Reviews

  • Eraserhead (1977)

    Eraserhead (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2017) It is with some satisfaction that I report that really disliked Eraserhead. After all, that’s exactly what I was expecting: I don’t do surrealism and I generally don’t like (or get) much of writer/director David Lynch’s work, so why would this one be any different? The movie itself doesn’t care all that much about whether people like it—advancing at its own glacial pace through nightmarish body-horror thankfully filmed in black-and-white, Eraserhead is a bad dream put on-screen, with minimal plot and maximal non-sequiturs. The themes of parenting anxiety are clear enough, but I can’t be bothered to decode the rest when I care so little about the result. I’m satisfied that, having seen it, I can remove it from my list of films to see and that’s about it. 

  • Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)

    Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2017) One of the problems in watching the Naked Gun trilogy on successive days is that the series is so generally consistent in achieving its comic objectives that it’s difficult to tease apart any film-specific commentary. So what’s to be said about Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult? The film is funny; Leslie Nielsen is comedy gold with his deadpan portrayal of a veteran cop; OJ Simpson features in it. This third instalment gets more insistent with its movie-specific parodies, heralding the downfall of the subgenre later on. There’s also a crudeness to some of the gags that clearly makes this third volume the least successful in the trilogy, but that’s not really unexpected. At least the climax, set at the Academy Awards, allows for some pokes at Hollywood itself, although the references there are getting dated far more quickly than the rest of the series. Still, once you’ve started this series, there’s no real reason to stop—even as a third instalment, the film is funny enough to warrant a look.

  • The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)

    The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2017) While The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear is slightly less funny than its predecessor, the difference is slight enough as to be negligible, and the original started out high enough. The result is another solid comedy, perhaps a bit more dubiously motivated (what is Frank Drebin doing in Washington, all of a sudden?) but still effectively hitting upon the tropes of police thrillers. There are a few more outright nods to specific films, but they’re still controlled well compared to the grotesque excesses of more contemporary spoofs. The poke at Bush(I)-era American politics date the film more quickly than the generic cop-thriller stuff of the first film. Otherwise, there isn’t much to say about the film that wasn’t already discussed for the first film: It’s a consistent series, now without its flaws but good enough to be worth a few laughs. 

  • The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

    The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2017) Much of the fun in watching The Naked Gun is in seeing the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker team (along with Pat Proft) take on the police thriller as worthy of spoofing. Using Leslie Nielsen as a gaffe-prone policeman with more zeal than polish is inspired, but then again most of The Naked Gun comes from the short-lived but still-hilarious Police Squad! TV show. The basic elements being familiar to the filmmakers, the film itself seems well-practised, something that also probably has to do with the previous ZAZ spoof movies. In any case, the solid plot acts as a clothesline on which to add various gags, joke sequences and parodies. The number of outright parodies is low (the shift would happen in later instalments of the series) but the laughs are high, mostly because the film is spoofing a genre and generating a lot of jokes along the way. Leslie Nielsen is solid, playing his ridiculous character Frank Drebin with absolute dryness. Ricardo Montalban is also a highlight in his own way, while Priscilla Presley, George Hamilton and (ironically now) O.J. Simpson round up the main cast. The third act does get a bit long especially if you have no great interest in baseball. Still, no matter how you see it, The Naked Gun remains a terrific spoof comedy, as essential today as other classics of the genre such as Airplane!, Top Secret! or Hot Shots!

  • Tonari no Totoro [My Neighbor Totoro] (1988)

    Tonari no Totoro [My Neighbor Totoro] (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2017) There’s a refreshing refusal to play by conventions that shines at the heart of Tonari no Totoro: The avoidance of conflict, the supernatural seen as wonder, domestic concerns and a constantly inventive imagination at play. There’s quite a bit of darkness in the film as it focuses on two girls waiting until their mother is well enough to be released from the hospital, but much of the movie is about discovering the hidden magic in their bucolic setting, with dream sequences and spirits helping out the two girls. Whatever drama in the film is limited to looking for a lost girl and the tension of knowing if their mother is doing well. I suspect that Totoro works on a level that escapes analysis or narration—it’s just cute, comforting, wondrous and unlike anything else. It plays like a pleasant daydream, non-threatening to a fault. The cute creature design may also help explain its popularity with kids of all ages. While I wasn’t as taken by the movie as I hoped I would, it’s squarely in Hayao Miyazaki’s impressive body of work and does rank highly as a must-see animation film.

  • Sleepers (1996)

    Sleepers (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2017) The mid-nineties were a surprisingly good time for solid thrillers, and Sleepers works not because of its atypical revenge plot or unobtrusive direction but largely because it managed to bring together an impressive group of actors. In-between Kevin Bacon, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and the always-compelling Minnie Driver, it’s a nice mixture of generations and styles. It helps that the script is built solidly around an unusual conceit, with an ambitious lawyer doing his best to lose a case but make sure it’s widely publicized to take revenge upon childhood enemies. A blend of courtroom thriller and working-class drama, Sleepers may or may not be based on a true story, but it works well as fiction. Despite revolving around difficult subjects such as child abuse, Sleepers manages to be slightly comforting in how it ensures a victory of sorts for its characters, present a solid underdog story in an accessible fashion, and largely depends on familiar actors doing what they do best. Director Barry Levinson mostly stays out of the way of his actors, and the result is curiously easy to watch despite harsh sequences.

  • The Animal (2001)

    The Animal (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Prime Streaming, October 2017) For such an easy punchline, Rob Schneider’s apex as a leading comedy actor is actually quite short, from 1999’s Deuce Bigalow to 2002’s The Hot Chick, with 2001’s The Animal in the middle of those two. Before and after that, Schneider is to be found in supporting roles and cameos in Happy Madison productions … sometimes effectively but usually not. The Animal certainly presents Schneider in a familiar role, taking advantage of a high-concept comic premise to be as crude as possible in the name of getting laughs. It very occasionally works here, but The Animal is more annoying than funny even while allowing for the usual Happy Madison lowest-denominator methods. What helps a bit is that Schneider is up against first-season-of-Survivor early TV Reality star Colleen Haskell in the lead romantic role. She may have charmed all of North America in 2000, but as an actress Haskell is an empty void—she’s cute but so bland that she’s a rare case study of non-acting in a Hollywood picture. She at least has the decency of looking suitably baffled as Schneider showboats all around her, exhibiting animal traits in a series of comic bits that would be actively embarrassing to explain to the preschoolers for which the film is seemingly destined. (“Yeah, he’s rubbing against the mailbox because … oh, let’s watch a Disney movie again.”) There are a handful of laughs in the movie, largely due to Norm MacDonald’s too-short appearance as an overly analytical mob member, and a final anti-racism joke that surprisingly lands despite the film’s best efforts to make it offensive. Otherwise, well, The Animal is surely sliding away as an unlamented dim memory, and that’s not a tragedy. Maybe, someday, we will forget all about Schneider as well.

  • The Bad News Bears (1976)

    The Bad News Bears (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, October 2017) Either they don’t make kids movies like they did, or The Bad News Bears was an oddity even in its time. As we meet our protagonist day-drinking in the parking lot of a neighborhood baseball field, it’s obvious early on that this film goes for hard-luck gritty life lessons. Fortunately, it works even as it’s horrifying by 2017 standards: Seeing kids tag along an adult drinking beer while driving a convertible is the kind of thing that register as a very different kind of funny these days. Walter Matthau is pretty good as the initially reprehensible protagonist—a washed-up failure who learns lessons from coaching a team of early-teen misfits who shouldn’t even be playing in their league. Good character work (especially by Tatum O’Neal as a tomboy with a history and Jackie Earle Haley as a teenage hoodlum) helps a lot, and The Bad News Bears’ fondness for its oddball characters remains endearing even today. The various slurs aren’t so much fun, but given that the film is forty years old at this point, it’s not entirely unexpected. The ending remains a case study in how to transform defeat into a moral triumph. The score is also noteworthy, taking bits and pieces of opera Carmen for inspiration. There’s also an interesting, very American atmosphere to this bicentennial film—the emphasis on baseball helps ground it into a depiction of suburbia circa 1976.

  • Stretch (2014)

    Stretch (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, October 2017) I had been waiting for Stretch for years. A new film by writer/director Joe Carnahan? Yes, but after two years in post-production hell, Stretch was never shown in theatres and its release on the VOD market was quiet enough to go unnoticed—I learned about the film from an article about how Netflix was changing the distribution market. But it took another three years for Stretch to make it to Canadian Netflix, and I ended up watching it within days of its availability. Verdict? It’s the Carnahan movie I was waiting for: fast-paced, darkly comic, strangely conceived, tightly edited. It takes potshots at the insanity of Los Angeles, exploits Patrick Wilson’s charisma to its fullest extent and gets Chris Pine to deliver a wonderfully bizarre performance quite unlike anything an actor like him is expected to provide. Jessica Alba shows up as a gal-pal love interest, Ed Helms’ cackling voice-of-reason character has a mostly-posthumous presence … and that’s not even talking about David Hasselhoff or Ray Liotta. Produced on a shoestring $5M budget, Stretch looks ten times more expensive, and has more manic inventiveness in its 90-minutes duration than any three random Hollywood theatrical releases. The pedal-to-the-metal pacing of the film helps sell its weirdest quirks, as one day (and night) in the life of a limousine driver gets worse and worse. Stretch isn’t a great movie, but it’s pitch-perfect at reaching its target and it’s maddeningly entertaining for anyone who discovers it. I’m really annoyed that it’s still largely unknown, and somewhat grateful that, thanks to Netflix, it now has a fighting chance of being seen. 

  • Busanhaeng [Train to Busan] (2016)

    Busanhaeng [Train to Busan] (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, September 2017) By now, the zombie genre has been declared creatively dead so often that’s become a cliché to be amazed at how filmmakers are still finding new things to do with it. But there’s no underestimating creative ingeniousness, and so we end up with movies such as Busanhaeng, a South Korean zombie movie that manages to find one or two new things to say about the zombie apocalypse. The first of these is the South Korean setting—for most North American viewers, it’s a source of just-enough exoticism, while based in a recognizable first-world society. Much of the social and emotional cues are recognizable as-is, although the lack of guns does bring a further element of tension to the proceedings that, in an American setting, would be settled with far more expended rounds. (In fact, by the time guns show up late in Busanhaeng, they’re presented as direct treats to our surviving characters.)  The second and most distinctive feature of the movie is its immediate setting, aboard a train leaving a zombie-infested Seoul to a possibly-safe Busan, a cross-country trip just long enough to be dramatically interesting. The train becomes simultaneously a haven and a source of danger, as it moves through a countryside that is not safe, but contains contaminated cars that end up separating our protagonists. Most of the characters are generic, but the film is handled efficiently enough that it’s easy to get into even the most familiar situations. Gong Yoo is sympathetic enough as the lead, but Ma Dong-seok earns a lot of attention as a bruiser. Some of the later sequences are spectacular in depicting long sustained shots of zombies trying to outrun the characters in a train yard, but Busanhaeng is generally better in its first half as the situations haven’t yet resolved themselves to more familiar plot beats. Still, it’s a refreshing-enough take on a standard story, and it will reward viewers looking for something slightly different.

  • Gone with the Wind (1939)

    Gone with the Wind (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2017) What a movie. What a terrific movie. While Gone with the Wind surely ranks way up the list of overexposed films (it’s still the highest-grossing film in history when adjusted for inflation—nearly everyone saw it back then), there’s a reason why it still works nearly eighty years later, even with its three-hour-plus duration, even as it expresses warm feelings toward historically repellent issues. There are a lot of ways to see the movie (as an epic family drama, as a romance, as a historical film) but I found it most effective as a character piece tracking the evolution of a young woman into a hardened life-scarred survivor. Vivien Leigh stars as the legendary Scarlett O’Hara, growing up through civil war and reconstruction from a flighty heiress to the mistress of a domain, a grieving mother and someone who will never be able to live with the love of her life. (It’s significant that Rhett Butler, her counterpart played by Clark Gable, also looms large as an oversized character, but does not significantly evolve during much of the film.)  The lavish production values of the film as still amazing today, whether it’s the vivid colours (wow, those dresses), the burning of Atlanta or, more strikingly, the hideous open-air hospital scenes with what looks like thousands of extras—in high definition, the movie still amazes through its sheer visual density. As a sumptuous historical recreation, Gone with the Wind is an amazing time capsule from the thirties looking back at the eighteen-sixties—just consider that the film is now significantly closer to the American Civil War than to today. Alas, this proximity leads to a few unfortunate consequences—at times, modern viewers will feel some revulsion at the way the film excuses or regrets the Confederacy and the systemic use of slavery as an economic system. This also ties with the representation of black characters in the film—ludicrous today, but groundbreaking at the time (leading to the first-ever Academy Award given to a black actor, Hattie McDaniel). But a film doesn’t last nearly eighty years without reflecting its own era, and Gone With the Wind has endured far better than most movies of its time.

  • Manchester by the Sea (2016)

    Manchester by the Sea (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Prime Streaming, September 2017) Most movie misanthropes are simply eccentric people who just need a little bit of love and compassion before they become whole again. But not the protagonist of Manchester by the Sea, a haunted man who would rather work in a menial job and avoid human contact (including advances from attractive clients) due to an unspecified trauma in his past. But as his brother dies and he’s forced to take responsibility for his nephew, the nature of his past becomes more obvious, and his all-consuming guilt explained. Casey Affleck has never been the most sympathetic of actors, and he’s just about perfect in this movie as he plays a character going through life through motions, not quite believing that he deserves to live. (The flashback that explains his all-consuming grief has a spectacular suicide attempt, for reasons entirely comprehensible to the audience.)  Having lost it all, he doesn’t believe that he deserves it back, and the ending only offers a very brief glimmer of flickering hope. From the above description, you’d think that Manchester by the Sea was an unrelenting assault of gloom, but one of the savviest ironies of this well-controlled film is the bleak dark humour that permeates it, making it feel far more interesting than a pure drama would have been. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan has put together something unexpectedly interesting considering the dark subject matter, and it’s as sure an instant Oscar contender as you can imagine. 

  • The Duchess (2008)

    The Duchess (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2017) Nowadays, it’s not particularly difficult to make feminist-themed historical movies. Being a woman has seldom been easy in recorded history, and it doesn’t take much highlighting to make the point that it was even worse not too long ago. So it is that The Duchess, even fancifully adapted from historical events, doesn’t have to reach in order to present a credibly oppressed heroine. The plot summary does read like a melodrama: An 18th-century young English woman stuck in an arranged marriage, pressured to produce a male heir, sidelined by her husband’s affair with her friend (herself pressured by having been taken away from her sons), embarking on an affair of her own … and so on. A nudge too far would have sent the film in X-rated territory, especially given how little consent there is all around. While the summary reads like a wild ride, it’s considerably dampened by a running time that feels too long even under two hours, considering the tepid pacing and highly mannered costume drama. At least there’s the acting to admire along the way: Kiera Knightley turns in a serious performance, while Ralph Fiennes has seldom been so detestable and Hayley Atwell distinguishes herself with a difficult character. The visual look of the film is as good as period dramas get, and the Oscar-nominated costumes are indeed pretty good. This being said, The Duchess does feel like an intensely familiar story—from The Other Boyleen Girl to Anna Karenina to Belle to a chunk of the Jane Austen adaptations, there is a lot of similar material out there and if it happens to scratch an itch, then hurrah. Otherwise, it’s a long film with familiar plot points, reasonably entertaining but not essential.

  • Say Anything… (1989)

    Say Anything… (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2017) There are a few reasons to go back to Say Anything … and they’re not strictly limited to this being one of John Cusack’s first big role, or that this is Cameron Crowe’s first movie as a writer/director. Even today, Say Anything does have an off-beat quality that distinguishes it from so many other teen romance movies. Most of the characters defy easy characterizations (indeed, one of the film’s strengths is in undermining the stereotypes it starts with, all the way to an incarceration that feels wildly daring for a movie of this type), the dialogues are witty and the conclusion ends, as it is, in mid-air without being unsatisfying. Cusack’s charm is apparent even at a young age, while Ione Skye distinguishes herself as a teenage heroine and John Mahoney handles a difficult role fairly well. Surprisingly enough, the iconic boombox moment is a fleeting scene without much pomp associated with it. Decently comparable to the slew of John Hughes high school romantic comedies, Say Anything may not be a perfect examples of the form, but it’s readily watchable even today, and it still feels somewhat more sophisticated than many of its contemporaries.

  • Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)

    Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On DVD, September 2017) While Smokey and the Bandit II is a noticeable step down from the first film, I find it fascinating to see that I remembered more of it from boyhood memories than the first film (specifically the end stunt sequences). As a grown-up, there’s almost no limit to the ways this sequel is worse than the original: The set-up makes no sense, the film sabotages itself in ensuring that it revisits the same dynamics from the first film, the irritation caused by Jackie Gleason’s character is magnified (and multiplied by the indulgent use of Dom Deluise) and the whole elephant plot device slows down what should have been a pedal-to-the-metal action comedy. The one thing that the sequel does better than the first is the final demolition derby: While none of the stunts make sense from a story perspective, it’s a special kind of fun to see director/stuntman Hal Needham go crazy with a hundred police cars ready to be scrapped and just film whatever metal-tearing silliness his team can conjure. Otherwise, it’s another excuse to see Burt Reynolds effortlessly charm audiences (although he first has to dig himself out of a contrived pit of overacted despair) and while his banter with Sally Field isn’t as strong this time around, there’s still a little bit of what was so special in the first movie. Otherwise, most reviewers since the film’s release have gotten it right: this is a pure cash grab of a sequel, unnecessary and not particularly well executed. If you’re out of time, just skip to the last twenty minutes or so to see the stunts.