Reviews

  • Having Wonderful Time (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Oh sure, you can go watch Having Wonderful Time, lured in by a cast that features pre-stardom Lucille Ball and Red Skelton (doing a skit about dunking donuts) supporting well-known 1930s figures such as Ginger Rogers and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. You can even be taken in by the film’s cozy setting of a mountain vacation camp, with people relaxing enough that romance blooms. But even the cast and environment can’t save the film from one fundamental flaw – it’s rather dull. Well, “mediocre” would be a better word – an undistinguishable summer-camp romance with bits of humour thrown in. Not bad (although some will find Skelton insufferable), but not really remarkable either – Rogers is nice but bland, and that applies double for Fairbanks. Even Ball is far from her later screen persona. Reading about the film reveals that it’s based on a play that took place at a Catskill resort with a largely Jewish cast of characters and – aaaah, that version of the film (even if impossible to shoot due to the censorship standards of the time) could have been much, much more interesting to watch. What we have instead is a white bread film equivalent: blandly bland stuff that’s not unpleasant, but leaves little impression.

  • Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) I’m not one for celebrity worship or performative displays of grief when a famous figure dies, but Anthony Bourdain’s suicide in 2018 felt different. I first knew of him as an author than a TV personality, and I’m significantly more attached to writers than other kinds of celebrities. Then there’s the idea that Bourdain seemed to be the kind of person who was more alive than most people. From being a middling chef and a failed novelist, he wrote the literary equivalent of a Grand Slam with Kitchen Confidential and parlayed his notoriety in becoming a TV star with globe-trotting shows. He remarried, became a father and seemed to enjoy what life had for him. Much of Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain revolves around the big question left behind by his suicide in a small French inn: how did he end up there, doing that? The film asks itself the question early on, but completes a whirlwind overview of his last twenty years before getting back to it. Documentarian Morgan Neville (who scored notable hits with such films as Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) has a wealth of material available to him in telling Bourdain’s story: archival footage (including incredible footage of Bourdain as a chef in the late 1990s), friendly testimonials, behind-the-scenes material from his TV shows and quite a bit of writing/narration from Bourdain himself. (If you find yourself watching the film and having an instinctive alert that “this doesn’t sound quite like his voice” or “how did they get access to that narration?”, pay attention to your knee-jerk reaction – Neville used AI technology to -imperfectly- recreate Bourdain’s voice from some of his writing and let’s just say that this raises huge questions about documentary ethics.)  As an overview of Bourdain’s rise to fame and his many years spent travelling the globe, Roadrunner offers evocative material. While this is a very friendly biography, it doesn’t stop itself from commenting on Bourdain’s very dark outlook on life. By the time we get to the end of the film, we have layers to unwrap – Bourdain killed himself because he was depressed, yes – he was depressed partially because of a whirlwind romance and breakup with Asia Argento that affected his character, yes – but in the end, the impression left by Neville is that Bourdain spent a life being self-destructive, and his sudden fame, family life, and ability to do what he wanted were a reprieve from something that could have happened years earlier in different circumstances. Roadrunner shows the oft-unglamorous toll that his lifestyle took, spending months away from home every year, but also how Bourdain refused to make it easier on him… perhaps because he suspected what would happen if he stopped running. Neville is a crafty filmmaker in many ways – in addition to re-creating Bourdain’s voice, he also stages a mural defacement as a punk middle-finger of a conclusion. Both of those excesses are regrettable, largely because they’re futile: he had more than enough strong material here to avoid resorting to such manufactured theatrics. They end up harming a film that would have been much better without them. Still, for Bourdain fans, Roadrunner is quite a film – a perspective to his work that doesn’t contradict as much as it complements it.

  • L’ordinateur des pompes funèbres [The Probability Factor] (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) Near-obscure French comedy/thriller L’ordinateur des pompes funèbres is not a particularly good movie, but it has a few period quirks that make it intermittently interesting. For one thing, it improbably makes its protagonist an insurance actuary, used to compute death percentages. For another, it describes how the protagonist comes to use his skills for evil, whipping out a lovingly portrayed Hewlett-Packard calculator to plan the most statistically probable accidental death for his unbearably shrewish wife. This being accomplished, well, what are a few more “murders” to keep improving his life? All well and good until he moves in with two very different women (each of them satisfying him in different ways) and finds out that they’re using his methods against him. As a dark comedy, the film is often a glorious paean to the mid-1970s, sometimes a constant madcap reversal of expectations, and sometimes something that feels more modern than it is. Jean-Louis Trintignant does a good job in a role that blends sympathy with pathos, while director Gérard Pirès (who would go on to direct two of the biggest French blockbusters of the turn of the century: Taxi and Les Chevaliers du Ciel) here turns in a relatively early effort. (There are also car crashes that come from – who else?—the legendary stunt coordinator Remy Julienne.)  At a bare 75 minutes, L’ordinateur des pompes funèbres doesn’t waste too much time even if there’s a noticeable gap between the initial joke, and the last big conceptual laugh. (Some of it is intentional – in tweaking expectations, the film has fun showing the financial toll and eventual dullness of a ménage à trois.)  I liked it quite a bit better than I expected – I went in expecting a naïve comedy about the early computer age and got a substantially more complex dark satire.

  • Lights, Camera, Romance (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) I’m certainly not above watching a few low-end romantic comedies when they have an interesting hook, and the idea of a lighthearted romance set in Hollywood appealed to my movie nerd self. Alas, that would presuppose that the result would have something, anything to say about its setting, because Lights, Camera, Romance is about as unremarkable a film as can exist. Bland lead actress (Monica Moore Smith), bland script, bland directing, bland sets… it’s a film set in Hollywood (even if filmed in Utah) that doesn’t do much with the idea of being set in the world of movies, with a plot that riffs from Jane Austen as if no one had ever had that idea before. The only surprise is that this wasn’t broadcast on Lifetime or Hallmark – it’s seemingly made to ape those kinds of films, but can’t be bothered with a single spark of interest. As I said – I’m usually a forgiving audience for such films, but Lights, Camera, Romance struggles to make an impact in any way. It’s far too innocuous to be incensed about, though – but I would be surprised if I recalled anything from the film in a few weeks.

  • Old (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) I have long held that M. Night Shyamalan is a much better director than he is a writer (although the nadir of his career features films where he fails at both), but his last few films, while an improvement on the poisoned two-slaps of After Earth and The Last Airbender, have revealed a far more scattered Shyamalan – and one that seemingly lost his touch for credible human moments. Old, like his previous “Renaissance” films, is filled with high concepts, striking scenes and visual ideas, but seems woefully incapable of maintaining a consistent tone, remaining remotely credible, or wrapping things up in a satisfying package. The story, simply put, sees a few tourists stranded on a beach where they age a year each thirty minutes. While the original French graphic novel on which the film is based offered no explanations for this, Shyamalan crams a science-fictional (ish) explanation in the third act, to unclear success. Over and over again, highly contrived and artificial scenes take the place of plot development, with some ideas very quickly developed. Logic and physics are merrily ignored despite a few half-hearted explanations that aren’t really sustained. Characters are puppets to vehicle ideas, while the direction has an uncanny artificiality to it. Furthermore, chunks of Old are deliberately upsetting, which doesn’t do anything to paper over the film’s more substantial filmmaking problems. The result is a thoroughly mixed bag – don’t be surprised to flip back and forth on whether you like the results, sometimes in the span of mere moments. It’s ambitious, though, and I’d rather see Shyamalan get half-successes than the complete flops that characterized an earlier phase of his career – after all, it’s nearly a miracle that he survived that episode to write and direct again.

  • F/X2 (1991)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, May 2022) Amusingly enough, I had much clearer memories of F/X2 than the first film, even though I last watched both sometime in the early 1990s. That doesn’t make sense – the second film is clearly inferior to the first, and even the set-pieces aren’t quite as good. Here’s to the unpredictability of human memory. One of those sequels that clearly tries to ape their predecessor, F/X2 picks up a few years later, as our protagonists are a bit older and still definitely richer from their previous adventures. Our protagonist (a still-likable Bryan Brown), now independently rich, is now a freelance toy/illusion designer, while his ex-police partner (Brian Dennehy, wisely reintroduced in the first few minutes rather than waiting out an entire act) has purchased a bar as a hangout. The inferior nature of this sequel can be felt from the opening sequence, a vast pile-up of contrivances that eschews logic and simplicity in order to show-off the renewed premise of the film (a practical special-effects designer fights a small conspiracy in order to clear his name) and get the plot going on a shaky foundation. We’re supposed to be too wowed by the FX tricks to care, but it doesn’t work that way: instead, we spend the sequel aghast at the leaps of logic, unimpressed by the contrivances and underwhelmed by some curious choices – such as bringing back a very sympathetic character only to kill her off. There are two upgrades here – a bigger budget (most clearly shown in the opening and closing segments) and the beautiful Rachel Ticotin as the female lead. Otherwise, F/X2 is notable for a few proto-Internet thrills (in showing a suspense sequence revolving around the successful transfer of an electronic file) and a plot that takes us from a stalker murder to bits of business reaching all the way to the Vatican. There are, clearly, some memorable moments here – including a clown puppet – but I wouldn’t trust my teenage self as an authority on this film: it’s not bad if you’re looking for more of the same material found in the first film, but that doesn’t make it much of a thriller on its own.

  • La boum 2 (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2022) Feeling more like an episode than a sequel, La boum 2 takes us back to the family of the first film two years later, now with one extra family member (a mostly-inconsequential baby) and our teenage heroine ready for some serious romance. A young Sophie Marceau (with better hair) plays a fifteen-year-old who, coming back to school after a summer in Germany, gets more serious about dating, even as her parents undergo the sequel-mandated chill in their relationship. Clearly focused on breakout star Marceau, this sequel skimps on the titular parties as well, only awkwardly shoving one such sequence near the end as it to fulfil contractual obligations. Once again, Marceau is likable, Brigitte Fossey looks amazing and Denise Grey steals her scenes. (There’s even a young Lambert Wilson in the cast.)  Still, La boum 2 isn’t much of a film – it pleasantly continues the adventures of the characters from the previous film, so you need to be a fan in order to get the most out of this sequel.

  • Blonde Inspiration (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) As someone who spent a lot of time reading about pulp fiction magazines of the 1940s–1950s (albeit of the Science Fiction genre), I had a favourable predisposition toward Blonde Inspiration: After all, it’s a romantic comedy set against the world of western pulp fiction magazines, with a writer protagonist (John Shelton) trying to make it big as an author. It does help a lot that he’s the heir to a sizeable family fortune, as his worth to the magazine publishers he works with is more as an investor than an author. But don’t fret—thanks to the intervention of the lovely Virginia Gray’s character, he’ll manage to expose fraudsters, make his name as a fiction writer and get the girl. All the way to writing an entire issue of a magazine for himself when the usual writer flats-out refuses to work until he’s paid. Alas, this plot summary sounds better than the film as it exists – despite a decent amount of potential and some rather charming period detail for anyone who once dreamt about the life of pulp fiction writers (if you’re curious about that, have a look at the adventures of Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg as short-fiction writers in 1950s–1960s Manhattan – able to finance a modest urban lifestyle by writing a stream of short stories and throwing them over the transom of locked publishers’ doors.), Blonde Ambition struggles to create enough narrative rhythm. Director Busby Berkeley doesn’t have his usual tools here – the film isn’t a musical and doesn’t feature any dance sequences—so he falls back on a serviceable directing style that is undistinguishable from many other for-hire directors of the time. I enjoyed Blonde Inspiration, but I didn’t love it, and considering the potential hook that the film had for me, that’s not exactly a ringing recommendation.

  • F/X (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, May 2022) I last saw F/X back in the… early 1990s? and didn’t recall much of it (the sequel, for some reason, was fresher in mind) but the premise was distinctive enough to stick: what if you had a rather standard thriller, but with a hero that was a practical movie special-effects wizard? With a central idea like that, it’s no surprise if you occasionally have to be indulgent while the film puts its set-pieces together: things are manipulated so that the hero gets the chance to demonstrate his skills rather than evolve naturally. But that’s cool, because part of the film’s pleasure in being fooled by a trick, then seeing how it was executed. Bryan Brown (not disguising his Australian accent) is quite good in the lead role, whereas Brian Dennehy sports a distracting moustache and comes into the film far too late. As far as contrived thrillers go, though, F/X is quite enjoyable. The protagonist shows sparks of intelligence in how he deals with the situation, even when the film anticipates Home Alone in a final act that has the protagonist fatally pranking the bad guys in their own house. The special effects material remains the most fascinating part of the film, but it still moves at a decent pace and still keeps our interest despite a mixture of familiar elements and outlandish gimmicks. The conclusion is not bad, with a spirited use of Imagination‘s “Just an Illusion” as envoi over a sweeping helicopter shot. Somehow, I don’t think CGI specialists are quite going to make as compelling a kind of hero in any future remakes.

  • La boum (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2022) I can’t say I enjoyed La boum all that much, but as far as “French slide-of-life” films go, it’s relatively painless, maybe even amusing at times. Focusing on a thirteen-year-old girl (the film debut of a young and nearly unrecognizable Sophie Marceau, underneath an unflattering haircut) having to balance school, life and love as her parents near separation and divorce, the film is resolutely low-stakes as it follows its family of three (or four if you include the pleasantly uninhibited great-grandmother played by Denise Grey) as they go through quotidian episodes. Occasionally, a scene makes an impression – for instance, the revenge scene of the female lead (the superb Brigitte Fossey) on her husband’s mistress, in which she thoroughly smashes a perfume store. At other times, we’re simply left to contemplate the characters in their imperfections and quirks. La boum, despite being as low-octane as possible, does have the advantage of being likable and watchable – which is a great deal more than one can say about many, many navel-gazing character-driven French films.

  • Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, May 2022) I would be of the right age to be a big devoted Ghostbusters fan, except for one thing: I don’t really go nuts for those intellectual property franchises (in the language of our corporate cultural oppressors) that are being periodically unearthed in the name of big profits. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug when you’re a studio executive greenlighting projects in an ever-more-ferocious entertainment landscape, and I feel an almost-pigheaded instinct to rebel against attempts to regurgitate and repackage older properties as something we should get excited about. (Heck, the last time I was tempted to let go and give in to the nostalgia gave me the mediocre The Matrix Resurrections, which is a lesson that should last me years.)  So, when I approach Ghostbusters: Afterlife, an umpteenth attempt to re-create the success of the original film, it’s almost natural that I would conclude that the film would be much stronger if it got rid of its Ghostbusters legacy to focus on the story it has to tell. Worryingly leaving the urban backdrop of Manhattan for the wide-open expanses of the rural Midwest, Afterlife focuses on the adventures of a brainy teenager (the very likable McKenna Grace) as she awkwardly tries to fit in a small town and starts investigating the legacy of her eccentric grandfather. The film is most engaging when it’s its own thing, following a family trying to figure out what to do next, and uncovering a world-threatening prophecy from a place that couldn’t be farther away than The City That Never Sleeps. But, of course, such a film can’t help but directly tie itself back to the Ghostbusters mythology (even if it ignores the much-maligned 2016 reboot and only pays a minimal acknowledgement of Ghostbusters II) –all the way to bringing back nearly everyone from the original film and lasciviously playing up even the logo reveal. Whom are we trying to fool here? If it doesn’t work (as it didn’t in 2016), we’ll be back with another instalment in 5–10 years. If it works, we’ll keep digging up these corpses for more necrophilia on a regular basis (and this isn’t that outlandish an exaggeration, considering what CGI is capable of doing now). I would have liked Ghostbusters: Afterlife had it stood on its own as simply Afterlife – but then again, it’s an open question as to whether the film would have been made at all had it not vampirized the franchise for funding. You’d think that, as I grew older, I would be both grouchier and more nostalgic – but now it looks as if I’m just overwhelmingly grouchy, even about nostalgia.

  • When Were You Born (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2022) I’m normally a good sport for 1930s murder mysteries, and an even better sport for any movie featuring Asian pioneer Anna Mae Wong. But horoscope thriller When Were You Born starts on the wrong foot and keeps stepping on its own toes throughout. Even by the standards of 1930s films going nuts for dubious subject matters, this film goes all-out of very strange tangents. The opening of the film, for instance, has noted astrologer and all-around crackpot Manly P. Hall introducing the film by speaking directly to the camera and insisting that Astrology! Is! A! Science! It’s not a random cameo, as Hall also co-wrote the script – which features Wong as an astrologer whose understanding of the discipline gives her near-magical divinatory powers, to the point of predicting deaths. That would normally make her a prime suspect but in this film, she becomes a detective helping the skeptical policemen sift through the twelve suspects, each of them from a distinct zodiac sign. What Wong is doing interpreting western astrology despite being showcased as a mysterious lady of the orient is a mystery for the ages. While murder mysteries with a little bit of the supernatural were not exactly unknown in the 1930s, few were as thoroughly contaminated by the supernatural as this one, as the second of Ronald Knox’s 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction are gleefully jettisoned in favour of astrology hokum – the “investigations” of Wong’s character pretty much consist in asking suspects about their date and hour of birth, from which she can pretty much divine their quirks, fate and breakfast. (It does not make for a satisfying mystery plot.)  Too bad – Wong remains a striking performer even in substandard roles when she’s asked to be overly stiff, and the film does have a few amusing bits of business, suggesting the importance of co-writer Anthony Coldeway in shaping the pseudo-scientific material in a half-competent commercial product. Still, I can’t bring myself to recommend When Were You Born except to audiences knowing what they’re getting into – I mean, it’s interesting that the film’s twelve characters are mapped so that they all fall on a different zodiac sign, with corresponding personality traits – but there’s a large step between this and an actually good film. [June 2022: Manly P. Hall… I knew this name meant something! I actually have a copy of his magnum opus, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, in my library: a thick, lavish book full of hokum that’s nonetheless a wonderful piece of conversation and contemplation. Which might as well be what I think of the film as well.]

  • End of the Line (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2022) I’ve come to pity those movie reviewers stuck in the Hollywood hype machine: those who aren’t close to any local film industry, those who can’t step outside the American cinema system. I’m lucky enough to be exposed to the French-Canadian film community, and it’s amazing to see what else is out there. I’m not sure I would have ever seen End of the Line, for instance, if French-Canadian horror cable TV channel Frissons TV hadn’t gone out of its way to get this film out of mothballs, hype its broadcast, and pair it with a new interview with its writer-director-producer Maurice Devereaux. The tragedy here being that, even fifteen years later, this remains Deveraux’s last film (and last IMDB credit) – as he candidly recognized during the interview, he did too much on his own, exhausted his financing, ran out of motivation and didn’t have the industry contacts to parlay the film’s initial impact into another project. It’s too bad that End of the Line sunk into obscurity (not even having an English-language Blu-ray release) – while it’s hardly a perfect film, it does a lot with little, is effective at creating mystery and suspense, and isn’t afraid to go crazy once in a while. The blend of elements in its premise is enough of a hook – a few late-night subway passengers, abruptly confronted with an eruption of violence led by a world-wide cult. There’s a lot of gore in what follows, some of which certainly pushes the boundaries of good taste. There’s also some ambiguity in the climax that may rub some viewers as provocative and deep, and others as frustrating and begging for a third act that isn’t to be found in the film. (I’m in the latter camp, but not deeply.)  It all amounts to something worth rediscovering: End of the Line remains significantly better than many bigger-budgeted horror productions, and it’s got just enough depth to be worth a look over an endless succession of less ambitious monster movies. And it’s a proud –if almost forgotten—product of the French-Canadian film community.

  • Cet obscur objet du désir (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2022) In looking at legendary writer-director Luis Buñuel’s very long filmography, it looks as if his final film Cet obscur objet du désir was one of the last of his major titles that I hadn’t yet seen. I’m just glad I approached it with some knowledge of the rest of his work, because I’m not sure I would have known what to do with it had I seen it cold. After all, at face value, this is an absurdly odd romance between an older man and a volatile woman, played against a violent background of near-omnipresent terrorism. Interestingly enough, the female lead character is played by two actresses, often switching based on the mood of the character they represent. The script does have an interesting hook in that it features an older man (Fernando Rey, quite compelling) dumping a bucket of water on an unknown woman, then explaining to a small audience the reasons leading to such an outlandish gesture – much of the film that follows takes place in flashbacks, leading back to the water-dumping moment and going on from there. Theirs is not a fun or happy romance, with aggressive gestures from both parties punctuating multiple breakups. It’s all very off kilter, like Buñuel’s best movies. The cinematic technique is accessible (some colour cinematography giving a good period feel as the film travels from Seville to Paris) and the film remains compelling despite its intentional ambiguities and mysteries. Even the casual violence makes sense as a surrealist trope. It’s not my favourite Buñuel (that would remain Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie) but it’s well above most of his other films.

  • Les visiteurs: La révolution (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2022) All right, I give up – Les visiteurs: La révolution is my third dud in a row in the Les visiteurs series, and I have to recognize that the very basics of this trilogy simply don’t grab me. If I had to guess, it would be that the series’ celebration of French history is the sticking point. It’s even more pronounced this time around, as the time-displaced heroes of the series find themselves not in modern times but poking around the French Revolution, mixing time periods and having fun with elements that should be familiar with European audiences… and are utterly baffling to French-Canadian ones. (I can’t even rationalize that I should know about the period as part of my ancestral history, considering that both main trunks of my family tree left France almost a century before the French Revolution.)  Absent any reason to care about the on-screen shenanigans, I’m left with a laborious comedy that can’t even sustain simple gags for too long. It doesn’t help that watching a third (or fourth, if you include the American remake) instalment in a series means that if you’ve missed the onboarding, you’ve missed a lot. It’s easy to recognize that the film is playing jokes with its own mythology (with the characters meeting their own descendants), but it doesn’t help if you care so little about previous films that this one doesn’t spark either. The result, no matter why, is uninvolving, overlong and only fitfully amusing. Apparently, my disappointment is hardly unique – Les visiteurs: La révolution also got terrible reviews overseas. That doesn’t improve anything, but it does make me feel less alone.