Reviews

  • The Black String (2018)

    The Black String (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) One of the fundamental differences between a genre fan and someone more sympathetic to so-called mainstream filmmaking is that the genre fan will insist on the coherence of the genre elements above any realistic interpretation. This makes The Black String particularly frustrating to take in, especially as the film revels in the liminal region between fantasy and twisted psychology. Here, Frankie Muniz plays a man with significant issues making a meager and lonely living as a liquor store clerk. An atypical one-night stand proves far more troublesome when he realizes he’s been possessed, but these fantastic developments come with progressively more troubling revelations about his mental health history. Clearly trying to play both sides by alternating between paranormal and psychological explanations, The Black String eventually tries to have its cake and eat it as well: The conclusion ends up pointing in contradictory directions, perhaps in an attempt to blow viewers’ minds but only succeeding in exasperating everyone. To be fair, writer-director Brian Hanson scores a few hits along the way — Muniz is pretty good, the images are often striking and the film does better than expected whenever it leans into the supernatural facet of its narrative. There’s a point where the film does feel as if it’s heading something interesting. Alas, it does not stick the landing — the very dark conclusion doesn’t help make viewers any better about the lack of commitment to an explanation or another. The Black String does meet one of the fundamental criteria for a “psychological thriller,” though — as in “while no physically impossible, nothing like this has ever or will ever happen.”

  • La chinoise [The Chinese] (1967)

    La chinoise [The Chinese] (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2021) When I say that La chinoise reeks of the sixties, I’m being literal. I’m not paying a compliment to its atmosphere — I mean that thanks to its naturalistic portrayal of left-wing revolutionaries, you can actually imagine what they smelled like: a mixture of body odour, cigarettes and unrealistic expectations. Much of the film’s first section consists in having characters lecture the audience about the coming Marxist revolution, the evils of American foreign policy and what the Chinese are up to. It’s not quite as tedious as it sounds thanks to Godard’s hyperactive editing illustrating the monologues with jump cuts, skits, stock illustration and one rather catchy novelty song. Many scholars agree that La chinoise is when writer-director Jean-Luc Godard shifted gears from a semi-traditional form of filmmaking to a more politically charged career path. It also illustrated the preoccupations of the French left-wing just as the protests of May 1968 got underway, marking an unerring flair for current events. So, there’s some documentary value in having Godard chronicle (albeit not as a disinterested observer) the mood of the time and the tenor of the discourse. Of course, there’s a limit to how much of it is tolerable — the first section of the film is so basic in its filmmaking that it’s not hard to recall amateur YouTube video showing more talent in putting something similar together. The real film begins a bit later, as the characters (having spoken enough to the audience) get to speak to each other and carry bloodthirsty measures. Saying that I hated the characters by the end of the film would be incorrect, as I started loathing them well before then. What saves La chinoise from pure disgust (especially at the part where violence is proposed) is a thin veneer of humour that carries throughout — it’s not much, but at least it’s something. But as a deterrent against replicating the excesses of the French far left of the 1960s, it’s hard to think of a better example than La chinoise.

  • The Cowboys (1972)

    The Cowboys (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) My indifference to John Wayne is vast and profound, but I liked The Cowboys more than I thought largely because of his place in it. For one thing, my perennial crack about Wayne being best portrayed as a cranky bigoted uncle has seldom been better incarnated than here, as he plays a rancher forced to hire a gaggle of boys in order to complete a cattle drive. The film thus has him explicitly assume a semi-parental role toward an ensemble cast, and doesn’t really mince his portrayal as a tough taskmaster. (There’s also another reason why I like Wayne here, but saying more would be even more spoilerrific than usual for me — although is it really a spoiler when it’s the first thing that almost everyone remembers from the film and the fifth line of the film’s Wikipedia entry?)  Wayne’s grumpy performance is somewhat offset by a warmer one from Roscoe Lee Browne as the other adult in the crew. The Cowboys is clearly a western made in the mould of other genre films — it clearly espouses the usual values of the genre, including that of linking manhood to violence, self-reliance and hanging with other men. It’s never subtle, but it can be entertaining as a big adventure for the eleven boys. It does crystallize an aspect of Wayne’s screen persona better than many other movies I’ve seen of him, and the western surroundings are well-photographed along the way. Even as a non-fan of Wayne, I wasn’t disappointed by The Cowboys.

  • Bobbleheads: The Movie (2020)

    Bobbleheads: The Movie (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) I’m not going to lie — even hearing about Bobbleheads: The Movie had me raising my hackles in critical disgust: there is no limit now to how low films can go for inspiration; it’s not as if the flipping bobbleheads have any narrative potential; today’s Hollywood should burn; every day we stray further from God’s light; etc. Of course, that’s spending rather a lot of time even thinking about a film that does not deserve any attention. Watching Bobbleheads: The Movie is a singularly joyless experience, but one tempered by the knowledge that if anyone ever remembers the film, it’s going to be in order to condemn it. The exasperating script valiantly tries to find meaning in bobbleheadness (there’s apparently a code — yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds) in order to provide the semblance of a theme for this Toy Story derivative. The plot, as slight as it is, has four bobbleheads (plus Cher – yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds) defending their house against the invasion of their owner’s relatives, whether we’re talking about a redneck stereotype, his money-grubbing wife or their dog. The screenwriting here is about as formulaic as possible: don’t bother looking for wit or depth here, because it’s all blunt surface plotting, with hammered character arcs and cheap resolutions. Things aren’t all that better in execution: the animation is competent but roughly as cheap as it’s possible to justify at this point in time: character designs are simpler, the amount of background detail is minimal and Kirk Wise’s directing isn’t particularly inventive. It all amounts to an intensely forgettable film: something for the kids, maybe, but not particularly tolerable by the entire family. It’s really not worth getting incensed about Bobbleheads: The Movie: it will disappear fast enough on its own.

  • Sea Fever (2019)

    Sea Fever (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) There’s something delightful in recognizing a completely science-fictional narrative structure to Sea Fever, despite it largely taking place today(ish) in a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. See if this feels familiar: A scientist aboard a ship filled with blue-collar workers grows concerned when a chance encounter with a mysterious creature produces unexplainable phenomenon. The ship then encounters another ship, abruptly deserted with its communication and propulsion equipment sabotaged. And then the crew starts experiencing medical issues… Oh yes — Sea Fever is an Alien clone on the northern seas, almost point-for-point sticking to the ur-structure of such stories. As such, it’s not badly made, especially as a low-budget Irish film. Narratively tired and disappointing in the nihilistic conclusion it chooses, but generally handled with some competence when it comes to the atmosphere, pacing and visuals. Hermione Corfield is not bad in the lead role, with some assistance from Ardalan Esmaili and a spectacularly de-glammed Connie Nielsen. While Sea Fever is a disappointment, there’s something very promising in writer-director Neasa Hardiman’s work here, and it’s going to be interesting to see what’s next for her.

  • The Fugitive Kind (1960)

    The Fugitive Kind (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) It’s not hard to see how The Fugitive Kind was an envelope-pushing film back in 1960 — Tennessee Williams writing, Sydney Lumet directing and Marlon Brando in the lead role, with a plot that has a drifter arousing passions in the small town where he stops for a while. (That plot summary also covers Picnic five years earlier, which was also considered edge-of-the-envelope.)  If you’re familiar with films of the time, it does remain a bit shocking to see Joanne Woodward make her entrance, dishevelled, unmannered and quite possibly inebriated: while unremarkable by today’s standards, female leads simply didn’t do that kind of thing back then. As the film advances, malevolent undercurrents suggest that it’s not going to end well… and it doesn’t. Still, what was effective sixty years ago is not always as fresh now, and it doesn’t take a long time for The Fugitive Kind to show its limits. Brando’s acting almost feels like a parody of itself, and Williams’s writing isn’t among his best. As with many films of its era, its desire to push the edge of permissible subject matters in an environment where the Hays Code was holding back honest drama lands it in a weird demimonde of unsatisfying compromises. It amounts to a film that’s certainly interesting as a representative of its era, but not completely satisfying as a viewing experience these days.

  • Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)

    Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) The more you learn about Hollywood history, the more you discover sub-sub-genres with maybe a handful of titles. Sometimes, they even prove to be a lot of fun… for the right audience. Thank Your Lucky Stars can be loosely included in the “wartime musical revue” subgenre, pleasantly overlapping with the “studio self-satire” one. In other words, here we have Warner Bros putting together a loose collection of sketches featuring their own stars, loosely connected with a slight and amusing plot. There’s one important caveat for twenty-first century audiences, though: This kind of satire, heavily based on screen personas, is completely dependent on audiences knowing quite a bit about what is being parodied. So it is that Thank Your Lucky Stars largely depends on audience knowledge of Eddie Cantor, as Cantor sends up his screen persona by playing a dual role as his self-obsessed self and a humbler look-alike. Much of the humour in the narrative is in the mistaken identities, but far more of the film’s laughs come from the various sketches and musical numbers scattered in-between — especially when they feature performers not known for singing, such as Ida Lupino (!) and Betty Davis (!!). Other highlights have S.Z. Sakall intimidating Humphrey Bogart, and Erroll Flynn as a blowhard soldier. Thank Your Lucky Stars served as a fundraiser for the Hollywood Canteen, which also spawned another film of the same name that is very much in the same genre. Cantor himself is fearless in sending himself up (and has a few good comic moments, such as when he finds himself on an operating table), while the sight of Davis crooning about the lack of eligible men is a sight upon itself. The caveat is that the comic revue is only a fraction as enjoyable if you’re not familiar with the names that are featured in it — but if you are, it’s a lot of fun. Like most movies of that subgenre, Thank Your Lucky Stars is worth revisiting regularly as you learn more about Hollywood History.

  • Dear White People (2014)

    Dear White People (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) My motives in watching Dear White People were not noble or progressive: Like many, many (white?) people, I’ve had a crush on Tessa Thompson for years and here was one of her movies that I hadn’t seen. Arguably the movie that made a number of critics take notice of her, Dear White People features Thompson as a film student and provocative campus activist, notably through her radio show addressed at, well, “dear white people.”  Clearly taking on racism on American college campuses in the early 2010, the film hasn’t lost any of its provocativeness seven years later. Its fast pace, sardonic sense of humour, interesting characters and refusal to be righteous in its racial commentary still give it a distinctive edge over more recent and far more numerous works tackling race relations in America (including a successful spinoff episodic show on Netflix). There’s a welcome vivaciousness to the film’s editing, which flips between title cards, an ensemble of characters, and a framing device taking in the aftermath of a party leading to a race riot. It’s a film that pokes at racists and activists alike, but not in a hypocritical both-sides fashion — the racists are clearly to blame for the racism (even if, at times, the film clearly caricatures them), but even the loud activists take a moment late in the film to reconsider if they’re really making progress, or making themselves feel better for shouting back. It’s a significantly more textured and nuanced look at social activism than the self-satisfied progressiveness that often comes out of recent productions, and there’s something to be admired in the film’s refusal to claim to have all the answers. It also helps the film become a dramedy in its own right rather than a soapbox — the characters have complexities that define them more than stereotypes or roles, and the actors have quite a bit of material to use. Thompson is clearly the highlight, but she has the most flamboyant role even as Tyler James Williams, Brandon P. Bell and Teyonah Parris also have great material and know how to play it. Writer-director Justin Simien’s vision for Dear White People still feels fresh and relevant even after seven years of tumultuous events in American race relation discourse. Go in for Thompson, stay for the witty filmmaking.

  • Allagash aka Blood and Money (2020)

    Allagash aka Blood and Money (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) There’s a great little thriller buried in the back end of Blood and Money — too bad it takes forever to get there. Oh, I’ll grant that movies should take the time to develop their characters and setting… but this one simply keeps repeating the same points over and over before getting to the good stuff. It’s not as if the basics need much explanation: Northern Maine features a very large, very empty hunting territory, and that’s where our elderly protagonist spends a lot of wintertime hunting. He’s apparently estranged from his family, which doesn’t serve many purposes other than giving him enough of a stake later to care about his enemies but not enough to bequeath them a prize. Taking something like thirty minutes (of a 90-minute film) to set this up is far too long, especially given how the story shifts in a much higher gear once he accidentally shoots a woman in the woods. This, obviously, has something to do with the casino theft that left a few people dead, the criminals on the run, and a few million dollars missing. By the time the protagonist returns to the dead woman, her co-conspirators get involved and it’s several of them against one lone but resourceful old man. The meat of Blood and Money is in the hunt between the elderly protagonist and his younger-but-not-smarter opponents — using every trick at his disposal to even out the odds. It’s a film that squarely fits in the geezer thriller subcategory (as unfortunate an expression as it is) in which aging action stars get one more kick at the can. Here, Tom Berenger does his best to echo his action credentials in portraying a character hobbled by his own body and quite conscious of his mortality. Unfortunately, the film’s pacing issues highlight a lack of economy (even in a 90-minute film!) and a mishandling of the elements at its disposal — there’s enough here to make Blood and Money a passable choice for an unassuming thriller, but it’s not difficult to see how its narrative threads could have been tightened or heightened.

  • Falling (2020)

    Falling (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) As usual, it’s interesting to see what actors pick as material when they go for their first film as director. In Viggo Mortensen’s case, with his directing debut Falling, the stakes are even higher considering that he’s also writing the script, co-producing the film and starring in it. Aiming at low-key drama, the film features Mortensen as an airplane pilot dealing with a hideously ultraconservative father teetering on the edge of dementia. Lance Henriksen plays the father as a quasi-caricature of the worst possible person in the world made even worse by the onset of dementia — crudely intolerant of his son’s lifestyle and homosexuality, quick to lash out at everyone he sees, alternately confused and aggressive. It’s almost too good a portrayal: it certainly justifies the other characters washing their hands from him, makes the inevitable confrontation sweeter and softens an ending that could have been considered tragic if it had featured a nicer character. In terms of writing and directing, Mortensen does well — this is clearly a project for showcasing actors and dramatic situations with raw intensity, meaning that it’s not really meant for a wide audience. Still, it’s gracefully handled and in-between Mortensen and Henriksen (plus Laura Linney in a supporting role), there’s an interesting interplay between the actors. (Canadian cinephiles will laugh as how the film’s two proctologists are played in cameo roles by national filmmaking titans David Cronenberg and Paul Gross.) While there’s clearly a limited audience for this kind of unpleasant low-stakes drama, Falling does mark an honourable performance for Mortensen behind and in front of the camera.

  • Les visiteurs [The Visitors] (1993)

    Les visiteurs [The Visitors] (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2021) By French cinema standards, Les visiteurs was an unquestionable hit — the highest-grossing French film of 1993, a multi-nominee for the César Awards, followed by two sequels, and one of the films that solidified Jean Reno’s status as one of the leading French stars of the 1990s (all the way to his steady roles in Hollywood movies by the end of the decade). Despite its 2001 American remake, it’s also an irreducibly French film — by virtue of being a time-travel comedy in which denizens of the twelfth century are sent forward to 1992, it gets to play with France’s medieval past and its then-contemporary present. The fish-out-of-temporal water comic premise quickly leads to accessible gags (hmmm, toothpaste…) and Reno’s charisma does the rest even with a terrible haircut. Still, I had a harder time than expected in getting interested and staying interested in the result. Part of it may be that Frenchness doesn’t always carry over very well on this side of the Atlantic— anything having to do with French nobility, for instance, carries absolutely no power in the former colonies. (A friendly reminder—the gulf between the French and French Canadians is significantly wider than the one between the English and English-Americans.) The time-travel justification is strictly fantasy-based—something about mishandling potions—which does land the film into whatever-land where anything and everything is possible without much justification. Clearly aiming at large French audiences, you can see how Les visiteurs works on its intended target… but it’s not guaranteed that you will be part of that target.

  • Father Goose (1964)

    Father Goose (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2021) By the mid 1960s, sixty-something Cary Grant was seriously contemplating retirement. Having played romantic leads for the near entirety of his career and unwilling to change by taking on supporting or non-romantic roles, his options were getting more limited and his on-screen partners increasingly ludicrous. Leslie Caron, for instance, was 27 years his junior when shooting Father Goose — while the film (his penultimate) doesn’t necessarily look like a romantic comedy in its first half, the second quickly reverts to form, as his crusty beachcomber protagonist eventually marries the schoolteacher in desperate circumstances just to, ahem, goose up the film’s tension. It’s a shame, because the first half does a few interesting things — chiefly by taking Grant out of a suit and into a scraggly alcoholic hermit’s role, manipulated by acquaintances into contributing to the Allied resistance against the Japanese on the Pacific front. Grant’s charming mumbling remains as entertaining as ever, and the script is ingenious in contriving an interesting situation when eight schoolgirls and their caretaker disrupt his new routine. It’s afterwards that Father Goose gets far more conventional at a breakneck speed. While there are a few worthwhile moments (including a very funny response to a schoolgirl getting a crush on a sixty-year-old man), the film seems so preoccupied in creating, advancing and resolving the romance between Grant and Caron’s character that this only highlights its artificiality. Oh, Grant is his usual compelling self, and Caron looks better than in other movies with longer hair. The interplay between the two is not bad, and the screenplay does hit its mark. I’m probably being overly critical of the film — a Cary Grant film is worth a look even when it doesn’t hit the heights of the rest of his filmography. Still, Father Goose does demonstrate why Grant retired when he did, rather than take on roles that diminished his persona.

  • The Bounceback aka Love & Air Sex (2013)

    The Bounceback aka Love & Air Sex (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) I have visited Austin, TX only once, and spent less than twelve hours in the downtown core. Still, the one place I remember vividly is the movie mecca The Alamo Drafthouse. So, imagine my pleasure in seeing the downtown establishment being used as a focal point for the independent romantic comedy Love & Air Sex as it hosts the Air Sex championship (it’s a thing) and, incidentally, provides one of the backdrops to the story of two young ex-couples contemplating getting back together or not. From a narrative perspective, there really isn’t anything new in Love & Air Sex — if your viewing is interrupted after twenty minutes (as mine was), you will still have a pretty good idea of who ends up with whom or, more crucially, who doesn’t — and this is the kind of romantic comedy that has you rooting for the leads not to end back together so that they can move on. Clearly aimed at twentysomething viewers, it often reaches for vulgarity in-between more romantic moments: never mind the crude air sex pantomime when lust and love are sometimes tough to separate for one of the ex-couples. (Tellingly, though, it’s the B-couple that has hormonal issues and gets back together — the A-couple deals in longing, new romances and growth.)  Fortunately, Love & Air Sex does work quite well when it gives itself permission to go for romance without crudity — the resolution of the film is more mature than you’d guess from the onset, and there are a few cute scenes here and there. My main problem with the film is elsewhere — specifically, the male protagonist, who can’t stop moping around like a sad dog and who seems both incapable of succeeding in Los Angeles and not much of a match for a far more attractive female lead. I get that Love & Air Sex, being slightly more aimed at male audiences, probably thought it best to leave the male protagonist (played by a likable but unremarkable Michael Stahl-David) bland in order to facilitate self-identification, but the resulting character is, frankly, not much more than a walking blank canvas. A nice guy, but hardly someone who creates much attachment. Ashley Bell (who reminds me of a young Julie Hagerty, for some reason) does much better as the med student finding a possible match in a far superior “vet vet”.  In comparison, Sara Paxton and Zach Cregger have a lot more fun as the comedic supporting players. Writer-director Bryan Poyser doesn’t do too badly here — Love & Air Sex is reasonably entertaining to watch, and it brought me right back to a really good day in downtown Austin and a great evening at the Alamo Drafthouse.

  • Small Town Girl (1936)

    Small Town Girl (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) There is a pleasant matter-of-fact treatment of an outlandish premise in Small Town Girl that’s both a reflection of the common tropes of the time, and a charming reminder that 1930s Hollywood screenwriters played by different rules. The story of a, well, small-town girl swept off her feet by a dashing Boston surgeon, the film quickly goes to a familiar place: the quick whirlwind marriage, preceding romance by quite a margin. What would be truly weird today ends up being just another Hollywood trick to force our characters into an intimate relationship without riling up the Hays Code. Since they are married, they can go all the way at the slightest moment and that’s where the romantic tension emerges. Otherwise, though, there isn’t much more to the film. A still-unknown James Stewart shows up as a distant supporting character—the boring suitor who gets dumped as soon as the surgeon drives into town. Janet Gaynor and Robert Taylor are presented as the protagonists, but neither of them have much of a spark — they do what lead actors are supposed to do and get the film to the finishing line. By 1930s romantic comedy standards, Small Town Girl is ordinary: slightly weird seen eighty years later, but mildly charming at the same time and quite representative of the way marriage would be used as a plotting device in the shadows of the Hays Code.

  • The Crowded Sky (1960)

    The Crowded Sky (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) In most respects, The Crowded Sky is a turgid drama, with so many thoughts-as-voiceovers that it becomes a device fit to create more hilarity than introspection. (I suspect that it inspired some of Airplane! funnier moments.)  It’s creaky, interminable, naïve and disjointed. But there is one aspect in which it’s utterly fascinating: as a proto-catastrophe movie, not quite understanding how to best fit the pieces at its disposal for a far more streamlined thrilling experience. The basics are simple enough: Over the increasingly busy airspace of 1960 (the melodramatically dubbed “crowded sky”), a military plane collides with a passenger jet, killing a few, and endangering many. If that premise sounds familiar, you’re not crazy — it was reused almost as-is as a basis for later catastrophe film Airport 1975. But that was fourteen years later, after the runaway success of Airport, after Hollywood better understood how to build a thrill machine, after audiences had grown used to ordinary disasters and started asking for sustained catastrophes. You can clearly see the difference here: The idea of presenting characters that are then put in jeopardy is sound, but The Crowded Sky spends far too much time on character development and nearly nothing on how they react to their peril. The narrative structure itself is lopsided, putting the catastrophe at the very end of the film, cutting short any sense of lingering danger. Director Joseph Pevney repeatedly places emphasis on the “wrong” elements, spending some time creating wonderful dramatic subplots (such as a young pilot/painter rediscovering his father’s heritage) that have nothing to do with the impending disaster. In a few words, The Crowded Sky still thinks of itself as a drama with a few genre elements, rather than as a genre piece by itself. That wouldn’t have been so bad had the script been more elegant in how it approached its narrative structure. Here, unfortunately, we have the characters looking pensively into space as a voiceover reveals their thoughts to the audience, a theatrical device that could have been effective (and actually is, the first time it’s used, by lowering the light around the thinking character) but is here presented in such a ham-fisted way that it becomes unintentionally hilarious. It’s the additional touch that makes the final film hard to take all that seriously, even despite some interesting period material and brief moment of effective drama. Too bad that the character development and the catastrophe don’t interact as well as they should. If you want to see The Crowded Sky done right—or at least better—, then have a look at the Airport series: The disaster takes place earlier, the characters have the opportunity to react to it, and the pacing goes much faster without any intrusive monologues. But that’s the nature of genre evolution — there has to be someone doing it half-badly for someone else to pick up and rearrange the pieces more effectively.