Reviews

  • Histoires extraordinaires [Spirits of the Dead] (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, on Cable TV, March 2022) There was a small anthology movie craze in the 1960s, and it’s a surprise to take a look at the credits for Histoires extraordinaires and realize that no less than Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini (!!!) got together to deliver the film’s segments, all loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe short stories. The result, unfortunately, is not quite up to expectations: Vadim goes for medieval fantasy, Malle for a sombre crime story and Fellini digs into the inner life of an actor. I’m not going to pretend that it’s all dull. There’s quite a bit of fun seeing how Vadim directs then-wife Jane Fonda play an evil countess opposite Peter Fonda. Malle has a bit of fun re-creating an atmosphere of crime, religion and dissection with Brigitte Bardot and Alan Delon along the way. Still, neither of those two segments quite get up to where they should be. I’ll be kinder to Fellini’s concluding segment, as his exuberant approach to the material (Terence Stamp playing an alcoholic actor losing his grip on reality while attending an awards ceremony) feels far more exciting—in itself and in having Fellini do what he did best—than the rest. I’m disappointed by aspects of that third segment, most notably the drawn-out ending that takes far too long to deliver a foregone conclusion, but it’s easily the best of all three. In the end, though, Histoires extraordinares can’t quite transform a terrific cast and intriguing premise into better-than-average piece of entertainment. And that certainly explains why anthology films have remained such marginal propositions for the past few decades: it’s really, really difficult to get an even level of quality and enjoyment out of them.

  • King Richard (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) What difference does a moment make? Usually, not much, except when it makes all the difference. Had I written this review immediately after watching King Richard, I may have had something interesting to say about how this biography of the tennis superstar Serena and Venus Williams makes a rather daring choice to focus on their father Richard Williams’s decades-long campaign to get them to succeed. I probably would have discussed how the film, authorized by the Williams family, chooses to positively represent actions that would have been seen as unbearably controlling by others. I even would have had a few positive things to say about Will Smith’s performance, so intent on begging for an Oscar that it channels his undeniable charisma into something sufficiently different to be remarkable, but close enough to his person as to stay recognizably his. But then came The Moment. To recap for future historians: In the middle of the Academy Awards ceremony, Smith got up, walked onstage and physically assaulted presenter Chris Rock by slapping him across the face and berating him with a profanity-laden tirade for a perceived slight against his wife. But then, unlike you and me, who would have been hauled away immediately by security, Smith was allowed to stay in his seat until his name was announced as that year’s Best Actor winner, at which point he delivered a rambling, self-serving tirade that had me audibly booing at home despite watching the ceremony by myself. So, no, I’m not really interested in talking about King Richard. I’m far more interested in talking about Smith’s obnoxious and incessant begging for an Oscar since 1997’s Six Degrees of Separation. (Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness I can still tolerate, but Seven Pounds and Collateral Beauty are trash.)  I want to highlight some of the dumbest career decisions he’s made, not necessarily Wild Wild West, but the way his ego made Hancock worse and the incompetent nepotism of After Earth (which he produced and co-wrote, making it even more uniquely his screw-up) meant to jump-start his son’s acting “career.”  There’s quite a bit to say about Smith’s growing egotism even as his career regularly sputtered, or the way his personal life started overshadowing his performances. I’ll let others weigh in on the slew of hints and allegations (and, um, video footage) about his unhealthy marriage—except that all of that led to the utter hubris of his creating The Moment that exposed him to the world in the worst way possible. (In his acceptance speech, Smith relayed Denzel’s Washington’s dead-on warning ”In your highest moments, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you” but I don’t think he understood what that meant.)  I won’t burn my copies of Smith’s music CDs, but I’ll consider prefacing any future mention of his performances as “face-slapping Will Smith,” and mostly I want him to go away in obscurity for a very long time. In a fit of megalomania, he ruined other people’s crowning achievements (poor Questlove) and overshadowed a film that should have been discussed on its own merit. That’s the difference a moment can make.

  • tick, tick… BOOM! (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, March 2022) I wasn’t too sure about tick, tick… BOOM! in its opening moments. A biographical look at a pivotal moment in the tragically departed Rent creator Jonathan Larson’s life, it’s clearly a film by and for theatre geeks. (I use the term with affection.)  It’s not necessarily inaccessible—but it’s a film that has much to gain by understanding whom it plays for. The film effectively takes us to the pre-stardom days of a struggling creator, working in a menial job to afford living in New York City as he slaves away at an audacious musical. The atmosphere of young creators trying to reconcile their big dreams with their hardscrabble lives is well-rendered, and it doesn’t take that much time for the film and its protagonist to become sympathetic. It’s a bit amazing that, despite Lin-Manuel Miranda’s oversized cultural profile over the past few years, this is his first film as a director—and he does exceptionally well at rendering the film’s musical numbers. Marrying classic Hollywood fun and expressionism with modern themes and technique, Miranda is able to give life to his film whenever his characters start singing. Of my five (!) favourite numbers, “30/90,” “Boho Days” and “No More” introduce the film, whereas “Swimming” and especially “Sunday” are when tick, tick… BOOM! fires on all cylinders. Also noteworthy are a few of the actors—Andrew Garfield, obviously, not simply for channelling Larson, but also delivering a credible singing performance. This is the second film this week in which I’ve been given the opportunity to stare at Alexandra Shipp, and her role here is quite a bit more substantial than in the disappointing Jexi. Also worth mentioning is the cinematically less-known Robin de Jesús in a solid dramatic/singing performance. By the end of the film (which starts by telling you it’s going to be an exhilarating but sad story), I was won over. Even in the middle of a much-welcomed resurgence of the Hollywood musical, tick, tick… BOOM! distinguishes itself through its approach and respect for its subject. I may be, in the end, far more of a theatre geek than I suspected.

  • The Big Sleep (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2022) Forty-five years later, the decision to remake a classic 1940s Los Angeles-based film noir as a 1970s London-based thriller smacks more of a stunt than a modernization of the story. There is, to be fair, a rather amazing cast in the 1978 version of The Big Sleep. With Robert Mitchum playing the private investigator to an elderly James Stewart, the film then goes on to have Joan Collins in a small role… even if Sarah Miles gets most of the appreciative stares playing a mop-topped redhead. While updated elements include colour cinematography and free mentions of elements too racy to have been acknowledged by classic Hollywood, the deliberately labyrinthine plotting has been kept almost intact. It makes for interesting viewing, but that may have more to do with the incongruity of the adaptation than its success. It’s a fun ride, but it would be an exaggeration to call it a good movie. Mitchum is easily twenty or thirty years too old for the role, and the film tortures itself to justify the American-accented Mitchum and Stewart in the middle of an otherwise very British film. Director Michael Winner’s pacing is slack, and Mitchum relies a bit too much on his tough taciturn persona rather than inhabiting the character. The period feel is more flashy than transparent (exactly the opposite of what the filmmakers intended for audiences at the time) and the direction is much flatter than expected, with the actors not always fully engaged in their roles. Oh, I still liked this The Big Sleep remake—but I liked it as a perversion of a much-admired original rather than its own thing.

  • Pillow to Post (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) One of the side-benefits of having seen so many classical Hollywood movies is being able to spot obsolete tropes and micro-phenomenon specific to a brief period of time in history. So it is that Pillow to Post’s premise smashes two things we don’t really see nowadays: the World War II housing shortage and the quaint trope of instant marriages. Watching some older Hollywood film, you could be forgiven for thinking that marriage was quick, cheap and easy, as characters got married on a whim then spent the rest of the film figuring out if they were romantic matches. It’s a big screenwriting conceit more than a reflection of how things were, of course—what better way to crank up the romantic tension than to throw characters together and let them react? Pillow to Post adds one trope to the other and comes up with a narrative in which a vivacious young woman (Ida Lupino, luminous as always), sidesteps a housing crisis by “marrying” a stranger to get a married-couple-only bungalow. Things predictably get more fun once his superior and her family come around and start poking at the situation. The rest is by-the-numbers romantic comedy, somewhat enlivened by the social constructs leading to the complications, and the charm of the lead actors. Sydney Greenstreet is an imposing figure as a high-ranking military office, but it’s really Lupino who’s the focus of the picture. (Louis Armstrong appears in a bit role, but don’t be fooled by mentions of Dorothy Dandridge being in the film—it’s a fleeting glimpse more than even a small role.)  Pillow to Post is not a film that will earn many dedicated fans—it’s slightly fun and nothing more. But it will do the job if you’re just looking for something light and amusing to wrap up the day, or a look at comic devices of past ages.

  • A Small Fortune (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) Money is power in a compact package, and like all concentrated forms of power, its sudden release in a void can be explosive. A Small Fortune isn’t taking place in an area where money is common: it’s set in a small Atlantic Canada community, where making ends meet can require an artful combination of jobs, government benefits and small-scale crime. It’s in this unglamorous environment that our lead couple lives, with tensions made worse by the imminent arrival of a baby. When a large quantity of money makes its way to the shore, our male lead doesn’t think for a long time about taking some of it to improve his life. The problem, though, is that the money comes from somewhere, and its owners really want it back. The small town isn’t ready, either for that amount of money nor the force exerted to get it back. I frankly watched the film to have a look at long-time favourite Liane Balaban, who looks great as the pregnant woman in the middle of the escalating mayhem, but Andrea Bang is not bad either as a policewoman clearly out of her element. The story isn’t all that original and the execution may feel excruciating to those who don’t want to spend time in such a dispiriting environment, but the Prince Edward Island setting is more original than most, and it leads to some unusual cinematography along the way. A Small Fortune, alas, doesn’t quite manage to build a satisfying conclusion: there are structural issues in the way some things are resolved, and the coda is far less satisfying than it could have been. Still, it’s not a bad watch for a low-budget Canadian production—even when it plays along familiar lines.

  • Pink Skies Ahead (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) It doesn’t take much more than ninety seconds for Pink Skies Ahead to establish that its protagonist is an unlikable self-centred moronic young woman—an anxious college drop-out unable to take any responsibility for her problems. With an introduction like that, things can only go up, but writer-director Kelly Oxford has a tough job navigating a tricky line between redemption and the protagonist repeatedly making life even more difficult for herself. This is about as far as we can get from the competent heroine archetype, and credits go to Jessica Barden in keeping the audience on-board even as her character goes out of her way to irritate both the other characters around her and the audience along the way. There is, fortunately, some verve to the dialogue and scene-building. It’s all clearly part of a conscious artistic intention—and to Pink Skies Ahead’s credit, the protagonist’s mental health issues are not as cut-and-dried as in most other movies—but I don’t really have to like it. As I mention from time to time—sure, you can make the protagonist exasperating, upend a number of heroic tropes and lock the audience in a dreary environment to justify it all, but then you have to accept that audiences may not be overly happy with the result.

  • Hollow Triumph (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) The preposterousness of Hollow Triumph’s plotting is not a problem. In fact, it may be one of its most charming qualities—especially as a fine example of middle-tier film noir. The story barely makes any sense—a criminal on the run decides to impersonate a psychiatrist, deliberately scarring himself to heighten the resemblance between the two men but ironically cutting himself on the wrong side of the face. There’s also a pretty secretary with whom he has an affair, and a largely useless girlfriend to the psychiatrist whose life he’s taken over. The mechanics of the plot are dumb enough to exasperate (the timeline of events alone is enough to make anyone throw up their hands), but the film does faithfully follow in the ethos of film noir by chronicling an anti-hero’s steady downfall all the way to a conclusion that’s as downbeat as it is appropriate. There’s some modest fun in the visuals, period sights and acting (especially from lead Paul Henreid, far from his Casablanca role, and Joan Bennett looking really good) even if Hollow Triumph isn’t all that good when considered from afar. But if you like noir, even a middle-of-the-road noir is still a good time.

  • Ostre sledované vlaky [Closely Watched Trains] (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) For a film with such a downbeat trajectory, there’s a lustful comedy aspect to Closely Watched Trains that helps it go by faster. The story of a young man working at a rural train station and pining after a local girl, writer-director Jirí Menzel’s film eventually reveals itself to be about Nazi oppression during their occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the efforts of the resistance at destroying German trains. The high-and-low mixture between comedy and tragedy is not necessarily smooth: You can appreciate the rough humour of a young man figuring out girls and then be blindsided by the film’s late shift into much grimmer material. Still, that vein of relatable comedy is what will get viewers through much of the film, and one of the reasons why Closely Watched Trains keeps an edge over the previous (and very similar) Best Foreign Language Academy Award-winner The Shop on Main Street, to which it’s often and appropriately paired.

  • Obchod na korze [The Shop on Main Street] (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) “Dreary” is how I’d start to describe The Shop on Main Street—Emerging from the depths of Cold-War communist Czechoslovakia, this drama from writers-directors Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos engages with the horrid practice of ethnic cleansing (“Aryanization”) during World War II, as our Slovak and Jewish main characters gradually come to face the efforts of the Nazi occupiers at purifying their small village. It’s a dispiriting topic by itself, but the ending spares no one in its implacable resolution. Add to that the suffocating feeling of being stuck, in black and white cinematography, in a small Slovakian village as the Nazis roam around that explains both the film winning a Best Foreign Language film (in the middle of the Cold War, a bleak communist film taking aim at authoritarians was a solid pick) and viewers wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  • The Kid Brother (1927)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) Film historians will tell you that even if The Kid Brother doesn’t have the comedic set-pieces of writer-star Harold Lloyd’s better-known film, it ranked high in the star’s own assessment. They’re not necessarily wrong: compared to other Lloyd pictures, it’s a film with a stronger story, better-defined characters and a more careful atmosphere taking us to rural America. Here, a physically frail younger son has to contend with bullying as he proves himself fit to be a sheriff. It’s not bad… but as it turns out, there’s a reason why audiences still look up the zany antics of Speedy or Safety Last! —While The Kid Brother may be a more successful film overall, it leaves viewers hungering for more. There aren’t that many comic set-pieces and the film doesn’t leave much of an impression once it wraps up. Not necessarily a bad watch if you wanted to see Lloyd approach a more sustained project, but not necessarily the first pick if you want to understand why he remains a reference for silent-era comedy.

  • A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) Few experiences are so dispiriting as a film that should work but doesn’t, leaving audiences checking the time to see when it’s going to end. By all rights, there’s enough potential in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum that it should at least be a passable film: a mid-1960s comedy set in ancient Rome but not afraid to go for anachronistic humour. You can find echoes here of Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part One, or other anachronic comic excursions in history. Director Richard Lester has a solid track record and lead actor Zero Mostel has talent as a performer, but even he can’t quite make the film click. Adapted from a Broadway show, it often shifts from plotting to sound, and plays along decidedly unsubtle lines. I’m as surprised as anyone to find that the film feels like a dud. It’s so eager to make anyone laugh, though, that I just may revisit it later.

  • Blood Feast (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) The job of a full-time film enthusiast is to watch everything, no matter personal preferences—after all, what if there’s something magical in an unpromising title? But there are times when this omnivorous drive becomes self-punishment, and Blood Feast certainly feels like a masochistic experience. An early work by the “godfather of gore” Herschell Gordon Lewis, it’s widely considered to be the first splatter horror film (i.e.: the first to show so much gore) and I’m not sure that’s a milestone worth recording in the grand book of human creativity. It’s a hard film to watch on many levels: never mind the brutal, blood-splattered murders and psychopathic protagonist: the film was made on a very low budget and every shortcut shows. Amateurish only begins to describe the slap-dash cinematography, special effects and acting talent on display here: Blood Feast is profoundly ugly, and that also applies to the contrived plotting in which the serial killer (and writer-director) feels compelled to butcher several people to assemble their organs for a ritual sacrifice. There’s some degree of bizarre comfort in the film being so low-budget that nothing feels real, but the ugliness lingers on despite the unconvincing visuals. Blood Feast is far more significant than good—it was the first horror movie to be this explicit, bridging the gap that would take cinema in a few years, from the artful shocks of 1950s horror to the cheap ultraviolence of 1970s slashers. It’s a milestone, but I’m glad I’ll never have to see it again.

  • Mamma Roma (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) You have to have a strong stomach to tolerate much of the Italian neo-realist movement, as even spiritual successor Mamma Roma (released a decade after the acknowledged end of the period) will certify. It starts, hopefully enough, with a middle-aged woman (the captivating Anna Magnani) boisterously attending a marriage ceremony. It doubles as a farewell for her, as she leaves her village with her teenage son and sets out for Rome, where her savings from years of prostitution have enabled her to rent a decent apartment and start a fruit-selling business. But there’s her son to contend with: a wannabe thug, easily lured by the distractions offered by the big city. Things get worse once a man with knowledge of her previous occupation tracks her down and blackmails her. Things get even worse once the son gets in trouble with the law and then… well, it’s not a happy ending. Writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini isn’t interested in rewarding the virtuous as much as inflicting as much pain as he can on our likable protagonist, to the point where the entire feels pointless—it ends not just on a downer, but a refusal to answer even the more elementary, “And then what?”  While this really isn’t my kind of cinema, I don’t completely hate the results largely due to Magnani’s performance and the unromanticized portrayal of Roma on the cusp of La Dolce Vita. The city portrayed here feels far closer to the post-WW2 reconstruction years than the sweet portrait shown by Hollywood-on-the-Tiber and other Italian filmmakers with an optimistic spirit. But that’s what you get once you start digging into Italian neorealism—it’s even in the name!

  • The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) One of the most interesting aspects of 1950s Hollywood cinema, contrary to twenty-first century depictions of a conservative, conformist decade, is the sheer number of movies questioning the emerging post-war social structures. The new medium of TV got its fair share of contemporary criticism, and so did the rise of the corporate world. There are plenty of boardroom movies questioning whether the capitalist agenda could be aligned with humanist values, at various levels of seriousness. While The Solid Gold Cadillac is a few steps removed from absurdist comedy, its humour barely masquerades some pointed questions about the morality of management (even if it’s compared to an ideal of founder ownership rather than a culture of ethical governance and internal audit). Judy Holliday stars in a familiar blonde ditz role as a minor stockholder who becomes a thorn in the board of directors’ side after asking many simplistic but vexing questions at the annual stockholder’s meeting. Paul Douglas turns in an enjoyable performance as the gruff founder off to Washington and leaving the management of his company to a trio of ethically-challenged directors (including the always-fun John Williams). Romance predictably strikes between the naively shrewd secretary and the business tycoon, especially when the malfeasance of the board becomes obvious. The fairy-tale aspect of that subplot gets explicitly mentioned, but there’s a lot more than that going on, with the humble underdog taking down a crooked board through last-minute theatrics. It’s not perfect (including a too-long opening sequence that leans too hard on its theatrical adaptation) but it’s enjoyable enough with the right set of expectations. There’s one curious aspect of The Solid Gold Cadillac that establishes it clearly as a mid-1950s production: As the final sequence unveils the titular solid gold Cadillac, the film finishes by switching from black-and-white to colour cinematography in time for the last shot.