Reviews

  • Mon Oncle Antoine [My uncle Antoine] (1971)

    Mon Oncle Antoine [My uncle Antoine] (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2020) I don’t expect that most readers of this review will be as taken with Mon Oncle Antoine as French-Canadian viewers like myself are liable to be. From a purely objective perspective, this is a rouuuugh film. The fuzzy quality of the TV-ratio images is disappointing, the editing is slack, the shot-to-shot visual continuity isn’t always smooth, the acting isn’t always strong and that’s not even getting into the griminess of the visuals. A lot of this should be excused, as writer-director Claude Jutra was pioneering Québec-based location filmmaking at that time, and had to laboriously reinvent what was smooth filmmaking elsewhere. But it’s also true that Mon Oncle Antoine is not aiming for populist entertainment: it’s a conscious slice-of-life throwback to the Duplessis years as kitchen-table character drama set in a remote rural location. I can rattle off half a dozen French-Canadian historical films that are slicker, richer and more evocative of Québec’s history than this one—but Mon Oncle Antoine was there first. It’s absolutely not glorious in intent: Rather than take place on farms, in forests or in snowy rural Québec, it’s stuck in a dusty mining town, revolves around a dead body and embodies the quiet despair of ordinary people prevented from achieving even modest ambitions. Even the title character can’t stand his own life, which runs counter to a lot of rural mythologizing present in Québec filmmaking. It is, in other words, a slog to get through. But there’s a difference between what the film is and what it represents. Somehow hailed as a classic of Canadian cinema in multiple polls, it made a mark over at least a generation of filmmakers. That may be changing, though—Jutra himself was almost instantly disgraced in 2016 when his actions as a pederast came to light and led to the mass renaming of nearly everything bearing his name (including some of Canada’s most prestigious movie awards). Lately, probably due to Jutra’s erasure, the film itself hasn’t been as widely hailed—at the benefit of some of the other films I could rattle off. Which leaves me with something of a quandary when it comes to Mon Oncle Antoine. On one side, I’m not terribly impressed by the film itself and what it’s saying. On the other, well, what the film shows is very similar to the world in which my grandparents and parents lived—I can recognize the shabby rural houses, the colourful joual expressions and the utter lack of grandeur in the movie’s depiction of rural Québec. French-Canadian pride won’t let anyone else call this a terrible film—unless you’re going to come up with better alternatives.

  • Shoot to Kill (1988)

    Shoot to Kill (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2020) While Shoot to Kill doesn’t really manage to get above its B-movie intentions, it does have a few things going for it. The most obvious one is the setting, as this criminal chase thriller takes us far from the urban skyline of San Francisco all the way up north to the Rockies, eventually crossing the border into Canada and finally ending in Vancouver. The Canadian content doesn’t stop there, as Shoot to Kill is an early effort from Ottawa-born director Roger Spottiswoode. The unusual nature of the film’s setting is bolstered by interesting casting, whether it’s a rare late-career role of Sidney Poitier, Kirstie Alley looking her best, or Bart the Bear doing his usual thing. The least one can say is that Spottiswoode manages to put all of the ingredients together competently: Shoot to Kill moves forward steadily, does well with its budget and comfortably executes the buddy-movie thriller template it’s given. It’s certainly watchable, even if it falls into the glass-half-full-or-half-empty neverland of middle-of-the-road films that are both better and worse than they could have been.

  • Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

    Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) My interest ebbed and flowed as I sat watching Inside Daisy Clover, a film that seems stuck between the shiny fairytale of 1950s Hollywood and the grim revisionist 1970s. I picked it based on the cast and premise: a drama featuring a young 1930s Hollywood starlet having trouble fitting in, featuring no less than Natalie Woods, Robert Redford and a young(er) Christopher Plummer in a deliciously evil role. Inside Daisy Clover certainly looks good on paper. But it doesn’t start out all that well, what with Woods beginning a film-long struggle with an unflattering hairstyle and the film touching upon an unpleasant blend of teenage alienation and a hard-luck struggle between daughter and mother. The premise starts from pure bubble-gum “poor girl becomes a movie star” to turn into an examination of the hidden darkness behind celebrity, but it somehow doesn’t quite manage to satisfy along the way. Some scenes are quite strong (such as a meta-musical moment in which the increasingly sad song is shot from behind the scenes of a movie shoot), and the ending becomes a bit of explosive dark comedy, but the way from this to that is both too grim and not grim enough to fully satisfy. (Or, if you’d prefer, camp and yet not camp enough.) At some point, I really started wondering how much of Inside Daisy Clover was explicitly meant to evoke Judy Garland (who was still alive at the time). Unusually enough for the mid-1960s, Robert Redford plays a bisexual character—but the film doesn’t get to explore his character as more than an additional burden on the heroine. Hence my opening assertion: the same movie made in the 1950s would have been more buoyant; the same movie in the 1970s would not have pulled its punches. In the meantime, what’s left in Inside Daisy Clover is of mild interest to fans of Hollywood movies about Hollywood, but simply falls apart as its own story.

  • A Night to Remember (1958)

    A Night to Remember (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) It’s completely unfair to compare a film with another one made forty years later, but such is the luck of the draw for A Night to Remember, which has been and will continue to be compared to 1997’s Titanic. The comparison is fairer than most, though, given that the intent behind both movies is more or less the same: Illustrate the tragedy of the Titanic’s sinking by recreating as accurately as possible the event given the time’s technology, and dramatizing its biggest human conflicts through a mixture of real characters and ones meant to stand in for the ship’s inherent class issues. Titanic’s writer-director James Cameron explicitly acknowledged the influence of A Night to Remember, and even the most contrarian curmudgeon will acknowledge that the 1997 film was simply better in terms of technical polish, special effects, accuracy to what we now know about the disaster, and simple story structure. One can quibble forever about Cameron’s dialogue and sentimentalism, but then again compare it with A Night to Remember and the difference doesn’t seem so stark. But even acknowledging that A Night of Remember was outclassed by its spiritual remake is not necessarily diminishing director Roy Ward Baker’s considerable achievements at the time. While we now know more about the ship’s sinking than they did at the time, the rest of the film stands up reasonably well to real-life events, and the dramatic tension of the film keeps increasing throughout the period after the iceberg crash—relatively speaking, the film doesn’t take a long time to get there. Sure, the whole thing is imbued with 1950s melodrama, but up to a certain point that adds to the period charm of the film. Still, you have to have a special interest in vintage films in order to get the most out of A Night to Remember—anyone else looking for a suitable take on the topic matter would be best served by the later film, and anyone who has seen the 1997 film will find their viewing of the 1958 one constantly tested by comparisons.

  • Ruthless People (1986)

    Ruthless People (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2020) Considering that I have long been a steadfast fan of the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (ZAZ) spoof comedies (Airplane!, Top Secret!), it’s a bit of a surprise that I managed to wait this long to see their Ruthless People. There’s definitely a reason for that, however: Ruthless People, compared to other ZAZ movies, is known to operate on a very different comedic register. It’s not a visually intense spoof, is far from being as absurd on a gag-to-gag basis and is far more character-based. I hesitate to call it more realistic, however, considering the incredibly dense and twisted nature of its plotting as a “simple” kidnapping case soon reverses the usual good/bad character roles and leads to some strange alliances, twists and counter-plotting. Milquetoast Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater star as disgruntled employees who decide to take revenge by kidnapping the wife (Bette Midler) of their boss (Danny DeVito), but things very quickly take a turn for the weird when the boss actively attempts to provoke the kidnappers into killing his wife. This is all in the film’s first fifteen minutes, and there’s a lot left along the way, including the jarring introduction of a serial killer who eventually ends up becoming a comic prop. It’s both disappointing (if you’re expecting the usual ZAZ goofiness) and better than expectations when compared to other comic crime capers of the time. There’s a pleasant density of plot developments, DeVito is at his most darkly unhinged, and Bette Midler is the force of nature that she is in her better roles. On the other hand, this is not as distinctive as other ZAZ comedies, and in a post-Tarantino world it’s not quite as intriguing as it must have been at the time. Pair it with Throw Momma from the Train for a fun Danny DeVito dark comedy combo.

  • Always (1989)

    Always (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2020) In any examination of Steven Spielberg’s filmography, Always usually gets short thrift. There’s a two-hour-long Spielberg documentary out there that barely spends a few seconds on it, and it seldom pops up in any casual discussion of his work. There’s a good reason for that: standing awkwardly at the intersection between action movie, supernatural fantasy and romantic drama, Always is not ready for easy packaging. It’s also, perhaps understandably, a bit scattered in-between paying homage to its 1940s inspiration, delivering 1980s action sequences and trying to find a satisfying dramatic arc in a bone-simple story. Based on WW2 fighter pilot drama A Guy Named Joe (which shares much of the same awkwardness), Always updates the setting to modern-day firefighting bomber flyers, and kills off its lead character so that he becomes a ghost able to assist another pilot who grows closer to his ex-fiancée. There’s not a whole lot for the film to do beyond the grieving dramatic arc, and the second half of Always peters out into a far less interesting path to a predetermined conclusion. From a relatively strong start, the film progressively loses steam and doesn’t keep its most spectacular moments for the end. Still, there’s quite a bit to like in seeing how a veteran director like Spielberg tackles even substandard material. From the very first shot, we’re clearly in the hands of someone who likes to play with film narrative, and carefully composing his images to choose what the camera will or won’t show. Richard Dreyfuss is not bad in the lead role despite his typical 1980s arrogance, and Holly Hunter also does well as the female romantic lead. (Still, it’s John Goodman who shines in a comic supporting role.) Audrey Hepburn is an angelic vision in her last film role—she simply looks amazing at sixty. There’s a pair of good action flying sequences in the first half of the film, and the atmosphere of a firefighting camp is so vividly rendered that it’s a shame we couldn’t spend more time there. Still, Always makes a strong case for being Spielberg’s most ordinary, least distinctive film. It doesn’t have the glorious misfires of 1941, it’s not a kid’s film like The BFG, it’s not animated like The Adventures of Tintin—it’s just there, in all of its shortcomings, muddled execution and decreasing interest.

  • Cronos (1993)

    Cronos (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2020) Guillermo del Toro’s first feature-length film was Cronos and, well, that’s pretty much all you need to know about it. No, it’s not a polished as any of his later features. No, it’s not quite as baroque, or finely-controlled, or entertaining. It was, after all, shot in Mexico on a threadbare budget, from a young filmmaker who had many things to prove but not much pull in getting what he needed to execute his vision. But here’s the thing: Del Toro had a vision even at such an early stage. Cronos is slickly made even at its low budget—The visual density of the film’s images is particularly interesting. You can dissect it as an early work prefiguring del Toro’s entire subsequent career (including an improbable appearance from Ron Perlman), but it’s also easy to watch as its own little modest supernatural thriller in which an elderly antique dealer is gradually turned into a vampire. Unlike other horror filmmakers’ first efforts, Cronos is not a pure-horror film in execution: there’s some dramatic depth to it, some restraints on the exploitation side, and a clear artistic ambition at play. Cronos is interesting both by itself and as a proof of concept for some of the themes, tropes, filmmaking tics and gothic grandeur that del Toro would explore in other films.

  • What’s Up, Doc? (1972)

    What’s Up, Doc? (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) There’s an adorable playfulness at work in writer-director Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? that makes it difficult to resist—and doubly difficult if you’re even casually aware of screwball comedies. Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal star: he in a straight-laced role while she plays the anarchic Bugs Bunny figure turning his life into chaos. There are several broad acts to the film, from the first-act hotel farce to a fight sequence, a large-scale chase through San Francisco, an absurdly funny courtroom scene and then the romantic conclusion. It makes What’s Up, Doc? slightly episodic, but the energy and comedy are kept at a high pace throughout. (Then it eviscerates O’Neal’s own turn in Love Story in its final moments, which is always a plus.) While the film explicitly patterns itself on 1930s filmmaking, today’s audiences will see another kind of nostalgia in the film’s generous display of 1970s fashion. It all amounts to something very enjoyable to watch—perhaps not quite completely hilarious from beginning to end, but still a film that’s easy to like. I’m not sure Bogdanovich was ever looser, funnier or more crowd-pleasing than in putting together What’s Up, Doc?

  • The Skulls (2000)

    The Skulls (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) True to form for a Hollywood thriller, The Skulls takes the kernel of a good premise (behind the scenes at an Ivy School secret fraternity, à la Yale Skull and Bones) and then takes it to a ludicrous level that, ironically enough, makes it quite forgettable. Our protagonist’s bland everyman qualities ensure that the character isn’t quite as interesting as the antagonist (Paul Walker, in a pre-Fast/Furious starring role). The rest of it seems to steal from low-octane conspiracy thriller tropes without necessarily putting the pilfered ideas together in an interesting whole. Fairly bland directing from Rob Cohen doesn’t help the film stick in mind, although I suppose that twenty years later The Skulls is taking on a time-capsule kind of newfound relevance in chronicling Hollywood’s idea of cool at the dawn of the century. Still, there’s a feeling that, despite a fun premise, a director capable of much better, some interesting young actors and good production values, The Skulls simply isn’t fun enough or smart enough or wild enough to stick. Although I suppose that a true-life exposé of Ivy League secret societies would be even duller to watch.

  • Husbands and Wives (1992)

    Husbands and Wives (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) One of the issues with Woody Allen and trying to separate his art from his somewhat unsettling life is that his movies are big giant signposts telling us about his state of mind at any given time. Husbands and Wives, for instance, is a tale of marital dissatisfaction that just happened to come out at the end of his relationship with Mia Farrow—with Farrow and Allen fighting it out on celluloid. Whew. There’s more, of course—the seediest things in Allen’s filmography are the constant relationships between much older men and women at most half his age, and we get that once again here—hey, Allen, can’t you at least stop writing that stuff in your scripts? As for Husbands and Wives itself, there’s a reason why it generally holds up when compared to the other Allen films of that era: the intense navel-gazing eventually leads somewhere, and the film doesn’t even unfairly evoke the memory of Allen’s comedies. The mixture of Manhattan DINK lifestyle, documentary style and messy examination of personal foibles is certainly classic Allen, done in a still interesting-enough way compared to some of his later works. He also, as usual, gets great performances from his supporting cast: Juliette Lewis makes an impression in a more sedate role than the ones she’d play throughout most of the 1990s, a rising-star Liam Neeson barges into the plot and Blythe Danner makes a very quick appearance. Husbands and Wives is a kind of film best suited for adult audiences, not so much for any risqué content than because it’s glum and unromantic about long-term relationships—and it takes some living to relate to that.

  • Anna Karenina (1948)

    Anna Karenina (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) It’s a gift to cinephiles to see so many adaptations of a few classic novels—especially when they’re released within a few years. So it is that Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina had two high-profile English-language adaptations in 1935 and 1948, forever begging for comparative pieces. I won’t quite do that here—not having read the novel is a handicap, and at some point, most black-and-while period dramas sort of blur into each other. Still, a back-to-back viewing of both versions shows that if the British 1948 one doesn’t have Greta Garbo, it does have a wonderful Vivien Leigh in the title role. The rest of it is a very respectable adaptation, once again focusing on the romantic tragedy of Karenina rather than the myriad subplots. (Some of the ensuing plot shortcuts can be confounding, but that’s the way it goes.) Anna Karenina is, in many ways, very Russian: winter, ballet, ill-fated protagonists and a shrug at the capriciousness of fate. I prefer this version to the prior one, what with a better use of exteriors, more confident directing and more expansive storytelling. Some of this reflects technical progress accomplished during a thirteen-year period—but some of it is due to writer-director Julien Duvivier’s approach to the material—and perhaps the influence of crowd-pleasing producer Alexander Korda. There’s some good control over the material, whether it’s the technical aspects of recreating historical Russia, the costumes, or the very good execution of the final scene. This being said, Anna Karenina does remain a costume drama, and one executed with late-1940s means. Modern viewers, if they’re just looking into checking out the story, may want to ease themselves into it by watching the 2012 version—maybe not quite as good as the early ones, but certainly more technically accomplished.

  • Anna Karenina (1935)

    Anna Karenina (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) Another one in a long list of 1930s Hollywood literary adaptations, the 1935 version of Leo Tolstoy’s much-adapted Anna Karenina does have Greta Garbo, Fredrick March, and David O. Selznick as a producer—the three of them as close to Hollywood royalty as it was possible to get in the mid-1930s, which should give you an idea of the pedigree and importance of this Anna Karenina production. It goes without saying that Garbo is the main reason to see this version—it was a familiar role (she also played in a 1927 version), but this time she could use her voice. Although handsomely shot with big-budget production means most visible in sets and costumes, this production doesn’t quite have the technical polish nor expansive cinematography of later versions—but it does focus on the nuts and bolts of the story with good costume drama instincts (which includes a thorough culling of the novel to its most dramatic elements to fit within 90 minutes), so it’s still quite watchable today. I still prefer later versions, though.

  • Gambit (1966)

    Gambit (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2020) Part of my curiosity about Gambit was comparing it with the little-seen, somewhat-dismissed 2012 Coen Brothers remake. As it turns out…, those might as well be two different films. There are a few decades’ worth of filmmaking differences between the two, obviously, but also a complete change of setting (the remake takes place in England—the original in Hong Kong) and, frankly, almost the entire plot as I remember it. So, anyone who thinks that seeing the remake is good enough will get plenty of surprises with this original. The opening half-hour of the film is immediately interesting, as a caper unfolds… and then the rest of the film doubles back on the opening act to extend and subvert it. Michael Caine is up to his very high 1960s standards here (albeit a bit more clownish than usual), while Shirley MacLaine, never my favourite actress, is surprisingly entertaining. There are enough twists and turns here to make Gambit a pleasant heist romantic comedy, and one with a great period atmosphere (admittedly bordering on orientalism) by twenty-first century standards. It’s well worth seeing, even by the cinephiles who are familiar with the remake… because it’s really not the same film at all.

  • Les Misérables (1935)

    Les Misérables (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) A few reasons explain why Hollywood was churning out so many adaptations of classic works of literature in the 1930s. For one thing, it suddenly could—the arrival of sound meant that dialogue could be used without interrupting the flow of the film with title cards. For another, keep in mind that the movie industry had been born out of vaguely disreputable origins by moguls marginalized from the more respectable sectors of American industry—as a result, they were eager for cultural recognition as purveyors of fine arts, and adapting classic novels was a shortcut to that. Thirdly, such films were great showcases for the many disciplines of studio cinema—set-building, costumes, makeup and classical actors. Fourthly, but not lastly, such films had a built-in audience: the classics were part of the curriculum, audiences could recognize familiar titles and Hollywood made money. Considering all of the shortcuts that were often taken at the time (simplification of plotting, if not outright amputation; iffy special effects; acting taken straight from the stage), it’s a wonder that many of them turned out to be quite good, even to today’s audiences. And that finally takes us to the 1935 version of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, which somehow manages to cut down the massive original novel into something adequate within 103 minutes, featuring great production values and able actors like Fredric March and Charles Laughton in lead roles. While this is in no way a faithful adaptation, it’s a well-executed costume drama for the masses, and part of the film’s fun for those familiar with the Hugo novel are spotting the ways in which the story was cut to fit. While purists will howl, the result is rather entertaining—even today.

  • Lust for Life (1956)

    Lust for Life (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) Kirk Douglas is quite a revelation in Lust for Life, surprisingly good at playing Vincent van Vogh as a tortured-artist archetype. (And if that’s not enough, you also have Anthony Quinn playing Paul Gaugin, because why not?) His red hair and beard are as striking in Technicolor as the artist’s vivid paintings, even if Douglas’ energetic performance is apparently not quite the right fit for the reserved painter. But let’s be clear—this is a Classic Hollywood biopic movie made in the 1950s by Vincente Minelli—there’s no way it would be melancholic, realistic or even accurate. This is l’artiste as presented to the moviegoing masses as a big weirdo, and it’s enjoyable even if we suspect that’s it’s complete bunk. Production values are high, the acting duet between Douglas and Quinn is quite good, and the paintings are given centre stage, so that’s that. If you’re particularly concerned about authenticity, there are many other Van Gogh movies out there—this one is best taken as an opinionated take on familiar material, with the gloss of a mid-1950s studio production.