Reviews

  • The Great Dictator (1940)

    The Great Dictator (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2018) Charlie Chaplin is most closely associated with the silent film era, so it’s interesting to see the ways through which he approached The Great Dictator, a full feature film in which he speaks … and carries a heck of a message. Famously made to criticize Hitler, the film is filled with Nazi imagery, depicting of life under a fascist regime and a strong message against tyranny. It works both at the micro and the macro level, leveraging small injustices in an effort to talk about bigger ones. Chaplin also manages to deliver a fiercely political statement with the confines of an often-silly comedy. (And if you think that being against authoritarianism isn’t much a political statement, you may want to pay attention to news coming out of the United States these days.)  There are numerous comic set pieces, made even more remarkable for the film’s position in history in laughing at a situation whose true horrifying nature would only be revealed in later years. It all amounts to a film that’s fun to watch for the jokes, and fascinating to contemplate for the context surrounding the jokes. A classic for a reason, The Great Dictator is an impressive achievement.

  • Funny Girl (1968)

    Funny Girl (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2018) The best reason to see Funny Girl was and remains Barbra Streisand—for all of her diva reputation, here she is at the beginning of her career with the chance to play a few decades’ worth of a character through early success and later heartbreak. In taking on a star-making debut role loosely based on Fanny Brice’s life, Streisand gets to be funny and attractive, then increasingly embittered by a bad marriage even as her fame grows. Most of all, Streisand gets to sing in a musical that becomes a showcase for a broad range of talents, from light-hearted to dramatic. It’s quite a performance, and it should charm even though who have grown dubious of post-fame Streisand. The great Omar Sharif shows up in a key role as her no-good husband—the story here is rather standard, but Streisand’s performance elevates it. Funny Girl is also notable in that while it was made in the twilight years of the big Hollywood musical (and during the big upheaval that brought New Hollywood to the forefront), it doesn’t suffer all that much from the encroaching bitterness that killed off the genre in the 1970s—while the second half of the film is significantly less amusing than the first, the transition is accomplished gradually, and much of the first half is actually quite funny. William Wyler’s direction is fine—with some standout sequences such as the last scene of Act One. Still, this is Streisand’s show and she remains the single best reason to watch Funny Girl even today.

  • The Dirty Dozen (1967)

    The Dirty Dozen (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2018) Frankly, I thought that I would have enjoyed The Dirty Dozen quite a bit more than I did. Part of it may have been shaped by modern expectations—in modern Hollywood, movies based on the premise of bringing together hardened criminals for a suicide mission are meticulously polished to ensure that the criminals aren’t too bad, or that they meet a morally suitable comeuppance. Our heroes have been unjustly convicted, or operate according to a sympathetic code of honour that may not meet official approval. Their adventures, first in training and then in combat, are calculated to meet focus group approval. But The Dirty Dozen, having been forged in the years following the breakdown of the chaste Hayes Code, is significantly rougher and grittier than the modern ideal. The dirty dozen members are in for reprehensible conduct, not pseudo-criminal malfeasance. The attitude of the film, as Hollywood was pushing the limits of what was acceptable in terms of violence, also permeates everything. While tame by contemporary standards of gore, The Dirty Dozen nonetheless feels … dirty. There are a lot of characters, and they’re often short-changed by the film’s juggling of roles. This being said, The Dirty Dozen is also a showcase of actors: In between Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy and an impossibly young Donald Sutherland (among many others), there are a lot of familiar faces here, and that has its own appeal. If you can go along with the film’s disreputable atmosphere, it remains a competent war film … but it may be difficult to do so.

  • Dumbo (1941)

    Dumbo (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, March 2018) As with many classic-era Disney movies, Dumbo is sufficiently well-known as to appear safe and obvious from childhood memories: It’s a movie about a flying elephant, what else is there to say? But a good look at the film from beginning to end does have a few surprises. The biggest one is almost certainly the pre-psychedelic Pink Elephant sequence, a small triumph of animation craft that quickly devolves in a hallucinatory, nightmarish blend of melting blank faces and other indescribable moments. Coming a few minutes after a heartbreaking sequence in which Dumbo’s mother is taken away, it does push the boundaries of what we consider to be appropriate for kids these days. This leads to a sequence with black crows that now seems saddled with racist language, and then to an ending so abrupt that the film seems to be missing another act entirely. This is all interesting, as is the contemporary depiction of an early-forties circus. It may not, however, match with the derivative representation of Dumbo from the Disney Corporation. But that’s all right—as long as you properly vet the film before watching it with your kids.

  • Hamlet (1948)

    Hamlet (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2018) Despite my best intentions, I have something of an irrational aversion to Shakespearian dialogue. My first language isn’t English, for one thing—and while I can appreciate modernized versions of Shakespearian works, the source material itself nearly always leaves me cold. You can imagine the problem with Laurence Oliver’s 1948 Hamlet, as strict a representation of Shakespeare as you can imagine (minus some judicious editing to bring the play down to feature-film length). The only thing that kept me going is the strikingly stylized imagery on-screen—as a director, Olivier went for stark, nearly-noir depictions of the story, and it remains interesting to watch even today. Never mind the dialogue and appreciate the images. Still, as far as movies go (and as far as Oscar-winning movies go), this is really dull stuff. It doesn’t help that, for all of the violent twists in the tale, much of Hamlet contains few surprises today in terms of plot given its familiarity to nearly every high-school student in the Anglosphere. It (barely) remains watchable today solely by dint of execution … which, all things considered is about as high praise as you can get from filming the Bard’s work directly for the screen.

  • All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

    All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2018) As far as anti-war statements go, All Quiet on the Western Front remains a landmark even today. Cleverly set among German youth heading to the front during World War I, this is a film that not only takes an unsentimental view of warfare, but actively shows how kids were deceived in fighting. Death, amputations, stomach-churning symbolism and nihilism follow. While modern audiences may like to think of early near-silent black-and-white films as primitive compared to today’s technologically-augmented spectacles, this is a powerful counter-example: Never mind the gore of trench warfare—the Boot montage is still a kick in the gut, as is the harrowing simplicity of the final shot. There’s some serious skill in the way director Lewis Milestone handles the film—a work so well done and effective in codifying film grammar that most of the war sequences wouldn’t feel terribly out-of-place in a more modern film. Curiously enough, All Quiet on the Western Front is best seen today in its “International Sound Version” version, a dialogue-free sound film straddling the brief period in which movies transitioned to sound—there are plenty of added sound effects that do add to the final result, but title cards rather than synchronized dialogue to allow for easy foreign versions abroad. The combination of the sometimes-jocular nature of the film’s protagonists and the horrors that eventually befall every one of them is sobering in ways that a uniquely dramatic film would not be. Also sobering (especially to modern audiences, who know things that the original audiences of the film wouldn’t) is the fact that for all of the film’s effective message is, it wouldn’t stop another world war from starting again nine years later—nor any of the so-called heroic military efforts of the US in the decades since. Artists can tell the truth in the most accessible ways even decades later, but there’s no telling anyone will listen.

  • Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

    Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2018) For a mid-thirties production, Mutiny on the Bounty still manages to impress thanks to expansive filmmaking, a solid story and good character work. While historically dubious (read the Wikipedia entry for the latest thinking regarding the real-life incident, markedly more sympathetic to captain Blight, not to mention the sad aftermath of the mutiny), the story itself does have a certain narrative drive, and the way the film portrays the events manages to be impressive—the shot in which hundreds of Tahitians converge to the water to greet the English visitors is still remarkable today. The heart of the film remains between Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as Captain Blight—both actors hold their own. While creaky by modern standards, much of Mutiny on the Bounty can be watched effortlessly today … and that’s no small achievement for a film pushing eighty.

  • True Grit (1969)

    True Grit (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2018) Neither of these opinions are particularly controversial, but here goes: I’m not all that fond of John Wayne, and I like the 2010 remake version of True Grit more than the original version. The first does not necessarily explain the second: While I find Wayne to be an unsympathetic actor, he’s at his best (and has often been cast) as an unsympathetic character. Here he gets to crow as Rooster Cogburn, a gruff and violent frontier lawman hired by a teenage girl to avenge her father. As per its title, True Grit is not a fun western, and the way it delves into the danger of the Wild West with its teenage heroine is markedly different from the adventures that often awaited typical young male western heroes. The location shooting is good, and the narrative has plenty of, well, grit to it. This being said, True Grit often veers far too close to average-western territory for me, losing my interest along the way. I’m not all that dismissive of the original when I say that I prefer the remake—moviegoing sensibilities evolving along the way, I found the remake more naturalistic and Hailee Steinfeld’s performance more interesting than that of Kim Darby in the original. Your own appreciation may differ.

  • One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

    One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2018) I’ve been revisiting enough Disney classics lately that I can’t even predict if I will like them after watching them in their original English from beginning to end (buying movies for kids does not mean that you’ll watch them like you watch other movies). I’ve been impressed, depressed and unimpressed by other Disney classics, so it’s a bit strange to say that One Hundred and One Dalmatians is … pretty much what I was expecting from childhood memories and consumption of tie-in material both as a kid and as a parent. It’s the story of a bachelor, a bachelorette, their dogs and what happens when an old acquaintance of hers becomes obsessed with harvesting puppy fur for a coat. It’s musically minded without being a musical, it features a lot of dogs and unfolds more or less like I remembered it. There are occasional flashes of outdated social conventions (the sexualization of antagonist Cruella DeVille is bothersome, although not as much as the extreme caricature in The Rescuers) and the usual stuff to tolerate in a film with many animal characters, but One Hundred and One Dalmatians hasn’t spoiled in the past few decades. I really liked the first few minutes showing “life before puppies” and more specifically the routine and courtship of a London-based song composer—there’s some charming stuff in there, and it tends to be forgotten when recollections of the film focus on the titular Dalmatians. In short, I’m satisfied by One Hundred and One Dalmatians and that’s already better than what I can say about other Disney movies of the same period.

  • Wings (1927)

    Wings (1927)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2018) Given Wings’ place in history as “The First Oscar-Winning Picture” (Lies! It tied with Sunrise, no matter what the Academy now says!), you could be forgiven to think that it would be a stuffy silent picture. The reality is that, proudly establishing the Oscar tradition, it’s a big-budget crowd pleaser of the first order, following three characters in war until the tear-jerking moment that makes it all worthwhile. Epic in length (the dialogue cards not helping, it’s nearly two-and-a-half-hours long) and spectacular in its depiction of WWI air combat, Wings still works rather well as a war movie. The narrative strings are familiar (hmmm, maybe “timeless” is a better word here) and the film, even in the late twenties, knew well enough to include a romantic triangle in the middle of its war story. Richard Arlen and Charles Rogers star as the airmen (with a short appearance by Gary Cooper), but the real star here is the original “It girl” Clara Bow, still remarkably fetching even ninety years later. There are a number of highlights to the movie—the air sequences are surprisingly good (much of the footage was actually shot from the cockpit), and there’s an impressive infantry sequence with plenty of perceived danger. Director William A. Wellman also gets a few choice shots on the ground as well—the Paris bar sequence is good enough to be emulated even today (viz; The Last Jedi’s similar glide through a gambling joint) and the special-effects-driven “bubbles” interlude marks an impressionistic moment in an otherwise well-grounded film. Reading about the film, it seems almost incredible that Wings (one of the first Oscar winners!) was for decades regarded as “a lost film” until it was found again in 1992. Now safely remastered in high resolution, it looks brilliant and further reinforces the idea that we’re living in a golden age of movie-watching, being able to see movies that even our parents and grandparents couldn’t see. I won’t try to claim that Wings is essential viewing for contemporary audiences (even my patience was tested by the running time), but it’s far more interesting than I expected from digging so deep in the Oscar archives.

  • Sense and Sensibility (1995)

    Sense and Sensibility (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2018) Is it possible for a film to be so good as to become invisible? The 1995 version of Sense and Sensibility has, in adapting Jane Austen’s novel so well, become part of the fabric of pop culture. It launched an Austen revival that continues even today, it solidified the career of its director Ang Lee, netted Emma Thompson an Oscar-winning reputation as an actress and screenwriter and became a strong calling card for other actors such as Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Stephen Fry. It cleverly alters the plot and themes of the original novel for modern sensibilities, and delivers everything with an appropriate atmosphere of period detail. In short, it succeeds at being what it wanted to be. Alas, I was surprisingly bored through it all, and I suspect that much of the problem lies in the film’s own success. Since 1995, there have been an explosion of Austen-inspired material, and many of my favourite ones have remixed the material in ever-stranger ways, from Los Angeles-set From Prada to Nada, to Canadian-Indian musical Bride and Prejudice, to the unlikely mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies … and the list goes on. Going back to the unadulterated source material at a time when it has become such an inspiration isn’t necessarily dull … but it does feel overly familiar. I will also note that Sense and Sensibility is the film of film uniquely affected by mood—it doesn’t make much an effort to draw audiences in (the beginning is notably in media res), but rather relies on pre-existing sympathies and goodwill. If it so happens that you’re distracted or otherwise less than receptive … this may also be an issue. So: Good movie, muted impact—by creating an incredible legacy for itself, Sense and Sensibility may have dulled its own reception twenty years later.

  • Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017)

    Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video On-Demand, February 2018) I’ve heard Roman J. Israel, Esq. discussed as a fascinating character study wrapped in an underwhelming story, and that certainly has some merit as a description. The best thing about the film is Roman J. Israel, Esq. as played by the ever-capable Denzel Washington, a genius-level lawyer with substantial social interaction problems. Comfortable in his role as the rarely seen brainy half of a two-man small legal outfit, Israel starts having problems once his partner dies, leaving him to fend off in a hostile environment. Getting hired is difficult enough that he’s got to accept a few favours, but staying employed is even more difficult when his personality clashes with just about everyone in a top legal firm. Issues of romance, class, crime and legal ethics come to complicate this already challenging situation, but even with all its flourishes (and occasional action sequences), Roman J. Israel, Esq. seems to deflate as it nears a conclusion. I suspect that the film would have been more successful with a more upbeat ending. In the meantime, we are free to admire Washington’s portrayal, or its nuanced look at the life of an idealistic lawyer. Both Colin Farrell and Carmen Ejogo continue their streak of good supporting performances. Writer/director Dan Gilroy doesn’t meet the considerable expectations set by his debut feature Nightcrawler, but his follow-up remains a watchable effort and a decent showcase for Washington.

  • The Jungle Book (1967)

    The Jungle Book (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2018) I can’t say that I got much out of my first beginning-to-end viewing of Disney’s classic The Jungle Book. Do understand that the film was practically written in my DNA as a child—I must have seen the film in French at some point, but more importantly was deluged with related materials, read the original Kipling novel as a boy scout, and have since then seen bits and pieces of it and its live-action remake (in French) with my child. The plot? Utterly familiar. The characters? Even more so. What’s left? Well, at least two songs in their original glory: “The Bare Necessities” is an instant humming favourite, while “I Wanna Be Like You” reminded me of the catchy Big Bad Voodoo Daddy cover version. Otherwise, I know Mowgli and Baloo and Bagheera and the rest of the gang. It’s a fun movie. It’s occasionally long. The animation isn’t as good as some other Disney movies (you can see the in-between marks), but still works well most of the time. I’ll watch it again without too much boredom.

  • The Mummy (2017)

    The Mummy (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2018) There’s something … off about this newest edition of The Mummy that exemplifies the worst in modern blockbuster movies. It’s not even worth comparing to the already classic 1999 film that perfectly blended comedy with adventure and introduced us to Rachel Weisz. It’s clunky enough on its own terms. Part of the problem is pitching the film as the first in the “Dark Universe” (nice logo!), an acknowledged copycatting of the MCU that is up to its third attempt to launch a shared universe of movies: We get glimpses of intriguing things, but the film keeps its best shots in reserve in anticipation of something else. Part of the problem is Tom Cruise, increasingly too old and too proud to play the same roles in the same way. Part of the problem is a script that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself, and suffers from a dull premise that can’t manage to tie everything together. It’s shorter to list the things that aren’t a problem: Sofia Boutella is (as usual) fantastic and alluring in her role as the villain mummy Ahmanet—sufficiently so, in fact, that she practically becomes the sympathetic protagonist to cheer for. Russell Crowe is enjoyable as Dr. Jekyll—the film can’t figure out what to do with the character, but Crowe’s hulking bulk is used to good effect. The plane crash sequence (as a few other scenes here and there) is well executed. Bits and pieces of the shared universe are admittedly cool—having classic Universal monsters interact and a secret organization to keep track of them isn’t a bad idea, even though The Mummy isn’t the best showcase for such a crossover event. Alas, there is so much boring stuff in the film that it struggles to keep our interest whenever Ahmanet isn’t on-screen—Annabelle Wallis is dull as the nominal heroine, and the various shenanigans regarding Cruise’s character and his relationship to death are really far less interesting than they should have been. And then there’s the ugly side of the script (a plane crash next to THE church required for the next plot point! Sandstorm in London?) and a hero we don’t really care for. Still, this is a big-budget action fantasy film, and there’s enough stuff in here to be worth a forgiving watch. I wouldn’t necessarily mind another Dark Universe film—The Mummy, after all, is better than Dracula Untold and I, Frankenstein. But after three false starts, wouldn’t it be time to put the idea to rest?

  • The Towering Inferno (1974)

    The Towering Inferno (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2018) I partially grew up on seventies Disaster films (they were a popular staple of French-Canadian TV in the early eighties), and while I don’t remember a lot of about them, there is the occasional ping of recognition as re-watch them in middle age. My fuzzy memories of The Towering Inferno were a disservice to the film, which is quite enjoyable in its own bombastic way. Never mind the fascinating backstory to the film (two studios meshing together similar projects based on different books) when the end result brings Steve McQueen together with Paul Newman in a big cooperative battle of manly heroes. The film is long, but the leisurely opening act does set up a premise of fiendish promise: an enormous skyscraper, fire risks everywhere, and human failings exacerbating an already dangerous situation. It all culminates in a titular conflagration … and it works pretty well. There are a lot of familiar faces here, including O.J. Simpson as a security guard, Robert Vaughn in his usual evilness, and one last great appearance by Fred Astaire in an effective dramatic role. (He won an Oscar for it, properly understood to be about the rest of his career.)  The film hits harder than expected, with plenty of sympathetic character deaths in addition to the expected reprehensible characters burning along the way. At times techno-thrillerish and at others always-getting-worse, The Towering Inferno does benefit from its mid-seventies vintage. The special effects haven’t aged well (mostly by limiting the way the disaster is portrayed—no CGI flybys of a burning tower surrounded by helicopters here) but the overall atmosphere of the film is fun. Far more successful than I expected to be, The Towering Inferno mostly holds up today … but be prepared for a long sit.