Reviews

  • The Nun’s Story (1959)

    The Nun’s Story (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) The premise of The Nun’s Story doesn’t sound like a good mix: Audrey Hepburn playing a noviciate nun? Her better-known screen roles aren’t anywhere near that type of character, and yet she successfully delivered an intense dramatic performance here, solidifying her ingénue superstar status with several accolades for her acting talent. Coming almost exactly in the middle of her film career, some have called the movie Hepburn’s finest dramatic performance, and that sounds about right even if you think that comic performances are often more challenging. At first, The Nun’s Story does feel like a wandering procedural about the life of a noviciate, going through the somewhat dull process of the apprenticeship required for a young woman to take her vows. For a rather long time, the film navigates a fine line between being boring and interesting, as it doesn’t hurry through its protagonist’s apprenticeship even after taking her vows. But The Nun’s Story does become far more interesting—and relevant to Hepburn’s life—once the last act rolls around and suddenly the Nazis invade the movie. That’s the point when we can understand Hepburn’s interest for the role (after all, she did serve in the Dutch Resistance as a teenager), and the film becomes far more interesting in opposing obedience versus the moral imperative to resist the occupation. The conclusion feels very appropriate to the character. The direction and cinematography could have been a bit stronger, but even in their current state they do carry the film to a satisfying conclusion. Anyone who feels restless during the first half of The Nun’s Story should stick around—it’s laying down the groundwork for later moral choices, and the film sharply improves in time for its conclusion just as Hepburn herself comes back to the fore.

  • Hairspray (1988)

    Hairspray (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2019) I haven’t seen as many John Waters movies as I’d like yet, but I like what I’ve seen so far, and Hairspray seems to package his iconoclastic outlook in a very audience-friendly package. Set in early-1960s Baltimore, it focuses on a curvy teenager (play by the very cute Rikki Lake) who comes to compete against more conventionally beautiful girls in a dance pageant and break down the city’s racial segregation. The square targets are broad and easy, but the film does have an exaggerated fun factor clearly crossing over in camp aesthetics. Breaking from his most transgressive fare, Waters here offers a slightly subversive look at an earlier generation in the form of a musical comedy. The music is quite good, and the white perspective means that Hairspray is accessible to a very wide audience that can laugh at the heavy-handed racism. (It does remain aimed at a white audience, though—fine for the 1980s, maybe a bit limited in the 2010s.) It’s simply a lot of fun, and the good music means that it’s got replay value as well.

  • Brexit: The Uncivil War (2019)

    Brexit: The Uncivil War (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) The Brexit mess has clearly shown the limits of British collective intelligence for almost three years now. You may say that it’s too early to have a look back at the referendum, but considering that the mess shows no signs of abating [January 2020: It actually got wilder in 2019!], now is no worse than last or next year for an incisive take on the events of 2015–2016. Made-for-TV film (originally for Channel 4, brought to North America by HBO) Brexit: The Uncivil War proves to be significantly better than expected not only at presenting the referendum, but explaining how sophisticated modern persuasion techniques have become. This remarkably entertaining look at the Brexit campaign is based on real facts and features real people, but doesn’t settle for a naturalistic style. In the best tradition of British political satire, Brexit: The Uncivil War takes flights of fancy, breaks down complex issues in an accessible way and throws its hands up in the air while wondering how so many people can be so stupid. It certainly helps that Benedict Cumberbatch headlines the cast by playing balding political strategist Dominic Cummings as a Sherlock-level genius with an ideological bent toward anarchism. The secret sauce in the film, reflecting real-life events, is the use of targeted advertisements delivered very precisely through web sites—there’s a brilliant five-minute segment in the heart of Brexit that connects the dots on how people can be analyzed and manipulated through algorithms that rival Black Mirror in sheer technological horror. It’s executed with a great deal of cinematic flair, and clever writing certainly helps the film’s narrative move forward. It may focus on a disgusted (possibly remorseful) Leave strategist, but the film seems aimed as Remainers—I certainly found it clever and witty, and I couldn’t be more closely aligned with the Remain side despite being, obviously, just a colonial. Brexit: The Uncivil War is funny yet bitter (the sequences featuring American influences, Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon, are portents of much darker forces) and it has things to say that apply well beyond the border of the increasingly not-so-Great Britain.

  • Pollock (2000)

    Pollock (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2019) I’m often intrigued by the choices that well-known actors make when they become directors. Often, their chance to direct a film is also a chance to express something we may not have guessed from their screen persona. So it is that when Ed Harris chose a project to direct, he went for the life of American painter Jackson Pollock. Given that he also plays Pollock (including the painting sequences) in addition to directing and that the project was ten years in the making after Harris read Pollock’s biography, this is unquestionably his movie. The result is quite interesting, although it does exist in the lineage of the “complicated white man” tradition, where creative genius sometimes excuses a host of personal failings such as alcoholism and anger. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is its look at the creative process, something that a director without an acting background may not have handled the same way. Harris may direct in a straightforward style (something later seen in his Appaloosa follow-up) but the painting scenes alone are quite good, belying the old crack about watching paint dry. Harris is quite good in the title role, but Marcia Gay Hayden is even better as his long-suffering wife. The slide-of-life look at the American 1940s–1950s art world is intriguing. Ultimately, the film does not shy away from Pollock’s tragic arc, and does make a certain statement about the artist. While Pollock could have benefited from a more explicit look inside the painter’s mind, the result is satisfying enough for Harris, both as a performer and a director. Better yet, it’s not the movie you may have expected from seeing Harris-the-Actor.

  • The Bounty (1984)

    The Bounty (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) If I recall correctly, The Bounty is the third version of The Bounty Mutiny story that I’ve seen in slightly more than a year. Fortunately, it may be the best—perhaps not as impressive as the 1935 version for its time, but certainly the one with the better actors and the most nuanced take on the story. Defying the older fictionalized portrait of Captain Blight, modern histories of the event seldom think that the opposition between Blight and Christian Fletcher was a clear case of one being right and the other being wrong. This 1984 version comes to reflect much of that ambiguity, with Blight not necessarily cast as a villain or Christian as a hero, but as a tragedy in which the two men come to fight over different opinions. The ending is a bit glum, reflecting the record although not all of it. Aside from a stronger (but not perfect) historical accuracy, The Bounty relies on none other than Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson in the lead roles, with some improbable appearance by notables such as Laurence Oliver, Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson in smaller roles. Roger Donaldson directs in a fashion that allows both the grandeur and the adventure of the story to come through, featuring a surprising amount of (historically accurate!) nudity, but also the hard choices that come to dominate the second half of the film. Partially designed for people who have seen earlier version of the same story, The Bounty remains an incredible story, leading to improbable survival at sea.

  • Cocoon (1985)

    Cocoon (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, January 2019) I remember seeing Cocoon as a kid, but considering the film’s themes of aging it’s very different to see it as a middle-aged adult. (There’s one shot in the film, in which “human skins” are discarded and thrown to the floor by the alien characters, that seriously freaked me out when I was younger.) Efficiently directed by Ron Howard, this is a clever blend of SF, romance and comedy as retirement-aged characters discover alien eggs and the rejuvenating effects of the pool in which they’re stored. Of course, the aliens are there for a reason and their minders have good reason to be concerned. The script cleanly moves between one mode to the other, gradually making its way to a sentimental action-driven finale. There’s a tremendous amount of irony and foreshadowing in Cocoon’s early lines, showing the craft in the script. This probably remains the best film in which Steve Gutenberg ever starred, although his acting simply can’t reassure up to the impressive elderly ensemble cast assembled in between Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy and others. Now that the baby boomers are taking over retirement homes, I expect the film to undergo a modest rediscovery as its themes of eternal youth directly addresses them. For younger viewers, Cocoon can occasionally be a meditation on growing old (and what people would do if there was an alternative), although it doesn’t forget to leaven the meditation with genre elements and comedy.

  • Ocean’s Eight (2018)

    Ocean’s Eight (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) Like many, I’m not overly happy with the recent tradition of relaunching franchises with gender-flipped casts—it smacks of opportunism, and a cheap way to revive franchises that have otherwise run their courses. But even grouchy me had a hard time resisting the charm of Ocean’s Eight, which resurrects the modern Ocean’s comedic heist franchise with a mostly female cast. Headlined by Anne Hathaway (going back to a sympathetic character after a too-long detour playing out-of-persona unlikable characters), the ensemble cast tears into the usual heist plot mechanics with gusto, with everybody getting a choice moment or two. Plot-wise, this isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, although it should be noted that rather than head for banks or casinos like their male colleagues, the women of Ocean’s Eight head for jewelry at a high-end fashion event … because why not. This enjoyable follow-up has a snappy rhythm thanks to director Gary Ross, and even the post-heist material doesn’t drag on too much despite wallowing in useless complications. (But it wouldn’t be a heist movie if they went for a simple approach.) The ensemble cast is at the top of their game, what with Sandra Bullock going head-to-head with Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham-Carter throwing in a bawdy French dialogue wordplay that is not adequately translated in the subtitles, as well as younger actresses such as Mindy Kaling, Rihanna and Awkwafina having good moments. It’s not meant to be profound or sophisticated beyond surface appearance, but Ocean’s Eight is a fun heist movie, and I quite liked it.

  • The Mighty Ducks (1992)

    The Mighty Ducks (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2019) Sports movie are often intensely formulaic, and The Mighty Ducks is even more formulaic than most. It being a hockey movie is almost irrelevant to the hackneyed underdogs plot that it follows without deviation, assembling a team of misfits to take on much better teams. Emilio Estevez slums it up by taking on the usual coach role of those movies, overcoming some personal trauma by working with troubled kids. It’s a bog-standard sports movie and perhaps that helps explain its enduring popularity. Estevez is not bad, the tone of the film is carefully pitched to impressionable young teenagers (who are guaranteed to remember it fondly as adults) and hockey helps the action move faster than baseball. You can compare and contrast the beige amiability of The Mighty Ducks to spikier fare such as The Bad News Bears for an instruction on how bland corporate products are extruded. It almost inevitably led to the naming of Disney’s own hockey team, furthering cementing the film’s legacy right before the two sequels and animated TV series. For adults, though, The Mighty Ducks is an umpteenth take on an overly familiar formula. It’s watchable, but almost immediately forgettable.

  • Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

    Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, January 2019) I watched Solo: A Star Wars Story very reluctantly. The shameless exploitation of the Star Wars universe by Disney has a clear endpoint of diminishing return, and the way the standalone movies have been calculated for mercenary impact is enough to leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. To put it bluntly, Solo is a useless, unneeded movie. Nobody was really asking for a young Han Solo film. Nobody needed another attempt to explain the most minute corners of the Star Wars universe in even-duller detail. Frankly, the result does rankle. It’s filled with huge coincidences, an annoying tendency to overexplain, the irritating urge to tie up everything and the introduction of new leitmotifs that smack of modern screenwriter handbooks more than organic storytelling. But of course, organic storytelling is the last thing that Disney wants, and much of the chatter prior to the film’s release had to do with the way the original team of directors—iconoclasts Chris Miller and Phil Lord—was fired and replaced by Ron Howard, who reportedly reshot Solo using a more conventional approach. It would be fascinating to see that first cut of the film (I’m not holding my breath), but the result does work as a straight-up adventure. The plot is serviceable, the actors in the main roles are generally fine (I may even come to like Emilia Clarke at some point in the future) and the secondary characters usually steal the show—with a special mention for gone-too-soon Thandie Newton’s character, Donald Glover as a perfect Lando Carlissian, Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the voice of L3-37 and Erin Kellyman as Enfys Nest. While Solo isn’t devoid of links to the rest of the Star Wars Universe, those are more interesting when they cover smaller touches (such as the embedding of L3-37 within the Falcon, or the dawn of the Rebellion) than providing an entire backstory to Han Solo. The film is far more interesting when it strikes out on its own away from the established Star Wars mythos than when it rehashes the same old thing. Han Solo often ends up being the least interesting thing about the movie dedicated to him, not helped along by Alden Ehrenreich’s bland take on the character. If there’s one good thing to come out of Solo’s relative lack of commercial success (considering expectations and a $275M budget, “merely” grossing $400M is not enough), it’s that The Mouse has finally understood the point of diminishing returns on its Star Wars cash grab and may start being more discriminate about future projects.

  • FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2019)

    FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, January 2019) I’m not sure what’s most amazing: the resounding failure of the Fyre event, which touched upon the worst aspects of late-2010s culture, or the hoopla surrounding the making and releasing not only of documentary FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, but the duelling between this Netflix-distributed film and the competing Hulu-distributed Fyre Fraud. But let’s go back to the beginning: In late 2016, several “influencers” broke the announcement of a music festival with an idyllic tropical setting, top-rated artists and a luxurious atmosphere. Fyre, as the festival was named, lured unsuspecting attendees through overinflated claims that, upon reasonable analysis, had no chance of being met given the low ticket prices. Despite plenty of warning signs and critical commentary, attendees converged on the festival’s grounds in May 2017 to find that the event had been … well, something like cancelled but worse in that there were no events, bad accommodations, terrible food, unpaid workers yet no official cancellation. The resulting social media postings were the highlight of that week, fuelled by undisguised schadenfreude from many at seeing the influencer lifestyle blowing up in the attendee’s faces. Those are the facts that pretty much everyone agrees on. Now FYRE takes us inside the organization of the festival through interviews with some of the people involved in the failure. Perhaps the best aspect of the film, especially for those with a background in event planning or project management, is the horror show of seeing the event disintegrating well before it took place, as locations changed, promises couldn’t be kept and the gulf between the promises and the results grew wider and wider. If you’ve been involved in failed projects, there’s a familiar hollowness to the way it gets worse and worse, well past the point where any sane person would put an end to it all. A special mention goes to event planner Andy King for telling an astonishing story of what he was prepared to do in order for a relatively small part of the festival to come through—he got rewarded with short-lived meme infamy after the release of the documentary. Still, as fascinating and detailed as this story can be, FYRE does stop short of calling it fraud (despite ample evidence to the contrary) or seriously studying the role of social media influencers in the debacle. And that (thunderous music) is because you have to watch the credits in order to understand that the documentary is being produced by some of the people involved in the marketing of the Fyre festival. Of course, it wasn’t a fraud. Of course, the blame wasn’t on the shoulders of the social media people who convinced so many people that Fyre was worth attending despite the critical reaction to their announcement. For that story, you have to watch Hulu’s Fyre Fraud, which is both more morally dubious in its production (by paying Fyre founder and convicted fraudster Billy McFarland for an interview) yet a bit more honest on-screen in calling a fraud a fraud. But of course, considering the post-truth environment that led to the current American administration, a dishonest documentary seems entirely appropriate at this moment.

  • The Truth about Cats & Dogs (1996)

    The Truth about Cats & Dogs (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) If, somehow, Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired The Truth about Cats & Dogs is still watched by future generations, I’m reasonably certain that it will continue to unite audiences around one single common takeaway: It makes no sense to feature mid-1990s Janeane Garofalo as the “unattractive” woman. Any romantic comedy that even tries it should be laughed out of the room. This being said, I suspect that there’s still a good future left for this nearly-twenty-five-year-old romantic comedy. It’s cute, charming, generally unobjectionable, features animals and a sunny California background. Oh, and a young Uma Thurman as the “attractive” one, at least compared to Garofalo. The mid-1990s sheen of the film is pleasant, especially when multiplied by the unthreatening conventions of the era’s romantic comedies: If Hollywood history is any guide, there will be a greater timelessness for those movies than grittier, more depressing fare. This being said, let’s not overstate things: The Truth about Cats & Dogs is more an exemplar of the romantic comedy genre than a specifically good movie by itself. Garofalo herself has semi-disavowed the film in recent years, in keeping with her more intellectually ambitious persona. Still, it’s fun and breezy and not every movie has to be a hard-bore denunciation of current social ills.

  • The Truth about Killer Robots (2018)

    The Truth about Killer Robots (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) So here we are … comfortably in the twenty-first century, and living in a world where robots have killed people. (I’m old enough to remember a serious early-1980s article in French-Canadian magazine Québec-Science taking a look at the convergence of humanity and robots, and using the eventual death of a human at the hands of a robot as a significant marker. The article gave me nightmares at the time, but as I said: here we are.) The Truth about Killer Robots uses three deaths (the 2015 death of a worker at a Volkswagen factory; the 2016 takedown of a sniper by a Dallas Police robot; and the first of the Tesla “autopilot” deaths in 2016) as an excuse to study where the science of robotics was in 2018 and what it means. The film is structured around three themes introduced by each death (manufacturing, service and total displacement), and has the conceit of being narrated by a robot from the future. Alas, the film doesn’t do much with the narrative hook, and that disappointment (along with the descriptive title) is indicative of the rest of the film’s blunt and unsurprising approach. Writer/director Maxim Pozdorovkin has delivered an up-to-date global look at where we are (the look at the post office robotization is fascinating, and the film spends a lot of time in Asia) but doesn’t go anywhere beyond the obvious nor doesn’t come close to addressing the use of drones in combat—a curious omission. Pozdorovkin is obviously skeptical about the idea of automation, to the point where the film seems to be missing a more challenging viewpoint—either in the direction of techno-utopianism (What if robots helped us rediscover our imperfect humanity?) or deeper into the underlying horrors of its implications (What if there was no choice, no way around the roboticization? Are we creating those incentives unconsciously?) As a particular point of irritation, the film does play around with Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, but without quite dispensing with the fiction that they were anything but literary devices. Ham-fisted and a bit hollow once past the facts and footage it assembles, The Truth about Killer Robots leaves us wanting more, and as more human deaths at the hands of robots accumulate, it will become even less relevant.

  • Anchors Aweigh (1945)

    Anchors Aweigh (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) I’m probably showing the shallowness of my pool of reference, but Anchors Aweigh certainly struck me as a dry run for the more successful On the Town four years later. After all, both movies star Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as sailors on shore leave, reaching for the same kind of audience-friendly mixture of comedy and music. It’s as if both sprang from the same starting point, with On the Town improving upon its predecessor by featuring more couples and swapping Los Angeles for New York. Still, Anchors Aweigh is far more than a prototype—it’s a perfectly enjoyable film in its own right. The plot is serviceable as a way to showcase what its leads do best. Sinatra is great while singing a quiet number at a piano, while Gene Kelly dances as well as ever—famously with an animated Jerry the Mouse, but also in a market sequence, and then again in a dream Spanish adventure sequence. The colourful look at 1945 movie studios pleasantly blurs the line between fiction and memorializing then-reality. George Sidney’s direction is slickly professional (especially during the Hollywood Bowl piano sequence), and female lead Kathryn Grayson is very, very cute. While comparisons with On the Town do Anchors Aweigh no favour, it’s a very enjoyable musical, and it’s doubly worth seeing by classical Hollywood fans by virtue of showing us what MGM studios looked like at the close of WW2.

  • Uncanny (2015)

    Uncanny (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2015) The 2010s have been a good decade for low-budget, genre-aware science fiction movies. (Well, Syfy aside.) If the quality has been hit-and-miss, at least there’s been a lot of them to choose from, and even the not-so-good ones can have something to offer. Uncanny is ultimately not that good of a movie, but it’s intriguing for about thirty minutes, which is fifteen more than many other SF movies. There’s an admirable simplicity to its setup, as only one loft set and four characters are involved (a journalist, a tech genius, an android and a billionaire played by special guest star Rainn Wilson). The journalist is there to interview the genius and his android, but not all is as it seems in a “twist” that can be seen long before it happens. There is also a baffling mid-credit “counter-twist” that makes the entire plot disintegrate in self-contradictions, but don’t worry—you’ll make up your mind about Uncanny well before that happens. As a late entry in the 2013–2014 mini-wave of movies about artificial intelligence, slow-paced thought-piece Uncanny attempts to remain grounded in tech-industry jargon, but doesn’t have much to contribute—this really isn’t anywhere close to Ex Machina. It’s not exactly an easy movie to like: Due to the lack of emotional affect by two of the three lead characters, it feels cold and stunted—and that’s without me going into an extended rant about the film’s dumb equation between lack of emotions as an intellectual marker. Still, especially at first, Director Matthew Leutwyler attempt to deliver in Uncanny something more mature than most other low-budget SF movies. The results aren’t particularly successful, but the ambition has to be respected. Still, there are better picks out there.

  • Doctor Dolittle (1967)

    Doctor Dolittle (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) The original 1967 Doctor Dolittle is a landmark in movie history for all the wrong reasons. It was a big expansive musical at a time when American cinema was shifting away from such films, it had a famously troubled production with a fuzzy script and a temperamental star; it was such a bomb that it nearly took down its producing studio 20th Century Fox; and its studio-bought nomination as Best Picture at the 1968 Academy Awards is risible considering that it ran against such acclaimed classics as In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. [May 2019: For more on the making of Doctor Dolittle and the way 1967 changed movies forever, I heartily recommend Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution]. As a result, the film itself feels much smaller than its own reputation. It’s certainly not the awful movie that its troubled production history would suggest. A lighthearted adventure/comedy/musical featuring a protagonist with the ability to speak to animals and a fantastic menagerie of imaginary beasts, Doctor Dolittle can be watched without undue hardship. It benefits from an unflappable performance by Rex Harrison, imaginative creations, a large budget that shows up on-screen, a pleasant atmosphere and numerous side-gag one-liners. The scenery changes often (see: large budget) and the special effects aren’t as dated as one would expect. Animal-lovers will find it more amusing than most (I saw much of the movie with a cat on my lap). For all of the flak it took, the film left enough of an impression to be remade once (with a second one coming in early 2020) and gain a bit of a nostalgic following. Still, watching today, Doctor Dolittle remains disappointing. The imaginary animals aren’t all endearing, the tunes aren’t particularly catchy and the conclusion seems rushed after the uneven pacing of the rest of the film. There are clear signs that the film was harmed by its overly narrow focus on Harrison, and the entire thing feels underwhelming considering the production’s lavish means. “Better than expected” is no substitute for a film enjoyable on its own, and perhaps the best thing one can say about Doctor Dolittle is that it remains essential viewing for understanding why Hollywood had to change by the late 1960s—it exemplifies the worst of the old studio system, and the limits of what it could do at its best.