Reviews

  • Interiors (1978)

    Interiors (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) It’s a good thing that Interiors is well known as one of Woody Allen’s most deliberately serious films — an attempt to go over austere Bergmanesque family drama territory in a way that consciously seeks to oppose itself from Allen’s ”earlier, funnier films.”  Even so, I was sorely tempted to giggle through much of the film — Allen’s painstaking approach at re-creating the sparse rhythm, tortured relationships and Scandinavian aesthetics of his model can approach parody at times. I don’t usually respond well to such torpid movies anyway, so you’ll understand if it doesn’t work this time around. (On the other hand, I actually welcomed the final death of the film, considering how annoying I found the character — and how it was telegraphed well before.)  Anyone will be on firmer grounds in considering the film as an actor’s showcase — with special affection for the trio of sisters (Diane Keaton, Mary Beth Hurt and Kristin Griffith) who are the true protagonists of the story. People act badly all around them, whether it’s unreliable partners, a crush who becomes a would-be rapist, or a father choosing to leave their mother after decades of marriage (while not directly telling her that). Maureen Stapleton shines as one of the few expressive characters in the entire film. While Interiors got good reviews at the time and still figures among Allen’s better-rated work, it’s clearly not as special today as it was back then — the filmmaker’s output has grown to be incredibly diverse and not necessarily comic, explaining why Interiors feels far more ordinary (yet more obviously a pastiche) than it did. Modern viewers who, like me, have a strong preference for Allen in comic mode may watch Interiors without the reverence by which it’s seen by many critics.

  • Misbehaviour (2020)

    Misbehaviour (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) The grrl-empowerment drama is a well-established genre by now, and Misbehaviour seems to be following in the steps of half a dozen examples of the form, perhaps most closely the recent Battle of the Sexes. You can check off the elements: a historical recreation a few decades past highlighting unbelievable sexism, plucky heroines banding together to fight the patriarchy, potshots at the institutions’ refusal to move forward, one hissable patriarch as an antagonist, queer characters, lighthearted tone, all savvily wrapped in well-executed crowd-pleasing style. It’s now common because it’s fun, mind you: you can’t be against the message of the film, and the underdog narrative always plays well even if it feels increasingly calculated. Misbehaviour does a little bit than most entries in the subgenre by being slightly more ambivalent about its message than a rote regurgitation of feminist talking points. Largely taking place in 1970 London, it tells us about the protests that targeted the Miss World contest held at the time, featuring a few activists going against none other than emcee legend Bob Hope, who comes to personify the worst aspects of the patriarchal agenda—hero of a generation, villain of the next. Our protagonists, anchored by Kiera Knightley (even though Jessie Buckley has a more striking role), aren’t the only ones with progressive credentials, however, as a very interesting subplot featuring Gugu Mbatha-Raw ends up establishing. Progressivity and diversity are multidimensional movements that have the good luck of all sharing white men as antagonists, and part of what makes Misbehaviour more interesting is in opposing different views about the Miss World contest, and what happens when the contest ends up scoring a victory for diversity even within the confines of the structure that our (white) protagonists are contesting. That kind of complementary complexity is something that reflects real-world tensions within the progressive communities, and something I’d like to see a bit more rather than simplistic underdog fairy-tales. As a result, Misbehaviour does get better as it goes on, and then becomes much better once it hits its final moments. The style is meant to be easily accessible, and the viewing experience reflects that: it’s an easy film to watch and to like even when it plays close to the obvious formula. Despite the film’s hit-job, I still like Bob Hope — but then again, I can pass as a patriarch if I need to.

  • I Remember Mama (1948)

    I Remember Mama (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) A bunch of likable episodes chronicling a period of time in the life of a Norwegian immigrant family in early 20th-century San Francisco, I Remember Mama adopts a familiar framing device — the writer protagonist reminiscing about growing up—in order to serve its short stories and affectionate reminiscences. Clearly meant for comfort viewing, the film is most successful when it relies on its actors: Barbara Bel Geddes as the narrator, an aged Irene Dunne as the titular Mama and especially Oscar Homolka as the grander-than-life uncle who ends up being the focus of many scenes. The black-and-white cinematography portrays scenes of 1900s San Francisco as best as it could in a pre-CGI era — still, the sense of place is evocative. You have to have a tolerance for episodic narratives, but like films such as Meet Me in St. Louis, it all adds up into a portrait of a close-knit family, meant to create a nostalgic view of the narrator’s childhood. The material does have a universal quality, and its impact is still perceptible even today.

  • I Never Sang for My Father (1970)

    I Never Sang for My Father (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) There’s an unescapable clash of generations at the heart of I Never Sang for My Father that can only come from a 1970 production, as the first baby-boomers were hitting 25 and New Hollywood was changing the business forever. An intriguing pairing with The Graduate, it’s a film about a young, well-educated protagonist having to deal with his conservative father and housewife mother — echoes of the 1950s that clearly don’t understand him. Gene Hackman plays the protagonist, visibly too old for the role (age 40, playing 25…) but still echoing the generational divide so apparent circa 1970. It’s all vividly illustrated by a simple but well-developed drama in which the character is torn between what he wants to do (that is: move across the country to be with his girlfriend) and what one would expect him to do (stay with his widowed father even in declining health). The two men clash, argue, clearly don’t understand each other and the ending is not exactly comforting. But as far as dramas go, I Never Sang for My Father does have more punch than usual. The younger Hackman is good but Melvyn Douglas is arguably better as the abrasive father who’s not interested in getting closer to his son — both of them earned their Academy-Award nominations here. No character here is virtuous or admirable (never mind the close-minded, abusive father—the protagonist juggles two girlfriends and the film doesn’t seem all that bothered by it) and the conclusion is similarly bittersweet. I Never Sang for My Father is not a big or uplifting film, but it works well enough and draws viewers in small doses before they’re hooked for the rest.

  • Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

    Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) It’s amusing how horror is the only genre to reliably sustain the anthology format. There’s a good reason for this — horror often works best in small doses, and having shorter stories one after the other can let filmmakers play with one idea at an ideal length, then move on to another. As far as anthology movies go, Tales from the Darkside is in the solid average, although some casting choices may bring it up one notch in some viewers’ esteem. The framing device has to do with a suburban cannibal preparing her meal while the main dish, a paperboy, stalls his cooking by narrating three stories from within his cage —not bad as a setup, but the conclusion seems a bit too convenient without the panache that such a tidy ending would warrant. The first story, “Lot 249,” is probably the most impressive from a casting standpoint, what with the much younger Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore and Christian Slater all backstabbing each other horribly for academic purposes — alas, the narrative is a bit bland once you get over how great Moore looks. “Cat from Hell,” the second story, is far more interesting with its narrative hook, as a hitman is hired by a rich infirm to kill… a cat. A murderous cat, seeking revenge from pharmaceutical animal experimentation. It’s George Romero adapting a Stephen King short story, so it’s no accident if this is the most distinctive story in the film, even as it can’t quite avoid some silliness. Finally, “Lover’s Vow” goes for erotic gore with a story of death and promises between an artist and a mysterious woman. Rae Dawn Chong looks amazing here and the story does feel more violent than the others, making it a definitive climax to the film even if it’s a bit on the longer side. Tales from the Darkside can’t quite escape the uneven nature of horror anthologies, but it’s more interesting and varied than many others, and generally well-executed throughout. The surprising casting does add quite a bit to the final result — especially for those who went on to have long careers during which they visibly aged and developed their own screen persona.

  • The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)

    The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Hollywood has always been in love with social-issue films, but until the mid-1960s there was only a very narrow range of social issues worth discussing under the Production Code. Things improved in a hurry from the mid-1960s onward, as the code was replaced by ratings, and the range of permissible, even desirable topics expanded at the same time as moviegoers expected more from American studios. But in films like The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, you can almost feel the repressed pile-up of social issues crowding each other for recognition — disabilities (physical, sensorial and cognitive), fatal diseases, racism, sexism, alcoholism, classicism, discrimination, sexual awakening, suicide and small-town violence all show up in the strange brew of this melodramatic adaptation of a best-selling 1940 novel. If it sounds like a lot, it is a bit much at times — especially as the film tries to keep up with a busy novel in barely more than two hours. If it’s any comfort, the cast is reliably more interesting than the narrative: Alan Arkin as a deaf-mute protagonist, Sondra Locke’s screen debut, and appearances by Cicely Tyson and Stacy Keach. Still, the film does feel like what we’d call Oscar-bait these days — a comparison that’s made easier by the film’s two Academy Awards nominations (for Arkin and Locke) among other recorded honours. It doesn’t exactly make The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter compelling viewing, though — unless you like that kind of overdone drama at a time when Hollywood was expanding its palette of permissible topics without necessarily getting more subtle about how to tackle them.

  • The Hanging Tree (1959)

    The Hanging Tree (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Since westerns often degenerate into a morass of overused tropes, I was surprised to stay interested in The Hanging Tree at least throughout its establishing act. Here, we follow not a gunman, but a doctor trying to establish himself in a small town dealing with a gold rush. But the doctor is not necessarily an admirable protagonist, as he saves a criminal from death then uses his leverage to press him into servitude. Things get more interesting when a woman, the survivor of a stagecoach attack, is moved in his new offices, and they start making romantic plans for each other. The problem is that this isn’t necessarily a nice western — the lead character is a hyper-controlling deceiver (it’s a good thing that he’s played by the steadfast Gary Cooper), and the townspeople aren’t all upstanding citizens. (Plus, there’s a faith healer who is not welcoming of real doctors.)  It all conflagrates at some point, and it’s almost a surprise if it all ends on a somewhat positive note (although one wonders how long it can last — at the very least, someone’s going to move away). The colour cinematography takes good advantage of the landscape, and the feeling of a gold mine boomtown is portrayed convincingly. I wouldn’t classify The Hanging Tree as a great western, but it does have that elusive compelling quality that many better pictures lack — it may be imperfect, abrasive and meandering, but it holds our attention well enough.

  • The Green Years (1946)

    The Green Years (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) There is, on paper, not much to distinguish The Green Years from stereotypical Dickensian sad stories, as a young orphan boy comes to stay with distant relatives after losing his mother. Despite the inevitable setbacks and villains, trials and tribulations, we can broadly guess where the story is going to go—but that doesn’t really take into account the likable Oscar-nominated performance of Charles Coburn as the patriarch who takes our plucky protagonist under his wing, often going against the indifference or outright hostility of other members of the family. Also noteworthy are long-time couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, amusingly playing father-and-daughter. The Green Years is not that good, but it does have its fine moments and the kind of fist-pumping victory (with a side order of vengeance from the grave) that we expect from such family melodramas.

  • The Corn is Green (1945)

    The Corn is Green (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Inspiring teacher stories are often timeless, and seeing a star like Bette Davis aged fifteen years older in order to play a matronly teacher doing her damnedest to send a student from a poor remote mining town to Oxford is a high concept that remains accessible even decades later. Of course, there’s a difference between a good idea and a compelling execution, and while The Corn is Green is a serviceable example of its sub-genre, it’s not exactly riveting entertainment if you fall outside its intended audience. The recreation of a small Welsh town in a Hollywood studio is about as good as was possible at the time, while seeing Bette Davis heavily made up to look older and heavier is nothing short of interesting. Still, given the unsurprising, generally linear thrust of the plot, there isn’t much more to The Corn is Green than what you can gather from its log-line and production era. It’s not bad, but I’m not sure I’m going to remember it much longer.

  • The Facts of Life (1960)

    The Facts of Life (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) If you’re watching the Lucille Ball/Bob Hope headliner The Facts of Life and expecting something like the three other films they did together, you’re going to be surprised. Not that surprised, as Hope is still trading bon mots and Ball has occasional moments of comedy, but surprised nonetheless, because The Facts of Life is about two married people grappling with having an affair, and there’s an entire undercurrent of guilt and drama running close underneath the jokes. It’s somewhat reflective of its era in American cinema, where the rigid standards of censorship were ever-so-slightly relaxed in reflection of how society was changing, but not quite blown apart as they’d ben by the end of the decade. As a result, The Facts of Life does feel like a strange halfway film — willing to contemplate a difficult topic, but not able to completely give it the treatment it would have deserved, and possibly held back by the persona of its stars. As a result, it’s not completely satisfying, but neither it a failure — the film was nominated for a handful of Academy Awards and presents Hope in one of his better quasi-dramatic roles. It’s worth a look, especially for Hope fans who are already used to seeing him in other goofier roles.

  • South Central Love (2019)

    South Central Love (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2021) With a title like South Central Love, you already know what to expect — love in one of Los Angeles’ least privileged neighbourhoods, with its attendant racial and poverty issues. It does take a long time for the romance to rev up between our likable hero and just-as-likable heroine as they try to set themselves apart from so many other people in a neighbourhood seemingly eager to keep them back. As someone who’s a continent away from South Central Los Angeles (although I did walk through it once), I found the film interesting for its de4piction of a completely different way of life — the irony being that as a low-budget effort, South Central Love is not creating a new world as much as showing how things are. Writer/director Christina Cooper also stars in the film, and manages to create a convincing sense of place from what she has at her disposal. Ironically enough, South Central Love is at its best when stepping away from the clichés of South Central in order to develop its romance. It’s not so distinctive nor remarkable when it abruptly tries to wrap this love story in a far more familiar tale of crime and loyalty in the ghetto — despite my own liking for genre stories, I almost wish the film would have dispensed with the crime elements that come to dominate the third act in order to keep on showing something that few films do: young people building a life without major movie-grade crises affecting them. Still, I liked the result well enough — South Central Love is engaging even to white suburban middle-aged men such as myself, and there’s a compelling quality to the script that kept me interested much longer than comparable romantic films. Looking at Cooper’s IMDB page, I see that she has an amazing number of projects in pre-production — I’ll be curious to see what else she’ll end up achieving.

  • For Me and My Gal (1942)

    For Me and My Gal (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) While rough and unpolished around the edges, For Me and My Gal owes much to its early pairing of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. For Kelly, this was his film debut, and while it’s far from taking advantage of his talents in dancing or choreography, his considerable charm as a performer is already apparent. For Garland, this was a first adult role after some time as a child or teen star — to twenty-first-century audiences, she here appears unusually cute and relaxed, before her drug abuse and personal issues prematurely aged her. As a couple, both of them are quite likable. As for the story itself, it’s an often-unwieldy fusion between vaudeville comedy, wartime heroism and conventional romance, as Kelly’s character mains himself in order not to be drafted into World War I, then changes his mind after being called a coward by everyone. Don’t worry — For Me and My Gal ends well, but there’s a good chunk of the film that steps away from comedy and into more serious drama right on time to whip American audiences to serve in the first days of America’s involvement in World War II. Still, the fun of the film is in the musical numbers, Kelly’s early performance as a young man and Garland looking unusually good. It’s an early prototype for other movies Kelly would make later (two more of them with Garland, although she was struggling by the time The Pirates and Summer Stock rolled around) but you can already see the greatness here in Kelly’s ease in front of the camera and as a singer/dancer. For Me and My Gal is a minor entry compared to what would follow, but it’s well worth a look.

  • The Four Feathers (1939)

    The Four Feathers (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) British film producer Alexander Korda was well known throughout World War II as an immigrant more British than the British-born, putting together films that sang the praises of the embattled country even when they putatively took place in other historical eras. In this context, The Four Feathers is notable for a few things, starting with an early spectacular use of colour at a time where such a process was costly and difficult to handle — especially in the harsh location shooting conditions that the filmmakers experienced in Sudan. Widely considered the best rendition of an often-adapted novel (most recently in 2002, with Heath Ledger), it’s a tale meant to stir any young man with patriotic fervour, as it shows its protagonist turning away from service, then being labelled a coward (through the titular feathers) by family and friends. The highlight of the film remains the spectacular battle sequences shot in naturalistic colour in the middle of the desert. There’s a kinship here with later films such as Zulu, unfortunately, all the way to the built-in racism and colonialism that we’re asked to espouse as self-evident:  Don’t look too close at the depictions of non-English characters. It’s by an accident of history (albeit not an unpredictable one) that The Four Feathers landed in theatre screens just as England needed a patriotism booster. It’s still, despite quite a bit of disturbingly outdated material, a decent watch.

  • Four Days in November (1964)

    Four Days in November (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) The assassination of John F. Kennedy was not even a year old by the time Mel Stuart put together Four Days in November, an incredibly detailed documentary about JFK’s final trip to Dallas, the assassination, and the immediate aftermath all the way to his funeral. Put together from contemporary news feeds, a few dramatizations, a few interviews and a heavy dose of narration with the soothing classical intonations of Richard Basehart, it’s a meticulous recreation not only of the assassination itself, but everything surrounding it, from the reasons why JFK headed to Dallas (seeking to repair a few rifts in the Democratic Party) to the extraordinary preparations for a state funeral that is meant to help a nation grieve. There’s a clear difference in emphasis between Four Days in November and more recent takes on the event — the fetishization of conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination means that we seldom get any objective presentation of the events any more: everything has to be fiction with heavy doses of mysteries and conspiracies and a mad quest to explain the fantasies of generations of conspirationists. Compared to this thickening fog of misdirection, Four Days in May has a straightforward approach to the events that make it feel almost freshly affecting again — the incredible coincidences (what with Joan Crawford and Richard Nixon being at the same party as JFK in the days before the shooting) that pepper real history and the wealth of detail often forgotten in snappier documentaries. It’s quite a summation of a complex series of exceptional events, and perhaps where anyone interested in the JFK assassination should start. It’s missing a few things (the Zapruder film, for instance, would not be revealed for a few more years—not to mention the conclusions of the Warren report) but it’s refreshingly absent from the modern mythology that has grown around the event.

  • The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)

    The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) I’m not usually averse to goofy whimsical musicals, but even I have my limits and The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. probes at some of them. Written by Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, it’s a musical that stems from the fantasies of a young boy who intensely dislikes his piano lessons — as he dreams about a tyrannical piano teacher and his 500-boy piano, the film goes deep into a fantasy that was probably too far ahead of its time to execute convincingly. It’s certainly weird enough, with outlandish set designs that bring to mind the Seuss books and a fantastical approach that seems exuberant for the 1950s while being too timid for contemporary audiences used to CGI flights of fancy. One thing that does harm the film is a lack of humour to go along with its imagination — the film remains far too serious for its own good, perhaps too preoccupied by the demands of its complex production to allow for moment-to-moment whimsy. There are ambitious musical numbers, but few of them are catchy, likable or memorable — much of the film plays out among too-sparse sets that add a degree of clinical asepticism at odds with what the film should be. I couldn’t help but compare the result to Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, which, while dated by contemporary standards, is far more at lease with its own lunacy. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. is probably worth a look if only for how weird it is by early-1950s standards… but don’t expect too much.