Reviews

  • Let It Snow (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) I should know better, but I’m still amazed at the way some movies go out of their way to make themselves unlikable. Writer-director Stanislav Kapralov’s Let It Snow, for instance, will drag the audience through 86 minutes of boredom, cold cinematography, bland protagonists, stock horror and for what? Kill the characters, have the villains walk away unbothered, and skip the part where the ending is meaningful. (Except the mid-credit scene where wow, the protagonist is still alive but it really doesn’t matter at all because wow, who cares?)  The paper-thin plot has two English snowboarders arrive at a mountain where the ghost of a little dead girl is said to kill unsuspecting tourists… unless it’s something else. There’s a cheap shot here to be had about the film’s Slavic origins and setting—as in: if you really want to experience the bleakness of life, ask a Slav. Let it Snow certainly delivers, with is snow-covered mountain settings, ominous characters acting mysteriously about deathly matters, poor English-speaking characters heading into a foreign country that wants them dead… as well as an ending that spares no one, especially not the protagonist that the viewers have spent the last minutes trying to care about. The film’s flirting with the supernatural is about as underwhelming as everything else, so little does anything matter. Life is cold, life is cruel, life is bleak and then you die and if you didn’t already know that, then maybe Let it Snow is for you.

  • Rogue Hostage (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) Oof—the low-budget stench is overpowering in Rogue Hostage, especially when the film tries to build a tense action thriller out of a wholly unconvincing department store setting. The concept is not too bad—war veterans take revenge upon a billionaire at one of his stores, against another war veteran trying to save himself, his son and other civilians—but the execution is what kills the film, and it does it very early. A painful opening clearly established the bland ramshackle cinematography, by-the-number dialogues, convoluted narrative contrivances and amateurish direction from Jon Keeyes. Rogue Hostage eventually manages a very mild narrative velocity, but never overcomes the initial rebuff of a low-budget, low-skill production exhibiting itself naked. Those kinds of films give a better appreciation of what the bottom of the cinematic barrel looks like, well under the so-called bombs laughed about at the Razzies: it’s impossible to get into the story, because every frame reminds you that you’re watching a film (ineptly) put together by people who don’t know what they’re doing. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Rogue Hostage is the top-line cast: How did John Malkovich, Michael Jai White and Tyrese Gibson get marshalled into this? The only people who do well here are, ironically, in the supporting roles—Luna Lauren Velez is quite nice as the store manager, for instance. But everything else—yikes: bland villain, character relationship complications with no bearing on the plot, ham-fisted political commentary and inert “action” sequences just make this worse and worse. I’ll say one thing, though: Rogue Hostage is bad and inept, but it’s not exactly hateable or excruciating—and that saves it from the very worst. But still—unless you’re feeling in a mood to be punished or bored, there’s no reason at all to see Rogue Hostage—it’s a fourth-generation copy of much better movies at best, and simply useless at worst.

  • The Gateway (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) In some ways, The Gateway is a solid, routine thriller—a man trying to save a woman and her daughter from an abusive ex-spouse, with a plot that devolves around drugs and organized crime. It’s just distinctive enough to avoid becoming undistinguishable from similar films. For one thing, our character (a solid performance from Shea Whigham) is not a super-powered operative: just a social worker, albeit one who acts as if he represented the full weight of the law—with enough complexities in the character’s backstory to make it a dramatically interesting role. Much of the film is gritty and unglamorous, presenting an interesting showcase for Olivia Munn to show up as the woman in need of help. Frank Grillo also stars, although as a supporting crime boss rather the kind of tough-guy protagonists he often plays. Much of The Gateway feels a bit too long and unfocused—with an action scene late in the film that suggests that the film has trouble finding a way between thriller and drama. Still, the result is slightly more interesting than your run-of-the-mill low-budget crime movie, simply because it looks at a familiar story through a slightly different protagonist.

  • The Throwaways (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2022) The rise of new streaming platforms and their original content leads to interesting questions, and the one that fascinates me as a budding movie historian is whether that content will survive any eventual demise of those platforms. This is no longer a theoretical concern, as streaming platforms are shutting down. The Throwaways got some minor notoriety back in 2015 for being the first original film for the now-gone Sony-exclusive platform Crackle. Crackle folded in Canada in 2018 (and changed owners the following year), meaning that The Throwaway then began an interesting post-exclusive career. You can now watch the film on five different platforms, and you can even catch it on regular TV channels in French translation. So that answers part of the question: As long as there will be libraries and content providers, there’s a chance that content will simply jump to another platform as another item in the listings. But what about the film? Well, The Throwaways, fitting enough, is meant to be a quick and cheap piece of entertainment. The limits of the budget clearly show despite some effective East-European production values, and it doesn’t take much more than the credit sequence to realize that we’re in sub-studio territory, closer to straight-to-cable cheapness than anything else. The special effects are rough, the staging is rudimentary, the scenes are arranged for maximal value-for-money and the cast includes James Caan as a marquee name more than a substantial character. And yet… the result isn’t as bad as it could have been. A rather clever script does well at maximizing the production elements at its disposal, and has half-decent dialogue, characterization and situations. An advantage of shooting in eastern Europe is that there are plenty of grandiose, vaguely run-down locations to choose from. Why have a briefing in a small meeting room when you can have it in a vast auditorium? Why settle for a small warehouse when you can shoot in a gigantic warehouse? The level of the script is a clear notch above similar films—Despite some awkwardness here and there, it’s generally interesting to listen to, and the film does the bare minimum in presenting a plot with some narrative momentum. The Throwaways is, to be clear, not a good film—but it’s a pleasant surprise that punches above its weight, clearly highlighting what clever screenwriting can do without a big budget. While the result feels like a pilot for an extended series, it wraps things up satisfyingly, and it’s hard to ask for much more. Now, I wonder how long I’ll be waiting to see a Netflix original pop up on French Canadian television…

  • Best Sellers (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) I do like me some Aubrey Plaza, and she has a good role in Best Sellers, working opposite Michael Caine as he plays a crusty old recluse author, and she portrays a young editor trying to keep her father’s publishing house afloat. Now, a considerable amount of indulgence is required to appreciate the film if you know anything about the publishing industry: its fairytale portrait of the way publishing houses work is only as ludicrous as its portrayal of how promotional tours are handled. But the advantage of reducing a publishing house to two employees and a handful of authors ensures that the story can be told, and so suspension of disbelief is essential, as our protagonist desperately places her best on a single author and constantly holds his hand through a tour of the Northeastern United States. Plaza is up to her usual cute-and-quirky standards, but also gets the chance to emote a bit more than usual. Meanwhile, Caine makes a great recluse author (with some visual assistance from old interview footage and a photo of his long-time spouse). The relationship that develops between the two is credible despite the unlikeliness of the premise, and the film is good for a few scenes having fun with modern media virality, authors indulging in physical violence and obscene acts, as well as the uncertain future for publishing house in what’s constantly threatening to become a post-literate society. I particularly liked the “editing” scene (through page-ripping), and how the ending ties a few things together. I’m a cheap and forgiving audience for movies about authors (and publishers) but even then, some props go to Ellen Wong as the long-suffering assistant to our protagonist, and the largely French-Canadian crew that shepherded the film through its Montréal-based production. The conclusion reminded me that we won’t have that many other movies featuring Caine (he’s 88 years old!) and we may as well appreciate every single one we get.

  • Rams (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) Considering the strong Australian tradition of quirky comedies, Rams is in good company. It’s not that funny, but it does have a pleasant atmosphere, as it looks at two crusty rival sheep farmers and their reaction once a deadly disease requires their irreplaceable flocks to be put down. Headlined by Sam Neill and Michael Caton, it credibly takes us deep in rural Western Australia, where nothing ever happens and that’s a good thing for most of the characters. When something does happen, it forces two brothers to re-evaluate their decades-long enmity, and precipitates other subplots. It doesn’t take a long time to realize that there’s something being hidden from the government inspectors, and that secret drives much of the third act. As someone with aging family members still involved in farming, I felt that Neill’s character was uncannily realistic. It makes the film a bit more interesting, as does walking through very convincing barn sets and the strained relationship between government inspectors, veterinarians and farmers. It’s not exactly accurate to place too much emphasis on the Australian roots of the film—after all, it’s a remake of an Icelandic film—but the sense of place is terrific and often beautiful even through a massive brush fire. Rams isn’t all that great of a movie, but I found it relatable enough to be worth the watch. It also ends on an uplifting note, which ensured that we’ll class it as a comedy even if the road to get there isn’t necessarily all that amusing.

  • Ryan’s Daughter (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) You would think that calling a film boring would be the ultimate insult, but language has far worse superlatives available for those films that go beyond the limits of boredom. Boredom, to me, implies becoming uninterested in the film, letting one’s mind wander but still being willing to play along in comes something better comes up. But describing Ryan’s Daughter as “boring” is understating things. A stronger term is sorely needed to accurately represent the experience of sitting through a three-hour-and-fifteen-minute romance set against in an Irish village. There are no humanly explainable reasons why this film should be as long. Hence ruffling through the thesaurus to unleash some serious semantic weaponry. Ryan’s Daughter, then, is an interminable film. It stubbornly refuses to end even as our attention is completely gone, dwelling as we do upon shopping lists, tax filings and looking forward to being stuck in traffic. Worse yet: it’s fractally interminable, meaning that it’s not just the film itself that never ends, but entire sequences, scenes, shots and lines of dialogue that never end. Director David Lean is celebrated for his epic films, but he should have been restrained, forcibly, from ever making this film. His approach is utterly unsuitable to the topic. Ryan’s Daughter could have been reasonably tolerable at 90 minutes. At twice that, it’s a chore approaching torture, with an unsatisfying plot made worse by miscalculations such as a thoroughly irritating village idiot. I saw Ryan’s Daughter because I wanted to cross it off my list of Oscar-winning films, but now that I have done so, there’s no way (short of money or seduction) that I’ll willingly watch this again on my own. Life is short and getting shorter for this middle-aged reviewer: I refuse to make death come closer by wasting another one-eights of one of my remaining days watching this again.

  • West Side Story (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, March 2022) Frankly, I wasn’t asking for a West Side Story remake. I sometimes daydream about laws that would prohibit Academy Award Best Picture winners from ever being remade. But if Steven Spielberg really wants to do a full-fledged musical… the least we can do is check it out. Much to my surprise, I was quite taken by the results. The original West Side Story is one of my favourite 1960s musicals (a decade that was very uneven for the subgenre) and I’m not delusional when I propose that this remake is generally better than the original. No, it’s not as impactful a statement about minority life in America than it was back in 1961. No, it won’t become the reference. But when it comes to the direction and execution, this remake gives the original a hard run for its money. My acid test, the one sequence I was waiting for, was the “America” number—to me, it’s the thematic heart of the film: a music number that presents an argument across gender lines about whether to live or leave America. It’s my favourite sequence of the original, and it’s probably the strongest number of the remake as well, taking to the streets for a colourful choreography, witty staging and breakout star Ariana DeBose at her very best. Now that’s an old-school musical number executed with a contemporary flair. My second-place pick isn’t the bouncy “Gee, Officer Krupke” number (daringly set in an enclosed space), but the dynamic execution of “The Dance at the Gym” even if not much happens during that number. Third place goes to “Cool,” making good use of special effects for a dance number that doubles as a battle between two characters. I like that I get to talk about a modern musical in terms of numbers, because that harkens back to the kind of discussion we can still have about Classic Hollywood musicals. It’s easy to note that West Side Story keeps its modern moviemaking techniques under reins in a successful attempt to re-create a film that looks and feels like a 1960s film. There are a few strong hints of the future intruding on its 1950s story (most notably looking forward to the Lincoln Centre development, and a non-binary character), but the film makes a good-faith attempt to limit what it does to what would have been possible at the time. It works. I’m not all that taken by blandy-bland Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler in the lead roles, but their Romeo-and-Juliet shtick is not meant to be flashy. I’m far happier with DeBose (playing a challenging character) and Rita Moreno in a meaty supporting role. There are really interesting comparisons to be made between this West Side Story and the somewhat similar In the Heights, as the latter doesn’t hold back on delivering a thoroughly modern film with contemporary music and flashy special effects (re: “When the Sun Goes Down”). I may prefer In the Heights, but this West Side Story does build upon the original, and that about the best thing one can say about any remake.

  • Turning Red (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, March 2022) Whenever a film’s release comes with controversy, it’s useful to wonder why it’s controversial—especially if it’s political or about unavowed discomfort with something else. So it is that the big story on the week of Turning Red’s release has to do with a review being pulled for writing that the film would have an appeal limited to the demographics of its 13-year-old Asian-Torontonian female protagonist. Now, as a film reviewer, I have Numerous Thoughts, starting with the idea that every film has a target audience that’s worth identifying. But once again, that controversy is not a pure one—it exists in a context where we’re coming to terms with identity as a component of reviewing. I don’t have much of a problem with that either: my reviews are inseparable from the fact that they’re written by a middle-aged French-Canadian white male, for better or for worse, and one of the things that separates my latest reviews from my early ones is an acknowledgement (over several decades) that my perspective isn’t the only one. But that’s not the root problem either: the underlying issue is that film criticism in big outlets is (still) dominated by middle-aged white men, and any dismissal by them of films not specifically aimed at them can be seen as cultural colonialism (or something). This is far too long a prologue to the meat of the review, but I’m getting there: After watching Turning Red, it would take a particularly thick skull to miss on how the film is about a thirteen-year-old girl experiencing radical changes with her body, and how that strains the relationship she has with her domineering mother. If you don’t quite get the subtext, rest assured that it becomes text as the mother is convinced that her daughter is having her first period… rather than changing into a big red panda as per the family tradition. Oh yes. So, there we go: Pixar’s latest film is about puberty, periods, sexual awakening and troubled mother-daughter relationships. All set against the joyously multicultural backdrop of Toronto. No wonder some people made comments about the film’s appeal to a specific audience: As far as Pixar films go, this one is audacious enough that I really started wondering midway through if they would be able to tie it all back up by the end. Yes, it’s a film for 13-year-old girls, and yes, it talks about things that some reviewers find uncomfortable. So be it. Film is for everyone but not necessarily everyone at once, and those who still think Pixar films should be about safe topics have not been paying attention to their body of work. Now, I didn’t completely like Turning Red: The film paints itself in a corner when it comes to its thematic issues, and the conclusion is only satisfying if you don’t think too much about it. Or is it unsatisfying only to a middle-aged male reviewer? If we follow its subtext to its logical conclusion, the film ends up saying, “Our protagonist’s body has now changed and we must trust her to do the right thing rather than have an absolute guarantee that there won’t be any problems,” which is the kind of thing that I’m not terribly happy about as a father of a soon-to-be thirteen-year-old—but must learn to cope with. As much as the film’s Toronto is gloriously painted in luminous tones, Turning Red pokes at the way real-life doesn’t always have tidy ever-after resolutions. Not bad for a family film—and many film reviewers should learn that it’s not always all about them.

  • The French Dispatch (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, March 2022) It took me more than a decade to warm up to writer-director Wes Anderson’s films (well, either that or he got better), but since Fantastic Mr. Fox, it seems that I get what his films are about and can’t stop grinning through them. On the other hand, The French Dispatch makes a provocative case that his approach has grown formulaic. His production having slowed down throughout the 2010s, Anderson here reaches back not to Isle of Dogs but his previous The Grand Budapest Hotel in style and technique, presenting disconnected stories in a wider tapestry, eschewing diagonal camera movements, multiplying art shifts (within a coherent aesthetic) and assembling an eye-popping cast of known actors previously associated with his other productions. I won’t mention them here—the list would take over the capsule review. Focusing its eccentric presentation on the making of the last issue of an American magazine headquartered in a French City, The French Dispatch wraps three distinct short films and a snappy introduction within its larger framework as the writing staff of the magazine contemplates the death of their editor in chief, the mandated last issue of the magazine and the content of the stories contained within. Once again, oddball humour rubs shoulders with tragedy and drama everywhere we look, with deadpan delivery somehow making everything funnier. Copious details pepper the multiple narrations, with the real city of Angoulême being the backdrop for the film’s very French (not Parisian) setting. Anderson’s well-known Francophilia here finds its ultimate expression, with French actors (most notably Léa Seydoux) delivering dialogue that’s not necessarily fully translated in subtitles. Otherwise, there’s a paradoxical comfort in watching how Anderson changes his approach every few moments, panning horizontally through his sets, delivering an animated short sequence, re-creating the atmosphere of May 68 and breaking the fourth wall from time to time (all the way to actors changing on-screen to represent the passage of time). It’s funny, poignant, a bit precious and feels like Anderson is making a film for his fans. You can reasonably wonder whether this means Anderson has found his groove and will stay in it—I suppose that his next few films will answer that question. In the meantime, though, The French Dispatch is another delicious confection just waiting to be tasted.

  • Jigokumon [Gate of Hell] (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) If Gate of Hell does well when compared to the slew of samurai films in 1950s Japanese film history, you can point to two factors—writer-director Teinosuke Kinugasa’s use of colour cinematography, for one, never missing an opportunity for bright colours everywhere, adding a very different dimension to a familiar setting. (Unusually enough for the 1950s, Gate of Hell won two Oscars: one for best foreign film, and another for best costume design.)  Each character wears bold clothing, which adds to the second distinction that the film can make for itself: it’s a strongly romantic tragedy, chronicling the all-consuming obsession of one victorious samurai for a woman who will never be his. From a conventional war story, the film goes on to become a tragic downfall, all the way to big dramatic gestures toward the end. I don’t think anyone will be fully happy with the way everything unfolds, but Gate of Hell distinguishes itself in a crowded field and is distinctive enough to make a few fans out of viewers that may not necessarily be all that enthusiastic about more conventional samurai films.

  • The Great McGinty (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) One of the things that fascinates me in entertainment history is the concept of a streak—a run of back-to-back-to-back successes for a creator that shows just how good they can be. The duration of streaks can vary—three to five-work runs are more common—but they’re the kinds of things that fans can talk about decades later. So it is that writer-director Preston Sturges had one of the greatest filmmaking streaks of all time in 1942-44, years during which he delivered four all-time comedy classics from The Lady Eve to The Miracle of Morgan Creek. But those streaks have a beginning and an end, and trying to determine their exact limits can be a rich source of discussion. In strict chronological terms, The Great McGinty should fit in Sturge’s initial streak—after all, it’s his shining directing debut and it’s clearly conceived and executed along the same high-concept and witty cynicism as his later films. I will argue, however, that The Lady Eve should remain the beginning of the streak: The Great McGinty is good, but it’s clearly not as good as the others. Still, it remains fun to watch, if only for its premise. Presenting a crooked politician who comes to a moment of honesty… and dearly pays for it is exactly the kind of attitude that would define Sturges’ best work. Delving into the machinery of crooked politics, The Great McGinty earns an honourable place in the crowded pantheon of American films obsessing about American politics. My main issue with the result is that it seems to be running out of steam fairly quickly, and embroidering on the same premise doesn’t necessarily make it all better. The romantic angle is familiar enough to be cute but not add all that much—the female role feels underwritten compared to later Sturges films—and there’s a sense that there’s an entire third act missing to make it completely satisfying. Hence my assertion that The Great McGinty is not a bad directing debut, but it’s not in the same class of the four Sturges films starting with The Lady Eve… and that in no way diminishes the achievement of his streak.

  • Adventures of Don Juan (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) Quintessential swashbuckling icon Errol Flynn gets a great showcase in Adventures of Don Juan—not necessarily his last adventure film, but perhaps the last of the good ones that made his reputation. Shot in colour with all the lavish means that Warner Brothers was able to muster, it takes place in gilded palaces and period carriages, with Flynn smiling through dialogue meant to establish that Don Juan was no ordinary man. The film begins quite well, with a series of familiar but well-executed sequences to showcase Don Juan’s prowess as a seducer, without quite making him an unlikable womanizer. Pressed into the service of the nation, he turns out to be a proto-James Bond able to seduce his targets to gather information about a dastardly plot. Alas, the middle section of the film struggles under the requirements of advancing the plot—the character is already introduced, but the action climax isn’t ready yet… so the pacing sags somewhat. Fortunately, there’s the ending to turn things around, get Don Juan to go all-out on the sword-fighting and wrap up the picture on a high note. Flynn is at ease here, his age adding further credibility to the character. He makes it look effortless, but the film’s production history shows just how Flynn was burning out at the end of his best years—missing weeks of shooting due to illnesses and heavy drinking. Still, the result on-screen speaks for itself: Adventures of Don Juan isn’t prime Flynn, but it’s not too far from it, and it makes for a decent watch.

  • All That Money Can Buy aka The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) I’m fond of deal-with-the-devil stories, and that partially explains why I expected much more from The Devil and Daniel Webster. Taking place in nineteenth century New Hampshire, the story follows a farmer after he makes a pact with the devil for luck and prosperity on his hardscrabble farm. “Mr. Scratch” obligingly appears and arranges for said good fortune, in exchange for a mere soul seven years later. Except that by the time the seven years are over, it’s debatable how much of a soul our protagonist has left considering his subsequent turn toward evil. Frantic to avoid hellish condemnation, he turns to gifted orator Daniel Webster to arrange a formal trial to decide the fate of the contract. What’s most noteworthy about the film (yet toned down considerably from Stephen Vincent Benét’s original short story) is the sheer Americanism of it—gleefully linking the farmer’s fate to that of the republic, dredging infamous figures from American history to act as jurors, and opposing the essential nature of Americans against nothing less than the devil. It’s all a bit big, yet charming in its own way, as the film becomes increasingly fantastical. But that quirk of execution is not enough to make the result all that compelling—while Edward Arnold is not bad as Webster (and Walter Huston as Mr. Scratch), the film doesn’t quite take off when it should—for a film whose third act is predicated on fanciful oration, the result remains more pedestrian than expected. The rest of The Devil and Daniel Webster can be a slog as well, especially in the first act where all the expected pieces are still being put together. It all amounts to a rather disappointing result—not quite the solid hit that should have been.

  • Night Moves (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) As far as neo-noirs go, Night Moves hardly makes any wrong moves. Focusing on a Los Angeles-based private investigator (played by Gene Hackman in an often-overlooked performance) asked to find the missing daughter of a former movie actress, it’s a film that has a lot of pleasure poking at the convenient archetypes of an earlier era. Our poor protagonist doesn’t get any respect from being a private investigator—other characters routinely put him down by questioning what kind of person would choose to be a professional snoop, and it’s as if the entire idea of a PI is fodder for sarcasm. It doesn’t help that the film is designed to frustrate by design. Coming from the dour New Hollywood era where heroes had to be punished, tidy endings were to be avoided and gritty dirty cinematography ruled the day, Night Moves is not the film to watch if you want closure, satisfaction or uplifting inspiration. On the other hand, it does the deconstruction thing really well: The surprisingly simple plot is never truly understood by the supposedly deductive protagonist, and his blind spots are what leads to an incredibly bleak conclusion. There’s an element of malice from the screenwriter in multiplying the coincidences, hidden connections and contrivances required to get to the downbeat ending, but in a historical perspective, it makes sense that something like Night Moves would deliberately pervert the values of an earlier age. (My full thesis about this is too long to be contained in a footnote, but can be summed up as “America is a reactionary nation.”)  If you’re properly steeled for the nature of Night Moves, the film does become entertaining in its own way. The dialogue isn’t bad, Jennifer Warren gets a wonderful role as a sarcastic maybe-femme-fatale, and the film manages to set some very sombre material in bright California/Florida sunlight. (More disturbingly, you get a far-too-young Melanie Griffith nude scene that skirts the edge of legality.)  In keeping with noir and neo-noir tradition, the flawed detective himself is the point of the film rather than the investigation or the mystery to solve: it’s what makes the film as interesting as it is, and not as frustrating as it could have been. I’m not a big fan of 1970s New Hollywood nor of deconstructing a genre I like a lot, but Night Moves manages to rise above the depressing morass to become something more interesting than expected. It’s a must-see for fans of film noir and its later echoes, especially as a nadir before the subgenre rebuilt itself for a far more audience-friendly era.