Reviews

  • Killing Gunther (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2022) I had a very, very hard time making it through the first half-hour of Killing Gunther, but you probably won’t. Given the film’s low-profile despite starring no less than Arnold Schwarzenegger making fun of his own tough-guy persona, it first popped up on my radar as a French TV channel in a dubbed version. I don’t usually have trouble watching films dubbed in French—while there are a few actors I’d rather hear with their original voices, I’ve been watching dubbed French films all my life, and the level of quality of these dubs (after decades of expertise accumulated in French-Canadian dubbing companies) is usually top-notch. But Killing Gunther was something else: not only had the film been dubbed very, very loosely (with voices obviously not matching the lip movements), it had also been dubbed in colloquial Québécois, which is almost always a poor choice compared to mid-Atlantic French. It took me a few minutes to understand why, and while the film clicked once I did figure out the reasons behind this choice, it still made the first minutes of the film a bit of a slog. As it turns out, the choice turns out to be defensible once you consider the source material—Killing Gunther is a wild dark comedy in which a killer sets out to assassinate the top man in the business—the elusive titular “Gunther.”  Motivated by the desire to make a name for himself, our assassin protagonist hires a film crew to follow them during the entire adventure. So, yes—Killing Gunther is a found-footage hitman comedy with shaky-cam, naturalistic acting, shoddy obvious editing and reality-TV production values. As such, it makes perfect sense that the dub would be terrible, because that’s the way reality-TV shows are dubbed in French Canada. If it took me too long to figure that out, it’s because I don’t watch reality TV in general, and even less of it dubbed. Once that initial bump in the road behind us, Killing Gunther improved. The pleasantly chaotic plotting (in which no one is safe from sudden death, ruining all plans) is intercut with action scenes often executed as extended one-shots (even if the price to pay for that is substandard special effects, such as the endlessly exploding cars sequence) and comedic interludes in which the tropes of semi-competent hitman suspense films clash with the dumb mundanity of a reality-TV shoot. It does have the advantage of getting crazier by the minute, though:  by the time Schwarzenegger shows up as (who else?) the legendary and over-the-top Gunther, the film has long since jettisoned any attempt at being realistic or even credible. The humour, obviously, is hit and miss—it’s sometimes lame enough to be funny despite itself, which is clearly no substitute for being funny enough to be funny by itself. The result is far too flawed to be good, but it does have a certain propulsive narrative, a few chuckles and an action star having fun sending himself up. Writer-director-producer-star Taran Killam doesn’t quite make everything click, but the result is watchable enough—although I would recommend watching it in the original English.

  • Numb (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) Is it possible to have too good a cast? Maybe, when it creates expectations that the rest of the film can’t match. So it is that Numb, at first glance, offers an intriguing list of names: Matthew Perry, Kevin Pollak and Mary Steenburgen—not a bad cast for a comedy dealing with serious themes. In this case, we have Perry playing a Hollywood screenwriter who comes to experience depersonalization disorder. What begins as an intriguing premise, however, soon turns into something far more familiar—a low-octane dramedy in which a middle-aged man (well, nearly middle-aged: Perry was around 37 when the film was shot) finds solace in going out with a girl nearly a decade younger than he is. Yes, I’m being a bit too dismissive—but Numb does itself no favours by going back to some very familiar plot beats and mishandling some less obvious ones. The numbness of the main character doesn’t really resurface past the halfway mark of the film, and you could replace it with a generalized ennui without changing much of it. The film does have one high point, and it works to the rest of the film’s disadvantage in offering a glimpse at what a better, more coherent film could have been: Steenburgen shows up as an older therapist who ends up developing unprofessional feelings for her patient—another bit of male fantasy, sure, but one that’s handled at such a higher (welcome) pitch of comedy that it ends up making the rest of the film feel much blander in comparison. In the end, it’s hard to avoid feeling that Numb (even allowing for the fifteen years since its release) is taking us to overexposed territories—oh, no, poor aging white guys in Hollywood, shoving their midlife crises down our throats as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. (Spoiler alert: I am a middle-aged white guy; I had a midlife crisis; it wasn’t interesting at all. )  If Numb leaves you unengaged, let me reassure you: it’s not because you’re dissociating, it’s because the film is honestly just dull.

  • Scarborough (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) It wouldn’t be exact to refer to the Toronto neighbourhood of Scarborough as a slum, but as Scarborough-the-movie makes it clear, this isn’t a place of stately mansions and expensive cars. Focusing on three kids following the same drop-in reading program at a community centre, it’s an ensemble drama of misery at the bottom of the social ladder, with kids not being protected by their parents and any overly empathic response being discouraged. Adapted from the novel of the same title by author Catherine Hernandez herself, it’s a gritty, depressing, often infuriating ensemble drama that doesn’t spare any misery for the innocent. It occasionally feels like a grab bag of every possible social issue—by the time gender dysphoria is introduced late in the film, it’s not as much a plot development as the last item to be checked in a specific list. Still, for all of its heaviness, grittiness and formulaic uplifting end, Scarborough has a few aces up its sleeves—most notably Aliya Kanani as an engaged young teacher doing her best to take care of kids despite a system that tells her not to care too much, and a street-level authenticity engineered by directors Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson. In a certain grand tradition of Canadian movies, it may not be fun to watch, but it’s respectable to have seen. Too long at two hours and a quarter, it’s often an ordeal but ultimately a very humanistic one.

  • Antebellum (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) There’s no frustration quite like giving a disappointed review to a film that has its social conscience at the right place. It’s repulsive that we would need a full-throated denunciation of the evils of American slavery in 2022, but, well; here we are. Given this, the opening moments of Antebellum pack a punch, graphically portraying plantation slavery and then revealing that a modern, well-educated black woman is among the slaves. It’s after that strong opening that the film goes into a tailspin. Much of the problem is that, beyond a provocative premise, the film runs out of plot very quickly—Antebellum is a Twilight Zone episode stretched over 115 minutes, and the hollowness of its execution quickly becomes apparent as it moves to the “modern” day and spends far too much time establishing irrelevant subplots and characters. It doesn’t help that the script can’t follow up its premise with something interesting—it takes the cheapest, least imaginative road to its conclusion. Antebellum being a black horror story, it goes without saying that the white characters are irremediably, cartoonishly evil here—even if Jena Malone does have an interesting role as Queen Racist. Never mind the practicalities of their plan! Janelle Monáe is good within the confines of her role, while Gabourey Sidibe is tremendously fun to watch but plays a useless character. Antebellum cheapens its most distasteful moments by having nowhere to go—when so much of the film doesn’t have a reason for existing, it becomes much harder to justify the exploitation of its most striking moments—especially by the time the third act rolls round. There are about a dozen more interesting, substantial and wittier directions the film could have gone, but in the end, it retreats to cheap shots, empty empowerment slogans, excruciatingly executed obviousness and filler material for more than half its length. Much to my dismay, Antebellum is a thriller that should have been science fiction, or a film that should have been an episode, or knee-jerk cheap horror that should have been nuanced systemic drama—anything but what it is right now.

  • Measure for Measure (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2022) Adapting a lesser-known Shakespeare play to modern-day lower-class urban Australia, Measure for Measure goes for a complex web of modern-day issues (drug dealing, Islamophobia and romance being only a few of them) featuring an ensemble cast led by Hugo Weaving. The result may have its moments, but remains unremarkable and is not worth a recommendation. For all of the potential complexities of its ensemble drama, much of the film eventually boils down to a generic crime story interacting with a forbidden romance. Weaving is as good as usual as an elderly crime lord, while Megan Hajjar/Smart is quite likable in the lead female role. Alas, bland execution from writer-director Paul Ireland makes the film slower, duller and grittier than it should have been, making it difficult to remain interested in what’s happening before the precipitating burst of violence. While the glimpse at an Australian housing project can be interesting at times, Measure for Measure doesn’t manage to use its elements effectively, and the result is surprisingly forgettable.

  • The Lost Daughter (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2022) Slow-moving psychological dramas aren’t my style, and The Lost Daughter tested me. The first film written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal (working from a novel) is about motherhood but not the kind of stereotypical motherhood held up as ideal. No, in this case we follow the summertime adventures of an accomplished academic as she experiences the lifestyle of the Greek island she’s visiting, and flashes back to her own progressively unhappy experiences as a young woman. Olivia Coleman stars and features a typically finely honed performance, alongside such notables as Dakota Johnson, Ed Harris, and Peter Sarsgaard. From a certain viewpoint, The Lost Daughter is a successful film: it’s generally well directed, offers a strong showcase for its actors and delves into unconventional topics that are not seldom tackled. But the same film excels in a very specific niche that may not appeal widely: it’s slow-moving, and showcases a rather unlikable protagonist while remaining uninterested in any kind of moral condemnation or celebration. Much of the action being an internal character study, it’s not a film made for suspense or action. And then there’s the Hollywood-dynasty pedigree of its writer-director. In other words—you can see exactly how the film would appeal to critics and the Academy and understand why it ended up with a very long list of accolades—including three Oscar nominations. That doesn’t make it a crowd-pleaser, though: The Lost Daughter’s glum, unsentimental, naturalistic style takes patience and a specific kind of mood to appreciate.

  • Gun Hill (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2022) In theory, there’s enough good stuff in Gun Hill’s premise to make the film viable as good evening entertainment. In practice, though, this BET original film quickly reverts to the dull routine of such low-budget made-for-TV movies. The hook here is the idea of twin brothers on opposite sides of the law, with one of them taking the other’s identity when he’s killed. Writer-director Reggie Rock Bythewood should have been able to parlay this premise (along with a rather good double turn from Larenz Tate) into a compelling result. But the result is held back by a few things—most notably the requirement for being a pilot for a later series that never materialized, hence dangling subplots not properly resolved. (BET did the same thing with the even-more-frustrating Sacrifice, except it did lead to a TV show.)  The low budget doesn’t allow for many flourishes, and the “BET house-style” is usually synonymous with amateurish screenwriting. Gun Hill suffers from all of this, but fares even worse in the dullness of its execution: it rarely rises above mediocrity in terms of viewing interest, and it’s a measure of how thoroughly it squanders its assets that by the film it springs a surprise revelation right before ending, most viewers are liable to shrug for utter lack of caring. Too bad, really—I still think a much better film could have come out of this.

  • The White Tiger (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, July 2022) I’ve seen more than a few reviews comparing The White Tiger to Slumdog Millionaire, which initially feels like a cheap comparison. After all, it’s not because you’ve got two western-produced rags-to-riches movies set in India that they are the same—you could argue that it’s an act of western imperialism to conflate films based on mere setting, and that’s before even getting into the vitality of the Indian film industries, or the bewildering diversity of India by itself. But despite first instincts, there is an interesting point of opposition between two films, one that has a lot to say about the way western filmmakers/studios/audiences/reviewers perceive films in so-called exotic (ack, ptui) contexts. The White Tiger, at a very superficial glance, does seem to typify the kind of story that audiences crave: how a promising young man rises through a stratified society to become his own boss, acquiring riches along the way. Entire genres of American literature have been built on such narratives. Who doesn’t love an underdog? But from the very first moments of the film (which is framed as a letter from our protagonist to the visiting Chinese Prime Minister), something feels off—and the rest of the film all leads to a conclusion that trashes the usual standards of decency, eventually flaunting its transgressions as a demonstration that the future does not belong to the honourable white man. It gets very, very dark, and in a way that has far more to do with sociopathic glorifications of hustling than the Horatio Alger plucky-young-man-does-good literary archetype. The tone is deeply cynical to the point where the film (adapted from a similarly caustic novel) doesn’t really go for outright moral condemnation. If the future does belong to those ready to kill in order to succeed, perhaps everyone else should stay in the coop where life is predictable and usually bearable. It does (or doesn’t?) help that the film is slickly executed by screenwriter-director Ramin Bahrani—grittily portraying a slice of Indian life over the past few decades with a minimum of sentimentality and plenty of jaundice. It’s disturbing if you dig into its amoral core, and as such offers quite a contrast to Slumdog Millionaire: it’s not sweet, not romantic (almost anti-romantic, in fact), and definitely not honourable. For western viewers, it presents a conundrum about expectations—is it a realistic reminder that “the other,” in reclaiming a multipolar world, is not beholden to hypocritical standards of western morality? Or does it skirt racist agitprop by demonstrating how “the other” will not be stopped by the niceties held as ideal by western movies? Maybe both, maybe neither: the unfortunate byproduct of adapting one of tens-of-thousands of novels into one-of-dozens prestige films (especially in a rarefied area such as “western films about India”) is that the film acquires the force of a geopolitical statement that the novel is not really built for. Far more people will ever see The White Tiger than will read it, and far more opinion pieces will be written about it as well.

  • Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, Laurie Woolever

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ecco, 2021, 442 pages, C$36.99, ISBN 978-0-06-290910-7

    I don’t usually go for celebrity worship, and most obituaries of public figures don’t create as much grief for me as for others. Let’s keep parasocial relationships in perspective: Someone I don’t even know dies? Well, that’s terrible. They will be missed, and my sympathies go to those who knew them. But I usually won’t make much of a fuss on social media or otherwise.

    But Anthony Bourdain’s death in 2018? That was another story. It hit much harder. Yes, I react more to writers dying than other types of celebrities—the consequence of being a big reader from childhood on. But even then: Bourdain, man… Just click on his name tag below this review and you’ll understand why I held him in such high esteem.

    It wasn’t just his death, it was the manner of his death: suicide, hanging himself while he was out travelling and recording another episode of his exceptional TV series. Right after getting his heart broken by none other than actress Asia Argento. For someone who exuded as much sheer joie de vivre as him, writing hard-hitting books that celebrated life as much as food, it seemed incomprehensible. Or rather, as incomprehensible as anyone we don’t really know—depression is a dangerous head-mate, and even the most authentic of celebrities never fully reveal themselves to their audiences.

    Apparently, I wasn’t the only one struggling to come up with an answer. Three years later, Bourdain’s life is now the topic of a documentary film, Roadrunner, and an oral biography assembled by one of Bourdain’s editors. (An unauthorized biography is also reportedly just around the corner.)

    Can an answer be found in Laurie Woolever’s Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography? Well, yes, somewhat. Among many other things.

    While I don’t think that oral biographies can fully replace a knowledgeable biographer, they have their own specific place in allowing knowledgeable friends and family members to tell their perspective. The role of the oral biographer is to cull everything into a coherent whole, preferably one that flows well from one intervention to another.

    So, we find in the list of interviewees an impressive selection of family members, celebrities who regularly interacted with Bourdain, companions-in-arms of his earlier ventures, and other people with stories to tell. One of the most interesting contributors, for instance, is Anderson Cooper, who shares a few memories of working with Bourdain, but also his own reflections on the difficult relationship anyone can have with celebrity, and what remains when the cameras are turned off and you end up alone in a hotel room far from home.

    Arranged mostly in chronological order, the biography takes us through the familiar beats of Bourdain’s life, but in greater detail than I’ve seen in any other form—including Bourdain’s own writings. Special attention must be paid to the years during which a younger Bourdain lived fast and hard in New York City streets—cooking with a rogue gallery of miscreants, doing drugs, unsuccessfully trying to become a published writer, and hardly thinking about the long term. Bourdain, not to mince words, was an addict, did bad things and, frankly, did not expect to live much longer.

    Keep that in mind, because that’s probably the key to the rest of the story. Unlike many cooks and addicts who burn out early, Bourdain found an unlikely second act as a celebrity food writer, and then became a TV show host, his celebrity exploding far beyond that would have been reserved for him as even a best-selling writer. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Bourdain’s ascension into pop culture became a lifeline—that if it had not taken place, what ended up happening would have happened earlier.

    None of this is comfort for those who miss him, for the family and friends he leaves behind, and for those who would just like another book, another column, or another episode. But it does make everything just a bit more understandable.

    It’s not a perfect oral biography, though—while Woolever does great work conducting interviews and whipping them up into a coherent whole, she should have intervened more often to establish context and smooth over some of the transitions. Even for Bourdain fans, it’s not a given that every facet of his public life is familiar, and there are junctures in which even a line or two of context would have been very helpful.

    If you’re wondering how this oral biography compares to the documentary Roadrunner, rest assured that the portrait is very similar—after all, more or less the same people are interviewed for both. But while the documentary manipulated a few things for dramatic effect, and restrained itself from casting blame on Argento, the book is both far more detailed and less coy about its conclusions, with several interviewees squarely pointing a finger at Argento’s actions. On the other hand, many of the most informative sound-bites come from the film—David Chang’s reminder that “at the end of the day, Tony’s dark as f-ck, man” or David Choe’s “I mean, he ran for a long time, but you’re not gonna outsmart pain” encapsulates a lot about Bourdain in a few words. And you can understand how people would be harsh on him—his self-destruction left behind a large production crew in an abominable situation and, unforgivably, a young daughter.

    If you’re looking for a definite answer about why, you won’t get it. But the elements of a credible answer are there—his own personality and temperament, his increasingly ambivalent relationship with fame, and the Argento breakup that clearly had a huge influence. Blend all of this together, peek behind the scenes of glamour, remind yourself that depression isn’t rational, and what happened is what happened.

    The whole thing makes for bittersweet reading, as with any raucous wake: we get many more anecdotes of just how cool, how passionate, how literate, and how friendly Bourdain could be, but we do so knowing that he is no longer with us. As far as epitaphs go, however, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography is a far better one than most. You get Bourdain at a remove, but you get more of him for just a while longer.

  • Crawler (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Given my laughable credentials as a film reviewer, my connections to the film industry are tenuous, outdated and almost entirely tied to the French-Canadian market. One of the particularities in reviewing the little-known, little-seen horror film Crawler is that I remember attending a few Montréal-area genre conventions alongside its writer-director S. V. Bell back in the late 1990s – I don’t recall interacting with him, but I’m reasonably sure we were in the same room together a few times. But anyway – Crawler is a low-budget Québec-made horror film that clearly apes Stephen King’s films of the 1980s – mysterious not-really-explained horror taking the form of a bulldozer that kills people. But not in the way you imagine – sure, that bulldozer crawls over a few people, but it also hosts various horrors of imaginary, tentacular and ichorific forms. All of this to say – it doesn’t end well for most of the construction crew around the bulldozer. What’s perhaps most remarkable about this clearly low-end production is how sunny and colourful it often is, with much of the action taking place on a rural construction site with bright yellows, greens and blues. Some of the practical special effects are not bad when graded against their 1980s inspirations. The acting is not so good, but as with the rest of the film… I’ve seen worse. You’ll have to work overtime to see Crawler: shown at Fantasia 2009 but otherwise not theatrically screened, currently unavailable on physical media and streaming media, the film briefly popped up on French-Canadian horror channel Frissons TV as part of their occasional unearthing of obscure local genre films. The amusing thing is that it’s better than much of what else plays on the channel!

  • The Lineup (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) I know that most people (especially those who haven’t discovered the joys of Classic Hollywood) refer to “old movies” as if that was a damning epithet by itself — as if newer movies were automatically better, or maybe that all movies become steadily worse as soon as they’re released in an echo of new cars driving off the dealership. But even letting slide the idea that great movies are timeless; that this attitude reflects the power of crass marketing making you crave new movies; that all movies appeal to a fundamental human condition… the truth is more complicated. Some very ordinary films can be appreciated in time for mirroring their era, making them special decades after they were commonplace and unremarkable. Maybe they innovate with things that have since become more obvious, maybe they show images that would be impossible to capture today. I’m not going to point at The Lineup and say that it’s an ordinary film that has become great while we weren’t looking. But I will suggest that, in presenting a thriller set against the backdrop of late-1950s San Francisco, it shows a unique glimpse at the city as it existed then, with landmarks now gone or altered. I will rally to the opinion that it features one of the most intense car chases made during the 1950s. I’ll point to its director, Don Seigel, as historically important considering that he’d go on to direct films such as Dirty Harry -also set in San Francisco- and mentor Clint Eastwood. None of these reasons elevate The Lineup over what it is – a competent thriller featuring psychopaths going after an innocent woman and her daughter. But they do manage to make this film better now than in 1958 – a classic case of film as a time capsule.

  • Illicit (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2022) Please forgive me if I get some of Illicit’s details wrong – I’m writing this review only a few days after seeing the film, but already it’s blurring into an indistinct morass of very, very similar black-cast infidelity dramas also broadcast on BET. Let me check the plot summary for details – oh yes: a parole officer and a model-turned-housewife are a few years into their marriage, so both decide on their own to start an affair. The hallmarks of a BET infidelity drama are all there, except for the slightly different ending: attractive cast (which is more than half my justification for watching — Michele Weaver looks fantastic in curls and glasses), lingerie scenes, appearances by patron saints of straight-to-BET movies Vivica A. Fox and Essence Atkins, and plotting so wonky that I’m not sure the filmmakers were working with adult supervision. Aside from attractive actresses, what keeps me coming back to BET films is the delicious sense that their movies are not slick or particularly competent: their storytelling mistakes are so confoundingly inept that they feel like fresh air in a world of overengineered filmmaking. In Illicit’s case, for instance, it means setting up the two adulterous relationships, then slowly cranking up the pressure on both partners until they’re blackmailed, revealing the connections between the various characters, getting all of them in the same place and threatening to blow all the secrets wide open… then walking away from the whole potential climax. Both husbands and wife end their affairs. No serious consequences. Never mind the blackmail that seemed so urgent ten minutes earlier. Roll credits. Who ever thought this was a good finale, ready to air? Even the most twisted “subvert all expectations” fan would find this unacceptable. In the end, films like Illicit have this bizarre blend of crowd-pleasing titillation (yet with nothing more explicit than lingerie), conservative morality (affairs are bad!), stupid characters (you would think parole officers would know not to mess with parolees), straight-ahead basic filmmaking (don’t go looking for directorial style from writer-director Corey Grant!), low-budget expediency and yet an embarrassing amount of rookie mistakes that stop the entire thing from being enjoyable as more than a catalogue of things not to do. I still liked Illicit, maybe in part because of its faults, but would it be too much to ask for a conventionally good film of that ilk once in a while?

  • Ging chaat goo si 4: Gaan dan yam mo [Police Story 4: First Strike] (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, June 2022) Jackie Chan goes from Hong Kong cop to international secret agent in Police Story 4: First Strike – such a change of pace that the film was marketed in North America as its own standalone film. I actually saw it in theatres back then, a month or two before I started reviewing every film I saw on this web site, but I still had to watch a few minutes of First Strike before confirming that, yes, I had already seen it. (Chan’s koala briefs was the thing that made me go from “this is familiar” to “yup, seen it.”)  This lack of certitude about whether this was a first or second viewing is not a reflection on the quality of the film – almost any Jackie Chan film from his golden period (roughly 1978–1998) is guaranteed to be comic Kung fu entertainment worth seeing on its own, but there are so many of them that anyone may be unsure which one it is. First Strike is “the stepladder one” – because, after some lengthy throat-clearing that humorously shows Chan in the middle of a Bond-like international adventure going from Hong Kong to Ukraine to Australia, the film really finds its usual footing in a terrific athletic sequence in which Chan uses a stepladder to defend himself from attackers. It’s a sequence as good as any other Chan showpiece, with an incredible integration of environmental elements to enliven great stunts – an exceptional showcase of Chan’s team approach to blocking a scene from scene elements and riffing ever-crazier action beats from what’s available. The comedy is the usual for Chan – an innocuous blend of an incredible athlete’s self-deprecation and family-friendly action. First Strike amounts to a film that sits solidly in Chan’s middle-tier filmography – not a classic, but a respectable, solid entry that showcases him doing what only he could do.

  • The Big Cube (1969)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) If you ever wanted to experience a late-1960s soap opera-style drug melodrama, then The Big Cube is your otherwise indescribable pick for the evening. Headlined by Lana Turner, the film was shot in Mexico and heightens its inheritance-thriller foundation with LSD-infused sequences. Turner plays a widowed actress gaslit by her stepdaughter and no-good boyfriend through drug ingestion and spooky recordings at night. The same drug-less plot would have been perfectly viable Hollywood fare in earlier decades, but this being the late 1960s, we get a lot of LSD talk and semi-trippy visuals as bonuses. Turner here turns in one last role for the big studios, while George Chakiris is deliciously slimy as a deceptive LSD-dealing medical student. The Big Cube often feels like a period case study of how pre-New Hollywood desperately tried reheating old formulas with new 1960s elements – there’s a comfort in well-worn plotting, with a spicy dare of the forbidden in roundly denouncing drugs. Not necessarily a classic, but something that has some interest even today.

  • Skidoo (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Some movies end in elation, others in disappointment, many more without making much of an impact and a few in flabbergasted perplexity. Skidoo goes straight in that last category, because the most likely response to making it to this film’s end credits is an awed “…what?”  It’s blindingly from 1968 – calling it “dated” is like dismissing a calendar of previous years, so clearly does it present a (satirical) picture of what the late 1960s must have felt like to older adults at the time. Directed by renowned iconoclast Otto Preminger, the film sets up an old-Hollywood archetype in the form of ultraconservative gangsters, set against the then-weirdness of the hippie youth lifestyle. Drugs prominently feature in the storyline, and so do about a dozen well-known comedians: If you want to see Groucho Marx’s last film role, it’s right here alongside such notables as Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Burgess Meredith, Peter Lawford, Cesar Romero, Slim Pickens and Mickey Rooney – some of these actors in featured roles, others in cameos. This is a big-budget comedy from beginning to end, with decent production values and an end-credit sequence that is not only illustrated, but sung through (!) with relevant lyrics. Alas, comedy isn’t universal, and there’s a reason why Skidoo is often regarded as the worst in Preminger’s filmography: it’s awkward and reactionary, two words that seldom applied to Preminger’s earlier films. But let’s face it: he wasn’t much of a comedian, and he was definitely too old (in his mid-sixties) to reflect anything but bemusement at youth culture and the promotion of LSD as world-peace instrument. The result, ironically, doesn’t reflex late-1960s youth culture as much as it feels like a contemporary parody of the late 1960s. Yes, I would argue that Skidoo has aged rather well in this regard: it’s probably funnier now with ironic distance than it was upon release. That doesn’t make it a great movie still – but I can think of a few good reasons why it’s worth a look for anyone even remotely aware and interested in late-1960s Hollywood and how it was trying to figure out the social changes that were underway. The result? Unique.