Reviews

  • Lilies of the Field (1963)

    Lilies of the Field (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Sidney Poitier won his Oscar thanks to his performance in this film and it’s easy to see why—playing an itinerant handyman who comes across an eccentric group of nuns during his travels, he is the glue that holds the film together. The nuns are not only recent immigrants unable to talk much English: they need help building a chapel, and their leader is unusually skillful at persuasion. Before understanding what he’s getting into, our protagonist finds himself spearheading the construction of the chapel, helping the nuns despite their inability to pay him. There’s clearly a construction narrative at work here as we see the chapel take form, but Lilies of the Field wouldn’t half as interesting without the off-beat nuns and how they somehow convince the protagonist in doing their bidding. Meanwhile, Poitier plays the cool, bemused outsider (the nun’s antics wouldn’t be half as funny without his reactions), immensely relatable to the audience. The black-and-white cinematography makes good use of outdoor locations, with the desert helping to create a white backdrop useful for composition. In some ways, I’m amused that script can be seen as a constructive take on the “stranger comes to town” western premise. Still, the draw of Lilies of the Field is Poitier, charismatic and relatable at once. It’s thanks to him if it’s still so entertaining today.

  • The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

    The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) In the pantheon of Hollywood movies about Hollywood, The Bad and the Beautiful still stands tall as being emblematic of its era, right before the weight of studio producers crumbled before television, antitrust legislation, and the end of exclusive studio contracts. Kirk Douglas is in fine form as a movie mogul with numerous enemies, bringing three of them together so that he can convince them to work on his next project. But it’s a framing device, as the producer recalls his history with each one of his three listeners, leading to three shorter related stories about a director, a star and a writer. In each case, the protagonist plays the spoiler, pushing them to further heights even as he (as they put it) ruins their lives. As a way to take a multifaceted look at the way Hollywood worked up to that point, The Bad and the Beautiful is ingenious—it takes us in three different sub-worlds of Hollywood, loosely linked together. The tone is strictly melodramatic, which does add to the period charm. Douglas plays a magnificent bastard here, willing to sacrifice relationships in order to make movies … and then get the band back together. As befit a framing device holding together three shorter films, the ending is a bit weak, but that’s fine: this is very much a journey-is-the-destination film where the climax is less important than the scenes leading to it. At this point in time, it almost feels like comfort viewing—a paean to a lost Hollywood, but whose echoes can still be felt today.

    (Second viewing, Streaming, May 2025) Every year, I learn a little bit more about Classic Hollywood, and that in turn changes the experience of re-watching the films of that era.  A second looks at The Bad and the Beautiful is not quite the same.  Sure, Kirk Douglas is just as impressive as a life-altering studio mogul — but this time around, I get to appreciate Dick Powell in a later-career role unlike his earlier turns.  I get to take in Gloria Grahame’s short but striking role a Southern belle that the script heartlessly dispatches as being a distraction from creativity.  (Lana Turner is top-billed, but Graham, and to a lesser extent, Elaine Stewart, make more of an impression in a shorter time.)  I get to chuckle at the nod to Val Lewton’s Cat People, and revel in the glimpses of classic-era film-making.  There are quite a few touches of wit in director Vincente Minnelli’s direction, working with the script to punch-up some fake-outs (“It stinks!”) and amusing reveals (such as the pool dip).  Sure, The Bad and the Beautiful is melodramatic, uncomfortably dissonant with modern values, and perhaps too much in love with Classic Hollywood to deliver an honest conclusion.  But it’s fun, witty, an utterly splendid illustration of a specific era in film history, and a pretty good acting showcase.  It stands on its own as a story, but it becomes greater when measured against its era.

  • Stormy Weather (1943)

    Stormy Weather (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Due to an unfortunate lengthy delay between first watching Stormy Weather and publishing this review, I’m cheating a bit here—I’ve seen the film about twice-and-a-half in the past two years, and I’m not going to pretend that this is a “first viewing” review. Simply put, I love Stormy Weather. It may not be as well known as other movies of the time, but it has something very distinct running for it: It’s one of the rare all-black films made by Hollywood studios in the 1940s, and it doesn’t hold back giving the star treatment to its lead performer Lena Horne. Given my enduring crush on the timelessly gorgeous Horne, it makes perfect sense that I’d like Stormy Weather as much as I did: She get the primary role (allowing her to show her acting talents far more than the walk-on singing performances she got in other musicals), it treated with reverence by the other characters, is shot in a luminous fashion by the best cinematographers that the studio could put on the project and she gets a few terrific numbers along the way (most notably the title song). But wait, because there’s so much more to Stormy Weather than a showcase for Horne: You have Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in a leading role, you have Cab Calloway showing everyone how it’s done, and as a perfect climax to the film you have an anthology-worthy dance performance from the Nicholas Brothers that’s worth seeing again and again. (Not less an authority than Fred Astaire famously called it the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen.)  Less famously, you have plenty of dance and song numbers by talented black performers who have full license to be at their best. (One of the numbers features black performers doing blackface, which is the kind of thing that marks it as a product of its time, but also make for interesting reading.) The all-black cast shows a very different vision of life in 1943, and it’s immensely regrettable that only Cabin in the Sky (also 1943) would be made in the same style. As mentioned before, I’ve watched Stormy Weather two-and-a-half times already (up to five times for the Nicholas Brothers sequence) and it gets better every time. An utterly essential musical and one I don’t get tired of recommending.

  • Seven Chances (1925)

    Seven Chances (1925)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) There is definitely a slow-burn quality to Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, as the film shakes itself from a melodramatic first act (in which a young man must find a bride before the end of the day) all the way to an escalating chase sequence in which Keaton flees before hundreds of women in wedding gown, then a full-blown rock avalanche. The progression wasn’t in the early plans for the film—it’s at the audience preview stage that Keaton understood how to cap his film with its wild climax and went back to shooting in order to complete the film. Still, the result works. From the finer small-scale comic work of its first act, Seven Chances gradually works itself into more ludicrous sight gags, and then one of the great sequences of Keaton’s films in time for the finale. No, it’s not quite as inventive as Sherlock Jr., as demented as Steamboat Bill, Jr. or as finely controlled as The General, but it makes for a good second-tier Keaton feature, and those remain well worth seeing.

  • Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

    Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) An integral part of writer-director Preston Sturge’s incredible early-1940s steak, Sullivan’s Travels remains quite a watch even today. It helps that it’s firing on all cylinders, from casting (Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake) to writing/directing (featuring Sturges’ early-career manic energy) to its subject matter (a movie star sinking to a work prison camp) to its full-throated defence of comedy as a noble pursuit. It would be quite a heady film even without Sturges’ sure touch on the dialogue and directing, but with them it becomes an incredible film. There’s even an unusually respectful treatment of black characters at a time when those were usually marginalized or stereotyped, and that clear demonstration of Sturge’s humanism explains why his films are still delightful today. Lake delivers a good performance, McCrea a great one and the film is fit to stand alongside The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story as the very best of what Sturges did in rapid succession.

  • Death of a Salesman (1985)

    Death of a Salesman (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) It’s kind of amazing that the 1985 filmed version of Death of a Salesman would be so widely regarded (and still replayed) today. It was a made-for-TV film and so prospects for its longevity weren’t exceptional—after all, there’s been five other filmed adaptations of Arthur Miller’s play so far, and that’s from a play that goofs around with very theatrical conventions. But this version happened to star two powerful actors (Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich, even a young Stephen Lang) and earned an impressive list of accolades at the subsequent Emmys and Golden Globes. It’s still the most popular filmed version of the play, and the one most likely to be rebroadcast. While it can’t quite transpose the unusual conventions of the theatrical play to the big screen (what with its characters deliberately crossing over the symbolic décor, and playing along several timelines), it does some unusual and interesting things with its own staging, and certainly gets the point across. Death of a Salesman does not replace a good theatrical production, but sometimes (especially for such a glum work) a viewing at home is what’s indicated. The downbeat nature of the story is credibly rendered, and it’s a good thing that we’ve got at least one decent version of the story available on film.

  • Hero (1992)

    Hero (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) What I like best about Hero is the way it engages with a question that most would rather avoid—the nature of heroism. Especially in movies, where heroism is the kind of pillar value of spectacular entertainment. Movies are not where regular people live—it’s where we get to indulge in idealized characters doing things that go beyond the ordinary. Accordingly, it’s refreshing to see the film focus around a small-scale criminal who suddenly finds himself in a position to perform an act of undeniable heroism—even as he uses the situation to his advantage. The ethical questions that follow are fascinating and rarely explored—weighing public perception versus private intentions, feelings of shame and further complications. It’s fertile material, even if Hero doesn’t quite manage to execute its material in better-than-average fashion. There’s a lack of focus to the film that eventually makes it feel longer than it should (even at 112 minutes), with its philosophical questioning more diffuse than it would have been in a more concise format. There’s a lot to like in Dustin Hoffman’s lead performance, though—under Stephen Frears’ direction, he’s able to take on a thankless role with a great deal of panache—I wonder how many A-list actors without Hoffman’s dramatic background would have been willing to take on such an inglorious role. There’s a decent depth to the supporting casting, all the way to numerous uncredited cameos. Hero’s not a perfect film, but it does ask unusual questions and manages an honest result despite a number of missed opportunities.

  • The Mule (2018)

    The Mule (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) There’s something in the air about older movie stars not quite wanting to face down retirement. So, we get The Old Man and the Gun, and The Mule, about older men turning to crime. The similarities are uncanny, with both films (inspired by true stories) showing legendary movie stars playing old guys using their charm to get away with things that old people really shouldn’t be doing, and featuring the criminals unknowingly interacting with their police pursuers. But while Robert Redford may push it to charmingly flirt with bank tellers in The Old Man and the Gun, Eastwood here can’t help but cast himself cavorting with women young enough to be his granddaughters (usually two of them at once). Ah well—what’s the use of being a Hollywood celebrity director if you can’t engineer yourself a threesome? Even though The Mule follows the usual formula, it does invite scrutiny: Eastwood, notoriously conservative, tries to have it both ways by showing how one can personally benefit from crime until it becomes dangerous, while also tut-tutting younger generations wasting their lives in a cycle of crime and violence. (This is called “hypocrisy,” and it is indeed a central feature of modern American conservatism.)  There are a few sops here to Eastwood’s old-guy crankiness, from “There’s something wrong with you, kids” to motorcyclists who won’t take his advice and so on. It does occur to me that we’re in sore need for a further subcategorization of what it means to be “old”—Sixty may be the new fifty, but when you have Eastwood pushing ninety, that’s an entirely different ball game. Every film of his may be the last, and The Mule at least has the distinction of being quite a bit better (and enjoyable) than the much maligned The 3:17 p.m. to Paris. [April 2022: Peeking from the future, I also note a similarity between The Mule and Cry Macho, which will probably keep going for as long as Eastwood casts himself in tough-guy roles.]  Even despite the issues and flaws and contrivances, I did still like The Mule—it’s a fun crime caper that features an unusual character, and I have a hunch that despite my having some issues with Eastwood-the-man, I’m going to miss him when he’s gone. But I have a feeling he’s going to die with his boots on, on a movie set.

  • The Corporate Coup d’État (2019)

    The Corporate Coup d’État (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) There’s some precious irony in having some of the best documentaries about the sorry state of (North-) American society being financed by Canadian tax dollars. But after All Governments Lie and now The Corporate Coup d’État, Fred Peabody is clearly establishing himself as a clear-eyed chronicler of the many forces making things worse in today’s world. The central thesis of the film, as per its title, is in describing how politics are increasingly subordinate to corporate interests in setting policy, especially with laws that demonstrably benefit no one but a few corporations. But it’s impossible to present such a thesis without plenty of tangential topics to support the main argument, and that’s how we find ourselves discussing the opioid epidemic as evidence of generalized despair, excessive imprisonment used as social control mechanism more than individual punishment (let alone rehabilitation), and state violence not being used except overseas and in the inner city, as per police brutality riots. Much of the film’s thesis is not new nor all that revolutionary—Canadians will note that it, and the film’s title, comes from a 1995 book by John Ralston Saul, whose achievement since then include being the husband of the country’s Governor General. Much of the film uses a mixture of on-screen titles, news footage (sometimes used ironically—The CBC comes in for a few shots), on-the-ground reporting (not as intellectually heady but viscerally illustrative of the thesis—the foreclosure sequence is particularly poignant) and interviews with notables such as Ralston Saul, Cornel West, Matt Taibbi and quite a bit of Chris Hedges. Much of the film is quite convincing, showing that the 1995 thesis has been fully realized and illustrated by the past twenty-five years. Still, I can’t help but poke at a few moments of the film. One idea worth exploring would have been the centralization of wealth in the Internet age, for instance. I also wanted to hear more about the idea that Obama’s election caused an increase in corporate messaging to undermine his political support. Perhaps more crucially, I’m really not all that happy about the “both sides” rhetoric that finds its way in the text: it’s demonstrably not true, and it feeds into hopelessness rather than activism. (As that other noted Canadian intellectual Rick Mercer once ranted, choosing the lesser evil is really important.)  Still, it’s quite an interesting documentary: It guns for big ideas, and finds plenty of material to illustrate its argument. It’s also far more entertaining than you’d expect: Perhaps the biggest treat in The Corporate Coup d’État is seeing West and Ralston Raul have a tea and chat about how to save the world. Considering this and a rather good envoi, the film doesn’t end quite as bleakly as you could expect from its glum subject matter.

  • Union Pacific (1939)

    Union Pacific (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) I’m not sure how much we twenty-first century sophisticates truly understand the meaning and importance of the first coast-to-coast railway. To put in modern context, it was akin to building the first highway and the first Internet link throughout the country at the same time. The first transcontinental railway (1869 in the United States, 1886 in Canada) did as much to tie the country together as any law. It standardized time, facilitated the mobility of labour, ended the wild frontier, improved the flow of news and information—all things that we now take for granted. We may never be able to fully appreciate that it meant then, but at least there are movies like Union Pacific to make us appreciate the details of how it was done. Focusing on a troubleshooter for a railroad company, this is a film that takes a look at the nitty-gritty of building such a revolutionary endeavour, from shooing away undesirables that prey on railroad workers, to the logistics of keeping such a group of workers fed and productive, to negotiations with the native tribes. Joel McCrea plays the troubleshooter, bringing his usual charisma to the part and helping to humanize a complex subject. Barbara Stanwyck plays the love interest, while you can see (or rather hear) Robert Preston and Anthony Quinn in the supporting cast. But this is director Cecil B. de Mille’s film—an expansive, spectacular subject matter that never misses a chance to stage a large-scale action sequence. While the film does regrettably rely on native attacks as a pretext to action scenes, it does spend more time than was usual back in 1939 showing how those attacks were motivated by the white businessmen breaking their promises to the tribes. Union Pacific is my kind of western—not a celebration of the wild frontier using the usual macho tropes of the genre, but a study in how civilization spread throughout the land and closed the frontier. Some film historians point to this film and Stagecoach as when the Western grew up, but I can only testify as to the interest that it created and sustained over a two-hours-and-fifteen minutes running time: It’s a fascinating railway procedural, and it manages to have a nice human edge to it.

  • Splendor in the Grass (1961)

    Splendor in the Grass (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) I’m not a big fan of small-town dramas, but there are two or three things that make Splendor in the Grass worth a look. The first is the most obvious: the casting. With Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty in the lead, there’s additional interest that other movies with lesser-known actors may not have. The other is more subtle, but with its premise turning around the dilemmas experienced by two circa-1928 teenagers dealing with romance, sex, and future prospects, you can feel the film trying to say something about the changing perception of teenagers as of 1961. Splendor in the Grass, directly written for the big screen, is nonetheless messy in ways that originally scripted movies usually aren’t: At times, with its time skips and changes of situation, it feels like an adaptation of a novel being overly slavish to the source material. There are a few melodramatic junctions that stretch the bounds of a believable drama, but so it goes. Director Eliza Kazan was trying for something more than comforting formula here, and the result manages to transcend specific time or place. But even if you’re not having any fun seeing the story go where it goes, at least there’s Wood and Beatty delivering early great performances.

  • Zombi Holocaust (1980)

    Zombi Holocaust (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) Anyone wondering why I’m even looking at Italian zombie films despite my dislike of the genre should be aware that I’m working to complete a list of popular 1980s movies more than really seeing what I want to see. If I really had my pick, I wouldn’t go anywhere near Zombi Holocaust based on reputation alone, and a viewing of the film only bears this out. Combining two of my least favourite movie genres, this film blends a zombie prologue (as New York City hospital is overrun with zombies) as lead-in to a cannibal motif that uncovers a plot by a mad scientist to bla-bla-bla. I really can’t be bothered by the plot given that director Marino Girolami isn’t particularly interested in it anyway. The point, as is usually the case with circa-1980 Italian horror are the kills, the gore effects and the overall meanness of the film. Zombi Holocaust is truly unpleasant, without any entertainment value, blatantly manipulative (there’s an insistent tone blared whenever something is going on) and of very little cinema history value—at most it’s one more example of what happened when giallo crashed into the 1980s and that’s not an episode that anyone should highlight.

  • Galaxy of Terror (1981)

    Galaxy of Terror (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) It will probably cause physical pain to at least one cinephile if I keep comparing Galaxy of Terror to Solyaris, but how else to talk about a science-fiction film in which the alien presence literalizes thoughts out of the characters’ minds? Of course, Galaxy of Terror is an avowed SF/horror hybrid coming from Roger Corman’s low-end exploitation production company: the seemingly clever premise is really a way to string along unconnected scary scenes without much thought regarding consistency or plausibility. It’s not playing fancy or playing nice—the film’s most infamous sequence has an alien worm raping a female character, and the film’s Wikipedia entry spends almost as many words talking about that scene than detailing the plot. One of Galaxy of Terror’s few claims to a place in cinematic history is that James Cameron served as production designer and second-unit director on the film. (He didn’t direct the worm scene — Corman did.)  How you feel about the result will depend, again, on what you compare it to.   It’s more interesting than most of the slasher-horror movies of the moment, but it also feels like a terrible imitation of Alien. It does showcase Corman’s low-budget high-imagination ethos, but that’s not much of a recommendation. Ultimately, Galaxy of Terror is not likely to appeal to Science Fiction fans as much as to horror fans, given that so much of the plot is focused on the terrors rather than the galaxy.

  • The Butler (2013)

    The Butler (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2019) As Hollywood’s portrayal of history grows more nuanced than the simple portrayal of cause-and-effect led by white males, I can understand the irresistible impulse to show events from a different perspective. So it is that something like The Butler was inevitable—a look at American presidents as seen from the one of the black butlers serving the White House, adapted from factual events. With Obama as the officeholder, it seemed like a natural triumphant conclusion to years of post-WW2 racial integration and a way to showcase the American presidency through a very specific lens. Played by Forest Whitaker, Cecil Gaines makes his entrance at the White House in 1957 and goes on to witness history from up close while dealing with various family crises along the way. An incredible cast propels the film forward, with familiar actors imbuing even short scenes with an additional level of interest. The Butler cleverly plays with casting in casting a succession of Very Big Names as the presidents. Director Lee Daniels keeps things moving relatively smoothly through decades of history, especially given how the scope of the story would seem to justify a miniseries. There are, to be sure, some very suspicious contrivances here as nearly every sequence relates to matters of racial issues and the character’s personal family history is woven in for dramatic effect. Daniels isn’t above some good old-fashioned melodrama and pot shots at historical figures, neither of which are necessarily good things in an already-contrived narrative. Still, The Butler is a relatively entertaining film, as much for its sweeping take on racial issues in recent American history as in the ways it chooses to dramatize those issues. It’s far more sobering to realize that post-2013 history has not been as kind to the progress demonstrated in the film with unrepentant white supremacists lodged in the post-Obama White House, but that too will make for a fascinating biopic one of these days, and the bigots won’t win that round either.

  • Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)

    Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On TV, August 2019) Now here’s something that younger generations may not understand: there were two solid decades, roughly 1975–1995, where the late 1990s were fiction’s “techno-thriller years”—a time where writers set stories that were a bit like the future but not too much. Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is a really good example of that: By setting their story forward in 1996, the filmmakers are free to imagine a slightly more dystopian future (no ozone layer!) with stronger corporate control and, crucially for the story, a new synthetic drug. The narrative gets started when two bikers rob an armoured van and end up not with cash but a substantial shipment of drugs that are, of course, property of corrupt corporate executives. As the title suggests, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man dives deep into the biker outlaw archetype, with Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke showing a much-inflated opinion of themselves as they strut around thinking that they are the epitome of cool. But the film is all attitude and bluster, and not as much fun thirty years later. There are some moments that stand out: Vanessa Williams and Tia Carrere have supporting roles (the first as a singer), the portrayal of mooks in bulletproof long coats seems prophetic of a late-1990s cliché, and there’s an occasional so-bad-it’s-good quality to the over-the-top dialogue and mindless action of the film. It’s also interesting to measure the results against familiar western archetypes, making an argument about bikers being modern cowboys. To be clear, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is not good, and nearly everything intriguing about it has been seen elsewhere. You also have to tolerate unearned machismo in order to even get into the film (although the opening monologue from a radio DJ rather efficiently sets the tone). But I’ve seen much, much worse, so at least it’s got that going for it.