Reviews

  • Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)

    Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2019) One of the niceties of being a French-Canadian cinephile is having access to channels that work on very different standards than the Anglosphere. Such as the one filling its Thursday late-night movie slot with racy material from cinema’s crazier years, often dipping into little-known oddities that have probably been forgotten by nearly everyone else. (I suspect that there’s a filter effect to the necessity of showing dubbed movies—some decent films have never been dubbed while bad ones have been, and you can guess from which catalogue the programming director makes their selection.)  Which brings us to Looking for Mr. Goodbar, a dark and depressing exploration of the perils that await a young woman as she sinks in ever more extreme levels of hedonism, regularly bringing back strange men to her apartment. The biggest surprise here is the casting, with Diane Keaton (looking a bit like a young Juliana Moore or Nicole Kidman) playing the lead role in an utterly off-persona performance as a schoolteacher by day, drug-sniffing party girl by night. Other familiar (but young!) faces include Richard Gere, Levar Burton and Tom Berenger as the big villain of the movie. Looking for Mr. Goodbar is not a fun film to watch, as it comes straight from the gritty New Hollywood era and keeps heaping more and more abuse on its heroine until an utterly bleak ending that takes everything from her. Richard Brooks’s direction can be intense at times, with numerous pulls into the character’s inner life and fantasies without warning, and a strobing red-and-black colour scheme that brings on the extreme violence of the ending. It’s quite an unpleasant film, with disco music being the least of it. Chicago nights are scary in this film, and the script (adapted from a novel) adds some heavy-duty family drama to make things seem even less pleasant. There’s plenty of nudity and viewers will pay the price for it: in the 1970s, nobody was allowed to have fun at the movies on either side of the screen. I’m glad that I got a chance to catch Looking for Mr. Goodbar, but I’ll be even gladder to let it fall in obscurity.

  • Anthony Adverse (1936)

    Anthony Adverse (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) While Hollywood literary adaptations have been a constant in cinema’s history, there is a definite flavour to 1930s movies based on famous works of popular English literature: By then, Hollywood had sound technology and enough experience to fully realize costume dramas without breaking a sweat, and such films were the next best thing to a sure commercial bet given that novels were the only other popular entertainment game in town before the explosion of new media. (Even radio wasn’t all that common coast-to-coast.) There are some great movies in that subgenre, and then there are films such as Anthony Adverse. Adapted from a monumental 550,000+ words novel (five times the length of an average novel) by now-forgotten Hervey Allen, this film is equally lengthy at 141 minutes and it feels like it. Telling us about the adventures of one young man living through Napoleonian Europe, bouncing between continents as the unusually melodramatic events of his life make things even harder for him. (Napoleon himself appears, with La Marseillaise hilariously used as an ominous leitmotif.) It’s a big multi-decade historical drama, complete with multiple title cards throughout to explain even more of what couldn’t fit in the film. And yet, despite the length and the often-unbelievable accumulation of plot turns, Anthony Adverse itself feels badly paced, rushing through some things and languishing on others. It takes a long time for the film to even show its main stars Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland: Director Mervyn LeRoy did much better before and after, but trying to compress too much in even a generous two-plus-hours running time is asking for trouble—in modern days, this would become a miniseries. The number of plot points that come up by sheer coincidence is your biggest indicator of the film’s extreme melodrama. I won’t be too harsh on the result—after all, Anthony Adverse does have its charms if you do like melodramatic Victorian-era plot devices and/or the glamour of 1930s Hollywood trying to deliver a period drama. But be prepared for a long, sometimes frustrating sit.

  • The Big Sky (1952)

    The Big Sky (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) Even relatively minor works from Howard Hawks can be interesting, and The Big Sky is the kind of big-budget western shot on location (in black-and-white, alas) that is worth a look even if you don’t like westerns. It’s more of a pioneer movie than a traditional cowboy western—taking place in the Pacific northwest, it features explorers and traders as they head west to befriend natives and establish trading posts. (As such, it’s already more palatable than many horse operas where natives were solely portrayed as bloodthirsty killers.) Much of the film’s action comes from the considerable enmity between the trading companies and the rival native bands. True to facts, there’s a substantial French-Canadian presence here, notably though the character of Jourdonays—although one notes that the actor playing him, Steven Geray, mumbles incomprehensible phonetic French even as the secondary characters speak decent, but European-accented French. Visually, The Big Sky is interesting to look at, and Hawk’s qualities as a sheer entertainer means that there’s almost always something to keep us interested in the film. There’s an interesting romantic arc featuring the ethnically native Elizabeth Threatt in her sole film role. (There’s plenty to quibble in the “native princess kidnapped as a pawn in a trade negotiation” arc, but by 1950s standard this was almost progressive material—the legendary Hawksian woman reinterpreted in that context.)  Acting-wise, the film features Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin, but all the attention goes to the arresting Threatt and Arthur Hunnicutt’s Oscar-nominated role as a Daniel Boone -type character. On a structural level, the film is slightly less successful, with the last act of the film being an anticlimactic coda after an earlier action climax. Still, it’s worth a look: more interesting than your average 1950s western, The Big Sky indeed opens up possibilities for the western genre that were not often followed up.

  • I Confess (1953)

    I Confess (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2019) In some ways, it makes sense that I wouldn’t readily know about Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess: After all, it’s definitely in the second tier of his filmography (perhaps even third tier once you exclude his early British films), and it only seldom plays on TV considering the much better choices available in his filmography. On the other hand, come on: A 1950s film (Hitchcock’s best decade) entirely taking place in Québec City? I’d be a poor French-Canadian if I didn’t see the film as soon as it popped up on my radar. So it is that I ended up catching a broadcast on (where else?) a French-Canadian classic movie channel. Truth be told, there’s a reason why this isn’t considered top-tier Hitchcock: It’s a return to the straightforward thrillers that he did in the 1930s rather than the more sophisticated fare that he was accomplishing in the 1950s: Black-and-white cinematography, little discernible humour, somewhat contrived situations without even a layer of plausibility. As far as I can tell, I Confess is set in Québec City because pre-révolution tranquille Québec City was the strongest North American bastion of Catholicism and he wanted a thriller built around the Catholic seal of confession. While the film does have some very nice black-and-white cinematography of 1950s Québec City, it really does not capture anything specific about the Québec City that I know, nor any of the city’s distinctive aspects. While I can’t be sure due to the French-language dub, there doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgement of language issues—Québec City has a solid history of an English presence, but that’s not a factor here. The plot isn’t particularly believable either (I would expect a dutiful priest to discuss matters of ethics and theology with superiors, for instance) and there’s a big chunk of on-the-nose exposition in the middle of the movie. None of this adds up to anything more than a curio. I Confess is still worth a look if you want to know what Québec City looked like in the early 1950s, but I suspect that it won’t be anyone favourite Hitchcock film—even among French-Canadians.

  • *batteries not included (1987)

    *batteries not included (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On TV, March 2019) I must have seen *batteries not included as a teenager in the early 1990s, and remembered a strange mix between special effects work and unabashed sentimentality. As it turns out, that’s not too far away from an impression left by a second middle-aged look at the film, as the film blends then-top-notch special effects work with a script that wears its heart on its sleeve at multiple levels. The premise focuses on an old building in the middle of an area cleared for high-rise development. As you’d expect, the villains are real estate developers doing their best to force the tenants to move out. It just so happens that alien creatures then enter the picture, nesting on top of the building and helping with minor repairs and good actions throughout the building. The rest goes on from there, with no one really being surprised at how it ends. Director Matthew Robbins keeps a good balance between special effects showcases (some of them still quite effective) and more humanistic moments. The film is built on a nice unity of place, to the point where it feels off-putting when the action eventually leaves the apartment block. It’s sentimental for sure, but it’s difficult to dislike a film so optimistic—although the “baby alien” creature is pushing things. For cinephiles, what’s perhaps most remarkable about *batteries not included is the number of known names from different eras assembled for the occasion: It’s one of the last recognizable roles for veteran actor Hume Cronyn, a decent performance from his wife Jessica Tandy, a rather young Elizabeth Pena, and a screenwriting debut for Brad Bird. Predictable but not bad, *batteries not included still works as a film for the entire family.

  • The Last Man on Earth (1964)

    The Last Man on Earth (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) Considering that no less than three well-remembered films (1964’s The Last Man on Earth, 1971’s The Omega Man and 2007’s I am Legend) all came from the same 1954 Richard Matheson novel I am Legend, it’s tempting to keep comparing all three adaptations to each other. While my favourite is probably The Omega Man, it’s not by a wide margin and you can certainly argue that The Last Man on Earth is fast acquiring a patina of almost quaint charm, so artificial does it now feel compared to modern standards or later adaptations. This is clearly Vincent Price’s movie, so central is he to the action and how thoroughly comfortable he seems to be in the role. It’s a bit cheap and shot in Italy to save further costs, but the ideas are there and developed relatively well—despite the familiarity with the story, I still found the finale a bit surprising. Of course, much of The Last Man on Earth will feel humdrum to modern viewers considering that its premise has been mined and remade left and right. Still, it’s not a bad beginning for the novel’s string of adaptations, and it’s definitely worth more than a historical look.

  • The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

    The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) The 1970s were a turning point for low-budget gritty horror grindhouse movies, and it’s hard to get trashier than The Hills Have Eyes, which often feels shot by high school students on a summer break. As with other landmark horror movies of the era (I’m thinking Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but especially Last House on the Left, which was The Hills Have Eyes’s director Wes Craven’s first feature film), there’s no gloss, no spectacle, just matter-of-fact horror in the middle of nowhere featuring desert hellbillies. The topic matter is just as dead simple, with a suburban family being targeted by cannibal mutant psychos. It’s really not a likable film, but it’s somewhat effective … if you like that stuff. Unsurprisingly far less slick than its 2010 remake (although not quite as humourless), but somewhat dull once you get past the rawness of the production. Of course, films like The Hills Have Eyes are made for a specific kind of viewer—those who shy away from grotesque and decadent horror may choose not to apply.

  • Bugsy (1991)

    Bugsy (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) There is such a heady brew of elements in Bugsy that I wonder why I’m not so happy with the result. It is, after all, a mixture of crime, Hollywood, gambling and empire building, as a mob enforcer goes to Los Angeles in 1940, discovers the allure of Classic Hollywood, and starts dreaming about building a big gambling town in the Nevada desert. It’s easy why the role of “Bugsy” Siegel would have some attraction for Warren Beatty: a mixture of a powerful criminal, decisive lover, futurist dreamer and Golden-Age Hollywood glamour—a fast-talking con man with the ruthlessness to back it up. Plus, the lead female role belonged to Annette Bening, whom he met during shooting and eventually married. Technically, the film is solid: great production values, veteran director Barry Levinson at the helm, and good actors in the main roles. But Bugsy isn’t quite as slick as its components would suggest. The script shows some contempt for its character by titling itself after a nickname he hated. The pacing is unhurried, quite unlike the character it portrays. The ending is as obvious as it’s drawn out. And so the film’s highlights (such as a visit to a movie set) are drowned in so much minutiae that the entire thing feels lifeless in comparison to its subject. Maybe I’ll revisit Bugsy someday and see if I was just in a bad mood, or if the film does not align with its own centre.

  • The Public Enemy (1932)

    The Public Enemy (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) At times, it can be fascinating to go back in history to see how the modern shape of cinema came together—how the elements we now take for granted were assembled over decades of small refinements and audience reactions to various experiments. It’s obvious that The Public Enemy is a formative work of crime movies—it’s often mentioned in histories of the genre, and even casual cinephiles are likely to have encountered critical commentary about James Cagney’s prominence in gangster movies of the 1930s. The Public Enemy is framed as a semi-realistic depiction of gangster activity at a time when America was still hungover from Prohibition and pre-Code cinema was trying to figure out the balance between good taste and audience thrills. As such, it’s definitely intriguing—you can see when the filmmakers are trying to get a rise out of the audience (hence the domestic abuse scene featuring a grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face, still as shocking now as it was then), but also how they ensured that the criminals repented and were punished for their actions. This being said, it hasn’t always aged particularly well, even though its filmmaking techniques were decent for the time and director William A. Wellman used a number of unusual shots. It’s not the film’s fault—it’s that we’re used now to what was novel and exciting then. If you’re watching The Public Enemy for entertainment rather than cinema history, don’t be surprised to find it a tepid viewing at best, and at worst kind of dull.

  • That’s Entertainment! III (1994)

    That’s Entertainment! III (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) Third instalment in the now-classic anthology series, That’s Entertainment! III is farther away from its 1950ish source material than its predecessors and consequently much less reverential. It innovates by featuring behind-the-scenes footage, cut numbers (some of them better than those that replaced them), a focus on lesser-known stars (such as my favourites Ann Miller and Cyd Charisse—who looks amazing in her sixties as she presents a segment of the film) and some attention to non-white performers (with Lena Horne even acknowledging that Hollywood wasn’t ready for them). Under this new focus, there are plenty of things to wow about: Eleanor Powell’s dancing remains as astonishing at the techniques used to film it, a wonderful ditty sung by Horne in a bathtub, and a split-screen comparison of a Fred Astaire routine performed several weeks apart shows the amazing control that he had over his performances. On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of the stupidly racist Judy Garland bit “I’m an Indian Too,” which should have stayed buried in the vaults. As with the other films of the series, That’s Entertainment! III can be revisited at several stages in a classic movie cinephile’s evolution: As an introduction to some terrific movies and performers, as an exploration of a few familiar favourites, or as delightful complements to one’s existing knowledge of the era. No matter how you choose to see it, it’s a great anthology movie, and it’s well-worth watching alongside the others.

  • The Pelican Brief (1993)

    The Pelican Brief (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) In retrospect, it does make sense that a straightforward crowd-pleasing novelist like John Grisham would lead to a handful of straightforward crowd-pleasing movie adaptations. I’m not complaining! In fact, I miss those solid, medium-budget standalone thrillers. Take The Pelican Brief, for instance—an average but competent thriller in which a young woman stumbles upon a conspiracy by linking the death of Supreme Court justices to land development shenanigans. If the film has a stroke of good luck, it’s in being able to depend on a few capable actors (Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, obviously, but also John Lithgow, Tony Goldwyn and Stanley Tucci in a rare role as a terrorist) as helmed by veteran director Alan J. Pakula—who clearly knows how to wring every drop of suspense out of a given sequence. The early-1990s atmosphere of The Pelican Brief is getting quainter and more charming by the day as it reminds us of how difficult it was at the time to get any kind of information without the Internet: the movie would be about an hour shorter if they just had access to Google. But then again, maybe that’s the way they’re going to go with a remake: have a blogger spew a joke conspiracy theory that happens to be true, rather than have a law student speculate as in this film. Ah well—I’m not really asking for a remake. This one is good enough.

  • Skyscraper (2018)

    Skyscraper (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) If you want a look at the state of the blockbuster film at the end of the 2010s, it would be hard to do better than Skyscraper. Featuring Dwayne Johnson as a security expert working to protect a massive high-rise building in Hong Kong, it works on familiar elements on and off the screen. When a character in the film proudly claims, “Chinese Money, American Know-how!,” they could just as well be talking about today’s Hollywood, with Asian money financing Hollywood films doing their best to appease Chinese censors just to have a chance at playing to a billion Chinese moviegoers. It wouldn’t simply do for our hero to battle terrorists in a building: Skyscraper adds wild science fictional threats and sticks the hero’s family in the building to heighten the stakes. It’s also cribbing from the most popular screenwriting books of the moment in other ways: The first fifteen minutes (once past the prologue) are a non-stop carnival of plot devices exposition: pay attention, because there will be a test later on. Johnson and writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber have a nice working relationship after working together on Central intelligence, and the film is clearly designed to play to his strengths. It’s also fun to see Neve Campbell back in the blockbuster field after nearly a decade of lower-profile pursuits and a parental break. Filled to the brim with top-notch special effects, Skyscraper feels obligated to throw in futuristic plot devices and IT nonsense, including a hall-of-mirrors sequence that takes Orson Welles’s original concept one step further for better or for worse. While the plot elements are familiar, Skyscraper’s execution is competent enough in its genre to be an average blockbuster action film. However, it’s pretty much all soulless … which practically guarantees that it will disappear without a trace once the marketing money runs out.

  • How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017)

    How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) Much of the initial attraction in wanting to see How to Talk to Girls at Parties is the idea of a Neil Gaiman science-fiction short story (indeed a very short story) being adapted to the big screen. But as soon as the opening credits end, there’s another, more intriguing names in the mix: John Cameron Mitchell, writer-director of such off-beat movies as his debut Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Would his sensibilities mesh well with the Gaiman story? Well, as it turns out, the result is about as punk as fans could expect—eventually, the film expands the short story to set up a clash between our wild freethinking punk heroines and hive-minded aliens living undercover in London. There are plenty of punk rock music and attitude to make anyone happy, all the way to featuring Nicole Kidman as a punk rock goddess. It does get delightfully weird along the way. The ending can’t quite manage to successfully tie up all loose ends (although the coda, with a Gaiman visual reference, brings a bit of it back together), but that’s OK—it’s still quite a ride. The direction can be a bit flashy, perhaps to compensate for the limited budget, but that too adds to the charm of it. How to Talk to Girls at Parties is remarkable for more than simply being an adaptation of a familiar story—it’s crazy enough to be distinctive, and on a tone that’s not overly serious.

  • Oliver & Company (1988)

    Oliver & Company (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) The mid-1980s weren’t the best of times for Disney Animation Studio. It had been years since Disney had an all-out success (arguably 1973’s Robin Hood, less arguably 1967’s The Jungle Book) and Oliver & Company was the last of the not-so-good streak before The Little Mermaid kicked off the Disney Renaissance a year later. So, it’s perhaps best not to expect too much from the film. It does stem from a halfway clever concept, by setting a modern take on Oliver Twist in 1980s New York. The setting is probably half the fun of the film, with the other half being an easy (maybe even cheap) use of anthropomorphic animals as heroes. You can visually identify Oliver & Company as being from the Disney doldrums by the sometimes-cut-rate quality of the animation and the limited imagination of the result once the “talking animals do Oliver Twist in 1980s New York” thing is accepted. You can see in here some touches that portend the new and successful direction that Disney would soon take—the use of animals, obviously, but also taking a classic story and presenting it as a musical: it may even be somewhat underrated in this regard. Few will claim that Oliver & Company is a Disney classic, but at times it approaches some second-tier favourites such as The Aristocats—cute animals plus music equals nostalgic charm for those who grew up on the movie. It does get better as it goes on and ends on something of a high note, so at least there’s that.

  • The Specialist (1994)

    The Specialist (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2019) There is really no reason to watch The Specialist for what it delivers. At best (and that’s stretching things), it’s a mid-1990s action movie that suffers from comparison to the genre’s wilder and better entries. It’s about bombs, so exhaustingly so that much of the script’s slight ingeniousness has been put into showcasing as many situations as could be solved through a well-placed bomb. Naturally, credibility isn’t The Specialist’s strong suit, and it’s comfortably outclassed by the other “bomb” action movies of 1994, Speed and Blown Away. So, what’s left to justify a look at The Specialist? A few details, such as the charmingly quaint look at mid-1990s BBS technology. But mostly the acting—for all of its faults, The Specialist can still boast of a strong trio of lead actors: Sharon Stone could play a strong female lead like no one else at the time, while Sylvester Stallone’s boorish charm remains distinctive and James Woods still makes for a great villain. But that’s not much, and all three of these actors have been served by better similar roles in better similar movies. Despite the strong Miami atmosphere, The Specialist is almost entirely forgettable—you may enjoy a few things along the way (and truth be told, fast-forwarding from one explosion to the next may be the most entertaining thing to do with the film), but I’m not sure that it’s worth a look nowadays.