Harvey Keitel

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2019) The 1970s were a melodramatic time for everyone, including directors better known for straight-up genre fare. In Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, here we have Martin Scorsese tackling a romantic drama, looking at lower-class Americans through the eyes of a new widow trying to make it as a singer. Of course, money is scarce, there’s her son to consider, and new romantic relationships are a path fraught with peril. As befit a New Hollywood film, it’s all dirty, grimy, realistic and depressing. We’re stuck around Phoenix, Arizona for most of the duration. Scorsese’s usual sense of style is muted here (well, other than a very stylish opening and a long tracking shot) but considering that he took the job in order to bolster his credentials as an actor’s director, he over-succeeded at his ambitions at the moment Ellen Burstyn (looking impossibly young here) won an Oscar for the role. Other than Burstyn, there’s a fun number of famous actors in the cast, from Kris Kristofferson to Diane Ladd to Harvey Keitel to Jodie Foster (plus Laura Dern in a cameo if you know what to look for). Still, the star here is Scorsese, who delivers a very atypical film by his later standards but was able to parlay his experience here in later more memorable projects.

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) In retrospect, Bad Lieutenant is so successful that it almost seems inevitable. If I’m going to put together a thriller in 1992 about a spectacularly corrupt NYPD policeman, of course I’m going to have Abel Ferrara as the director. Of course, I’m going to have Harvey Keitel as the corrupt cop. These choices feel as obvious as having cameras, lighting or catering on set. Ferrara captures filth and degradation like few others, and as Keitel goes around the city abusing his authority, excessively gambling, doing hard drugs and staying ahead of his bookie, it all feels like a carefully controlled nightmare. I don’t usually react well to grime and corruption, but it seems so, um, heartfelt here that it seems more acceptable. Ferrara muse Zoe Lund has a single but striking scene here, and Keitel does fantastic work, especially as his characters takes small steps toward redemption. I don’t usually go for dark and depressing films (of which this is clearly one), but I tolerated Bad Lieutenant better than most because it actually commits and believes not only in its character, but in his subtle redemption arc. I’m still not going to re-watch this for fun any time soon, but that too is a good review in its own way.

Point of No Return (1993)

Point of No Return (1993)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, May 2019) If you’re keeping track at home, 1993’s Point of No Return is the American remake of Luc Besson’s 1990 French film La Femme Nikita, and both of them can be said to have been prequels to the better-known 1995 film Léon. As a remake, if very close to the original—Americanized, for sure, but otherwise very similar in story beats and overall themes, and perhaps a bit less stupid than Besson’s script. The influences go deeper, of course—Nikita explicitly became not one but two TV shows, there’s a good case to be made for Alias tracing back its early-years lineage to either the French or American version of Nikita, Besson seems to be rewriting his female-assassin urtext every few years (Bandidas was in 2006, Colombiana was in 2011, Lucy was in 2014, Anna is next in 2019) and much of Milla Jovovich’s career seems to have been facilitated by this film. But progeny aside, what about Point of No Return? Well, as directed by John Badham it’s a serviceable action film. The suspense and action scenes can be effective despite their familiar nature, and that goes for much of the film as well—given the endless quasi-remakes of that story, the film does feel formulaic at this point, and even the little bits of interest illustrating the story don’t feel quite as fresh these days. Bridget Fonda does manage a very good action/drama performance, with some smaller but showy interventions by Gabriel Byrne and Harvey Keitel. Execution counts for a lot, and the early-1990s sheen of the film is fast approaching period-piece status, not to mention the trend-trendy filmmaking tracks of the film. The Nina Simone songs add a bit of colour, and Point of No Return frequently needs it.

Youth (2015)

Youth (2015)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, December 2016) I’m not normally a fan of elliptic artistic films driven less by plot than by contemplation of deep themes, but there is something about Youth that makes the experience entertaining, even gripping at times. Benefiting from the acting talents of Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as veteran creators struggling with the accumulated weight of their lives, Youth ponders issues of life and death, loops into vignettes that have little to do with the plot, veers into dream sequences, and discusses the pitfalls of the creative process and fame. It is alternatively grandiose, pretentious, intimate, funny, surreal, tragic and oblique. On paper, it sounds like a terrible mishmash of everything that the writer/director Paolo Sorrentino has thought about in making the film. And yet it works. I’m not sure why. The humour helps a lot, of course, and the way the film uses Madalina Diana Ghenea’s assets gleefully feels like exploitation. But there’s also a suspicion that Youth talks about life in a blunt way, using experiences that most of us will never have (being solicited for knighthood, being unable to secure a famed actress for our newest screenplay, even resting a few weeks in a five-star hotel in the Alps) to talk spectacularly about universal issues. The quality of the images, as incongruous as they can be, also contributes to a renewed interest in the film. No matter why, Youth does succeed at creating a memorable viewing experience. Not bad for a film that many, including myself, would have thrown dismissively in the “made for Cannes” bin.

Mean Streets (1973)

Mean Streets (1973)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On VHS, June 2001) Can’t remember a lot of things about Mean Streets even scant days after seeing it. I recall a gallery of younger well-known actors, including Robert de Niro. I certainly do recall a nude scene. I have jumbled memories of various violent acts. There are a few murders. There’s also a conclusion that takes the easiest way out, killing all characters after a preposterous coincidence that smacks more of screenwriter laziness than organic resolution (how else to explain a car finding another among all other car leaving New York at that moment?) Oh well. Scorsese-watchers will probably recognize elements from about half of all his later films in this one. Enjoy the references, people, because there isn’t much else. Practice makes perfect, and fortunately, this whiz-kid would go on to a few other better things…

(Second viewing, On Cable TV, June 2019) Disregard my previous review—I’m now nearly twenty years older, have seen almost all of Scorsese’s movies and can now recognize an influential mob movie when I see one. This being said, I may now like Mean Streets but it doesn’t mean I love it: as a naturalistic look at low-level New York mobsters as they go along their business, it works better as a prototype for later Scorsese movies. Episodic, rambling and low-stakes, Mean Streets is definitely steeped into early-seventies New Hollywood grimy conventions. The musical choice is terrific, there’s an “are you calling me a mook?” sequence that anticipates a later Joe Pesci scene, and we can also recognize Scorsese’s fondness for lengthy tracking shots. (Mama Scorsese even has a cameo.)  The editing is tight, the actors handled well (it is fun to see Harvey Keitel as a dashing young man, not so much fun to see Robert de Niro as a psychopathic lowlife) and the religious symbolism as present as ever. Having a real ending to Mean Streets would help it, but not as much as we’d think at first given the disjointed nature of the film’s plotting.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On VHS, December 1999) In retrospect, a rather promising debut by a guy named Quentin Tarantino. It’s also surprisingly theatrical, for such an obviously cinematographic film. Steadily -though blackly- amusing throughout, with great performances by Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi. A solid rental.

(On DVD, February 2009) This talky crime thriller has aged pretty well, all thing considered. The dialogue gets better, the lack of action isn’t as surprising, and the cut-ear scene seems positively restrained given the excesses that Tarantino and his imitators have committed ever since. The 15-year-anniversary DVD edition is filled with interesting material, from interviews with/about the fascinating personalities involved in the project, a look at the impact of the film on the indie circuit and other assorted tidbits.