Reviews

  • The Goldfinch (2019)

    The Goldfinch (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) The truth about filmmaking is that so many people are involved and so many things can go wrong that it’s almost a miracle when something good comes out of the process: Good movies are the exception, not the default. This is true no matter your budget, your actors or your source material. While you can try to stack the deck with seasoned professionals, the result is still often a game of luck. (And now you know why Hollywood loves the sequels.) So it is that with The Goldfinch, producers certainly did get the best of everything—an award-winning novel, a seasoned screenwriter, a handful of great actors, Roger Deakins doing cinematography, enough budget to do justice to the story’s globe-spanning narrative, and all of the other production niceties afforded to a prestige drama. (I’m sure the catering must have been really nice.) This thing is taking us to the Oscars, they must have thought. And yet, and yet—nobody knows anything and, in the end, The Goldfinch is a messy, unwieldy adaptation of a novel that probably should have been best handled as a TV series (if at all) than as an unfocused, herky-jerky two-hours-and-a-half train wreck. The weird result blends genre thrills and pretentious narrative conceits in an attempt at becoming a so-called serious drama. In this regard, it reminded me a lot of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close—along with sharing terrorism plot points and Jeffrey Wright—although I suspect that The Goldfinch is far too ludicrous to age as gracefully. If you’re looking for solace while you’re stuck in the film’s interminable length and ludicrous plot points, you can at least point at the actors, some of them used against type (Luke Wilson), others in more familiar characters (Wright) but none of them are any more comfortable with the results, as they are prisoners of a script that jerks characters around like puppets. While The Goldfinch is not strictly bad (it looks far too good for that), it’s just not very pleasant to watch most of the time. Even the structure tries for a collage and ends up with what feels like undisciplined flashbacks. But worse of all is the feeling that The Goldfinch had Best-Picture-of-the-Year ambitions and then, through hubris or complacency, completely wasted everything it had at its disposal.

  • Suburbicon (2017)

    Suburbicon (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2020) The biggest disappointment of Suburbicon is that it features a few things I do like—Matt Damon as a despicable character, suburban satire, George Clooney directing, righteous anti-racism, a Coen Brothers script, dark comedy, Julianne Moore, film noir plotting, and Oscar Isaac—yet still mushes them up into this unsatisfying jumble. It doesn’t take a long time for the film’s audience to start sending distress signals—an opening sequence about suburban racism falls flat so quickly that it portends the film’s inability to bring something interesting to the table, and that the quasi-farcical treatment will not help. The rest of Suburbicon struggles to reach solid ground, as anything interesting is undermined by something worse—the overall tone is so absurdly mean-spirited that the wholesale slaughter of characters at the end of the story isn’t quite as meaningful as it could have been. If, watching the film, you detect a clash of sensibilities at work, don’t necessarily blame the differences between the Coens as screenwriters and Clooney as director—read up on the film’s production history and realize that they ended up combining two very different screenplays in the final script. In the end, the film’s two directions aren’t reconcilable: Sure, you can darkly joke about a suburban murder plot, but you can’t really laugh at a black family being the target of community-organized racism. I suppose that my own perspective as a perpetual suburbanite may be an issue here: I’ve experienced the reality long enough that I’m not happy with cheap shots and I demand something more interesting… and Suburbicon’s middle-of-the-road, confused treatment isn’t enough. What a waste. But Oscar Isaac’s two scenes are pretty good.

  • Bird on a Wire (1990)

    Bird on a Wire (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2020) A good old-fashioned star vehicle combining action and romance, Bird on a Wire is about as generic and calculated a box-office bid as you can imagine—but it does work if you’re a fan of the actors involved. Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn star as, respectively, a fugitive informant and his ex-girlfriend who finds herself on the run along with him after a chance encounter. As a pretext for chases and kisses, that’s all you need: action director John Badham dutifully handles the mayhem. The plot here clearly takes a backseat to the checkbox-ticking required of such craven crowd-pleasers: clear character-establishing introductions, one car chase to kick off the plot, one bedroom sequence, some funny bickering between exes, more action beats as the story moves from one location to another, and a sailing into the sunset finale. The story is familiar and plodding in order to let the stars show off why they were hired—the belligerent romantic tension is made-to-order, and the villains are merely perfunctory. But while some of the execution looks stodgy today (action scene standards are much higher than they used to be), Bird on a Wire will work if you like the earlier incarnations of Hawn and Gibson—what’s notable here is how she is ten years older than him, which is a still unusual-enough age pairing when it’s usually twenty years in the other direction. Overall, Bird on a Wire is not bad but not good either and more of a demonstration of circa-1990 Gibson and Hawn on autopilot than anything else.

  • Wild Nights with Emily (2018)

    Wild Nights with Emily (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) The greatest thing about the democratization of filmmaking is the possibility for new voices, oddball sensibilities and very specific subject matter to be made available to all paying audiences. So it is that Wild Nights with Emily is nothing less than a strange mixture of literary arcana, LGBTQ optics and awkward comedy taking as a topic the life of Emily Dickinson. It takes roughly thirty seconds before Dickinson French-kisses another woman, and that sets the tone of historical facts blended with modern sensibilities. Molly Shannon stars in an atypical historical role but a rather familiar awkwardness. Wild Nights with Emily is clearly a work of passion in making a historical literary figure relevant to modern concerns, addressing issues of LGBTQ erasure along the way. But there are two significant limits to its effectiveness what will make it beloved by its target audience, and a bit confounding to others. For one thing, you do have to like its brand of off-beat often-ironic humour—which is not always intended to be funny. For another, this is the kind of film that works best if you like and know about Dickinson: while she’s a significant literary figure, a quick read through her Wikipedia page may be indicated before watching the film—as much as I loathe to assign homework before watching a film.

  • This is the Army (1943)

    This is the Army (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) It’s sometimes amazing to measure what has endured from a specific era versus what was popular at the time. World War II-era movies are a useful case in point, as most of the production was geared toward outright propaganda meant to motivate the home front. This is the Army is an odd collection of musical numbers loosely connected by a threadbare story, but it did top the 1943 American box office… yet is only remembered these days by film buffs. If you research the film a bit, you’ll realize that it’s largely a filmed adaptation of a WW1-era travelling musical show, updated to WW2 standards and cinema choreography. It becomes a collection of inspirational, patriotic, propagandist musical numbers and comic sketches loosely connected by bits and pieces of wartime melodrama. Clearly belonging to the WW2 propagandist school, it’s clearly meant to whip the audiences into fighting spirit. A young Ronald Reagan shows up, the credits specifically include military ranks, and the film does look rather good in colour. It has been (mostly) forgotten for a reason, though: The musical numbers are pomp and propaganda, not particularly refined or timeless. (It’s very much in one tone—stage-bound choruses of men singing about the merits of their service branch in a theatrical setting. Under those constraints, it does have some good staging.) Other aspects reflect the times of its production: there are explicit impressions of people now forgotten, there’s a minstrel blackface number (oh boy), and quite a bit more crossdressing than you’d expect—despite understanding the limitations of all-male troupes at the time, you can file that one under “things that haven’t aged well.” This being said, what works against the film now may just be the things that increase its interest as a period piece: While This is the Army may be only mildly interesting by itself, it (like many WW2 propaganda movies) remains a fascinating look at another time.

  • Terra Willy: Planète inconnue [Astro Kid] (2019)

    Terra Willy: Planète inconnue [Astro Kid] (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Video on-Demand, May 2020) There’s a whole universe of animated movies for kids out there that never gets any serious attention. They’re clearly not in the same league as the flagship productions of Pixar, Laika or Illumination, but they’re often surprisingly entertaining along the way. Terra Willy: Planète inconnue is a French animated film that’s easily up to American B-movie standards. A joyful film about exploration on a strange new planet, it features a resourceful young boy fending off for himself while awaiting rescue, relying on a handy robot and the friends he makes along the way. Director Éric Tosti turns in a film with its own qualities—not quite as hyperactive as other big-budget productions, but with an enjoyable atmosphere and message. The creature design is cute (if plasticky), as is the design of the robot helper. The film works hard at presenting the situation from the kid’s point of view (eager to explore!) rather than what the absent parents must have been thinking, especially considering that it takes them a year before finding their son again. You can make a case that, through its worldbuilding and exploration, Terra Willy feels a lot like Avatar for kids, minus the whole adult themes and blue body sleeves. It’s all rather charming, but make no mistakes: this is definitely geared toward kids, and very specifically eight-year-old boys.

  • Kickboxer (1989)

    Kickboxer (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) I’m not a good audience for Jean-Claude Van Damme films, and it’s not Kickboxer that will make me change my mind. Sporting the thinnest possible excuse to chain together a bunch of repetitive martial arts sequences, the film heads over to Thailand for Van Damme to be part of a tournament and avenge his paralyzed brother. The rest is just one fight after another, and while the film boasts of being the first international production to feature the Muay Thai martial art to worldwide audiences, it’s not as if I can make much of a difference between this and other forms of combat. Look: I probably would have liked Kickboxer more if I had any interest in sweaty bash’em up bouts, but I don’t so—meh. This being said, even I can recognize that Van Damme is physically very good on a pure physical level. Alas, the story is basic stuff, and the execution is more grimy than exciting. Fans, you already know if you’re going to like this—but Kickboxer does not escape its own sub-genre.

  • Aftermath (2017)

    Aftermath (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2020) I thought I knew all about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s filmography, but his post-political career has been far less visible than his glory years—he’s now working in low-to-medium-budget films, not quite successfully adapting to post-action-star status and often springing for cameos rather than starring roles. Unlike other actors of his generation, he hasn’t been able to completely transition into supporting roles in films where others are the action stars. Aftermath, which frankly slipped under my radar, is a near-perfect example of these new expectations. It’s a fairly dull thriller, made slightly more respectable in how it’s (loosely) based on a true story. Here, Schwarzenegger plays a grieving family man who decides to take revenge on the man who organized the plane bombing that killed his wife and daughter. The rest of the film is a revenge story, but not a triumphant one—director Elliott Lester handles the downbeat drama script appropriately, which is to say in antiheroic cinematography, slow pacing, bad character decisions and melancholic atmosphere. What doesn’t help this dispiriting premise is the film’s slow, linear and surprise-less execution, even late in the film when there’s something meant to be shocking. Aftermath is a far, far different cinematic animal than the action films that made Schwarzenegger an improbable household name. To his credit, he does deliver a fair performance as a dramatic actor (and one has to appreciate how he’s not being pushed in becoming an implausible action hero) but it raises two questions—is Aftermath a kind of film suited to someone like Schwarzenegger, and two; is this Schwarzenegger’s best use of his time?

  • The Company of Wolves (1984)

    The Company of Wolves (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) Moody, dark, stylish, gauzy and fantastic more than horrific, The Company of Wolves takes a far more dreamlike (and female-gaze-friendly) approach to werewolf horror than most of its contemporaries. Director Neil Jordan works from an Angela Carter script (adapting her own short story) and delivers a collage of striking images loosely based on the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale, except with more hairless male chests and werewolves running around. Creating a misty, gothic atmosphere on a limited budget isn’t without visible seams, but Jordan makes it work. Unusually enough, the script doesn’t settle for a clear narrative as much as a mixture of episodes and shorter stories bound together as a sort-of-anthology within a realistic framing device, further adding to the surreal, oneiric feeling of the entire film. Its closest recent equivalent may be Catherine Hardwicke’s work on Twilight and Red Riding Hood. Interestingly enough, in retrospect, The Company of Wolves is a closer fit to the fantasy film boom of the early 1980s than the horror movies of the time. Fortunately, that still ensures its distinctiveness today.

  • The Unholy Three (1930)

    The Unholy Three (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) While the world remembers Lon Chaney Jr. as one of the defining actors of the Universal Monsters franchise (as the Wolfman), fewer now remember his father. Part of this is that most of Chaney Sr.’s work was in silent film, inherently less popular and lesser-seen today. Alas, he fell ill and died shortly after the production of his only talking film, The Unholy Three. A sound remake of an earlier 1925 thriller, it’s a crime melodrama featuring three different men (a dwarf, a ventriloquist and a strongman—with Chaney playing the ventriloquist and showcasing his gift for vocal impersonations) joining forces to perpetrate crimes. Romance follows, along with a deadly circle of betrayals and revenge when the crimes don’t go as planned. There’s also a gorilla who ends up taking a crucial spot in the plotting. With such an unlikely mixture of elements, it almost seems redundant to say that Chaney is the single best reason to see the film—while The Unholy Three has a few freakshow-like moments to its credit, the rest is a bit dull even considering the sensationalistic premise. What’s for sure is that Chaney would likely have done very well had he had a longer career in the talkies—he was one of the silent stars who was just as well suited to the world of sound.

  • The Belle of New York (1952)

    The Belle of New York (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) If you run down the list of Fred Astaire musicals, The Belle of New York runs the distinction of being one of the least distinctive ones. Here, Astaire plays the playboy who falls for the holier-than-thou Vera-Ellen against a stylish backdrop of turn-of-the-century Manhattan and a fantastic illustration of love as making characters weightless. Despite the whimsical conceit, the film itself is slightly too staid to be wholly enjoyable. This doesn’t mean it’s a failure, though—compared to a few other lower-end Astaire musicals, The Belle of New York certainly has its attractions. It’s not churlish to note that it benefits from being shot in colour, and that Vera-Ellen, despite her age difference, is a better-than-average dance partner for Astaire (her “Naughty but Nice” solo dressing room number is nothing short of whew!) The film also demonstrates Astaire’s career-long intent to dance at the edge of special effects technology—here, a lot of green-screen work may not have aged particularly well (part of his face disappears in one shot), but still has quite a bit of charm. Then there’s also character actress Alice Pearce being very funny (and rather cute) in a comic relief role that even includes a brief song. Despite those elements taking The Belle of New York at least to the mid-tier, there is a sense that the film is spinning its wheels. The songs are hardly memorable, and don’t quite bolster the numerous dance numbers. From a plot perspective, the film hews a bit too close to the least admirable aspects of Astaire’s persistent-suitor screen persona, even if it does play a bit with deconstructing that archetype. I still liked it, but Astaire completists are definitely advised to keep The Belle of New York for later in their explorations of his filmography.

  • My Bloody Valentine (2009)

    My Bloody Valentine (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) Sigh… what is there to say about this My Bloody Valentine remake? As a teen slasher reboot that boasts of its 3D cinematography, it’s like a fusion of every single bad idea that infected Hollywood circa 2009. It’s visually slick, of course (director Patrick Lussier was already a decade-old veteran of medium-budget horror films at that time), but predictably even less engaging than the original. The plot is the same slasher plot except (as the title tells you) transposed around Valentine’s Day. Clearly aping the original, My Bloody Valentine plays up the villain-with-a-gas-mask imagery far more than the original itself. The gleefully unsubtle early-3D-revival cinematography of the film (which came out a year before Avatar) is incredibly intrusive on a 2D screen, which bode poorly for the film’s future reputation now that 3D TVs are on their way out. It’s all aggressively mediocre, especially for a slasher, but it’s not really meant to be anything else than a thriller for teens so who’s going to care? I have a feeling, though, that this version of My Bloody Valentine may age into something like camp in a decade or so, with the 3D cinematography being so over-the-top and combined with 1980s-style gore effects that it may play more as a comedy for horror fans than a horror film. But time will tell.

  • Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)

    Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) If you want to see the results of the Hollywood-on-the-Tiber era, during which Hollywood studios headed to Rome’s Cinecittà in order to take advantage of lower production costs and a studio built by Mussolini, then watch any of the dozen sword-and-sandal epic of the era. If you want a film about that filmmaking era, however, there’s Two Weeks in Another Town to bring back, a decade later, many of the main creative forces behind The Bad and the Beautiful in a thematic follow-up examining how Hollywood stars lived in their little Roman bubble far away from California. There are differences, obviously—Two Weeks in Another Town is in colour, and not quite as purely entertaining in its examination of Hollywood. But it does star Kirk Douglas as a washed-up actor trying to find a new place for himself in the movie industry, and a behind-the-scenes fictionalization of a difficult film shoot. Douglas is surrounded by notables such as Cyd Charisse (who’s not given enough to do), Edward G. Robinson (as a director at the end of his rope), and George Hamilton hilariously cast as a brooding artiste-type actor. While the film is interesting, it also has plenty of misplaced cues and darker themes that ensure that it’s not a feel-good film despite its hopeful ending. Studio meddling is apparently to blame for not delivering the core vision, but even in its adulterated form, the film features themes of suicide, professional uselessness, jealousy and isolation—all of which clash with the Dolce Italia atmosphere occasionally showcased. It’s a shame that some terrible rear-projection work takes away some of the late-film scene’s emotional effectiveness. Let’s just say that Two Weeks in Another Town gets about three-quarter of the way there—it’s interesting to give us a glimpse at an episode of Hollywood history, but not as great as it could have been had it figured out what it wanted to say and found a more disciplined way of telling it.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, June 2021) The “Hollywood on the Tiber” era is one of the most interesting episodes in film history – Hollywood going to Rome in order to take advantage of fiscal incentives and Cinecitta, a top-notch studio built by Mussolini as a propaganda instrument. Hence the slew of swords-and-sandals films of the early 1960s and the numerous American films somehow set in Rome in the 1960s. Two Weeks in Another Town is one of the few productions of that era to be about itself, as our troubled protagonist (Kirk Douglas, reliably fascinating as always) gets a new chance to help a friend complete a Hollywood production shooting in Rome. There are glimpses at moviemaking, dramatic situations alluding to the reality of how movies were made at the time, and characters almost entirely portraying a fictional film’s cast and crew. The rather good cast also helps, what with Douglas playing a recovering alcoholic former star actor, Cyd Charisse as his ex-wife, a young and trim George Hamilton as a rising actor, and Edward G. Robinson as an aging director. On paper, there are plenty of reasons why Two Weeks in Another Town shouldn’t work, starting with the lead character: Who should care about a former movie star putting back together his life after alcoholism? Who should care about Charisse’s character when she barely has any dialogue? The film was apparently cut short by fifteen minutes by the studio, and those seams are more blatant when you start looking at the dramatic structure of the film. But, fortunately, there’s quite a bit more to it – the focus on filmmaking is strong enough (similarities with The Bad and Beautiful are all over the place, from its theme to a shared team of creative leads) and the glimpse at the Hollywood on the Tiber era is frequently charming enough to create a bit of longing for what it must have been at the time. It’s also hard to go wrong with Douglas in the middle of it all – Two Weeks in Another Town probably wouldn’t have worked with another actor.

  • Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969)

    Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) Huh—I really did not have “proto-steampunk underwater adventure” on my to-watch list today, but that’s what I got in Captain Nemo and the Underwater City. Loosely based on Jules Verne’s classic novel, it’s more a branded excuse to show off Victorian underwater wonders than to let it suggest any kind of a plot. Unfortunately, whatever plot it does feature is a misguided story of escape, featuring a protagonist that comes off as a dangerous idiot less worth cheering for than worth drowning for everyone’s safety. It’s not quite the only dodgy plot elements, especially considering what feels like a kid’s film: a comic-relief character is killed off late in the film through sheer greed, and everyone seems to take with impassivity that’s meant as lifelong imprisonment. (Well, except for the dangerous protagonist, who should not be celebrated as a hero.) At least Nanette Newman looks good, and Robert Ryan shows appropriate gravitas a Captain Nemo. The film’s production history suggests that it was heavily influenced by the late-1960s Jacques Cousteau underwater craze, and that’s best reflected in how much of the film is a wide-eyed wonder at submarine cities and possibilities. Even discounting the film’s less-than-stellar narrative, there’s some rather incredible visual stuff for a film that’s largely forgotten today—novel visuals in a Victorian underwater steampunk atmosphere. There’s probably a good remake to be made from Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, but only if anyone still remembered it.

  • Atlantis: The Lost Continent (1961)

    Atlantis: The Lost Continent (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) After several spectacular science fiction films, legendary director-producer George Pal goes back in time to Atlantean mythology in Atlantis: The Lost Continent, which purports to tell the Greek-classics-inspired story of how Atlantis was destroyed. Before we get there, however, our Greek hero must travel to Atlantis, witness its retro-science fictional technology, experience its sword-and-sandal excesses (sometimes via stock footage from other films) and then run away as the third act’s climactic destruction sequence wows audiences. But what may have looked like a nice change of pace on paper ends up considerably blander than expected. It feels less like a Pal spectacle than a Hollywood-on-the-Tiber epic with funny hats. Fortunately, the film gets better as it makes its way to the expected third-act ending destruction sequence with landscape-altering earthquakes and lava flows. The rest, unfortunately, is surprisingly dull—and ludicrous at times, starting with some very bad science. Clearly, Atlantis: The Lost Continent is not the best known of Pal movies, and understandably so: despite the different setting, it lacks that spark that made his other films special. Alas, the rest of his filmography wouldn’t get any better—the 1950s were truly his best decade, and this is the film that would announce his downward path.