Reviews

  • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

    The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) I come to the 1977 version of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh a bit late, having seen and enjoyed the 2011 Winnie the Pooh much earlier. As it happens, both movies share the same kind of gentle fun, strong characterization, meta-fictional devices, and fix-up nature. The 1977 film is more obvious as to its nature as a collection: All three segments had appeared separately as short films before being bundled together as a feature-length movie. Still, the tone is very consistent from one to the other, and the whole thing does feel of a piece. Of course, some familiarity and liking of A.A. Milne’s universe helps—it’s easy and darkly amusing to describe the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood in derogatory terms (a bear with a serious substance addiction, a tiger without personal boundaries, a donkey with clinical depression) but that’s missing the point by a hundred kilometres: it’s a charming family movie, gentle and fun and clever at the same time. As an adult, I’m perhaps more interested by the film’s metafictional tricks as the characters and narrator know that they’re in a book and sometimes take advantage of the fact. Still, the kids are likely to like the result without fuss: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is as likable as children’s stories come, and the film faithfully adapt its literary inspiration.

  • The Thin Man (1934)

    The Thin Man (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) I’d heard very nice things about The Thin Man, but it took a long while before I was able to see it. For reasons I still haven’t figured out, it looks as if the Canadian distribution rights of the film are snarled in something—whenever it’s scheduled to play on Turner Classic Movies, the Canadian simulcast substitutes something else; the latest DVD is unavailable through official Canadian channels; and it never plays anywhere else on TV (trust me, I’ve been checking for the past three years). Ultimately, I gifted myself with a pricey gray-market import from amazon.com, and it was worth it: The Thin Man is indeed a charming mixture of complex whodunit, strong characters, married-couple romance and 1930s period feel. It features Nick and Norah Charles, a witty leisure-class married couple with a strong interest in alcohol, parties and recreational murder investigations. The plot is complex enough to be interesting, but the heart of the film is in the repartee between the leads, the unflappable Charles, the unusually strong Norah and the sophisticated comedy that comes from seeing such characters conduct their own investigations. It all naturally culminates around a dinner table when villains are unmasked and police rushes in to arrest the killer. Despite pushing eighty-five-years old, The Thin Man doesn’t feel old: While the script has its structural issues (serving far too long an introduction, only fully exploiting its own possibilities in its later half), much of the (barely) pre-code script adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel contains great snippets of dialogue, delivered with debonair aplomb by William Powell and Myra Loy, with some assistance from Skippy the dog. Director W. S. Van Dyke takes a while to get things moving, but once he does it’s all straightforward to the end. The Thin Man may take a bit of work to see up here in the North, but it’s worth the trouble.

  • The Mouse That Roared (1959)

    The Mouse That Roared (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2019) I have very fond memories of reading the comic novel on which The Mouse That Roared is based—a romp in which a small impoverished European country, having learned the wrong lessons from the Marshall Plan, deliberately sets out to lose a war against the United States in order to be richly rewarded by a reconstruction plan. But the plan fails when the country unexpectedly wins the war, inadvertently capturing a doomsday device. The film does deviate a bit from its source, most notably by casting Peter Sellers in multiple roles, including that of the country’s reigning queen. It’s all quite amusing in a clipped British-humour way, although the opening minutes of the film feel remarkably modern given the density of the editing, the deadpan jokes and the way it quickly gets the exposition business out of the way. Things do slow down after that, once we’re past the grand concepts and into the character humour—it never gets as funny as in the opening moments, but it does wrap things up nicely. The Mouse That Roared in not a great film, but it’s one that does still have its share of pleasures even today—albeit perhaps more as an affectionate look at Cold War issues.

  • When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)

    When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) What was that? No, seriously, what was that? Some kind of prehistoric adventure with dinosaurs and women in fur bikini? With invented-language dialogue? And … the formation of the Moon? Did I dream all of this? OK, let me go take a nap. [Later:] Wikipedia tells me I wasn’t dreaming: When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is not only real, but one of four “Cave Girl” movies made by Great Britain’s Hammer Studios between 1966 and 1971. Clearly, verisimilitude took a distant back seat to titillation considering the well-toned people in skimpy outfits and the presence of actual dinosaurs (and six-foot crabs) in the plot. Amazingly, the story comes from artsy SF writer J.G. Ballard, even if it was later scripted and directed by not-artsy-at-all Val Guest.  To be fair, I only watched the film because it was referenced in Jurassic Park and won an Oscar for Best Special Effects—and in this regard the film delivers in spades: the stop-motion animation of the creatures in staggeringly good even today. Alas, that’s not what I’m going to remember about the film considering the brain-breaking suspension of disbelief required to see attractive cave people fighting dinosaurs. Despite the Oscar win and Spielberg shout-out, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth isn’t frequently seen today and I’m not going to argue against the wisdom (or at least the indifference) of the masses. Some movies are best shamefully forgotten.

  • Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001)

    Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) As much as I liked 1988’s Elvira: Mistress of the Dark beyond expectations, I find myself curiously underwhelmed by belated follow-up Elvira’s Haunted Hills. Maybe you can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice, or maybe there’s a limit to how much of Cassandra Peterson’s very specific charm one can absorb. Or maybe it’s an inferior follow-up, choosing to take the very contemporary Elvira to a historical setting, cutting corners and speaking roles in an attempt to deliver on a small budget. (Mistress of the Dark wasn’t an expensive production by Hollywood standard, but at least it had the means to tell the story it wanted to tell—there’s a sense in Haunted Hills that it’s a film that compromises a lot.)  The story is familiar, what with Elvira ending up at a haunted east European castle where her likeness adorns the wall: obviously, this is a take-off on well-worn horror tropes except with the Elvira blend of sassiness and sexiness. It works, but not always—some of the dialogue is forced (even in dubbed French, which usually smoothens out those issues), some of the attitude is overdone and the plot itself can’t sustain scrutiny beyond being a snark-delivering mechanism. It keeps going surprisingly long after it should start wrapping things up. Elvira herself is the reason to watch the film or not, and the point of the story should be to place her in situations where the character can do amusing things. Alas, Haunted Hills only does the bare minimum—it’s amusing without being as likable as the earlier film. Elvira spends so much time spouting anachronistic jokes that she should have been in a contemporary setting. The rest is merely piling up lame jokes over familiar plot points and while it’s entertaining, it’s not quite enough.

  • Trois couleurs: Blanc [Three Colours: White] (1994)

    Trois couleurs: Blanc [Three Colours: White] (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) Second entry writer-director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s intriguingly titled Trois couleurs trilogy, Trois couleurs: Blanc once against takes an off-beat approach to what could have been a stock premise, by blending a post-love story with a revenge fantasy taken to the hilt. Zbigniew Zamachowski headlines as a protagonist who loses everything once his wife (Julie Delpy, suitably repulsive) divorces him for impotence, but soon lands back on his feet with an ambitious plan to get back on top … and ruin her forever. The plot takes twists and turns that are at once funny and sad, with neither of the main two characters feeling like someone we can cheer for. There’s a clever use of uplifting plot devices in service of a downbeat moral trajectory (clearly, our protagonist has never heard of “the best revenge is living well”) and while the result is interesting, I can’t imagine revisiting this film for fun anytime soon.

  • Trois couleurs: Bleu [Three Colours: Blue] (1993)

    Trois couleurs: Bleu [Three Colours: Blue] (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, September 2019) I’ve been fascinated by the Trois couleurs trilogy (on titling alone) for a quarter of a decade, so now was the time to see what the fuss was about. The trilogy apparently sends familiar premises spinning in new directions and I can certainly see it at play in Trois couleurs: Bleu, a film in which a familiar dramatic situation—a woman devastated by grief after having her husband and son die in a car crash that she survived—is given an unusual turn. Here our grieving protagonist decides to retreat from the world, leaving no address even to friends and family. Juliette Binoche anchors the film in a complex performance, portraying a character freed by her grief, yet not entirely able to give in to self-destruction. Trois couleurs: Bleu may be heavy at times, but there’s an off-beat quality to its story that makes it compelling. It’s not the kind of film that I’d readily re-watch again, but there’s a careful balance of cinematography (focusing on, yes, the colour blue) and music that adds a lot to the purely narrative drive of the film. This is, clearly, a film with clear artistic intentions and writer-director Krzysztof Kieślowski has the skills to execute the result to his satisfaction.

  • A Soldier’s Story (1984)

    A Soldier’s Story (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) From the ever-dependable director Norman Jewison (Canadian!), here comes A Soldier’s Story, a canny examination of racism in the 1944 US Army. The story begins as an officer, a black man, is sent to investigate a murder on a southern military base. Structured as an old-fashioned whodunit, A Soldier’s Story does have the propulsive plot element of a murder mystery, but in doing so does manage to touch upon an impressive number of themes revolving around the black experience. Here we have characters with profound differences of opinions pushed to their limits, in a setting not exactly renowned for its embrace of diversity. A Soldier’s Story remains interesting both as a genre thriller and as a social commentary (echoing Jewison’s earlier epochal In The Heat of the Night), making it a solid film recommendation. Nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, it has aged quite well. While Denzel Washington has one of his earliest roles here, much of the film’s attention deservedly goes to Howard E. Rollins Jr. as the protagonist investigator and Adolph Caesar as the victim seen in flashbacks. The theatrical origins of the story don’t restrict the film from being feeling free to go where it pleases, keeping the quality of the dialogues intact. Often forgotten in favour of more spectacular fare from the era, A Soldier’s Story remains a solid criminal thriller and a good entertaining time with additional social value.

  • Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

    Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (TubiTV Streaming, September 2019) Wow, that was terrible. Given the choice of watching Manos: The Hands of Fate in its original version or MST3K mocking, I chose the original. That was a mistake. From the very beginning, we’re clearly at the mercy of amateur filmmakers: the grainy images are ineptly captured without apparent cinematography, the overdubbed dialogue features unconvincing acting and awkward pauses, the actors are not good and the special effects are laughable. And the story, well, the story could be written on a napkin with enough space left to wipe your anxious brow—there’s an incredible amount of padding in this 77-minute film. (Rarely heard but fair critical reaction: “Oh no, they’re cat-fighting again!”) The only way to survive is to mock the experience, which accounts for the film enjoying a comparatively high number of votes on IMDB (although I strongly suspect that most of those votes have seen the MST3K mockery rather than the real deal). Anyone who claims with a straight face that one of the latest Hollywood blockbuster is “the worst movie ever” seriously needs to recalibrate their senses by watching Manos: Hands of Fate or something similar—it’s a glimpse into how bad filmmaking can be. As such, this film isn’t exactly normal: Most such atrocities are buried and never seen again (no, not even on cable TV)—it’s a fluke of history that MST3K took an interest in the film and almost single-handedly revived it. As for me, I’m in the camp that Manos: The Hands of Fate is so bad that it’s bad—as in, there are few reasons to even see it as anything but incompetent cinema.

  • Der müde Tod [Destiny] (1921)

    Der müde Tod [Destiny] (1921)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, September 2019) There are a few ways to approach Fritz Lang’s Destiny, and some of them are more exasperating than others. As a film for contemporary viewers, it’s sometimes a struggle to watch—it’s not only silent cinema, it’s mid-period silent cinema, meaning that it doesn’t have the best technical qualities, staging, effects or acting. It’s frequently interrupted by loquacious title cards, and even at 99 minutes feels like a much longer sit. As such, it’s not the kind of film to recommend to a casual viewer, or even a silent-curious viewer—there are far better introductory movies of that era for contemporary viewers. Even compared to its contemporaries, Destiny is an odd duck—it’s a collection of four romantic stories loosely held together by a framing device revolving around death personified. All four stories take place in radically different settings: a medieval European town for the framing story, then in Arabic, Venetian and Chinese backdrops. As such, Destiny becomes a marginally better pick for those who are interested in the history of fantasy films—its openness to the world is intriguing, and you can see here the first attempts to present a fantastical vision on screen with something approaching a thematic unity in its depiction of love and death. The special effects are primitive, but they’re in service of the story, and they led to further development—rights to the film were purchased by Douglas Fairbanks, leading to the better-known 1924 version of The Thief of Bagdad. Destiny is definitely film history 201 material (well, maybe 301), but it does have its qualities even when it’s borderline-boring for modern viewers.

  • Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)

    Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) The character of Elvira (as played by Cassandra Peterson) is best known as a pin-up, a naughty icon or a highly successful brand blending gentle horror tropes with curvaceous sex-appeal. Considering that the character was created as a horror-movie hostess, it makes sense that she would have at least one movie to her credit. Actually, there are two once you throw in 2001’s Elvira’s Haunted Hills, but the first 1988 film Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is as good a representative sample of the character than we could have wished for. Firmly executed in the 1980s B-movie tradition, the film features Peterson in character as Elvira travelling from Los Angeles to a small town in Massachusetts to claim an inheritance. Naturally, once over there she gets to shock the mundanes, bring city attitudes to the small town and (naturally) fight evil supernatural forces. The film is a bit more cohesive than the string of quick gags that viewers may apprehend after the first few moments of the film—there’s a real script here, even if it’s focused on comedy and misses no opportunity to play off Elvira’s form-fitting cleavage-showcasing outfit, sarcastic personality, and witty one-liners. Peterson isn’t the world’s best actress, but she inhabits the character with self-aware ferociousness even if the film can’t always keep an even tone. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is unabashedly silly, but crucially it works: it earns its wolf whistles, its laughs and its good humour—not to mention an enduring piece of work to present Elvira to future generations.

  • Beat Street (1984)

    Beat Street (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) There isn’t a lot to the plot or characters of Beat Street that we haven’t seen since then—this weakly plotted musical comedy follows the adventures of a few Bronx teenagers as they dance, beat box, DJ, tag and create music. But the plot or characters aren’t the point—the point is to showcase early-New York rap and breakdancing, as the film’s plot is structured in a way to feature such sequences. The result is a wonderful time capsule of early hip-hop, featuring plenty of names that even casual fans such as myself can recognize: Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, Kool Moe Dee. There’s a lot here that prefigures later looks at hip-hop—including a dance battle sequence that feels like the prototype for the entire Step Up series. The actors themselves are passable—although Rae Dawn Chong looks great here. Not every moment works (I’m not so happy about the graffiti sequences, for instance, and the more conventional dramatic beats feel overwhelmed by the dance and music sequences) but as a time capsule movie, Beat Street is definitely worth a look.

  • Chung Hing sam lam [Chungking Express] (1994)

    Chung Hing sam lam [Chungking Express] (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Criterion streaming, September 2019) Considering that I had a look at Chungking Express solely because it showed up on several (longer) “best movies of all time” lists, I’m left a bit nonplussed at its critical acclaim. Oh, I do think it’s a good movie: As an unconventional romantic comedy following one policeman, then another as they recover from painful breakups, it’s stylishly executed, often very likable and portrays mid-1990s Hong Kong effectively. Both male leads are depicted with disarming detail—it’s one thing to see Takeshi Kaneshiro eat thirty cans of pineapples in romantic grief, but have one lived until seeing Tony Leung talking affectionately to inanimate objects in his underwear? In comparison, the female characters are far less approachable: Brigitte Lin comes from a Hong Kong crime drama as a blonde underworld assassin, while Faye Wong pushes the quirky-girl thing up to eleven. But there’s a fair case to be made that this is a film of mood and atmosphere, as the two stories revolve around a small fast-food restaurant (the eponymous “Express”) in a busy Hong Kong area. Writer-director Wong Kar-Wai is typically careful with his use of colour, film speed, mood and reflections—there’s a lot to see here in his use of the camera, and the film remains interesting to watch even if some of what he was doing in 1994 has now fallen into cliché or dated material. As an atmospheric piece, it remains quite good (reminding me of the two dozen HK films I watched at the end of the 1990s)—and it feels faster paced than many of Kar-Wai’s later features. Still, there’s a leap from good to great movie that I don’t quite see when Chungking Express shows up on those best-movies-ever lists. But that’s just expectations management—the film remains worth a look even without inflated expectations.

  • The Circus (1928)

    The Circus (1928)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) Charlie Chaplin sketches at the circus—sure, there is a plot to The Circus, but it’s really an excuse for Chaplin to string along one circus-related routine after another. Fortunately, a lot of them are funny—the climactic tightrope sequence, in particular, gets crazier and crazier the longer it goes on. While it’s not as heavy on the melodrama as other Chaplin films, The Circus does have its bittersweet ending. Notable for being the one Chaplin film made through the epochal change from silent cinema to sound, The Circus is also known for having been exceptionally difficult to complete, with considerable turmoil in Chaplin’s life during production, and other difficulties on set (when the sets weren’t burning down, that is). The result is a film that Chaplin himself didn’t acknowledge very often, but one that shows his comic genius in clearly identified sketches loosely connected by plot. As a result, The Circus may be appreciable for its set-pieces, but doesn’t quite hold a candle to Chaplin’s most successful efforts both before and after this one.

  • The Witches (1990)

    The Witches (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) The thought of Nicholas Roeg—a director better known for elliptical, atmospheric, often violent movies—handling a children’s film is odd, but it may explain why The Witches often plays harder and harsher than other kids’ movies. Those sequences in which the witches reveal their form, or their plans to kill every kid in England, go substantially farther than most other such films. Roeg obviously plays well with the source material, Roald Dahl’s famously misanthropic novel. Still, the film is very competently handled, and can benefit from the very well-cast Angelica Huston as the head witch. There’s some interesting pre-CGI animal work in the second half of the film as our protagonist is transformed into a mouse. The final sequence is suitably chaotic, with plenty of revenge delivered unto the antagonists. It does amount to an occasionally off-putting but successful film for older kids—you can credit Roeg for using his veteran’s skills to deliver the result.