Reviews

  • Coogan’s Bluff (1968)

    Coogan’s Bluff (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) I unintentionally built myself a hippies-as-seen-from-1968 double feature while watching I Love You Alice B. Toklas and Coogan’s Bluff back-to-back. My favourite is an easy pick—not only is Coogan’s Bluff far less annoying than the first film in this double bill, but it’s an interesting bridge between Clint Eastwood’s western roles and his Dirty Harry tough-guy persona. The transition from one to the other is nearly literal, as he plays an Arizona rural lawman travelling to Manhattan to extradite a fugitive. The film plays quite a bit with the clash of culture that this implies, with the staid and conservative protagonist confronting Manhattan as a den of crime and perversion, discovering the hippie subculture along the way. But Coogan’s Bluff is not so much a sociological study as a crime thriller, with Eastwood chasing down the escaped fugitive with detectorial savvy and two-fisted vigour. As a portrait of late-1960s New York City, it’s not bad—more clean-cut than the blaxploitation films that would pop up soon afterward, but still evocative at the street level. For Eastwood fans and film historians, Coogan’s Bluff is most notable for being the first collaboration between Eastwood (an actor often quick to tell directors what to do) and director Don Siegel, which would turn out to be the first of five films they would do together. It also definitely feels like a first draft of the kinds of characters that Eastwood would adopt as persona over the following two decades, and exactly the kind of meaner-tougher film that would dominate the 1970s. It still plays rather well now (although watch out for the blunt sexism), and gives viewers a prime-era Eastwood in late-1960s Manhattan.

    (Second viewing, On TV, November 2020) There are two things that I find interesting about Coogan’s Bluff, a contemporary crime thriller featuring Clint Eastwood as a tough Arizona lawman sent to New York City in order to capture a fugitive. The first being that this is a film that combines a very familiar Eastwood character (the laconic western gunslinger) with the late-sixties trend of trying to figure out the new shape of the society that changed during the decade. So it is that we have a typical Eastwood character taken out of westerns in order to figure out what to do with those punks, hippies, city slickers and women abusers. If you’re thinking that Eastwood revisited similar territory later on in later archetypical movies such as Dirty Harry, that brings us to the second interesting thing about Coogan’s bluff: that it was directed by Don Siegel. Siegel, of course, was one of the very few directors that Eastwood ever tolerated well, leading to four subsequent collaborations, including—you guessed it—the 1971 urban thriller exemplar Dirty Harry. There’s a city-mouse-in-the-city quality to Eastwood’s squinty trip to the decadent Big Apple that clearly plays on stereotypes that would grow even stronger in the gritty 1970s, and if Coogan’s Bluff keeps things a bit less dark than many of its imitators, it still plays on what would later become well-known tropes. But perhaps more significantly, it does appear like a crucial turning point for Eastwood, bridging two phases of his career as an actor, literally taking his persona from the Wild West to the Big City.

  • I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968)

    I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) One of the advantages of watching movies, taking notes, but coming back to edit those notes into a coherent review months (even years!) later is that in that way you get a perspective that just wouldn’t apply for a review written immediately after. So it is that I can tell you with confidence, four years after the fact, that the title song of I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! is a formidable earworm — I can still hum the chorus despite not having heard it since watching the film. I didn’t say it’s a good song—just a memorable one, and that stands for the film as well. It’s representative of an era, obviously — Peter Sellers (ugh) plays a straight-laced lawyer who ends up discovering the hippie subculture through a free-spirited girl, and that’s how we get a near-documentary take on how America perceived hippies in the late 1960s. It’s sort-of-interesting from an anthropological point of view, but again that doesn’t make it good. While I don’t like Sellers all that much, he’s more tolerable than usual here as the disaffected young man who leaves his staid life behind to explore what the counterculture has to offer. Tellingly, the film has him eventually reject the hippie lifestyle, but not necessarily going back to his own personal conservatism. The comic setpiece of the film is an early variation on the now-cliché “unsuspecting people eat drug-laced brownies” trope — I’m not sure it’s the earliest such scene, but it’s played in such a straight way that it feels like it. But my problem with I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! is that, well, it’s that it’s an annoying film. It doesn’t quite glorify hippies (one of the protagonist’s third-act epiphanies is that the free-spirited girl is quite shallow) but it does look at them from a gawking point of view, and the character arc feels very conventional. It probably aged a bit better than it could have had the script been worse, but it has aged, and it has aged worse than other movies at the time that were either more serious or wilder about their approach to the counterculture. But the most annoying thing may be the earworm title song, which pops up far more often than you’d think, driving itself into your brain and becoming more inane every time. It’s annoying, and it transfers its annoyance to the film itself. In the end, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! is best recommended to Sellers completists (those poor souls) and anyone curious about contemporary depictions of the hippie movement.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, November 2020) I may have liked Peters Sellers at some point, but that was quickly damaged by his exasperating son-screen showboating, and then extinguished by the two biographies I have read/seen about him. Nearly every movie of his I see now carries the baggage of knowing far too much about him and the rampaging egomaniac that he was. For I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, it doesn’t help that the film has aged poorly and ends on a conclusion fit to frustrate anyone. Sellers here plays a straight-laced Los Angeles lawyer who, inevitably enough, comes to be seduced by the wild, drug-taking, free-loving hippie subculture. Considering the date of the film, that should not be a big surprise—soon he dumps his fiancée at the altar, lets his hair grow long, opens his house to all sorts of groovy people and awaits the epiphany that he’s gone too far. But while the film presents thesis and antithesis, it skips out on the synthesis as it (as a product of its time), opines that the truth is somewhere else and ends at that point, irresponsibly letting his fiancée at the altar for a second time (where, one hopes, she’ll catch her final clue). Sellers once again indulges far too much on the creepy aging lothario angle, although he does keep the funny voices in check for once. While the look at 1960s counterculture can be intriguing, there really isn’t much in the film that feels particularly insightful or new—although comedy historians may note an early example of the “brownies eaten by unsuspecting straight-laced people” trope. It feels equally suffocating both in showing the mainstream and the counterculture, which I suppose is the point but at least could have outlined something else rather than quitting midway through. Plus, well, I don’t like Sellers in either short or long hair, leaving little else to say about the film. The title tune is admittedly catchy, although it remains to be seen whether it’s really catchy or simply drilled into our heads through endless repetition.

  • Idi i smotri [Come and See] (1985)

    Idi i smotri [Come and See] (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) A regular title on Top-100 movie lists, Come and See is unabashedly about the horrors of war, specifically as seen through the eyes of kids forced to grow up too soon. Set during World War II, it follows a Soviet boy as he picks up a rifle and becomes a resistance fighter against the invading Nazis. One of the biggest ironies of the film is that while it’s hard to imagine a more justifiable scenario in which to fight than resisting Nazis, the film pulls absolutely no punches in highlighting that war is hell even in the most understandable of circumstances. What could have been a propaganda film turns into a resolutely anti-war statement. Writer-director Elem Klimov doesn’t flinch and barely provides release in the downbeat arc of the narrative: This brutal film steadily gets grimmer at every passing minute. As a piece of filmmaking, it’s quite an achievement— Come and See ends on a reverse-montage sequence that is still hailed as a landmark. Indeed, the film is such a definitive statement that Klimov never made another movie after this one. You can see why it ends up on so many best-movies lists. You should definitely see it. But maybe just once.

  • Night of the Lepus (1972)

    Night of the Lepus (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) I’ve been waiting to see Night of the Lepus for the past twenty years, ever since a snippet of it was featured in The Matrix. Predictably, it doesn’t live up to the hype—unless you’re expecting a B-grade midnight-movie kind of thing, in which case it definitely has its moments. Riffing on very early-1970s ideas about overpopulation, director William F. Claxton’s film presents as evil antagonists nothing but… gigantic cuddly rabbits. It’s really amazing what a bit of ominously slow-motion macrography can do, although you’ll have to either reluctantly suspend your disbelief or just revel in the sheer absurdity of it all. Alas, rabbits aside (although there is really no Night of the Lepus with “rabbits aside”), the film isn’t that good. The first half is a bit dull, while the second half becomes only slightly more enjoyable on a pure camp level. Even today, you can imagine the midnight-movie crowd whooping it up at some of the most over-the-top sequences. Janet Leigh stars in this MGM production, which clearly fits it in the “Classic Hollywood stars stuck in 1970s B-grade horror movies from the studios’ dying gasps” genre. Despite its weaknesses, I almost recommend seeing Night of the Lepus—it’s gloriously stupid enough to offset most of its most lifeless moments. This being said, you almost have to know how to watch bad B-movies before tackling this one, because there’s no way it’s good in a traditional sense.

  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

    Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) That new Monsterverse series is really going in all directions. I was lukewarm on the Godzilla reboot, more enthusiastic about Kong Island, and am back to tepid positivity about Godzilla: King of the Monsters. This sequel goes for volume rather than quantity, leaving viewers exhausted by the end of it. Holding little back from the kaiju bestiary, it also multiplies the characters (most of them played by known actors) and goes for several set-pieces from the beginning of the film onward. It’s big-budget blockbuster filmmaking all right, but there’s an argument that it’s too much, goes on for too long and features too much stuff. It’s as if we skipped a movie between Godzilla and this—although you can argue that Godzilla: King of the Monsters is merely a step up to the Kong versus Godzilla film that the coda sets up. It’s not too clear where things are going otherwise—as much as I enjoy bits and pieces of the “Monarch” mythology being set up here in an attempt to make kaijus credible to twenty-first century audiences, it’s also clear that a lot of stuff is being made up as the films accumulate—it looks as if we’re going to explore the hollow earth next, which may or may not work. Acting-wise, the highlight is Bradley Whitford’s character, while Vera Farmiga as a mad scientist is not something I was expecting. On a happier note, Boston is the city that gets trashed this time around (including the John Hancock building): while I do like Boston a lot, it’s one of the few cities that could be improved by wiping it clean and redoing the street plan. That happy thought aside, Godzilla: King of the Monsters may end up being made stronger or weaker on the basis of its follow-up: a good development of the ideas here may rehabilitate it somewhat, while a bad one could make the film seem even less significant. And so it goes with those new franchises desperately downplaying the individual film aspect—you never know what you’re going to get, except in those cases where they get so bad that audiences stop flocking to them.

  • The Stuff (1985)

    The Stuff (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) If you’re familiar with writer-director Larry Cohen’s 1970s–1980s filmography, then The Stuff makes complete sense. Everyone else, though… be ready for a wild ride. Avowedly more satirical than horrifying, the movie revolves around a creamy-white substance oozing from the ground that is quickly marketed as America’s latest dessert sensation… until it turns people into mindless zombies. The commentary on consumerism may be a bit too obvious by now, but the B-movies goodness of seeing people consume and being consumed by the white stuff still remains a lot of fun. The Stuff squarely goes for the rich and still-untapped vein of what can be called social horror—in which everyone is doing things that are harmful to everyone. It also goes in places seldom seen in horror, such as industrial settings and possible complicity in the upper echelons of business. All good stuff, if you’ll pardon the expression. But even if The Stuff can remain a cult favourite, it’s still a bit too messy to be as effective as it could be. Even discounting the satirical intention, the plotting is messy and doesn’t sustain a lot of scrutiny. The zigzagging plot could have used some rigour, and the ending doesn’t quite knock it out of the park. Still, it’s memorable for more or less the right reasons: being dissatisfied with the narrative should not stop anyone from seeing The Stuff it its madcap glory.

  • Winchester ’73 (1950)

    Winchester ’73 (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) There’s something interesting in that the film credited with jump-starting James Stewart’s run of 1950s Westerns is one that thematically delves into one of the central symbols of the western: the gun. Titled for the gun, revolving around the gun, propelled by the gun, almost entirely focused on the gun, Winchester ’73 both plays on the attraction of the gun and comments on how crazy it is that such an object could lead to murderous passion. This tension serves the film well, especially since it also applies to the redefinition of James Stewart into a rougher, more disillusioned persona—perhaps reflecting the lasting echoes of a war that left no one innocent, perhaps simply acknowledging one of the phase transitions that actors with long careers must face. This ended up being the first of eight collaborations between director Anthony Mann and James Stewart, many of them westerns that started asking questions about the mythology of the west. The film may star Stewart, but the plot favours the gun—the protagonist wins it in a shooting contest early on, then spends the rest of the film trying to get it back from a thief and everyone else who wants the gun for themselves. It’s rich thematic material even if the film doesn’t quite have the sophistication (or the guts) to fully explore what it means. Still, what Winchester ’73 does for its time is quite remarkable. There’s a near-mystical quality given to the titular gun and to all guns in general, even the Native American characters lusting after them as much as the white characters. All of this is accomplished with a big budget and good production values, meaning that the film remains interesting even if you’re not interested in digging into its meaning. Stewart is also remarkable, taking on a darker role with relish. Opinions are split as to whether this or later movies are the best of the Mann/Stewart era, but even as a first effort Winchester ’73 is worth a look.

  • Society (1989)

    Society (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2020) When a crazy body-horror comedy takes on a title like Society, it’s a fair bet that we’re in for a much wilder ride than a simple late-1980s slasher. Conflating society-at-large with a specific secret society of nameless horrors in Los Angeles’ upper class, this is a film that follows the growing horror of a young disaffected man who comes to suspect that there’s something far more sinister than anyone would expect behind closed doors. Director Brian Yuzna takes sheer delight is messing with his audience early and often, playing the uncanny discomfort along with the gaslighting, the uncertainly about what is really happening and the disquieting soundtrack. Society, among other problems, arguably overplay sits hand early on, leading to frayed nerves and disbelief well before the first hour is through. By the time our misfit-with-issues protagonist (a fitting character for a teenager who doesn’t even feel he’s part of his own family) sees impossible things through a shower door, or a hand that should not be where a hand should be, it’s easy to doubt everything in the film. But Society does redeem itself with one of the craziest ending sequences of its decade (which is saying a lot)—a nightmare of pulsating flesh, ultra-dark humour, surrealism, social criticism, terrifying makeup effects, and existential invitations to annihilation into the whole. It’s a lot, and perhaps the worst about Society is also the best: This is a lot to take in and the execution of the film isn’t slick enough to do it all justice. Yuzna’s first-time direction is a bit of a mess with disorienting transitions and I’m not sure that the much-discussed ending actually sticks the landing in carrying the film’s themes to completion. Despite its faults, though, I am fascinated, seduced and amused by Society. It’s certainly kinky and sexy—although keep in mind that, having come of age in the late-1980s, I will always be partial to the kinds of hairstyles and clothing shown here—There are some nice bikini bunnies here, and Devin Devasquez is nothing short of whew. (I really would not have minded if the Big Secret was just some kind of weird sex cult without the body horror, but I guess that’s just me.) The other thing I really like about Society is that it seldom forgets to be funny. The final sequence is disgusting but not repulsive due to some well-placed touches of off-beat humour, and the film is very much aware of just how transgressive it’s trying to be. The ending is unexpectedly happy for the protagonist and his friends, which works in one way while not working in others. Anyway— I suspect I’m going to revisit Society within a few years, because there’s a lot to unpack here and I feel as if I’m just done with the essentials.

  • Sex and the Single Girl (1964)

    Sex and the Single Girl (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) The sex comedy subgenre of the early-to-mid-1960s has not aged well at all, and yet it remains curiously irresistible. I could watch several of those films one after the other—the only thing stopping me is that I would run out of them too quickly. So it is that Sex and the Single Girl has both a prime-era Tony Curtis and a spectacular stockings-clad Natalie Wood battling it out romantically against the dual backgrounds of psychiatry and Manhattan magazine publishing. (I strongly suspect that this was one of the main sources of inspiration for 2003’s pastiche Down with Love.) Having Henry Fonda and a gorgeous Lauren Bacall in supporting roles really doesn’t hurt either, even if their roles are underwritten. While the film itself does miss several comic opportunities and could have been more sharply written, there’s a lot of fun to be had simply plunging into the film’s atmosphere, rediscovering relics from another time (gags from coin-operated devices?) and enjoying the naughty-but-not-vulgar style of that era’s guiltless sex comedies. Pure wholesome fun is the special glue holding these films together despite their specific weaknesses. Wood’s Audrey-Hepburnesque qualities are in full display here, and Curtis is at his most Curtisesque all the way to a reference to Some Like it Hot. While the film could have been written more carefully, there’s a deliberate approach to its idiot-plot structure, with misunderstandings and misdirection between characters growing bigger and wilder every minute, climaxing with a consciously self-aware highway climax that’s a pack-and-a-half of logistics to juggle. By the time the characters are all chomping down on pretzels, it’s all non-stop joy that ends remarkably well. I could certainly go for another film much like Sex and the Single Girl right now. A shame they’re not making them like this any more, even with the disappointing writing.

  • The Last Dragonslayer (2016)

    The Last Dragonslayer (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) It’s always a treat to see a movie adaptation of a favourite author’s novels—even if you haven’t read that specific novel. I should explain that while I read nearly all of Jasper Fforde’s pre-2010 output, my reading regimen fell off a cliff after that date, and I haven’t necessarily placed Fforde’s Young-Adult output on my priority reading list since then. Still—Fforde’s wild imagination deserves more attention, and even a low-budget TV movie is a way to experience his trademark style in a different way. Let’s get the obvious out of the way—as a modestly budgeted TV show tackling a fantasy story set in a world where the modern flirts with the magical, The Last Dragonslayer is not without technical issues, dodgy special effects (although roughly on par with 1996’s Dragonheart, so there’s that), awkward cost-cutting cinematography and less-than-stellar technical credentials. But even in that framework, the film punches above its weight. The Fforde-infused imagination certainly helps, as part of the film’s fun is plunging into an alternate reality that accommodates the Internet and dragons at once. Ellise Chappell is quite appealing as the titular dragonslayer who’s not all that keen on escaping a modest upbringing to be asked to go kill a dragon she has no quarrels with. The film’s takes on familiar fantasy tropes in a world that blends modern tropes with the traditional ones is a lot of fun, and it comes with a healthy dose of satire that harkens back to Jasper’s earlier adult novels. There are links here with The Boy Who Would be King—both would make an excellent double feature. I’m not sure someone will ever dare consider tackling Fforde’s other novels to the big screen, but The Last Dragonslayer is quite nice for what it is.

  • The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920)

    The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) It’s easy to become fascinated by the few surviving movies of Oscar Michaux, the first black film mogul. He was making, as early as the 1910s, movies by and for black audiences, with an uncompromising point of view. Most astonishing of all is how tenuously his movies are still with us today—The Symbol of the Unconquered, for instance, has survived a hundred years thanks to a single copy found in Europe, in another language. It’s rough, of course, but the restored and back-translated film holds fascination as much for what it represents than what it is. Justly conceived as an answer to the massively-seen (and just as massively-racist) film The Birth of a Nation, it’s a film that squarely aims at the newly-resurgent KKK and features an appealing black couple fighting back against the racist whites. (Well, they’re not a couple at the time—among other issues tackled by the dense 54-minute film are considerations of self-image when passing white.)  It’s always satisfying to see racists get their comeuppance as worthy targets of scorn, but there’s an added resonance in seeing such a thing in a 1920 movie. The film is not, to be said, that good by itself—there are weird tangents, rough technical issues, and they weren’t able to rescue the entire film from that single European copy—the climactic defeat of the KKK isn’t shown, for instance. Still, the passion is there, Iris Hall looks wonderful, and the film actually stands for something. Countless digital copies of The Symbol of the Unconquered now exist (even from the film’s Wikipedia page) and hopefully we’ll never get close again to the possibility of losing this film.

  • A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

    A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) The best and truest thing anyone can still say about A Letter to Three Wives is that it’s really clever—it’s a straight-up domestic drama, but it’s structured in such an irresistible way (a letter is sent by a woman of ill repute to three wives, telling them that she’s run off with one of their husbands… and then the flashbacks and suspense begin) that it feels a great deal more dramatic than had it been more classically structured. It’s all from writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, which made me think—have I ever seen anything from him that wasn’t interesting? (Good, not necessarily, but uninteresting?) The distinctive premise is a great hook, but once you add the unusual structure, the sharply-written characters, the exceptional bon mots and the beautiful rendition of the late-1940s, it’s a spectacular movie. There’s some sex appeal too—Linda Darnelle looks amazing in that glowing Classic Hollywood studio sheen, and a young Kirk Douglas gets a few good moments as a fed-up schoolteacher. You can even use the film as a prism to look at the fractures in the American institution of marriage in the immediate postwar era. But we always go back to the writing, the strong mystery at the heart of the story—Who is that Addie Ross woman, so perfect and beloved by all three husbands? Unexpectedly enough given its world-weary nature, the film even delivers a happy ending of sorts. It’s all wrapped up in terrific narration, even is it steps out of the film’s strict realism. A Letter to Three Wives is remarkably good even for those who don’t care too much for mainstream dramas—a testament to the power of great writing. [August 2021: Wait, The Simpsons lifted an entire episode’s premise off this film? It’s a TV show that has always had surprising depth to its movie references, but even for them, that’s a deep cut.]

  • Father’s Little Dividend (1951)

    Father’s Little Dividend (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) If you’re still annoyed at how Steve Martin (or rather Nancy Meyers) screwed up 1995’s Father of the Bride Part II, I’ve got mixed news for you. For one thing, Martin and Meyer weren’t completely making it up by themselves—the sequel was also a remake of 1951’s Father’s Little Divided, with the main plot (the father of the bride becomes a grandfather; angst ensues) inevitably making up the main arc of the follow-up. The good news is that the 1951 film wisely stopped there—there wasn’t a ludicrous subplot about the wife of the father of the bride becoming pregnant at 49, and that’s for the better. Focusing on the original does highlight how much the remake mishandled fundamental elements. Here, the essence of the film remains a universal experience—how do men go through the perception shift of thinking of themselves as grandfathers? Once again, Spencer Tracy makes for the perfect everyman going through a universally relatable scenario. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Taylor is cute but slightly wasted in the role of a young expectant mother—the focus, unfortunately, is squarely on her father without much interest in what she’s going through. While generally likable and still resonant, the film doesn’t equal its predecessor and highlights how values have shifted in the decades since then—the last set-piece of the film before its happy ending (grandpa losing a baby due to inattentiveness) is now nothing short of hair-raising, and that may stop some viewers from embracing the result entirely. (Still, that scene is notable for one interesting constant—Grandpa doesn’t become grandpa at his grandson’s birth, but later on once his self-image catches up to the events.) Still, the film survives this plotting bump thanks to Tracy’s always-sympathetic performance and some warm direction from Vincente Minelli. It may not be enough to smooth over the 1950s attitudes so prevalent here—there’s a lot of “well, accounting for the times…” required to get to the universality of the film. Still, my bold theory is that the 1951 film is still more relatable than the frantic 1995 remake that didn’t trust itself to tell a simple story without making it a frantic two-ring circus. If you’re going to make a film about a rite of passage for older men, why not focus on that? One final piece of trivia that may escape modern viewers: Father’s Little Dividend was released less than a year after Father of the Bride: a breakneck production pace that may explain why this sequel doesn’t quite rise to the level of the first film despite a good attempt.

  • Titanic (1953)

    Titanic (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) Most movies are released, seen, discussed and then slowly fade away from memory. A few have the arguably worse fate of permanently being overshadowed by a sequel or remake. While the 1953 version of Titanic wasn’t necessarily remade by the blockbusting 1997 version, there’s only so many ways you can tell the same story, and so both movies will remain forever linked. It’s certainly not the only “earlier version” of the Titanic story (Wikipedia helpfully lists at least three more of those films made prior to 1953), but it’s the one with the most star power, what with Barbara Stanwyck and a very young Robert Wagner in the cast. It’s also one with the bigger budgets, although that money did not stretch to cover historical accuracy—there are significant issues here in terms of factual history, which is highlighted by some generic subplots running through the film in typical Hollywood fashion. The drama is staid, but it does have its moments. Special effects are fair for the time, which may not pass muster today. Considering the film’s context, unflattering comparisons with the 1997 version may not wrong, but they may be misguided—this was blockbuster filmmaking in the early 1950s, and you can almost feel the wheels turning toward the kind of wide-scale spectacle that would be popular toward the end of the decade. A better comparison is with the near-contemporary but superior 1958 film A Night to Remember.

  • Qimen Dunjia [The Thousand Faces of Dunjia] (2017)

    Qimen Dunjia [The Thousand Faces of Dunjia] (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2020) I hadn’t seen a wuxia fantasy film in a while, and that probably explains why I enjoyed The Thousand Faces of Dunjia so much despite it being difficult to follow and overwhelmed by bad CGI rather than practical action. It certainly has good credentials from the get-go, what with writer-director Tsui Hark and director Yuen Woo-ping—and a potentially rich formula in hand in building a fantasy action film. If it works, it’s on energy and speed more than on wit and finesse: the story about an adventurer fighting magical monsters is simple enough to follow, but (maybe because of subtitles) the moment-to-moment continuity of the plot can be challenging at times. More troublesome are the film’s tonal issues oscillating between very serious fantasy drama and much goofier comedy gags. When it comes to the visual effects, it’s a bit of a mixed bag as well: while there’s something interesting in seeing opening credits and chapter titles integrated in the environment inhabited by the characters, most of the film’s CGI is bad to the point of looking like pre-visualization attempts rather than polished special effects. This being said, there is a lot of such CGI exuberance, and it does lend some energy to the result. The pacing of the film is uneven, but the wild imagination is there and so there’s something to see every five minutes, guaranteed. Plus, there’s Dongyu Zhou as Circle and Ni Ni as Dragonfly to keep things interesting. It’s regrettable that The Thousand Faces of Dunjia is not that good a martial arts film given the amount of CGI and monsters, but there are fights enough to fill the two hours of the movie. It may not be the best of that subgenre, but it’s entertaining enough to be satisfying.