Reviews

  • Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans (2019)

    Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) It certainly had to happen at some point—The overly serious Teen Titans being confronted by their parodic offsprings in Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans. It’s not quite a melding of form: This being produced through the current Teen Titans Go! property, it’s a Go-ification of the earlier series, as its characters are brought into the comic universe for a few laughs. This is not a bad thing: I find the Go! series hilarious, and I’m not sure the dramatic intensity of the first Teen Titans series would have meshed well in a half-and-half scenario. To its credit, this straight-to-DVD film does have the good sense of escalating the stakes as befits an event story: By the end of the film, several teams of Teen Titans of various influences are plucked from the multiverse for the final battle. While Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans clearly doesn’t have the budget or refinement of a theatrical animated film like Teen Titan Go to the Movies, it’s loopy and entertaining enough for fans of the Go! series and delivers enough epic metafiction for viewers to enjoy.

  • Lifeforce (1985)

    Lifeforce (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) There’s a surprising mixture of elements at play in Lifeforce, an erotic apocalyptic horror-SF hybrid featuring alien shape-shifters laying waste to Earth. It starts in somewhat convincing science fictional mode, as an expedition discovers an alien ship and brings back a suspiciously well-preserved (and naked) “human” woman. Then it shifts into laboratory horror as the alien wakes up on Earth and starts sucking off the life-force of its human victims, often doing do in the nude. Much of the middle portion of the film is about scientists racing to find answers, discovering that aliens have originated the vampire mythos, and unsuccessfully trying to prevent an epidemic-like contagion of vampires-created zombies. The third act, remarkably enough, presents a portrait of London devastated by the turning of much of its population and gets back to the SF-horror hybrid in its climax. It’s all pleasantly watchable and perhaps the last unimpeachable film from director Tobe Hooper. A young Patrick Stewart has a supporting role, the special effects are pretty good for their time, and the echoes of Quatermass and the Pit are not unpleasant. While not a great film, nor a flawless B-movie, Lifeforce is nonetheless a big thrill ride with enough unusual twists and turns to warrant a look.

  • Menace II Society (1993)

    Menace II Society (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) Some movie-watching mediums are completely ill-suited to some kinds of films. Watching an action epic on a tiny screen makes no sense, and neither does watching a hard-R urban drama like Menace II Society on a regular TV channel considering how much muting the editors have to do in order to tone down the language. Which is a shame, because there’s quite a bit to admire in writer-directors The Hugues Brothers’ film. Historically, it’s part of an important movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s to put cameras into the hands of black filmmakers and let them tell a story of their own. What is now a cliché (inner-city drama of young people tempted by a life of crime) was new, provocative and fascinating at the time: there’s a fair case to be made that Menace II Society, along with such notable titles as Boyz n the Hood, Juice, South Central and others, codified an entire subgenre. The story is familiar stuff if you’re used to these kinds of films, but the Hugues Brothers, taking advantage of their experience shooting music videos, bring some additional style to a straight-up social drama. The position it stakes for its characters, stuck halfway between law and crime, is hardly revolutionary now but presumably hit harder at the time. This does, however, make character identification harder than in most films: it’s so dour that, at times, it’s not clear why I should be watching at all. Still, Menace II Society is not a bad movie—the situation hasn’t changed all that much in some strata of American society, and the film’s cinematic verve is a cut above others of the same ilk. Still, don’t make the mistake of trying to watch it on AMC—every other word is muted out in an ineffective attempt at censorship.

  • L.A. Story (1991)

    L.A. Story (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) Sweet and occasionally absurd, Steve Martin’s L.A. Story is what happens when a comedian decides to satirize his Los Angeles experience. Martin stars and wrote the script, and his specific touch can be found in the silly scenes that depart from reality (a communicating billboard, highway shootout scenes) in order to back up the film’s romantic comedy. It’s a lot like Martin’s Roxanne in some ways. It’s romantic in a somewhat unusual register of wisecracks accompanied by magical realism and disarmingly cute sentimentalism: Martin earns the right to do one by doing the other. The cinematography is evocative of a semi-fantastic Los Angeles, and Martin gets plenty of co-stars, supporting players of cameos to strengthen the film—with a nod toward Sarah Jessica Parker and Victoria Tennant. One suspects that L.A. Story is filled with inside jokes that will only make sense to actors working in circa-1990 Los Angeles, but those feel like depth rather than whooshing references. Sure, the early-1990s fashions, jokes and visuals can be outdated—but they’re now equally apt to be charming, much like the rest of this wonderful film.

  • Yin bao zhe [Explosion] (2017)

    Yin bao zhe [Explosion] (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) Movies are often just as much about their context than about themselves, and that makes assessing out-of-culture films like Explosion more difficult. So, allow me to report a bit of trivia that will help focus this film. China’s movie industry is on a rapid incline lately, repackaging Hollywood-style lessons in order to pump pro-Chinese propaganda for worldwide audiences. Fair enough; the United States has been doing so for a century by now. But like Classic Hollywood filmmakers, Chinese screenwriters and directors are working in a creative environment rife with thematic limitations. What is good as propaganda cannot be used for social criticism, and it’s in that frame that Explosion is more interesting than the thriller it claims to be. The plot itself is solid but conventional: a mining explosive expert must find who killed four miners… and who framed him for it. But here’s the thing: Explosion is best approached as a Chinese mainland film noir, and that carries expectations eerily similar to 1950s Hollywood examples of the form. The mood is grim and dramatic (although the script can’t help but crank up the action late in the movie), and the film manages, under cover of “just telling a murder mystery,” to gently poke and prod at the limits of Chinese propaganda. Taking place far from the industrialized cities that best represent the amazing progress of China over the past few decades, Explosion focuses on a nearly abandoned community and thus can tell a story where the Chinese miracle isn’t working for everyone. Some built-in tension can help focus the attention of viewers (and censors) toward the genre crime mystery and deemphasize the social criticism aspect of the film. Explosion may not be considered a particularly great or spectacular film, but it’s serious and solid (which is already more than what we can say about many Chinese exports to the west) and it’s got this really interesting context around it that adds to the straightforward thriller of its presentation.

  • -30- (1959)

    -30- (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) At this point in my exploration of Classic Hollywood, I almost live for those hidden gems in the margins of the official canon we remember from past decades. Something very much like -30-, a thoroughly satisfying newsroom thriller that nonetheless feels practically unknown these days. I think that some of this may be due to a title (Dash three zero dash, newspaper shorthand for “end of story”) that’s nearly impossible to search online; some of it to a less-than-stellar box-office performance; and maybe also because it’s a somewhat average film that just happens to hit a lot of my buttons. I mourn, for instance, the disappearance of newsroom dramas—I like that subgenre a lot, and anything even feeling like one automatically gets a few points from me. I’m also a sucker for time-compressed films, and this film barely fits within a single nighttime shift with a cavalcade of subplots to fill the running time. Jack Webb stars, directs and produces the film in a very efficient fashion: despite the fast pacing of the film, there are few stylistic flourishes even if the script crackles with pretty good repartee. Looking at some of the film’s contemporary reviews, I see that many critics dismissed the film’s outdated throwback to 1930s newsroom tropes despite taking place in the late 1950s. That kind of criticism is virtually irrelevant today, as one period blurs into another and we don’t really care as much as to whether it’s twenty years out of date or just an entertaining-enough script. The soundtrack isn’t bad, and the entire narrative has enough energy to make it to the morning. It reminded me a lot of 1994’s The Paper, and that’s another plus-for-me aspect of the film that may not work as well on others. But who cares about the others? -30- is my TCM discovery of the week, and one more reason to keep watching even if I think I’ve seen most of the classics.

  • Dark Phoenix (2019)

    Dark Phoenix (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) The problems with Dark Phoenix are numerous and significant, but most of them stem from one particularly boneheaded decision: Redo the comics’ Dark Phoenix arc, merely thirteen years after it was (badly) done in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Sure, superhero films aren’t known for originality—but this is being insultingly blatant about it, especially since you have the same scribbler, Simon Kinberg, penning the second script. But then further missteps accumulate: the decision to put the dramatic weight of the film on Sophie Turner is baffling considering her limited range, the “X-Women” pandering misandry [2023: A problem specific to Kinberg, as further demonstrated by his work on The 355], the limp action scenes, the way characters act out of character, an irritating pair of lead performances from Turner and Jessica Chastain, the humdrum direction, the fuzzy writing… It’s a surprisingly incompetent film, especially given the large budget it has to play with. Kinberg specifically beclowns himself here—not only is it his second time at bat as screenwriter for that specific story, he also directs and produces meaning that he only has himself to blame for the limp result. It’s not that the film is completely dull, but whatever highlights it has (from the opening shuttle sequence to the train-set final mayhem) are largely bits of special effects rather than character moments in a series that usually succeeded because of strong actors and dramatic highlights. The production history of the film suggests that it could have been worse—after multiple false starts and extensive reshoots to redo the entire third act (i.e.: the train sequence), the film was a box-office bomb that cut short any thoughts of a new trilogy launched by this film. Considering the tangled corporate restructuring that came with Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox (which cut off planned plotlines all over the place), there’s a very good chance that this is the last of the Fox-lineage X-Men movies and if so, it’s a deeply unimpressive finish—all thanks to Kinberg, who (after writing the previous two instalments) turns out to be the final villain of the series.

  • Overboard (2018)

    Overboard (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) If there’s a 1980s comedy that warranted the indignity of being heavily changed for its remake, it’s 1987’s Overboard—not every comic conceit is comfortable, and the earlier film’s depiction of an amnesia victim being gaslit into domestic life is faaar less amusing now than in the wild and coarse 1980s. Alas, thirty years later, the new Overboard’s idea for making this less creepy is to… gender flip it? As if, I guess, the male gender deserves deception? As an exhibit for the 2010s′ internalized misandry, this remake isn’t the worst, but it’s remarkably up there. Granted, this may be overanalyzing things when it comes to a fluffy romantic comedy—despite the dodgy premise, Overboard is really sweet, unthreatening and forgettable. You can even make a case that it’s about class rather than gender—but I don’t entirely buy that. Anna Farris in the lead role helps further defang it, even if Eugenio Derbez ends up stealing most scenes. This being said, the lacklustre execution of the film may be its most vexing aspect: there’s little here that’s not the original plot filtered through familiar screenwriter tics, and some unremarkable direction from Rob Greenberg doesn’t elevate the material. In the end, this version of Overboard is either something you’ll watch casually and shrug, or watch more closely and find increasingly disappointing.

  • Royal Wedding (1951)

    Royal Wedding (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) For fans of classic films, it’s a bit of a generational shock to realize that the Royal Wedding in 1951’s Royal Wedding has to do with Queen Elizabeth II—another piece of evidence about her incredibly long reign. Otherwise, though, I suspect that most viewers will focus on the one thing in the film that hasn’t aged—Fred Astaire’s performance and he tap-dances and sings his way through this movie musical. Astaire was a practised professional at that time and the film sports most of the specific trademarks of his performances—the quirky solo number (this time dancing with a hatrack), the funny duet (as the ship’s deck rolls under them), the innovative special-effects dance number (the film’s most famous sequence, as Astaire dances on the walls and ceiling of the room, filmed from within a rotating set), a sequence coming from a show (with Jane Powell), a big ensemble song-and-dance finale (“I let my hat in Haiti”) and so on—the only notable omission being a romantic dance duet, somewhat explained by how the only dancing partner Astaire has here, Powell, plays his character’s sister. The other thing missing is a big finale: After the ensemble song-and-dance, Royal Wedding still has five minutes filled with stock footage of Elizabeth II’s ceremony and a perfunctory double wedding to wrap things up. In the pantheon of Astaire’s musical comedies, this is solidly middle-tier material even if two of the sequences (the hatrack and revolving-room sequences) are literally anthology pieces in the That’s Entertainment series. Compared to the average movie musical of the period, though, Royal Wedding is still very much worth a watch: Director Stanley Donnen and Astaire are old hands at what they do best here, and if Jane Powell is a bit bland here, she does fill the shoes required of an Astaire screen partner (although, significantly, she’s not featured very much in the dancing). I liked Royal Wedding quite a bit (it helps that Astaire’s caddish persona is toned down slightly, as is his no-means-try-later persistence) but I can definitely think of many better entry points to his filmography.

  • See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)

    See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor made four movies together, and while the place of Silver Streak at the top of the list and Another You at the bottom are not up for debate, there’s some jockeying as to whether Stir Crazy or See No Evil, Hear No Evil gets the silver or the bronze. It certainly has the highest comic concept, as one protagonist can’t hear and the other can’t see—yet they must team up to resolve a murder. Considering that it’s a film that depends on exaggerated depiction of disability as a comic engine, it’s now inevitably divisive. The natural charm of Pryor and Wilder does work overtime to keep audiences sympathetic, but it doesn’t always work—the depiction of deafness is a major irritant. Still, See No Evil, Hear No Evil is amiable even when it’s not particularly funny, and the late-1980s depiction of New York City can be fun. Bonus points for a very early villainous appearance from a young (but not younger-looking) Kevin Spacey. In the end, Stir Crazy is probably still a bit better—although let’s not pretend that some of Pryor and Wilder’s moment-to-moment work here is anything short of comic genius.

  • À Fond [Full Speed] (2016)

    À Fond [Full Speed] (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) I had a look at French action comedy À Fond on a whim, and I glad I did. While the first act of the film is a bit tedious in setting up all of the plot elements that it will later require, it gets up to cruising speed along with its premise: While driving south for the holidays, a family is stuck in a fancy new all-electronic minivan that can’t turn off its cruise control… at 160 km/h. While the highway patrol quickly gets involved, there are a few things it can’t fix, such as a massive traffic jam. Of course, this wouldn’t be a comedy without about half a dozen secrets, misunderstandings, long-simmering tensions and accidental complications aboard the minivan. À fond is thankfully billed as a comedy, which does help in stretching a fifteen-minute premise into a 90-minute film. It also helps keep some tension under control, as it’s clear early on that this is the kind of comedy that, at worst, goes for a bit of slapstick and nothing more serious. The “comedy” remains one of reassurance rather than outright laugher—despite a few chuckles, À fond doesn’t go for the overly absurd and remains grounded throughout. As befit the subject matter, there are a few fun action scenes throughout, most of them seemingly without intrusive CGI. (The climax is another matter, but the safety concerns are understandable.) Jose Garcia anchors the film, but special notice goes to Charlotte Gabris as a pleasantly dim-witted hitchhiker unable to grasp even the fundamentals of the situation. The script is a tight tapestry of loaded setups all waiting to go off, and it’s perhaps a bit more realistic than one would expect—during the climax, I wondered if a certain grip would hold and immediately afterward the movie had a further action beat focused on that failure. French cinema is one of the most cheerfully audience-driven ones on the planet, and it’s reasonably entertaining movies like À fond that demonstrate it best.

  • Code 8 (2019)

    Code 8 (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) I wasn’t expecting much from Code 8, but had to give it a chance given that it’s a Canadian Science Fiction movie likely to play for years in order to satisfy CanCon Cable TV requirements. Fortunately, my expectations were exceeded early on. While I didn’t quite believe in the premise of the film (in a parallel reality where some humans have shown supernatural powers for decades, a modern-day metropolis features them as an unwanted, marginalized minority tightly monitored by police), the first few minutes quickly ground Code 8 in a credible reality, and then set up a street-level crime thriller spiked with psi powers. Writer-director Jeff Chan’s refreshingly low-key approach works wonders: this isn’t about superheroes saving the world as much as downtrodden mutants trying to get ahead in a society terrified of them. The obvious parallels with the black American experience with police aren’t really played up, which does allow the film to breathe while not shackling itself to on-the-nose parallels. Robbie Amell is bland but likable as the protagonist, an electrically-gifted young man trying to save his sick mother and get away from the shadow of his dead criminal father. Sung Kang is a bit more interesting at the police officer chasing him, while Kyla Kane makes a bit of an impression as the moral lever of the film’s third act. Code 8 is unassuming and that proves to be one of its greatest assets: it never tries anything too ambitious, but it stays well within the limits of what it can deliver. This is partially illustrated by the script, stronger when dealing with the nitty-gritty of its protagonist’s situation, and substantially weaker when trying to grapple with the wider-scale machinations about organized crime in the city. Still, the story works, and even has a nicely bittersweet ending. I suspect that the film will be championed by a variety of viewers (those convinced that films can be crowdfunded; fans of the Arrow TV show; Canadian movie fans, etc.) but I’m just relieved that it’s a decent production, and a reasonably entertaining film on its own.

  • Major League (1989)

    Major League (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) There is nothing new in Major League, and that’s probably what explains its charm. Yet another baseball underdog comedy, this one features a calculating team owner who deliberately sets out to put together the worst players she can find in order to have an excuse to move the team to another city. This naturally strong comic premise leads to a collection of supporting oddballs and lead characters with overblown problems. The decision to go for an R rating allows the film to distinguish itself with plenty of spicy language and risqué situations. Still, Major League would have been better had it featured even a few surprises: as it is, it’s an underdog sports comedy that ends like you’d expect it to end, with all characters have resolved their issues along the way. Added fun comes from spotting actors who would become even bigger stars later on: the then-ascendant Charlie Sheen is quite good as the bespectacled “Wild Thing,” while Wesley Snipes, Dennis Haysbert and Rene Russo have good early roles. The humour can be coarse at times but never too gross or off-putting, which does help a lot in making this an approachable R-rated comedy. Major League plays familiar riffs and still does it reasonably well, and sometimes that’s all a movie needs to win.

  • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)

    Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) Mainstream Hollywood’s take on the sexual revolution of the 1960s gets one of its definitive examples in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Writer-director Paul Mazursky takes on the radical openness of the time with his protagonists seeking enlightenment (or maybe just a sense of cool) through affairs and proposed swinging. But nothing quite goes as planned, which definitely keeps the film more interesting than a simple time capsule. A typical problem with 1960s films is that they often feel like watching your parents trying to goof off—we know it’s not going to hold and, in the meantime, it’s just embarrassing. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, in its breathless embrace of free love and infidelity, occasionally runs into this problem. But keep watching because Mazursky eventually arrives at a conclusion that anticipates the post-hedonistic letdown of the 1970s. Or maybe the film is more about messy feelings than the attraction of free sex, and that works just as well. In addition to Mazursky’s welcome ambivalence about the whole thing, the film does benefit from a solid cast—with specific mentions to the ever-beautiful Natalie Wood and a pleasantly goofy Elliott Gould. While permeated by the smell of the 1960s, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice has aged better than the average drama of the time: it doesn’t go for easy answers, moral characters or irony. It’s still definitely a period piece, but not an unbearable one.

  • Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

    Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) I tried and failed to get to the end of Beyond the Black Rainbow a few years ago, but with the success of writer-director Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy and a vague sentiment of unfinished business, I went back to the film and… well, I finished it. The story is both obtuse and simplistic, what with a young woman trying to escape a failing research institute, a creepy facility founder, a killer entity trying to prevent her from leaving, and 1970s-inspired visuals. Still, the point of Beyond the Black Rainbow is not the plot as much as the atmosphere, as everything is from an alternate 1983 steeped in grainy psychedelic colours. The imagery is admittedly terrific (especially on the film’s somewhat low budget) and there are some interesting threads to pull if your thing is overanalyzing movies—the most promising of them being a repudiation of the kinds of things that a lesser film would have celebrated. But if upgrading my assessment of Beyond the Black Rainbow from “unwatchable” to “interesting” is a significant improvement, it’s not necessarily a recommendation. Or at least not for everyone: It may be that I’ve become a more tolerant viewer for artistic experiments in the past few years. At the very least, this is not a film for everyone at any given time.