Reviews

  • The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)

    The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) In retrospect, even mildly successful documentaries can be ennobled by the passage of time if they capture something that can no longer be experienced in later years. In this light, The Decline of Western Civilization is a much better documentary now than it was at its release because its insider’s look at the 1980 Los Angeles punk scene is now the stuff of legend, never again to be recreated. To be clear, The Decline of Western Civilization was never a bad movie: much of what it chronicles, in between generous concert footage and revealing interviews with various punk scene members, was under-covered at the time. Director Penelope Spheeris (best known for Wayne’s World) was a member of the scene at the time, and was able to use her friendships to set up the interviews and film the performances. The result is a document for the ages – a good punk anthology, complemented by a description of the scene by the scene members themselves. I’m not that familiar with punk nor any of the bands here (although I do recognize Black Flag, even if that’s more due to the later presence of Henry Rollins than anything else) but I had a good time listening to much of The Decline of Western Civilization while doing something else.

  • … All the Marbles (1981)

    … All the Marbles (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Peter Falk with forever be Colombo, but his film career is filled with hits, from his dead-on Bogart impersonation in Murder by Death to a very odd turn in City of Angels to, well, a rather decent turn in female wrestling drama movie…all the Marbles. Here we are, clearly in the early 1980s, following a female tag-team wrestling team and their manager (Falk) as they tour the decaying pockets of the United States interested in female wrestling, going from one terrible hotel room to a low-rent venue, always looking for bigger and better engagements. It’s a miserable living and an equally miserable movie at first, as the lead trio keeps squabbling, running into trouble and losing faith in their ability to succeed. Things eventually change for the better in the film’s later half, as the protagonists move west for greater and greater success. It all culminates at a Reno face-off with their biggest opponents, an event during which Falk’s character demonstrates his talent for working the crowd. As an underdog sports comedy, it features the expected comeback and the marginally happier finale than the film’s opening moments. Falk is quite good here, with his gravelly voice reflecting a man who knows he’s spiralling down but always clinging to the hope of a break. While the film is not always pleasant to watch, it does build to something better. I’m reminded of the adage “three good scenes and a great finale” – you really can’t go wrong with a big final victory.

  • El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

    El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2020) Like many people, I binge-watched “Breaking Bad” as soon as the entire series made its way to Netflix in 2016ish. Picking up the pieces of the series’ plot in time for El Camino wasn’t as difficult as I would have guessed: while the film dutifully continues the events of the last episode as if no time at all had passed, it also revisits many of the series’ characters in such a way that you can easily remember who was who and what they did. The cameos are usually in increasing order of significance, so just wait and you’ll see your favourites at some point. Acting as more of a bonus coda than anything specifically new, El Camino focuses on Jesse as he escapes from the neo-Nazi compound, then spends the next few days putting his affairs in order and getting enough money to start a new life. Taking its cues from TV show structure, El Camino often feels like a series of short loop episodes, with Jessie dealing with a specific challenge before moving on to the next stage. Robert Forster makes an impression (in one of his last film roles) as an inflexible “cleaner,” and the film does get a pretty good sequence, as Jessie looks for hidden money in the lair of a dead nemesis. (Jesse Plemons is back in his irritatingly evil character, proving the banality of evil in many different ways.) El Camino is probably not work a look if you’re not already a viewer of the show: the story is decent, the production values are nice, but the film doesn’t really intend to stand alone nor offer meaning to anyone but those wanting another hit of “Breaking Bad.” Nothing wrong with that – just setting expectations straight.

  • The Irishman (2019)

    The Irishman (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2020) To anyone closely keeping track of Martin Scorsese’s career, The Irishman arrives as a clear late-career entry – the kind of film that plays as much as a narrative as a reflection of the films previously made under his direction. At first glance, it does look like many of Scorsese’s celebrated crime epics: a multi-decade odyssey through the murky world of east-coast union corruption, organized crime and veteran hitmen. It features Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, with special effects technology used to portray them from the 1950s to the 2000s. It has flashes of Scorsese’s directing style at its most vivid, with individual sequences playing like virtuoso riffs on the content of the film: There’s a particularly good sequence midway through in which a hitman ponders his choices for an upcoming hit, prepares and executes it despite not exactly going to plan. But, at the same time, The Irishman does play like a pre-retirement capstone, as the director deals heavily in themes that make more sense from an older filmmaker’s perspective. There is a moment where the narration sends nearly every single character to death or retirement, and you’re sure that this is the end of the film. But there are still thirty minutes and an unresolved framing device to go, and that’s when The Irishman strikes out in its own territory – telling us about the uneasy retirement of an accomplished hitman, the estrangement from his family, the gradual disappearance of his friends and the inevitable press of time, transforming a stone-cold killer in a frail old man liable to be taken out by even the slightest health problem. That’s what transforms The Irishman into something special, and something that befits Scorsese’s evolving filmography: he’s not putting together Mean Streets anymore. Of course, there’s a price to pay for such a substantial epilogue: the film is very long and feels even longer as the years go by and we dig ourselves out of no less than two framing devices and various flashbacks. There are a lot of characters to follow, and the way the film fits in history, often in oblique detail, is meant to be interpreted by those who have a decent grasp of post-WW2 American history, and specifically everything about Jimmy Hoffa. Some will argue that The Irishman would have done best as a miniseries, and, curiously enough, I only half-agree with that statement: Scorsese makes movies, not episodes of a TV show, and while that’s a distinction increasingly irrelevant to anyone but purists, it’s still a significant difference in matters of filmography. I enjoyed it, but I was really wishing for faster pacing at times. Still, The Irishman is an important milestone in Scorsese’s ongoing work: while we may wish for him to keep working forever, it does feel like the kind of work that can stand as a capstone.

  • Running on Empty (1988)

    Running on Empty (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) I didn’t expect to develop much sympathy for the adult protagonists of Running on Empty. As the film quickly sketches out, here are two ex-activists who ended up maiming a janitor in a laboratory bombing in the 1970s, then spending the 15 previous years on the run while raising two boys. Who can empathize with people like that? Fortunately, though, the emphasis of the film is on their elder son, a gifted pianist who is getting fed up with uprooting himself every few years, as his parents are terrified of being discovered by the authorities and keep a nomadic lifestyle. The script does a fine job of portraying the toll that regular uprooting can take, especially outside a controlled context providing support. The protagonist is played by River Phoenix, going a rather good job as the one most affected by the decisions of his parents. There’s a mixture of social drama and paranoid thriller going on here, especially when the runaways themselves keep suffering for not turning themselves in. From a narrative perspective, Running on Empty is messy: While it has a clear moral centre in the eldest son, it does spend some time on tangents related to other family members – it shouldn’t work, but somehow it coheres into a strong conclusion that is no less effective from being predictable long in advance. Director Sidney Lumet is at ease with a complex, politically aware script, and the cleanliness of his work does much to untangle a script filled with tangents.

  • Moulin Rouge (1952)

    Moulin Rouge (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) There is a particular charm to the way Hollywood used to make biopics – a mixture of caricature, big stars in famous people’s roles, mannered filmmaking and some very specific idea of what a “prestige” picture could be. So it is that in Moulin Rouge, we head to late 19th-century Paris to learn about the life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as played by José Ferrer. The attraction to the topic should be obvious: Toulouse-Lautrec was a genius and a tortured man – physically stunted due to a childhood accident, unlucky in love, spectacularly alcoholic and perpetually living close to poverty. He incarnated much of what many people imagine when they think about troubled artists in the 1890s. For 178cm Ferrer, taking on the role of 152cm Toulouse-Lautrec meant undergoing a physical transformation and making good use of unusual filmmaking techniques such as trenches, fake knees and body doubles. Then there’s the visual attraction of the topic: It would have been unthinkable, even in the 1950s, to shoot Moulin Rouge in anything but colour. The musical numbers are, of course, very can-can: I strongly suspect that most of what we think of as being the aesthetics of the Moulin Rouge (or that period), including the 2001 version of Moulin Rouge!, can be traced back to this film. Absinthe shows up (naturally), as do dark stockings and garter pants. The character of Toulouse-Lautrec perfectly fits the colourful, seedy, exhilarating world created here: Director John Huston knew what he was doing, and the result is a film that deserved its Academy Award nominations. Ferrer is quite good, and there are other known names, such as Zsa Zsa Gabor, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the cast. The 2001 Moulin Rouge! (which doesn’t share much than the title and the setting) is one of my favourite movies of all time, but this 1952 title is perfectly likable in its own way.

  • Torn Curtain (1966)

    Torn Curtain (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) With Torn Curtain, I have reached the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s second tier of films—I think that the only remaining movies I haven’t watched by him are the practically obscure The Paradine Case, Under Capricorn, and after that we get into 1930s British movies and 1920s silent films. Working from a popularity-based list, I am clearly going backward through quality as well: Made between Marnie and Topaz, Torn Curtain is clearly not among Hitchcock’s best, although it does have a few highlights. The best one of those is something I either somehow didn’t know or had forgotten: Paul Newman in a Hitchcock film?! He’s clearly not the best choice for the kind of cool thriller that Hitchcock did best (and it’s easy to confuse the opening minutes of Torn Curtain with that of The Prize), but much of his innate charm still makes quite an impression. On the other hand, Newman being Newman means that we’re not fooled when the film tries to make him a traitor defecting to the east. Fortunately, that’s not meant to be a twist—and that’s part of the film’s problem, as it keeps going on long after a blackboard combat that should have been the climax of the film. There are sequences that fare better, but even in those moments, the specifics don’t quite match the desired impression—I get that the kitchen sequence is meant to drive the point home that it’s hard to kill someone, but there are about six different better weapons on the set to finish off the guy than sticking his head in an oven. Julie Andrews is there but fails to make much of an impression as the woman who follows her fiancé deep behind the Iron Curtain and back. It’s no secret that Hitchcock did better on more personal movies than when he tried to go geopolitical (Topaz would confirm that a few years later) and so Torn Curtain seems a bit scattered compared to his better movies—it’s still watchable, but not always compelling.

  • Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962)

    Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Musicals had practically gone out of vogue by the early 1960s and genre epicentre MGM was clearly looking to recapture some of their past glory with Billy Rose’s Jumbo, a wide-scale musical set in the colourful world of the circus. Film scholars tell us that the project was in development for decades, starting in the 1930s, before the studio greenlit the film. The result is clearly meant to be expansive—with its succession of numbers taking advantage of circus iconography (Busby Berkeley was involved, in what I believe was his last film project), it’s meant to be a throwback to the glory days of MGM musicals. The result is not bad—especially for the 1960s, where the quality of musicals generally took a nosedive—but it does take a while to build up some interest. Doris Day stars as the daughter of the circus owner, with none other than Jimmy Durante playing her father. (There’s even a recreation of his classic “What elephant?’ gag.)  Both have impressive solo circus numbers, but I’m not smart enough to guess what part of their performances was theirs and what (if anything) was done by a double. Billy Rose’s Jumbo is watchable enough from a twenty-first century perspective, but if anyone tried to guess its production year, they’d probably peg it as a mid-1950s film—which explains why it wasn’t a box-office success and why it did not reignite the MGM musical era. That’s too bad for the filmmakers and studio, but, on the other hand, it has produced a musical for the ages, a bright colourful take on the circus world that you can very well pair with the more serious The Greatest Show on Earth for a double-shot of 1950s circuses.

  • Il gatto a nove code [Cat O’ Nine Tails] (1971)

    Il gatto a nove code [Cat O’ Nine Tails] (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) Once again in a giallo film, we have an innocent man getting drawn into investigating a lurid string of murders, in a film elevating an already-wild screenplay with stylish composition, colour, cinematography and musical choices. That Cat o’ Nine Tails is coming from giallo grandmaster Dario Argento only makes it further essential viewing in its subgenre. Here, the big wrinkle is a blind protagonist, and pseudo-scientific nonsense about the XYY gene turning people into killers or something. Of course, the fun of the film is in the ride more than the destination, with stylistic fillips that feel more modern than its early 1970s era of filmmaking. It’s more interesting than a strictly realistic take on the same topic would have been, although there are clear limits to this kind of material. I’d probably have more to say about Cat O’ Nine Tails if I hadn’t seen something like half a dozen similar movies in the past week (thank a giallo movie marathon for that jadedness), but that’s kind of the point: if you like giallo, it’s a stylistic genre more than a narrative one, so there’s a good chance that you’ll like one more.

  • That Touch of Mink (1962)

    That Touch of Mink (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Film scholars are quick to note that That Touch of Mink really wasn’t Cary Grant’s favourite film. By that time in his career, thirty years in the business, Grant felt that his best years were behind him: he was getting more difficult to sell as a romantic lead (something that would be apparent in the following year’s Charade, otherwise a high point of his career), his favourite directors were slowing down or retiring, and American society was changing in unpredictable ways. Having formed his own production company, he backed That Touch of Mink as a good commercial prospect and was proven right when the film finished fourth at the 1962 box office. Thematically, the film fits squarely with the low-key, somewhat quaintly charming sex comedies of the early 1960s—playing with the idea of more permissive social mores without quite bringing itself to embrace the thought. As a result, the film occasionally feels like a throwback to earlier movies, as Grant and Doris Day engage in a whirlwind romance punctuated by the question of “will they or won’t they?” There are quite a few engaging period details here, from an extended sequence in an automat, baseball legend cameos, a scene set inside a Univac computer room and a funny supporting role from Gig Young as an academic acting as Grant’s conscience. Unfortunately, it also comes with a side order of homophobic panic, a less than impressive ending and a first act that, with slight variations, plays like a humourless take on the opening for Written on the Wind. Then there’s the age of the leads: Grant was a seasoned 58-year-old, while Day herself was 38, playing a character easily fifteen years younger. That Touch of Mink is watchable, even amusing and certainly charming for fans of Grant or Day… but really not a career high point for anyone.

  • Class of 1984 (1982)

    Class of 1984 (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) Taking the Bad Seed cliché up a few notches, Class of 1984 has a teacher running afoul of a few teenage sociopaths in a high school seemingly jaded to a heightened level of violence. (As the date of production suggests, it’s meant as a near-future satire, but it feels like depressing reality forty years later.) Perry King stars as the meek music teacher, with some assistance from Timothy Van Patten as the irremediable antagonist, Roddy MacDowall as an even meeker teacher and none other than a very, very young Michael J. Fox as a bullied student. The film is very cleanly structured around the lines of a gritty 1970s revenge fantasy, with the teacher getting an increasing amount of aggravation and violence, and then bodies eventually piling up as no one seems willing to acknowledge the evil of the teenage antagonists. As manipulative as it may feel, Class of 1984 is executed with a fair amount of skill—it’s violently over the top, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I got a little spark of satisfaction at the very final and predictable death of the infuriating villain. Otherwise, it’s a serviceable 1980s thriller, a cut above most contemporary slashers but not great cinema by any means. At best, you can tie it to the growing anxieties about the Echo teenagers coming of age in the early 1980s and the horrors to come in terms of high school violence. But don’t read too much into it: it’s really an excuse to see violent provocation being answered by even more violent retribution. What else could we expect from exploitation cinema?

  • Cosa avete fatto a Solange? [What Have You Done to Solange?] (1972)

    Cosa avete fatto a Solange? [What Have You Done to Solange?] (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) Aside from any qualities the film itself may hold, I have to admit that What Have You Done to Solange? Is a terrific, quote-worthy title appropriate to a surprising number of situations. What have you done to her, indeed? The film, of course, is far less funny—stemming from the giallo subgenre, it presents a serial murder narrative in typically expressive style, bringing a great deal of sometimes-misguided vigour to the dull slasher genre. The ending packs a bit of a twist, but the film, in keeping with its subgenre, is more about the moment-to-moment thrills and chills than the convolutions of the plot. It generally works—the atmosphere of a college gripped by the serial slaying of young women is right out of the slasher cliché handbook, but it’s executed in a slightly more stylish fashion by director Massimo Dallamano and holds together at the end, which is not necessarily a given for the subgenre. I wasn’t expecting much, but the result is better than what I was bracing myself for.

  • She’s Working Her Way Through College (1952)

    She’s Working Her Way Through College (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) The 1950s were a little bit racier than most people are willing to give it credit for, and you could point at movies such as She’s Working Her Way Through College as an example. In many ways, it’s a bog-standard movie musical representative of the times, as it features a small-town college putting together a show and movie viewers seeing the bits and pieces of the musical through the rehearsal process. But it also features Virginia Mayo as a burlesque star going straight as a college student with literary ambitions. For post-1980 viewers, much of the film’s notoriety would come from seeing Ronald Reagan play an academic (!) who, in a drunken stupor (!!), ineffectually tries to punch another man he suspects of hobnobbing with his wife. Later on, we also have Reagan delivering a speech of tolerance in the face of a burlesque star in their midst, which will strike some as mildly tolerant and others as a bit hypocritical. Anyway—Mayo is great, the tone is amiable, the comedy has its moments and later presidential history has made the film a bit weightier than it used to be. Worth a look, frankly, if only for a combination of Mayo’s achievements and Reagan’s somewhat memorable role.

  • Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost (1942)

    Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) If I repeat myself in reviews of the Mexican Spitfire series, it’s because the movies themselves are almost carbon copies of each other. In Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost, Lupe Vélez once again plays the titular spitfire, ready to unleash torrents of Spanish invectives and threats of divorce at the slightest opportunity, while Leon Errol gets most of the laughs once again by dual-playing a likable uncle and a less likable (but funnier) British lord. The convolutions of the plot, involving hidden bandits, business dealings and the usual intentional blurring of identities of Errol’s characters, are once again at the forefront to fairly good effect. But as usual, the fun is more in the scenes and details than the grander plot. One of the film’s highlights, for instance, is seeing Vélez dressed up as a maid, and screeching loudly as a “Mexican wildcat” in trying to convince a dog to come from underneath some furniture—it’s much funnier than it sounds. Of course, there’s a great blend of sexiness and wackiness at play whenever Vélez shows up in the series: combined with Errol’s very game comedic performances, it makes the series a somewhat consistent experience. The ending is a bit of an explosive puzzler, but it’s not as if anyone cares when the next instalment of the series was there six months later. Film historians infamously remember Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost as the top bill of a double-header that featured no less than Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons in the least desirable spot: mind-boggling but true!

  • Una lucertola con la pelle di donna [A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin] (1971)

    Una lucertola con la pelle di donna [A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin] (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) A big flash of bright colour and crazy imagery, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is classic giallo, bright red blood and subjective unreality boosting an already twisted script of murder and insanity. That probably sounds like praise, but anyone’s reaction is likely to vary considerably: while the result can be more interesting than staider thrillers of the time, it’s not hard to feel as if this is writer-director Lucio Fulci simply throwing as much crazy stuff at the screen (including gutted dogs) in the hope that something will stick no matter if it makes sense. Of course, giallo works more on senses than sense: it’s about the experience of watching a film far more than the intellectual aspect of ensuring that all of the parts fit together from a narrative and logical standpoint. In this light, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is exactly what the viewers ordered: a hallucinatory nightmare of dread and suspense, leading up to a twisty (or maybe anti-twisty) finale. Giallo fans will love it, while non-fans may only appreciate it—but the result is decidedly representative of its subgenre.