Reviews

  • Back to School (1986)

    Back to School (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On TV, August 2019) “Rodney Dangerfield goofing off” seems to be the plot summary of most of Dangerfield’s movies, and the same holds true for Back to School. As the title suggests, this is Dangerfield heading back to academia to deliver his usual takedown of authority, pompousness, and higher education. As a (very) rich entrepreneur who goes back to college in order to foster his bonds with his son, Dangerfield gets the chance to oppose his brand of rough common good sense against the stuffy professors. Slobs versus snobs again, with expected results … including romancing a younger professor (only 16 years’ difference between Dangerfield and Sally Kellerman—could have been worse), getting in fights with pompous enemies and partying with the coeds. I saw the film a long time ago and only remembered two scenes (the protagonist bringing some real-world knowledge in an economics class, and the final diving sequence), so much of it was relatively fresh to me. Adrienne Barbeau has a small but appreciated role as a philandering trophy wife. Still, much of the film actually works well. Dangerfield, playing a rich guy, doesn’t get to overindulge in his “I get no respect” shtick, and his motivations approach nobility at times. As a result, his character feels more sympathetic and so does Back to School given how closely it depends on him.

  • Ziegfeld Follies (1945)

    Ziegfeld Follies (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) For fans of golden-age Hollywood musicals, it’s easy to get excited about Ziegfeld Follies from the get-go, as the names pile up the opening credits: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Lena Horne, Lucille Ball in the same movie? Well, yes, but don’t expect a full narrative: As the opening number makes clear (featuring William Powell reprising his titular role in the Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld, looking down from paradise and wishing he could assemble another revue), this is a series of unconnected musical numbers and comic sketches featuring some of the era’s biggest stars. First number “Here’s to the Girls/Bring on the Wonderful Men” gets going with a bang, with Fred Astaire introducing Cyd Charisse leading to Lucille Ball in full grandiose Ziegfeld choreography, with a cute and very funny spoof from the deadpan Virginia O’Brien to wrap it up. The comedy numbers that follow have nearly all aged poorly—the comic style is broad, repetitive and laid on far too thick. The exception is the half-comedy, half-musical number “The Great Lady Has an Interview” in which a great-looking Judy Garland sings and charms her way through a satire of interviews—the number concludes with an extended comedy/dance/song tour de force from Garland. Still, there’s a lot more: Astaire features in three other numbers in the film, all of them quite different. “This Heart of Mine” starts on a conventional note with Astaire as a gentleman thief sneaking his way in a jewelry-heavy ball, where he dances with Lucille Bremer—but then the floor under them becomes a pair of treadmills and then a giant turntable and we see Astaire’s gift for innovative dance choreography take flight, leading to a cute conclusion. “Limehouse Blues” is something different, billed as a “dramatic pantomime” with a tragic storyline that takes Astaire (in yellowface, alas) through a vividly imagined Asian-inspired dance. But the kicker is “The Babbitt and The Bromide,” the sole golden-era joint performance by Astaire and Gene Kelly: the number plays up both the sincere admiration and the playful audience-imposed rivalry between the two screen legends. It’s everything such a joint performance between the two should be. For fans of more classical dancing/singing numbers, Esther Williams, Lena Horne and Kathryn Grayson all get standard numbers showing both their beauty and talent. A few other numbers and sketches round the film, perhaps the only other highlight being a half-funny comic sketch featuring Fanny Brice (one of Ziegfeld’s original 1910s girls) with Hume Cronyn (an actor still remembered in the 2010s for roles in 1980s films)—an astonishing duo. Disconnected, uneven but very impressive at times, Ziegfeld Follies is a real treat for golden Hollywood musical fans.

  • Look Who’s Talking Too (1990)

    Look Who’s Talking Too (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2019) Sequels shouldn’t aim to deliver exactly the same as the previous film. You want something like it but different (and hopefully better, but let’s not ask too much), otherwise the feeling of déjà vu can overpower the built-in advantage of reprising characters. So it is that Look Who’s Talking Too is so much like the first film (down to the opening credit concept), that it doesn’t have anywhere to go. Romantic comedies should, as a rule, never have sequels and let the characters live happily ever after. Here, the birth of our lead couple’s second child is merely the first salvo in a deteriorating relationship, and there’s nothing funny in seeing them separate even if we know it’ll get better by the end of the film. The babies voiceover thing isn’t as cute as the first film, even if the addition of a second voice can vary things a bit. Overall, the film feels like it’s cruising without much effort: Kirstie Alley and John Travolta make for a fine lead couple, but the film makes a mistake by focusing on them when going after another set of character would have broadened things a bit. Even at barely 90 minutes, Look Who’s Talking Too causes restlessness more than anything, which is not the kind of thing you’re aiming for in a sequel.

  • White Zombie (1932)

    White Zombie (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) There’s an undeniable first-mover advantage to White Zombie in that it was, at least to my knowledge, the first feature-length horror film to head to the Caribbean for its zombie thrills. Obligatory precision: These are old-school voodoo zombies and not the Romero flesh-eating ones—meaning that mysterious plants and hypnotic suggestions lead to an undead-like state. In this context walks in a loving couple about to get married, and a local count who covets the woman. It escalates as it should, with none other than Bela Lugosi as the voodoo master doing his lord’s bidding. The atmosphere approaches Caribbean Gothic at times, although that really oversells it: as times, it feels as if they simply transposed some vampire story to Haiti and didn’t file off the serial numbers. Coming barely five years in the sound film era, White Zombie still feels like a silent film in many aspects, and most specifically in the melodramatic acting carried wholesale from silent movies. While the film was modestly influential in its own way (this is where Rob Zombie got his band’s name from), it feels bland compared to other horror movies of the era, or even other takes on similar material. For instance, I can’t say enough good things about I Walked with a Zombie (1943) when I compare it with White Zombie. It’s worth a look for horror historians, but I’d be hard-pressed to suggest it as decent entertainment when there are better options out there.

  • Terror Train (1980)

    Terror Train (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) The early 1980s were thick with slasher horror films, in which one psychopath took on a dwindling number of teenage characters. One of the more unusual of these was the Canadian co-production Terror Train, which set the murders aboard, well, a train. A teenager-filled train travelling during winter (this was filmed near Montréal), which severely limits the option of stopping the train. Jamie Lee Curtis once more stars as a screaming young woman fighting back against homicidal evil, but the draw here is the restrained setting, the stylistic experimentation from director Roger Spottiswoode and the thematic emphasis on magic, featuring none other than David Copperfield as a magician entertaining the teenage audiences. (Yes, he gets killed at some point.)  Despite those few points of distinction, Terror Train itself isn’t particularly fun or entertaining to watch: it quickly falls into the same boring morass of murder sequences, each death being slightly more annoying than the last. By the end, we’re just relieved that even at barely more than 90 minutes, it’s over and we can watch something else.

  • True Crime (1999)

    True Crime (1999)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, August 2019) One of the strongest arguments for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States may be the incessant stream of message movies taking it as a premise to be denounced. The Player laughed about a last-minute stay of execution climax in 1994, but True Crime played it absolutely straight in 1999 (and The Life of David Gale would subvert it in 2003). Other examples abound, but the point still stands: The death penalty can be a cheap tool in the wrong hands, and even the best-intentioned filmmakers can fall in the trap of excessive melodrama. Granted, Clint Eastwood’s film has other problems, and one of his worst ones here is to cast himself in wildly inappropriate roles. Here we have Eastwood directing 69-year-old Eastwood as a two-fisted rogue reporter who regularly steps out of his marriage to have affairs with wildly inappropriate (and much younger) partners. Knowing what we know about Eastwood’s personal behaviour, we have to ask: Wish fulfillment or acting from experience? The problem is that we never believe Eastwood in the role of a clearly much younger (as in: forty-something) protagonist. Even as he goes beyond the expected article to investigate the events leading to an impending execution, we know where this is going. If you manage to set your disbelief aside for a moment, however, True Crime does actually manage to turn into a decent potboiler thriller, with the death penalty as the big consequence everybody runs against. The ending is as predictable as it’s mildly hilarious if you have fresh memories of The Player. With Eastwood’s no-nonsense style, it becomes a serviceable thriller with a few basic script issues, one unforgivable miscasting and an over-the-top conclusion that couldn’t have gone any other way.

  • Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

    Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) There are a few movies out there that are best reviewed after reading about their production. A first uninformed look at Hollywood Shuffle is invariably going to come across as being too harsh on the material. This can be explained by the film’s extremely low-budget, writer-director Robert Townsend’s overriding satirical intentions, and sheer underdog nature of the project (which was financed through credit cards and acting gigs, and took two years to complete in guerilla-style filmmaking conditions). It’s clearly didactic in how it really wants you to understand the problems that faced black actors in 1980s Hollywood, and unapologetic in the ways it gets in your face about it. The result is unequal. With Keenen Ivory Wayans writing part of the script, the humour is very uneven, ranging from classic sequences (such as the one where he imagines a hostile press berating him for not being black enough, or the fantasy movie-review sketch) to more humdrum material. It’s also (especially in hindsight) imperfect in how it tackles inequality—loudly advocating for fewer black stereotypes while indulging in other kinds of stereotyping. I do have a sneaking suspicion that the film is funnier if you know all about life in 1980s Hollywood for black actors: that it’s an inside joke that happened to have wider appeal. Still, in the evolution of black cinema through the decades, there’s clearly a place for Hollywood Shuffle as an eloquent capture of a specific time and place—not that things are necessarily perfect now, but that by the 1980s you could see black cinema go from the superstars à la Eddie Murphy (explicitly referred to here) to a more accessible brand of black cinema. Do remember that Spike Lee had just come out with She’s Gotta Have It in 1986…

  • The Painted Veil (1934)

    The Painted Veil (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) It’s completely unfair to compare a film with another adaptation made decades later, but here we are—I can help but measure the 1934 version of The Painted Veil with the 2006 adaptation of the same novel by W. Somerset Maugham, and being overly critical of the earlier film. There’s some logic to it, though: as a tough drama taking place in a picturesque location, this is a story that benefits from the increased technical sophistication of twenty-first century cinema. The colour cinematography, ethnic-appropriate casting, enhanced sense of place and ability to squarely tackle topics without skirting around censors and impressionable audiences (especially in a film focused on an affair) are undeniable strengths of the later film. What this version has is Greta Garbo in the lead role (admittedly an advantage only if you really like Garbo) and an ending that could be described as a happy one, avoiding the tragic finale of the novel and later adaptation. I’m normally someone who likes happy endings—even to the extent of defending some of the most outrageous ones imposed by Hollywood adaptations—but I can’t muster much enthusiasm for this one, so integral does the tragedy feel to the work. There’s also a fair point to be made that this version seems to be all about Garbo, Garbo, Garbo to the extent of minimizing the work it’s supposed to adapt. It does make an interesting contrast, though—between the studio-bound techniques of the 1930s versus the unlimited palette offered to 2000s filmmakers, between a cast-member taking over the story versus a team effort, between the emphasis that a version can place on sections of the story compared to another. I would have written another review had I not seen the 2006 adaptation of The Painted Veil first, but again—here we are.

  • Welcome Danger (1929)

    Welcome Danger (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Considering that comedian Harold Lloyd’s career just about straddled the silent and sound era, Welcome Danger is a fascinating case study in how he was forced to transition from one style to the other. He did so reluctantly—after encountering so much success with silent movies, Lloyd could be forgiven so thinking that sound filmmaking would harm his usual fast-paced, visually centred approach to comedy. So it is that, according to the film’s production history, Welcome Danger was first shot as a silent, then (after Lloyd convinced himself that there was no other choice) edited down, partially re-shot and entirely re-dubbed so that it could be presented as a sound film. His qualms were not unjustified—most of Lloyd’s enduring classic films were made during the silent era, with the rest being considered an appendix to his silent body of work. Accordingly, Welcome Danger feels like a decent film, but nothing more—as Lloyd’s “Glasses” character travels to San Francisco to help fight against organized crime, the film mixes in the usual physical comedy, romantic subplot, and specific set-pieces. There’s something not entirely comfortable in the film constantly bringing up San Francisco’s Asian population as the origin of the crime wave—even if, ultimately, the film blurs the cards when it comes to the crime boss. Welcome Danger does remain watchable enough—it may not be a terrific Lloyd film, but it’s fun, “Glasses” is up to his usual likability and if there aren’t any big physical stunts to wow audiences, everything is wrapped up nicely.

  • Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

    Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Like many cinephiles, I was quite impressed when Melissa McCarthy suddenly became a comedy superstar thanks to a remarkable comic performance in Bridesmaids. It was an overnight success years in the making, thanks to several well-regarded supporting appearances in various projects, but it cemented her comic persona as that of an obnoxious loudmouth. That kind of comedy based on deliberate irritation, as many others can testify, is only good until you get overexposed and suddenly becomes a liability. So, it’s smart for McCarthy to try to switch her image before it’s too late. She went in that direction with her supporting role in St. Vincent, but it’s with Can You Ever Forgive Me? that she really takes the chance of a lead role in a very different register. Here she plays in a docu-fictive drama about Lee Israel, a difficult and down-on-her-luck writer who turns to celebrity letter forgery as a way to make money. It turns into a nice revenue stream, but ambition eventually gets the better of her as the forgeries are exposed and the FBI closes in. Where I found the film most fascinating, though, was in its immersion in the Manhattan literary culture of the 1980s, made of collectors, authors, editors and associated personalities. I was very, very amused to see an actor portraying Tom Clancy (as an insufferable bore, no less) show up in the middle of a party scene, and charmed at the depiction of the written-word ecosystem exposed bare. McCarthy is superbly restrained here, taking a frumpy middle-aged character with finesse and dignity. Considering the times we’re in, this won’t be the last film about fakers and con artists, but I can definitely stomach this one, and being able to like McCarthy’s work here is a good chunk of it.

  • Banana Joe (1982)

    Banana Joe (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) I’m hardly the first one to remark that cultural cross-pollination is weird, especially when looking at how translation allows works to go from one cultural sphere to another. There’s no real reason why a French-Canadian middle-aged man such as myself would be a fan of Italian comedian Bud Spencer, except for a few economic decisions taken in the mid-1970s. For some reason, many Spencer movies (especially those he shot alongside frequent screen partner Terence Hill) were translated in French and become big hits in French Canada, which ensured that they were mainstays of French-Canadian television as well … which explains how I saw a lot of Spencer/Hill movies in the 1980s. It also explains why those very same movies regularly show up even today on Cable TV channels dedicated to older films. So here we are, nearly thirty years later, with me humming the insanely catchy theme song of Banana Joe as I revisit the film. Spencer was a gentle bear of a comedian, and his larger-than-life appearance also translated in an oversized presence in his films. Banana Joe has him (sans Hill) play a friendly, simple-minded banana farmer forced to get out of his comfortable semirural life to seek a permit in the big city. The usual amount of fish-out-of-water hijinks happen, with the protagonist’s innate goodness overpowering the inhumanity and meanness of so-called civilization. (If you want to write a paper exploring the link between this and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, go ahead—it’s not going to hurt anyone.)  Spencer not only plays the lead, but also co-wrote the script, meaning that it clearly plays to his strengths. The result is not surprising in the slightest, but it does have a comforting feel-good quality that’s hard to dislike—although it probably helps if you have a decades-long sympathy for the roles that Spencer played in dozens of formative films. I really cannot reliably tell you if you’re going to enjoy Banana Joe … but it was a great throwback as far as I’m concerned.

  • Father of the Bride Part II (1995)

    Father of the Bride Part II (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, on TV, August 2019) While the 1991 remake of Father of the Bride was an unexpected success cleverly balancing modern filmmaking technique with the good-natured message of the original 1950 film, I can’t be so positive about the sequel. Taking elements from the original sequel (does that phrase even make sense?), 1951’s Father’s Little Dividend, this Father of the Bride Part II ultimately goes a bit too crazy in adding elements of its own, muddling what should have been a clear focus for a sequel and cranking up the frantic nature of the film to eleven, which again misses the point of what it should be doing. The natural development of this sequel is to have our middle-aged protagonist confront the fact that he’s about to become a grandfather, and that happens in the first few minutes of the film. So far so good—and with Steve Martin being able to play comedy as much as the light melodrama of that kind of premise, it looks as if we’re in good hands. But then this remake/sequel strikes out on territory of its own, and that’s when things start falling apart. For the film’s big idea is to make the protagonist a new father at a very late age, with his wife (played by Diane Keaton, 49 at the time of the film’s release) announcing news of her pregnancy alongside her daughter. I have two big problems with that. For one thing, late pregnancies such as those are not comic material—the high risks to the mom and baby in so-called geriatric pregnancies are significant (not to mention health issues with the baby, even with an uneventful pregnancy) and don’t fit within the comic tone of the film. Even if you can gloss over those medical issues (as the film does), a pregnancy at an advanced maternal age is cause for significant concerns in terms of life trajectory, finances and lifestyle, something that Father of the Bride Part II doesn’t want to address in any significant fashion despite presenting the expectant couple as empty nesters early in the film. But even if you also manage to sweep that issue under the rug, the more salient point is that this creative decision blows a hole in the thematic foundation of the film. I’m not sure about you, but any concerns about becoming a grandfather would be eclipsed almost entirely by becoming a fifty-something father. Watching Father of the Bride Part II becomes actively difficult, because the characters don’t seem to be behaving as humans would. Even discounting the heightened comic tone of the film, the outrageous supporting characters and the deer-in-headlights mugging of Steve Martin, it’s hard to perceive it as just an amiable family comedy when it rings so false. At that point, it’s even redundant to compare it to any of its predecessors, except to point out that they at least had some sense in not escalating the comedy to ludicrous levels. Maybe it’ll work differently on you, but as far as I’m concerned, Father of the Bride Part II is more dumbfounding than amusing.

  • Aquaman (2018)

    Aquaman (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) Thankfully, DC is finally getting the hang out of that superhero movie thing after half a dozen attempts to boot up a DCU worth enjoying. Alas, by the time you’re done with Aquaman, there’s so much stuff in that film that you’re likely to feel punch-drunk. Seriously—by the time the film mentions seven realms, some audience members will groan at the thought of having to visit all seven. The immensely colourful atmosphere and cinematography are undeniable boons, but they do contribute to the cognitive overload skirted by the film’s last act. If Aquaman has two secret weapons, they’re actor Jason Momoa, and director James Wan. Momoa has been flirting with superstardom ever since his impressive turn in the first season of Game of Thrones, but he attains his potential here with the kind of performance that his royal character warrants. Meanwhile, Wan uses his experience directing special-effects heavy horror films and one Fast and the Furious instalment to good effect, fluently using CGI and colourful cinematography to make the film’s wild imagined world credible enough to enjoy. Typical to form for superheroes tentpole films, a few name actors can be found in supporting roles, with various degrees of effectiveness. (Amber Heard: No.  Willem Dafoe: Yes!)  It’s all remarkably good considering that previous DC films couldn’t make sense of similar material, but it’s not quite a home run: At 2 hours and 23 minutes, Aquaman would have been better cutting twenty minutes and a few million dollars’ worth from its budget in order to deliver a more focused story and a more visually intelligible cinematography. In a common failure state of films with near-unlimited budgets, there’s so much stuff on screen at any given moment that it eventually gets tiresome. When nothing is held back for the climax, the climax itself feels like more of the same thing. Still, I had a much better time than expected from previous DCU films: Aquaman has more humour, more colour, more likable characters and a globetrotting plot that has far more to show than an expected underwater film would have had. (There’s even a desert sequence.)  Momoa walks away from the film as an authentic megastar with a long future in the DCU, but time will tell if he’ll be able to play an equally regal character in the future. In the meantime, there’s flickers of hope for the DCU in between this and Wonder Woman. Imperfect and uncontrolled in both cases, but a great step up from the dour early films in the series.

  • Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)

    Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, Netflix Streaming, August 2019) One of the joys of being a free-range film critic (Wild! Carefree! Untamed!) is bouncing between all eras of film history, unbeholden to any specific genre, commercial imperative, venue specialization or upcoming deadline. One of the better consequences of such an all-inclusive perspective is thinking perhaps a bit too much about how contemporary releases are going to age. What, of the thousands of movies released in 2018, will still be watched in 10, 25, 50, 100 years from now? What distinguishes an enduring film from one that fades away? It’s largely an academic discussion—studios make movies for their weekly box-office results and quarterly reports, not posterity (although an enduring film does mean financial returns for a longer period). Still, there are circumstances where posterity becomes an interesting question, and you can point at the Disney Animation Studio films as one case where it matters most. There are, after all, Disney fans, specialists and historians with an encyclopedic knowledge of the fifty-plus movies produced by that studio. By being part of that lineage, they endure even as comparable films have sunk back obscurity. Then there’s the ultra-timely nature of Ralph Breaks the Internet to deal with—explicitly trying itself to technological innovations (and a current-day expression) in its very title, the film courts such discussions. That it’s a rare theatrical sequel to a previous title in the Disney pantheon also raises its own questions. Ultimately, we don’t know and won’t know how well it will endure—maybe Facebook will go bankrupt tomorrow, maybe computing will change radically over the next few years, maybe a global EMP event will reduce the Internet to inert electronics for a few decades. And trying to assess a film independently of its context requires a detachment of steel. (I mean—the Disney Princesses scene is fun and all, but how will it sound in a decade?)  What can be evaluated, roughly, is how solid the film is—and on that aspect, the film is dramatically sound: the character relationships take centre stage, with the Internet providing a backdrop through which to explore timely yet enduring issues of how people interact. It’s also easy to forget that enduring films don’t always depend on timeless universality—sometimes, a perceptive period piece can be just as interesting to watch, and that’s probably how Ralph Breaks the Internet has the best chances of being fondly remembered. This being said—maybe there’s a lesson in how Ralph Breaks the Internet was widely expected to win the Best Animated Feature Film Academy Awards (all the way to some stores pre-printing celebratory material) … and lost to Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. Which one of these two will be best remembered?

  • Mermaids (1990)

    Mermaids (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2019) As a historical coming-of-age dramedy, Mermaids defies easy assessment. Yes, it’s cute (and reportedly cuter than its original darker vision was) and occasionally off-putting (what with a consummated relationship between a 15-year-old girl and a 26-year-old man) and often contrived in ways that are only possible in movies—yet reaching for a complex depiction of women of two generations figuring out what they want to do in their lives. The casting is probably the most spectacular aspect of the film, what with Cher as the family matriarch (the word being a bit too strong here, considering her loose and friendly parenting style) over a rebellious teenager played by Winona Ryder and a younger daughter played by Christina Ricci in her screen debut. Bob Hoskins also stars as someone who could be part of the solution to their issues. But the focus here is on the mother/daughter relationship, and the chosen tone is somewhere between comedy with serious moments. It’s a good film, but not a great one—and viewers will be free to further gauge the result based on their own biases and idiosyncrasies. I’m not sure anyone will put Mermaids on their list of essential films from 1990, but it does leave a favourable impression, wraps things up satisfyingly and gets a few good performances from known performers. You don’t have to pin it down exactly to appreciate it.