Reviews

  • Tales from the Crypt (1972)

    Tales from the Crypt (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) Anthology movies aren’t meant to be consistent, but I’m finding myself generally disappointed by the overall level of quality from the five Tales from the Crypt. The framing device actually isn’t too bad, but once we dig into the five stories themselves, we end up with fairly basic concepts developed limply. I suspect that the passing of time may have had something to do with it—horror build upon itself and the basic stories in this 1972 film often appear just a bit too simple, just missing an extra twist to be truly interesting. (To be fair, Tales from the Crypt is indeed aware of horror history—it adapts an old comic book series, after all, and even has characters explicitly mentioning “The Monkey’s Paw” in its best segment.)  Perhaps the best reason to watch the film today is for its early-1970s atmosphere: In the hands of director Freddie Francis, the fashions and décor, as dated as they can be, do offer a contract to other horror aesthetics. As for the rest, I remain lukewarm.

  • Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

    Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) Considering the central role of computer-generated imagery in portraying fantastic creations in modern movies, there’s still an old-fashioned charm to see ambitious fantasy movies from the pre-digital era. In Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, stop-motion wizard Harry Harryhausen is at the top of his form in making fantastic creatures interact with live-action actors.  It’s all the service of an old-fashioned adventure tale with a party of adventurers, evil opponents and a stream of wonders. In many traditional ways, this is not a particularly good movie: the acting is perceptibly poor, the direction is clearly limited by the requirements of the special effects and the episodic plotting is of the one-thing-after-another variety so popular in picaresque fantasy adventures, with few things building upon each other. But Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is not a movie to be appreciated on the usual scale. The stop-motion animation is often impressive (although that final-act tiger looks more huggable than threatening) and the imagination at work in terms of developing even rough fantasy conceits is refreshing in contrast to so many mainstream movies of the era. It has definitely aged and is now definitely dated: the special effects can be great or terrible depending on the scene and your own indulgence in such matters. But Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is, perhaps almost despite itself, quite a bit of fun. It’s like being told a fairy tale, filled with known elements but comforting because of how familiar it is, and how old-school it now feels.

  • Boxcar Bertha (1972)

    Boxcar Bertha (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) In many ways, Boxcar Bertha isn’t particularly remarkable: As a better-than-average production from the Roger Corman filmmaking school, it heavily draws upon Bonnie and Clyde for inspiration at it shows a depression-era couple turning to crime in between love scenes. But here’s the thing: It’s Martin Scorsese’s second feature film, his first professional feature one after his quasi-student film Who’s That Knocking at My Door. As such, it’s practically mandatory viewing for fans. But it also shows what a good director can do with familiar material: While most movies produced by Corman had trouble even settling for capable B-movie status (“crank them out fast and cheap” seem to have been his American International Pictures’ unofficial motto), Boxcar Bertha does manage to become a decent genre picture. Despite a blunt script and low production values, it’s handled with some skill and meditative intent, reflecting Scorsese’s approach to the material and destiny to execute superior genre pictures. Barbara Hershey and David Carradine also do quite well in the lead roles. I’m not sure contemporary audiences will appreciate the film as much at the 1970s one did—after all, there’s practically a 1970s “violent couple picaresque journey” subgenre by now-famous directors in between Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, arguably Beatty), Sugarland Express (Spielberg), Badlands (Malick), and Boxcar Bertha fits right into what was then New Hollywood’s most salacious appeal. Decades and a few more Natural Born Killers later, it’s not as new or invigorating as it once was. Instead, we’re left with something far different: the movies as juvenilia, interesting not as much for what they were, but what they foretold.

  • The Stranger (1946)

    The Stranger (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) In Orson Welles’s filmography, The Stranger is often regarded as one of his least remarkable efforts. An early film noir set in a small town where a Nazi-hunter comes to investigate, it was (at the time) an attempt by the disgraced Welles to prove that he could be counted upon as a dependable actor/director, free from the drama that punctuated the first few years of his career. We all know how Welles’s career eventually turned out when driven away from Hollywood, but he was successful in turning out a competent and profitable result with The Stranger. Alas, this work-for-hire means that the film has far fewer of the distinctive touches we associate with Welles at his best: while highly watchable, the result seems rote. The action moves efficiently through stock characters, and Welles even at his most commercial is still a cut above most directors of the time. The dialogue has some great moments (such as the magnificent speech about the nature of Germans, as horribly stereotyped as it may feel now) but the film’s biggest distinction is how closely it engages with the immediate aftermath of WW2: Never mind the film’s interest in escaped Nazis living in the States: it also features then-new graphic footage of concentration camps … including a pile of bodies. Just to make it clear what this is about. You can certainly see in The Stranger a transition film in between the domestic thrillers of the early-1940s and the more fully realized noir aesthetics of the end of the decade. The result is still worth a look, not least for the compelling performances of Welles, Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. It’s a striking illustration of what happens when a great artist is given familiar material.

  • Prince of Darkness (1987)

    Prince of Darkness (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) If it took me a while before catching Prince of Darkness on TV, it’s not for lack of trying.  But it’s is not considered among director John Carpenter’s best movies, and watching it only confirms why. I’ll be the first to admit that there is something intriguing in the concept of the film and a good chunk of its execution: The uneasy mixture of science, religion and impending apocalypse is always something that gets me interested, and there’s some interest in the film’s idea of ancient evil bootstrapping itself in the world through modern technology. On a purely visual level, there is also some really interesting stuff here, up to Carpenter’s prime-era standards: the man-of-insects, the liquid mirrors, gravity running in reverse and other spooky stuff works well in isolation. Finally, there’s some interesting character work throughout the film: Despite Jameson Parker’s unfortunate mustache, Donald Pleasance acts as a cornerstone of the film, with some assistance from Victor Wong. Alas, Prince of Darkness, for all of its potential, eventually falls into the spooky-stuff-in-a-blender school of horror filmmaking, in which various strong images are strung together with no apparent discipline or meaning. Anything and everything can happen, making moot any attempt to make sense of it all. This impression is made worse by the film’s frequent and blatant jumps from a patina of scientific justification to pseudoscientific nonsense without rigour or reason. Even the music is a bit too much at times. Finally, and perhaps more damagingly, Carpenter misses the mark when it comes to creating empathy for his characters. The lead couple is dull and uninvolving (the male lead initially behaving like a creep doesn’t help at all), there are too many supporting characters, and few of them end up being sympathetic, except for supernatural fodder when the film has to kill or possess someone. The result is still worth a look, like most of Carpenter’s movies, but there’s a palpable sense that Prince of Darkness, with all of its genuine eeriness and good ideas, could have been much, much more.

  • Der Himmel über Berlin [Wings of Desire] (1987)

    Der Himmel über Berlin [Wings of Desire] (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2019) There are so many reasons why I should not even like Wings of Desire. The deliberate use of monochrome, the stream-of-consciousness dialogue (is it dialogue if it’s eavesdropping on people’s thoughts?), the languid pacing, the improv-style acting, the pretentious philosophical claptrap, the very familiar dramatic arc … and so on. On paper and initially on-screen, Wings of Desire is an almost prototypical art-house film meant for a very specific audience. But gradually, almost begrudgingly, I ended up warming to the results. There’s a subtle grace to the way writer-director Wim Wenders uses a downplayed portrayal of angels to explore a full-spectrum take on humanity, portraying their black-and-white coolness against the colour perceived by the human characters. Peter Falk shows up playing a version of himself (even referencing “Columbo”) that turns out to be a fallen angel. Otto Sander also plays an angel with a mixture of detachment and empathy. But the acting focus here falls on Bruno Ganz convincingly portraying an angel yearning for human feelings, falling in love with a trapeze artist played by the captivating Solveig Dommartin. Clever understated touches (overcoats, libraries, children of course perceiving angels) add to the overall effect, while pre-reunification Berlin, cut by its wall, is shown in stark detail. Even the use of black-and-white has a plot purpose—and I surprisingly found the last colour portion of the film blurrier and less impressive than its initial black-and-white presentation. The film peaks somewhere near its third quarter, both in imaginative detail and in execution—the ending feels satisfying but pat, possibly from having influenced many other takes on similar material. While I don’t love Wings of Desire, I do end up liking it more than I thought, which hints at its more universal appeal than could be anticipated.

  • Born Yesterday (1950)

    Born Yesterday (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) There’s a deceptive simplicity to the premise of Born Yesterday: from afar, it’s a standard Pygmalion spinoff, what with a journalist being asked to educate the girlfriend of a businessman. But it’s in its execution that the film proves to be quite a bit more than expected. For one thing, the film (which takes place in Washington) doesn’t miss an opportunity to link personal virtues to political values—the coarse businessman who slaps his wife is proved to be a criminal who aspires to fascism (how familiar!), and the ingenue who learns better about the bedrock principles of the nation uses that knowledge to emancipate herself from a bad situation. Then there’s Judy Holliday, who comes across (though a grating voice and uncouth manners) as a hopeless self-obsessed hick but eventually proves herself as smart as everyone else—and do so in an almost imperceptible manner, making us care before we even know it’s happening. William Holden and Broderick Crawford also provide good performances to round up the lead trio. The script is a bit blunt at times and certainly predictable overall, but it does have moments of cleverness and humour, good dialogue and effective directing. Handled by veteran George Cukor, Born Yesterday proves to be a solid comedy with a timeless message, a still-impressive lead performance and a political message that really wouldn’t be out of place in a Frank Capra film.

  • Viva Villa! (1934)

    Viva Villa! (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) Hollywood has always had a soft spot for grander-than-life outlaws, mostly because it could make portray them as protagonists even bigger than life and (in the name of entertainment) revel in whatever cool crimes they committed. 1930s Hollywood was just as susceptible, as shown by a number of outlaw movies of which Viva Villa! Is only one example. Here we have Hollywood avowedly magnifying the legend of the famous Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa: a woman in every village, an army of thousands, and an American journalist creating his legend. It’s not exactly subtle, and the film’s treatment of the character is not without a dose of racism: clearly, this is an American perspective on a Mexican story (literally—what would Villa be without the American journalist documenting his actions?) rather than an attempt to show the story from his own perspective. Executed with significant production means, the film features hundreds of extras, a lot of location shooting and grandiose battle sequences, which (combined with the attempt to show a charming rogue, helped along by an exuberant performance by Wallace Beery) help keep the film interesting today … even though it would be completely unacceptable as a new movie today. You can see why Viva Villa! was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Fans of Howard Hawks will appreciate knowing his uncredited contribution to the film, even though director Jack Conway completed the film.

  • My Fellow Americans (1996)

    My Fellow Americans (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, October 2019) There isn’t anything particularly sophisticated in My Fellow Americans, which features two bickering American ex-presidents going on the run after being exposed to malfeasance from the current administration. But it’s one great late-period opportunity for Jack Lemmon and James Garner to shine in comic performance as elder statesmen. The film eventually becomes a buddy road movie (complete with the mandatory shot of the two characters screaming, “Aaah!” while driving), taking them (mostly) undercover through America in an effort to get back to Washington and expose the plot before they’re killed. There’s an effective mixture of the high and the low here, with two revered figures often acting out like schoolboys. Despite the warring presidents from different parties, don’t expect much political relevance from a film that would rather settle for silliness rather than barbed satire. (It’s also from an era where you could actually respect [ex-] presidents no matter their affiliation, but we’re long past that point now.) Still, Lemmon and Garner make for a good comic pair, even when the rest of the film around them is trite and obvious. I half-enjoyed My Fellow Americans, which is more than I can say from most similar movies.

  • Pather Panchali (1955)

    Pather Panchali (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) I understand why Pather Panchali is an important film: Breaking from the dominant tradition of song-and-dance Indian cinema, it chooses to focus on a representation of desperate rural poverty in, helping to launch the parallel cinema movement. Writer-director Satyajit Ray is considered a legend today, and his work in India echoed what was also going on in Europe as cinema tried to propose an alternative to the glossy Hollywood film aesthetics. His work in Pather Panchali is as dramatically effective as any other director, with a gut-punch of an ending that certainly won’t have you thinking about a happy ending. Then there’s the fact that the film presents Indian culture from the inside, without the distancing effect of many western productions (especially at the time) that imposed a filter over the depiction of the country. (See the quasi-contemporary The River, from Jean Renoir, that was closely linked to the production of Pather Panchali.) That’s all fine and good, and I suppose that I can check off one more film from the must-see lists of world cinema. But here’s the thing: I really don’t like neorealism, no matter the country. I like the glossy entertainment that cinema has to offer, and the thought of being stuck for more than two very long hours in desperately poor rural India has me reaching for the escape door, the fast-forward button or any other form of escape. For all of my growing film education, I really don’t like Pather Panchali, don’t want to see it ever again, and am not looking forward to digging deeper in that subgenre to watch similar movies. Part of a film education isn’t only to find out what you like, but also what you don’t.

  • Night and the City (1950)

    Night and the City (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) Film noir is often about desperate people in bad circumstances, and in this light Night and the City certainly qualifies as such. Unusually taking place in London rather than in a large American city, it nonetheless plays up the grimness of low-class hustling, with a protagonist perpetually convinced that he’s only one lucky break, one spin of the wheel away from success. Grim and tawdry, it takes place in the city’s underworld, rubbing shoulders with wrestlers and killers. Richard Widmark is not bad as the protagonist, but I suspect that most viewers will better appreciate Gene Tierney as his long-suffering girlfriend. The unrelenting grimness of the result isn’t only in the atmosphere, but in the lack of sympathy for any character and the unsparing ending of director Jules Dassin’s preferred version (a British version reportedly softens up the ending—it’s not the one I saw). Night and the City is not a film for every audience or every mood, but it does stand as a prototypical noir even despite not taking place within American borders. You even get a (repeated) didactic mention of “Montréal, in Canada” just for the fun of it.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, November 2020) There have been many films noir in the 1950s, and they do get to blur if you’re watching too many of them in rapid succession. What director Jules Dassin’s Night and the City has over others is its somewhat unusual location: For as American a genre as noir, it feels refreshing to see the film take place in London. The historical circumstances surrounding this are strange—Dassin was on the blacklist at the time, and MGM was looking to take advantage of some financial incentives to produce films in England. (It also set in motion the very improbable series of events that would make Jules Dassin the father of an iconic French singer, but that’s going way beyond the scope of this review.)  Taking place in the very noirish demimonde of boxing promotion, Night and the City piles on the noir trademarks; desperate characters squeezed into illegality by bad luck and circumstance, moody black-and-white cinematography; plenty of scenes in which characters run in deserted alleyways; a femme fatale, this time played by the legendary Greer Garson. Plus, the London backdrop is quite intriguing as a change of pace. It doesn’t make Night and the City all that good, but it does help it distinguish itself from so many close contemporaries.

  • Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

    Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) The first Happy Death Day was a tricky mixture of comedy and horror, and it took a while before it started firing on all cylinders. Happy Death Day 2U isn’t that different, although the first few minutes do promise a more interesting sidequel than the outright sequel it ultimately settles on. But there’s only so much deviation that a series can tolerate, and this sequel does ultimately change the tone and genre of the series a bit, going for a thankfully more comedic approach and reaches for outright science fiction (even if nonsensical) as an explanation for its time-looping weirdness. Jessica Rothe once again captures our attention as the heroine (once again hitting the film’s peak during a bouncy montage), especially given how Happy Death Day 2U unusually digs deeper into her dramatic back-story and provides her with a heartbreaking choice. The result is fun bouncy entertainment with enough depth to it to keep things interesting. Toning down the serial killer shtick only improves the sequel, and while it does fall prey to a certain sense of deja vu, it’s an impressive continuation by itself. Writer-director Christopher Landon is a clever filmmaker, and the results here outdo anything we may have hoped for a sequel.

  • Astérix & Obélix contre César (1999)

    Astérix & Obélix contre César (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) Adapting a comic book to the big screen is a tricky exercise, even more so when it’s working from an exuberant source such as the Astérix and Obélix series. As someone who grew up on the series, the idea of attempting to adapt the comic violence, over-the-top gags and fantastic visuals of the comic seems hopeless. Astérix & Obélix contre César, as the first live-action adaptation of the series, clearly underscores how difficult it is. On the positive side, the film does manage to present an authentic Astérix adventure, complete with the wild cast of characters in the protagonist’s village. The state of computer-generated imagery circa 1999 is just barely enough to give an idea of what’s possible, while looking unfortunately dated twenty years later. A still-young Gerard Depardieu is featured as Obélix, along with Christian Clavier as Asterix. Roberto Benigni, then at the height of his international fame, showboats annoyingly in a villain role. The film works, but barely: other than the weirdness in trying to fit a fluid comic style in live-action, the film also frequently loses itself in useless subplots, and becomes actively irritating when it repeatedly tries to pairs up (despite objections from other characters) the fifty-something Depardieu with a much-younger love interest. Writer-director Claude Zidi doesn’t embarrass himself (the bar being low enough), but the approach here is rougher than in other later classic comics adaptations along the lines of Lucky Luke, Le Marsupilami or Gaston Lagaffe. (None of them were all that successful, but more so than here.) Considering what was available in 1999, it’s an honest half-success.

  • The Tunnel aka Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)

    The Tunnel aka Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) Oh, what a fun curio Transatlantic Tunnel is. As I’m slowly documenting my history of science-fiction films, one of my assertions is that there was no self-conscious SF genre before the 1950s: Much of what preceded was in the horror genre. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t a few specific SF movies before then.  In between Metropolis and Things to Come, here we have a film fussing over the digging of a tunnel between Great Britain and the United States. This is only made possible through fancy technology (science: check!) and developed through a sometimes-stupefying pile-up of melodramatic tropes (fiction: check!) Consider that, in the tradition of two-fisted SF heroes, the protagonist of the story (played by Richard Dix) is a genius engineer who becomes the public face of the grandiose project, but ends up losing nearly everything along the way. Consider how an exotic gas blinds his wife, how an underground volcano threatens his plans and how terrible tragedy affects him. It’s not meant to be subtle and indeed at times the Anglo-American boosterism of the film feels ridiculously overdone. (Also, hello, Canada’s coast is right there to save you some time and money in completing the tunnel!)  Still, there’s an undeniable Buck-Rogers-style charm to the proceeding, as primitive as they may seem. There’s an attempt to develop a vision for the future even in a film limited by budget and being shot on studio-bound sets. One notes with some amusement that even in 1935, this Maurice Elvey film was the third adaptation of a transatlantic tunnel novel, and that it copiously reused footage from the previous films. As a classic Science Fiction novel reader, I’m curious as to whether Transatlantic Tunnel influenced Harry Harrison’s semi-classic A Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah (early research suggests no explicit link), but the film itself stands on its own.

  • Pet Sematary II (1992)

    Pet Sematary II (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) The first Pet Sematary managed to blend Stephen King’s unusually bleak novel with a crazy sensibility of its own and if the result wasn’t exactly good, it did hold its own as a decent 1980s horror movie, especially in the King adaptation subgenre. Sequel Pet Sematary II, alas, is crazier but nowhere as respectable, nor as interesting. Once we’ve established at film length that it’s a terrifyingly bad idea to bury people in a cemetery that resurrects them wrong, the follow-up merely piles one dumb character decisions on top of others. The result isn’t a complete catastrophe: At least Clancy Brown has the good sense of overacting throughout his part, making it more fun than the dour plot summary may suggest. Edward Furlong is dull as the lead, but Darlanne Fluegel does bring some redheaded heat to her role, and is a good reason why the beginning and end of the movie are more interesting than anything in between. Still, Pet Sematary II is not much: the plot depends on unbelievable characters, repeating the high points of the original without as much dramatic oomph and with the usual limitations of early 1990s horror movies following up on King’s work without directly adapting them. See it if you must complete a list or two (or if it comes bundled with the original); otherwise it may not be worth the effort to track down.