Reviews

  • To Have and to Have Not (1944)

    To Have and to Have Not (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) On paper and on the screen, you really have Classic Hollywood running on overdrive in To Have and to Have Not: Let’s see—Howard Hawks directing from a script by William Faulkner from a story/treatment by Ernest Hemingway; Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as the lead couple, while they were having an affair behind the cameras that would lead to their marriage later on. Coming from Warner Brothers, there’s an obvious kinship here to be made with Casablanca, especially as the story delves into wartime shenanigans between the French Resistance and the Vichy government. Bogart himself clearly plays his own screen persona as the tough and glum smuggler, while Bacall (despite her young age) delivers an exemplary Hawksian-woman performance with more iconic lines of dialogue than most actors get in an entire career. None of this is particularly new (although the Hemingway/Faulkner collaboration is noteworthy), but it’s fun to have another go-around when it works so well—and the Bogart/Bacall chemistry would itself lead to a few encores. Typically for Hawks, there are a few choice quotes, and the direction is limpid, going to the heart of what you can do with Bogart-as-a-rogue and a luminescent Bacall as a strong wartime dame. Not quite noir but certainly not fluffy, To Have and to Have Not is so much fun to watch (although you may want to space your viewing away from Casablanca due to the inevitable parallels) that it ends a bit abruptly, although not without having Bogart shoot a guy, as it should be. The work of several craftsmen all working at the best of their abilities, it’s quite a treat, but also a good example of what the studio system could do when it was firing on all cylinders.

  • Ace in the Hole (1951)

    Ace in the Hole (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: the more I dig into classic Hollywood filmmaking, the more I realize that satire, social criticism and acerbic commentary have always been part of the package. This especially holds true for the 1950s, traditionally seen as a conformist decade but which also featured some of the bitterest take on media ever put on film. Coming in right before the rise of television and so perhaps at the apex of newspapers as a dominant form of media, Ace in the Hole gets downright nasty in describing how an unscrupulous newspaperman milks a personal tragedy for all it’s worth. As a man is stuck in a mine shaft and awaits a delicate rescue, our repellent protagonist (Kirk Douglas in a top-tier performance) decides to start manipulating events to his benefit. Within a remarkably short time, the mine entrance is surrounded by a circus of print journalists, broadcasters, opportunists and hucksters. Viewers beware—For all of the mordant wit of writer-director Billy Wilder’s film, Ace in the Hole is not meant to end well: it’s a deeply cynical work without many sympathetic characters to latch on. We’re meant to be awed but not charmed by Douglas’s wily, amoral protagonist, even as his great dialogue is undermined by despicable actions. Visually, there are some very evocative wide shots of cars, people and the media circus created around the scene of the news. As usual for Wilder, the film deftly manages to navigate a tricky labyrinth of tones even as it settles for more cynicism than usual even for him. It’s got a strong scene-to-scene watchability, and some clever-yet-transparent direction. The darkness of the ending may account for both its initial lack of popularity, and for its enduring nature. Show Ace in the Hole with A Face in the Crowd and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? for a surprisingly grown-up triple feature of 1950s media criticism.

  • Searching (2018)

    Searching (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) Technology changes movies, specifically changes the grammar of movies, and after more than a decade of staring at computer screens, it makes sense to see the rise of a sub-genre of films executed as if from a computer screen from start to finish. Searching comes hot on the heels of films such as Open Windows and Unfriended (the last of which shares producer Timur Bekmambetov), but it manages to feel like something more than a cinematic experiment. It’s clearly more confident in what it can do, and so the execution incorporates different computers screens (to show the passage of time), zooms, flashbacks and multimedia variance. Even from a more nuts-and-bolts narrative perspective, it’s significantly stronger in terms of characterization, suspense, plot details and Easter eggs (I caught parts of the alien-invasion subplot, but not all of it). John Cho is quite good as a grieving father doing all he can to find his missing daughter—the first two thirds of the film are more about style than substance, but the last act eventually gets to the point of delivering some emotional payoffs as well. Searching is compelling viewing, paced for the Internet era and clearly eliding details that are taken for granted by modern audiences. (I’m having fun imagining what an average 1950s viewer would make of the film.)  Some of the new film grammar invented by writer-director Aneesh Chaganty is quite clever, and so is the way that it makes use of the big Internet structures that we now consider part of our lives. I have no clue how well this is going to age, but I suspect that at the very least it’s going to be a fascinating time capsule of circa-2018 Internet use. (Complete with concern trolling, social media hypocrisy and anonymous attacks.)  I liked Searching quite a bit, and as more than just a showpiece of a different kind of way to tell a story—although that counts for it as well.

  • The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)

    The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) I’m not going to suggest that Michelle Pfeiffer peaked at the end of the 1980s, not with the length and substance of her career since then. But The Fabulous Baker Boys does look like an early apex of sorts, cementing her rise to fame during the 1980s and solidifying her stature as a serious actress that could also turn up the sex appeal when needed. Considering that she’s the terrific centrepiece of the film, it’s good that she can take the pressure. As a lounge singer that acts as the push and pull between two musician brothers, she gets to play drama and sultriness—her “Making Whoopie” number while lying on a piano is deservedly remembered as the highlight of the film. Still, The Fabulous Baker Boys is also remarkable for a few other things. Detailing the personal and professional challenges of two brothers working the music lounges of the Seattle area, it goes for a retro feeling that makes it still timeless thirty years later. Writer-director Steve Kloves succeeds in creating a tone as sexy and jazzy and melancholic as the soundtrack suggests. Pfeiffer is accompanied by great performances from real-life brothers Jeff and Beau Bridges, with Jennifer Tilly showing up in a small two-scene role. As bittersweet as the film can be, the conclusion remains curiously satisfying: the characters don’t get what they initially want, but they’re probably better off from where they were at the start. The Fabulous Baker Boys all wraps up to a modest, but successful film—see it for Pfeiffer first, but stay for a well-controlled, well-executed small-scale drama.

  • Fantômas (1964)

    Fantômas (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) If you want to immerse yourself in 1960s French pop film, you can do much worse than to look at Fantômas. It’s bright, colourful, loopy and a bit messy. The premise is slightly annoying in its childishness—having to do with a super-competent criminal villain always in control who’s obviously never going to get caught by our pursuing protagonist. The predictability of his slipperiness is magnified by the film’s tendency to loudly announce what it’s going to do in the next five minutes … and then do exactly what we can see coming. Having renowned comedian Louis de Funès in the protagonist’s role certainly doesn’t help, as his comic grimacing and antics keep the film shifting between an attempt at serious action filmmaking (as limited as it could be in 1960s France) and a far broader comedy. Fantômas is still decently entertaining, but it suffers from a lack of tonal control that feels odd to modern audiences. This being said, there are a few decent action beats here, considering that the French industry was busy taking lessons from the James Bond series and had (at the time) very little of the professional resources and tricks of the trade that today’s action filmmakers take for granted. (Even small things as stuntmen—a lot of the stunts were made by the actors themselves, or by first-time stuntmen.) Helping to tie things together is Jean Marais, quite good in a variety of roles, including Fantômas and one of his pursuers. Ultimately, though, Fantômas’ ever-shifting tone and sometimes-amateurish filmmaking do add to its period charm—you won’t see a film like this today, and while that’s not a bad thing, it does mean that you’ll have to go back to the vintage Fantômas to get the full experience.

  • Dolores Claiborne (1995)

    Dolores Claiborne (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) The history of Stephen King movies across the 1990s is … shaky, but Dolores Claiborne is not going to count as a bad one. Much of this success can be traced back to the original material, which (despite featuring murder in most unusual circumstances) lends very little freedom for filmmakers to go wild in bad ways. Keeping the tone close to the novel, screenwriter Tony Gilroy and director Taylor Hackford deliver a film that sticks close to reality—and thankfully so, considering the film’s themes of domestic violence and abuse: inserting supernatural elements would have been a distracting mistake. A great sense of place, in a small island community off the coast of Maine, certainly helps in creating the film’s convincing atmosphere. Dolores Claiborne is Kathy Bates’s show as she delivers a full-featured performance, but the supporting cast is unusually strong, what with Jennifer Jason Leigh as an estranged daughter, Christopher Plummer as a detective and a pre-stardom John C. Reilly as a policeman. There’s some skill in the way the film blends a modern-day timeline with flashbacks, complete with specific colour schemes and makeup. The eerie colour manipulation throughout the film—and most intensely in the eclipse sequence—clearly prefigures more ambitious (and now commonplace) efforts in current movies. The result, as skillful as it is, can’t avoid a few missteps that reinforce its melodramatic nature—the soundtrack is too insistent at times, adding far too much to something that didn’t need it. The slow start of the film reinforces the impression that it is too long and overdone—a shorter climax would have helped. Still, Dolores Claiborne does stand as a rather good adaptation of the King novel, despite taking a few justifiable liberties (notably in beefing up and adding more characters to the present-day frame). Dolores Claiborne is probably too often forgotten in the King filmography—not horrific enough, not necessarily fitting the mould of what people expect from him—but it’s a successful effort, and one that can still be watched with some satisfaction nowadays.

  • Doctor Moreau’s Island (1996)

    Doctor Moreau’s Island (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) The making of Doctor Moreau’s Island is one of the most legendarily troubled production of the past few decades, so it’s fascinating to find that the film itself is spectacularly dull. Quirky, twisted, off-putting at times, maybe, but once you take away the menagerie of human/animal hybrids designed by Stan Winston’s company, not a lot is left to contemplate. Handled by directors Richard Stanley then John Frankenheimer, the story is dull, muddled and uninteresting—even updating the classic story to modern technobabble doesn’t do much to help. Casting-wise, Fairuza Balk always fun to see, while Val Kilmer has a much smaller role than expected and David Thewlis is the film’s true protagonist. Let’s not talk about Marlon Brando, who’s a walking disaster (hey, let’s cast him in a role of a legendary eccentric lost in the jungle—what could possibly go wrong?)  The film’s big budget doesn’t really help things—even the credit sequence is terrible. If you want better entertainment, read about the film’s production rather than just watch the film.

  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

    Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) I dearly love the first Jurassic Park film, but the rest of the series I can drop in an instant, especially once you take away the action set pieces that the rest seem structured around. I do believe that there are no creative or artistic impulses to the series—well, other than filmmakers jumping up and down while screaming DINOSAUR ACTION!!! Each new film seems intent on undermining the series’ laughable mythology, marginalizing people in favour of their reptilian overlords. This reaches a climax in Fallen Kingdom as the series seems intent to replace humans with dinosaurs. Inelegantly structured in distinct halves, the first chunk of the film takes us to a thrilling end-of-the-world segment on a self-destructing island for poorly justified reasons, but at least there’s a thrilling gyrosphere one-shot that’s suitably claustrophobic. The second half, on the other hand, gets worse and worse despite some interesting gothic atmosphere early on. The ending snatches a sequel out of the jaws of victory, releasing dinosaurs into the wild for obvious sequel-baiting action, and passing the action off as a muddled kinship of cloned entities. Still, even with the stench of uninspired moneymaking intent, there are good spots here and there. Director J. A. Bayona does have a bit of Spielbergian flair in the way he moves his camera and choreographs the special-effects-heavy action. Bryce Dallas Howard (in more sensible footwear) and Chris Pratt remain likable, with noted contributions by Toby Jones and Daniella Pineda. This being said, it doesn’t take much to be vexed by the inevitable, unnecessary, slightly obnoxious result. Fallen Kingdom simply feels fundamentally broken in how it, motivated by greed, tries to pass survival of dinosaurs as noble cause. We all know it’s to sell even more tickets later on, and that the follow-up movies will get worse and worse.

  • The World According to Garp (1982)

    The World According to Garp (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) I recall reading The World According to Garp in high school and being bemused at the novel’s obvious artificiality, going from one attempt to shock to another. Even today, it would probably be seen as a checkmark exercise in hitting as many hot-button issues as possible, from violent feminism to adultery to transgender characters to sexual assault to many other issues. The film adaptation, for all its faults (most of them self-inflicted) is relatively faithful to the book, although the actors do an incredible job in humanizing what, on paper, often feels like an exercise in authorial fiat. Should we give a bullhorn to John Updike? Many smarter people than me haven’t come to a conclusion. So it is, though, that the film adaptation is a blend of extreme characters, out-there hijinks (many of them sex-related), a writer obsession about being a writer, and so on. A young Robin Williams is in fine form with a character that’s not entirely aligned with his later screen persona. Glenn Close is good as his mother, but John Lithgow is even better as a transsexual friend—and the film, fortunately enough, has aged far better than expected in this regard, largely because it treats its character with respect and affection, making up for an otherwise lack of sophistication. I’ll admit that The World According to Garp remains interesting on a basic what-the-heck-is-going-to-happen-next level, but there is an extreme contrivance to much of the plotting that make it hard to take seriously upon reflection. It was a weird book and it remains a weird film, so at least it has that going for it.

  • Navy Seals (1990)

    Navy Seals (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) The 1980s were about as bad as things got when it comes to exporting violent American imperialism through the magic of Hollywood movies (not-so-coincidentally climaxing with the TV-friendly Gulf War of 1991), and if the release of Navy Seals missed the end of the Reagan administration by two years, it started production years before, with a script from a retired Navy SEAL, pre-production stopped by director Richard Marchand’s death and several script rewrites slowed down by the 1998 WGA Writer’s Strike. None of those delays mattered much considering that the Middle East was still a hotspot during the Bush I administration, and so was the projection of American power in the area. The plot, as conventional as it is, has Navy SEALS tracking down errant Stinger missiles and getting into all sorts of shenanigans. As you’d expect from a Hollywood film, the Navy SEALs protagonists are presented in a very mainstream-friendly way: They fight for America, and they’re bad boys! They don’t play by the rules! They do dangerous things for fun! TO THE EXTREME! As befit a muscular military action film of the 1980s, it does very much feel like an attempt at a recruitment film, albeit not quite as slick or successful as Top Gun. There is some ironic value in seeing Charlie Sheen here in full bad-boy soldier mode, not only considering his troubled personal history later, but specifically his role as the lead of the Hot Shots! military spoofs starting the following year. Still, once you put away issues of geopolitical power projection and ironic casting, there isn’t much here to report—Navy Seals is about as basic as military action films were during that period.

  • Boeing, Boeing (1965)

    Boeing, Boeing (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) If you’re looking for a uniquely specific example of 1960s sex comedies, you probably can’t do much better than Boeing, Boeing, which wallows in the atmosphere of the then-trendy jet-set in order to set up a classic French bedroom farce with stewardesses getting in and out of doors with split-second timing. As the film begins, we find ourselves in swinging Paris as our Lothario protagonist (a perfectly well-used Tony Curtis) is a journalist who has figured out how to keep three girlfriends going at once: Thanks to a thorough knowledge of airline schedules and operating procedures, he’s able to have them in and out of his apartment like clockwork. Everything comes crashing down when the airlines get faster planes, and as a colleague (Jerry Lewis, less annoying than usual) comes to stay for a while, completely wrecking the careful scheduling and bringing all the spinning plates crashing down. Adapted from a French theatrical play, much of Boeing, Boeing is in the tradition of bedroom farces, one difficult situation escalating into an even more complicated one with some great bits of physical comedy along the way. Alas, the disappointing ending cuts away to a retreat that takes away the moment of reckoning and spares the protagonists getting their full comeuppance. If Curtis and Lewis get good roles, one can’t say the same for their female co-stars—aside from the much-funnier matron played by Thelma Ritter, all of the female characters are cut from the same 36-24-36 mould and are practically undistinguishable save from superficial physical attributes. Still, Boeing, Boeing itself remains fascinating: the period atmosphere alone is terrific, and the film reflects the evolution of social mores in the past sixty-five years—thankfully, few movies today would dare include the measurements of its female stars on-screen as part of the opening credits!

  • The Nines (2007)

    The Nines (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) It took me twelve years to make my way to The Nines, and I’m glad I eventually did. I guarantee you won’t guess where it ends from where it begins, as it starts with Ryan Reynolds playing an actor on house arrest, but then becomes weirder as clues accumulate that we shouldn’t take that reality for granted. Eventually, we end up in science-fiction thriller territory, with three stories crashing into each other in ways that are increasingly strange. It does make sense in the end, even though the final impact is lesser than could have been anticipated twenty-five minutes in. One good reason to watch The Nines is the number of pre-stardom actors showing up: Reynolds lends his charm to three linked roles, while Octavia Spencer uncharacteristically shows impressive cleavage, and most notably Melissa McCarthy shows up here as a rather sweet character before her post-Bridesmaids screen persona settled (at least temporarily) on an abrasive nature. Her stripped down, classically traditional performance will make converts of those who couldn’t stand her in the 2010s. Taking a step back, there’s a quite a bit of fun in putting the various said and unsaid layers of the story together—the “Nine” symbolism isn’t hard to see (although 9 as “I, X” or if you prefer “I, an unknown” isn’t dwelled upon) but the film has fun blending together acting, writing and videogames into a panopticon of assumed identities. I’m a bit annoyed that it took me twelve years to see The Nines—while it’s not the greatest film ever made, it’s a happy discovery and one that may play better now than in 2007 due to the rising fortunes of its stars and how we perceive them … adding another layer to writer-director John August’s film.

  • Running Scared (1986)

    Running Scared (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) So, there was apparently an effort in the mid-1980s to make Billy Crystal an action-comedy star? Well, why not: it was his biggest decade on the big screen, and who can blame studios for trying all sorts of things? He certainly won’t be remembered for Running Scared, a standard 1980s buddy-cop film in which our two cowboy cop heroes go around Chicago shooting and blowing up everything the producers could afford. It even comes with all the banter, police brutality, car chases and Uzi-toting drug dealers they could round up. Casting is hit and miss: While Crystal is fine with the banter, his limitations as an action hero are apparent, while the well-matched Gregory Hines does very little tap-dancing but feels significantly more rounded both on the comedy and the action side. Still, there’s enough blood and mayhem to prevent Running Scared from being a pure comedy: With Jimmy Smits on drug dealer role duties, the film does often feel a bit too spread between its successful comic dialogue (even awkwardly translated in French) and its less-successful action beats. Director Peter Hyams makes good use of the Chicago setting with a chase sequence involving the El, but on the flip side he ends up using some of the worst snow ever put in a studio film. There’s little point in getting incensed about it, or any other aspect of Running Scared’s production: the film feels forgettable even as you watch it, and it probably would have been completely forgotten if it wasn’t for Crystal headlining.

  • Our Town (1940)

    Our Town (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) I had a surprisingly sentimental reaction to Our Town, this classic of American theatre that doesn’t simply delve into the life of its small American town, but does so from beyond the grave, as the undead reflect on the richness of life and how much they miss it. The portrait of small-town America is doubly nostalgic by now, being a 1940 production looking back upon 1901. It’s not interested in the kind of critical social commentary we’d get from Peyton Place and its imitators later on: it’s more given to combining the mundane with the cosmic, using its very high and all-knowing perspective to reflect down-to-earth concerns. By the third act, we have a full-blown reflection on the afterlife that’s far more poignant than I expected. The nostalgia is tinged with timeless commentary, with a charming performance by the “stage manager.” I discovered after watching the film that the original theatrical play by Thornton Wilder was (and probably is still) a popular choice for high school theatrical productions and I can see the appeal—from the metatheatrical addressing the audience to the surprisingly deep reflections on life and death. In fact, I’d be rather curious to attend a revival.

  • The Band Wagon (1953)

    The Band Wagon (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) As a seasoned cinephile with thousands of reviews filed on this very web site, I’m far too jaded to start saying things such as “an instant personal favourite!” … but The Band Wagon is something different. Sometimes billed as “everyone’s second-favourite movie musical after Singin’ in the Rain,” it lives up to the hype: filled with striking numbers, bolstered by a cast headlined by Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, directed by Vincente Minnelli and produced by Arthur Freed, this is as good and as fun as musicals ever got. Astaire anchors the film in a role that smirks at his own personal situation at the time—coming out of retirement to play an entertainer looking for a comeback picture. Opposite him is Charisse, and romantic dance duets don’t get any better than their “Dancing in the Dark” with two of the greatest-of-all-time dancers playing together. But that’s a rare serious/romantic moment in an otherwise comedy-filled picture. “That’s Entertainment” is a pure earworm classic with plenty of sight gags, while “Triplets” is a darkly funny number that will surprise a few and “Shine on Your Shoes” gets Astaire dancing up a solo storm. Still, my favourite number has to be “Girl Hunt Ballet” which mixes two of my favourite movie genres—musicals and film noir—into an incredible, consciously over-the-top result. The theatrical setting of the story (in which a Broadway troupe rallies together to rescue a failing show) allows for plenty of show-business in-jokes and commentary, in keeping with the best musicals of the time. I’m not so happy at the 23-year age difference between Astaire and Charisse, but which fifty-something actor/dancer could hope to keep up with a talent as singular as Astaire? It’s a small blemish on an otherwise incredibly compelling picture—I’ve already watched The Band Wagon twice before writing this review, and—indeed—I’m placing it right under Singin’ in the Rain as one of my favourite musicals.