Reviews

  • Last Christmas (2019)

    Last Christmas (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) My resentment has been building for a while and it’s unfortunate that Last Christmas has to bear the brunt of it, but here we go and I’m not sorry for the spoilers: I’m done with the modern trend of inserting imaginary characters in movies for the sake of a twist. Twenty years after Fight Club, there’s now a spate of movies that feel that it is somehow impressive to have a character coming out of their protagonist’s imagination. I’m looking at you, Onward and 47 Deep below. And I’m really looking at you, Last Christmas, for pulling that trick. Now that we’ve combined the imaginary character with the Christmas movie genre, we’ve reached the end of the road. It’s time to stop. It’s especially true given that it doesn’t make Last Christmas any better as a movie—the film is fine as a romance, it’s even better as a story of a woman pulling herself together after a long period of aimlessness and persona trauma. The imaginary character muddies the water and feels as if the film depends on a gimmick more than its own honest values. (Or maybe it betrays a lack of confidence in the material.) It’s a bit of an issue considering that some of the film actually works well. I’m grown a bit warmer about Emilia Clarke’s acting and her non-Games of Thrones screen persona with each subsequent film, and she actually manages to handle the transformation of a character from an irritating screwup to something approaching adulthood. Michelle Yeoh is a delight no matter the movie—and she’s no exception here, along with relative newcomer Henry Golding in a thankless role. There’s an appealing multicultural quality to the characters in this London-set film, and there are a few other good moments stuck in the middle of the film. Now, if Last Christmas could have found any other way to resolve its climax without an imaginary character, we would have been left with a far better film.

  • Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

    Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2020) The first Escape Plan wasn’t so great, so the idea of a sequel leaves one wondering—Where to go? With another escape? And that indeed ends up being the case, with another better prison and another (not necessarily better) plot to escape. The original had the distinction of teaming up Schwarzenegger with Stallone, but this time around only Sylvester Stallone remains to look tough in retirement age. The bare-bones plot (good guys escape from bad guys’ prison) thinks that more characters equals complexity, but ends up creating more confusion than interest from the result. At times, Escape Plan 2 seems to be throwing random plot elements in the mix just to see what would happen (Chinese entrepreneurs! Hackers! Private for-profit prisons! Robots!) and the result feels overstuffed with useless material. Some faux-philosophy is thrown in narration, but the film doesn’t deserve whatever patina of intellectualism that those suggest. Despite some attempts at stylish presentation from director Steven C. Miller, the result is almost instantly forgettable, except when it’s ridiculous (such as having Stallone go hand-to-hand with a much younger opponent). The climax is underwhelming (We’re in a hole in the ground in Atlanta! Wow! Who cares?) to the point of feeling less impressive than the following end credit sequence. Escape Plan 2 is passable background filler considering that you don’t really have to pay attention to the nonsense in order to follow the plot. Not essential viewing for anyone, including fans of the first film—but don’t worry, the end promises another sequel, which was actually released in 2019 as Escape Plan: The Extractors.

  • One, Two, Three (1961)

    One, Two, Three (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, July 2020) The legendary Billy Wilder wrote and directed so many great films that it’s easy to forget about even his second-tier efforts, and so it took me a curiously long time to get to watch One, Two, Three. A comedy set in Berlin that heavily plays with the Cold War obsessions of the time, it also lets James Cagney have one of his last roles be a comic showpiece as a Coca-Cola executive dealing with Soviet contacts and the flighty daughter of an influential superior. As usual for Wilder movie, the screenwriting is front and centre, with Cagney spitting dialogue at a blistering pace as a fast-thinking professional used to get his way even under adverse circumstances. The comedy gets crazier and crazier, picking elements from Wilder’s own Ninotchka and bringing them forward to a newly-fractured Berlin stuck between communists and capitalists. One, Two, Three is very much a fascinating time capsule of its era, because it seems able to laugh contemporarily about things that you think would have been best dealt with retrospectively as a period piece. The film does get funnier as it goes on, and Cagney keeps his maniac pacing from beginning to end. There’s quite a bit of mordant cynical humour from Wilder’s pen, but it all leads to a nice wrap-up. For Wilder, One, Two, Three will always be overshadowed by a filmography that includes classics such as Double Indemnity and Some Like it Hot, but it’s a very enjoyable film nonetheless.

  • Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] (2019)

    Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Hmmm. Let me check the list of what makes reviewers flip over a movie these days: Historical setting, great costumes, foreign-language production, careful directing, deliberate pacing, progressive ideals, non-heteronormative rethinking of familiar stories… yes, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu is almost custom-designed for critical acclaim. Too bad I couldn’t get into it. The pacing is too slow, the production too measured—even the subject matter felt like a rethread of The Favourite… and I never expected to mention The Favourite as “my favourite” of anything. I’ll be the first to say that the film isn’t geared for me, and that I shouldn’t keep harping on its case—but I’ve seen, by now, far too many of what seems to be the same movie playing on the same chords in more or less the same way. And that’s fine—Portrait de la jeune fille en feu ended up as an instant classic, a critic’s favourite, and received an almost-instantaneous consecration into the Criterion pantheon. But it’s not a movie for everyone: If you’re looking for sustained pacing, an unpredictable story, or red-blooded character work that doesn’t seem to belong on a museum’s wall, this isn’t the right pick. Far too long in telling us something that can be predicted almost every step of the way (at least, if you’re familiar with that subgenre), Portrait de la jeune fille en feu is probably a bull’s-eye for some, but it will struggle to get out of that subgenre.

  • Leviathan (1989)

    Leviathan (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) Watching Leviathan so soon after Deepstar Six may not have been such a great idea. After all, those were two of the three big underwater thrillers released in 1989 — along with The Abyss, which is so much better than the other two that it will immediately be excluded from further comparison. After meticulously comparing the merits of both remaining movies, I think I can pass a narrow judgment that I liked Deepstar Six slightly better, even despite Leviathan being the most ambitious film. It certainly has an interesting B-string 1980s cast: In-between Peter Weller, Ernie Weller, Richard Crenna, Daniel Stern and the rather cute Amanda Pays, there are a few familiar faces here. The plot has some degree of Alien-inspired complexity to it, what with a blue-collar crew in a hostile environment, a mysterious discovery aboard a derelict ship and a corporate conspiracy that’s absolutely not meant to be helpful. The creature itself is conceptually interesting, amalgamating the people it consumes, but not very well executed given the special effects limits of low-budget 1989 filmmaking. (I wasn’t going to mention The Abyss again, but its special effects were the absolute Oscar-winning limit of what was possible at the time—we 2020 viewers have gotten used to much better for even low-budget features.) Perhaps the clearest example of the outer reaches of the film’s production comes at the very end, with editing placing a monster on one side of the survivors and a Coast Guard ship on the other—the shots are very obviously spliced together despite not matching at all. Ah well—but the mechanistic copying of Alien gets annoying, and I remember Deepstar Six as being a bit more effective at portraying the reality of a deep-sea crew, and exceeding lower expectations. This being said, the difference between the two isn’t all that great, and anyone with more affection for the cast would be justified in liking this one better.

  • Murder by Death (1976)

    Murder by Death (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (CTV Streaming, July 2020) I recall seeing bits and pieces of Murder by Death as a kid, so I was more than curious to re-watch the film, only remembering that it was about parodies of fictional detectives being set up to solve the perfect murder. Going in the film otherwise almost entirely unaware, I was amazed at the cast of the film: Peter Sellers, Alec Guiness, Peter Falk, David Niven, Maggie Smith and none other than a very young James Cromwell! Then I was bowled over once over again, as I recognized the archetypes they were playing—Falk imitating Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade, Niven as a pitch-perfect incarnation of William Powell’s Nick Charles, and so on. I could have done without the casual racism of Sellers’ Charlie Chan, but it does get us the rather wonderful spectacle of having him going toe-to-toe with his inspiration Alec Guiness in a scene or two. None other than Truman Capote shows up as the main antagonist of the film, setting up a perfect murder that none of the world-class detectives will be able to solve. As Murder by Death is working from a Neil Simon script, you can expect a steadily amusing script and dialogue—although the film doesn’t quite get as hilarious as it could have been. The structure of the story seems lopsided as well, with a very long time spent on introductions and setting up the premise, then zipping to a conclusion. It doesn’t get any better once we realize (after an android or two) that the film is absolutely not meant to make conventional narrative sense. There are six successive plot climaxes in a row getting more and more absurd, the joke being turned on the viewers expecting this comedy to make any kind of narrative sense. Murder by Death becomes a letdown after such a promising start, but the result is still worth a look if only for the cast and the playfulness of the script as it charges forward, determined to upend most expectations.

  • Crash Dive (1943)

    Crash Dive (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2020) At first glance, Hollywood made many movies like Crash Dive during WW2—heroic dramas about men in combat, puffing up just about every branch of the armed forces. But there are two crucial differences here, and one interesting element worth mentioning. The first and most obvious difference between Crash Dive and many other propaganda films is that it’s filmed in colour—lending a quasi-documentary quality to the results when the camera focuses on the submarines where much of the plot takes place. The second difference is a much-bigger emphasis placed on the romantic narrative: compared to other war movies where combat against the enemy was enough of a narrative, Crash Dive spends a lot of time in a romantic triangle between a woman and two men (one the commanding officer to the other). Finally, one element worth mentioning is a supporting role for Ben Carter at a time (and in a war movie genre) that did not usually have roles for black actors. The blend of wartime action and romance is interesting, but it doesn’t make for a particularly cohesive film. Crash Dive is not bad, but its message is on the nose, and the addition of a romantic narrative reinforces the impression that there are many movies just like it, except set elsewhere than in submarines.

  • Seppuku [Hara-kiri] (1962)

    Seppuku [Hara-kiri] (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion Streaming, July 2020) I wasn’t expecting much of Seppuku, but that’s not the film’s fault—I may have overdosed on samurai movies a while back, and I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to another early-1960s black-and-white Japanese samurai drama. So, I was a bit surprised when the opening sequence of director Masaki Kobayashi’s film drew me in with unusually modern cinematography, heavy on tracking shots and insistent editing. Then you get into the mystery of the film’s plot, as a samurai comes to commit ritual suicide in a lord’s courtyard while making specific demands. There’s clearly a reason behind his requests, and much of Seppuku is a mystery pieced together through flashbacks and revelations. For a film set in 17th-century Japan with its very specific social codes, this is an unusually accessible film, as the information required to make sense of it all is intelligibly presented. In some ways, the film is a rough analogue of a courtroom drama, as it explores social constraints according to the limits the participants have set upon themselves. By the time we piece together the explanation, Seppuku has become an elegant story of revenge, exploiting flaws in the opponent’s self-image to drive them to destruction. Now, I’m not a fan of the entire film—I think that the flashback sequences take too long and lessen the growing suspense. I also have some minor issues with bits and pieces here and there. But overall, I can see why the film has enjoyed a bit of a pop-critical renaissance for the past few years (having recently cracked the IMDB-250, not normally known for more challenging filmmaking) and why it’s held in such high esteem. I actually like Seppuku more than some (but not all) of Kurosawa’s samurai films, which is saying something even in a small pool of references.

  • Du Barry was a Lady (1943)

    Du Barry was a Lady (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Like many other hobbies, movie-watching gets more rewarding the more you put into it. If you’re the kind of person who watches a film a year, then go ahead and enjoy the film on its own merits. But if you’re the kind of cinephile who enjoys tracking down filmographies, sub-genres and how movies exist in context, then a film can become far more than the sum of its parts. While watching Du Barry Was a Lady, for instance, I was struck by how it brings together many people that I liked elsewhere. It has one of Gene Kelly’s earliest roles, for instance—and even at this early stage, he gets play the likable cad, singing and dancing even if it’s not (yet) to his own cinematography. It has one of Lucille Ball’s foremost movie roles, where she gets to be strikingly beautiful and funny. It has Red Skelton, semi-restrained from his usual comic tics and funnier for it. It has one of my favourite supporting actresses of the era, Virginia O’Brien, lovely and hilarious as she sings in her usual deadpan style. (“Salome” has funny lyrics, but half of the song’s many laughs come from O’Brien’s side glances, facial expressions and hand movements.) It has Zero Mostel playing small-time hustler, Tommy Dorsey as (what else?) a band leader and an entire song dedicated to Vargas pin-ups girls (Happily, Miss September is the best). Du Barry was a Lady is also, perhaps more significantly, one of Arthur Freed’s early MGM musicals and you can see bits and pieces of it as inspiration for the tone and content of his later movies. Compared to this thick web of associations and context, it does feel as if the film itself is not as good as its components. Much of the first half is a nightclub comedy (giving generous time to the on-stage acts) paying particular attention to Ball, Kelly and O’Brien, while the second loosens up by going back to Louis XV-era France for some sillier comedy focused on Skelton. It’s not bad, but the film is more interesting for its numbers and showcases than by itself—as mentioned before, “Salome” is worthy of an anthology reel, and it’s a treat to see Ball, Kelly and Mostel in early roles. I liked Du Barry was a Lady a lot, but I suspect that I’m getting a lot more out of it by virtue of having seen, in rapid succession, many of the other movies with which it shares a web of associations.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, November 2021) What I like about revisiting classic Hollywood films is that even a few months can mean a world of difference in how you approach a film knowing more about its stars and their careers. You can watch Du Barry was a Lady (as I did the first time) without knowing much about its players and still appreciate the film on its own terms. But come back to it with a greater appreciation for Red Skelton, Gene Kelly, Lucille Ball, Virginia O’Brien, Zero Mostel and Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, and the film becomes nothing short of a quasi-miraculous union of distinctive talents. Skelton delivers another of his usual performances here, and stays (mostly) under control for the first half of the film. Ball was on the upswing at the time, distinguishing herself as a dependable comic performer – but this was the film (her first as an MGM star) that changed her hair colour to red… a distinction she’d keep the rest of her career. Kelly was barely known at the time, but here gets a terrific solo dance number that clearly wowed others enough to give him bigger roles as a dancer. Gorgeous O’Brien gets an anthology number in “Salome” (sung deadpan, but complete with hilarious acting) as well as a decent supporting role. Zero Mostel makes his big-screen debut here, whereas Tommy Dorsey (aka D’Orsay in the French Royalty sequences) and his orchestra get a welcome showcase. Finally, who can resist the rather wonderful “I Love an Esquire Girl” featuring no less than twelve terrific Vargas girls? (Miss September being my favourite, even the second time around.)  The film itself is uneven: the first present-day half is not bad, but the second historical one is rather dull. But it’s by bringing together several talented performers that Du Barry Was a Lady finds its true calling. It’s not a completely satisfying film, but it’s well worth another look, possibly fast-forwarding from one great sequence to another.

  • Death Warmed Up (1984)

    Death Warmed Up (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) It turns out that there was more than Peter Jackson making horror movies out of New Zealand back in the 1980s, but looking at Death Warmed up and comparing it to (say) Bad Taste, it’s obvious why Jackson became an international sensation and writer-director David Blyth didn’t. Working from a script that has two prologues and welds together a bunch of familiar splatter/slasher horror tropes without necessarily saying anything more interesting about them, he delivers a workmanlike horror film, a bit better than the norm at the time but still not quite good enough to be particularly memorable. Production values are on the low side, and the elements of the story aren’t handled with any kind of flair. A gratuitously mean ending causes little reaction, reflecting the lack of interest in the rest of the film. It’s interesting in that Death Warmed Up is clearly inspired by the American horror movie craze of the early 1980s while being just different enough to be distinctive, but it remains more a curio for horror fans looking to expand their knowledge of New Zealand cinema beyond the essential.

  • The Atticus Institute (2015)

    The Atticus Institute (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2020) In the fine tradition of horror films puffing themselves up with made-up “based on a true story” hokum, horror mockumentary The Atticus Institute purports to tell us about “the only case of possession ever recorded by the United States Government.” In this case, a parapsychology institute studies a woman exhibiting paranormal powers that are later revealed to be the work of a demon possessing her. Cue the US Army taking control of the institute in an effort to weaponize the demon, which (as five out of five scientists will tell you) is a terrifyingly bad idea. It goes where you expect it to go, with the demon going on a rampage inside the institute and everyone being powerless to stop it. Writer-director Chris Sparling handles the mockumentary aspect reasonably well, without too many questions as to how or why the footage exists, and the mid-1970s period convincingly recreated—although some of the camcorders have a strong 1980s vintage air to them. I have issues with some of the grandiose dialogue from the characters, but that’s almost part of the fun. At least it’s short enough not to overstay its welcome. The Atticus Institute is not all that good as a movie, but I’ve seen quite a bit worse in the found-footage horror subgenre.

  • Notfilm (2015)

    Notfilm (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2015) Came for Buster Keaton, stayed for Samuel Becket and drifted off thanks to director Ross Lipman. I’m always amazed at the amount of stuff I don’t know, and the link between noted author/playwright Samuel Becket (of “Waiting for Godot” fame) and comedian Buster Keaton was a missing link in my overall culture. What everyone should know before seeing Notfilm is that back in 1965, Samuel Becket somehow managed to convince a bunch of people to make a short 20 minutes experimental film called, well, Film. It starred Buster Keaton and was received like most experimental films—people called it interesting and/or incomprehensible. Forty years later, a filmmaker working on the restoration of Film got the idea of producing an accompanying making-of/retrospective feature called, ahem, Notfilm. The project grew and grew as Lipman interviewed the producers of the film and as many people he could find that had something to say about it. He found very rare audio footage of Becket (who famously disliked being recorded), uncovered intriguing contradictions coming from Becket, and started exploring the multiple facets connected to that summer 1965 shoot in Manhattan. By the time we realize that the cinematographer of Film is the brother of the filmmaker behind 1929’s classic Man with a Movie Camera, and that a teenage Leonard Maltin showed up on set to meet Keaton for the first time, we’re far past the point of wonderment. Becket being from the literary/theatrical world, we have an opportunity to talk about Grove Press and theatre in addition to film. Such an expansive approach to a topic means that Notfilm is often unwieldy. It’s certainly not focused (some information is repeated a few times; the introduction does not introduce Film properly yet spoils much of Notfilm’s later impact), and it’s inconsistently interesting—I was enthralled by matters about Buster Keaton, for instance, but not that interested in explorations of Becket’s oeuvre. My interest varied quite a bit, but at the end I had the impression of having been exposed to a hurricane of trivia, some of it uninteresting but others absolutely fascinating. It’s also refreshing in how it keeps blasting ideas at the viewer and daring them to keep up.

  • Men at Work (1990)

    Men at Work (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) There’s something very perfunctory to the dark comedy of Men at Work that makes the film far less distinctive than it wishes to be. It’s still special in that it brings together brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez as good friends involved in a murder thriller in small-town California. Garbagemen by profession but certainly not professionals by any means, our two heroes seem content to goof off all day long until they’re stuck with an observer on their daily routes, and accidentally find a murder victim. Things get wilder once their observer proves to be crazier than themselves, and the agents of the small-town conspiracy go looking for them. While the camaraderie between the two leads is exceptional, the rest of the film plays off familiar elements. Keith David gets increasingly funnier as his demeanour is stripped to its fundamentals, and Leslie Hope is eye-catching as the love interest. But much of Men at Work seems perfunctory in the way that very average circa-1990 comic thrillers could be, stuck between two decades’ very different aesthetics and not quite distinctive enough to be memorable. It’s still not a bad watch, but it’s far less memorable than I would have expected.

  • No Time for Comedy (1940)

    No Time for Comedy (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) If you like James Stewart (and who doesn’t?), No Time for Comedy has him in a good role as a young romantic lead, a gifted comic playwright playing opposite an actress (the rather wonderful Rosalind Russell) through high and low times in their relationship. As a portrait of another era where playwrights were household names, No Time for Comedy is interestingly off-beat—it speaks to readers and movie fans alike in having Stewart as an agreeably awkward writer as the protagonist. Russell was very near the peak of her early roles at the time of this film (shortly after great turns in The Women and His Girl Friday) and her screen persona is a good match for the material. Both Stewart and Russell had better roles in 1940 alone—for Stewart, his foremost turn as a young romantic lead came the same year in The Shop Around the Corner—but it’s actually fun to see them both in a lesser-known film playing to their strengths. If anything, No Time for Comedy is a perfectly acceptable little comedy (despite an unconvincing slide into manufactured drama in the third act), and it’s not quite as overexposed as His Girl Friday or The Shop Around the Corner from the same year. Stewart and Russell are perfectly up to their personas, and the result is a nice little discovery.

  • The Manor (2018)

    The Manor (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) Movie reviewers often get a pretty good idea of a movie from its first few minutes. Not always, mind you—there are famous cases of slow burns delivering final deflagrations, but the craft and style in which a film is conducted are usually obvious early on. In The Manor’s case, it takes a surprisingly short time to realize that the film is going to be unusually bad. From the opening credits onward, as they try to ape an early-1980s style through synth music and in-your-face lettering, the familiar sinking feeling of a terrible low-budget production sets in. Despite a few visual flourishes, the film is so ineptly put together than we lose the suspension of disbelief essential to a movie viewing: we’re not watching a film as much as we’re watching people acting, a director framing his shots and an editor splicing the result together. The elements of The Manor’s awfulness are cumulative and go far beyond simply a bad script: overacting, awkward staging, bland cinematography, direction that can’t give a sense of space, editing that’s just a little bit too slack (or annoys though useless subliminal images), cartoonish special effects and so on. Even the titular manor just looks like a big country house. Those issues compound a script that already doesn’t make a shred of sense or decency, with stock elements jammed together in a whole that becomes increasingly bewildering the longer it goes on. Surprisingly enough, asylum outpatients, rednecks, cousins-on-cousin incest, monster puppeteers and religious nuts don’t make as interesting a blend as you’d think when in the wrong hands. And that’s not even talking about the terrible dialogue, which even the best actors wouldn’t be able to make believable—and these are not the best actors. While The Manor may aim for style, it ends up detached from reality in such a way that you seriously start wondering what everyone involved was thinking. Struggling to find anything nice to say about the film, I have to admit that I like seeing Rachel True even in the worst dreck (although I feel sorry for her), and I do think that director Jonathon Schermerhorn has a good eye from time to time. Danielle Guldin’s character would have worked better in a comedy, but that goes for much of the film in general. Alas, The Manor is not a comedy—it’s really meant as a horror film, but it fumbles its way there. Films like this one are why I don’t take the Razzies or any other “worst movie of the year” lists seriously when they focus solely on big-budget studio productions, because this is far worse than anything on the most irritating Razzie shortlist. The universe of bad movies is far bigger than we can imagine, and The Manor is like opening a door to cinematic horrors beyond any imagination.