Reviews

  • American Assassin (2017)

    American Assassin (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2018) As a quick trawl through this site’s archives shows, I’m more than familiar with the novels of Vince Flynn, from which American Assassin was adapted. Unfortunately, I wasn’t much of a fan back then, and most American thriller writers are now so far to the right that they’re often unreadable for any sane foreigner. American Assassin takes up that worldview verbatim, offering a vision of bloodthirsty terrorist hiding in every dark corner, gleefully mounting plans against all Americans and requiring the services of none other than a state-sanctioned psychopath. Someone very much like Mitch Rapp, traumatized by the violent murder of his girlfriend and positively lusting after revenge. You can probably write the rest of the film yourself, so closely does it adhere to the usual formula. Despite the numerous fights, chases and evil plans, it’s a surprisingly dull thriller. Nearly everything is on rails going from one plot point to another, and Dylan O’Brien doesn’t have what it takes to make a compelling protagonist out of what the script gives him. But someone else does, and it’s Michael Keaton—he shines brightly in a supporting role as a hard-as-nails mentor who positively relishes his job. Otherwise, some nice special effects illustrate a nuclear-driven climax. But that’s it—American Assassin plays to its paranoid base but doesn’t do the required legwork to reach out to a broader audience. It’s surprisingly boring whenever Keaton isn’t on-screen.

  • A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

    A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu-ray, November 2018) I probably shouldn’t expect much from the Nightmare on Elm Street series, but its second instalment feels silly and dull. Freddy’s Revenge clearly isn’t beholden to any kind of internal logic, meaning that stuff happens without explanations or rigour in what is made possible by the rules of the series. The strength of the Nightmare on Elm Street series is how its films can flip squarely in dream logic without much notice, but there isn’t enough of that in this sequel. There are, to be fair, some decent sequences here and there—the idea of a character possessed to conduct a series of murders is horrifying enough, and there is one showcase sequence in which antagonist Freddy gruesomely emerges from the protagonist’s body. The special effects do have a quaintly charming quality that reminds us that this is merely a movie. Still, taken at face value, Freddy’s Revenge isn’t much to talk about—as if someone had seen the first film and had to turn out a half-baked script in a few weeks. But if you do read about the film and discover that there was an intentional attempt (not recognized by the director) from screenwriter David Chaskin to insert a significant amount of homosexual subtext, then the film suddenly become far more interesting, even in retrospect: Suddenly, the lack of romantic chemistry between hero and heroine, the tone of the coach sequence, the “friendship” between the two male leads and the body-horror all become pieces of evidence in a deeper reading of the film. I’m not among the target audience for such alternate takes on material, but it’s there and it does lend quite a bit of depth to what had been at face value an uninspired sequel.

  • A View to a Kill (1985)

    A View to a Kill (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On Blu-ray, November 2018) Roger Moore is the Bond through while I discovered the series, so he’ll always remain my definitive take on the character … but he was clearly far too old to play the role in A View to a Kill. Bond’s tendency to date far younger girls gets overwhelmingly uncomfortable here, especially after the somewhat more mature heroines of the previous films. Various other structural mistakes, such as passing far too much time on the opening penny-ante villain horse-doping scheme rather than his ultimate evil plan, further damage the picture. Still, I still enjoyed quite a bit of the movie. There’s something about the action scenes that feels more modern than previous instalments, and both the chase sequence through Paris and the other in San Francisco feel well-handled. Then there are the antagonists: Christopher Walken is typically indescribable as genetically-engineered villain Max Zorin, his line delivery being much better than the actual lines. Then, of course, there’s Grace Jones: Not a gifted actress, but a spectacular evil Bond Girl more than capable of taking on Bond and make him sweat a little. Goody-two-shoes Tanya Roberts doesn’t compare, and there’s a fantastic lost opportunity here to bring back a recurring KGB agent character. Patrick MacNee shows up in a supporting role as a fellow agent, with some fun banter between him and Bond. Duran Duran’s title song is terrific, and it does underscore the peak-eighties nature of the film. Still, it’s hard to watch the film and not wonder about the wasted occasion of what a younger Bond, a tighter script, and a more daring director could have done with the raw material of the film. Still, as a swan song for Moore in the role, A View to a Kill is not quite bad. There have been far, far worse movies in the franchise and even in Moore’s tenure.

  • Gung Ho (1986)

    Gung Ho (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2018) No matter the era, America is always under siege. In the 1980s, even as détente was making the Soviets slightly less threatening, Americans discovered that the Japanese were going to outproduce everyone and buy everything. American industrial management were quick to obsess about Japanese production techniques: why was Toyota producing cars that were so much better than anything Detroit could turn out? 1986’s Gung Ho may not be a particularly well-known film these days despite being directed by Ron Howard, but it presents an impeccable take on the obsession of the time as a Japanese car company buys an American factory and starts imposing its methods. A significant culture clash ensues, spiced up by the fact that the American characters are being challenged to do better. Michael Keaton headlines the film with his usual charm, playing a foreman acting as the link between Japanese management and the American workers. Despite the obvious concessions to comedy, the film was reportedly used in Japan in order to understand how to manage American workers. The result is often more interesting as a time capsule than a conventional film—Howard directs unobtrusively, Keaton is his usual sympathetic self, Mimi Rogers shows up, a few more Howards (Clint and Rance) have supporting roles, and the film has a pleasant blue-collar atmosphere without being weighed down in the kind of dark drama that such mid-1980s setting usually accompanied. It’s watchable enough. A sequel, showing how American manufacturing adopted and adapted Japanese manufacturing techniques, would be sorely needed at the moment.

  • Felon (2008)

    Felon (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2018) Prison films have a long, long history in Hollywood, and the earliest of them have even been able to effect some social change in calling for reforms and more humane treatments. Alas, with the newest American prison-industrial complex and worship of punitive policies, that time is past. The newest wave of prison movies simply describes what’s happening without editorializing for better conditions and the result can be disheartening, especially considering the markedly higher rate of imprisonment for American males as compared to other most civilized countries. (Watching American prison films as a Canadian is the kind of thing that makes you want to hug your Canadian passport.) In this context comes writer/director Ric Roman Waugh’s Felon, a story about how an ordinary man gets stuck in the gears of the system and becomes increasingly familiar with the violence inherent in the system. Once you’ve seen enough contemporary prison movies, Felon feels very familiar. Some of the plot logic is weird—including the confounding set of circumstances that sends an ordinary man to high-security jail. But it may rank a little bit higher now than upon its release because the last two big prison movies (Shot Caller and Brawl in Cell Block 99) have been of such unrelenting grimness that Felon manages to feel uplifting merely by not condemning its protagonist to death or a life sentence. Otherwise, it’s a fair standard thriller, generally well executed but not specifically memorable.

  • Philomena (2013)

    Philomena (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2018) In fiction, searching for long-lost family secrets is fun and exciting and fruitful as the unlikeliest of thread lead to bigger and bigger revelations. In reality, those family secrets usually lead nowhere (as people don’t remember or are dead) or to unsatisfying places (as in terrible secrets, or conversely making much of what turns out to be mundane material). Occasionally, though, you do get real-life mysteries that end up like fiction, and that’s the story that Philomena ends up telling. It starts as a disgraced British journalist is contacted by an older woman with a story to tell about how her child was taken away from her and given up for adoption. Where is that child now? And who made this happen? Our two protagonists’ investigation eventually takes them to the United States, where they discover in rapid succession that the long-lost son was an influential closeted Republican, and that our journalist had met him years before. There’s a little bit more to the story, but Philomena is more than the result of the investigation: It’s about an unlikely buddy road movie, calling out injustice, discovering unfinished facets of history and very good performance from Steve Coogan (maintaining a grip on his showboating tendencies) and Judi Dench as the eponymous Philomena. Well-executed with a satisfying (yet tragic) mystery at its core, Philomena is a decent drama that may win over even skeptics.

  • Spellbound (1945)

    Spellbound (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, November 2018) Lost among the moniker “master of suspense” is the stone-cold fact that Alfred Hitchcock could be downright weird when it suited his purpose. In his quest for unpredictable thrills, Hitchcock’s career is crammed with ludicrous plot devices, unbelievable psychological quirks, formal experimentation and frequent return to basics. Some of his best and worst films are far away from reality, meaning that there’s little relationship between their eccentricity and their success. Sandwiched between the far more prosaic Lifeboat (1944) and Notorious (1946), Spellbound shows Hitchcock diving deep into psychoanalytical plot devices (something that would come up again later in his career) and coming up with surreal results. Literal surrealism, in fact, since there’s a dream sequence midway through the film that was designed by none other than Salvador Dali. The man-on-the-run plot feels familiar to Hitchcock fans (echoed in, say, North by Northwest), but it allows stars Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman to develop some pressurized chemistry. The details of the plot are less important than the meticulous details of its execution, and the way the film becomes just a bit more straightforward in time for its conclusion. There’s a memorable moment near the end that still jolts viewers through a combination of an obvious practical effect and a flash of colour. This isn’t one of Hitchcock’s finest films, but it’s nowhere near the bottom either—although it’s perhaps more fascinating as a prototype of later Hitchcock movies and a reunion of some very different artists than a wholly pleasing thriller in its own right.

  • Around the World in 80 Days (2004)

    Around the World in 80 Days (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2018) You’d think that a “remake” taking on not only a classic Jules Verne novel but also the legacy of an Oscar-award-winning 1950s epic movie would struggle to distinguish itself, but that’s not really the case with the 2004 version of Around the World in 80 Days, for reasons both good and abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this is a good movie: By taking the guts of the Verne novel as overlay on an unusually dumb kids’ movie featuring the “comedy” of Steve Coogan, it quickly and firmly establishes itself as a waste of potential from the very first few minutes. The accumulation of steampunk anachronisms and low comedy means that it’s hard to take the result seriously, and the various hijinks that follow only confirm this experience. The result is pretty much what we’d expect, the only flashes of wit being either upstream (Verne’s source material) or downstream (acting, special effects, set design) from the script. And yet, there is something to see here, mostly because Around the World in 80 Days is an exemplary representative of the big-budget bomb subgenre: so much money has been thrown on-screen that it’s hard to look away. Since the film co-stars Jackie Chan and features a bit of his classic blend of action and comedy, a few sequences still stand out as watered-down but still effective examples of what Chan could do in his prime. Then there’s the casting, which brings together western comedy and eastern action in combinations never seen anywhere else: Jim Broadbent, Kathy Bates (as Queen Victoria!), Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Cleese, Rob Schneider, Luke and Owen Wilson, but also Maggie Q, Karen Mok and none other than Sammo Hung as Won Fei Hung. That’s … amazing. The mixture is far less involving than the individual parts that form it, but the film is definitely worth a look if you want to see those actors and ideas thrown together. The result certainly underperforms, but it’s a ride.

  • Mostly Sunny (2016)

    Mostly Sunny (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2018) You can find the darndest movies playing on cable TV channels late at night, and Mostly Sunny is one of them. It is, after all, the story of Sunny Leone, a Canadian-born, American-raised woman of Indian ethnicity who became a well-known pornographic star … and then somehow ended up a leading Bollywood actress. What makes the film extra-amusing is its pedigree as a Canadian production partially financed by tax dollars in an effort to develop Canadian content for cable TV channels. That’s right — Mostly Sunny is considered valuable cultural content. But jokes aside, Leone’s unusual story suggests a thicket of intriguing issues, especially given the Indian connections: How do her parent react in finding out their daughter’s first acting career? What about the reactions in the notoriously conservative Indian society as a known pornographic actress stars headlining mainstream movies? There’s quite a bit of dissonance verging on hypocrisy commented upon here — no one will admit seeing her earlier work, but everyone knows about it — and her second career is more than partially fuelled by her earlier notoriety: the film begins with her being a (paid) guest of honour at a wedding celebration. Expect some nudity but no explicit sequences along the way: This may be made for cable, but it is still made for cable. (Later accounts about the movie reveal that Leone and the director had a falling-out — She somehow expected the film to contain no nudity and he obviously disagreed. As a result, don’t expect Leone to comment fondly now about a documentary featuring lengthy all-access interviews with her and members of her closest circle.) Leone herself gets a lot of opportunities to express herself here — She comes across as down-to-earth and likable, albeit not particularly clever or insightful. I suspect that the film will play to viewers’ expectations. Still, this middle-of-the-road sensibility means that the film doesn’t quite dare reach for particularly hard-hitting conclusions. It’s worth noting that Leone has added more than a dozen Bollywood titles to her filmography since Mostly Sunny’s release — I can’t vouch for their quality, but it sure seems as if her career is doing just fine even three years later.

  • The Dead Pool (1988)

    The Dead Pool (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, November 2018) Each Dirty Harry movie gets worse and worse, and The Dead Pool marks not only the end of the series, but the cul-de-sac in which its increasing self-parody could lead. As the film begins, Harry Callahan has become enough of a celebrity that he qualifies for inclusion in a municipal death pools—that is, predictions on whether he will soon die. The plot gets going once someone decides to hasten his demise, motivated by overall psychopathy and revenge. Clint Eastwood sports yet another hairdo here, and I can’t underscore how weird it feels to see Callahan’s character in the firmly established 1980s: He’s such a creation of the 1970s that it just feels wrong to see him compose with the worst clichés of the decade, including Guns’n’Roses. (Sudden Impact, the fourth film of the series was indeed set in the eighties, but its small-town setting and early-decade product means that it still felt like the seventies.) It gets worse once you see Callahan interact with up-and-coming actors that would achieve notoriety a decade later: pay attention, and you’ll see Jim “James” Carrey, Liam Neeson and Patricia Clarkson (looking like Natasha McElhone!) in supporting roles adding to the weirdness. Mind you, the film has enough contemporary weirdness on its own—Callahan is here written as a self-parody, fully indulging in the worst traits of his character. The nadir of the entire Dirty Harry cycle can be found in the silly car chase featuring… an explosive remote-controlled car. (Nobody will be surprised to find out that Callahan’s car does not survive the film, as noticed by the characters. And we won’t bring up what happens to Callahan’s partners.) The Dead Pool feels like an overextended joke, a wholly useless entry in a constantly declining series. Amusingly enough, it’s not even included in many of the Dirty Harry compilations on the market, which should tell you enough about it.

  • The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1980)

    The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2018) I read the original novel years ago but I can’t recall much about it other than some metafictional tricks and multiple endings. So when I saw The French Lieutenant’s Woman pop up on the TV schedule, promising a story about a historical couple and the actors playing them in a movie, I was definitely interested. The best thing about the film is how it takes some metafictional ideas from the book (which sought to be “novel” in the way it presented and commented upon the story) and spin them in an original film-appropriate direction. Here we have married actors having an affair while shooting a movie about a complex Victorian-era romance. It sounds interesting … but the execution is underwhelming. The links between the two parallel plots aren’t particularly strong, and the modern-day romance peters out in an undignified fashion, which would be disappointing only if we actually cared for it. Meryl Streep does look surprisingly good in curls or with bangs (the similarities with Joan Cusack in the later case are striking), while Jeremy Irons does himself no favour with a moustache. The historical plot feels more interesting than the modern one, so it feels frustrating that there aren’t more resonances between the two, or that the film gets the good idea of transforming literary metafictional devices into cinematographic ways to comment upon the story … but then does nothing spectacular with that idea. In other words, there is less to The French Lieutenant’s Woman than expected, and I don’t think that the film manages to come up to its own expectations in terms of the story. Too bad; because there’s a really good kernel of an idea here.

  • A Bridge Too Far (1977)

    A Bridge Too Far (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2018) Watching A Bridge Too Far, I was struck at how closely the film initially seemed to follow the template of The Longest Day: A lengthy WW2 drama covering both sides of the war, with a lavish re-creation of the fighting and an ensemble cast of superstars including Sean Connery, adapted from a non-fiction book by Cornelius Ryan. But the comparisons only go so far, especially as the movie advances and the military operation goes sour. It’s certainly worth noting that a significant cultural shift happened in-between 1964’s The Longest Day and 1977’s A Bridge Too Far: The Vietnam War did much to affect the public perception of war and audiences having digested MASH and Catch-22 and Kelly’s Heroes in 1970 alone were far more willing to embrace a film about an unsuccessful operation. (Even A Bridge Too Far’s opening narration is a bit off-kilter, suggesting a level of built-in cynicism that would have been unheard of fifteen years earlier.) While there are plenty of enjoyable wartime heroics in A Bridge Too Far, mistakes in planning, insufficient intelligence, bad communications and plain old happenstance all contribute to a costly failure. Still, if the events described by the film may be frustrating to watch, the film itself is entertaining enough. The historical re-creation of the massive airdrops is impressive, the massive explosions are numerous and the sheer number of recognizable actors is also notable. Connery gets a great character to play, but there are equally interesting moments for Michael Caine, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman and even Anthony Hopkins in a very early role. The film does not describe a particularly glorious moment for the allied forces, but that may add to the sense of discovery while watching it—I’m a modest WW2 buff thanks to having read many histories of the era as a teenager, but I had either not learned or forgotten much of Operation Garden Market until A Bridge Too Far refreshed my mind. It’s quite a spectacle, and it’s not quite as well-known as other WW2 movies. In any case, it’s worth a watch if the subject matter interests you.

  • Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

    Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Youtube Streaming, November 2018) It’s easy to like Arsenic and Old Lace if you already like Cary Grant—after all, the film is his showcase, as he goes from being a suave newlywed man of letters to becoming increasingly frantic as he discovers that his aunts and then his brother are all proficient serial killers in their own ways. It’s not a good thing to discover on one’s honeymoon, and things get crazier as he also tries to manage an insane uncle, friendly policemen and fights to stay alive given the presence of a psychopath or two. The black comedy of Arsenic and Old Lace is a bit surprising in a post-Code mid-1940s comedy, but the film did have a strong theatrical pedigree, being an adaptation of a long-running Broadway play. Frank Capra directs what is essentially a stage play with some flair (a bit of a departure from his usual fare), but much of the work is done by the actors. If you want to see a face-off between Cary Grant and Peter Lorre, well, this is your movie. Grant does play the role very broadly, but his facial expressions are terrific—the sequence in which he’s tied up and gagged has some hilarious comedy moments simply because of the way he uses his face and eyes. Grant hasn’t often played a character as out-of-control as in Arsenic and Old Lace, but it works largely because his usual persona is the one we see at the beginning of the film—what if such a person got in as bad a scrap as in here? There’s even a metafictional moment in which his character comments on the stupidity of stage characters … while making the exact same mistakes. The beginning of the film is a bit laborious, but like most farces it converges in time for a high-spirited last act in which everything collides. Some of the acting and staging choices will seem a bit on-the-nose, but Arsenic and Old Lace is still funny and still well-worth seeing today.

  • The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

    The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Archive.org streaming, November 2018) Structure isn’t always used as effectively as it could in movies, especially as a tool to reveal dramatic ironies. But The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a film from 1943 that does it exceptionally well: It starts with an impetuous young British soldier disregarding orders to mock-capture an older officer as he’s in a Turkish bath. The older man seems like an object of ridicule with an overblown moustache, a portly belly and a pitiable insistence on following rules in war. But then the flashback begins, and so does our perception of the character through a forty-year span. Made at the height of WW2, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp isn’t your usual wartime propaganda film: it’s a sophisticated meditation on age, wisdom, unfulfilled romances, the sacrifices required to fight evil and the nature of friendships. Our protagonist (magnificently played by Roger Livesey at a variety of ages) is occasionally sympathetic but not always admirable—he causes diplomatic trouble for dumb reasons, derives the wrong lessons from his life and becomes increasingly fixed in his ways. In short, he’s an authentic character in a medium far more interested in easy archetypes. He escapes easy description, and that also goes for the entire film as it pokes and prods at British tradition, military customs and the changing dynamics between friends. Is it better to be ethical or victorious? Is it better to be young and dumb or old and inflexible? It’s an unexpectedly moving film, and one that escapes the kind of cheap rabble-rousing propaganda that emerged from the era. Deborah Kerr is fine in three separate roles, but Anton Walbrook is almost as good as a friend/foil of the protagonist. There’s some serious moviemaking skill in some of the film’s delivery (most notably in portraying change across a lengthy period), and the colour cinematography of the film makes it feel more modern than its early 1940s origins. Even if the version I watched was a poorly-compressed low-resolution digitization of a pre-restoration copy of the film (it was the most easily available way to see the film legally), the magic of the film still works. By the time we get back to the framing device, we no longer see the older man in the same way, nor do we think that the young man is completely right … but neither do we think he’s completely wrong either. Such nuances were rare in early-1940s cinema, and it’s one more reason why The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp has survived so well along the way.

  • Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)

    Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Fourth or Fifth Viewing, On Blu-ray, November 2018) I do have a soft spot for Return of the Jedi: I don’t hate the Ewoks as much as some pretend to do (heck, keep in mind that they’re probably going to eat those fallen Stormtroopers) and as a kid who was eight when the movie came out, cinema couldn’t get any better than the sequence in which the Millennium Falcon goes inside the Death Star to blow it up. Decades later, I still get a kick out of that sequence, especially given its place in the three-ring circus that is the last act of the film. Richard Marquand does a fine job directing a complicated film, and the result it still fun to watch. I’m not happy with some of the digital alterations made to the movie since its release—the celebration sequences set on planets that would be introduced in the prequels are the worst. Mark Hamill is a much stronger presence this time around (even though the short timeline between the two movies don’t support much of his growth), while Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are up to their standards. (Fisher never looked better than in this film, and I’m not talking about the Jabba-the-bikini sequence as much as her long hair extensions down in the Ewok village.) While revisiting the original Star Wars as a not-eight-years-old was a serious let-down, the two immediate sequels are still fine—as long as you learn to live with the various idiocies of the science-fantasy adventure tone requiring so many contrivances along the way.