Reviews

  • Running Out of Time (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) In watching Running Out of Time, I think I’m closing the filmography of writer-director Chris Stokes’s feature-film work for the BET channel. I’ve written elsewhere of my growing awareness of Stokes as a filmmaker and my ongoing disappointment in his work, but I have to admit that Running Out of Time is a high note. While he’s still riffing off a very familiar concept—this time around, a home invasion in which our characters are threatened by bad guys about a secret they don’t know about—, there’s some welcome effectiveness to the opening half of the film. None of it is subtle and some of it borders on overdone, such as the voice of one of the masked antagonists. Much of Running Out of Time is predictable—the mid-turn twist isn’t impressive, and there’s a sense that (as in other Stokes films) the screenplay is simply playing with big broad ideas while not having much to say on its own. Things decline throughout the third act, especially as the action moves outside the house, breaks the tight spatial unity of the story, and steadily dissipates to be replaced with increasingly cheaper attempts to ape better films. The epilogue is baffling—fast-forwarding a few months later for nothing more than a coup de grace that could have been administered earlier and with much less fuss. (So how did she get that top-secret assassination device? There’s an entirely other film in that.)  Tasha Smith looks great, walks around in lingerie but doesn’t have much of a character (not, apparently, much in terms of directing attention) to get into. Running Out of Time is, to be clear, not that good. But when put against other Stokes films for BET, it’s slightly tighter, slightly less ridiculous, slightly more effective. It’s still a significant notch below comparable thrillers, but it’s not as terrible as it could have been.

  • Down to Their Last Yacht (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Probably the most interesting thing about Down to Their Last Yacht is that it’s one of a surprisingly small number of films from the 1930s to acknowledge the Great Depression—were you to see films from that period without knowing better, you would be convinced that it was a decade of prosperity in which the main topic of discussion among Manhattan elites was marriage and remarriage. But this acknowledgement of financial problems remains the pretext for comedy: Here, a family of formerly rich socialites is reduced to renting their yacht to richer families. But that only leads the film to its second half, as a charter cruise is interrupted by running aground on a deserted island and a primitive tribe ran by a lovesick white queen. (This somehow happens within sailing distance of New York City but never mind because the film doesn’t.)  It’s all rather dull, unfortunately. Even the somewhat racist last half of the film fails to register as offensive because it’s so dull. The singing and dancing are wasted, failing to lift this up. It’s not exactly bad—there are a few one-liners, a gruff performance from Ned Sparks, a bit of interest in seeing the depiction of fallen riches… but it’s really nowhere near what it could have been. At least Down to Their Last Yacht doesn’t really outstay its welcome at barely 64 minutes.

  • Les maîtres du suspense [The Masters of Suspense] (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) As someone with a much-better-than-average knowledge of the French-Canadian book publishing scene (some of my best friends are best-selling authors), there’s an additional fun factor in watching the comedy of Les maîtres du suspense and measuring it against the dull reality of a novelist’s life. Our characters are not the well-adjusted, slightly introverted writers I know—they’re either a womanizing celebrity with a lasting writer’s block, a slightly-unhinged ghost writer confronted with divorce, or an exuberant man-child with an outsized storytelling talent. The plot gets going when an editor’s increasingly insistent requests to see a new manuscript force the celebrity thriller author to ask his usual ghostwriter to get to work, except that this ghostwriter is so drained by his ongoing divorce that he ends up farming the novel to a neighbourhood daycare worker. It’s all good for a few chuckles: Michel Côté is his usual dependable self as Quebec’s foremost leading man, while everyone else does their part in keeping the film going. Writer-director Stéphane Lapointe doesn’t completely control his material, though: A third act set in La Nouvelle Orléans shifts the tone of a largely domestic comedy into something weirder and certainly more expensive, with little impact. Sure, there’s more colour to the film—but it doesn’t necessarily help the film confront its themes, and it leads to a conclusion that’s as disappointing as it perpetuates bothersome myths about novelists. (Having the protagonist “triumph” by writing… an autobiography is really not closing the loop on his inability to write fiction that precipitated the entire film.)  There’s metafictional material about a film shoot (adapted from his novels) that doesn’t really pay off other than providing a love interest to the protagonist, and the film’s comedy is simply not wild enough to accommodate the sort-of-serious issues raised by the film’s plot turns. There are many ways the same premise could have been spun, but the result seems stuck between those possibilities, awkwardly unable to really dive into the material. A disappointment more than a failure, Les maîtres du suspense is readily watchable, but doesn’t leave much of an impression. Although it is considerably funnier when you know how writing a novel works.

  • Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) While not personally directed by Tyler Perry, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is clearly a Perry movie, and his first as well—he wrote it, and makes his big-screen debut(s) as a lawyer, an elderly man and Madea herself. The film comes straight from his prior theatrical experience and box-office receipts—Perry’s life and rise to notoriety will one day be the topic of a movie, and I expect that this film will be a major turning point. It certainly exhibits in even rawer form than usual the trademarks of Perry’s later career: the brute-force melodramatic style of his movies, the awkward blend of funny and serious scenes, the role of spirituality, the earnest romantic material, the importance he places on female characters, and—most strikingly of all—the place that his Madea character would occupy in his work. As the film begins, our narrator (a rich, pampered wife of a respected lawyer) finds herself kicked to the curb in an absurdly over-the-top sequence in which her belongings are stuffed in a moving van, her husband’s side-chick moves in her formerly palatial house (along with two mentioned-but-never-seen kids) and she finds herself abruptly homeless on their 18th wedding anniversary. Seeking refuge with Madea launches the Madeaverse in a broader sense, and leads to the film’s funniest sequence in which Madea goes for some tough-love chainsaw-powered retribution (which then, less joyously, results in the first of her many skirmishes with the law). The rest of Diary of a Mad Black Woman goes high and low in the search for self-fulfillment and forgiveness of its main character—and she’s certainly not portrayed as a saint considering that some of the third-act wild turns have her become an abuser. There’s some great material here, although it’s presented in very raw form: While Darren Grant directs efficiently, this is Perry’s show—the story often can’t focus, goes through wild mood swings, does not deal in execution subtleties even when it tackles challenging material, and does offer decent showcases for its actors. Kimberly Elise is not bad in the lead role, while Steve Harris does get some rough material to play as her near-ex-husband. Cicely Tyson appears for a few scenes as the protagonist’s mother, foreshadowing Perry’s gift for casting great actors in later films. Diary of a Mad Black Woman probably plays better now than it did in 2005—Perry is now a known quality and a certifiable success, so this works better as a piece of juvenilia than a calling card for a new talent. If you’re a fan of the Madeaverse, it’s decent-enough entertainment: at least you know what flaws to expect.

  • 3 Godfathers (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) While the 1948 colour version of 3 Godfathers is relatively well-known, I chose to watch it as the second film of a double bill with the earlier version of the same story—the 1936 version of Three Godfathers. Maybe I shouldn’t have, because I found myself liking the 1936 version more than the better-known one. Of course, there’s a reason why the 1948 version is the better-known—it’s directed by John Ford, with John Wayne in the lead role and colour cinematography to make it pop. It simply plays better nowadays. Unfortunately, which the premise of the story remains the same (three criminals on the run encounter a dying woman and her baby in the middle of the desert, only to swear to her that they’ll bring the infant to safety), this later version is considerably toned-down from the previous one. John Wayne being John Wayne, his character is made to be much nicer: Not as much of a scoundrel, not a killer, barely a thief. He, significantly, makes it alive to the end of the film. This version does restructure the opening act of the film to be focused on the three godfathers rather than the small-town citizens, providing a contrast to them in the previous version: a far more defendable choice in terms of dramatic unity, but one that does make the film less interesting. Colour cinematography has its advantages, but this post-war version does put far emphasis on the parallels between the three godfathers and the story of the nativity, all the way to a blatant visual comparison. It’s still not a bad film—the central conflict is quite unlike most westerns, and uses the setting as an obstacle rather than a justification by itself—but comparing 3 Godfathers shows how much better it could have been.

  • Three Godfathers (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) While probably best remembered as the precursor to the 1948 feature film starring John Wayne, this earlier version of Three Godfathers (the fifth of seven recognized adaptations of the original novel) does have a few interesting features compared to the later, better-known version. It starts with a rather long prologue in which the three titular men are introduced against a backdrop of civilization. From their interactions with citizens of a small town in the American west, it’s clear that the protagonists are scum—a liar, a cheat, a thief and a killer. The story gets going after the gang of three completes a bank robbery and goes off in the desert, where they find a dying woman and her baby. Tasked with bringing the baby to safety, they find themselves in desperate circumstances, miles away from water and civilization. Much of the film is an elimination contest, as those bad men (headlined by Chester Morris, Lewis Stone, and Walter Brennan) sacrifice themselves to save their charge, all the way to a melodramatic and rather satisfying finale. While not without lulls and technical limitations, I found this version of the story far more satisfying than the watered-down 1948 version that I saw immediately after this one. (I also attempted to record Hell’s Heroes, an earlier version of the story, for a triple bill… but the DVR ate it.)  It’s got a better redemption arc, more interesting material in the prologue and an unspectacular black-and-white cinematography that focuses more on the moralistic aspects of the tale than its place as a western.

  • Together Together (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2020) There is a point in Together Together where I realized that the awkwardness of the opening moments of the film was going to be like that for its entirety. That what I took in as throat-clearing and prologue was, in fact, the main feature. That it was never going to actually begin, because it had already begun. There’s a specific kind of mixture between humour and uneasiness that I don’t find particularly palatable, and writer-director Nikole Beckwith squarely makes this the predominant tone of her film. Scene after scene of people feeling uncomfortable, exchanging awkward dialogue, poking and prodding at an unusual situation by deliberately drawing out everything that’s meant to be off-putting about it. I can recognize that it’s good at what it does: in chronicling the relationship between a single forty-something man and the unusual twentysomething woman acting as a surrogate mother for his child, Together Together upends nearly everything that Hollywood has offered as a portrait of pregnancy. There’s no doubt that the two characters are destined for greater intimacy throughout the entire film, but at the same time the tone of the film makes it clear that a conventionally happy ending is never going to be in the cards. (Indeed, the film just… ends.)  I went through Together Together experiencing the equivalent of a big shrug: I can see how it’s being provocative, but I don’t really care.

  • Eat Pray Love (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2020) It’s amazing/amusing to see that film criticism can simultaneously process the idea that cinema’s highest calling can be to make us empathize with different lives, while at the same time making the (often unstated) determination that some lifestyles are more respectable than others. Being practised by generally urbane, progressive, cynical, in-the-know commentators (formerly majorly male, although that’s thankfully changing), film criticism will privilege the hip, the foreign, the sarcastic but find itself ill-equipped to talk about a different set of values. At least that’s what comes to mind after watching Eat Pray Love and taking a look at its critical reaction. The general reaction was to dismiss the film as self-centred claptrap, and there’s some justification for that assessment. After all, the film is about a woman abandoning a comfortable life out of a vague sense of anomie, then travelling the world to find contentment. Of course, this worldwide tour goes for Italy (Eating), India (Praying) and Indonesia (Loving)—I’m not seeing ordinary places such as Rimouski on the list. Unlike other people with actual problems, our protagonist is just… bored. Aimless. Privileged enough to just think that something is off. So going off to hobnob with American theatre actors, Italian pasta-makers, Indian girls in arranged marriages and Brazilian businessmen is just what’s great for a movie travelogue. (Better yet: the protagonist is played by Julia Roberts and she’s supported by actors such as James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis and, to top it off, Javier Bardem as the ultimate dreamboat.)  The film is adapted from a memoir that’s self-consciously showy and the film follows in the footsteps of that intention. (I recommend reading up about author Elizabeth Gilbert in context — “Eat Pray Love” is not the biggest event in the life of an ordinary person as much as a middle chapter in the life of someone living for attention). I found it far more interesting as a fantasy for middle-aged women: what if you could just leave everything behind, travel to picturesque locations, eat as much as you wanted, act as a compassionate figure for exotic people, sleep with a succession of seductive men before settling on a rich one and, best of all, give the impression that you’re on a journey of self-actualization by doing all of that? I hope I’m not coming across as merely sounding sarcastic, because I am, in fact, being very sarcastic. At the same time, though, I can recognize and appreciate that Eat Pray Love is worth quite a bit of attention as a lavish big-budget fantasy for an audience that may not recognize themselves in other Hollywood power fantasies, especially at an age of superhero box-office domination. Movie reviewers have a point when they talk about the film’s self-centredness, but at the same time, I’m not sure they’re able to appreciate films when they work on the level of someone else’s fantasy—particularly not the kind of middle-aged white women who want nothing to do with movie critics.

  • My Online Valentine (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) There’s a charming quasi homegrown quality to My Online Valentine that makes it hard to resist, even when it’s demonstrably toward the bottom of the cinematic barrel. As a modern romantic comedy, it’s rarely less than likable even when it’s preposterous or meaningless: As the story of a young woman meeting a young man through a dating application, it’s both modern and traditional. The stakes are low, and the complications are contrived: should she accept her no-good ex-boyfriend’s attempts at reconciliation when she’s just met a hot new prospect? Obviously, no, but then there wouldn’t be much of a story considering how thin the plot already is. There’s plenty of wish-fulfillment here: our female lead is an attractive food blogger, while the male protagonist is a successful entrepreneur with chiselled abs. Shirtless scenes provide eye-candy for female viewers, while Taja V. Simpson and Laila Odom are effortlessly attractive to men. Still, there are plenty of shortcuts and missed opportunities in the way this low-budget small-cast film is put together: the stock footage of Houston is interesting at first, then repetitive and annoying the more the same shots are re-used. There are some significant, almost amateurish issues with the sound mixing, to the point of background noise changing between shots and dialogue muffled by static—surely a little bit of ADR would have helped. The narrative density of the film is surprisingly low, with meandering dialogue filling up the gap. The film is also surprisingly serious for such a lighthearted affair, to the point of barely qualifying as a comedy. This being said, I understand the budgetary constraints—My Online Valentine feels like a family affair, considering the title card featuring four producers with the same family name as the director, the tiny cast, static camera setups and a handful of locations—I would be surprised if the film’s budget reached the seven figures. But what works are the actors—not necessarily gifted thespians, but easy to like and reasonably interesting to listen to. Some clunky dialogue along the way takes a backseat to a crucially good scene of reconciliation that feels real and ends the film on a very good note. Romantic comedies don’t need to be all that well-made if they manage to succeed in the critical areas: you like the characters, you want them to end up together… and they do.

  • Always and Forever (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) I don’t exactly enjoy recognizing writer-director Chris Stokes’ name, nor having a (relatively low) opinion of his cinematic body of work, but the truth is that I’ve been watching a lot of BET original movies lately and he’s one of their go-to directors. After watching no less than six of his films in short order, I can say that he’s not always a bad director, but he doesn’t do very well under budgetary constraints—especially in the more demanding suspense genre. His comedies (Fall Girls, Swag Inc.) are better than his thrillers (Til Death Do Us Part, We Belong Together), where his limits as a screenwriter become more obvious. Still, his work fits well within the BET house brand of thrillers, that is: female-centric suspense films playing with familiar tropes often blended in wild ways. The specifics of the plot, the staging or the dialogue aren’t as important as delivering cheap thrills on a small budget. In this regard, Always and Forever is exactly what BET or BET’s viewers expect from a Stokes film: Attractive female lead put in danger, with a wild “twist” both ludicrous and predictable. The specifics in this instance are that a young lawyer (the beautiful Cynthia Addai-Robinson) finds herself in the middle of a dangerous situation when her childhood friends all start dying in mysterious ways. We, as viewers, having been teased with flashback scenes to her teenage years spent tormenting a pudgy young man, suspect that there’s a revenge story at play. It’s ridiculously easy to guess who’s the bad guy, so I suppose there’s some comfort in knowing where the story is going, despite the supposedly intelligent protagonist not having a clue. It escalates to a familiar place—a moonlit deserted summer camp where she and the killer go head-to-head, with the cavalry (a surprisingly intense Wood Harris) not far behind. Much of Always and Forever is simply preposterous, and that’s well before (and after) the Big Twist we’re not supposed to see coming: characters act in contrived ways more useful to the clunky plotting than anything else. (Such as leaving a gun on the ground so that the villain can then pick it up.)  Weird things only make sense in retrospect when they justify later plot points. Don’t ask questions about what’s not expressly shown on-screen (such as an entire murder trial where you would think a defence lawyer would do their job and expose The Twist) and especially do not ask yourself why the villain would hatch such a convoluted and insanely risky decade-long revenge. “He’s a psycho, that’s why” is an uncommonly frequent justification in the Stokes oeuvre. Still, I am now consciously seeking Stokes movies to watch and there’s got to be a reason for it: he is, for lack of a better word, an interesting filmmaker. His scripts are case studies of what not to do and his direction labours under budgetary constraints. But he’s got an eye for attractive actresses, he delivers wild material without even acknowledging its preposterousness and his movies have this strange mixture of narrative rhythm and plot problems that make them fun to dissect. No wonder I can’t stop watching his movies and writing about them.

  • Trauma (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) There are a few reasons why Trauma feels like an odd duck in the Dario Argento filmography, the biggest being that it’s clearly shot in the United States (Minneapolis, specifically). It also feels curiously restrained by Argento’s standards, the writer-director going for a more suspenseful, less gory approach in his bid to approach the American market. This being said, “Restrained by Argento’s standards” is a very relative thing when the film is a slasher movie with a psychopath running around with a decapitating device. There’s some noteworthiness in having Argento direct daughter Asia Argento in a leading role, although more questions are raised than answered when she (a teenager as of filming) ends up in a topless scene. The rest of Trauma is more annoying than anything else—it’s a slasher without the over-the-top nature of Argento’s best work, the final revelations are preposterous and the film errs into unintentional comedy far too often. Add to that the throwaway nature of slashers and there’s not much left to recommend here. At best, Trauma is a curio featuring the Argentos in America. At worse, it will put you to sleep so thoroughly that you’ll end up watching the ending twice.

  • The Kindness of Strangers (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2022) Prepare for misery as you approach The Kindness of Strangers, an ensemble drama that nonetheless focuses on the torrent of pain, fear, danger, humiliation and precarity experienced by a young mother and her two sons as they seek to escape their abusive husband/father by running away to Manhattan. Their journey takes them as far down in society as anyone would imagine, but by the end of the film they’re able to bond with people ready to help them. (Plus, a violent action from the antagonist that ensures that even he, as a cop, is put away for a long time.)  There are many noble intentions here, whether it’s rooting for a vulnerable woman and her kids, or trying to portray the web of interactions that becomes necessary to offer help to someone in need. Unfortunately, The Kindness of Strangers often feels like a mechanical exercise. An international production where simply figuring out the country of origin is an adventure, writer-director Lone Scherfig’s film feels pulled and pushed in various directions so frequently that, by the time we’re done, nothing remains except platitudes and easy decisions. The ensemble cast is not bad—Zoe Kazan does make for a likable protagonist, Andrea Riseborough remains intriguing throughout, Bill Nighy plays to his strengths as a sympathetic but somewhat befuddled figure and Jay Baruchel makes the most out of a supporting character. Still, it feels rote, arbitrary, overly manipulative and yet not terribly effective at it. In other words, The Kindness of a Strangers often feels like a slog that doesn’t lead anywhere interesting. Sure, things get better for the characters—but in a film where the interconnection between strangers is supposed to be an important thematic element, it falters when it comes to the moment to make a point. Not worth a look considering much stronger films dealing with similar issues.

  • Tintin et les oranges bleues [Tintin and the Blue Oranges] (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Fourth or fifth viewing, On TV, January 2022) As someone who grew up on Tintin albums and whatever movies were re-run on over-the-air TV, there’s quite a bit of nostalgia in revisiting Tintin et les oranges bleues after a few decades. I still remembered bits and pieces of the film, but not enough to make this a repetitive experience. It’s not bad—the visual similarities to the comic book are astonishing, and the sense of adventure in mid-1960s Spain makes for a strong atmosphere. (Alas, the version still broadcast on French-Canadian TV channels is faded and dull—I’m told there’s a more recent restoration, but this wasn’t it.)  But while this second live-action Tintin film has a few fun gadgets, stunts and characters and was probably my favourite growing up thanks to the focus on Professeur Tournesol, I now like the previous live-action film (Tintin et la toison d’or) a bit more due to its sense of adventure. Oh well—I’m not sure how much of Tintin et les oranges bleues holds up for modern kids who haven’t mainlined the albums yet: it suspects that the decrepit, gritty, almost disreputable cinematography doesn’t help, nor the rather strong stereotypes about the Arabic characters. For me, though, it’s quite a bit of fun and a welcome excuse to revisit a film I saw a few times as a kid.

  • Balto (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2022) Fans of Jack London’s Call of the Wild will feel in familiar territory in Balto, a dog-in-Alaska story executed as a classically-drawn animated film with a live-action framing device. As far as kid-focused animal adventures go, Balto is nicely executed despite the annoyances—the blend of a rather serious story of adversity in the face of a medical delivery is sabotaged by the comic talking animals shtick that was (and remains) so prevalent in those films… Jack London it isn’t, finally. Still, the adventure can be involving, the animation is squarely in what was the norm before CGI took over, and the pacing is not bad. The framing device feels useless and the facts of the “true story” that inspired the film are to be taken with a great deal of liberty. Director Simon Wells would go on to make better (The Prince of Egypt) and so much worse (Mars Needs Moms) that we would never direct again. Balto makes for an acceptable family film today—nothing groundbreaking (the irony being that it was released the month after the epochal Toy Story, tanking its box-office) but still something reasonably entertaining, especially if dogs-in-the-wild stories are your thing.

  • Justice Society: World War II (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2022) Another six months, another direct-to-video DC animation movie. Justice Society: World War II is slightly more distinctive than most in that it takes a contemporary framing device focusing on The Flash and then jumps back in time to present an alternate take on Justice Society’s actions during World War II. I’m not always a big fan of those DC animated films—while most of them are watchable largely as background material (unimpressive animation, straightforward scripts, tepid pacing with low plotting density), the better ones are rare. While this one is not exceptional, the focus on a different cast of characters is welcome (anything with Black Canary and the newest Iris West is fine by me) and there are a few interesting details here and there—an alternate Superman as an unheroic war correspondent? Aquaman brainwashed into becoming a Nazi? Wonder Woman giving Flash a ring for his engagement to West? Not bad. Those help Justice Society: World War II into being a better-than-average entry, even though the sideshow aspect means that we’re still far from an essential.