Reviews

  • It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

    It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) Few films have been perceived so differently over the year as It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Upon release, it was a fairly ordinary Science Fiction film featuring astronauts battling a monster in a spacecraft — a hermetic, claustrophobic version of the typical 1950s monster movies, not executed with any kind of sophistication by director Edward L. Cahn, but good enough for drive-in thrills. By the early 1970s (if it was seen at all at an age prior to home video), it must have been a quaint relic at a time of New Hollywood, as movies became increasingly realistic and the rift between what audiences expected and the shoddy execution of the 1958 film became more apparent. But then something very strange happened: Alien, a film that pushed horror where it had never gone before by borrowing quite a lot from It! The Terror from Beyond Space. Consider the crew of a spaceship landing on a strange planet and carrying back a dangerous visitor within the confines of their ship. Attempts to kill it through conventional means fail, as it keeps killing crewmembers, forcing the survivors to flush it out of the airlock. Isn’t that Alien or what? After a few decades in which comparisons must not have been kind, watching It! The Terror from Beyond Space is surprisingly fun now because we’re probably approaching it from the other end: What if Alien had been made in the 1950s? Well, it’s not a thought experiment or a retro-pastiche: Here we have the real thing, an authentic vintage interpretation of one of the ur-stories of horror/SF cinema. It’s almost enough to make you want to send modern movies back in time to see what they would have done with the concept, the limited means and the self-censorship prevalent during the 1950s. Oh, I won’t qualify It! The Terror from Beyond Space as conventionally good: there’s a fair bit of ironic distancing going on while watching the film, and Alien really should be a prerequisite to watch. Our “blue collar” crew plays chess, really… But movie experiences are not always the ones intended by the filmmakers, and if a modern reading uses other sources to create enjoyment, well, that’s better than no enjoyment at all.

  • La femme aux bottes rouges [The Woman with Red Boots] (1974)

    La femme aux bottes rouges [The Woman with Red Boots] (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) In watching a Buñuel movie, I expect weirdness, and weirdness is what I got with La femme aux bottes rouges — although I didn’t get the Buñuel I expected. Writer-director Juan Luis Buñuel is the son of Luis Buñuel, but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell the difference considering how closely does this film seem to stem from the same place as Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie. Having the beautiful Catherine Deneuve in the lead reminds us of Belle de Jour, and the controlled surrealism of the film clearly owes much to Buñuel père. The story, as much as can be gathered without an explanatory guide, has to do with a young woman (Deneuve) being courted by an elderly rich gentleman (Fernando Rey, remarkable), leading to rifts with her current lover, lust from another man who ends up shooting his wife in a hunting accident, and artists gathering at a retreat. But that’s not the weird part yet, because our heroine is a woman with the power to change reality, to make others do her bidding and create passageways out of paintings. What’s rather charming in La femme aux bottes rouges as it flirts with fantasy is the decidedly low-tech approach to its magic: Things appear, disappear or change after editing cuts: a low budget, low-effort approach that does enhance the eeriness of the fantastic by leaving the magical unseen. It’s really up to the viewers to pay attention and realize unnatural changes even though there are no showy special effects calling attention to themselves. (Speaking of special effects, I had to laugh at one scene in which Deneuve’s character briefly reveals herself naked to the elderly gentleman — she’s wearing a “naked” flesh-coloured bodysuit, and not a subtle one at that.)  As for the rest, well, weirdness abounds: Rey plays his mysterious character with quiet panache, while Deneuve remains enigmatic throughout. It’s a trip throughout art, dreams, semi-pretentious dialogue and people acting bizarrely. Frankly, it took me two attempts to get through La femme aux bottes rouges: I started the first attempt expecting something I could watch out of the corner of my eye and was mystified when the film resisted such a divided-attention approach: it worked much better when watched carefully, especially given what happens in between its cuts. It’s not necessarily recommended for everyone, but if you’re at the end of the Buñuel père’s filmography, consider this one a bonus.

  • Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

    Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2021) Bringing back a movie franchise after a decades-long hiatus is always a risky prospect, no matter how many commercial imperatives and fannish demands justify it. Bill and Ted being such a creation of their circa-1990 era, bringing them back nearly thirty years later -in an environment saturated with nostalgia—seemed wrong. But Bill & Ted Face the Music isn’t like most thirty-year-later remakes — perhaps the single key difference being that the core creative team behind the franchise is also back: crucially screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon (who became a celebrity screenwriter in the meantime), but also Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in the two lead roles. This probably explains why the film is so comfortable taking the story thirty years later, with our visibly aged protagonists having daughters and struggling with a life that has not lived up to their youthful expectations. When further time-travelling shenanigans suggest that the fate of the universe rests on a crucial music performance, it’s off to the races in recapturing the charm of the earlier films. It, surprisingly, generally works: There’s a certain wit to the script, some funny takes on time-travel elements, and the two leads recapture their performances with some gusto. Better yet, the film’s secret weapons are Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as Bill and Ted’s daughters, each of them clearly taking after their fathers. Lundy-Paine is particularly amusing channelling Reeves’ specific tics as Ted. The rest of Bill & Ted Face the Music has ups and downs: recruiting past musicians is a good idea, as are the visits to increasingly older and more desperate version of themselves, but some of the other material is more laborious — a subplot involving a terminator robot with serious self-esteem issues sputters as often as it works. Fortunately, it does build to a rather nice conclusion that wraps up Bill and Ted’s story while opening the door just widely enough for the next generation to take over. Not that they have to — sequels aren’t mandatory, after all.

  • The Fuller Brush Man (1948)

    The Fuller Brush Man (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) At some point in the future, I will be tempted to get all of the Red Skelton movies of the 1940s I can get (or maybe wait for a TCM marathon) and see if my impressions of a repetitive streak are correct. In how many titles does he play a good-natured semi-simpleton dragged into a crime comedy? I realize that’s not exactly a weird premise nor much of a stretch from his usual persona, but The Fuller Brush Man has, beyond the unusual nature of its titular job, some overly familiar elements. Of course, this is a film that came well into Skelton’s career, so playing to his strengths was the natural course of action. Now, I do like Skelton’s shtick most of the time and this film does it quite well — although I like him just a bit better when he’s not handicapped by an overly naïve protagonist: in Ship Ahoy, or the Whistling series among others. The Fuller Brush Man ends up being a decent but unspectacular effort for him — pleasant enough to watch, but not necessarily a highlight. He does what he does well, and that’s not bad.

  • Bachelor Party (1984)

    Bachelor Party (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) Considering Tom Hanks’ persona as America’s everyman, universally loved and respected and so on, it’s occasionally good to go back to the first phase of his film career and take a look at the kind of stuff he was starring in as a younger man. Oh, there’s plenty of broad sentimental material here — Splash, Big, The Man with One Red Shoe, Turner & Hooch, etc. —but then there’s some more interesting material in there and I’m not sure there’s anything more surprising than seeing Hanks leading a raunchy sex comedy in Bachelor Party. Not that raunchy of a sex comedy, mind you: Despite the promise of a wild sex-and-drugs-fuelled bachelor party and the ominous presence of a donkey (don’t worry), the film flirts with naughtiness more than commits to it, all the while building up a committed relationship between our baby-faced Hanks protagonist and his fiancée (Tawny Kittaen, in fine form) on the eve of their wedding. There are clichés and dumb jokes that wouldn’t pass muster today (including as hysterical a case of transphobia that could be put on film in a 1980s comedy, which is a lot) and they do harm to the film. But the rest of it is strong enough, in a somewhat conventional way that tips its hat to the classic 1980s comedy slobs-versus-snobs archetype. Still, the most interesting aspect of Bachelor Party to a twenty-first century audience may be the spectacle of Tom Hanks partying it up wildly in between strippers, donkeys, drunken Asian gentlemen and a trashed hotel suite. I’m not sure we’ll ever see something like that again in his filmography…

  • Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962)

    Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) As much as I wanted to like Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, there’s so much wasted potential in the milquetoast result that it starts to grate. Of course, that may be an overreaction — the film was obviously built by director Henry Koster to be an innocuous broad-public comedy, and isn’t meant to sustain more elaborate expectations. Still, as a family goes to a beach house for an extended vacation, the film skirts the edge of something more interesting but never gets there. James Stewart remains the film’s best asset as a harried father driven nuts by the entire family vacation (the framing device has him narrate a very funny exasperated letter, his drawl making everything even better — a shame that the finale of the film never quite goes back to it.), and having Maureen O’Hara play the mother is not a bad choice at all. Occasional set-pieces involving a persnickety steam heater, or a steam-filled bathroom, hint at a better film. (And the two references to a father purchasing a Playboy magazine for his son are… surprising.)  But for most of its duration, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation ends up being a curiously tame affair, content to let Stewart run exasperated at everything going wrong during his vacations. It works fine in the way many subsequent family vacations films do — a bit of humiliation comedy, a dash of comic contretemps, and a heaping of traditional values at the trip brings the family back together as one unit. Familiar stuff, perhaps tamer than expected by modern audiences, considering how the envelope has been pushed since then. I can’t, in good conscience, call this a bad movie, but it’s certainly disappointing — although one notes that it led to the somewhat better Take Her, She’s Mine the following year with the same director/star combo.

  • Dead Silence (1997)

    Dead Silence (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) As far as low-budget made-for-TV thrillers go, there’s something halfway interesting in Dead Silence. After all, this is about psychopathic criminals taking a busload of deaf children hostage in a farm, as the police surround the area and negotiations begin. The disability angle adds interest to what would otherwise be a rather run-of-the-mill thriller. Casting adds some more as well, with veteran James Garner playing the lead hostage negotiator and Marlee Matlin as a schoolteacher. The low-budget imperatives of the film create a nicely restrained setting around the farm. The last element of note is a wild third-act swerve that creates more questions than it answers, but makes for a sudden late burst of energy in a film that needed it. The result is still not all that good, but it is not quite as bland as it could have been — the proof being that Dead Silence is still playing on TV twenty-five years later, even if on a Canadian channel focused on accessibility issues.

  • Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)

    Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) I’m not a big fan of Abbott and Costello in the first place, so I find myself curiously unmoved by even what others call their best films. (Star vehicles are wasted if the stars leave you indifferent.)  Jack and the Beanstalk has a good reputation as one of their more ambitious late-career movies, away from the “Abbott and Costello meet…” boilerplate and it’s easy to see the higher polish compared to many earlier efforts. There’s a clear ambition to go beyond the gags of their first films and deliver an experience supplemented by a sustained story, special effects and even musical numbers. It’s shot in colour, which was still a financial risk in the early 1950s (although one notes that the film was produced outside studio financing). There’s even a cinematographic device used to enhance the framing device, as opening and closing segments of the film are presented in sepia monochrome. But little of this amounts to a lasting impact — Jack and the Beanstalk runs through the motions of the fairytale while adding very little of interest. Costello takes the leading role, not leaving much for Abbott to do (which may be part of the issue, as I usually prefer Abbott). The simplistic singing and dancing reinforce the kid-friendly intention behind the film, which may be fine for some but left me wanting more in terms of imagination or comedy. Ah well — as with most comedy vehicles, this is for the fans.

  • Three the Hard Way (1974)

    Three the Hard Way (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) When people praise the fun of blaxploitation, they often talk about Shaft, but I think they really mean films like Three the Hard Way. I suppose there’s some irony in that Shaft, from Gordon Parks père, is a studied, rather serious cool, while Three the Hard Way, from Gordon Parks fils, truly plays into the exploitation elements. Macho male leads, sexy actresses (go ahead and try to pick between Sheila Frazier and Marie O’Henry), Kung fu fighting (making explicit the connection between two strains of exploitation films), more action sequences than was the norm in the mid-1970s, some delicious urban style and an elaborately ludicrous premise. We’re way beyond the usual inner-city crime thrills here: This is a film about defeating a white supremacist plot to kill non-white Americans through a genetically engineered virus. Fortunately, Three the Hard Way goes about it in such an over-the-top way that it’s much easier to cheer for the systematic slaughter of dozens of white racists than to be too upset about the idea. Led by Jim Brown and supported by Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly, the cast is not just about preventing genocide, but looking terrific while doing it. Martial arts moves are supplemented by an arsenal so large that it takes a plane to carry it all. The action scenes, explosions and fights are numerous, although Parks’ low-budget, early-days-of-the-action-genre direction has more old-school charm than real immersion: it’s all too easy to spot where cuts are meant to masquerade bad staging… and even easier to spot where the staging doesn’t work even with careful cutting. (There’s a jeep explosion filmed from two angles that’s supposed to be two separate explosions, for instance…)  But this is not a film made for technical prowess: it’s a slam-bang exploitation film done with generous means for the subgenre and an accordingly larger scope. The three leads are quite likable, leading to considerable sympathy for them as they mow down scores of unrepentant white supremacists. But it’s really the period feel of mid-1970s black Los Angeles that makes the film work: the style, fashion, and attitudes are something that has been parodied often (Undercover Brother owes a deep debt to Three the Hard Way) and integrated into an entire aesthetics, but it’s great good fun to get back to the source of it all. The copious amount of sex and violence means that it’s not a film for all audiences, but blaxploitation fans will recognize the pure undiluted thing here.

  • Blade Violent—I violenti [Women’s Prison Massacre] (1983)

    Blade Violent—I violenti [Women’s Prison Massacre] (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) Even by the exploitative standards set by “women in prison” movies of the 1970s–1980s, Women’s Prison Massacre seeks the bottom of the barrel and stays there. Naked women, brutish men, grimy setting, lesbian sex and generous gore — those are the ingredients and notorious exploitation director Bruno Mattei (who worked both in porn and horror, giving you an idea of the pedigree brought here) doesn’t hold back. The good news is that the breathtaking Laura Gemser stars as a character named Emanuelle (alluding to her work in the Black Emanuelle series, even though most films in that series were nowhere near as violent as this one); the bad news is that her character gets subjected to terrible things, undercutting almost all of the enjoyable aspects of her presence. Pushing the women-in-prison genre in gory horror is not an endearing move: whatever enjoyment you can get from the nudity is nullified — and then some — by the brutish violence and horrific blood-letting. It doesn’t make Women’s Prison Massacre worth remembering, except as a warning not to watch again.

  • We Broke Up (2021)

    We Broke Up (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) With a title like We Broke Up, don’t expect a modern comedy of remarriage — while this awkward romance flirts with the possibility of reconciliation, it will do wonders for your expectations to go into the film with the dead certainty that the title consists of the last words of dialogue spoken. It doesn’t make the film less melancholic, but at least you won’t have false hopes. Much of the plot has to do with a long-time couple, still unmarried, who decides to break up days before the marriage of her younger sister… but still go to the wedding to keep up appearances and avoid dealing with unpleasantness. Still, the truth has a strange habit of being unescapable, and much of the film’s comic moments have to do with them going to elaborate lengths to avoid or sidestep the question. Far more of a depressive dramedy than an outright comedy, We Broke Up may be a tough sell for many viewers — it’s one of those films in which the couple breaks up out of boredom more than anything else, and no one is really gaining anything from that decision. Frustration may be the dominant emotion, especially as the lead couple is rather likable, either on their own or together. I’d like to go all generational and point at the film’s emotional detachment as being a symptom of all that’s wrong with today’s etc., etc., etc. but there have been movies like that for a very long time (not even going back all that far back, have a look at 1997’s Breaking Up, with Salma Hayek and Russel Crowe, or 2006’s The Break-Up with Jennifer Anniston and Vince Vaughn), and they’re often low-budget marginal affairs because there isn’t much that’s uplifting or even all that perceptive in what they have to say — breakups happen, maybe they’re justified but everyone’s sad anyway, roll credits. We Broke Up does have a few interesting moments here and there, including a pair of supporting performances from the marrying couple that often outshines the leads. It’s a downer of a film, but writer-director Jeff Rosenberg is after something specific here and seems to have achieved his objective. Now, whether he can get others to listen is another story.

  • The Courier (2020)

    The Courier (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, November 2021) On the sliding scale of realism-to-James Bond, spy thriller The Courier deliberately goes for the more realistic approach, oftentimes ever more so than even John Le Carré. (It’s a common misconception that Le Carré is realistic, but he’s not: he’s more restrained in his approach, but his stories are just as wild from a conceptual and plotting standpoint.)  It follows the adventures of a British businessman in the early 1960s who is asked by western intelligence services to make contact with a Soviet double agent and report back. His cover is, naturally, doing business in the USSR and facilitating Soviet business in the West. It’s all well and good until things go badly, and it’s the mark of this fact-based tale’s realism that there’s no real heroic climax here — he gets, at best, to be released from prison after a lengthy stay, while his Soviet friend is not so lucky. It does make for a sobering experience, and Benedict Cumberbatch is able to lead the film in its low-key approach to a true story. Handsomely executed by director Dominic Cooke but not overly concerned with pacing, The Courier does make for an absorbing, more mature spy story than usual. (It’s even more restrained and intentionally dull than Bridge of Spies.)  It will do best with adult audiences looking for something less ludicrous than the norm.

  • Fantasy Island (2020)

    Fantasy Island (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, November 2021) Considering the list-driven approach I have used to make my way through the popular films of the past few years, I don’t always pay a lot of attention to reviews. But the harshness of the commentary toward Fantasy Island was striking enough to make an impression — what could possibly make the film so reviled? I didn’t get it, nor did I get it during the film’s opening moments. My childhood memories of the original show’s reruns were faded (Tattoo’s “Da plane!” and Ricardo Montalban’s immaculate white tuxedos are just about what remains), but the overall idea of an island making its visitors’ wishes come true seems like something difficult to screw up. Fantasy Island’s first few minutes did seem to set things up nicely — a few visitors, quickly (if bluntly) sketched, a mysterious owner played by reliable scene-stealer Michael Peña, a rather cute assistant, great lush tropical scenery: how could this go wrong? Well, I had no idea the film would soon take a nosedive, and then keep going lower. Warning signs start to show when it quickly becomes clear that the film only has horror on its mind, as the various fantasies of the guests all converge. This is obviously not a TV show, so the palette of emotional goals that could vary from one episode to another is here compressed to fit the commercial imperatives of a movie aimed at younger audiences and that means horror. But it’s the way it gets there that’s strange: Even fantasies that don’t need to go to horror eventually get there in jarring ways. There’s also the inconsistent accumulation of supernatural events that comes to ruin the story. Not necessarily by sole dint of being supernatural (that could be smoothed over, and the original show had some of it as well) but the ways the film’s justifications don’t necessarily make sense when they’re all put together, with so many tropes (Time travel! Mysterious liquid! Demonic deals!) competing for attention, it all degenerates into a big ball of incoherent nonsense. There are twists that bore, different stories clashing with others in ways that leave us cold, and the sense that a lot of effort (especially from Peña, who’s still good even in a dumb role) is expended trying to make us believe in something misshapen in the first place. The ultimate problem is in trying to tie everything up into one single explanation, which seems ludicrously specific, contrary to the potential of the premise and unbelievable in the first place. (“No way, we’re all from Chicago?”)  I’m not completely disappointed at the result (Any film with Maggie Q or Michael Peña is worth a look, and I’m adding Parisa Fitz-Henley to my watch list) but I now very much understand the critical lashing that the film got — enjoy those opening moments, viewers, because it’s all downhill from there.

  • JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass (2021)

    JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2021) I’m not sure about you, but my tolerance and sympathy toward conspiracy theories have fallen sharply over the past few years, now that they’ve become one of the most dangerous strands of political discourse in American politics. It used to be that conspiracy theories were the domain of a few crackpots, but they could be enjoyed as an escapist way of imagining a fictional retelling of the world in which everything made sense. Now that the crackpot hordes are more numerous and actively inflicting damage to the civil institutions, well, the fun has gone out of it. So, I’m approaching Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited in a far less indulgent way than I did for his original film. Theories about JFK’s assassination are not the Rosetta stones of the modern crackpot movement like they used to be, but they’re a central text and rehashing them at this point seems like a cross between a half-hearted reunion tour and a bunch of old crazy people shouting incoherently at their surrounding. While this documentary may lure viewers in by promising them a look at evidence unearthed in the past thirty years, much of the film is the same old breathless ranting. Conducted at a breakneck pace between Stone’s narration, “expert” talking heads, archival clippings and ominous effects, JFK Revisited quickly becomes a caffeine-addled rant jumping between not-so-damning pieces of !!!EVIDENCE!!!, paranoid thinking, overactive pattern recognition and indiscriminate doubt. You can probably get a more entertaining and cohesive experience talking to a dishevelled nutcase at the local watering hole. It’s tiresome and not exactly effective at making its own thesis. One thing that seems completely evacuated of the entire discussion, for instance, is how humans do not always act rationally or impeccably in situations of crisis. There are many things that could be explained away by “the president got shot, people were under stress, innocent mistakes were made” that are here presented as nefarious proofs of… something by… people. Because, at the end of JFK revisited, you can believe anything about everything: No coherent thesis is offered, no compelling new piece of evidence, nothing to convince anyone: It’s specious groupthink aimed at those already convinced that there was something going on, and who will seize on anything to prove to themselves that they are right. And that brings me right back to my first point — I don’t have any sympathy for that kind of confabulation any more. Not when the price to pay for conspiracist thinking is a corrupt administration, a failing democracy, irrefutable excess deaths in the middle of a mitigable pandemic and an overall corrosion of civil discourse. I’m done with conspiracy theorists, and I’m not so incredibly disappointed that Stone would fuel those crackpots for personal gain. (I’ll note once again that the only conspiracy theory about the JFK assassination I halfway entertain is the one, outlined in Bonar Menninger’s Mortal Error, in which the president was killed by a shot accidentally fired by a panicking secret agent riding in the motorcade — but that’s because it appeals to my darkest sense of humour, and explains so much by simple dint of people being so incredibly embarrassed.)

  • Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

    Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Netflix Streaming, November 2021) On the one hand, Hillbilly Elegy does have the merit of looking at some of the most marginalized people in America — the white lower-class of semirural Midwestern America, usually the butt of jokes and derision by the cultural establishment. Of course, the story doesn’t quite commit to the nobility of such people — the viewpoint character of the film (adapted from an autobiography) is that of a young man who managed to get out of there and become a more socially respected East coast prestige-firm lawyer. (Whether that’s better than, say, a lawyer working in a small Midwestern town to help his fellow citizen is not a debate that the film is interested in having.)  The film switches between him dealing with the latest family crisis in the middle of job interviews, and flashbacks to his younger years dealing with members of his family. Amazingly, I’ve made it this far in the review without mentioning the film’s two showiest assets: Amy Adams as a volatile heroin-addicted mother, and Glenn Close as an elderly crusty no-nonsense grandmother who ends up being the closest thing to what this film has to a hero. Both are willing to shed their glamour for the role, but there’s a freak-show element to their turn — more impression than inhabitation in keeping with the film’s gawking attitude. Director Ron Howard does a workmanlike job here, typically adapting his style to the demands of the script, but not necessarily doing anything to change the base story’s most troubling elements, and consciously giving in to the requirements of showcasing Adams and Close as much as possible. Hillbilly Elegy would have been a very, very different film had it been made at a lower budget with a cast of unknowns rather than shouting from its prestige perch how brave and bold it is in stooping down to that level and giving bad haircuts to its stars. The result uncomfortably brings to mind some of the weirdest misfires of Classic Hollywood, in which you’d see major stars get under makeup to play some impoverished “other,” but all the time hogging the spotlight to themselves. At least there’s Freida Pinto: wasted in nothing more than a supportive girlfriend role, but still likable no matter the role or the film. In the end, Hillbilly Elegy remains a weird movie, superficially inspiring and intense, and yet paternalizing and overly familiar at once. [November 2024: And now Hillbilly Elegy is the villain origin story for the vice-president of the United States? What just happened here?]