Reviews

  • Johnny Belinda (1948)

    Johnny Belinda (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) The depiction of disability in Hollywood has changed quite a bit over the years, and Johnny Belinda squarely belongs to the old school inspirational category… with a few complications. There’s no going around how an able-bodied doctor ends up being the salvation of a deaf-mute woman. But there’s more to this film than just a so-noble story of a disabled person overcoming obstacles: as Johnny Belinda unspools, there’s an entire story about rape, rumour and eventually murder. The film is set in quiet bucolic seaside Nova Scotia—but shot in California. You can see how it was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, considering how much it sounds like an Oscar-bait film. Still, Johnny Belinda is not bad: the criminal subplot adds a lot to the film, and Jane Wyman turns out a convincing performance in the lead role, along with Lew Ayres as the doctor helping her. There are a bunch of issues in having an able-bodied man being the saviour, but the overall portrait is very sympathetic, especially for a 1940s film.

  • Entangled aka Multiverse (2019)

    Entangled aka Multiverse (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) There are at least two low-budget 2019 films called Entangled—this one is the Canadian Science Fiction thriller featuring four students of “anomalous science” who end up creating a strange quantum entanglement phenomenon that eventually comes to haunt them after an untimely death. Obviously shot in Sudbury (which is quickly emerging as a Canadian Science Fiction film powerhouse—I’m coining Sudburypunk right now), it’s a low-budget, small-cast, limited-scope kind of science fiction film, rather charming in dealing with its own limitations. The film’s colour palette most often seems to be shades of dour blue, which applies to the plot as well: Our amateur mad scientists are not all sane, and when strange events (which we quickly deduct to be parallel universe doppelgangers) start happening, it’s clear that they’re not all going to react rationally. This is probably the weakest part of the story—there was quite enough here in the premise without throwing in a human antagonist as well, but that’s how the script goes. Entangled does a bit better on the execution front—the cinematography reinforces its themes of duplication by making heavy use of mirrors. I’m paying attention to director Gaurav Seth: After the rather good Prisoner X and now Entangled, he seems to be emerging as a significant talent for Canadian genre cinema. Marlee Matlin shows up in a small role as the mother of one character, with her deafness weaved into the story. I’m not entirely happy with the ending that feels both obvious in some ways and willfully obtuse in others, but the result is more interesting than most movies in the Science Fiction genre these days, and I’m not going to be overly critical of a low-budget Canadian feature shot in my area of the continent. It will appeal to fans of more cerebral SF, along the lines of the comparable Radius, Time Freak, I’ll Follow You Down, Volition or James vs his Future Self—many of them also shot in Sudbury. Sudburypunk!

  • Shaft (2019)

    Shaft (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) Having seen the original 1970s Shaft not too long ago and the 2000 sequel/remake in theatres, my expectations for this newest instalment were calibrated just right. As much as it may irk some, the best thing about the original movie remains the title song—nearly everything else has been handled much better in other blaxploitation films. The 2000 film was an uninteresting follow up, so how much worse could another reboot be? As it turns out, this latest instalment feels like the most entertaining film of the trilogy. By explicitly setting itself up as a third film in an ongoing once-a-generation series and having both Richard Roundtree and Samuel L. Jackson play older versions of their own characters, this Shaft opens itself up to a new audience while paying a more respectful homage to the previous generations. The film clearly draws upon 2010s scripting techniques by blending comedy with action, adopting a fast pace thanks to director Tim Story and relying a bit too much on established stereotypes even as it decries doing so. Much of the story has to do with the newest, youngest Shaft (played by Jessie T. Usher), son and grandson of previous ones. He’s a data analyst with the FBI, who dislikes guns (while still being pretty good at them, as shown in one of the film’s best scenes) but is forced to team up with his elders in order to resolve the murder of a friend. The story isn’t as important as seeing a twenty-first century Shaft argue about approaches and techniques with his rougher elders, each coming from a slightly different era of blaxploitation. Jackson is particularly funny as a man out of time, but everyone has their chance to shine along the way. Alexandra Shipp makes for a rather lovely companion to the younger Shaft, while Regina Hall also makes an impression as an ex-flame of Jackson’s Shaft. Some of the humour is predictably directed at younger generation clichés, but it all reaches a polished climax high atop a villain’s lair. I liked Shaft quite a bit more than I expected, even though I suspect that it may not age particularly well… but then again neither has its predecessors. Not as much as you’d like to think.

  • Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

    Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2020) Whenever anyone complains about Hollywood taking on the silliest premises in the name of profit, remind them that dubious high-concepts have been in the film industry’s DNA for a very, very long time. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein is not the first nor the worst example, but it’s wild enough to be remembered. By 1946, Universal had been in the Monster Movie business for a decade and a half—long enough to look for ways to spice it up, and the one they picked was melding it with their Abbott and Costello comedy franchise. Crossovers: They’re not new! Despite the title, it’s a comic companion to the big three of the Universal Monster roster, as Dracula and the Wolf Man join Frankenstein for the fun. And fun it is—hitting several comedy registers (physical, verbal, conceptual), this is a film with something for everyone, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome at 83 minutes. The brain transplant comic premise is funny enough, and Lenore Aubert is very cute in the lead female role. Acting-wise, though, Lon Chaney Jr. looks like a terrific actor next to Abbott and Costello. Universal clearly threw everything they had in store at the time: the live-action also features special effects and animation. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein certainly wasn’t meant as great cinema, but a counterbalance of sorts to the seriousness of the Universal Monster movies… and it still works.

  • The Champ (1931)

    The Champ (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m slowly but surely discovering my appreciation for King Vidor, an early filmmaker whose successes remain impressive. After familiarizing myself with silent-era movies such as The Big Parade and The Crowd, here is The Champ—a film whose profile remains heightened due to its 1979 remake. The remake, which I don’t recall seeing but probably did, probably accounts for the familiar nature of the premise—an aging boxer trying to take care of his son despite self-destructive bouts of alcoholism and gambling. The ending can be felt coming from a mile away, but it remains heartbreaking. While there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done afterward, the film does feel hard-hitting by 1931 standards—noticeably willing to confront issues related to debilitating alcoholism, for one thing, and with an ending that does everything necessary to make audiences cry. The Champ is not exactly my cup of tea, but it’s well done in its genre.

  • 3:10 to Yuma (1957)

    3:10 to Yuma (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) There aren’t that many westerns that could be adapted as one-room theatrical production, but 3:10 to Yuma fits the bill. While the film’s first half is filled with the usual Western thrills, the film finds its true purpose as two men—a criminal and an everyman—settle down in a hotel room while waiting for the train that will escort the criminal to jail, away from a small town. They talk, argue, and try to convince the other of their viewpoint and hash out other things in-between four walls. It’s not strictly a conceptual piece—there’s too much time spent outside that room—but it’s an unusual focus on a single location for a long time. The black-and-white cinematography is quite good and so is the period recreation. Still, it’s the verbal confrontation that sticks in mind at the end of the film, far more than the usual Western shootouts. Glenn Ford does well in an out-of-persona role as the villain—it’s true that the film needed an almost-heroic figure as its antagonist for his charm to have any meaning. Clean, simple and effective, 3:10 to Yuma remains a decent western even a few decades later — and a 2007 remake, executed in maximalist fashion but decent in its own right.

  • A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

    A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) The more I discover the Powell/Pressburger filmography, the more I’m impressed by their sense of style, humour and capacity to create sustained narrative interest. A Matter of Life and Death is the fifth of their films that I’ve seen and liked, and as it explores the afterlife as an aviator unexplainably survives a fatal crash, it’s probably the most ambitious of them. Filled with fantastic imagination, it’s also a surprisingly funny film, as the aviator continues to live and gets embroiled in a celestial court case to decide his fate. The interplay between reality and fantasy is very well done, and David Niven is terrific in the lead role (Marius Goring is not too far behind as a Frenchman trying to help the protagonist through his afterlife). A Matter of Life and Death is quite an impressive piece of fantasy filmmaking both from a visual and a narrative standpoint, and it remains somewhat original even decades later. The special effects are rough, but the script definitely has its moments.

  • The Wrong Man (1956)

    The Wrong Man (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) It’s paradoxical yet inevitable that while “the wrong man at the wrong place” ends up being a perfectly valid plot description for much of director Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre, The Wrong Man finds a true story that perfectly fits this description and somehow manages to produce something less involving than pure fiction. A dramatized depiction of real-life events, this is a movie that stars Henry Fonda as an innocent man accused of robbery through bad luck and happenstance. Given its status as a true story (as ponderously announced on camera by Hitchcock himself in the film’s first moments), it’s no surprise if The Wrong Man goes for more of a more realistic atmosphere than many of Hitchcock’s contemporary works. It doesn’t quite feel like one of his movies—the black humour is toned down, the stylistic camera tricks are mostly absent and the return to black-and-white here feels like an accidental rehearsal for Psycho than anything else. The inclusion of a mental health breakdown (toned down from true events) is also a bit of a downer that carries through the end credits. Still, one thing that The Wrong Man does get right is the casting of likable everyman Henry Fonda in the lead, equally able as other heroes in Hitchcock’s filmography. It still works today, but more like an attempt at true-crime realism than a Hitchcockian thriller by itself. But then again, reality is usually duller than fiction.

  • Brubaker (1980)

    Brubaker (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) Making a movie about prison reform, inspired by real-life events, isn’t exactly the most compelling subject matter. But make sure that your hero is a two-fisted reform advocate, pit him against an entire corrupt prison/town/state and given the role to Robert Redford and suddenly Brubaker gets far more interesting. Redford’s legendary charisma is well suited to his role, as he takes on an establishment that actively profits from old-fashioned prison practices. A gallery’s worth of character actors (including Yaphet Kotto, M. Emmet Walsh, Wilford Brimley and very young Morgan Freeman—recognizable by voice rather than by sight) are united against him. This being from a true story, don’t expect a triumphant ending: at most, the character gets applause and an end title card explaining the scandal that erupted afterward. Still, much of Brubaker’s entertainment value comes in seeing an incorruptible character uncover the vast web of old-boys corruption that surrounds the prison, and defending himself against attacks. It does make for dramatic intensity and narrative interest. It also represents a good entry in Redford’s filmography as a progressive champion, a role matching his political interest with his megawatt charm. Plus, he gets to shoot a shotgun, which isn’t to be neglected.

  • Peyton Place (1957)

    Peyton Place (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m not sure it’s possible to put ourselves in the same frame of mind in which audiences first took in Peyton Place. It was the late 1950s, after all, a time at which American society barely started to acknowledge the rampant dysfunction behind its picture-perfect façade. The previous year, Grace Metalious’s novel had become a publishing sensation by acknowledging the rot to be found in small towns, and the film had to tone down or remove much of that material. What remained, however, was enough to create some amount of controversy even at the twilight of the Hays Code era. Of course, we’ve seen much—much—worse since then, and going back to Peyton Place with a modern mindset is closer to “well, what did you expect?” as the town’s sordid secrets are exposed at a time when few took familial abuse seriously. Alas, the result suffers. The film is both far too long at 162 minutes and now too tame to be entirely interesting. Despite the good sequences to be found here and there (most notably Lloyd Nolan as a town-castigating doctor), much of it feels like the talky melodrama it was meant to be. Lana Turner is good in the lead role, but this is really an ensemble cast. The Technicolor cinematography brings a distinctive sheen to the movie, but Mark Robson’s flat direction doesn’t really lead to any cinematographic distinction. I found Peyton Place substantially dull, but then again– I acknowledge that you really can’t perceive the film as audiences did back then.

  • The Crowd (1928)

    The Crowd (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) The concept of Hollywood was in its teenage years when The Crowd was released, and you can almost see in here an inkling of the medium’s maturation. Rather than give in to upper-class melodrama, cheap comedy or grand adventure, writer-director King Vidor’s film chooses to focus on ordinary people. At times, he even makes an ironic point about the unremarkable nature of its characters—despite early proclamation that the protagonist is destined for great things (and him spitting on “the crowd” early on, instantly accumulating karmic debt), we spend most of the film seeing him fall in love, get married, resent his job, get into domestic fights and eventually resigning himself to his own lack of distinction. The Crowd is not exempt from melodrama—there’s a particularly cruel twist of fate two thirds of the way through that seems curiously at odds with the idea of following an ordinary man. Still, our protagonist suffers through the last act before accepting his newfound humility as a member of the crowd, and that’s a fairly unusual point in a medium usually obsessed with the exceptional individual. Where the film does become distinctive even in showing indistinctive people is in its direction. Clearly inspired by the German expressionist school, Vidor goes for some crude but effective special effects and mise-en-scène from time to time. The zoom up a building and into an endless sea of desks to portray work alienation remains a striking sequence, and other moments in the film show impressively symmetrical shot compositions. This is an extraordinary film about ordinary people—not quite a slice-of-life kind of thing, but a grandiose symphony for the common people. I started watching it without particular expectations (I do struggle with non-comic silent movies) and ended up far more impressed than I expected to be. The Crowd strikes me as more accessible and, in many ways, more interesting than many other silent dramas—I suppose that the idea of common people remains just as relevant today.

  • Love Affair (1939)

    Love Affair (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) By sheer happenstance, I happened to have Love Affair waiting on my DVR after watching An Affair to Remember and finding out that it was a remake of this film. Watching both at a few days’ interval only highlighted the similarities between both versions and what it takes to make it work. Both movies are easier than most pairs to analyze: after all, both are (co-)written and directed by Leo McCarey, and both share a structure that is almost scene-per-scene identical. Love Affair is in black-and-white, whereas An Affair to Remember is in Technicolor, but that’s not the most significant difference: Stars Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne are in the lead roles and while they’re certainly not bad or unlikable actors, they simply can’t compare to Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, who shoulders almost all of the remake’s added interest over its progenitor. Perhaps the best example of this difference can be found in the weepy last scene—a bit silly and melodramatic with good actors, but somehow almost convincing with superior ones. Oh, I liked Love Affair well enough, despite thinking that the first half isn’t as funny as the remake’s first half. It’s more even and less frustrating in parts when compared to the melodramatic remake. But even if the remake is flawed, it’s still far more memorable than the first movie. So it goes—Hollywood alchemy, unpredictable and striking at once.

  • Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

    Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) It can be a tough sell to make a movie about a pair of irredeemable villains, but Sweet Smell of Success takes up the challenge with vigour and delivers a compelling movie despite being unable to cheer for any of the two main characters. Tony Curtis has a welcome and somewhat atypical role (at the time; many more followed) as a morally bankrupt publicist who schemes to get in the good graces of an influential and just-as-terrible columnist played by Burt Lancaster. The casting here is a triumph—Curtis’s good looks being commented upon as a façade, and Lancaster being the incarnation of an “intellectual bully” towering over his co-star and glaring down on him through distinctive glasses. Both characters are profoundly immoral in their behaviour, and what saves the film from overwhelming darkness is the presence of a heroine to save (Susan Harrison, looking as cute as her character needs to be in order to earn our affections) and some terrific dialogue that still packs a punch even today. (This is where “The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river” comes from!) The dialogue’s strength and the cohesion of the story are borderline miraculous in that Sweet Smell of Success was essentially being written as it was shot—but this is what happens when you have professionals working from a strong plan and keeping the polish to the end. While the film is light on murders, the noir atmosphere of the story is impossible to miss, what with corruption reigning and people making themselves worse in order to please the Great Corruptor. There’s a sombre atmosphere that makes the ending almost a relief. While the film does lose itself in a few tangents along the way, there’s a steady trickle of strong sequences even in the subplots (the attempt to blackmail another newspaper columnist being a highlight), and a sense of style in director Alexander Mackendrick’s approach that gives a modern urban grittiness to the result. It’s often subtle, but it’s there: The way “Now here you are, Harvey, out in the open where any hep person knows that this one… is toting THAT one… around for you” is handled is good stuff. You can quote that film for days, but what carries even longer is Curtis and Lancaster going at each other, with the audience rooting for no one in particular. Sweet Smell of Success often gets a mention as one of the top movies of the 1950s, and it’s not hard to see why.

  • Mommie Dearest (1981)

    Mommie Dearest (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) Even though I’m moderately knowledgeable about movies, I’m still often surprised by the stories that I unlock in researching movies prior to these capsule reviews. Obviously, I knew of Joan Crawford, and her relatively small modern profile (especially when compared to Bette Davis, with whom she legendarily feuded), and the tarnishing of the Golden Age of Hollywood idols, and Faye Dunaway’s decline as an actress throughout the 1980s. But prior to watching and reading about Mommie Dearest, I was certainly missing on a piece of the puzzle that linked all of these things together. To put it simply: Mommie Dearest is an adaptation of a biography by Crawford’s adopted daughter, in which she revealed that her “mommie dearest” was a cold-hearted parent, a child abuser, and an overall wreck. In film history, Mommie Dearest was the first landmark in a series of books by children of Classic Hollywood stars that unbolted their saintlike public image. Many followed, but Mommie Dearest had a bigger impact than most in that much of it was corroborated, and it led to a movie whose execution, to put it charitably, maximized the tragic arc of the story. Faye Dunaway here plays Crawford as a quasi-caricatural monster, and the first half-hour of the film is the depiction of one episode of child abuse after another, as the mom terrifies her daughter in ways that are actively unpleasant to watch. (The famous “Wire Hanger” scene is one for the history books even in its French dubbed version: my cat, who can normally tolerate the worst horror movies with supreme feline detachment, had her ears pointed sideways in alarm at the screaming in the sequence… and I wasn’t necessarily any more detached.) I’m told that the film earned an unplanned reputation as an over-the-top camp classic of unintentional hilarity, but I’m not subscribing to that viewpoint. While some sequences do attain a certain comic level of scenery-chewing, there’s only so much outright child abuse that anyone can tolerate, and despite Dunaway’s unhinged performance, the character she plays is an out-and-out harridan who clearly should not have any kids. It’s that character portrait that still makes Mommie Dearest ghastly intriguing to watch today: the raw mother/daughter feud, and how it fed into the falsity of their public appearances at the time. It’s hard to say whether the book or the movie had a bigger impact on Crawford’s reputation, but I note with some interest that Crawford’s star was considerably dimmed compared to some better-behaved contemporaries. Everyone has taken sides for Bette Davis in the Davis/Crawford feud, and Crawford is now seldom mentioned without sideways glances at her personal life. I suppose that Crawford’s lesser body of work may have something to do with it (She’s distinctive in her Oscar-winning performance in Mildred Pierce and not much else), but comparing the way she’s discussed to that of comparable stars of the same period is instructive. There’s an argument to be made that Faye Dunaway’s performance here was too good for her own good: While she was a superstar in the 1970s, her filmography dimmed significantly in the 1980s following the acid reception of this film. That’s quite a lot of material for a film to touch upon, but only a few other films so clearly attack the reputation of a former Hollywood icon as savagely as this one. (Have a look at The Lives and Deaths of Peter Sellers and The Girl for further examples.)

  • The Ward (2010)

    The Ward (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m sure John Carpenter had a lot of fun coming back to moviemaking in The Ward, after a decade away from feature film directing. On some levels, it does have the hallmarks of classic Carpenter movies: the isolated setting, horror minimalism, subjective levels of reality and potential to simply scare the pants off its audience. Taking place in a 1960s insane asylum, it features a group of girls being picked off by an evil presence, and our heroine trying to avoid being the next one. It’s clearly a horror movie, but it touches upon women-in-prison tropes (I really liked seeing Lyndsy Fonseca in old-school glasses, for instance) and ends on a hallucinatory note. There are clearly flashes of Carpenter doing stuff that he likes: As a veteran director, he knows how to block a scene, use his camera for suspense and lead an atmospheric horror movie. Unfortunately, none of these flashes of interest amount to much of an overall film. The final twist feels overused in a genre that has often used something similar; Amber Heard isn’t that distinctive as a lead actress and much of the film is spent going through the usual cascade of death sequences until the plot gets moving again. The Ward is clearly better than Carpenter’s 2001 Ghosts of Mars, but that’s not much of a recommendation. A decade later, this remains Carpenter’s last work as a director and it ends his career with a half-whimper rather than a bang.