Reviews

  • Rogue One (2016)

    Rogue One (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Blu-ray, April 2017) As much as I fear that Disney’s plans to release one Star Wars movie a year for forever will dilute the impact of the original trilogy, I’m relatively happy with the results so far. While neither The Force Awakens nor Rogue One are great movies, they’re decent films and, in the case of Rogue One, actually try something somewhat ambitious. As a putatively standalone story (but a backdoor prequel to the original film), Rogue One plays with big icons and sets a war story within the context of the Star Wars universe. It’s far from being perfect: the characters are rather dull (although it’s nice to see a Zatoichi homage in the Star Wars universe), a lot of plot-building moments are merely serviceable and there’s a scattershot nature to the plot that may be explained by the rumoured production difficulties of the movie. There are far too many dull moments where we’re waiting for the next thing to happen—and the longer you think about some of the set-pieces, the less they make sense. On the other hand, there’s a lot of stuff to like. The battle of Scarif repurposes iconic images in a tropical context and makes them feel fresh again. Many of the special effects are terrific. The production design and cinematography make impressive efforts (down to the grainy film stock) to deliver a conclusion that fits seamlessly with the 1977 original. The diverse cast is a welcome evolution. I also like the daring of using an entire film to bring further dramatic heft to the original film, transforming a few vexing plot holes into plot engines along the way. The attempt to digitally re-create two actors of the original film is admirable, even though the result doesn’t look quite right. Diego Luna, Donnie Yen and Alan Tudyk deliver good performances—I wish I could say the same about Felicity Jones, but her character is written so flat as to be playable by just about anyone. Director Gareth Edwards obviously has some fun as an ascended fanboy, but I look forward to later editions of the film detailing the reshoots and arguments whispered about. Rogue One certainly could have been significantly better (tighter, punchier, wittier) in other hands, but what actually made it to the screen is surprisingly effective in its own way. Despite stiff odds, it looks as if Disney knows what it’s doing so far with the Star Wars series—now let’s see if other standalone stories will be as effective.

  • Sex and the City 2 (2010)

    Sex and the City 2 (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2017) When I say that my pet name for Sex and the City 2 would be “Middle-Aged Women Wish Fulfillment: The Sequel”, I’m not being as dismissive as you may think. For all of the middle-aged male wish fulfillment out there (and 2011 did have its own gender-flipped Dubai-set fantasy in Impossible Mission: Ghost Protocol except no one called it “male wish fulfillment”), there is a need for other kinds of escapist fantasies in cinema. Sex and the City 2 is aimed at a particular audience, and in that context I encourage it to be as pandering as possible given that I’m already getting plenty of pandering for my own demographic subset, thank you. This being said, I can’t in good conscience let the film skate away on the highly problematic sequences that it contains. Never mind the length of the movie, low-octane romantic stakes, general faux pas in making romantic sequels, first-world problems and over-privileged heroines: There’s a lot worse to be found in the way our four protagonists head over to Dubai on someone else’s dime, are lavishly served by indentured servants, flaunt local conventions like ugly Americans and are shocked when there are consequences to what they do. There is a particularly baffling sequence toward the end that has Kim Cattrall’s character acting out in ways that aren’t just offensive to hardline conservative but to anyone with the slightest bit of sense and respect. Sex and the City 2 tries to have it both ways as well, first as vicarious living in luxurious quarters, then by acknowledging the ugly underside of this luxury, then portraying its protagonists as victims of the trouble that they themselves get into. As much as I’d like to like the film (snip away much of the third quarter and it becomes far more palatable), at worst Sex and the City 2 tries to impose its own artificial materialistic/hedonistic values on a clearly identified Other and at best settles for an obnoxious fantasy. And I say this as someone who likes Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Noth and the others. What a let-down.

  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

    Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Third viewing, On DVD, April 2017) There are many reasons why I shouldn’t like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s a bit too cozy with bunk-science UFOlogy, for instance, and the plot (especially in its first half-hour) falls apart as soon as you look too closely. It’s long, meandering, is far too fond of weirdness for weirdness’ sake and the “goodbye kids, I’m going to space” ending leaves a sour taste in my mind. (Although Spielberg has, since becoming a father himself, recanted that ending.) On the other hand, most of these reasons are why Close Encounters of the Third Kind still works fantastically well today. Even forty years later, it still stands as a well-executed take on the well-worn first contact scenario. It’s a film that plays heavily on pure wonder, which remains an all-too-rare emotion in Hollywood cinema. It tricks our point of view (our hero is justifiably mad from any other perspective than his), is comfortable in blue-collar suburbia, paints aliens as benevolent (if unknowable) and spends no less than a final half-hour in a nearly wordless light-and-sound show. It’s also a movie that’s unusually emotion-driven: it doesn’t always make logical sense, but it’s certainly effective at creating suspense, awe or surprise. As flawed as it is, it remains one of Steven Spielberg’s best movies. The special effects of the 1998 Director’s Cut are still convincing (well, except for some of the alien shots), the seventies period detail is now charming (even the reliance on UFOlogy lore now seems less and less harmful), Richard Dreyfuss makes a great next-door-neighbour protagonist, and it’s kind of cool to see film legend François Truffaut in a strong supporting role. I recall my parents discussing Close Encounters of the Third Kind with their friends once it hit television broadcast, along with my own memories of sequences such as the five tones, first backroad pursuit and, of course, the ending sequence which was completely enigmatic as a kid. I saw it again as a teenager and kept a good memory of the experience. So I’m very pleased to confirm, decades later as a middle-aged adult, that the film more than holds up as a SF classic.

  • The Fold, Peter Clines

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Crown, 2015, 384 pages, C$29.95 hc, ISBN 978-0-553-41829-3

    So … it took April Fool’s Day to get me reading fiction again.

    Let me explain. Over the past few years, I have almost entirely stopped reading fiction. I can blame various factors, but the truth is that I’ve fallen out of the habit and while I still think that written fiction is a noble and fun activity, I find myself watching movies, reading up on the endless circus of American politics or simply doing other things rather than cracking open a book. I have no doubts that, in time, I will gravitate back to written fiction. Right now, though, it’s a bit of a struggle. Having a smartphone is great for ebooks, but it’s also great for just about everything else as well.

    April Fools’ Day was a chance to do better. You have to understand that I don’t particularly like the festivities of April First. I don’t particularly like putting false information in my brain, and given the raging epistemological debate we seem to be having thanks to the Trump administration, my disdain for fake facts, even funny ones, reached a breaking point this year. So, I decided to unplug for a day. No news. No blogs. No forums. No social media. No exposure to made-up stories passing themselves off as reality.

    But what do to with all of that extra time? Well, I decided to read fiction. I’ve had my eye on Peter Clines’ The Fold for a few months (great cover, arresting blurb, unknown author—it didn’t take much more than that to get me going when I was reading 200+ novels per year) and decided that a self-imposed exile from the net could be a great way to plunge back into fiction.

    It actually worked. In a sobering demonstration of what’s made possible when you stop reading Reddit, I ended up reading most of The Fold in a single day, in small increments as I substituted reading prose instead of refreshing feeds. Hurrah!

    Unfortunately, I can’t say that I’m all that taken with The Fold, especially during its last third. In the grand tradition of SF novels built on mysteries, it’s no surprise if the tease is better than the revelation, if the promise of a mind-blowing explanation is far better than the collapsing of those probabilities in a single observation.

    But let’s enjoy the premise again as hyper-smart protagonist Mike, hiding away his prodigious intelligence as a high school English teacher, is recruited by an old classmate to investigate a mysterious research facility. The scientists there claim to have invented instantaneous teleportation, but there’s something strange about their experiment. The interminable delay between proof-of-concept and publishing their results. The lack of documentation. The constant frictions between team members. Not to mention the very strange episode in which a test subject was institutionalized after claiming that he didn’t know his wife. As an outsider with a perfect photographic memory, Mike should be able to piece together the pieces of the puzzle … right?

    The novel’s first third enjoyably sets up the parameters of the investigation and takes us to the San Diego lab in which this is taking place. The second third ups the tension with even stranger developments, a few revelations and even deeper mysteries. While the characters aren’t that memorably portrayed, there’s a pleasant tension to the proceedings as our protagonist knows that he’s seen as the enemy … and small mysteries just keep accumulating. This is a kind of Science Fiction I like a lot—set in the real world but with just enough of an intrusion from the future to be interesting. The puzzle-box aspect of the central mystery has readers developing their own theories as to what is happening (I had my own bet running on members of the team secretly building more teleportation nodes), and as long as anything isn’t pinned down then everything is still possible.

    Then the answers start coming down and we realize that The Fold is far more wobbly than at a first glance. The novel loses credibility once Victorian science is brought in. It loses even more credibility once the nature of The Fold is explained (raising further inconsistencies in trying to explain inconsistencies) and then pretty much goes into lalaland once the novel switches gear to a bog-standard portal horror mode. There’s a difference between “seen this before and it still interests me” and “seen this before and I’m not that interested” that’s clearly shown in the evolution from The Fold’s first to third act. I was able to forgive much of the prose’s clumsiness as long as I wanted to know more. It got worse when I stopped being fascinated, though. (It also explains why I read most but not all of the book on a single day.)  It doesn’t help, either, that The Fold’s own set of internal values quickly go from Science Fiction (new technology! How awesome!) to horror (this abomination must be destroyed at all costs!) along the way—I read Science Fiction because I like SF’s ethos of careful progress through technology, not because I was looking for another lesson in how Pandorian horrors must be stuffed back in their box. For one thing, Hope was at the bottom of Pandora’s box—and for another, there’s no doubt that what’s been created once can be re-created, and the curiously lackadaisical response from a few “Men in Black” late in the novel feels like a dramatic miscalculation that critically wounds the novel rather than enhance it.

    I won’t hammer The Fold much further for a weaker third act—such is the most common fate of any novel building itself around a mystery rather than more straightforward all-cards-on-the-table plotting. The Fold isn’t the first nor the last SF novel to lose interest as it reveals everything. To focus on the positive, I really like the protagonist’s unique skills and the various defences he has developed against them—at a time when ever-knowledgeable protagonists are often portrayed as justified psychopaths (as in: nearly every Sherlock-inspired character out there), Mike stands as a beacon of excessive humility. There’s a cute romance woven through, even though I think some details of it are off. When I say that The Fold could have been a Preston/Child novel, I’m not being as dismissive as you may think.

    From a purely personal perspective, coming back to fiction after a lengthy pause only to wrestle with a novel with such clearly defined strengths and weaknesses is like coming home. As a reviewer, I enjoy getting down and dirty with a flawed work. It’s good sport—in fact, voicing objections to a novel is the point of reading critically. Keep your perfect novels and your unmitigated trash to yourself—right now, I’d rather have more fun nitpicking and recognizing passing competence in a novel with both highs and lows. Reading fiction is supposed to be fun, after all. One thing’s for sure: I won’t wait an entire year to turn off the wireless and get lost in another novel.

  • We Bought a Zoo (2011)

    We Bought a Zoo (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2017) on the one hand, I’m not a big fan of obviously manipulative feel-good movies. On the other hand, I won’t deny that I like feeling good and can be lenient toward films that aim to make viewers happy. So it is that with We Bought a Zoo, we have the story of a widower purchasing a zoo, caring for animals and reconciling with his kids and getting over the tragic death of his wife. That’s it. Nothing else. Fortunately, that’s more than enough. Once you throw in the zoo animals, the decent performances by Matt Damon and Scarlett Johannsen, as well as the assorted cast of characters, the film becomes more than bearable enough. A heavier, older, quieter Damon makes for a solid protagonist, but a good part of the film’s charm goes to the underdog nature of a man picking up zoo-keeping from scratch. Speaking to animals is part of the challenge, but speaking to other people is just as important. Despite the blatant melodrama of writer/director Cameron Crowe’s script (the leitmotif “20 seconds of insane courage” aren’t even mentioned until the third act.), We Bought a Zoo is not a bad movie. Sometimes, we can accept manipulation if the end result is to our liking.

  • Manhattan (1979)

    Manhattan (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2017) I’m usually pretty good about compartmentalizing an artist and an artist’s work—something that has occasionally caused me a few retroactive pangs of guilt, especially in considering Roman Polanski’s work. Most of the time, those little bits of disapproval aren’t enough to affect me: I’ve got my list of good Woody Allen movies despite being aghast at his personal life. But for all of Manhattan’s reputation as one of Allen’s best, I understandably had a really hard time separating the movie (in which he gets romantically involved with a high-school girl) from Allen’s personal life (in which he got romantically involved with not one, but at least two high-school-age girls). As much as I tried getting into the rhythm and sensibilities of Manhattan, the film itself couldn’t stop getting me from thinking, “No, Woody Allen, no!” every time Allen and Mariel Hemingway (who, for all of the problematic aspects of her character, is terrific in the role) snuggled on-screen. So if I sound less than enthusiastic about Manhattan, keep thinking, “42-year-old guy writing a role in which he’s dating a 17-year-old girl”). Fortunately, there are other things to talk about in talking about Manhattan. The black-and-while cinematography is exceptional, some of the one-liners are very funny, the portrait of complicated romances is stronger than the usual pap that passes for romantic comedies, Diane Keaton is fantastic and the portrait of intellectual New Yorkers has a strong credibility to it. Oh, and Meryl Streep shows up for a handful of devastating scenes. Still, I was never completely convinced by Manhattan’s humour or its romance(s). Much as I appreciate the achievements of the film, I can’t quite bring myself to like it. You can credit Woody Allen for both reactions.

  • Aladdin (1992)

    Aladdin (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2017) This is not quite a “first viewing” review. I have, after all, seen quite a lot of Aladdin by sheer virtue of being a dad. But living with a preschooler-in-chief means that most kids’ movies have to be seen in bits and pieces, always in French and in-between fetching, cleaning or food-prepping. Over time, I have grown accustomed to the ever-growing DVD library of kid’s movies that I’ve seen but never really watched. Well, it’s time to remedy that. (My daughter was scandalized that I would want to watch one of her movies in the original English while she was busy playing—note to self; for The Little Mermaid or The Lion King, wait until after bedtime.) Now that I’ve had the chance to watch the movie from beginning to end, let’s acknowledge a few things: It’s a tight take on the Aladdin story, filled with enough humour, action, suspense, romance and adventure to entertain everyone. The animation is pretty good, with an impressive early integration of CGI and 2D animation at a time when such a thing was only becoming possible for top-notch studios such as Disney. The film is worth viewing in the original English if only for Robin Williams’ remarkable tour-de-force vocal performance at the genie. Not only does the film come alive when he’s on-screen, but his rapid patter is typically Williamsesque to a point that gets lost even in the most well-meaning translation. I’ve long suspected that Jasmine is one of my favourite princesses, and this film confirms why—you can clearly see in her nature the template for the feisty female characters that would form the core of the Princess archetype during the Disney Resurgence period that continues even today. At roughly 90 minutes, it’s a film that doesn’t have a lot of dull moments. (Although I would redo the introduction: Not only does it come across as a bit racist, it inelegantly contextualizing the film as being “from somewhere else”, contrarily to the approach taken by more recent film such as Frozen or Moana that takes us inside the other culture from the first few moments.) Small nice moments abound, such as the two-faceted nature of the villain animal sidekick (another performance worth savouring in English, by Gilbert Gottfried), or the surprisingly deep bond of friendship between Aladdin and the genie. Musically, I like Aladdin’s introduction songs (both of them), and the effective “Friend Like Me”. All in all, Aladdin remains quite satisfying for the kids, pleasantly funny for the adults who can catch the anachronistic references, and a family film in the best sense of the expression.

  • Forrest Gump (1994)

    Forrest Gump (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2017) Mmm mmm, mmm, delicious crow. I’ve long been an immature know-it-all, but now that I’m undeniably middle-aged, it’s time to atone and repent—part of it being recognizing Forrest Gump’s greatness. For, alas, dear readers, I have been boycotting Forrest Gump since it came out, since I was a mid-nineties neckbeard taking Bruce Sterling’s opinion as gospel. (True story: I was the guy who, while standing in line to see True Lies, sarcastically said “Awww, noooo” when they announced that Forrest Gump was sold-out.) Now, it’s true that I’ve never been a fan of holy fool stories. It’s also a given that I didn’t know enough about recent American history in 1994 to fully appreciate Forrest Gump’s little jokes and subtle inferences. It’s particularly true that my taste in movies has expanded quite a bit since then. All of which to say that while I’m late to the Forrest Gump party (to partly exonerate myself, I have read the novel a decade ago), I’m more than ready to cover it with praise. Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the movie is that it’s actually dealing with very clever matters under the guise of telling how a simple-minded man made his way through thirty tumultuous years of American history. At this stage in my life, I’m seeing it as a parable about how being good is better than being smart. But it’s also about the advantages of letting go, the synthesis of different views (Forrest vs Jenny) about life and history, the strengths of expressionist filmmaking and just how good Tom Hanks can be at incarnating the spirit of the United States in its multifaceted quality. Robert Zemeckis pushes the envelope of filmmaking so well that the special effects remain convincing even twenty-some years later—the use of “invisible” special effects to heighten reality remains close to the gold standard even today. Hanks is terrific as the lead character, finding a tricky balance between simple dialogue and complex acting while the film also has good turns for Robin Wright and Gary Sinise. The various nods and jokes at 1950s–1980s American history are hilarious (I’m sure I missed a few) while the film does manage to escape its episodic nature by weaving a few subplots in and out of the episodes. It’s a weirdly compelling film, with short comic bits combining with an overall story to make for sustained watching pleasure. A smart movie about a not-so-smart (but admirable) man, Forrest Gump has since ascended to the status of a modern classic, and I now see why. I may not wholly embrace it as five-star perfection, but I concede happily that I should have seen it earlier.

  • Hannah and her Sisters (1986)

    Hannah and her Sisters (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2017) As I’m watching Woody Allen’s filmography in scattered chronological order, I’m struck by how his works seems best approached sequentially—there are definitely phases in his work, and they partially seem to be addressing previous movies. Hannah and Her Sisters does echo other Allen movies—Manhattan (which I saw between watching this film and writing this review) in tone and setting, I’m told that there’s something significant about Mia Farrow’s casting, and there’s a continuity here between Allen’s nebbish hypochondriac and the rest of his screen persona. Absent most of those guideposts, however, Hannah and her Sisters feels a bit … slight as a standalone. It’s nowhere near a bad movie: the quality of the dialogue, twisted psychodrama of unstable pairings and Allen’s own very entertaining persona ensure that this is a quality film. But in trying to find out what makes this a lauded top-tier component of Allen’s filmography, answers don’t come as readily. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that Hannah and Her Sisters does things that have since then been done more frequently—Northeastern romantic dramas about a close-knit group of friends and family? Might as well tag an entire sub-genre of independent dramas … at least two of them featuring Jason Bateman. Familiarity, of course, is trumped by execution and so Hannah and Her Sisters does go far on Allen’s script. Allen himself is his own best male spokesman, although Michael Caine and Max von Sydow both have their moments. Still, the spotlight is on the sisters: Mia Farrow is terrific as the titular Hannah, while Barbara Hershey remains captivating thirty years later and Dianne Wiest completes the trio as something of a screw-up. There’s a little bit of weirdness about the age of the characters—although I suspect that’s largely because Allen plays a character much younger than he is, and I can’t reliably tell the age of the female characters. It’s watchable enough, but I’m not sure I found in Hannah and her Sisters the spark that makes an average film become a good one. I may want to temper my expectations—after all, not every Woody Allen movie is a great one, even in the latter period with which I’m most familiar.

  • Mississippi Burning (1988)

    Mississippi Burning (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2017) Issues-based thrillers aren’t always easy to watch, and there are certainly enough tough moments in Mississippi Burning to uphold this rule of thumb. But it’s also a thriller with a muscular anti-racism message that is also comforting given the atrocities portrayed in the film. The story of two FBI agents investigating the murder of three civil rights activists in rural Mississippi, this is a movie that pulls no punches in portraying the often-unbelievable racism of barely half a century ago. Quite a few buildings burn here, and the constant abuse suffered by the black characters is nothing short of revolting. While the film is certainly problematic in its white-saviour narrative, it’s also curiously frank in the way it embraces this aspect of itself: threatening, torturing and arresting unrepentant KKK members is the next best thing to punching a Nazi in the face in American cinema wish fulfillment, and Mississippi Burning certainly embraces this aggressive approach to the problem. Gene Hackman truly stars as a veteran FBI agent whose folksy bonhomie barely conceals a tough-and-violent approach whenever the chips are down. Contrasting him is Willem Dafoe is a curiously straitlaced role as a far more by-the-book supervisor who nonetheless gets to let his wilder instincts run free in the last act of the film. Frances McDormand also has a good turn as an acquiescent housewife who nonetheless gets a few shots in. Far more interesting than the “social issues drama” moniker would suggest, Mississippi Burning turns into a vengeful police thriller toward the end, with satisfying justice being delivered in spades. The relationship to the true events that inspired the story is incidental, the black characters definitely taking second place to the white protagonists but, in the end, it makes for curiously compelling cinema. This being said, Mississippi Burning is exactly the kind of film that other effective anti-racism movies such as The Help are meant to complement: it’s part of the story, but not all of it.

  • Suicide Kings (1997)

    Suicide Kings (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2017) The real treat in Suicide Kings is watching Christopher Walken as a clever mob boss, kidnapped, amputated, slowly dying but able to turn the tables on his naïve young kidnappers. As a Tarantino-inspired crime thriller with a mixture of darkly amusing dialogue and bloody criminal action, it’s a movie of its time, which is to say a quasi-nostalgic throwback for those who haven’t already seen it. Walken is quite good in a quasi-peak performance. Props also go to Johnny Galecki as a young man who gets far more than he expected, and Denis Leary as a loquacious mob enforcer. Unfortunately, while the story of a kidnapping going awry generally work well enough to keep our interest, the overall result does feel underwhelming given the assets at its disposal. Some of the direction doesn’t quite flow, some plot beats make as much sense as a runaway eighteen-wheeler and the dialogue either works or doesn’t. At its best, Suicide Kings is decent methadone for Tarantino withdrawals. (One of the advantages of rediscovering movies that felt tired in their time is that, sometimes, you do want more of the same years later.) At its worst, however, it’s a tired pastiche without much of the flair, wit or pacing of its inspirations.

  • Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

    Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, March 2017) Hmmm. My memories of Robin Hood: Men in Tights weren’t particularly good to begin with, but revisiting the movie more than twenty years later doesn’t do it any favour. The only reason why I’m not incensed about it is that there’s been plenty of terrible spoofs since then, even if you mercifully forget all about the Friedberg/Seltzer abominations. The truth is, Mel Brooks has a few unfortunate tendencies and while his best movies manage to avoid them, they’re nearly all on display in Men in Tights. The worst has to be a directorial vision that allows characters to mug for the camera, fully cognizant that they’re in a dumb comedy. That’s how we get quizzical glances, broad self-aware performances, pauses for laughter and blatant hamming. See, I’m funny! Is the unspoken assertion here, allowing viewers to shout back, “No, you’re not!” It harms the film even more when the pacing is slack enough to anticipate the next joke—the best spoofs usually move along at rocket pacing, layering jokes in background and almost never letting the audience in on the jokes. Here, there are basically honking signals, spotlights and subtitles to point viewers at the humour. Brooks himself shows up in a self-congratulatory sequence that quickly turns unbearable. Cary Elwes was a good choice for Robin Hood given a pedigree that included The Princess Bride … unless you’ve just watched The Princess Bride and was reminded of a kind of brilliance so lacking here. Isaac Hayes and Dave Chapelle do okay with what they’re given, but the only actors who escape from the mess with some decency are Roger Rees as the sheriff (hamming it up like Alan Rickman, but not mugging for laughs as terribly as other actors) and Amy Yasbeck, whose red mane is a compelling character in her own right. On the big scale of spoof comedies, the bottom has been lowered time and time again by Friedberg/Seltzer, and if Men in Tights is quite a bit better than those (by sheer virtue of actually attempting jokes), it’s still mediocre compared to the ZAZ classics or even Brooks” best. It should do if all you’re looking for is an amusing evening film, but given that my low expectations weren’t even met, I’d hazard that you’d be better off watching or re-watching other spoofs instead.

  • The ’burbs (1989)

    The ’burbs (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, March 2017) I was wary of revisiting The ’burbs: what if it didn’t measure up to my good memories? Fortunately, I shouldn’t have worried: As a comedy, it’s still as increasingly anarchic as I recalled, and the film has aged relatively well largely due to director Joe Dante’s off-beat genre sensibilities. Baby-faced Tom Hanks stars as a driven suburban man daring himself to spend a week at home doing nothing. But his holiday soon turns to real work as he starts obsessing over his neighbours and, egged on by friends, suspecting them of the worst crimes. Set entirely in a quiet cul-de-sac, The ’burbs still has a few things to say about the hidden depths of suburbia, dangerous obsessions and the unknowability of neighbours. It’s also increasingly funny as actions become steadily more extreme—by the time a house blows up in the middle of the climax, it’s clear that the movie has gone as far as it could go. Corey Feldman (as a fascinated teenager treating the whole thing like a reality-TV show), Bruce Dern (as a crazed survivalist), Carrie Fisher (as a voice of exasperated reason) and Henry Gibson (deliciously evil) are also remarkable in supporting roles. The “burbs may take a while to heat up, but it quickly goes to a boil and remains just as funny today.

  • Flashdance (1983)

    Flashdance (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2017) Sometimes, watching popular hits from decades past is enough to make you wonder what they were thinking back then. Some movies don’t age well, and for all of the box-office dollars that Flashdance accumulated in 1983, a lot of it just feels silly today. The premise itself seems like a jumble of words, as a welder-by-day and burlesque-dancer-by-night dreams of becoming a professional dancer. The only thing standing in the way of her dreams in a pre-YouTube era is an admission to a dance school. Much of the film is spent on the way from dream to reality, frequently interrupted by music videos. That last part isn’t much of an exaggeration: Director Adrian Lyne clearly aped then-new format of music videos in blatantly stopping the film for musical set pieces, hand-waving them as performance art in a burlesque club. It works up to a point, until we get exasperated that the simplistic story isn’t going anywhere. This focus on music videos is obvious from the wall-to-wall hit soundtracks—alas, it’s all early-eighties pop, which sounds terrible today. At least Jennifer Beals is very likable at the lead—she’s quite a bit better than the movie surrounding her. Flashdance is also notable for bringing together filmmakers who would then go on to have big careers, particularly producers Bruckheimer/Simpson and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas. If you’re not watching from a historical perspective, the film is a dud—the story is linear, the interludes too frequent and the romance is bolted together out of narrative convenience. There are far better movies from 1983, and they have all aged much better than this one.

  • Matilda (1996)

    Matilda (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, March 2017) on the one hand, Matilda is a good-natured story in which an adorable little girl manages to overthrow oppression and find true motherly love. It has a unique comic sensibility, great use of narration, a quasi-whimsical feeling and a strong performance by Mara Wilson, with a just-as-likable turn by Embeth Davidtz. Director Danny DeVito occasionally inches close to Tim Burtonesque territory in the way he’s willing to twist reality into an impressionistic version of itself. On the other hand—and I’ll acknowledge that this may be an idiosyncratic reaction—I have a really hard time with child abuse stories these days, especially when the targets of the abuse are young girls. For all of Matilda’s heartwarming ending, whimsical moments and sense that the heroine is never really in jeopardy, I was never quite able to open up to the film. The emotional abuse of a bright kid ignored by ungrateful adults (including parents) is almost too much to bear and that feeling never quite went away during the movie, stopping me from enjoying it all that much. This is one of those films that may be best appreciated upon re-watched, confident in how it’s going to turn out.