Reviews

  • Barbary Coast (1935)

    Barbary Coast (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) It feels weird to talk about Barbary Coast as a western, considering that it takes place in the largely urban setting of 1850s San Francisco. But it does feature many elements of the western thanks to the gold rush that serves as its backdrop. There’s an air of a wild frontier to it all, as much of the action initially takes place in a saloon of sorts, then runs out for life away from the city in a gold mining camp. So, let’s call this an “urban western” and try not to think too much about the contradiction. As such, it’s not bad: this two-fisted thriller shows life in San Francisco during the gold rush, with a wealthy villain (Edward G. Robinson) running the town while everyone else cowers. Director Howard Hawks brings his characteristic touch to the result (not as refined as his later films, but still effective) and the whole thing is rather fun to watch even as it deals in clichés and rough plotting. While technically of the Production Code era, the script still has enough echoes of innuendos to stay interesting. Even if some of the characters can be cartoonish, Barbary Coast is still a convincing trip to a specific time and place. Watch it as a double feature with 1936’s San Francisco disaster film for a wild Hollywood dive into the city’s history.

  • Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018)

    Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) It’s amusing to see how Jack Black has carved himself a niche in children’s fantasy film over the past few years, and he’s back as no less than R. L. Stine in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. It’s a small, late role for him but it does highlight the self-referential nature of this horror-lite film for young kids. Here, a Goosebump book is opened and brings to life all of the monsters of the franchise in a small town on Halloween night. This is not something made to be scary—it’s content simply remixing Halloween icons for a short 90-minute spooky time. The inclusion of Nikola Tesla is amusing, much of the film taking place at the Wardenclyffe Tower he designed and built. Also worth a mention is a bit of fun on how fiction can turn to real life and vice versa. Despite this, Haunted Halloween is not bad but not good either: it’s just inert, and the kind of stuff the kids can watch for thrills, while the adults keep their own harder horror films for themselves.

  • Addicted to Fresno (2015)

    Addicted to Fresno (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) The weirdest stuff pops up on cable channels once in a while, especially when focusing on those smaller movies without strong genre elements—it’s not rare to see a direct-to-video movie on steady rotation years later, as it’s rediscovered by a programming director looking for more unusual titles. So it is that Addicted to Fresno made it on Canadian Cable TV channels this month, featuring a can’t-miss cast headlined by none other than Judy Greer and Natasha Lyonne. Any of those two would warrant a look as far as I’m concerned, but the two of them playing sisters in a dark comedy? Yes, I will definitely watch that. But the cast doesn’t stop there: With such notables as Aubrey Plaza, Ron Livingtone (playing a very Ron Livingtonesque role), Fred Armisen, Molly Shannon and a short but memorable turn by a then-lesser-known Kumail Nanjiani, it’s the cast that keeps on giving throughout the film. Greer and Lyonne are also interestingly cast against persona, with Lyonne as the cheerful level-headed one and Greer as the flighty unstable sister. Addicted to Fresno spares no moment in establishing its raunchy (but fully clothed) brand of dark humour with the language alone earning the film’s R-Rating. But it’s fun, and seeing these comic actors bouncing against each other is fun as well. Director Jamie Babbit keeps things going in a straightforward fashion, and if the actors aren’t all up to the task (while I like Plaza a lot, her deadpan style can’t quite stretch to accommodate her character) there’s a good-natured sweetness that emerges from its initially irremediable characters right in time for the conclusion. Addicted to Fresno won’t set the world afire nor will it find a large audience—the humour and characters can be off-putting. But it’s a nice example of a little character-driven comedy and the ending does wrap things up nicely. Stay for the few outtakes at the end, including a reprise of Lyonne’s can’t miss “Cousin Itt” moment.

  • Coopers’ Camera aka Coopers’ Christmas (2008)

    Coopers’ Camera aka Coopers’ Christmas (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Coming from the depths of the Canadian film back catalogue emerges Coopers’ Christmas, a surprising, moderately entertaining dark comedy. Here, sour Christmas humour meets the found-footage genre, as a “1985” Christmas is filmed with a “VHS” video-camera. (It’s clearly not, but that’s a good thing—the real thing would be unwatchable in SD.) The dysfunctional nature of the family gathering quickly becomes apparent, and so does the coarse sense of humour of the film in which even killing kids while drunk driving is a laugh line. Our characters are almost all spectacularly flawed, and those issues all come to the surface during a tense Christmas Eve. You have to have some innate misanthropy to appreciate the results, especially as the humour gets raunchier and weirder with mixed parentage and misgendered characters. The actors are all up for it, with special mention to Dave Foley for a comic performance that’s as exposed as it’s brave in some ways. Coopers’ Christmas is not for everyone, and the ending doesn’t quite pull everything together. Nonetheless, it’s not a bad entry in the dark humour Christmas genre, and it’s well worth dusting off once in a while—considering its Canadian nature and restrained distribution, you’ll be lucky to find anyone else who has seen it.

  • Pete’s Christmas (2013)

    Pete’s Christmas (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Hallmark Christmas movies get a bad rep as repetitive repetitions of familiar clichés and empty platitudes, and I’m sure most would agree that we don’t need more movies repeating the premise of Groundhog Day. Maybe that explains why Pete’s Christmas ends up being a small pleasant surprise. As you may guess, the central premise is to have Christmas Day on repeat, seen from the perspective of an overlooked middle child teenager who, at least at first go, has the most terrible holiday anyone could ask for. Some vague supernatural shenanigans later, the loop begins. If you’ve seen Groundhog Day, the overall arc will feel intensely familiar: disbelief, understanding, random mischief, hedonism, then slow accretion of good actions to improve others’ lives, followed by the end of the loop. Then you combine it with the usual Christmas movie clichés—snow, food, song and family values—not to mention flat directing and low-budget production values. It shouldn’t work, but it does: even in its mechanistic repetitive fashion, Pete’s Christmas slowly builds charm and the amount of indulgence that it needs to run over a sometimes-rough script and obvious plot hooks. Zachary Gordon does turn in a fine lead performance, with Bruce Dern and Molly Parker most noticeable in supporting roles. The gradual resolution of the many issues is handled in non-chronological fashion (or at least that’s how I choose to interpret it, the alternative being a much less satisfying script), with the various characters getting a chance to explain themselves and for the protagonist to walk further along in his path to self-enlightenment. Pete’s Christmas does keep the Buddhist spiritual undertones of its inspiration, although I’m not sure if that’s by design or carryover accident. Still, as far as Christmas movies go, it combines two formulas to end up with a nice little spin. Not what we’d call a great movie, but something a bit better than average if you’re expecting just another Hallmark holiday special.

  • Last Christmas (2019)

    Last Christmas (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) My resentment has been building for a while and it’s unfortunate that Last Christmas has to bear the brunt of it, but here we go and I’m not sorry for the spoilers: I’m done with the modern trend of inserting imaginary characters in movies for the sake of a twist. Twenty years after Fight Club, there’s now a spate of movies that feel that it is somehow impressive to have a character coming out of their protagonist’s imagination. I’m looking at you, Onward and 47 Deep below. And I’m really looking at you, Last Christmas, for pulling that trick. Now that we’ve combined the imaginary character with the Christmas movie genre, we’ve reached the end of the road. It’s time to stop. It’s especially true given that it doesn’t make Last Christmas any better as a movie—the film is fine as a romance, it’s even better as a story of a woman pulling herself together after a long period of aimlessness and persona trauma. The imaginary character muddies the water and feels as if the film depends on a gimmick more than its own honest values. (Or maybe it betrays a lack of confidence in the material.) It’s a bit of an issue considering that some of the film actually works well. I’m grown a bit warmer about Emilia Clarke’s acting and her non-Games of Thrones screen persona with each subsequent film, and she actually manages to handle the transformation of a character from an irritating screwup to something approaching adulthood. Michelle Yeoh is a delight no matter the movie—and she’s no exception here, along with relative newcomer Henry Golding in a thankless role. There’s an appealing multicultural quality to the characters in this London-set film, and there are a few other good moments stuck in the middle of the film. Now, if Last Christmas could have found any other way to resolve its climax without an imaginary character, we would have been left with a far better film.

  • Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

    Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2020) The first Escape Plan wasn’t so great, so the idea of a sequel leaves one wondering—Where to go? With another escape? And that indeed ends up being the case, with another better prison and another (not necessarily better) plot to escape. The original had the distinction of teaming up Schwarzenegger with Stallone, but this time around only Sylvester Stallone remains to look tough in retirement age. The bare-bones plot (good guys escape from bad guys’ prison) thinks that more characters equals complexity, but ends up creating more confusion than interest from the result. At times, Escape Plan 2 seems to be throwing random plot elements in the mix just to see what would happen (Chinese entrepreneurs! Hackers! Private for-profit prisons! Robots!) and the result feels overstuffed with useless material. Some faux-philosophy is thrown in narration, but the film doesn’t deserve whatever patina of intellectualism that those suggest. Despite some attempts at stylish presentation from director Steven C. Miller, the result is almost instantly forgettable, except when it’s ridiculous (such as having Stallone go hand-to-hand with a much younger opponent). The climax is underwhelming (We’re in a hole in the ground in Atlanta! Wow! Who cares?) to the point of feeling less impressive than the following end credit sequence. Escape Plan 2 is passable background filler considering that you don’t really have to pay attention to the nonsense in order to follow the plot. Not essential viewing for anyone, including fans of the first film—but don’t worry, the end promises another sequel, which was actually released in 2019 as Escape Plan: The Extractors.

  • One, Two, Three (1961)

    One, Two, Three (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, July 2020) The legendary Billy Wilder wrote and directed so many great films that it’s easy to forget about even his second-tier efforts, and so it took me a curiously long time to get to watch One, Two, Three. A comedy set in Berlin that heavily plays with the Cold War obsessions of the time, it also lets James Cagney have one of his last roles be a comic showpiece as a Coca-Cola executive dealing with Soviet contacts and the flighty daughter of an influential superior. As usual for Wilder movie, the screenwriting is front and centre, with Cagney spitting dialogue at a blistering pace as a fast-thinking professional used to get his way even under adverse circumstances. The comedy gets crazier and crazier, picking elements from Wilder’s own Ninotchka and bringing them forward to a newly-fractured Berlin stuck between communists and capitalists. One, Two, Three is very much a fascinating time capsule of its era, because it seems able to laugh contemporarily about things that you think would have been best dealt with retrospectively as a period piece. The film does get funnier as it goes on, and Cagney keeps his maniac pacing from beginning to end. There’s quite a bit of mordant cynical humour from Wilder’s pen, but it all leads to a nice wrap-up. For Wilder, One, Two, Three will always be overshadowed by a filmography that includes classics such as Double Indemnity and Some Like it Hot, but it’s a very enjoyable film nonetheless.

  • Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] (2019)

    Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Hmmm. Let me check the list of what makes reviewers flip over a movie these days: Historical setting, great costumes, foreign-language production, careful directing, deliberate pacing, progressive ideals, non-heteronormative rethinking of familiar stories… yes, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu is almost custom-designed for critical acclaim. Too bad I couldn’t get into it. The pacing is too slow, the production too measured—even the subject matter felt like a rethread of The Favourite… and I never expected to mention The Favourite as “my favourite” of anything. I’ll be the first to say that the film isn’t geared for me, and that I shouldn’t keep harping on its case—but I’ve seen, by now, far too many of what seems to be the same movie playing on the same chords in more or less the same way. And that’s fine—Portrait de la jeune fille en feu ended up as an instant classic, a critic’s favourite, and received an almost-instantaneous consecration into the Criterion pantheon. But it’s not a movie for everyone: If you’re looking for sustained pacing, an unpredictable story, or red-blooded character work that doesn’t seem to belong on a museum’s wall, this isn’t the right pick. Far too long in telling us something that can be predicted almost every step of the way (at least, if you’re familiar with that subgenre), Portrait de la jeune fille en feu is probably a bull’s-eye for some, but it will struggle to get out of that subgenre.

  • Leviathan (1989)

    Leviathan (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) Watching Leviathan so soon after Deepstar Six may not have been such a great idea. After all, those were two of the three big underwater thrillers released in 1989 — along with The Abyss, which is so much better than the other two that it will immediately be excluded from further comparison. After meticulously comparing the merits of both remaining movies, I think I can pass a narrow judgment that I liked Deepstar Six slightly better, even despite Leviathan being the most ambitious film. It certainly has an interesting B-string 1980s cast: In-between Peter Weller, Ernie Weller, Richard Crenna, Daniel Stern and the rather cute Amanda Pays, there are a few familiar faces here. The plot has some degree of Alien-inspired complexity to it, what with a blue-collar crew in a hostile environment, a mysterious discovery aboard a derelict ship and a corporate conspiracy that’s absolutely not meant to be helpful. The creature itself is conceptually interesting, amalgamating the people it consumes, but not very well executed given the special effects limits of low-budget 1989 filmmaking. (I wasn’t going to mention The Abyss again, but its special effects were the absolute Oscar-winning limit of what was possible at the time—we 2020 viewers have gotten used to much better for even low-budget features.) Perhaps the clearest example of the outer reaches of the film’s production comes at the very end, with editing placing a monster on one side of the survivors and a Coast Guard ship on the other—the shots are very obviously spliced together despite not matching at all. Ah well—but the mechanistic copying of Alien gets annoying, and I remember Deepstar Six as being a bit more effective at portraying the reality of a deep-sea crew, and exceeding lower expectations. This being said, the difference between the two isn’t all that great, and anyone with more affection for the cast would be justified in liking this one better.

  • Murder by Death (1976)

    Murder by Death (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (CTV Streaming, July 2020) I recall seeing bits and pieces of Murder by Death as a kid, so I was more than curious to re-watch the film, only remembering that it was about parodies of fictional detectives being set up to solve the perfect murder. Going in the film otherwise almost entirely unaware, I was amazed at the cast of the film: Peter Sellers, Alec Guiness, Peter Falk, David Niven, Maggie Smith and none other than a very young James Cromwell! Then I was bowled over once over again, as I recognized the archetypes they were playing—Falk imitating Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade, Niven as a pitch-perfect incarnation of William Powell’s Nick Charles, and so on. I could have done without the casual racism of Sellers’ Charlie Chan, but it does get us the rather wonderful spectacle of having him going toe-to-toe with his inspiration Alec Guiness in a scene or two. None other than Truman Capote shows up as the main antagonist of the film, setting up a perfect murder that none of the world-class detectives will be able to solve. As Murder by Death is working from a Neil Simon script, you can expect a steadily amusing script and dialogue—although the film doesn’t quite get as hilarious as it could have been. The structure of the story seems lopsided as well, with a very long time spent on introductions and setting up the premise, then zipping to a conclusion. It doesn’t get any better once we realize (after an android or two) that the film is absolutely not meant to make conventional narrative sense. There are six successive plot climaxes in a row getting more and more absurd, the joke being turned on the viewers expecting this comedy to make any kind of narrative sense. Murder by Death becomes a letdown after such a promising start, but the result is still worth a look if only for the cast and the playfulness of the script as it charges forward, determined to upend most expectations.

  • Crash Dive (1943)

    Crash Dive (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2020) At first glance, Hollywood made many movies like Crash Dive during WW2—heroic dramas about men in combat, puffing up just about every branch of the armed forces. But there are two crucial differences here, and one interesting element worth mentioning. The first and most obvious difference between Crash Dive and many other propaganda films is that it’s filmed in colour—lending a quasi-documentary quality to the results when the camera focuses on the submarines where much of the plot takes place. The second difference is a much-bigger emphasis placed on the romantic narrative: compared to other war movies where combat against the enemy was enough of a narrative, Crash Dive spends a lot of time in a romantic triangle between a woman and two men (one the commanding officer to the other). Finally, one element worth mentioning is a supporting role for Ben Carter at a time (and in a war movie genre) that did not usually have roles for black actors. The blend of wartime action and romance is interesting, but it doesn’t make for a particularly cohesive film. Crash Dive is not bad, but its message is on the nose, and the addition of a romantic narrative reinforces the impression that there are many movies just like it, except set elsewhere than in submarines.

  • Seppuku [Hara-kiri] (1962)

    Seppuku [Hara-kiri] (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, July 2020) I wasn’t expecting much of Seppuku, but that’s not the film’s fault—I may have overdosed on samurai movies a while back, and I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to another early-1960s black-and-white Japanese samurai drama. So, I was a bit surprised when the opening sequence of director Masaki Kobayashi’s film drew me in with unusually modern cinematography, heavy on tracking shots and insistent editing. Then you get into the mystery of the film’s plot, as a samurai comes to commit ritual suicide in a lord’s courtyard while making specific demands. There’s clearly a reason behind his requests, and much of Seppuku is a mystery pieced together through flashbacks and revelations. For a film set in 17th-century Japan with its very specific social codes, this is an unusually accessible film, as the information required to make sense of it all is intelligibly presented. In some ways, the film is a rough analogue of a courtroom drama, as it explores social constraints according to the limits the participants have set upon themselves. By the time we piece together the explanation, Seppuku has become an elegant story of revenge, exploiting flaws in the opponent’s self-image to drive them to destruction. Now, I’m not a fan of the entire film—I think that the flashback sequences take too long and lessen the growing suspense. I also have some minor issues with bits and pieces here and there. But overall, I can see why the film has enjoyed a bit of a pop-critical renaissance for the past few years (having recently cracked the IMDB-250, not normally known for more challenging filmmaking) and why it’s held in such high esteem. I actually like Seppuku more than some (but not all) of Kurosawa’s samurai films, which is saying something even in a small pool of references.

  • Du Barry was a Lady (1943)

    Du Barry was a Lady (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Like many other hobbies, movie-watching gets more rewarding the more you put into it. If you’re the kind of person who watches a film a year, then go ahead and enjoy the film on its own merits. But if you’re the kind of cinephile who enjoys tracking down filmographies, sub-genres and how movies exist in context, then a film can become far more than the sum of its parts. While watching Du Barry Was a Lady, for instance, I was struck by how it brings together many people that I liked elsewhere. It has one of Gene Kelly’s earliest roles, for instance—and even at this early stage, he gets play the likable cad, singing and dancing even if it’s not (yet) to his own cinematography. It has one of Lucille Ball’s foremost movie roles, where she gets to be strikingly beautiful and funny. It has Red Skelton, semi-restrained from his usual comic tics and funnier for it. It has one of my favourite supporting actresses of the era, Virginia O’Brien, lovely and hilarious as she sings in her usual deadpan style. (“Salome” has funny lyrics, but half of the song’s many laughs come from O’Brien’s side glances, facial expressions and hand movements.) It has Zero Mostel playing small-time hustler, Tommy Dorsey as (what else?) a band leader and an entire song dedicated to Vargas pin-ups girls (Happily, Miss September is the best). Du Barry was a Lady is also, perhaps more significantly, one of Arthur Freed’s early MGM musicals and you can see bits and pieces of it as inspiration for the tone and content of his later movies. Compared to this thick web of associations and context, it does feel as if the film itself is not as good as its components. Much of the first half is a nightclub comedy (giving generous time to the on-stage acts) paying particular attention to Ball, Kelly and O’Brien, while the second loosens up by going back to Louis XV-era France for some sillier comedy focused on Skelton. It’s not bad, but the film is more interesting for its numbers and showcases than by itself—as mentioned before, “Salome” is worthy of an anthology reel, and it’s a treat to see Ball, Kelly and Mostel in early roles. I liked Du Barry was a Lady a lot, but I suspect that I’m getting a lot more out of it by virtue of having seen, in rapid succession, many of the other movies with which it shares a web of associations.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, November 2021) What I like about revisiting classic Hollywood films is that even a few months can mean a world of difference in how you approach a film knowing more about its stars and their careers. You can watch Du Barry was a Lady (as I did the first time) without knowing much about its players and still appreciate the film on its own terms. But come back to it with a greater appreciation for Red Skelton, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball, Virginia O’Brien, Zero Mostel and Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, and the film becomes nothing short of a quasi-miraculous union of distinctive talents. Skelton delivers another of his usual performances here, and stays (mostly) under control for the first half of the film. Ball was on the upswing at the time, distinguishing herself as a dependable comic performer – but this was the film (her first as an MGM star) that changed her hair colour to red… a distinction she’d keep the rest of her career. Kelly was barely known at the time, but here gets a terrific solo dance number that clearly wowed others enough to give him bigger roles as a dancer. Gorgeous O’Brien gets an anthology number in “Salome” (sung deadpan, but complete with hilarious acting) as well as a decent supporting role. Zero Mostel makes his big-screen debut here, whereas Tommy Dorsey (aka D’Orsay in the French Royalty sequences) and his orchestra get a welcome showcase. Finally, who can resist the rather wonderful “I Love an Esquire Girl” featuring no less than twelve terrific Vargas girls? (Miss September being my favourite, even the second time around.)  The film itself is uneven: the first present-day half is not bad, but the second historical one is rather dull. But it’s by bringing together several talented performers that Du Barry Was a Lady finds its true calling. It’s not a completely satisfying film, but it’s well worth another look, possibly fast-forwarding from one great sequence to another.

  • Death Warmed Up (1984)

    Death Warmed Up (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) It turns out that there was more than Peter Jackson making horror movies out of New Zealand back in the 1980s, but looking at Death Warmed up and comparing it to (say) Bad Taste, it’s obvious why Jackson became an international sensation and writer-director David Blyth didn’t. Working from a script that has two prologues and welds together a bunch of familiar splatter/slasher horror tropes without necessarily saying anything more interesting about them, he delivers a workmanlike horror film, a bit better than the norm at the time but still not quite good enough to be particularly memorable. Production values are on the low side, and the elements of the story aren’t handled with any kind of flair. A gratuitously mean ending causes little reaction, reflecting the lack of interest in the rest of the film. It’s interesting in that Death Warmed Up is clearly inspired by the American horror movie craze of the early 1980s while being just different enough to be distinctive, but it remains more a curio for horror fans looking to expand their knowledge of New Zealand cinema beyond the essential.