Reviews

  • The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) While my appreciation for 1960s crime caper The Biggest Bundle of Them All remains temperate, the film has appreciated slightly in time because it’s a wholly average example of something that has also appreciated in the intervening decades. It’s not a new phenomenon—the Tarantino-clones of the late 1990s are far more interesting now that we’re not deluged with them; the classical musicals of the 1950s are still great fun now that we’re not as tired of the genre as audiences were at the time. So, anyone in the mood for a 1960s crime caper comedy is on rather firm ground with The Biggest Bundle of Them All, especially considering the wild casting of the film, its European style (courtesy of its setting, its English director Ken Annakin and having been shot in Cinecittà) and pop-optimism. It pairs well with the later The Italian Job (despite not being in the same league) in how it plays with lucrative violence-free crime and ironic punishment. The casting spans decades of celebrities, with old-school titans such as Edward G. Robinson and Italian neorealist director Vittoria de Sica (!) rubbing shoulders with then-newer actors such as Raquel Welsh and Robert Wagner and black cinema pioneer Godfrey Cambridge. Welsh is clearly the sex-symbol hook on which much of the film was sold at the time—and The Biggest Bundle of Them All doesn’t pass an occasion to showcase her assets, even in a small part. It’s risky to call the film funny—overdone in many ways, a bit lame in others, it’s perhaps more accurate to call it “light-hearted.” There’s untapped potential in the final result: the film doesn’t quite manage to capitalize on its assets, leaving viewers amused but dissatisfied. It probably does play better now to anyone who’s a fan of those 1960s crime comedies.

  • Submerged (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) While Submerged does have a cool poster and an intriguing premise, it gets dramatically less interesting as it goes on. Having a bunch of characters stuck in an armoured limo as it plunges into a canal and sinks to the bottom is a great hook—there’s a survival thriller premise that could fuel an entire film. Alas, director Steven C. Miller is stuck with a script that feels obliged to explain in far too much detail the shenanigans and machinations that led to the characters being targeted by bad guys. Nor is he skilled enough on a visual level to effectively portray the claustrophobic nature of the danger. It doesn’t help, of course, that the film easily spends more time outside than in the limo—or that the characters are so incredibly annoying that we keep hoping that a kraken will eat them all. Given this, Submerged ends up a significant waste of a good idea that’s simply too inept to recommend, even for those who like off-beat premises.

  • Stanley & Iris (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) Reviews almost write themselves when you can shower a film with superlatives (good or bad), but even the most verbose critics can find themselves stumped in trying to talk about generic middle-of-the-road dramas with no obvious hooks nor reasons to love or hate. So it is that Stanley & Iris is perhaps most interesting as a meeting between two actors, Robert de Niro and Jane Fonda, that you think would have worked together more often. It’s a working-class social drama about illiteracy (in which she teaches him how to read), but one that doesn’t really want to put in the work required for the social issue to be portrayed convincingly. Here, he becomes a fluent reader in-between a few scenes, as the film focuses on their romantic relationship but then, not really given that he skips town, becomes a millionaire and comes back to sweep her away from her miserable apartment in a chromed Cadillac or something. OK, well, maybe the way I describe it makes Stanley & Iris feel worse or funnier than it is. But there’s not much of a reaction while watching the film itself: it plays like beige wallpaper, moving from one obviousness to another while the seemingly ordinary male lead ends up being an inventor genius of some sort. Because why, that’s why. Director Martin Ritt’s final film doesn’t do much to tarnish an otherwise illustrious career, but it’s still not much of a good note to go off. Oh, Stanley & Iris is not terrible… but it doesn’t have much to recommend either.

  • Westworld, Season 4 (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) While Westworld’s fourth season goes back to the initial themes of the series after a dubious third season, I’m still increasingly frustrated at how the entire show doesn’t seem to be under greater control. (Which is ironic, considering its overarching theme.)  Each season seems to zig and zag in another direction, with some great ideas being dashed by wonky execution, very strange concepts improperly executed, and inconsistent interest from one subplot to another. As I edit this review, one month after the final episode aired, there’s still no confirmation of season 5 happening despite putative plans for it—so it would make some sense to consider this a final season. In which case, it does offer some closure of sorts—especially given how nearly every single character dies in the last two episodes. (Of course, much of Westworld’s magic is that death is never final.)  I did enjoy quite a bit of it: This season clearly wanted to replicate some of the mind-bending twistiness of the first two, and so there’s a rather audacious time-skip midway through the episodes, and a gut-wrenching declaration in the final episode that doesn’t seem to leave anywhere to go. Of the returning characters, Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) spends much of the season as an enigmatic oracle who has simulated all the possibilities, lending further appeal to an already-complex oracular character. The casting remains as astonishing as it did, with some added appeal if you like a certain type of actress (as I do)—this season features not only Thandiwe Newton and Tessa Thompson on a final collision course, but also Aurora Perrineau and a surprisingly short supporting turn from recent Academy Award-winner Ariana DeBose. (This is what happens when you sign an actor before they get an Oscar.) The series pays itself another visit to a different simulated world (albeit one with the same plotlines), has a few moments of pure visual horror (robot faces come apart in the most disturbing ways!) and even has a somewhat self-contained episode that riffs off a central concept, like some of the previous best episodes of the series. Still, it’s hard to take all of this as seriously as it wants when the world-building seems too sketchy and convenient. Much of the details still feel improvised from one season to another, and I still haven’t figured out how people can get on a boat and travel from California to New York City to Nevada in a few hours. (Yes, it’s probably not “California” and “New York” and “Nevada,” but the series doesn’t clarify that.) There’s also a mean-spirited quality to the series’ objectives that feels off-putting to me, such as playing with the end of the human race in simplistic matters that only make sense if you’re willing to forgive the series’ quirks. There may be a fifth-and-final season and if there is, I will be watching it live—but I’m not sure anything means anything anymore in this series, and that suggests that it took quite a few wrong turns along the way. Maybe, in a few decades, someone will take the best bits of Westworld, polish it to a self-consistent gleam, and remake it all over again. Which would almost be a fitting fate for a series so obsessed with repetition, iteration, legacy and perfection.

  • The Outpost aka Mind Ripper (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) Look, either I spend 200+ words describing how mediocre-to-bad The Outpost is, or we can all save ourselves some trouble if you just take my word for it. I’ll even throw in some objective facts as a warning: This is one of those bog-standard “there’s a murderous monster in an isolated scientific outpost and here are a few non-scientists trying to survive” horror movies that were especially popular in the 1990s. It’s widely advertised as being “from Wes Craven,” but he’s just an executive producer—his son Jonathan Craven co-wrote the script, and it was directed by Joe Gayton. It’s strictly a low-budget effort, shot in Bulgaria to take advantage of tax incentives and lower production costs—but it still looks cheap. Do I need to add more to convince you? You won’t even remember it the next day. 150 words—we’re done here.

  • Paris is Burning (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) I don’t think it’s possible to watch the drag-queen documentary Paris is Burning today, in an age of glam-drag chic, in the same way as audiences did back in 1990. Despite the documentary’s considerable affection for its topic, there is still an element of queer exposition here for elements that are far more familiar today. But again—writer-director Jennie Livingston’s documentary has aged rather well. In its explanations of drag show minutiae, vocabulary and culture, it presents a portrait of a very specific slice of Manhattan life in the late 1980s, with participants proud to showcase a community that accepts them for what they are, often fleeing intolerant family along the way. The documentary is predictably colourful when on the catwalk, but it does not skimp on showing its participants in more vulnerable states—and the film still packs a gut punch in its final minutes, as it reveals that one of the most likable interviewees was found murdered a few months after being recorded for the film. There’s a strong sense of intersectionality here, as sexuality, race, class and gender all play a role in how the drag scene has evolved. That by itself would explain why the film remains equally interesting (in different ways) to watch today—respect goes much farther than anything else in securing a legacy, and it’s no accident if Paris is Burning remains, even today, an entryway in complex controversies and issues. Few documentaries from 1990 can still claim that.

  • Defining Moments (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) It’s common enough to talk about films as being good or bad, but we less frequently discuss films in terms of competence or rather incompetence. Most movies that are released to a big audience are competent. They make the most of what they have, usually scale their ambitions to their means, and involve so many professional filmmakers working together that the union of their strengths produces something that doesn’t raise questions as to how the filmmakers got their jobs. But then there’s Defining Moments, a pretentious piece of garbage that manages to be the worst possible showcase for Burt Reynolds’ last role. Big words, I know, but here’s the paradox: Defining Moments wouldn’t have been nearly so irritating had it stuck to more modest aims. From afar, there was a lot of mileage to make out of eight characters in a small Canadian town, each undergoing their own trials and tribulations. But the script’s central mistake is to reach for some kind of universal truth, wrapping everything together in a grand cosmic statement. The writing simply isn’t up to that task—the grand pronouncements barely make sense even as they strangle themselves in pretentiousness. Worse yet—the production values of writer-director Stephen Wallis’ film are barely equal to TV movies-of-the-week romantic dramas involving a plucky young woman going from the big city to her hometown to find true love. Amateurish actors deliver their terrible lines in fake-feeling sets, portrayed using the bluntest cinematography possible and steadily irritating editing. Whatever saving graces there are here seem defeated by what surrounds them. Sure, Reynolds is as terrific as his legendary status would suggest. And then there’s Graham Greene, Sienna Guillory and Polly Shannon doing their best. But the stuff that comes out of their mouth is embarrassing: there’s nothing they could have done to improve it. The multiple subplots are intensely predictable, and so is much of the humour. The attempt to elevate all of this to a grand statement about humanity or the universe is defeated by characters that barely sound human, or filmmaking technique that seems to ignore decades of good practices. What a terrible film. Incompetent, even.

  • Forget Paris (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) At times, I was struck by how Forget Paris is the most average Woody Allen movie that Woody Allen never directed. That’s a terrible comparison, but it’s not without justification. Consider, for instance, the framing device of having people talk about acquaintances in a restaurant, with the next phases of those discussed acquaintances’ lives being revealed by new arrivals to the dining party. Consider the plot’s globetrotting to Paris (anticipating Allen’s European period) and several American cities. Consider the film’s emphasis on verbal dialogue as the engine for a bittersweet romantic comedy. Consider the basketball background, the neurotic Jewish protagonist, the intended adult audience, the narrative tricks and the amiable tone. Of course, trying to be Allen doesn’t mean you succeed in being Allen, and while writer-producer-director-star Billy Crystal delivers a film that’s not terrible, Forget Paris is not all that memorable either. While some of the early scenes have some zest to them, the film seems to run on increasingly emptier material the longer it goes on through the break-ups and reconciliations, with some third-act turns feeling like they’re stretching the premise with increasingly stock elements. Much of the basketball cameos were completely wasted on me, but I’m sure they represent a good time capsule of who was who in the NBA as of the mid-1990s. I did like Debra Winger a lot in the female lead role—meanwhile, no one else could have played the role that Crystal wrote for himself. Forget Paris is funny and sweet enough to avoid grumbling, but there’s a feeling that Crystal would have been better-served by focusing on the oddest facets of his script all the way to the end rather than rely lazily on familiar plot elements in running out the clock.

  • Superman vs. The Elite (2012)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2022) The way to get suspense from a Superman story is to give him a conflict that his superpowers can’t easily handle—and in the right hands, it turns out that there’s rather a lot that can’t be resolved by super-strength, speed and invulnerability. In Superman vs. The Elite, much of the plot is dedicated to classic debates amongst comic superhero commentators—the balance between kid-friendly action and realistic violence, the tension that emerges being unable to resolve problems permanently, and the ethics of using superpowers in a threat-filled world. Here, the goody-two-shoe viewpoint of Superman is confronted by the harder-edged ideals of The Elite, a group of superpowered characters who occasionally veer from heroes to villains. This is hardly unfamiliar stuff by comic-book standards (where this kind of rumination dates back to the grim 1980s) and I’m not sure that The Elite acts all that effectively as a thematic foil to Superman, but it’s still interesting to see a DC animated film effectively deal with issues that weren’t nearly so successfully tackled in various live-action films. Superman vs. The Elite may be a decade old by now, but it still makes the point that the DC animated films have regularly, quietly, unpretentiously bested most of the DC live-action takes on the same comics. This is one further piece of evidence confirming this theory: it feels slightly more viable as a standalone watch than many of the later, increasingly interrelated follow-up entries in the same series.

  • Répertoire des villes disparues [Ghost Town Anthology] (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, August 2022) There are many intriguing and even effective elements to the French-Canadian low-budget supernatural rural drama Répertoire des villes disparues. It begins with a surprisingly jolting static one-shot in which a car swerves from a country road to abruptly crash into an obstacle, killing the driver. The plot of the film follows the atmosphere and consequence of that event: In a very small rural-Quebec town of barely two hundred people, any death hits people hard, and it’s not an eager-faced young “foreign” psychologist from Montréal who’s going to help anyone. As the film goes on, the portrait of grief and aimlessness in a small town gives way to a far more intriguing and far less-developed supernatural plot. The dead are now visible, hovering a few feet aboveground like giant harmless scarecrows and scaring the salt-of-the-earth characters. This, as is revealed in one of the film’s more dumbfounding developments, is now a provincial phenomenon worthy of study. But if you’re expecting this to lead to something interesting—oops, too bad because the film is now out of time and it’s not as if writer-director Denis Côté (working from a novel by Laurence Olivier) seems interested is following his concept to its resolution. In the tradition of many filmmakers averse to delving too deeply into genre material, Côté seems more at ease in the eerie, the uncanny. That does make Répertoire des villes disparues an effective film, but in a limited—even stunted—way. Even at its slow deliberate pace, it does not seem to fully engage with its ideas, or even develop them effectively. (One would think that the psychologist-from-Montréal would have been a better character to develop the story… but no.)  It’s far more effective in conflating the grief for a young man’s death into a more generalized malaise (helped along by overcast winter skies) about the ongoing but foregone death of the community. I’m sure there’s a much better movie to be made from all of these elements… but this is only half a success even if you’re being generous.

  • Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) Rich people are not like you and me. For one thing, they can lead a film production during which they chat with their parents, and get the result broadcast on cable TV. Yes, yes, I do like Anderson Cooper a lot—he has been a CNN pillar for decades, and I’ve often been struck by his insights in a variety of contexts (including when he pops up as a talking head in other documentaries). But Cooper is a scion of the Vanderbilt family, and as such is not necessarily your perfect parasocial buddy—just watch his acid commentary on anything that has to do with taxing the rich to realize that he’s not a man of the people. Keep that divide in mind as you watch Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper, a feature-length therapy session in which Cooper talks to his mother Gloria Vanderbilt and comes to a better understanding of her life (and his!) through tumultuous confessions. To be fair, Vanderbilt has led a tough, rich life. Her early years were marked by a high-profile custody legal battle, she lost one son to suicide (which she witnessed) and was a confidante and lover to a variety of well-known people. As if that wasn’t enough, her life as a socialite was also marked by some success in visual arts, writing and fashion entrepreneurship. All of this is explored through mother-son conversations, clearly leading to a hagiographic portrait with plenty left unsaid. As much as this is a film designed to make you like those people, it’s hard to get away from some poor-rich-girl thoughts. If you want a clear example of how much privilege money can buy, consider the opportunities in visual arts, writing and fashion entrepreneurship denied to equally talented women without a Vanderbilt-grade trust fund. Also consider the dichotomy between Vanderbilt’s reputed fortune and her numerous sources of income, and the reports that her estate was barely worth $1.5M—surely there’s a story to tell here? None of this makes Nothing Left Unsaid a bad movie—in another mood, I’m sure I could let go of my class-struggle nitpicks and admire the film for being a moving portrait of a mother by her adoring son. But that’s not the mood I’m in right now, and someone’s got to be the irritating contrarian pointing out perfectly valid alternate interpretations. After all, Cooper himself often is.

  • Belfast (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) Given enough time, all long-running filmmakers with serious artistic intentions will end up making an autobiographical film, even for fanciful values of “autobiographical.” So it is that, with Belfast, it’s Kenneth Branagh’s turn to fictionalize his late-1960s upbringing—and given the time and place, this means dramatizing the start of “The Troubles,” which defined life in the city for the next few decades. Much of the action focuses on a nine-year-old boy (born the same year as Branagh) as he sees some grown-up issues flare up in violence and potential exile. The story concerns the boy’s working-class family and how they react to the fights and arson taking place on their front steps. Mostly filmed in black-and-white, the film has a better-than-expected narrative forward momentum. The script cleverly alternates between boyish pursuit and wider social concerns, but never quite forgetting the kind of audience-pleasing elements required to make this more than a home movie writ large. I’m actually being effusive in my praise when I conclude that I didn’t dislike it as much as I expected to—such coming-of-age films are usually fine but not compelling, so Belfast slightly exceeds expectations. I’m sure it will play far better to audiences who connect with the setting or the characters, because they’re executed about as vividly as they could be. Even the ending is both surprising and poignant, as the characters make a choice that may not be the one we expect—and then acknowledge in the end-titles that other people make the right opposite choice. Not bad—while Belfast is far from being a personal favourite of 2021, I can see why it earned so much praise.

  • Night Train (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) There’s a difference between stylized and stylish—the first being an intention, the second being a compliment. Low-budget filmmaking often relies on stylization: in order to present something on-screen without breaking the budget, filmmakers often resort to functional CGI, visual shortcuts and even screenplay tricks. At times, Night Train relies far too heavily on those stylized elements, not quite making it to the “stylish” honorific. Much of the story is set on a train speeding through an endless winter forest landscape—cold and snowy on the outside, warm and cozy on the inside. Wait, did I say cozy? Well, as cozy as can be a near-empty passenger wagon with a dead body inside and three other people looking at each other suspiciously. What could have been a closed-room murder mystery, however, turns out to be something far wilder. Writer-director Brian King has something less realistic yet far more frustrating in mind, as a magical box comes to take a dominant place during the rest of the film. While the action stays on the train and clearly relies on cut-rate CGI for its exterior scenes, the film’s few characters mean that King can get a few name actors: In-between Steve Zahn, Danny Glover and Leelee Sobieski, the film does have a well-known cast for 2009. (As showbusiness goes, all three have experienced a significant career decline since then, with Sobieski even retiring from acting to focus on family and visual art.)  Night Train does try to do much with its small cast and mysterious supernatural forces. Some of it even works—seeing the attractive Sobieski gradually go from frumpy tuque-wearing bespectacled nerd to devil-crazed femme fatale is one of the film’s highlights. But in the end, as the gratuitously downbeat ending is nailed into place, there’s a feeling that the film fails to justify its existence, and that the corners cut in order to make the story fit into the budget aren’t in the service of something particularly worthwhile. The story definitely has lulls stretched to feature-film length, and an additional character may have enlivened a few things. I’m not happy about the use of a mystery-box plot device (especially given the undefinable nature of its mysterious content) but it’s certainly not the worst problem I have with the result. To be fair, the film does have enough going for it to make it a marginal pick—Sobieski is striking, Glover brings his usual calm intensity to the proceedings, and the supernatural plot device makes the film more than yet another monster film. The stylization attempt is interesting—but I don’t think that Night Train is successful enough to qualify as stylish rather than contrived.

  • It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) The expression “Clearly a film of its time” strikes both ways for It Happened at the World’s Fair—it would be difficult to imagine it being remade today without being emptied of what makes it special. For one thing, it’s an Elvis film—Elvis Presley here plays a clean-cut young American man (what else?) who’s happiest piloting a small plane or romancing girls (or, in the case of the film’s first remarkable stunt sequence, both at once) but is so unthreatening that an old man sees nothing wrong to ask him to take care of a young girl for a few days. Then there’s the fact that the film takes place at the Seattle World Fair, a uniquely 1962 event. But it’s the Elvis aspect that makes this a film uniquely preserved in time—the ten songs he sings (some of them likable, few of them memorable), the unthreatening womanizing, the sense that there won’t be any serious drama at any time in the film. Another piece of time-capsule history is Kurt Russell’s first movie role as a shun-kicking boy. (Russell would, of course, play Elvis a few decades later, and use his experience meeting The King to record a Presley tribute piece for TCM.)  It Happened at the World’s Fair is never taken seriously, and it’s not that good of a film either: It feels like a second-tier musical running on nostalgic charm more than anything looking like filmmaking craft. The script is serviceable and doesn’t take into account unexpected chemistry (to wit—the early throwaway love interest meant to show Elvis’s character’s good-natured womanizing ends up being far more interesting than the putative female co-lead of the film) or anything like directorial flair from Norman Taurog. But Elvis vehicles are what they are—and this one has the benefit of colourful early-1960s pop-optimism to add to the actor/singer’s undeniable charm. Many Elvis historians agree that It Happened at the World’s Fair is middle-of-the-pack Elvis cinema, and it’s watchable enough as such. But trying to even imagine such a film remade today is an exercise in futility.

  • Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117 [Shadow of Evil] (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) Much was made, when French filmmakers resurrected the OSS 117 series as comedies starring Jean Dujardin, of how the remake explicitly parodied the misogyny, bigotry and parochial values of the first series of OSS 177 adventures. Alas, I couldn’t help but find out by myself just how bad those original films were by watching the first four of them. Rather than give you a few intensely repetitive reviews of that original series films, let me stuff everything in a discussion of Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117. Let’s get the basics out of the way: Adapted from a series of French spy novels, the film is clearly part of the Bondsploitation movement of the mid-1960s, as everyone was churning out movies that tried (and failed) to recapture the charm of the first James Bond films. While it’s technically the second in the first OSS-117 film series, it’s the first to clearly ape Bond, the first to go outside France, the first shot in colour with a decent budget, and as such the one that has perhaps best endured until today. As with Bond, there’s an obvious intention to shoot in exotic locations, to feature a dastardly over-the-top super-villain, and to make the protagonist an utter charmer. But there’s a thin line between charm and smarminess, and lead actor Kerwin Mathews is badly served by a script that would get his character branded as a villain today—while working with good intentions (that is—if you’re into imperialism), his dialogue alone is worthy of an antagonist. (The pick-up lines he repeatedly uses are horrifying.)  Since it takes place in Thailand, you don’t get any points for guessing the off-putting way the film positions itself as above the native population. There’s a bizarre lack of self-assurance in the way the series hedges its bets by presenting its character as both French and American—trying to play to the French audiences while being unable to conceive that a purely French secret agent could be just as interesting. Still, there are limits to how much OSS-117 can ape Bond: director André Hunebelle turns in a rather dull thriller that can’t do much with the screenplay’s slow pacing. Some shots of mid-1960s Thailand are still evocative whenever the protagonist is unseen and unheard, but little of this manages to make this retrograde film feel any better. If you’re looking for a review of the next three titles in the series, simply swap Thailand for Brazil, Japan and Tunisia, because the same comments apply. This is a series that is best forgotten to the passages of time—and if you thought Jean Dujardin was intolerably over-the-top in the comic remake, you really should not go back to the originals.