Reviews

  • Il conformista [The Conformist] (1970)

    Il conformista [The Conformist] (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Google Play Streaming, December 2019) There are two or three movies in writer-director Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, and they’re far from being as interesting. The first has to do with an Italian man in 1930s fascist Italy, desperately trying to fit in normal society. He gets married for the appearance of it, he takes a job in the secret police because it’s the quickest way to attach himself to the state, and he does his best not to stand out—there’s an intriguing premise here all right, except that the film seems intent on reducing his personality quirk to a single childhood incident and ends up in homophobia along the way. (A far more empathic take on the same topic would have been possible, but that’s not what Bertolucci is interested in doing nor what the original novel was doing.)  The second third of the film has our newly married protagonist going to Paris to reconnect with an old teacher, and to kill him. But there’s the teacher’s wife and a quickly sketched love triangle to complicate things. Finally, there’s a depressing third act to the film, back in Italy, where the point is to show how things fall apart. What does bring the film together is a strong sense of visual style, with a stunning use of fascist-era architecture and impeccable visual composition. The Conformist may be disappointing in the way it ties (or doesn’t) its story threads, but it’s still worth a look of a sheer visual basis alone. The genre elements of the impending assassination prevent the film from sinking into mainstream drama morass, while the striking visuals help distinguish it from strict neorealism. It’s still of limited interest, but it does have some interest and that is more than I can say about other similar movies of the era.

  • The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

    The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on-Demand, December 2019) On one level, The Spy Who Dumped Me feels intensely familiar. There’s been quite a few female-centric R-rated action comedies lately, and this film fits right -in-between Spy and The Heat and Bad Moms and Ghostbusters and so on. Here we have two thirtysomething underachievers being swept in international spying intrigue after the ex-boyfriend of one of them is revealed to be a secret agent. On one level, the film can be a bit of fun: Mila Kunis plays the straight girl, while Kate McKinnon once again steals the movie thanks to a far more uninhibited character. There’s a classic dynamic at play here, and as they traipse throughout Europe trying to remain ahead of the shadowy forces after them, it’s an excuse for a few action set-pieces. Where the film limits its appeal, unfortunately, is in an over-the-top amount of gore and violence that stop the viewers from enjoying the film on a purely PG-13 rated level. (Let me rephrase: the sweet spot of such movies is with PG-rated violence with R-rated verbal comedy.)  In having this issue, The Spy Who Dumped Me is also very similar to other recent comedies going too far in gory violence: You can name The Hitman’s Bodyguard and Pain & Gain as two semi-recent films with that exact same problem.  At some point we must wonder—how did we end up here, in that a gag in which the putative protagonist cuts off a dead man’s thumb to activate his phone (and stores it in a lipstick tube) is considered acceptable? The film would have been far more accessible in toning down the sometimes-gratuitous deaths that litter the story, and focus on the innate chemistry between Kunis and McKinnon. It does move quickly, has a steady rhythm of jokes but something off-putting in the ever-increasing amount of gore in comedies that leaves me concerned, and The Spy Who Dumped Me is as good an example as many at how it limits the appeal of the result.

  • Christopher Robin (2018)

    Christopher Robin (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2019) Disney studio executives must have terrible family lives considering the number of family movies they greenlight that include a father who must learn to spend less time at work and more time with the kids. (Do people really need to be told that stuff, or is this the kind of unarguable dramatic arc that gets a free pass every time?)  Christopher Robin is the latest in this long trend, as it features Winnie the Pooh’s human protagonist as a grown-up man without a shred of imagination who must choose between overtime and family time, not to mention loyalty to his employees or efficiently cost-cutting for his company. You will not be surprised by the choice he makes early in the film, or the one he makes at the conclusion of it. There is an obvious mechanistic aspect to Marc Forster’s direction that comes from the screenplay itself—I won’t even bother describing the middle portion of the plot, so clearly is it developed from the central premise. But even in its CGI-heavy execution, the film does manage to poke now and then at the innate charm of the Hundred Acre Wood. The cast of characters comes to life in convincing fashion (the film was nominated for several Special Effects awards) and the script doesn’t send unexpected curveballs. Still, I wonder about the limits of using a midlife crisis as an excuse for a family film—surely there’s no need to bother kids with mild adult-onset depression. Why are Disney executives regurgitating their therapy sessions on-screen?

  • Instant Family (2018)

    Instant Family (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2019) I expected something quite different from Instant Family. At first glance of the plot summary, I expected a melodramatic paean to reconstituted family, what with a log-line having to do with a couple adopting three children at once. But I had missed a crucial name in the log line, which is to say director Sean Anders, who helmed such movies as Horrible Bosses 2, and both instalments of the Daddy’s Home series. Reuniting with Mark Wahlberg, the result often plays into the comic brand favoured by Wahlberg, with the expected sentimental fillip at the end. The hook here is a likable couple (Wahlberg and Rose Byrne, once again proving her talents for comedy) deciding to adopt a kid, but finding themselves unwilling to break up the group of three siblings. Having instantly acquired a family of five, our protagonists have quite a few adventures in store. The laughs, fortunately, are there: There’s a memorable Christmas meal that got a few laughs out of me, and some of the support group materials is so natural (in a good way) that it feels improvised. But while Instant Family spends some time in fun and games, it all leads to a surprisingly heartfelt conclusion in which all the emotional strings are cleverly tightened. There is a bit of an expected plot cheat when it comes to resolving the issue of the biological mother acting as a loose antagonist, but you can’t have the happy ending without resolving that one. In the same mode than the Daddy’s Home series but somewhat more successful on the emotional front, Instant Family is a pleasant surprise fit for family viewing.

  • Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

    Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Cineplex streaming, December 2019) Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 is such a landmark in prose science fiction that it deserves the best adaptation it can get. Unfortunately, the 2018 HBO movie wasn’t it (despite some clever ideas to update the premise to a digital age), and neither is François Truffaut’s 1966 adaptation. There is an inherent coldness (for lack of a better word) to his Fahrenheit 451 that makes it difficult to embrace, even if you wholeheartedly embrace its message. The issues raised by the story are noble and admirable, as books becomes the symbol for intellectual curiosity, diverse thinking, deeper empathy and nuanced entertainment. Bradbury may have ruffled a few feathers late in life when he claimed that his book was less about censorship and more about the rise of TV, but this movie adaptation certainly goes in this direction, as characters as mesmerized by personalized entertainment telling them what to do and how to think. You would think that the 1960s vision of future technology and frankly bizarre gadgets would take away from the experience, but on the contrary the weird future-from-the-1960s ideas are a great reason to watch the film even today, as they add a fascinating layer of alternate paths not taken. Still, Truffaut mistakes a cold-minded society with cold behaviour from its citizens, and the result looks emotionally stunted. (We now know that thought control is arguably easier when people get into rages and feel as if they get to express themselves against something.) The vision shown here looks far too antiseptic, and it trips on itself when it tries to be a bit too literal about what’s best shown metaphorically in the original book. No, I’m not talking about the woman setting herself on fire when her books are threatened—that’s still effective. I am, however, thinking about the ending in which people become books and pass the words to others: that may have read poetically on the page with a generous dollop of allegory, but on the screen it just feels faintly ridiculous, and perhaps sadder than expected. (The HBO adaptation keeps the self-immolating woman but finds a better conclusion.)  I’m still reasonably happy about Fahrenheit 451—Truffaut was a fun filmmaker—but it’s not ideal, and its limitations take away from what should be a stronger message.

  • Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

    Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2019) Much has already been written about Disney’s all-out effort to sell generations’ worth of its own pop-culture reference back to modern audiences, and at times it feels as if Mary Poppins Returns is an exemplar of that effort. Ripping off an earlier classic as a matter of course, this sequel seems happy to simply go through the same kind of story, the same kind of songs, the same kind of structure, the same kind of jokes. It’s competently made, amiable enough, and with some spectacular special effects to sweeten the deal, but it does struggle to justify its own existence as anything more than a money grab. Artistically, none of the songs or musical numbers seemed to grab me on first viewing—although I suspect that “The Cover Is Not the Book” and “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” may do better on re-watch. The cast is quite good, with Emily Blunt turning in as a perfectly decent Mary Poppins—I particularly liked her somewhat harsher tone this time around. Lin-Manuel Miranda is also a highlight, although only occasionally used to the fullest extent of his skills. Still, for all the prodigious technical skills used to make Mary Poppins Return, the impact is considerably lessened. I don’t think that there’s a single pixel of the result that hasn’t been meticulously art-directed half a dozen times, and yet the result isn’t that much better than the original. (It is, however, mercifully shorter.)  Thematically, the film doesn’t quite know where it’s going for besides making money—but if we’re going to talk about the film’s twisted relationship with capitalism, we’re going to be here all night. At least now the kids know about compound interest. Which, I’m sure, the Disney stockholders will approve. But in between Mary Poppins Returns’s paean to banking and Christopher Robin’s bemoaning executives not having enough time to spend with their families, I have a feeling we’re getting far too raw a glimpse into the Disney boardroom’s mindset through their movies.

  • Andrey Rublyov (1966)

    Andrey Rublyov (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, December 2019) I have a confession, dear readers: I dozed off somewhere in the third quarter of Andrey Rublyov and only woke up to the film’s final splashes of colour. I will not go back to see what I’ve missed. I regret nothing. I would do it again. I would encourage others not to do the same, but to doze off even earlier. OK, that may be overstating it. But still: As I develop this appreciation of classic cinema as a rough approximation of time travel, there’s the corollary that there are periods to which you really don’t want to go and medieval Russia is high on that list. Andrey Rublev, surprisingly enough for a Soviet film of the Cold War era, talks a lot about religion, faith and sacrifice—no wonder the film was not a favourite of the regime. (And no wonder, perhaps, if western film critics lionized Andrei Tarkovsky as a defiant gesture to the Soviets.)  While snippets of the film approach the ultimate parody of a European historical black-and-white art-house film, other moments show mayhem on an epic scale, with battle sequences involving hundreds of participants, horses and a very wide frame seen from above. Still, the film’s massive length (no less than three hours and 25 minutes) eventually got the best of me, especially since the battle sequences end up forming a comparatively small proportion of the film. While I liked the bell-making sequence, the rest of the film didn’t do it for me: the film’s ponderous rhythm, self-conscious dialogues and art-house aesthetics gradually sent me to sleep. I will not go back to see what I’ve missed. I regret nothing. I would do it again. I’m not the kind of viewer for which Andrey Rublyov was made, and I don’t care about how many best-movies-of-all-time lists include it as a top pick.

  • The Seven Year Itch (1955)

    The Seven Year Itch (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) The interesting thing about The Seven Year Itch is that I could reliably predict how much I’d like it based on other movies. Like writer-director Billy Wilder’s other comedies, it navigates a tricky path between tones, pushes the envelope a bit and shows his clear gift for humour. Like other movies featuring Marilyn Monroe at her best, it shows her as a comic actress first and a sex-symbol second. Like other brightly lit comedies of the mid-1950s, it offers us a colourful, nearly fabulist look at a society long gone. Beginning with a sardonic interlude describing the timeless ritual of men packing their family for summer trips while they get to enjoy themselves at work and at home during the summer, The Seven Year Itch quickly gets down to business as it relates the flirtation between a married man alone for a few weeks and his new sexy upstairs neighbour. It all takes place in 1950s Manhattan, as fun as a playground can be for this kind of thing. While quite tame by today’s standards, we shouldn’t underestimate the delicate way Wilder daringly tackled tough issues in the far more prurient 1950s, acknowledging a few base instincts that weren’t proper to acknowledge back then. Monroe can be very, very funny at times, although those who are attracted to the film for the infamous “dress pulled up by subway venting” shot will be very surprised to find that it’s nowhere in the film—that sequence is carefully framed to pull down from her head to the subway grate without offering a single overall shot of the pose, and the photo that people remember is a recreation of the scene made sometime later as a publicity shot. Protagonist Tom Ewell pales in comparison to Monroe, but he still acquits himself well, even when saddled with a narrative monologue that straddles an awkward line between voiceover and mumbling to oneself. The conclusion of the film is a forgone conclusion given the Production Code that limited all Hollywood movies at the time—as much as the film pushes at the edge of the permissible envelope, it will never rip it and maybe that’s why we feel so safe watching it. I much prefer the other Wilder/Monroe movie Some Like it Hot, but I did have quite a bit of fun playing a tourist in mid-1950s summertime Manhattan in The Seven Year Itch.

  • The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)

    The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) Let’s get the unpleasantness out of the way first: The Diary of Anne Frank is very, very long. Clocking in at three hours, it feels even more interminable by dint of almost taking place in a single location—this isn’t about a globe-spanning multi-decade story: this is about a group of people stuck in an attic for two years, and we start feeling the claustrophobia at times. This significant criticism put aside, it does remain an affecting film and a very effective portrayal of a classic book. While it condenses, dramatizes and bowdlerizes (according to what was known at the time and what the public could tolerate) the book, The Diary of Anne Frank remains an effective character study, and by the time it builds to the classic “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart,” there shouldn’t be a single dry eye left in the house. Even seen through the lenses of a 1950s movie, with its theatrical acting and carefully restrained emotions, it’s still an engrossing story. I would still like to see a much shorter version, but there’s nothing wrong in sticking close to the original text. Director George Stevens makes effective use of the elements at his disposal, and Millie Perkins sustains having the entire film depend on her as the title character. Long but worth the investment, The Diary of Anne Frank was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award and it’s not hard to see why.

  • Overlord (2018)

    Overlord (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2019) While Nazi Zombies are a staple in videogames and low-budget movies, Overlord is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that a Hollywood studio movie has tackled the topic with a substantial budget. Fittingly enough, it’s not meant to be a prestige picture—from the first few historically inaccurate moments, Overlord is clearly meant to be a pure B-movie, exploiting common tropes to deliver a thrill-ride. It succeeds mildly. Director Julius Avery’s setup is mechanistic and laborious, as our heroes are stranded deep behind enemy lines without enough resources to complete their mission and face unexpectedly formidable odds. The characters are whittled down to their essential numbers, the Nazi villains are proven to be irremediable, and then—as anticipated—we’re dropped in the middle of a Nazi scientific experiment to resurrect the dead. Overlord certainly isn’t designed to be surprising—you can predict almost to the second how one character gets abruptly killed and how another one gets heroically wounded, and that’s not mentioning the pedestrian dialogue. Still, much of the point of the film is showing us Castle Wolfenstein: The Movie, and that includes speed runs through familiar levels. Special effects are used wisely (including two lengthy tracking shots at the high points of the action sequences), Jovan Adepo and Wyatt Russell share protagonist duties, and Pilou Asbaek is just detestable enough as the Nazi-in-charge. The result isn’t particularly distinguished, though—somehow, I expected more fun, more mayhem and more zombies. Just-good-enough B-movies remain B-movies forever.

  • To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)

    To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2019) Much like teenagers, teenage romantic comedies can get attention through how they present themselves, but they ultimately pass or fail based on the strength of their character. So it is that the plot summary of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is catchy yet borderline inane (“Teen girl writes letter to crushes never intending to post them; they are posted.”) and yet the film succeeds because it’s got the characterization and finesse of execution that the premise requires. Lana Condor stars as an introvert high-schooler who suddenly finds herself the centre of attention when her crushes are revealed, and one of them suggests playing out the fantasy to make his not-quite-so-ex-girlfriend jealous. From that point on, the becoming-the-mask plot becomes crystal-clear … but the execution doesn’t drag. The characters are portrayed believably, Condor is very likable, the menagerie of supporting characters is decently handled and it ends on a satisfying note. (But don’t take anything for granted—as it’s based on a trilogy of novels, there are two more sequels planned.) The overall atmosphere is contemporary, sweet, cute, and borderline witty at times. While this isn’t my favourite teenage romance of the year (surprisingly enough, Love, Simon is edging out Blockers), it’s competently handled by director Susan Johnson, blends just enough novelty with tradition and does a lot of mileage out of a good lead performance. Nothing more is needed.

  • Take the Money and Run (1969)

    Take the Money and Run (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, December 2019) When it comes to Woody Allen’s “earlier, funnier movies,” you can’t get much earlier nor much funnier than Take the Money and Run, his first real directorial effort. (While he’s credited as director on What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, that was more of a rearrangement and creative re-dubbing of an existing feature.)  A then-innovative mockumentary featuring a singularly inept bank robber (Allen, obviously), it’s really an excuse for him to throw in as much silliness as possible in a single movie. The jokes start early and seldom let up—and there’s a lot of physical comedy as well. Even at this early point, it’s easy to see the future direction of Allen’s career—the mockumentary form reused in Zelig (or, more generally, the experimentation with form that would reoccur especially in the first half of his career) and the gag-a-minute pacing of his earlier-funnier films. Perhaps more importantly, Take the Money and Run’s best sustained sequence has to do with his talking about romantic relationships, a leitmotif which would form the backbone of his best movies. It’s all wonderfully silly—and contemporary viewers will be surprised to hear a rearrangement of “Soul Bossa Nova” (better known as the Austin Powers theme these days) on the soundtrack. Not particularly ambitious, Take the Money and Run is nonetheless quite successful—it still gets its laughs.

  • Tsubaki Sanjûrô [Sanjuro] (1962)

    Tsubaki Sanjûrô [Sanjuro] (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, December 2019) While writer-director Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro is recognizably the sequel to his earlier Yojimbo, they don’t really feel like the same movie. While Yojimbo was a very long action epic starring Toshiro Mifune as a Ronin-with-no-name manipulating two criminal factions to their destruction in order to save a village, Sanjuro feels more like a lighthearted episode in which the same ronin-without-a-name cleans up a village from corruption using a crew of ten amusingly younger acolytes. Aside from an atonal ending, the tone is lighter, funnier, and more disposable. It’s also significantly shorter, which helps a bit. From the get-go, the protagonist is portrayed as a genius-level quasi-superhero, able to outthink and outmanoeuvre friends and foes alike. This does lend to Sanjuro an accessible atmosphere as a bit of a fantasy, while reinforcing the protagonist as the centrepiece of the film. Various episodes show how corruption is identified and removed, all leading to an ending where the protagonist goes back on the road, having completed his mission. That’s when Sanjuro takes a bit of a weird turn, ending on a final fight that is not only far more dramatic and suspenseful, but surprisingly bloody as well. (As the story goes, the blood-gushing machine malfunctioned and a torrent of fake blood splattered out—they kept it in the movie even despite how it didn’t fit with the rest of it.)  Still, the movie works just fine as “one more hit” for Yojimbo’s protagonist—and at barely more than an hour and a half, Sanjuro is admirably concise.

  • Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)

    Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, December 2019) I’m not a big fan of late-period Mel Brooks and Leslie Nielsen played in some remarkable stinkers outside of The Naked Gun series between 1990 and 2001. Given those biases, you can accurately predict my tepid reaction to Dracula: Dead and Loving It. An obvious spoof of the film adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it strips down the plot to its barest essential, then adds gags as it goes. While the obvious inspiration is the 1931 Bela Lugosi film (“I never drink wine … oh, what the hell. Let me try it.”), there are obvious pokes here and there at 1922’s Nosferatu, 1967’s The Fearless Vampire Killers and 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And while (as someone who’s seen those Dracula movies in the past year or so), there’s something intriguing in seeing the Dracula story boiled down to its essence before, I’m not so happy with the comedy aspect. Dracula: Dead and Loving It simply feels laborious most of the time. In Brooksian fashion, the humour is basic, but the worst part of it is that it’s usually telegraphed well in advance and keeps going long after the humour has faded away. Predictability and insistence are not qualities that mesh well with humour, and one of the big surprises of comparing this film with other spoof comedies is how it feels far less dense with jokes than the better examples of the form. (At least it’s better than the non-funny Friedberg/Seltzer spoofs of the 2000s, although that’s not saying much.)  Still, let’s allow for some leeway: As I’m checking quotes from the film, I’m finding that the movie is far funnier on the page in its original form than on the French dub—this doesn’t change my mind about the pacing and predictability of the film, but it gets an extra point or two for the actual jokes. The other thing is that despite the film’s low budget, there’s a pleasant Victorian atmosphere to the proceedings—the sets and costumes are nice and it surely helps that there’s a lot of cleavage on display from nearly every female character. Then there’s Leslie Nielsen (as Dracula) and Mel Brooks (as Van Helsing) trying to out-ham each other, which is not all that bad. Still, Dracula: Dead and Loving It feels like it squanders a lot of its assets—but, of course, it’s late-period Mel Brooks, so what did we expect?

  • Kumonosu-jô [Throne of Blood] (1957)

    Kumonosu-jô [Throne of Blood] (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2019) Legendary writer-director Akira Kurosawa had a passion for Japanese history and so several of his films (and nearly all his best-known ones) take place deep in historical eras, allowing us to revisit a time and place not often seen outside Japanese cinema. Throne of Blood is very much in this tradition, although it’s more fantasy-focused than many of his other films. A localized adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, it transposes the story to feudal-era Japan, streamlines the action and spends a lot of time creating a foreboding atmosphere. The result is … impressive. From the first few moments, as two soldiers lost in the foggy woods encounter a witch capable of unsettling prophecies, it’s clear that this is not a straight historical re-enactment, and that the film will be as much a fable than a drama. Kurosawa stalwart (and screen legend) Toshiro Mifune once more gets the full spotlight in the lead warrior role, although Isuzu Yamada gives him some strong competition playing the equivalent of Lady Macbeth in unsettling makeup and steely resolve. The Shakespeare references and genre elements (choruses, prophecy, and a great final battle sequence) do much to keep the story accessible and interesting throughout—more so than many of Kurosawa’s other films. Frankly, it does still resonate as one of the best Macbeth adaptions I’ve seen to date, although that should be taken with a grain of salt given that straight Shakespeare adaptations usually bore me. Despite a few lengths, Throne of Blood has aged admirably well because it stands out of time: out of the 1950s for sure, but also out of its own chosen historical period by use of genre elements. It reaches for universality and largely attains it.