Reviews

  • Theater of Blood (1973)

    Theater of Blood (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) On paper, Theater of Blood sounds much better than it feels on a moment-by-moment basis. Featuring none other than Vincent Price as a serious Shakespearian actor taking murderous revenge over his reviewers, it sounds like a great excuse as a fun romp: You get Price doing Shakespeare (even in small segments) and a fantasy sequence showing what filmmakers would really like to do to those pesky critics. In execution, though, Theater of Blood proves to be more laborious and less interesting than expected. As usual whenever filmmakers have to talk about reviewers, they’re portrayed as caricatural antagonists with no depth other than opposing our viewpoint character. Much of the narrative structure anticipates the slasher craze of later years, as director Douglas Hickox goes from one murderous set-piece to another, each critic getting a gory death along the way. There are a few welcome complications along the way, but much of it feels muted, far from achieving its own potential. Price is delightful as ever, but Theater of Blood itself feels like a missed opportunity… and I’m not just saying that because I’m a reviewer.

  • Springfield Rifle (1952)

    Springfield Rifle (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) I’m not enough of a western fan to pay much attention when the films struggle to break out of the classic mould of the genre. Springfield Rifle eventually does, but it’s a long slog to the film’s twist, and the twist isn’t a twist as much as it’s a return to expectations. Let me explain: Here we have none other than western stalwart Gary Cooper (he of rugged but bland presence), except that he’s playing a no-good coward drummed out of the army and abandoned by his ashamed family. Left without anywhere to go, he goes west to end up in a fort where there’s some illegal weapon contraband… and then comes the twist that he’s really an undercover spy trying to stop the flow of rifles to the Confederates during the Civil War. So… Cooper is really playing a hero, which is really a return to form rather than a surprise. The rest of the film, despite an admittedly unusual amount of spying business in the middle of a western, does remain very much a western, and not always a gripping one at that. The 1950s were a high-water mark for westerns in Hollywood but remarkably few of them are worth mentioning today: there were a lot of them, and the better ones have floated to the top. While Springfield Rifle is probably one of those that has endured (mostly due to the star, reaffirmed by the twist), I’m so indifferent to the genre that it quickly becomes close to background noise.

  • Show Girl in Hollywood (1930)

    Show Girl in Hollywood (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) There’s not a while lot to say about Show Girl in Hollywood by itself, because it’s intensely prototypical of an entire sub-genre of pictures that first came to prominence early in Hollywood’s history: the naïve young woman travelling west, convinced that she’s going to become a Hollywood star. In this specific version of the story, our heroine is a Broadway showgirl heading to California on promises that are invalidated by the firing of a studio executive, the first of many to be let go through the film in oddly amusing ways. It’s an early musical from the first years of sound cinema, so the technical qualities are a bit rough — but the script can be funny at times considering that, even then, Hollywood was all too eager to make fun of itself. It’s also directed by Mervyn LeRoy, one of the first true professionals of Hollywood. It does occur to me that Hollywood making movies about Hollywood in 1930 could be seen as advertising for movies themselves — the beginning of the Hollywood glamour pushed to the masses, the dream factory revving up to full production. At times, the well-worn clichés enthusiastically embraced by the film can be oddly comforting: Show Girl in Hollywood is the archetypical fresh-off-the-bus story of a young woman stumbling into film stardom, and it’s not all that surprising that it still works well enough ninety years later.

  • The Body Snatcher (1945)

    The Body Snatcher (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) For classic horror fans, The Body Snatcher features a mixture of familiar names— infamous murderers/graverobbers Burke and Hare, for one (their infamy extending well into twenty-first-century takes), producer Val Lewton for another, and also chameleonic director Robert Wise in one of his earliest directing credits (and perhaps his first true end-to-end project). But what will get most people’s attention is Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the same film, neither of them playing the monster archetypes they’re best known for. This certainly isn’t their only collaboration, and Lugosi’s role is minor at best — but Karloff is quite good, and more importantly he’s good in a somewhat respectable context: The Body Snatcher is heavy on atmosphere and historical references, helmed by a director who clearly wanted to impress. Even the premise, having to do with murderous graverobbers, is far from lurid monster features. The result is very decent no matter the age of the film: it’s a signpost in the filmography of many familiar names, but it’s also a film that holds up decently as long as you don’t walk in expecting cheap thrills or camp monsters.

  • Strictly Dynamite (1934)

    Strictly Dynamite (1934)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) At barely 71 minutes of a threadbare showbiz plot having to do with creative inspirations and affairs, Strictly Dynamite isn’t a classic for the ages. But it’s enjoyable in the ways 1930s Pre-Code comedy could be, and it does have two terrific assets playing off each other: Jimmy Durante and Lupe Velez (in the first pre-Spitfire phase of her Hollywood career) each bringing their own comic sensibilities to the film. Both are worth watching separately, and if their reunion isn’t quite a multiplier, it does give ample reason to appreciate the result. The plotting runs out of steam just as complications should pick up, but there’s some interest in the details if not the framework — Velez is always watchable, but she gets some remarkable costumes here. The opening performance from the Mills Brothers is also quite enjoyable. None of this will make Strictly Dynamite essential, but it’s a small treat for Durante and Velez fans.

  • Bathing Beauty (1944)

    Bathing Beauty (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) There’s probably one heck of a box-set (or, these days, “digital collection”) in some distant future in which Red Skelton’s early-1940s films are brought together to give a better appreciation of the incredible run he had as a comic performer at the time. No, his broad ingratiating style isn’t to everyone’s liking. No, the films are not usually high art. But he usually gave it everything he had and he was blessed with some of the era’s most amazing actresses as co-leads, whether it’s Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Lucille Ball, Virginia O’Brien or, in the case of Bathing Beauty, aquatic athlete Esther Williams. The story is contrived to the point of bewilderment (what with a newly married couple not consummating the marriage, and the husband chasing her back to the college she works at) but that’s part of the point, as Skelton plays a virtual stranger chasing a woman while claiming, “but I’m her husband!”  There’s quite a bit of idiot plotting required in making it work, but Skelton’s comedic style is one that easily accommodates such shenanigans as indulged by director George Sidney. As usual for a Williams film, there are a number of musical interludes and aquatic sequences that have cemented her enduring image. (The final sequence, choreographer by Busby Berkeley, is a favourite for re-creations and homages, especially in Berkeley retrospectives.)  There’s a silliness to the college comedy that feels timeless, some snappy tunes and an overall amiability that makes Bathing Beauty hard to dislike. It’s also, crucially, a good showcase for Skelton’s talents, and a reminder of why he was a box-office draw at that time.

  • Aparajito (1956)

    Aparajito (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) It’s essential for any self-respecting film fan to explore the world of cinema as thoroughly as possible. Old, new, local, international, lauded and reviled — part of the point of those “1000 Essential Movies” lists is to expose viewers to a wide sample of cinema as a proof of what the medium can achieve, but also help them find out their favourite genres and periods. At the same time, I don’t expect everyone to like everything. Once you’ve gone through your list of essentials, as limited or expansive as it can be, it’s perfectly acceptable to declare a sub-genre of film not to your liking. As I have trekked through world cinema, I have reliably found that, no matter the country or the era, the one thing I can’t stand is neorealism. (The only borderline exceptions are when neorealism is culturally close to me. I’ll tolerate French-Canadian neorealism and give a passing grade to Francophone or Anglophone neorealism, but anything farther than that is usually asking too much.)  As a result, well, I did not have a good time with Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito, which returns to 1920s India to continue the story launched by Pather Panchali (another film I didn’t particularly like). The drama gets more intense by the third act of the film, as the lead character loses an important relative and his reaction is not necessarily one we expect. None of my tepid reaction of the film should be misconstrued as a dismissal of Aparajito (and its associated trilogy) as a piece of world cinema — I can appreciate the incredible documentary aspect of chronicling Indian life even from the mid-1950s and how Ray helped Indian cinema become more than the razzle-dazzle of its dominant masala tone. But every critic eventually learns the distinction between importance, quality, art and, on the other side, a personal appreciation of the result. I may respect Aparajito, but I don’t have to like it.

  • B*A*P*S (1997)

    B*A*P*S (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) Sometimes, silliness is all you need. In B*A*P*S (Black American Princesses), we have two feisty young black women somehow finding their way to a rich white man’s Beverly Hills house, upsetting the neighbour’s habits and prejudices. It’s all executed according to silly farce, what with stereotypes crashing into one another, but director Robert Townsend does get to mount a stealth attack on white orthodoxy, sending the down-to-earth exuberance of its protagonists crashing against the staid manners of their new surroundings. You can easily tell who’s good and who’s not from the way they embrace black culture — all the way to the well-mannered butler with a secret fondness for black TV shows. Martin Landau plays the charmed ailing white millionaire, but the stars of the show are clearly Halle Berry and Natalie Desselle as the titular BAPs as they set out to improve Beverly Hills culture with their own flair. Berry looks surprisingly good as a blonde, although I also liked Troy Byer (who also wrote the screenplay) as a no-nonsense lawyer. The silliness of the film’s execution is less interesting than its overall status as a racially subversive dismantlement of the white establishment. (I’m sure someone, somewhere, already wrote at length about how so-called “dumb” black comedies à la B*A*P*S and How High are far more interesting as tools of systemic racial derision.)  No, the film is not always that clever or witty in its moment-to-moment execution — I’m sure that there’s a better movie to be made from the same material (from Byer’s public disappointment with the results, the original screenplay is probably worth a look), but let’s highlight for a moment the worth of a black-written black-directed black-starring comedy openly espousing black values as explicitly opposed to the white Southern California establishment. While contemporary reviews were harsh (even Roger Ebert, normally a sympathetic audience for this kind of film, hated it), I suspect that more recent assessments are kinder to it — indeed, B*A*P*S seems to have become a bit of a fondly-remembered cult classic in the meantime, which sounds about right for the kind of silly film it appears to be.

  • Mystery Street (1950)

    Mystery Street (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) I’m always up for a good procedural, and Mystery Street certainly obliges — set in Boston (and filmed there — a rarity at the time), it’s about the murder of a young woman where we, the audience, hold all the facts from the get-go — the suspense is in seeing the police investigator (played by a young Ricardo Montalban!) piece together the clues and use the forensic methods of the time to advance in his investigation. The straightforward script and direction actually work well in letting us take in the period atmosphere: Being close to the facts and unwilling to indulge in flights of stylistic fancy makes Mystery Street a bit of an outlier in a period best known for stylish noirs. The unspectacular nature of the narrative doesn’t stop the thrills, and it allows the atmosphere of the time to be credibly portrayed. Most viewers will latch on the forensic science sequences as the film’s most noteworthy moments, anticipating the CSI series of decades later in combining science and criminal detection. The result is a rather nice B-grade thriller — not quite worth crowing about, but amply rewarding for audiences catching this with no great expectations.

  • The Star Witness (1931)

    The Star Witness (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Warner Brothers has interesting roots as a company — while other studios in the early sound era were going for literary adaptations, period costumes and horror movies, it was focusing on then-contemporary gangster films and urban dramas. It’s in this light that The Star Witness becomes more interesting, as a permutation on familiar themes as it focuses on the drama surrounding an old man’s testimony as a witness to a murder. The story isn’t anything we can’t readily predict, but there’s some interest in seeing the film as an exemplar of another time — organized crime was a pressing concern in the early 1930s, and the film does have some propagandist intent in telling witnesses that there is nobility in testifying against crime. (Even though the message is tinged with anti-immigrant xenophobia.)  Walter Huston shows up as an idealistic district attorney. The Star Witness is not that good of a movie—the thinness of the film becomes apparent even at a running time of barely more than an hour—but it can be interesting in a time-capsule kind of way… or (if you’re more cynical) a suggestion that things don’t really change.

  • Tunes of Glory (1960)

    Tunes of Glory (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) If you’re looking at film history as a vast tapestry of individual works in relationship with each other, a surprising number of movies are best seen when compared to others. They stand alone narratively, but their interest comes from being variations on preceding films, responses to previous work, conscious attempts to get away from something else or simply new (and not necessarily successful) combinations of elements used elsewhere. Tunes of Glory, at face value, is a somewhat dry and downbeat drama about two officers having a clash of personalities in a Highland Regiment outpost. As an almost-theatrical exploration of two different men battling for power, it’s not uninteresting even if it does play to a very specific audience and premise. It does not end well. But Tunes of Glory becomes substantially more interesting when you compare it to other films in their lead’s filmography, what with Alec Guiness playing a slob and John Mills a snob — both playing against type in a mutually-agreed upon exchange of the roles they’d initially been selected for. It’s a particularly interesting contrast when placed alongside Guiness’ previous turn as a by-the-book officer in Bridge on the River Kwai. While I can’t quite recommend Tunes of Glory as a film to watch on its own (it’s good, but it’s not that good in a universe with plenty of other unseen movies), it does become a provocative follow-up to Bridge on River Kwai, or as part of any career retrospective for Guiness or Mills. But that’s the nature of the game once you start seeing not just individual movies but pieces of film history.

  • Mr. Arkadin aka Confidential Report (1955)

    Mr. Arkadin aka Confidential Report (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) I’m at the stage of my cinephilia when any unseen movie from Orson Welles is a bit of a happy surprise — while I’m certainly aware of Welles’ fall from Hollywood grace and the haphazard nature of filmography, I rather like the persona he carved for himself in the later stages of his career, physical presence and terrific voice included. Now, Mr. Arkadin dates from a weird interstitial time in Welles’ life: generally burnt-out in Hollywood, but not quite out of it, as Touch of Evil was still three years in the future. But it’s clearly a film with a strong European flavour, and as such does anticipate the last half of Welles’ life. It also looks back at The Third Man, being explicitly based on the Harry Lime character and its dense web of international intrigue. The plot has to do with a shadowy businessman and a cross-continental quest for truth, but I really can’t say that the result is coherent. Part of it undoubtedly has to do with the version of the film that I watched: Out of the nine known versions of the story (!), the “public domain” version is acknowledged as “the least satisfactory” one (I’m quoting a specialist by way of Wikipedia here) and it’s not a good idea to try to make sense of its narrative. Which is just as well, because the film can often be best appreciated as a series of moments, images, Welles’ typically compelling performance and pure cloak-and-dagger atmosphere of postwar Europe. I will probably revisit Mr. Arkadin in the future, preferably through its better-reviewed Criterion edition. In the meantime, however, I’m just happy for a little bit more Welles.

  • Romance (1930)

    Romance (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) I’m not one to presume that 1930s films were less sophisticated than today — less technically polished, certainly, but not any less intense or subtle in matters of plotting, emotion and characters. Or at least that’s the rule — there are exceptions, and Romance often feels like one of them. It’s straightforward, familiar, blunt and unpolished. To be fair, it’s a simple story told at length, which is not the kind of pacing that I like. It’s also quite rough from a cinematographic perspective — not quite shot like a theatrical play, but almost. As a result, it’s a bit of a slog to get through. Fortunately, there are a few things worth looking for: Greta Garbo is as humourless as usual, but she does look good in side-curls. The story, despite its lack of density, does eventually lead to a surprising conclusion, so there’s at least some payoff for the investment. (Not that it’s that long of a movie — it just feels that way.)  What doesn’t help Romance is (as is typical of movies from this period) a flatness of tone, both video and audio — there’s only so much you can do to restore films from that era, but the monotonous audiovisual experience can be curiously demanding for modern viewers. Romance is a bit of a blunt object, but it eventually serves its purpose… even if it takes a while to get there.

  • The Brass Bottle (1964)

    The Brass Bottle (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) I’ve arguably seen the best of the 1960s comedies, so now I’m watching the rest—and there’s plenty to like in the lesser-known movies that amused people at the time. They’re less polished, feature lesser-known actors, strike one-note premises until we’re wrung out and often display jaw-dropping attitudes, but they’re meant to entertain and some of the gags still land. In The Brass Bottle, troubles begin for an architect when he takes possession of an ancient bottle that contains… a genie. A genie who’s curious to understand the world after hundreds of years of solitude, very eager to help his master, not constrained by any law or science, and certainly not limited to a mere three wishes. Seeing Barbara Eden in a supporting role may have you reaching for the nearest I Dream of Jeannie summary and yes: Both works are adapted from the same novel, and it was Eden who played Jeannie in the TV show. But even with those common strands, The Brass Bottle stands as a distinct film. For one thing, the casting is really good: Tony Randall gets a leading role as the architect, the genie is played by a terrific Burl Ives (who reliably steals every film I’ve seen him in) and the beautiful Kamala Devi gets an amusing supporting role as another genie eager to please (but too summarily dismissed from the film). Much of the film’s comedy comes from confronting the unlimited powers of the genie with the moral reservations of the architect, and the very practical consideration in having a magic-using genie in the very rational world of the 1960s. Our genie eventually settles for residential development and stock market investing—to give you an idea of the film’s tone. But then the real world comes knocking, leading us to a cheat of an ending far too close to “it was a dream.”  Still, The Brass Bottle is not meant to be a particularly sophisticated film—I mean, the sequence with the donkey is ridiculous enough on its own—but it still has a few chuckles in the tank, and a rather amusing portrayal of a world fifty years gone.

  • The Scout (1994)

    The Scout (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) You can watch The Scout for its casting (Albert Brooks and Brendan Fraser with a little bit of Dianne Wiest — an interesting combination), or for its focus on baseball, or for its premise in following a disgraced baseball scout finding “the best baseball player that ever lived” in Mexico. What you won’t do, however, is watch it because it’s any good, since in chasing down far too many rabbits (baseball excellence, scout aiming for redemption, protagonist with central trauma, mental illness treatment, satire of celebrity media) and too many tones (anything from heartwarming pseudo-parental bonding to broad comedy), The Scout loses itself into a jumble of different ideas imperfectly executed. It’s not a difficult film to watch nor is it all that obnoxious, but it is a mess and it ends up raising more questions than satisfaction. At least Fraser is not bad (in a role that portends his take on George of the Jungle, oddly enough) and baseball fans will probably enjoy the look at mid-1990s New York Yankees, but otherwise, it’s more frustrating than anything else.