Reviews

  • Funny Games (1997)

    Funny Games (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) There are a few films whose reputation not only precede them, but tell you everything you need to know about them. So it is that Funny Games is widely remembered as the home invasion horror film that plays unfairly with its audiences, intentionally toying with expectations in order to leave them with no way out. The infamous remote-control scene is as extreme a piece of meta-cinema as it’s possible to imagine outside a satirical comedy. I would argue that knowing as much as possible about the film’s ending is not a bad thing, because writer-director Michael Haneke (who remade his own film in English for an American studio in 2007, changing almost nothing) is determined here to make a statement about film violence and audiences’ desire for revenge. And that he does. Over nearly two hours spent circling the same idea, often not even bothering to move or turn off the camera. It gets very, very, very long. I think that some of what he has to say here is clever—but brevity is the essence of wit, and Funny Games is far too long to remain interesting when everything points to an ending that is then executed without many surprises. I’ll forgive nearly everything in the service of a happy ending, but not in the service of an everybody-dies one. It doesn’t help that I’m not really a fan of vengeance cinema—Haneke seems intent to score points with another kind of audience. Still, by the end, I was not only hating the over-the-top psychopaths serving as Haneke’s puppets, but the entire cast and crew of the film for going forward with such an indulgent and pointless piece of cinema.

  • Koroshiya 1 [Ichi the Killer] (2001)

    Koroshiya 1 [Ichi the Killer] (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) Even nearly twenty years later, Ichi the Killer remains infamous as a film that goes well beyond whatever boundaries we expect even from hard-core horror cinema. Renowned for its excessively gory violence, twisted psychosexual themes and utterly amoral compass, it remains banned in at least three countries (including the normally permissive Norway), often pops up in lists of extreme movies and is often mentioned as a landmark to see how strong a moviegoer’s stomach is. And yet, while watching it, I found it curiously easy to remain uninvolved and unimpressed at the amount of gratuitous violence shown on screen. Gratuitous actually doesn’t become the right word—a better one would be grandguignolesque. Writer-director Takashi Miike has made a film to shock the rubes, and will stop at nothing to gross out the audience. Once you catch on to the trick, though… it’s not as if the film has anything like a conscience—seeing bad people do bad things to each other isn’t a path to the kind of empathy we’d need to be revolted at what’s on-screen. I could give you a long list of the terrible and unbearable sights in the film, but I fear that it would make it seem far more interesting than it is to watch. In reality, Ichi the Killer showcases such a relentless succession of atrocities that they become numbing—as if the brain throws up a circuit breaker in defence. As a result (and not helped along by a direction that cares far more about gory set-pieces than coherent plotting) the film does feel interminable, and increasingly obnoxious as it goes on. By the end, we’re so fed up with the whole thing that it doesn’t matter who kills who in whatever way—the film is over and that’s quite enough of a reward.

  • Summer Rental (1985)

    Summer Rental (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2019) There are a few movies out there that seem to spring from near-universal experiences, at which point the screenwriter adds nearly everything that could go wrong in such a situation and call it a day. At least that’s the feeling I get from watching Summer Rental, a typical mid-1980s comedy featuring John Candy as a father of a family headed to Florida for the summer. What initially looks like an idyllic rental location turns out to be a nightmare compounded by everything else going badly once settled in. They get into arguments, make local enemies and eventually find themselves in a third act sea racing set-piece because there’s got to be more to a script than simply a string of humiliations. It’s clearly a summer comedy, light to the point of being insubstantial. It is strung together by John Candy’s comic ability, although if you want something similar but better you don’t have to look very far for 1987’s very similar The Great Outdoors also featuring Candy. Summer Rental will do nicely if ever you’re bored out of your skull and it’s the only choice available in a place without Internet connectivity, or are trying to complete the Candy filmography. Otherwise, well, there are better movies out there.

  • The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

    The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) Even at more than fifty years of age, The Thomas Crown Affair remains the epitome of cool for several good reasons. The incredible pairing of Steve MacQueen and Faye Dunaway is reason alone to be interested, but there’s more. The film is extremely stylized, which is not something we necessarily expect from chameleon director Norman Jewison. This stylistic approach (all the way to a split-screen heist and a great soundtrack with odd choices that eventually make sense) more than compensate for some very light plotting, which seems more determined to bring the protagonists together and then drive them apart than making any kind of sense. The insurance investigator doesn’t deduce very much, as the plot manipulates her through hunches that happen to be right and the film’s ending interrupts what could have been interesting had it gone longer. But The Thomas Crown Affair is a film that revels in details, set-pieces and characters more than sustained plotting—the chess sequence is still impressive, and the sand buggy driving is made even more interesting by knowing that MacQueen did those stunts himself. The main character is emblematic of the film’s flaws and strengths, incredibly cool yet deeply flawed in interesting ways: As a highly successful businessman who turns into a criminal mastermind for thrills, he’s not exactly believable or approachable, but he is a grander-than-life archetype fit for MacQueen. The Thomas Crowne Affair is a film that could only have been made in the late 1960s (even the 1990s remake was a more controlled but less exciting take)—crammed with style and excitement, but not always so shiny under scrutiny. Still, it shows the burst of energy coursing through Hollywood at a time without falling into the excesses of New Hollywood, and that remains a good thing.

  • Grand-Daddy Day Care (2019)

    Grand-Daddy Day Care (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) There is a specific cinematographic flatness to many low-budget movies that’s easy to identify, and it’s perhaps fortunate that Grand-Daddy Day Care shows it from its earliest moments—just so we know what we’re getting into. Much of the film is as bland as its presentation—with a blocked novelist turning to creating a daycare for seniors as a way to make money, you can predict that the film won’t be a fount of wit and it’s not. I only watched the film for Danny Trejo, and he does impress in a slightly more serious role than usual, even in keeping with his usual persona. Alas, he’s almost entirely the sole impressive spot—While it’s great to see Margaret Avery in another role, the other actors aren’t given much to do and Reno Wilson seems stuck doing a sedated Kevin Hart impression. It’s not much to go on, and the rest of the film moves from one familiar scenario to another, even as it’s trying to pretend that everything is funnier with seniors in the lead roles. By the time we’re breaking a friend out of a retirement home with the heroes dressed as clowns, we’re stuck with the film we’ve chosen to watch. Amazingly enough, this is explicitly spun off from the Eddie Murphy Daddy Day Care movies, something that only affects a small (but perhaps funniest) scene in the film. While not eye-screamingly awful, Grand-Daddy Day Care isn’t much to contemplate. I’d be surprised if it even becomes more than a very forgettable footnote in Trejo’s filmography.

  • To Sir, With Love (1967)

    To Sir, With Love (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) 1967 was an extraordinary year for Sidney Poitier, but while we readily remember In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, fewer will remember the third of his movies that year: To Sir, With Love. This time, he’s off to London as a teacher in a tough school, befriending local hoodlums and wayward girls after the initial hostility. The same super-teacher movie has been made and remade many times since then, but two things help To Sir, With Love remain interesting fifty years later—Poitier’s performance, obviously, but also the street-level view of London in the mid-1960s, as the film confronts the rise in teenage rebellion. The film itself is definitely on the side of the establishment—as the protagonist befriends his charges, he lifts them toward notions of respectability and good manners, helping them fit in society. As such, you can see the film as deeply conservative, but that too is in the tradition of that kind of movie. To Sir, With Love is a film about the revolution but not a revolutionary film—as such, it may have aged a bit better than the trendy New Hollywood movies that followed slightly later. For Poitier, this is a great role—he gets to whip up a few youngsters into shape, befitting his image as the capable, nearly unflappable black man. There’s a lot to unpack in this persona, as it was the only one allowed to him at the time, but that’s a discussion for another time, and about his other two movies of 1967.

  • The Hot Spot (1990)

    The Hot Spot (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2019) I don’t think that The Hot Spot is all that good a movie, but if you’re the kind of viewer who craves a bit of steamy neo-noir, then it will satisfyingly scratch that particular itch. The film, adapted by none other than Dennis Hopper from a 1950s novel, starts from the familiar premise of a stranger coming into a small Texas town and deciding to stay for a while. This being a neo-noir from the 1980s rather than the 1940s, there’s a lot more explicit sex and violence than its black-and-white predecessors, as our hero frequents a strip bar, befriends women played by Jennifer Connelly and Virginia Madsen, and gradually puts his plan in motion. True to noir, even a canny man of mystery is no match for the machinations of women with their own designs. The visual atmosphere of the movie does reflect the kind of torrid Texan heat best suited for the film’s subject matter. Don Johnson plays the protagonist with a certain stoicism not dissimilar from Kevin Costner, which does suit the film. Meanwhile, I may have been vocal before about how twenty-first century Madsen is more attractive than her younger self, but she looks really nice here (it’s the curly hair and the stockings more than the brief nudity). Meanwhile, Connelly is presented as innocence personified—misleading, but convincing. The pacing of The Hot Spot is a bit too slack for it to rank as a truly good 1980s neo-noir, but if you’re indulgent on that aspect then the film does deliver what it intended, and fans of the genre will find it very much to their liking.

  • 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

    2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) The most common criticisms of 2010: The Year We Make Contact usually compare it to its illustrious predecessor and find it wanting. This, of course, is damning a film with excessive expectations: While 2010 is no transcendental experience like 2001: A Space Odyssey was, it’s a terrific science-fiction adventure with one heck of a send-off. It has the joy of the kind of nuts-and-bolts hard Science Fiction that I used to read by the truckload a decade or two ago—starting with the Arthur C. Clarke novel from which the film is adapted. Even the mid-1980s visual sheen to the film, grimy and realistic in the tradition of somewhat realistic Science Fiction, is a welcome sight. The plot takes a while to get going and usually operates at half-speed, but it does blend a delicious mixture of mystery, suspense, Cold War stakes and mind-blowing concepts. I particularly enjoyed the suspenseful sequence midway through in which two astronauts board the deserted Odyssey from the first film, their breathing setting the pacing of the action. The special effects are still good, even incorporating early photorealistic CGI in portraying the transforming Jupiter. The lead cast is star-studded, from Roy Scheider as the protagonist scientist, Bob Balaban as an AI expert of dubious loyalties, John Lithgow as an engineer pressed into service as a space traveller, and the timelessly beautiful Helen Mirren as a Soviet commanding officer. Writer-director Peter Hyams is near the top of his filmography here, keeping action going at a slow burn. The film’s science is not bad at a few gravity-related exceptions, but then again those effects were nearly impossible to do convincingly in a pre-CGI era. All in all, I really enjoyed 2010—it’s not 2001, but then again only one movie is 2001. This is an entirely acceptable follow-up, and a solid space adventure in its own right. There are even no less than two Arthur C. Clarke cameos!

  • A Tale of Two Cities (1935)

    A Tale of Two Cities (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) Not being all that familiar with Charles Dickens’s novel beyond the celebrated opening lines, I got to enjoy A Tale of Two Cities first as a story and then as a film. As such, I had a better time than expected: the story takes twists and turns that may be unpredictable to modern audiences weaned on a clean three-act structure, and on more traditional notions of heroism. The dialogue here is remarkably good, and the actors do get substantial parts to play. As befits a mid-1930s prestige production, there are great costumes, lavish sets, and arresting set-pieces. The pivotal Prise de la Bastille sequence does feel as if it comes from another movie as it switches from costume drama to large-scale action-packed filmmaking—it’s even explicitly credited to another director! Still, it does set the stage for the film’s more sombre sequences with post-revolutionary kangaroo courts convicting the guilty and the innocents alike. Despite some hiccups in the plotting challenge of trying to fit a complex multi-year novel in barely two hours, I quite enjoyed the film—good work by the actors helps a lot in executing a good script. Ronald Colman is particularly good as the self-acknowledged drunk lawyer who becomes the hero of the story. One of my favourite character actresses of the era, Edna May Oliver, gets a few choice quips and even an action sequence late in the movie. The elegiac ending sequence, deftly handling tricky melodramatic material, does tie the film in a satisfying bow. A Tale of Two Cities works best as a double feature with the also-1935 version of David Copperfield for a double dose of 1930s Dickens featuring Oliver.

  • Le Marais [The Marsh] (2002)

    Le Marais [The Marsh] (2002)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) A typical criticism of French-Canadian movies is that they often take place on a very literal, very realistic register: They’re often concerned with domestic drama in a contemporary setting, or in realistic depiction of French-Canadian history. Now here comes Le Marais to offer a counter-example: Set in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, it’s a semi-fable about a small village, a semi-accidental death and its coverup ensnaring two eccentric men living near the closest marsh. The film’s images are unusually impressionistic, set in fog and palpable humidity. The plot doesn’t stick to reality as we know it. Actors (and not the usual group that you can see over and over in Québec’s biggest box-office hits) speak in an unusual accent, cultivate eccentricities, and behave with the gravitas that their semi-poetic dialogue requires. Writer-director Kim Nguyen is clearly trying something different. The film may or may not be meant to be taken literally—there are levels of meaning and thematic resonances here … it’s not just a movie about characters living near a marsh. Alas, for all the freedom that the non-realistic approach implies, it’s also a movie that leaves cold: when the end comes, relatively abruptly, I was left with a shrug and no real intention to stay a moment longer in Le marais’s distinct reality.

  • Battle of Britain (1969)

    Battle of Britain (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) I thought I’d seen most of the big ensemble WW2 movies out there, but I had missed at least one landmark: 1969’s Battle of Britain, a lavish recreation of pivotal WW2 events. Featuring a near-complete list of late-1960s British actors, the film feels almost as fresh fifty years after first appearing on-screen thanks to a big-budget colour treatment where the money is all visible on-screen. Presenting a few years of events in slightly more than two hours, director Guy Hamilton hits almost all of the high points from dogfights, character moments, a Nazi rally, the spectacular destruction of an airfield (with terrific pyro and stunt work) and London bombing reactions in between the requisite discussions between British higher-ups. It’s really a remarkable achievement and it does put even a familiar moment in British history in perspective. Its influence is crystal-clear on later movies such as Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. However, it’s interesting to note that its perspective on war is closer to an earlier generation, presenting a quasi-reverent take on a national point of pride—right as the mood of wartime movies would turn sour in reaction to Vietnam. Some of the special effects are a bit dodgy, but never mind—the aerial sequences are spectacular and the film is still a capable spectacle today. I’m ranking Battle of Britain an essential WW2 film.

  • Madame Curie (1943)

    Madame Curie (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) The ever-compelling Greer Garson had a remarkable five-year run of Oscar nominations in the early 1940s, and the biographical drama Marie Curie was right in the middle of it, focusing on the scientist’s turn-of-the-century discovery of radium. As befits a 1940s Hollywood production tackling scientific subjects, the emphasis here is on melodramatic sentiments, beautiful romantic black-and-white cinematography and actors mouthing off grandiose statements about science, peering sagely in a long-distant future to extrapolate the meaning of their research. Some of it comes across as silly and overdone, but everything must be put in perspective, and by most standards (including, often, our own), Madame Curie is still quite an admirable movie—it doesn’t soft-pedal either Curie’s femininity (easy enough with Garson in the lead role), the heartwarming loving relationship with her husband (Walter Pidgeon, looking dashing with a sharp-chinned beard), the importance of her discoveries or the effort that goes into actual science. While it does allow itself quite a few moments of unabashed Hollywood romanticism, those more conventional passages work at making the characters likable in addition to illustrating their serious intellectual achievements. The scientific vulgarization is not bad (despite a few shortcuts) and the portrayal of a woman scientist is still remarkable either for 1900, 1943 or 2019. I quite liked it, and I remain surprised that at an age where STEM for girls is rightfully seen an unabashed good, Madame Curie isn’t better known or more widely seen.

  • Little Giants (1994)

    Little Giants (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) As an underdog kids’ sports movie, Little Giant is exactly what you’d imagine as an example of the genre. The plot threads are familiar and obvious, the details are well observed and the film is often more interesting in its execution than its overall structure. Much of the film’s success comes from two well-matched actors: Ed O’Neill as a hometown football hero (echoing his more famous turn in Married with Children) facing down a kid brother played by Rick Moranis. The plot details are unimportant, leading us anyway to an absurdly important climactic football game won by the expected underdog. Some material involving Shawna Waldron playing a tomboyish teenage girl is more interesting than expected. Otherwise, it’s a comedy firmly in the mould of mid-1990s material. Some of it hasn’t dated well—considering what we now know about concussions, the idea of a kid’s movie about football seems more irresponsible than ineluctably American. (But do I repeat myself?) You also must swallow an unhealthy amount of skepticism retardant in order to believe in the amount of plot cheats required to make it from beginning to end. Still, as those movies go, Little Giants plays rather easily. One note to francophone viewers: The Québec dub of the film is particularly annoying, adopting a dialect that almost touches upon Québec joual before reverting to the mid-Atlantic correctness we expect from American film dubbing.

  • Armed and Dangerous (1986)

    Armed and Dangerous (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) As one of John Candy’s less-famous films in the middle of an extraordinarily productive decade, Armed and Dangerous often feels like mid-1980s comedy filmmaking at its laziest, with a workable premise battered through atonal development, fuzzy characterization, cheap plotting, and lazy writing. The premise does show some promise—as an ex-cop and a disbarred lawyer find themselves working as security guards, they come to discover a plot to embezzle union dues. Alas, the development of the premise feels off. I shouldn’t worry too much about the portrayal of a corrupt union, but I do—anti-union sentiment is symptomatic of 1980s Hollywood presumptions, and we now know where that path has led us. To be fair, Armed and Dangerous is dumb enough that it may not quite realize what it’s playing with, and does give equal credence to the idea of corrupt cops as well. The rest of the film isn’t much better—as the plot (already thin at 88 minutes) regularly stops to let Candy go on extended comic rants, it’s clear that the numerous screenwriters have no idea how to keep a consistent tone throughout the film: Candy’s character alone veers uncontrollably between incompetence, silliness and effectiveness in a way that suggests that Candy was allowed to run roughshod over what may have been a more coherent character. Other lazy plot shortcuts abound, including a final sequence with a truck driver blissfully unconcerned with the destruction of his rig—there’s a lot more comic mileage to be made out of this idea, but the film barely even tries. On and on it goes: Candy is up to his usual character, but the more interesting work is by Eugene Levy, turning in a character performance more interesting because it’s not quite part of his later persona. Meg Ryan looks cute, but that’s about it—anyone else could have done just as well. A welcome bit of vehicular mayhem does enliven the film’s last twenty minutes (albeit limited by the film’s average budget) but that’s not enough to make up for the rest of Armed and Dangerous.

  • Halloween (2018)

    Halloween (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) You can take the opening sequence of this Halloween remake as a summary of its strengths and weaknesses in a nutshell—a sequence giving us suspense in broad daylight, maxing out the spooky stuff, but ultimately signifying nothing and ending in mid-air with nothing achieved. A lot of sound a fury signifying nothing—if you’re not the kind of person who enjoys slasher movies and would go as far as to say that this kind of film should be left in the dustbin of history, then this newest endless umpteenth version of Halloween is not going to change your mind. For all of director David Gordon Green’s skill in crafting suspense sequences that have a little bit more to offer, there is nothing here to make us rethink the staleness of the genre’s approach. The crazy-prepared shtick by Jamie Lee Curtis is fun but doesn’t lead anywhere new. The psychologist indulging in some of that murderous mayhem is merely a five-minute detour that other movies have explored at length. The transgenerational trauma is presented as new but was seen in H20 already. To be fair, this Halloween far better than the Rob Zombie movies that no one wants to acknowledge, better than H20 and better than the fourth-to-sixth ones. (Halloween III exists in another dimension, and I tend to consider Halloween II to be an extension of the first) Curtis is magnificent in a role that a lot of actresses her age would have killed for, Judy Greer is far better used in comedies (although she does get a good gotcha moment at the end), while Andi Matichak is undistinguishable as the granddaughter. Still, there isn’t much here to make us think any better about slashers in general—it feels as if all of this Halloween’s ideas are cribbed from previous instalments in the series itself, with only a patina of good execution to keep things afloat.