Reviews

  • The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

    The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) As far as early-sound era movie adaptations of theatrical material go, there’s a lot to like in The Barretts of Wimpole Street. It combines the best aspects of films at the time (actors, setting) with the traditional strengths of theatre (strong sustained drama, good dialogue) for a result that has held up rather well. Norma Shearer is fine as the film’s heroine, inspired from real events, but it’s Charles Laughton who steals the show as a reprehensibly overprotective father. Coming in right at the edge between Pre-Code filmmaking and the constraints of the Production Code, the necessity of bending the film to the censorship adds a layer of mystery to the film’s final moments that would have been blunted by a more direct approach, as we must wonder if the villain has really said that what we think he meant. (Spoiler: he totally did—Laughton even boasted about “the gleam in my eye.”)  I can find plenty of faults with The Barretts of Wimpole Street (such as the lack of interest in the eight [!] other kids and its detour into romance-upon-romance) but I can’t really argue with the final results. Amusingly enough, the film may have been nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, but its enduring claim to fame was being one of the films that inspired the famous HICKS NIX STIX FLIX Variety headline.

  • Parenthood (1989)

    Parenthood (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) At first, Parenthood looks like your usual middle-of-the-road Steve Martin comedy, with enough silliness and hijinks to cover up a lack of thematic intentions. Much like Cheaper by the Dozen, in fact. But as Parenthood develops, it gains a significant amount of sentiment and profundity as a multifaceted exploration of parenthood from toddlers to, well, far older kids. There’s quite a bit of Martin silliness (including a rather triumphant sequence as a fake cowboy that finally gets the character to earn a win after a film designed to undercut him at each instance) but it’s all in the service of larger interests. You can see the deeper themes at play in the film’s very entertaining daydream sequences, two of them contrasting extremes of fatherhood success. But it’s not all laughter as the film touches upon some dramatic material even as it’s designed as a comedy—parental anxiety is a real thing. With an ensemble cast but a stronger more interconnected plot than many episodic films, Parenthood steadily gains steam throughout its run. It helps when it knocks holes to deepen its initially-stock characters, such as when a teenage Keanu Reeves delivers sage advice to a young and nearly unrecognizable Joaquin Phoenix. Mary Steenburgen is as lovely as ever, while Dianne West delivers an Oscar-nominated performance. All told, Parenthood delivers more than what you could expect from later-era Steve Martin comedies—it’s occasionally silly for sure, but it does deliver on more nuanced material as well.

  • Trader Horn (1931)

    Trader Horn (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Movies were something else in 1931, and Trader Horn is a tour through everything that has changed since then. Whether you want to talk about the film’s wobbling technical quality, its blatant exposition, simplistic plot or colonialist tendencies, there’s a lot of material for discussion here. I imagine that at the time, the chief appeal of the film was primarily as a way to see Africa and its wildlife on the big screen, from lions to giraffes all identified through a mildly hilarious travelogue sequence that doesn’t even attempt to hide its wide-eyed nature (even commenting upon how it’s not that unusual to see that many animals all close together). I also imagine that shooting the film on location was unimaginably difficult, explaining both the lush location and the disjointed editing of the result when there’s no time or resources to get it perfectly the first time. (Oh wow: checking its Wikipedia article, I see that it was not only the first non-documentary film shot in Africa, but a substantial portion of the cast and crew —including director W.S. Van Dyke—fell ill and a few actually died of various mishaps during filming.)  What’s left is a piece of history, but perhaps not a very pleasant one: the depiction of the native tribe is straight-up from the Victorian colonialism period, even though it’s not quite as offensive as I was dreading. Still, this is a film about white explorers discovering picturesque Africa, and no cliché is left unturned, including the white princess to be brought back to civilization. (Edwina Booth looks fantastic in the role, but she paid for it by falling gravely ill for years following the film’s production and never became the superstar that her performance suggested.)  Trader Horn is, in most respects, a rough watch: thematically, technically, and creatively, it shows its era’s limits more often than not. But I still found it unexpectedly compelling even though there are much more enjoyable movies from its time. This is one case where it’s probably better to read about the film’s extraordinary production history before watching, in order to best appreciate the labour that it represented.

  • Fame (1980)

    Fame (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) One of the least-appreciated revolutions in twenty-first century filmmaking is the viability of TV miniseries as a storytelling format. Suddenly, creative projects that make sense over a lengthy duration can become long-form binge viewing, leaving movies to focus on tighter, more focused stories. Fame cries out for the miniseries treatment: Featuring an ensemble cast of teenagers going through four years of creative arts high school, it simply packs too much in two hours and feels as if it barely gets any chance to develop its dramatic arcs, strike a coherent tone or let its characters breathe a moment. Director Alan Parker gets to play with a lot of different storytelling devices, from initial auditions to an impromptu musical number (and another, more diegetic one) to stand-up performing to sex comedy hijinks to a classical music concert, alongside more dramatic moments. To be fair, Fame does have its share of interest and quirks: Taking place in a school focused on performing arts means that the film can transition from one scene to the other through the device of characters rehearsing dramatic pieces, meaning that you quickly learn not to trust anything on-screen until a few moments have passed. The Rocky Horror Picture Show screening scene is a lot of fun, and there’s a genuinely funny stand-up routine in there. There’s also more nudity than expected. The actors aren’t bad (Irene Cara, Paul MacCrane and Gene Anthony Ray being particular standouts) and they are given some meaty material to play… but the script often leaves them badly served by depriving them of a climax or a complete character arc. Four years and a dozen characters can’t be stuffed in two hours without everyone feeling cheated of a satisfying story. It doesn’t help that the tone of the film is all over the place, from comedy to musical sing-alongs to big tragic monologues and dramatic character moments—such shifts are manageable within the context of an eight-hour miniseries, but they stick out in a film. I still like watching Fame for its moments, but I remain dubious about it overall. In movie history, it exists as a footnote (it was MGM’s last musical before its merger with UA), and a transitional point from seventies grittiness leading to the music video aesthetics of the 1980s.

  • Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

    Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) There are plenty of good reasons to watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but one of the best has to be able to drop “You know, Alfred Hitchcock once did a screwball comedy” in conversation knowing fully well what you’re talking about. Bonus points given for the incredulousness of convincing people that the 1941 Mr. & Mrs. Smith has nothing to do with the 2005 spy-versus-spy action comedy even though you would think that Hitchcock would have been a good fit for that kind of material. No, this version of Mr. & Mrs. Smith is about a happily arguing couple that goes through a crisis of un-marriage, romantically bickering in fine screwball comedy fashion until they make up at the end. It feels very similar to other “comedies of remarriage” of the time (allowing the thrill of quasi-adultery without actually having adultery in the eyes of the Production Code) although that comes with a caveat for twenty-first century viewers: Even if the banter is equally distributed between female and male protagonists, the film clearly plays on very 1940s assumptions about gender roles and contrivances. Today’s viewers almost have to be trained to get over some of the material in order to enjoy the rest of it. If you can get past that hurdle, it’s quite a bit of fun: Carole Lombard is quite good here in one of her last films before her untimely death, while Robert Montgomery is a good foil throughout it all. The likable look at upper-class New Yorkers in their apartment, offices and privileged romantic squabbles is very much in-line with the rest of the screwball comedy genre. It’s not always convincing, though (even if you accept its contrivances), and the conclusion is a bit abrupt, but it’s not as if the reconciliation wasn’t already a forgone thing. Mr. & Mrs. Smith is goofy fun, though, and that’s more than you’d expect from Hitchcock.

  • Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

    Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Everyone has their own irrational film dislikes, and one of mine is 1978’s Heaven can Wait, in which a lunk-headed football player is given another chance at life. It’s a manipulative, insulting piece of nonsense that doesn’t even work on a scene-to-scene level and one of my questions in approaching its original inspiration Here Comes Mr. Jordan was whether those flaws were inherent in the concept, or specific to the remake. (This seems as good a time as any to point out that 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan was remade as Heaven can Wait [1978], even if there was a different—and much better- 1943 film called Heaven can Wait. But that’s not all! Here Comes Mr. Jordan had a sequel in 1947 called Down to Earth, which was also the title of a third 2011 Hollywood remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan. All of these can trace their origin to a 1938 theatrical play called Heaven can Wait but originally titled It Was Like This. If you’re not confused, it’s because I haven’t included a diagram.)  The best thing I can say about the original is that it’s not quite as irritating as the remake. Robert Montgomery plays a boxer sent to heaven too soon, and then sent back to earth in another body.  The titular Mr. Jordan has the good luck of being played by Claude Rains, with Evelyn Keyes as the love interest.  But it’s still irritating: The protagonist is still an idiot, and the film still becomes ludicrous in its attempt to make an unsatisfying concept work. I understand the need to underscore unusual premises by clearly explaining to the audience, in triplicate, what’s happening—but a common failing of both versions is to dumb things down so much that the protagonist’s idiocy becomes grating and pile on one arbitrary rule on top of another until they don’t really matter anymore because angels. Speaking of which, there are much better angel movies—going from It’s a Wonderful Life to Here Comes Mr. Jordan feels like a downgrade. Or maybe I just don’t like the very idea of these films.

  • Once Were Warriors (1994)

    Once Were Warriors (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2019) There’s a good reason why Once Were Warriors remains a landmark of New Zealand cinema even twenty-five years later: It’s a harsh -at times unbearable—film, but it makes a few fundamental points about cultural disconnection and how social policy failures can have real, personal, and violent impacts. The story revolves around a Maori couple that leaves their village to go live in Auckland, but (eighteen years later) find themselves in desperate circumstances with the father of the family unemployed and alcoholic, his rage often manifesting itself in physical violence against his wife. Tough but compelling, it’s a film that hasn’t really aged, and remains relevant well outside New Zealand—as a Canadian, it’s impossible to watch the film and not feel the social indictment of government policies (some of them well-meaning, other decidedly less so) that end up separating First Nation people from their culture. It’s only, suggests the film, by reconnecting to traditions that there is hope. Once Were Warriors is extremely difficult to watch: the very realistic scenes of domestic violence are infuriating and nausea-inducing at once, with even worse material coming up later on. I’m impressed at how director Lee Tamahori was able to make a film that’s expressionistic and realist at once, combining impressive cinematic sequences with very humble moment showing familiar patterns of broken promises, commonplace abuse, casual use of violence and aimless lives. With all due respects to Rena Owen who plays the anchor of the story, this is Temuera Morrison’s film: he embodies charm and violence in a character that’s as magnetic as repellent. The film does have a strange relationship with violence, though—one of Once Were Warriors’ final scenes has a villain getting a much-deserved comeuppance, and now we’re cheering for the blows to land hard. Still, there’s a lot to digest in terms of themes and wider implications: it’s fast paced, seldom boring and some good visuals along the way. You will seldom see a film as hard to watch yet compelling and even admirable.

  • The Great Outdoors (1988)

    The Great Outdoors (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2019) When I say that The Great Outdoors is about taking a trip, it’s not necessarily in the way reflected by the plot of the film. Yes, sure, it’s superficially about two brothers and their families spending a week at a lake cabin, and the various tensions between the brothers playing themselves out. But in more significant ways to twenty-first century viewers, The Great Outdoors is a trip back in time, to an era with a very specific aesthetic when it comes to dumb comedies. Written by John Hughes, directed by Howard Deutch, starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd, you can clearly associate the film with the mainstream of mid-to-late-1980s American comedies. For anyone on a steady diet of more modern films, it’s a different experience watching a dumb 1980s comedy, with its painfully obvious plotting, shot dumb gags and abandoned emotional arcs. (I’m not saying modern movies are smarter—but the stylistic conventions are different.)  But dumb 1980s films can be reasonably fun, so if you can tolerate the expected gags and predictable third-act plot developments, the end result isn’t too bad—especially considering how The Great Outdoors does a lot of mileage on Candy and Aykroyd’s pure comic talents, with Candy as a goofy dad and Aykroyd as a fast-talking urbanite. (Meanwhile, Annette Bening’s screen debut here is probably an early shame considering her later body of work.)  There are a few things I really liked—notably the use of “Yakety Yak” at the beginning of the film, and the very funny scenes featuring subtitled raccoon talk. The Great Outdoors is not a great film, but it does have an amiable quality to it: if nothing else, it’s not mean-spirited at all in showing some heartwarming family moments.

  • United we Fan (2018)

    United we Fan (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) One of the consequences of having so many outlets for film in this streaming era has been the rise of the niche documentary. With comparatively lower production costs and an insatiable appetite for content (not to mention the clickbait potential for some documentary topics compared to fiction), there are more documentaries than ever on ever-specialized topics. (And if you happen to be a Canadian Cable TV network looking for Canadian content to meet your CRTC license broadcast requirements, Canadian-produced documentaries are a bonus.)  So that partially explains United we Fan, a Canadian documentary using examples of fan campaigns to save TV shows (starting with Bjo Trimble’s letter-writing campaign that got Star Trek its third season), as a springboard through which to talk about organized fan movements and, much more generally, fannish behaviour in the modern media landscape. Writer-director Michael Sparaga packages the result as an inspiring power-to-the-people kind of film, highlighting how it allows communities to connect, to take direct action beyond watching a show and talking about it, even allow people to realize their personal potential through organization, communication, and so on. (It doesn’t take much for the film to make the link between saving TV shows and social justice to which I’m thinking: Hmmm.)  Many of the interviews are with fans convinced of their self-righteousness, critics/commentators bolstering the film’s claims, and grateful creators/actors of fan-revived shows who know better than to be anything less than grateful to the fans. But as someone with fandom experience dating back to the mid-1990s, I’m curiously ambivalent about the United we Fan documentary—While the film does a good job at presenting and exploring its subject matter, it’s curiously curt about some second-order implications of fan devotion. To put it simply, there’s an entire commercial aspect to “saving TV shows” or other fannish obsession in support to lucrative interests that doesn’t get a lot of discussion here—for all of the nuts sent to a TV network to save Jericho, it’s still consumption in service of consumption, serving the interests of others. If you want inspiring stories of fans achieving more, take a look at those who transformed an interest in consuming media to producing media. But that doesn’t quite have the hook of Star Trek and other TV shows, right? As someone who spent time in the fannish trenches (most notably for Babylon-5), I’ve gone there and back—I’m more interested in critical explorations of how fan energy is co-opted as yet another marketing tactic in service of corporate interests. It annoys me that I have to ignore that dimension and clap along at another self-serving fannish documentary in a growing list of uncritical, superficial essays. But that may also be another lesson in approaching documentaries in general—they may be cheaper to produce than scripted dramas, but they still take time and effort, and it’s not clear if anyone would invest so much in criticizing actions that feel good in a limited perspective, but prove problematic in a wider context. All documentaries are trying to convince you of something, even if that something can be a carefully channelled “rebellion” that results in bigger profits for someone else.

  • Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

    Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Upon its release in theatres, Crazy Rich Asian was widely hailed by its publicists as a turning point in Hollywood history; the first studio-led big-budget film featuring an almost entirely Asian cast, heralding a new landmark for mainstream cinema inclusivity. I remember not quite getting the fuss, having seen a whole lot of Kong-Kong pictures, being able to cite precedents all the way to the admittedly problematic Flower Drum Song, and having tracked China’s growing influence over Hollywood throughout the 2010s. But of course, it’s different. No amount of bringing up The Joy Luck Club or Better Luck Tomorrow actually lessens Crazy Rich Asians’ achievement as a box-office and cultural success. But here’s a lot to unpack here, from the nagging feeling that this is another nail in America’s global dominance to the cross-cultural appeal of well-worn romantic comedy tropes, most notably the crazy wish fulfillment of marrying into a rich family. It’s great to see Michelle Yeoh back in a leading role as the family’s matriarch—she’s perfect for the role. The film is remarkably warm and funny, gradually easing American audiences into the titular craziness through a variety of western-educated viewpoint characters. Constance Hu headlines and does well, but Awkwafina steals every scene she has as a crazy Westernized friend who proves to be the protagonist’s sole reliable ally. You can argue that Crazy Rich Asians uses well-worn plot elements and merely dresses them up in new surroundings, but that’s the entire point of the exercise. Much of the film’s sheer sense of fun and accessibility can be attributed to John M. Chu’s excellent job directing, as he snappily brings together the experience he gathered while directing previous musical comedies and big-budget action blockbusters into something immediately compelling. He is certainly an efficient filmmaker—for a film about crazy rich Asians, the film does manage to put a lot of money on-screen, one of the set pieces being one of the most memorable wedding scenes in recent memory. No matter my qualms about the film’s publicity and meaning, I enjoyed it thoroughly. In fact, Crazy Rich Asians is so much fun that I was sorry to see it end so soon. Sequels? I’ll be there.

  • Crossfire (1947)

    Crossfire (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) 1947 was an interesting year when it comes to social-issues drama films at the Academy Awards. Two films in nomination for the Best Picture Oscar were squarely about antisemitism—a bold statement at the time. One of them, the serious and finely controlled major studio picture Gentleman’s Agreement, won the award. But it’s the other, Crossfire, that clearly exceeded expectations. A production of a major studio (RKO) but clearly intended as a B-movie in the disreputable crime thriller genre (now identified as a film noir), the picture went beyond its strict murder-and-investigation formula by tying it to a sensitive social issue—the victim having been the victim of an antisemitic hate crime. (Tellingly enough, the film is based on a novel where the victim was homosexual rather than Jewish.)  It is, in many ways, more overly hard-hitting than Gentleman’s Agreement—the price to pay for discrimination being death rather than social ostracism. Its execution may be less refined, but it’s well in the norms for a film noir—a darkly-lit tale of murder and the investigation to find not only the killer, but his motive. Crossfire is merely one in a long line of crime dramas being used to illustrate deeper issues, but it has the distinction of being the first to punch through the Academy’s prejudice against genre films to earn a handful of nominations. It’s still quite watchable today even if you don’t care about the historical context: Robert Mitchum stars as a police detective, making the film just a bit better every time he’s on-screen. Director Edward Dmytryk keeps things moving through a tight 86-minute running time, delivering a very satisfying film that exceeds noir motifs to deliver a stark and still relevant discussion of hate-fuelled murder. You may watch Gentleman’s Agreement and find that it has aged poorly in its well-mannered depiction of prejudice, but Crossfire will still grab you by the throat.

  • Penny Serenade (1941)

    Penny Serenade (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) I didn’t think it was possible to dislike a Cary Grant film, but here I am, looking at Penny Serenade. Oh, it’s not virulent hatred, nor wall-to-wall dislike. It’s just … not that enjoyable. Part of it has to be that in trying to show the first few years of a marriage, the film becomes an episodic melodrama, meant to make people sob and then rebuild them back into happiness even if it doesn’t quite make sense. It could have worked had it been executed well, but it’s not: instead, there’s a jerky-jerky rhythm to the plot that stops and goes and throws in tragedy instead of plot development and then caps it off with a cheap resolution that doesn’t actually resolve anything. Some of the early moments showing the courtship between our male lead (Grant, in a role with more serious moments and emotional range than many of his other roles—he was nominated for an Oscar for it) and our female lead (the beautiful Irene Dunne, at ease playing Grant’s on-screen wife for the third time but limited by a very traditional script) base their courtship on vinyl records. But the cavalcade of misery that awaits our characters at every turn gets increasingly ludicrous. Raking my brain for a way to make it make sense, the best I came up with was having a secondary character (played by Beulah Bondi) being an actually supernatural fairy godmother—at that point, Penny Serenade makes some kind of plotting sense rather than a collection of drama. Alas, I’m sure that this wasn’t the intended meaning of this melodrama. Unfortunately, that means that the ending (in which a new baby is meant to make everything all right) is hollow and unconvincing: It feels as if Penny Serenade had lasted twenty more minutes, the new kid would have died, some other tragedy would have tested our protagonist (place your bets on WW2!) and we’d be back at the starting point with yet another kid on the way. There are a few good moments along the way—and a few good bits of direction from George Stevens, as ham-fisted and obvious as they may seem to us. But Penny Serenade was never meant to be an audacious film—it’s old-school Hollywood mawkishness, and it’s not unusual that it would feel too broad, too on-the-nose for twenty-first century audiences.

  • Honey, I Blew up the Kid (1992)

    Honey, I Blew up the Kid (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2019) You’ve seen an absent-minded scientist shrink the kids, now watch him blow up a toddler to the size of a skyscraper in Honey, I Blew up the Kid. Yes, Rick Moranis returns as an endearingly clueless inventor, this time turning the size dial the other way in enlarging his two-year-old son. It’s a Science Fiction comedy, so there’s no need to be concerned. The spectacle is quite ambitious for an early-1990s film—including having a gigantic kid run amok through downtown Las Vegas. The special effects are definitely limited by the technology of the time, but there are plenty of them, and some actually work really well. Moranis is equal to himself, with some fine supporting work from other actors—including a teenage Keri Russell doing her big-screen debut here. On a plotting level, I was pleasantly surprised to see that, after an opening that portends strife between the teenager heroes and their parents, the script chooses to have the teenagers remain likable, be resourceful and work in collaboration with their parents to resolve the film’s conflict. This, plus the rather charming visual impact of seeing a two-year-old rampage through the Nevada scenery, does all lead to a very cute ending. Honey, I Blew up the Kid is not quite as attention-grabbing as its predecessor and doesn’t have as many ideas to go around, but it’s a solid high-concept executed in competent fashion.

  • The Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

    The Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Despite liking Jason Statham quite a bit, I have no regrets whatsoever in watching The Mechanic: Resurrection three years after its release, so average and undistinguished is the result. If you were to rank all Statham films, this sequel would probably be at the exact median—nothing special, but without the pretentious existential musings of its prequel, and with a few decent action set-pieces. This sequel dispenses with the more ambitious fluff of the original film to focus on another retired-hitman-brought-back-to-the-business plot with few bells and whistles. The schematic plot is built around three globetrotting set-pieces, with director Dennis Gansel doing his best to make each segment visually distinctive. He doesn’t do particularly well on the rest: the action is intelligible without being spectacular most of the time, a result of a frenetic editing style that doesn’t give a lot of room for the action to breathe. Statham is up to his usual standards, while Tommy Lee Jones looks like he’s having a tiny amount of perceptible fun playing an arms dealer. I have mixed feeling about Jessica Alba and Michelle Yeoh as supporting characters: on one hand, yay, on the other they don’t have much to do except being kidnapped. The vague videogame-like plot is all about providing Statham with a chance to do his usual tough-guy thing, and arranging action set pieces in increasing levels of difficulty. (The best remains the mid-film pool sequence, so clearly contrived it becomes funny … but with the panache necessary to be remembered long after the rest of the film has quickly faded away.)  Fortunately, only arm dealers and their henchmen are killed along the way. Even in its schematic mediocrity, I prefer The Mechanic: Resurrection to its nearly unrelated prequel (or New Hollywood-era original): it’s less dour, more colourful and features Statham in good form. He’s capable of much better, but he has also starred in worse movies so it all evens out to a median-tier film, largely for his fans.

  • The Accused (1988)

    The Accused (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2019) You wouldn’t necessarily expect a tough subject matter film to create a compelling viewing experience, but The Accused still carries quite a punch even three decades later. As a procedural legal thriller following the consequences of a rape in a small-town bar, it’s not meant to be fun or comforting—but the twists and turns ensure that it remains a gripping viewing experience. While Kelly McGillis headlines the film as the attorney, it’s Jodie Foster’s showy role as the victim that still earns all the attention. Foster, who won an Oscar for her performance, does have a difficult role, one that impresses even now given that it doesn’t quite fit her later upper-class screen persona. Despite being focused on a courtroom trial, the script cleverly keeps its harshest moment for late in the film—after an opening that takes place after the mass rape central to its premise, it proceeds for a solid three-quarter of its length before flashing back and taking the audience kicking and screaming through the entire traumatizing experience. This is not a unique structural trick, but by this time, the film has already established the sympathy for the character, and its bona fides as a serious and non-exploitative film. (Also, not to put too fine a point on it, the sequence has audiences watching a rape in the context of a trial about witnesses who watched a rape, after creating sympathy for the victim.)   The Accused made quite a stir back in 1988 (Even as a teenager, I recall some of the chatter) and it’s still remarkably effective today—even if you think you know what the film is about, its execution is excellent, with director Jonathan Kaplan creating that elusive scene-to-scene “I wonder what’s going to happen next?” quality. It feels more entertaining (if that’s the right word for it for a film with such an unbearable sequence) than a strictly social-issues film. And it does feature a high-intensity sequence that remains exceptionally effective even today.