Reviews

  • Hideous! (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2022) Some reviews naturally write themselves… as long as there are common references. Saying that Hideous! is a middle-of-the-road Charles Band film is enough for those who are familiar with Band, but may be meaningless to others. So, to recap: Band is a low-budget comedy/horror writer-director who has a fondness for puppets. Hideous! plays to his strengths by being concerned by characters stuck in a building with four puppeteered homicidal creatures. What follows is the usual Band brand of low-budget filmmaking. There is, as is often the case, a definite spark of potential here, as the film deals with rich oddity collectors who fall prey to their obsessions. He doesn’t do much with that idea, but things like that help Band remain a cult favourite director among fans with a tolerance for low-end horror filmmaking. Hideous! is not good, but then again it’s not meant to be: it’s supposed to be trashy, ridiculous, off-putting and familiar at once. At that, it succeeds—and remains slightly more memorable than many of Band’s other movies.

  • The Singing Marine (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) It took me far too long to notice Dick Powell. What makes him fascinating isn’t as much his individual roles as the overall arc of his career, as he transitioned from matinee idol roles requiring comic timing and a good signing voice to more hard-boiled characters in the film noir genre that made good use of his ability to deliver lines. (Later on, Powell further transitioned into directing and television producing.)  The Singing Marine is, obviously, a film from Powell’s first era: he plays a soldier with an unusually good voice who finds his military vocation sidetracked by show-business success. Much of the film’s dramatic arc has to do with his ego being inflated by showbiz before wizening up and returning to the armed forces. The Singing Marine is not that good or memorable a movie, but it does have its highlights and odd tangents as a piece of pre-WW2 propaganda, as a minor showcase for Busby Berkeley’s choreography, and obviously as Powell in his earliest persona. He’s pure charm and voice here and there’s really never any doubt that he’ll end up doing the right thing in the end. That probably explains why the film was a big box-office hit at the time… and is largely a curio these days.

  • The Penalty (1920)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, December 2022) As much as it will pain film historians to acknowledge this, there is an unspoken but real additional burden of proof required for much-older movies. Especially for titles from the silent era, which require more effort to watch (reading, eek!): why bother? Does it still have anything to say today? Is it still special, worthwhile, and compelling for us a century later? In The Penalty’s case, the answer is surprising: Not only do we have a grand-guignol revenge narrative going on, but we also have a mesmerizing acting performance from Lon Chaney as he plays a double leg amputee with a remarkable lack of special effects. (The real special effect is that, to supplement creative camera angles and a wheelchair apparatus, Chaney had his legs tightly bound behind him for lengthy periods of time while shooting—something incredibly painful and medically unadvisable.)  This visual spectacle, plus the film’s snappy 87 minutes running time and timeless genre plotting, make The Penalty far less painful to watch than many straight-up silent dramas of the era. Chaney is good enough to make anyone take notice (it would prove to be his breakthrough role) and there’s an audacity to the film’s production that still resonates today.

  • The Attic (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2022) In some ways, The Attic could only have been a product of the slasher era. In others, it’s a throwback to the earlier hagsploitation craze of the late 1960s, where former screen stars played themselves as psycho killers. Except that this psychological thriller splits the duties between an out-of-work librarian spinster (Carrie Snodgrass), her disabled father (Ray Milland), a chimpanzee and the gothic atmosphere of the house they share. As a psychological thriller, it’s outright contrived—the only question is whether this accumulation of wild plot elements will coalesce into something worthwhile. While presenting itself as a horror film, The Attic doesn’t quite conform to the strictures of the genre: there’s no gradual accumulation of bodies, as was the case in most horror films of the time, nor is the film exclusively focused on shock and suspense. While the ending is horrific, it takes a while to get there, and much of the film’s first half could be seen as a very dark take on a female emancipation narrative. But, of course, it’s not that—by the time the film ends, there are no good people left, just murderers and victims. It’s not quite as exciting as it could have been, but not a complete bore either. And The Attic has the advantage of a librarian as a heroine… although you have to be careful what you wish for.

  • Mira por mí [See for me] (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) There have been a surprising number of recent thrillers/horror movies featuring disabled protagonists, and See for me is a further addition to the canon. Built around a blind protagonist who has to confront thieves in the upper-class mansion she’s house-sitting, it should be an effortless thrill machine… but it’s not. Ironically, most of this self-defeat comes from stronger characterization than usual, as our self-loathing protagonist goes to great lengths to disguise her handicap. (So does the movie, in fact—it takes ten to fifteen minutes for the film to go beyond the hints and state it outright.)  She’s prideful—the consequence of losing her sight at a late age after achieving some success as an Olympic-class skier. She’s also, more regrettably, morally flexible: Not only is she planning on ripping off the mansion’s owner before the thieves show up, she quickly makes a deal to help them out in exchange for a cut of the profits. Later events will prove that you can’t make deals with those criminals, of course, and one brutal death later we’re down to the real meat of the film: a blind girl, helped along by an online viewing-service pal, trying to survive being in the same house as some hardened criminals. Director Randall Okita does a good job at orchestrating the suspense in a tight 92-minute package and blind actress Skyler Davenport brings authenticity to her performance, but there’s only so much they can do to sand off the edges of an unlikable protagonist who starts the film by being rude to her mom, and ends it with what’s likely a chunk of the money the thieves were after. Characterization is important, but too much of it in the wrong direction can dramatically damage the extent of the audience’s involvement. While it’s refreshing to see that there’s one disabled protagonist who’s not an angel of impeccable morals and compassion, the film pushes too hard in a direction that disengages the audience. Given this, See for me ends up being a middling thriller—not terrible, but not particularly good either. I was having more fun imagining further twists (such as the helper being in on the robbery) than I was just watching the film itself.

  • I’m Not Rappaport (1996)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2022) The nice thing about older Hollywood stars is that you can take in their complete career at a glance—the early movies are fun, sure, but what about the last few ones? Are the stars still playing to their persona, and is it still working? For Walter Matthau, the overview isn’t like most other cradle-to-grave stars—having made his entrance into showbiz relatively late in life and being blessed with a face that was more bulldog than matinee idol, he played titular Grumpy Old Men throughout his career. I’m Not Rappaport, one of his final film appearances, finds him co-starring with Ossie Davis and being as compelling a presence as in other roles. Here he plays an over-the-top confabulator, an opinionated socialist and rabble-rouser always eager to fast-talk his way through various issues. This exasperates Davis’s character, a more easygoing type who can’t quite get away from Matthau’s verbose hurricane. It doesn’t help that the protagonist keeps inventing grandiose stories that may or most likely are not true. Since director Herb Gardner is adapting his own theatrical play to the screen, you can expect the film to be heavily dialogue-based, with Matthau handling most of it. Various episodes are grafted onto the odd-couple dynamics at play, and they’re not all convincing: While the protagonist’s daughter coming around out of concern for her aging, tall-tale-telling father is interesting, the third-act emphasis on a rescue narrative for an abused woman is less credible—although it does end in a somewhat realistic fashion. Still, the spot light here is on Matthau, as likable and gruff as he’s been throughout most of his career. I’m Not Rappaport is not a great movie (in fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who remembers its twenty-five years later), but it’s a very nice showcase for Matthau and, in a less showy manner, Davis—and a somewhat better vehicle for Matthau than many of the other films he shot in his last two decades. It’s well worth a look if you’re going down Matthau’s filmography.

  • Off the Rails (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) If I say that I did not care for Off the Rails, didn’t find it funny, didn’t find it interesting, and didn’t find it worthwhile, I’m not actually giving it as bad a review as you’d think. For I can at least recognize that the film is not for me—as a dramedy following three fifty-something women taking an extended rail trip through Europe to recapture past glories, this is clearly a film for a specific demographic group—middle-class white women prone to wine sipping and empty nest syndrome. This isn’t a group often targeted by filmmakers, so at least that should get some respect. But it’s also true that the film doesn’t have all that much going for it. The inclusion of a teenage daughter ensures that there’s a barometer against which they can compare themselves (or rather themselves against their younger selves), while the overarching plot device of a dead friend motivating their trip is there for some easy emotional beats. Blondie provides the soundtrack, which is almost everything you need to know about the result. This was Kelly Preston’s last film, lending it some undeserved gravitas. Off the Rails is not specifically bad, but it’s so innocuously average that it’s highly unlikely to develop any following outside its target demographics.   Again—that’s not as bad a bad review as could have been.

  • Chinesisches Roulette [Chinese Roulette] (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) My lack of appreciation for Chinese Roulette was a forgone conclusion the moment I started watching it. I can barely tolerate the pacing of writer-director Rainer Werner Fassbinder even at his best, and this isn’t him at his best. A tawdry mixture of adulterous couples (plural), dysfunctional families, a disabled child, a not-completely loaded gun, and psychological cruelty, this is a film that goes deep into pretension. Despite loaded elements, it’s seldom interesting—just mean and alien, cold when it should be hot, yet suffocating in a closed-off location with a handful of characters. By the time it ends with a gunshot (shooter and victim unknown), the film is proud of itself for setting up its elaborate charade, but fails to account for bored viewers shrugging their shoulders and asking, “So what?” There are some really clever analyses of the film available online, but they only work if you’re willing to put in the work of analyzing the film—except that this is a film that goes out of its way to discourage viewers from ever watching it in the first place.

  • Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, December 2022) Iconic title; disappointing movie—so it goes for Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. (The film’s title is quoted just about everywhere, but not the film itself.)  But then again, I’ve never been much of a Sam Peckinpah fan, and as I dig deeper in his filmography, I’m slowly understanding why. Peckinpah was a wild man, fascinated by just about everything I’m utterly uninterested in—starting with a penchant for violence and nihilism. Here, a contemporary western set in Mexico becomes all about the head of the titular Garcia, lugged around like a prize for a drug lord but ultimately useless as anything but a proof of death. It’s a thoroughly dispiriting film, with very few characters making out alive—and many biting bullets well before when you’d expect. Visually, it has its moments—shot south of the border with a largely Mexican crew, it features a matter-of-fact presentation of the country in its mid-1970s then-modernity competing with more classical western vistas. For Peckinpah fans, this film is special—the only one to reflect the writer/director’s vision, he claimed, and certainly one of the most bizarre entries in his filmography, considering the role that a decapitated head plays in it. But weird isn’t always good, and in this case Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia reminded me of everything wrong with Peckinpah, and very little that’s right about him.

  • She Went to the Races (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) Horse-track romantic comedy is given a thin (but cute) scientific veneer in She Went to the Races, where a female scientist turns (with a few colleagues) to a mathematical system of horse-track betting in order to save her uncle from ruin. How mathematics can possibly predict horse racing is an idea that’s best left to degenerate gamblers and frantic screenwriters, but once you accept that premise, then the film becomes a lot easier to take in. There isn’t much going on here—but you get Frances Gifford and a pre-fame Ava Gardner competing for James Craig’s affections, with loonier performances from the supporting actors. As a comedy, it’s slight—you can argue that it’s funnier to watch Hollywood’s idea of scientists than the first-degree comedy of the film. As a romance, it’s more interesting but for the wrong reasons: Gifford feels bland whenever Gardner shows up on-screen, and it’s clear that Gardner (who was a year away from her big break) eclipsed the film’s designated lead. The rest of She Went to the Races is charming, but not essential nor all that memorable.

  • Lucky Devils (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2022) While Hollywood was already a fixture by the early 1930s, it was still very much the Wild West in some aspects of the craft. Which makes Lucky Devils a rather exciting take on stuntmen at work, at a time when safety didn’t always register as it does now. Written by stuntman Bobby Rose, and executed with some lavish use of the RKO back lot, the film is a blend of basic characterization (stuntmen as thrill seekers), elementary romance and as many dangerous-looking stunts they could fit in the film’s scant 70 minutes running time. Don’t expect much in terms of plot—but the stunts are quite good, and the atmosphere of rubbing elbows with stuntmen at a time when this was a profession that attracted mercenary daredevils is rather fascinating. I’m always amazed that there aren’t more movies about stuntmen, but pair Lucky Devils with near-contemporary The Lost Squadron, or the later Stunts (177) or Hooper (1978) and you’ll have a good overview of the field.

  • Thunder Force (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, December 2022) If you’ve seen any of Melissa McCarthy’s, oh, last dozen movies (especially those four written and directed by her husband Ben Falcone), then you should know what to expect from Thunder Force as well—McCarthy as a more likable-than-smart woman-of-the-people thrust in an extraordinary situation, complete with basic gags, simplistic plotting and conventional (nay: ingratiating) crowd-pleasing. This time around, two elements are slightly different: a premise in which supervillains run freely around Chicago, and the presence of Viola Davis as a childhood friend who has since become an ultra-rich scientist with a revenge fixation on avenging her parents’ death at the hands of a supervillain. None of the supervillain stuff is explored in any depth, and while McCarthy/Falcone make much out of superintelligence (or having a lot of money, both recurring themes in their filmography), the rest of the film is strict grade-six stuff. Seriously: one plot twist is telegraphed so clumsily that it’s a wonder it was ever meant as a twist. The fun here begins when McCarthy’s protagonist blunt-forces her way into her old estranged friend’s laboratory and gulps down the first of many treatments for super-strength, giving them a fighting chance against the supervillains. There are some political shenanigans here featuring Bobby Carnivale, but nothing too surprising. Jason Bateman pops up as a not-so-villain supervillain, while Taylor Mosby has a spirited turn as her mother’s daughter. Thunder Force is clearly no Lightning Force: it’s all bluster and loud sounds without much flash to it. We’ve been in the degenerate phase of superhero movies for long enough that this feels like a very tepid take on overly familiar elements, with the actors going through their usual motions without surprising anyone along the way. McCarthy, as is often the case, forgets that she’s at her best not as a star but as an ensemble player—but she doesn’t let Davis take enough space or retort as ferociously. I strongly suspect that improv took the already-loose script a few notches lower, and this is not a film that had any excess quality to spare in the first place. Saying that it’s a waste would require that it had something to waste. Instead, we get a watchable (but not too closely) riff on common clichés. Thunder Force is not going to age well, but that’s fine—being a Netflix production, it’s about to disappear in their back catalogue forever.

  • The Last Tycoon (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2022) You have to be a pathological fan of classic Hollywood to get any enjoyment out of The Last Tycoon—even if the sight of Robert de Niro as a 1930s studio executive may be good enough for some. Not that he’s the only known name in the credits: The cast lists about half a dozen other familiar actors, from Tony Curtis to Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau and others (plus a very young Anjelica Huston). What’s more, the film comes with an impressive origin story: based on a Harold Pinter screenplay adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last unfinished novel, directed by the legendary Elia Kazan (for whom this would be his last film), and produced by the equally legendary Sam Spiegel. But the great cast, crew and pedigree create expectations that the film can’t match. While The Last Tycoon offers a few pleasures in re-creating the working conditions of a classic Hollywood studio in a way that should make film fans happy, there’s something staid and overly mannered in result. By focusing on a studio executive, the film perpetuates a very privileged vision of the movie industry’s early years—something made worse by the central romantic pursuit of a younger actress by an older studio executive. (Even if De Niro was only five years older than Ingrid Boulting.)  But the film itself is noticeably inert—what should have been dramatic sequences are perfunctory, and the dull dark-brown colour scheme of boardroom scenes makes everything look dimmer and duller than it should. Despite a few promising elements, a top-notch cast and some incredible filmmakers at the helm, The Last Tycoon ends up an unmitigated disappointment. Sure, you get de Niro acting opposite Nicholson for the only time in their careers, but at the cost of a film that scarcely manages to justify its own existence. Bits and pieces of it are interesting, but hardly essential.

  • Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2022) By now, any (hypothetical) regular reader of my movie reviews should be tired of my standard rant against “men are garbage” movies—those weirdly hailed films portraying all female characters as virtuous or likable and all male characters as scum in a way that would clearly be misogynistic if the genders were flipped. It’s a surprisingly common trope these days, and I can’t wait for it to be seen for the mean-spirited sexist tripe it is. Gunpowder Milkshake definitely belongs to that subgenre: Its protagonists are female, its murderous antagonists are male, and moral alignment generally follows gender roles. (The occasional exception, such as the soon-to-die father, merely reinforces the overall message.)  But unlike other “men are garbage” movies, Gunpowder Milkshake has one crucial quality—it’s a lot of fun. It’s not completely self-absorbed in its message, it’s almost restrained in the way it gleefully murders males, and it makes some great casting choices along the way. I mean—a scene in which Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh and Angela Bassett play librarians who are secretly a front for a secret sisterhood of assassins? Yes! Written and directed with energy by Navot Papushado, Gunpowder Milkshake is at its best when it goes full bore in action movie tropes, ripping off everything it can from John Wick as a starter and topping itself at each successive action sequence. The clichés are big, the moral alignment of the film is non-existent (the protagonist gets a huge pass from another character for killing her father—but that’s okay, since he’s a male!) and we’re clearly closer to live-action cartoon than anything credible, but the result is a decently entertaining action film with strong art direction, a few original ideas (both structural and on a moment-to-moment action-beat basis) and plenty of attitude. There are a few wrong notes and missed opportunities here (most notably, Karen Gillan is a bit bland here—I can think of many other actresses her age who would have been more distinctive) and I obviously won’t let the “men are garbage” thing go. But in that subgenre, Gunpowder Milkshake is much better than average, and it’s the kind of action film meant to make fans happy until the next remarkable one rolls around.

  • Cinderella Jones (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2022) The nice thing about once-popular movie genres is that if you like the classics in that category, there’s plenty more to enjoy. Light-hearted but meaningless Cinderella Jones, for instance, is clearly not a great musical. But it is a musical, so if you like the tone (and are ready to overlook a few execution issues), then you’ve got a perfectly fun little movie that plays well even if it leaves no great impression. Here, we have Joan Leslie as a likable but dim singer who discovers she’s the heir to a fortune… if she can meet the conditions of the will and marry a certifiable genius. Given that this is a musical, the next logical step is, of course, to enroll in an elite all-male college to find a suitor. For a film directed by Busby Berkeley, the “musical” aspect of this musical comedy is lacking—there isn’t much here in terms of dancing or choreography. All the effort seems to have gone into the comedy, which is occasionally amusing but again not all that great. Still, even an amusing comedy can be interesting, what with a few zingers along the way and a showy little part for S. Z. Sakall. There’s a bit of systemic misogyny that is, for once, the butt of mild potshots. Calling Cinderella Jones a wartime musical may seem weird for a 1946 release, but that’s not taking into account that the film was completed in 1943, then held back for years. By the time it was released, it had to be re-edited to reflect the end of the war, leading to a few glaring inconsistencies (and probably many more unseen issues) within the film. Don’t watch Cinderella Jones because you’re expecting a top-notch musical—watch it because you’ve seen everything else, and like the overall atmosphere of such movies. Then it becomes a lot more fun.