Reviews

  • Mommie Dearest (1981)

    Mommie Dearest (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) Even though I’m moderately knowledgeable about movies, I’m still often surprised by the stories that I unlock in researching movies prior to these capsule reviews. Obviously, I knew of Joan Crawford, and her relatively small modern profile (especially when compared to Bette Davis, with whom she legendarily feuded), and the tarnishing of the Golden Age of Hollywood idols, and Faye Dunaway’s decline as an actress throughout the 1980s. But prior to watching and reading about Mommie Dearest, I was certainly missing on a piece of the puzzle that linked all of these things together. To put it simply: Mommie Dearest is an adaptation of a biography by Crawford’s adopted daughter, in which she revealed that her “mommie dearest” was a cold-hearted parent, a child abuser, and an overall wreck. In film history, Mommie Dearest was the first landmark in a series of books by children of Classic Hollywood stars that unbolted their saintlike public image. Many followed, but Mommie Dearest had a bigger impact than most in that much of it was corroborated, and it led to a movie whose execution, to put it charitably, maximized the tragic arc of the story. Faye Dunaway here plays Crawford as a quasi-caricatural monster, and the first half-hour of the film is the depiction of one episode of child abuse after another, as the mom terrifies her daughter in ways that are actively unpleasant to watch. (The famous “Wire Hanger” scene is one for the history books even in its French dubbed version: my cat, who can normally tolerate the worst horror movies with supreme feline detachment, had her ears pointed sideways in alarm at the screaming in the sequence… and I wasn’t necessarily any more detached.) I’m told that the film earned an unplanned reputation as an over-the-top camp classic of unintentional hilarity, but I’m not subscribing to that viewpoint. While some sequences do attain a certain comic level of scenery-chewing, there’s only so much outright child abuse that anyone can tolerate, and despite Dunaway’s unhinged performance, the character she plays is an out-and-out harridan who clearly should not have any kids. It’s that character portrait that still makes Mommie Dearest ghastly intriguing to watch today: the raw mother/daughter feud, and how it fed into the falsity of their public appearances at the time. It’s hard to say whether the book or the movie had a bigger impact on Crawford’s reputation, but I note with some interest that Crawford’s star was considerably dimmed compared to some better-behaved contemporaries. Everyone has taken sides for Bette Davis in the Davis/Crawford feud, and Crawford is now seldom mentioned without sideways glances at her personal life. I suppose that Crawford’s lesser body of work may have something to do with it (She’s distinctive in her Oscar-winning performance in Mildred Pierce and not much else), but comparing the way she’s discussed to that of comparable stars of the same period is instructive. There’s an argument to be made that Faye Dunaway’s performance here was too good for her own good: While she was a superstar in the 1970s, her filmography dimmed significantly in the 1980s following the acid reception of this film. That’s quite a lot of material for a film to touch upon, but only a few other films so clearly attack the reputation of a former Hollywood icon as savagely as this one. (Have a look at The Lives and Deaths of Peter Sellers and The Girl for further examples.)

  • The Ward (2010)

    The Ward (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m sure John Carpenter had a lot of fun coming back to moviemaking in The Ward, after a decade away from feature film directing. On some levels, it does have the hallmarks of classic Carpenter movies: the isolated setting, horror minimalism, subjective levels of reality and potential to simply scare the pants off its audience. Taking place in a 1960s insane asylum, it features a group of girls being picked off by an evil presence, and our heroine trying to avoid being the next one. It’s clearly a horror movie, but it touches upon women-in-prison tropes (I really liked seeing Lyndsy Fonseca in old-school glasses, for instance) and ends on a hallucinatory note. There are clearly flashes of Carpenter doing stuff that he likes: As a veteran director, he knows how to block a scene, use his camera for suspense and lead an atmospheric horror movie. Unfortunately, none of these flashes of interest amount to much of an overall film. The final twist feels overused in a genre that has often used something similar; Amber Heard isn’t that distinctive as a lead actress and much of the film is spent going through the usual cascade of death sequences until the plot gets moving again. The Ward is clearly better than Carpenter’s 2001 Ghosts of Mars, but that’s not much of a recommendation. A decade later, this remains Carpenter’s last work as a director and it ends his career with a half-whimper rather than a bang.

  • Red Heat (1988)

    Red Heat (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2020) On paper, Red Heat feels inevitable. Arnold Schwarzenegger was near the top of his early fame in 1988, and the idea of making good use of his accent naturally led to him playing a tough cop from behind the then-Iron Curtain. From that point on, you can almost write the rest of the film yourself, so closely does it branch out from that premise and sticks to the buddy-cop plot template. Of course, his American counterpart will be an opposite of Schwarzenegger’s polished image as a Soviet supercop—slobby, loutish, loose with the rules in ways that only Jim Belushi (also near the top of his unexplainable fame at the time) could play. Alas, inconsistent writer-director Walter Hill doesn’t quite know how to maximize the elements at his disposal: the script is a hodgepodge of predictable sequences strung together in haphazard fashion, with some curious lulls to prop up a surprisingly dull plot. Only the ending, making good use of buses for some glass-smashing action, floats above the morass that Hill serves here. There are a few good things here: Schwarzenegger is picture-perfect as a tough policeman, his character has aged fairly well as a (rare) heroic Soviet character in Hollywood movies, and Gina Gershon looks great in an ungrateful role. It’s also cool to see some footage shot in Moscow, including a saluting Schwarzenegger. Alas, Jim Belushi remains obnoxious throughout—his character being only slightly less obnoxious as the very similar one he’d play the following year in K-9. The action is often dull, the plot never sparks and the cinematography has that telltale 1980s softness. In the end, Red Heat is far more interesting as an example of the Schwarzenegger and/or buddy-cop movies of the 1980s than on its own merits.

  • An Affair to Remember (1957)

    An Affair to Remember (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2020) While An Affair to Remember is often hailed as one of the finest romantic movies of all time, it’s amazing to see how much it walks a very fine line between an honest romantic comedy and overcooked romantic schmaltz. The film is almost clearly divided into two halves, and as things unfolded, I ended up watching the film in two separate sessions separated by that division. The first half of the film is significantly better than the second, as a world-famous playboy meets a retired nightclub singer aboard a transatlantic liner bound for New York. Comedy and smart dialogue take precedence in this flirty first half, culminating in a cleverly unseen kiss that complicates everything for both characters, as they are already engaged to others. Faster than you can say, “Sleepless in Seattle will steal this,” they agree to meet on top of the Empire State Building six months later. It’s all funny and charming and Cary Grant can do no wrong and Deborah Kerr (despite an unflattering hairstyle) clearly shows why she was one of the best actresses of her time. Then there’s the break: the characters disembark from the ship in Manhattan, and the film loses the pressure of the seagoing setting. But that’s also the point where the film piles on the contrived obstacles, what with one character becoming paraplegic on the way to a weepy conclusion. It works largely because of the actors, because suave, charming and sophisticated Grant could make people swoon by reading the telephone book at that time of his career. It ends on a note that would be unbearable had the film starred nearly anyone else—good casting, certainly, but not-so-good screenwriting. Despite its flaws, there’s no denying that An Affair to Remember is a film to remember as well: not as a completely successful film as much as an imperfect one that succeeds despite itself based on certain very specific elements. Amusing enough, it’s directed by Leo McCarey, who also directed Love Affair, the film on which An Affair to Remember is based.

  • The Big Heat (1953)

    The Big Heat (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) At first, I couldn’t quite see in The Big Heat why it has earned such high regard as a film noir. I mean—sure, the film opens with a murder, and there’s a cute barfly dame being antagonistic toward our protagonist… but what about that protagonist? A veteran policeman, a solid husband with a loving wife, a wonderful little girl and a happy middle-class life? Where was the real noir? I shouldn’t have asked (or should have guessed that the happy home life only highlighted what he had to lose), because by the middle of the movie the plot explodes all domestic bliss, turning our protagonist into a vengeful rogue with a gun and no badge to stop him. The barfly is dead, and an even more dangerous woman enters the picture, her face half-scarred from burns. That’s the point where The Big Heat becomes noir, turning into a two-fisted anti-corruption tale that’s well handled through unobtrusive direction by Fritz Lang. It gets noirer the longer it goes on, culminating in an action-filled climax where all the pieces have a role to play. Glenn Ford is simply perfect as the lead character, with some able support from Gloria Grahame as a vengeful moll and Lee Marvin as the Big Boss. While the story clearly harms its protagonist, the ending offers a semi-unusual return to normalcy for him as he picks up the badge again. Noir rarely allows for the possibility of it being a detour into madness, but The Big Heat was a late-period entry in the genre, and remains successful largely because it does not clearly begin nor end in typical fashion.

  • The Lady Eve (1941)

    The Lady Eve (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m slowly starting to understand what film enthusiasts mean when they point at writer-director Preston Sturges’ extraordinary 1938–1944 run. The Lady Eve remains a spectacular film by any standards, and yet it’s only one of the four Sturges movies from the period often mentioned as an all-time comedy classic. In some ways, the premise feels familiar: the grafter taking aim at a wealthy target for purely monetary objectives, only to fall in love along the way. But there are twists and turns here that complement a well-executed delivery. It certainly helps that Henry Fonda is very likable as a hapless romantic lead, a bookish scientist who falls for Barbara Stanwyck’s scheming seducer. If Stanwyck has been sexier or funnier in any other movie, please tell me, because this is a classic performance—her opening sequence, as she provides colour commentary on seduction attempts on her target, says it all. The duo has a pair of very funny seduction sequences—first an unbroken shot of Henry with his head on her lap, and then later on a barn conversation interrupted by a curious horse. The film’s conventional first half leads to an unexpected turn midway through, and then even more comic sequences later on. Deftly mixing top-notch dialogue (you can quote that movie all day long) with physical comedy and absurd situations, The Lady Eve is indeed a screwball comedy classic, and a very good showcase for Fonda, Stanwyck and Sturges. This is what we mean when we say that they don’t make them like this anymore.

  • Battling Butler (1926)

    Battling Butler (1926)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) There are good Buster Keaton movies and funny Buster Keaton movies and the relationship between the two isn’t as clear cut as one would guess. The General is perhaps his most narratively successful film, but it’s got comparatively fewer laughs than many others. Conversely, Steamboat Bill, Jr. has a lot of great comic set-pieces, but a fairly dull story. Some films do manage both (Sherlock, Jr. is as good as the mixture gets), but Battling Butler clearly errs on the side of fewer-laughs-better-story. The premise is suitably ridiculous, with a pampered rich-boy protagonist (Keaton, in a familiar naïf role) blurring the distinction between him and a similarly-named boxer in order to win the romantic affections of a girl he just met. “Buster Keaton” and “glamping” aren’t words that seem to go together, but they’re a good description of the film’s first act, with numerous gags about trying to maintain an upper-class lifestyle in the woods. Then it’s off to the film’s main plot, as Keaton has to become a boxer in order to impress a young woman. The chuckles are there, but the film remains distinctively less impressive than its comic highlights. Fortunately, though, the buildup to a dramatically satisfying ending is handled with skill, and the conclusion is quite heartwarming in its own way. Keaton remains the highlight of the film, although Snitz Edwards does get a bit of attention as a valet and Sally O’Neil makes for a lovely heroine along the way. This isn’t often mentioned in Keaton’s upper tier, but it’s likable enough and is worth a look for his fans.

  • None but the Lonely Heart (1944)

    None but the Lonely Heart (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) When you intend to watch an actor’s entire filmography, you have to take the good with the not-so-good, and so any Cary Grant fan has to go through None but the Lonely Heart on the way to (or once past) better movies. Oh, it’s not that that this poverty/family/criminal drama is terrible—in fact, it does have its qualities, most notably in portraying a Londonian working-class environment and wrapping up domestic drama in spicier criminal activity. Still, this is fairly mild and disappointing stuff for Grant, who gets to use a Cockney accent (not his own) and a fraction of his natural charm as a young cad who learns better. For Grant’s fans, this is the film that best portrays his lower-class origins, although that’s not much of an overall comfort.  Fans of car chases will be impressed by an explosive action sequence late in the film—and seeing the wires used for the special effects only somehow makes it all better. A relatively minor entry in Grant’s filmography (but significant in its own way), None but the Lonely Heart remains for convinced fans in the mood to appreciate a bit of social realism.

  • Hold back the Dawn (1941)

    Hold back the Dawn (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m a good sport for anything written by Billy Wilder, but even I remain underwhelmed by Hold Back the Dawn. Wilder’s biography tells us that it was largely inspired by his own life—as an immigrant from Europe, Wilder had to spend some time waiting at the Mexican/American border for his right to enter the country. Of course, Wilder’s stay was uneventful—the story here is quite different. Charles Boyer stars as a European gigolo trying to gain entry to the US and resorting to what he does best—seduction. Taking aim at a visiting American schoolteacher, he inevitably develops feelings for his mark, and much of the film follows the consequences of trying to square everything away. We know from the framing device that he will make his way to Hollywood, but there’s more than him to care about. Olivia de Havilland plays the romantic interest, adding a further bit of star-power to the result—although Paulette Goddard is more interesting as a vengeful flame. Hold back the Dawn is unapologetically a grand Hollywood romantic drama. It seldom holds back in terms of melodrama, and toys with audience expectations in its very dramatic third act. While it does end well (at least for most characters), there are plenty of dramatic complications along the way, and chances for the actors to deliver sob-inducing speeches. I liked it well enough as an example of that kind of film, although I can’t say that I have any particular affection for it over similar examples.

  • Best Defense (1984)

    Best Defense (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) I’m glad I read about Best Defense’s troubled production before writing this review, because it turns out that what I liked best about it are almost accidental consequences of an attempt to save the film from a critical savaging. From the get-go, the film offers two timelines: One, in 1982, with a bumbling engineer trying to perfect a piece of military equipment, and another in 1984 of a soldier having to use the equipment in a military engagement. Already, this dual-timeline structure is far more interesting than the norm. But as it turns out, the 1984 subplot was added in reshoots when the 1982 scenes proved too terrible to exist by themselves. In that, at least, the studio acknowledged reality. Unexplainably relying on Dudley Moore as a protagonist (the more I see of Moore’s movies, the less I like his comic persona), the bulk of Best Defense tries to convince us that it’s worth cheering for an incompetent, lecherous would-be-adulterous idiot. (Has Moore played anything else?) Needless to say, this has aged poorly these days, especially during an American administration that has nakedly shown the consequences of incompetence. If you can manage to get over his performance, the film gets far more interesting when it plays with its dual timelines, the actions of 1982 having consequences in 1984, as none other than Eddie Murphy (then exploding as a megastar, and clearly funnier than Moore, even in showboating) playing the soldier struggling with the engineer-designed equipment. Amusingly enough, the film anticipates the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait eight years before it happened—although let’s not see in this anything but a lucky coincidence. The result is a bit of a mess—an intriguing structure that was bolted upon a far less interesting film. Murphy escapes from the film mostly intact, along with Kate Capshaw as the voice of reason to man-child Moore. Best Defense is interesting but for all the wrong reasons—and I’m not going to recommend it to any unsuspecting audience.

  • Captive State (2019)

    Captive State (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) Despite the slew of underwhelming movies about life under alien occupation, I continue to think that there’s something really powerful about that promise—at least if it’s used to comment on social issues, or reflect the contemporary feeling of life under (human) 1% oligarchs. Unfortunately, you’re not going to find that kind of material in Captive State, which struggles to become interesting even as it studies various characters as they react to life under a repressive alien regime. While the story does score a few points by focusing on the human enablers that prop up the alien regime and aping classic Resistance movies, much of Captive State struggles to gather any kind of interest.  You can see the ending (even the twist of the ending) coming far in advance and there really isn’t much more to the conclusion to make it stand out. The film can rely on a few veteran actors for quality, John Goodman and Vera Farmiga being the standouts—even though Farmiga feels underutilized. Captive State is a narrative and thematic dud as well: it alludes to class issues without engaging with them, and its low budget means that there’s very little visual kick to the story. In fact, some of it comes across as silly: As the characters suit up as if for a space flight only to take an elevator down, it’s easy to think that the film has overplayed the elements to its disposal. When Captive State showed up on Cable TV, I was convinced that it was a direct-to-digital production (and even more convinced of it after watching the film), but it turns out that it did have a wide theatrical release… which miserably bombed. The box-office failure is completely understandable while watching the final result. Writer-director Rupert Wyatt has a few good ideas up his sleeve, but his execution is messy, blurry, cold and boring. Worse yet: it doesn’t know what to do with what it has.

  • Nebraska (2013)

    Nebraska (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2020) It’s a bit of a surprise that I waited this long before seeing Nebraska—after all, it was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, and I’m a bit of a completist when it comes to those. Plus, it’s from Alexander Payne, an uneven filmmaker but one who can usually be counted upon to deliver a few surprises along the way. Embracing its Midwestern gothic aesthetics, Nebraska is shot in black-and-white (more a cinema-vérité gimmick than something truly interesting) and takes place in working-class America. Quirky characters abound, as the story is precipitated by an elderly alcoholic’s conviction that he has won a million dollars in a Publisher’s Clearinghouse-style contest and must go pick up his prize in person. Exasperated by his constant escapes from home, his son decides to lance the boil and make the drive. Cue the road trip movie, although it stops for a while at the man’s former hometown, a hotbed of past relationships, naked envy and spectacularly dumb characters. I’ll give something to Payne: he can be surprising, and it’s a wonder how Nebraska can remain interesting (in a truly cringe-inducing way) with such low stakes and down-to-earth concerns. Much of this can be attributed to a screenplay with distinctive (if frustrating) characters, featuring lusty elders, cackling rednecks, befuddled sons and gossip-loving townsfolk. It’s not an easy movie to like, but there are enough good scenes here and there to make it distinctive. Bruce Dern is terrific as the half-demented man who sets the plot in motion and eventually gains a strange victory of sorts despite being hopelessly deluded about his real chances. Nebraska may be an odd movie, not exactly pulse-pounding at what it does, but it’s interesting enough and somewhat similar to many other Payne movies in how it explored places and people that seldom figure in most other films.

  • My Bloody Valentine (1981)

    My Bloody Valentine (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) The early 1980s were the golden age of slasher horror movies, and it’s not a surprise if some of them were better than others. Despite my strong dislike of the subgenre, even I have to admit that My Bloody Valentine is an above-average slasher. There’s quite a bit more going on than simply setting a familiar plot at an incongruous time of the year: As the subplot and atmosphere of the small city in which My Bloody Valentine takes place, it’s actually possible to care a little bit about the characters and remain interested in the backstory underpinning the bloody kills. I wouldn’t want to overstate things—but the worldbuilding here is actually interesting, what with the mining environment offering a visual and thematic counterpoint to the small-tow atmosphere. (The mine feels superfluous at first, until you realize how it provides the film with its gas mask iconography and, eventually, the backstory required to motivate the killer.) The rest of My Bloody Valentine isn’t that interesting, but in wading through a seemingly endless succession of near-identical gory slashers, I’ll take any distinction I can get.

  • Mon Oncle [My Uncle] (1958)

    Mon Oncle [My Uncle] (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) As someone who started exploring “older” movies only a few years ago, one of my favourite feelings is to encounter a film so distinctive that nothing quite like it has been made ever since. Something like Mon Oncle, a satire that plays almost entirely without significant dialogue, relying on visual design and the talents of writer-director Jacques Tati as a mime. I’ll qualify my “I’ve never seen anything like this before or since,” reaction with the obvious note that this is my first Tati film—I’m aware of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot and Play Time but haven’t gotten around to them yet. (There are also plenty of similarities, as others have noted, between Tati and Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean.) Mon Oncle certainly makes a striking introduction to his work: A satire of 1950s French society taken over by American-style consumerism, this is a film that opposes two visions of France, and remains curiously timeless despite some very dated material. Tati’s background as a mime certainly shows in the film’s almost redundant dialogues, with the bulk of the film’s storytelling and comedy being handled through purely visual means. This doesn’t mean that Mon Oncle could have worked as a silent movie, though: the film’s soundscape is incredibly important in affirming the film’s atmosphere. There are a lot of slapstick gags, but perhaps just as many visual design jokes as well—the film’s cinematographic polish is incredible, and the way the film portrays an out-of-control drive toward modernism exists somewhere between words and images. (There’s a bit where the house “watches” Tati that’s almost a perfect moment of cinema.) Still, for all of the high esteem in which I regard Mon Oncle’s intentions and execution, there’s a limit to how much I actually like the result. The film often goes back to the same general ideas in more or less the same way, getting repetitive along the way. I also have… issues in the way modernism is portrayed as a soul-sucking step down from traditionalism. But then again, I’ve had sixty more years than Tati to get used to the idea.

  • Frankie and Johnny (1991)

    Frankie and Johnny (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2020) Here we have Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer in a middle-aged romance set against a background of petty criminality and restaurant shifts—and it’s based on a play based on a song. I’m not sure there’s anything more to say about Frankie and Johnny: this is a relatively low-octane romantic comedy (or rather romantic non-tragedy, because while it’s not exactly funny, it doesn’t end with everybody dying either) featuring two actors able to sink their teeth into more demanding material. The tone is resolutely low-key (although Pacino does get a chance to rave a little bit) and the result is fit to be watched by anyone, whether they’re interested in the actors, the premise or the prospect of a middle-of-the-road film that ends on a positive note. Director Garry Marshall was already an experienced hand at directing romantic comedies back in 1991 and the result is solid without being overly showy. The person who benefits the most from Frankie and Johnny is Pfeiffer, having a chance to play a solid dramatic role while toning down (but not too much) her movie-star looks. There’s a bit of a disconnect between the very domestic, working-class nature of the story being told and the way it’s been given to two mega-charm actors, but that’s Hollywood suspension of disbelief for you.