Abbott and Costello meet Universal Monsters’ movies), this ends up being a very loose take on the Invisible Man mythos, with our comic pair encountering a boxer who is injected by a formula developed by the original Invisible Man. The plot soon turns to a rigged boxing match, which obviously makes good use of Costello’s physique and the possibilities of a third invisible fighter in the ring. The special effects are surprisingly good even today and there are a few good laughs. I won’t ask much more. It’s not quite as good as Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, but it’s decently amusing on its own.

  • Kill ’Em All (2017)

    Kill ’Em All (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2020) There is something halfway interesting in Kill’em All’s structure: As a nurse is interrogated by the FBI regarding a mass shootout at her hospital, we see, in flashback, the way the day unfolded. As a way to add interest to a bog-standard revenge story starring Jean-Claude van Damme, it’s not a bad idea. Alas, this promising opening quickly gets bogged down in other more serious issues. The lack of directorial prowess from Pjetër Malota is regrettable, but really unexpected from the film’s low-budget pedigree: as long as people are getting beaten up or shot, it’s not the staging or the cinematography that’s going to wow us. What’s far more damaging is that, as Kill ’em All advances, it feels to grow more serious than it should be. There’s a time for sombre reflections on the cycle of violence to emerge from the Balkan states’ wars, but there’s also tonal consistency issues—and while Kill ’em All tries to be a pulse-pounding action movie, it also stomps on the brakes as it moodily explains its revenge-fuelled backstory in a way that’s really no fun at all. But it gets worse, and you can actually sense it coming—By spending so much time on the nurse protagonist, the film clearly telegraphs that there’s more to her than meets the eye, and much of the film’s last twenty minutes are spent preparing, announcing, making, then reinforcing a perfectly obvious plot point that is clearly supposed to be a twist. It really doesn’t work—in fact, it makes the film much worse considering how much of its last minutes are spent going over perfectly obvious material. (Suzzzaaaaane with a Zed!) Once all is done, we’re not left happy, and the film’s lesser flaws are magnified. There’s bad casting, for instance: While it’s cool to see Maria Conchita Alonso again and Autumn Reeser is very cute in hospital scrubs and brunette bangs, Peter Stormare is all wrong in greasy hair and thick beard as a back-office CIA analyst. Worse yet is Jean-Claude van Damme, about twenty years too old to even fit in the chronology of his character—a casting mistake made even worse by the way his character reacts like an old man rather than what a younger character should have been able to accomplish. Those may have been forgivable with a stronger, more sustained script—but the multiple points of failure in Kill ’em All multiply to make the film feel even worse than it is.

  • Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)

    Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2020) I really wasn’t expecting much from Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis, but I was at least hoping for some continuity from the Return of the Living Dead series, which was (at least at first) markedly funnier than the Romero films. Alas… well, I clearly hadn’t been paying attention at the evolution of the series — which didn’t keep the comic tone starting with the third entry, and kept getting smaller and smaller production budgets. Necropolis ends up being about as good as a made-for TV film, with bland characters, formula-based plotting and muddy cinematography. There aren’t many bright moments to it all, and once you start counting, “The heroine looks cute in pigtails and glasses” as one of the highlights, you know there isn’t much left to discuss. (Although, it’s true: Aimee-Lynn Chadwick does look cute in pigtails and glasses.) Simplifying the series formula down to teenage antics (with an inexplicable side order of motorcycle racing) is not a good way to go anything worth praising, and Necropolis ends up being that most pitiable of creations: a dull zombie movie like so many others, not even worth a look unless you’re some kind of crazy completist with a strong tolerance to boredom.