Reviews

  • Half Magic (2018)

    Half Magic (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) It must be fun to live in Los Angeles and somehow convince people to give you money to make a movie. You can hire your friends, have best-of-industry technical production equipment and crew, shoot in one of the most picturesque cities in the world and do all of that while still going to sleep at your place at the end of the day. No wonder so many actors try their hands at it eventually. With Half Magic, we have Heather Graham writing, directing, and starring in a vehicle for female empowerment in the trenches of Tinseltown. Ribald, raunchy (but never naked), the R-rated movie has a little bit more on its mind than the kind of overblow sorority girl antics of the better-known women-centred examples of the genre—it spends on-the-nose energy talking about women’s place in Hollywood, empowerment, bad boyfriends, and modern dating. It seems as if Graham had been away for a while, but this is a good return for her, a complex and likable role—plus, while the film won’t necessarily win directing awards, she’s effective behind the camera. Comic digressions include a commentary on changing slasher movies. Los Angeles looks great as a backdrop to a romantic comedy, and so does Stephanie Beatriz in dominatrix gear. The female empowerment message is conventional at this point, but it’s still relevant … even if, at other times, it does feel like hammering a well-known point. Half Magic doesn’t quite go all the way to address its potential: In many ways, it does feel like the kind of film, locally shot, that actors do to create a portfolio for themselves, and it’s not a bad example of the form. Still, it’s fun, breezy, takes a different perspective and gives decent roles to a few underused actresses.

  • Barb Wire (1995)

    Barb Wire (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) I don’t know if it classifies as an old shame or a still-canny move, but I remember watching Casablanca on VHS in 1995 and then immediately going to the movie theatre to watch its sort-of-remake Barb Wire. This is a film that doesn’t waste a moment after its obligatory exposition to show us Pamela Anderson in a striptease routine. But wait! She’s not just the lead attraction, she’s also the owner of the club (and also bounty hunter, because accounting is boring), stepping in the Humphrey Bogart role. The insistence on Canadian freedom (and Canadian dollars as the real currency) is endearing—although, let’s face it, in all scenarios where the United States has gone crazy enough that people seek refuge in Canada, it’s not likely that it will respect national frontiers. Still, one wonders if the French-Canadian element is why Plastic Bertrand plays in the club. The Casablanca comparisons only go so far—this remains a fairly dumb action movie, with lame quips (“Don’t call me baby”) and one succession of dull action sequences after another. In retrospect, the mid-nineties jejune pretentiousness of a run-down world with everyone sneering at each other in tougher-than-thou fashion gets tiresome more quickly than you’d think—one really longs for the black-and-white atmosphere of the real wartime Casablanca after a while. This being said, the portrait of Nazi-inspired American hard-liners is good for a few contemporary chills that weren’t necessarily there in 1995. (Do note that watching a dubbed version of the film unusually makes it a better one, as the woman dubbing Anderson is a far better actress who can paper over her vocal deficiencies.)  The action sequences are all dull nonsense overedited to cover up the low budget and lack of directorial vigour. Let’s really not read too much into female empowerment of a film chiefly using Anderson as a pin-up, but do notice that there are far more female characters on the side of the rebellion and, unless I missed anything, none on the oppressor’s side … suggesting a deeper feminist intention to Barb Wire than one would be willing to believe.

  • The Client (1994)

    The Client (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2019) It’s been so long since I read John Grisham’s The Client that I don’t really remember most of the plot, so you can say that I had an almost entirely new experience with the film adaptation. Here, a teenager having witnessed something of interest to the police and the mob is taken under a tough lawyer’s wing as she tries to negotiate a way out while outwitting both sides. If The Client works, it’s because it’s a sufficiently different riff on familiar tropes—in this case, the kid’s protector trying to protect her charge from overreach by the FBI at the same time as a very real threat from the mob. Susan Sarandon is quite good as the lawyer, flawed enough to have something to gain from the adventure. Meanwhile, Brad Renfro has a decent turn as a resourceful teenager caught between a few bad options. Tommy Lee Jones shows up as a senior FBI officer, while Mary-Louis Parker has a small role as a despondent mom. Director Joel Schumacher keeps things moving swiftly, not getting in the way of the plot-driven film. Grisham went on to write more interesting novels, but this film adaptation does the job and may seem more interesting in retrospect, as medium-budget mid-90s thrillers of the kind exemplified by The Client got much rarer in 2010s multiplexes.

  • Virtuosity (1995)

    Virtuosity (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) I suspect that both Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe would consider Virtuosity to be one of their early shames. At times, the film does stink of mid-1990s funk and silliness, what with its then-spectacular-now-terrible computer graphics, fascination for virtual reality and careless overuse of such SF tropes as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. At its heart, it’s nothing more than a cop-versus-criminal-nemesis chase dressed up in near-future plot refinements—it should work better as a crime thriller than a serious extrapolative work, except that what keeps it interesting are the SF plot devices, as half-heartedly developed as they are. (Circa-2019 viewers will be struck as how many of Virtuosity’s plot devices would also be covered in Westworld’s first two seasons, including a solid-state storage device for artificial intelligences and recreating virtual simulation to interrogate said AIs.)  Of course, what was gosh-wow for mainstream viewers back in 1995 is old hat to a far more technologically savvy 2010s audience. Still, there’s a certain inadvertent charm to see how the era then portrayed the future—shared with such Virtuosity contemporaries at The Net and Hackers, or to director Brett Leonard’s own The Lawnmower Man. Extrapolation aside, the film itself is an uneven suspense thriller—director Leonard occasionally finds ways to keep his action sequences moving, most notably through the use of helicopters in the rooftop finale. Still, perhaps the thing that most will remember from the film is the acting—Washington’s stoicism returns full force after a bit of an unusual prologue, while Crowe snacks on the scenery as an exuberant villain-of-villains with superpowers—and a (badly executed) musical fixation that partially explains the film’s title. In the background, William Fichtner is instantly recognizable, whereas only committed Kaley Cuoco fans will identify her in a child role performance. The ending has the unfortunate distinction of dragging on for an added ten minutes after the climax between the two protagonists—a more skillful screenwriter (or a film more resistant to the lead actor’s script tampering, as documented in an interview with Kelly Lynch) would have restructured that last half-hour to end on a higher note and effectively rearrange its best ideas. Virtuosity is not really a good movie, but let’s not try to pretend that it’s now without some interest even in the ways it now looks ridiculous. (After all: you needed to explain emoticons in 1995 because it was still obscure to older people. You still need to explain it in 2019 is because it’s obscure to younger people raised on emojis.)

  • A Star is Born (2018)

    A Star is Born (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) There are a couple of levels on which the 2018 version of A Star is Born can be appreciated. Perhaps the least interesting one is to take it at face value without any knowledge of its lineage or production history: As a story in which an aging rock star discovers a promising young talent and nurtures her to stardom while his own career fades. The music is exceptional, the chemistry between the two leads is off-the-chart, the plot moves efficiently between the set-pieces and it wraps up on an elegiac note that consciously brands the film as high drama. It’s enjoyable and perhaps even a bit rare in an environment that doesn’t give much of a chance to mid-budget romantic dramas. But, of course, 2018’s A Star is Born is not merely just any romantic drama—it’s the fourth (or fifth) version of a traditional Hollywood story played and replayed every twenty years since the mid 1930s, unexplainably skipping over the 1990s. Compared to previous versions (and I’ve seen all of them, including the two versions from the 1930s), this 2018 version is closest to the 1976 one, taking inspiration in rock and pop music rather than Hollywood—expanding the 1954 version’s idea to take on musical aspects to broaden the story’s appeal proves correct once more, and the male lead’s characterization owes a lot to Kris Kristofferson’s performance. The female lead is something a bit new—more organic to the story than Streisand was in her own pet project, but more likable than Garland in 1954. I think it’s probably my favourite version of the story, currently running slightly above the 1934 and the 1976 version. (Not being a Garland fan, I’m lukewarm about the 1954 one.) Much of this liking has to do with the strengths of both leads—previous versions have often short-thrifted the male lead in favour of the female upstart, but this version is more even-handed, and heightens the ending tragedy by making it feel inevitable. And that, in turn brings us to the third level of appreciation for 2018’s A Star is Born—one informed by a torrent of contextual material about the making of the film and its lineage. You can quite admire writer-producer-director-star Bradley Cooper’s decision to pause a highly successful acting career for two years in order to put together the project, learning musical chops along the way to deliver an incredibly convincing performance as an aging rocker on the decline. Or you can talk about Stefani “Lady Gaga” Germanotta’s quasi-revelatory performance as a skilled dramatic actress in addition to her undeniable vocal musical talents. (I say quasi-revelatory because even casual Gaga fans have long known that there was quite a bit of depth beyond the pop-star image.) You can also talk about the real-life chemistry of the two leads, the way Sam Shepard’s growl was integrated in the plot, or the integration of new technology in an old story—in short, there are levels of meta-textuality here that would be worth discussing even if the film itself wasn’t any good. Fortunately, this take on A Star is Born is actually quite decent, and defies expectations by one-upping several of its predecessors.

  • Throw Momma from the Train (1987)

    Throw Momma from the Train (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2019) At this point, I’ve seen enough of Danny DeVito’s movies as a filmmaker (The War of the Roses, Duplex and Death to Smoochy come to mind) to understand his very dark and twisted sense of humour. In that context, Throw Momma from the Train becomes understandable, perhaps even inevitable. Its main idea is to recreate the premise of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, except as a comedy. Two men with problems, wishing for someone else to take care of it. Except, well, there are complications: One of the men doesn’t quite understand that you don’t always really mean it … and so on. Billy Crystal isn’t bad as a writer with a grudge against his ex-wife, but it’s DeVito who steals the show as a dull-witted mama’s boy who pushes the absurd plot in motion. Don’t fret if you haven’t seen Strangers on a Train: The film explicitly refers to its origins, and only riffs on the premise: the movies are otherwise nothing like each other. It’s not a bad comedy, even though DeVito can be grating, and Anne Ramsey is deliberately irritating (impressively so, though). The dark laughter accumulates until a not-so-dark ending, leaving everyone happy along the way.

  • Legal Eagles (1986)

    Legal Eagles (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) I don’t think anyone would remember Legal Eagles today if it wasn’t for Daryl Hannah and Robert Redford, but that’s kind of the point of casting stars. The premise of the film has Redford and Debra Winger as competing lawyers who somehow agree to investigate the case they have in common—a sombre painting robbery that turns out to have links with the death of an artist killed eighteen years earlier. As our romantic pair bickers themselves into a healthy romantic tension, we’re free to enjoy the sight of middle-aged Redford at his most charming self, extremely cool even when slightly bumbling. Meanwhile Hannah plays the seductress with dull practice, leaving Winger as the film’s MVP as a combative attorney. Consciously written to feel like a 1940s belligerent romantic comedy, Legal Eagles is definitely middle-of-the-road stuff: there’s a substantial plot, but it’s a star vehicle almost designed to leave viewers with a pleasant feeling that soon evaporates—I’m not sure anyone can recall the details of the narrative even a week later. Still, fifty-year-old Redford is a joy to watch, and the film moves through the motions of its plot so confidently that it does give the impression of going somewhere even despite the banter. I quite liked it, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll remember why in a few months.

  • High Plains Drifter (1973)

    High Plains Drifter (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2019) At first, there is a bafflingly familiar quality to High Plains Drifter that may make you question why the film exists, so closely does it feel like half a dozen other Clint Eastwood westerns. Here we have a loner coming to town, shooting a few people up to no good, and asked to stick around to protect the town from a bigger evil. But even at the same time, there’s something not quite right with the movie, something that sets it apart: Our protagonist rapes a woman in the film’s first ten minutes and before long we understand that the villagers are clearly plotting among themselves to keep a secret from the hero. High Plains Drifter gets weirder the longer it goes on, as more secrets are revealed and the “innocent” villagers’ true allegiances are revealed. Throughout it all, we also realize how there’s a strong probability that the film is not entirely realistic. The dark-red climax gets positively occult as evidence of supernatural happenings accumulate. Noteworthy for being one of Eastwood’s first solo directing efforts (clearly inspired by Leone and Siegel), the film includes—of all things—what could be interpreted as one of cinema’s earliest first-person-shooter sequences. While the film may or may not belong to the supernatural horror genre, it’s the explanation that makes the most sense and interest given the clues given by the film. Eastwood fans may want to compare High Plains Drifter with Pale Rider, which seems to come to a similarly ambiguous situation from the other side of the good/evil coin.

  • The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)

    The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, in theatres, June 2019) I was oddly charmed by the first The Secret Life of Pets—I could identify with some of the more sentimental material about humans and their pets in between the more obvious jokes and fast-paced action sequences. As a result, sequel The Secret Life of Pets 2 doesn’t quite have the same element of surprise going for it, and may stretch the sauce a bit too thin. For a very long time, the film feels episodic: despite the promising prologue, it feels like a filler episode between weightier instalments. It takes until the third act, and the coalescing of the three subplots, before the film regains its coherence and feels like a single film again. While the result is not bad, I have a feeling that by stretching the story past its previous boundaries (by going to the farm, by including non-pet animals) it loses sight of the emotional connection to house pets that the first film maintained so well. At least, in the Illumination Studios tradition, there are the silly jokes to fall back on: The Secret Life of Pets 2 ends with Kevin Hart as a rabbit singing “Panda,” so at least there’s that to look forward throughout the film.

    (Second viewing, On UHD, July 2021) Don’t you hate it when subplots metastasize and take over a film? A second look at The Secret Life of Pets 2 suggests that the script was rushed, and the point of the series was lost along the way. Numbers may help: The Secret Life of Pets was released in 2016, while its sequel came out three years later, which is not a lot of time to get even an 86-minute animated film done from the ground up. With that kind of rush, you can’t expect a sober reworking of material at all stages, and the time constraints show most clearly at the script level. While the first film kept a tight focus on pets and their relationship with humans (culminating in a return-home montage that still gets me to this day), this second film goes off in three different directions, not always aligned with the core strength of the premise. The one subplot that works best on an emotional level is the one that develops the characters from the first film, as our dog protagonist learns to deal with his owner’s marriage, pregnancy and young son – suddenly, there’s an expansion of the emotional themes of the first film, and you can see some progress along the way. I’m not that fond of that subplot’s setting on an upstate farm (diluting the concept of pets through livestock), but I like where it starts and where it ends. I’m also marginally tolerant of the subplot involving other animal characters getting into crazy adventures with other pets, in this case a Pomeranian forced to go undercover as a cat to retrieve a toy from a crazy cat lady apartment – it fits neatly with the “secret life” aspect of the story, and it’s got the biggest laughs of the film while giving something to do to the ensemble cast still stuck in New York City. It’s the third subplot that gives off airs of not having been completely polished, as a rabbit character with delusions of super-heroism goes chasing after a cub tiger being abused by a circus owner. That’s the part of the film that seems to come from a different series, about as far away from the “pets” aspect of the series as possible. It’s the subplot designed for thrills rather than emotion or laughs, and while it does deliver an action-packed climax, it’s a disappointing tag that feels as if it was added early in production to round off the film’s short running time, and couldn’t be replaced or improved given the film’s target release date. Oh, The Secret Life of Pets 2 is not terrible by any means: the animation’s good, the jokes land and the characters are recognizably themselves. But the added spark from the first film is not always there, and here is such a stark difference in intent from the three subplots that the structural artificiality of the result is highlighted. Kids will like it, but adults may not have as much fun.

  • Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

    Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2019) There is something true in the assertion that once you’ve seen a Chuck Norris film you’ve seen them all, and it’s certainly not going to be disproven by the generic Lone Wolf McQuade, where a rather great title can’t hide that this is Norris playing the same Norris. This time, he’s a rebellious Texas Ranger who (what else) is on the trail of an evil drug lord. He carries a .44 Magnum. He has a pet wolf. The drug lord is played by David Carradine. The love interest is played by the very cute Barbara Carrera. I’m not sure that there’s anything of substance to add to those facts. As directed by Steve Carver, the film is slightly more cinematographically ambitious than many of Norris’s other movies, clearly going for a Leone-type modern western in the American southwest. Still, Lone Wolf McQuade doesn’t have a whole lot to care about: There are few surprises here, although the sometimes-blunt execution does have a rough-hewn charm. Norris fans already know if they’re going to like it.

  • About Last Night… (1986)

    About Last Night… (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) I came to About Last Night… the other way around, having seen (and really enjoyed) the 2014 remake before seeing the original. This one is set in 1980s Chicago (nicely using the city’s landmarks), and follows a yuppie couple as they connect, disconnect, and reconnect over the span of a year. Demi Moore and Rob Lowe are quite likable as the lead couple. In fact, this may be my favourite performances from them both—and that’s saying something considering Moore’s extensive career. The better than average dialogue clearly comes from David Mamet’s original theatrical play, and it shines even through the crude French translation doing its best to keep up with its rapid rhythm. It’s easy to see why some consider it to be a semi-classic romantic comedy: the execution is much better than the somewhat stock premise. And yet, and yet: this may be a generational thing or a recency bias, but I can’t quite muster the same affection toward the original About Last Night… than I have for its Los Angeles-set remake. It’s still good enough … but not quite as good.

  • Victor Victoria (1982)

    Victor Victoria (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) Director Blake Edwards built his career with bigger-than-life comedies, so the gender-twisting outrageousness of Victor Victoria does make quite a bit of sense coming from him. See if you can keep up: In 1930s Paris, a gay man convinces a woman to impersonate a man impersonating a woman in a transvestite cabaret show. (We’re deep in Philip K. Dick’s fake-fake territory here.) Still, the film itself is a decent amount of fun. Julie Andrews stars as the woman asked to play a woman, but much of the spotlight goes to Robert Preston (and his great voice) as an aging gay man—his character is treated with some respect (within the confines of a 1982 film taking in place in 1934, that is), helping the film age more gracefully than most contemporaries. There are shades of Cabaret here (especially considering its inspiration, a 1933 German film) but don’t worry: Victor Victoria doesn’t have Nazis and ends on a far more cheerful note. It definitely comes alive during the funny cabaret sequence, especially when they result in musical numbers. The best is saved for last, with a deliberately over-the-top final sequence. While I’m not enthusiastic about Victor Victoria, it’s an easy film to watch and the cheerful atmosphere makes it all feel far more bearable than other comparable films (or musicals) of the era.

  • Lucas (1986)

    Lucas (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2019) There’s an entire cluster of 1980s movies that, if you weren’t around to see them upon release, now feel like strange artifacts of another era. You can watch them for a cast of actors who later went on to do other things, but they usually feel so familiar in the story yet so detached from now that they’re artifacts. At least that’s how I feel about Lucas, a wholly unremarkable high school drama that had the good luck of featuring actors (Corey Haim, Winona Ryder, Charlie Sheen, Jeremy Piven) who became better known afterwards. The plot has something to do with a nerd picking up football to impress a girl, but as a coming-of-age comedy, it’s about as sweet as it needs to be with our hero learning about unreciprocated crushes and earning the respect of teammates through one of the big prototypical slow claps of the 1980s. Lucas is probably more meaningful to those who dabbled in high-school football, saw it at the right age, or were around for it in the 1980s. For everyone else, well, it seems as if there’s been endless variations of the same thing since then.

  • Nobody’s Fool (1994)

    Nobody’s Fool (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) For an actor that was once so vital to American cinema, it’s surprising to realize after the fact that Paul Newman essentially retired in the nineties, with a total of five films during that decade: At the exception of Road to Perdition, his twenty-first century career was low-key—voice acting, TV movies, smaller roles, this kind of thing. So, it’s a bit of a surprise to discover Nobody’s Fool as one of his parting lead roles, a small-town character-driven drama focused entirely on his character. Newman’s filmography is not the only one being enhanced by Nobody’s Fool—he plays opposite a cross-generational ensemble cast that includes a prime-era Bruce Willis, one of Jessica Tandy’s last roles, as well as turns for Melanie Griffith (who hilariously flashes her breasts to Newman’s character) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (as a policeman, no less). Willis, in particular, is almost a revelation for those who have grown used to his increasingly detached screen persona—here he is playing a now-unfamiliar character—loose, funny and engaged. Still, the show belongs to Newman: In a revealing contrast to his earlier, sullen roles, the bad boy of Hud and The Prize and Cool Hand Luke has mellowed into an elderly actor playing an elderly man who has found contentment in a simple life. It does complement the small-town charm of the film, albeit one tempered by a depressing snowy atmosphere and the very down-to-earth portrait of flawed characters. There’s more nudity than you’d think from a “small-town intimate drama.”  Still, Nobody’s Fool remains a bit more interesting than expected—and not just as a lesser-known title on multiple filmographies.

  • Look Who’s Talking (1989)

    Look Who’s Talking (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, June 2019) You know the shtick for Look Who’s Talking—everyone does: Standard romantic comedy, except with the baby character having a voice. It’s good for a few laughs (“Lunch!” is always good for a smirk or two), but there’s a limit to how long that gimmick can be sustained, after which the film has to rely on more standard elements. Fortunately, there’s John Travolta and Kirstie Alley looking great and being decently funny in their roles. Perhaps the biggest surprise of Look Who’s Talking is that the humour is considerably cruder than I expected, starting from a conception credit sequence that also introduces the gimmick. At times too cute but generally funny, there’s a bit more to this film than the talking-baby thing, including a rather complicated relationship between the two leads that goes a bit beyond the strict minimum expected. One sequence has a cute nod to Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, except that it’s more than a gag—it cleverly reinforces the father/son association between Travolta’s character and the baby in the viewers’ minds by making a call-back to the actor’s previous role. But that’s getting over-analytical on a movie that’s not built to sustain more than a casual viewing. Look Who’s Talking may be a bit too quirky to love entirely, but it has its charm.