Protect me from ever seeing this again

 BACKTRACK AKA CATCHFIRE (1989)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Dennis Hopper's directing career has had its ups and downs. "Out of the Blue" and "Easy Rider" are amazing, intense, sometimes poetic films of startling beauty. I am not one of the defenders of the fascinating, beautiful bore "The Last Movie." "Colors" is an entertaining and tough-minded cop movie, considering the caliber of actors like Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. "Backtrack," a 1989 film that is the director's cut of a film also known as "Catchfire," the latter being a film Hopper disowned and is thus credited as an Alan Smithee project, is a completely repetitive, choppy, highly disorganized mess. It seems to be pulpy material that is designed as a black comedy though at times it borders on parody. You can't be a black comedy bordering on parody - either you are one or the other. If it is black comedy, it isn't blackly funny enough. If it is intended as parody, it doesn't reach far enough into absurdity for laughs. The film is an infrequently (and unintentionally) funny movie because nothing in it rings of the tone needed to make it work.

This is the old cliched story of a witness to a mob hit and now the witness is being hunted down by a professional assassin. Nothing new except execution, performances and tone always makes the difference. Not here. Jodie Foster is completely miscast as Anne, an artist whose concepts are making electronic banner signs. While driving home, she gets a flat, looks for help and witnesses the mob hit perpetrated by none other than an uncredited Joe Pesci as the Boss! Her boyfriend is played by Charlie Sheen in a mercifully short part - he is killed by the mob hit men who are looking for her. Enter Dennis Hopper as Milo, the professional hit man who falls in love with Anne as soon as he sees her picture. He tries to enter her mind, reads about conceptual art, plays the saxophone as if he's trying to telepathically communicate with her, wait, what? Oh, yeah, he is falling in love. Some lovely couple they make - when he finds her, he spares her life. Milo forces her to wear lingerie and heels, rapes her, makes love to her, and they drive from town to town staying at one hotel after another. The mob is after them, and so are the police. And there's the kingpin I gather played by, and I am laughing while writing this, a wheelchaired Vincent Price! We also got John Turturro as a cackling hit man, Dean Stockwell who looks bored stiff as Pesci's lawyer, Bob Dylan as a chainsaw artist and an early performance by Catherine Keener!

That's all folks. Some will get a kick out of seeing Jodie Foster nude in a couple of scenes, others will get a kick out of seeing an incomprehensible Dennis Hopper with an accent I can't quite make head or tail of. The Taos location where Anne hides out at one point has some pulse because the location is so breathtaking (having visited Taos on a couple of occasions, I heartily agree). Hopper seems to be reaching for the black comedy stylings of what Tarantino accomplished a few years later so thrillingly yet it falls apart too easily. The ending is too bizarre to contemplate (Foster and Hopper wear fire proximity suits!), and just as stupid and inconclusive as the rest of the film. Geez, I'd rather watch "The Last Movie" again over seeing "Backtrack" any day. 

Blood and Jaeger in the Appalachians

 KILLING SEASON (2013)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I marvel at the days when movies like "The Most Dangerous Game" (the original 1932 version) and its modern rockin'-in-the-rapids counterpart "Deliverance" would shock and awe people with its vision of brutality in the mountainside where you never knew what or whom you would come up against. Some of that exists in beautifully scenic shots of the Appalachians in "Killing Season," an occasionally entertaining yet wildly overdone and undernourished thriller where the brutality between two former soldiers results in one too many graphic scenes that just might make you sick.

I know that "Deliverance" was considered shockingly violent for its time, but definitely not profane. The moment where Burt Reynolds pulled an arrow out of a body could make people squirm - that was in 1971. In 2013, we get a scene where a hook is inserted through a gaping wound on the calf of the leg and thus...eh, you get the idea. There is a waterboarding moment, no doubt to remind many of water torture methods from the Iraq War. But let's stop quibbling about the gratuitous violence and get to the plot.

John Travolta, who is completely unconvincing as a former Serbian (Scorpion) soldier named Emil, is seeking revenge for having been shot in the back by former Colonel Ford (Robert De Niro) during the Balkan Wars. Emil wants Ford to admit to what he had done and why, though it is clear that Emil killed many Serbians (some are seen inside a train car that immediately evokes Holocaust imagery) and the American soldiers had to put a stop to this. Why Ford decided to shoot him in the back as opposed to the head in the middle of a firing squad is an intriguing question never satisfyingly answered. Why Emil's poison of choice is drinking Jaegermeister, I couldn't say. 

De Niro does an able job as a retired Colonel living in the wilderness inside a log cabin, cooking for himself and occasionally taking pictures of elk. There is a bit involving Ford's son (Milo Ventimiglia) that is superfluous at best, especially when we only get dialogue from Emil's background end about a woman he loves to have sex with. The Colonel is a far more compelling character and I was willing to go where ever he went. I felt sympathy for him and De Niro gives the role more substance than the screenplay does. Travolta doesn't register any real presence, other than his deep black short-haired cut that has more personality than he does.

Yet it all becomes a bloodier than thou cat and mouse game, too bloody even for this critic (though the film is never boring). The violence borders on what we might see in a "Saw" sequel - as I often ask myself in some of today's movies, did it have to go that far? Wouldn't it have been enough to have both men chasing each other through the Appalachians with their bow and arrows and make it more of a psychological mind game, that is to have their wits put to the test. And why not give us some backstory on the war itself, otherwise they may as well be talking about Vietnam or WWII (the original screenplay used the latter war as a pretext). When I can't understand what Travolta is saying in his heavy Serbian accent and when De Niro's final speech is overwhelmed by an overstated musical score, then you have lost me. It would be easier to navigate the Appalachian mountain range than navigate Travolta's incomprehensible accent.  

Don't Smile

 JOKER (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

As unnerving and intense an actor as Joaquin Phoenix is, "Joker" feels like a homicidal take on Phoenix's occasionally fascinating and mind-numbing work as the catatonic Freddie in 2012's "The Master." Here's what I said about Phoenix in that film: " At 2 hours and 17 minutes, it is simply a chore to watch Freddie (Phoenix) who engages in sex or humping a nude sand figure, and stares and laughs maniacally or indulges in uncontrollably violent confrontations." That might sum up Phoenix's work as the iconic villain from the Batman universe in "Joker." Joker dances and cavorts in some strange balletic movements, laughs maniacally enough to draw notice from bystanders, and runs frequently after shooting people or knifing them. This bullied Joker is also on a Rupert Pupkin vibe as he desperately wants to be on a late night talk show though his comedic material is more political than funny. And just as it was true of Rupert in "The King of Comedy," Joker is also not much of a standup comedian where his uncontrollable laughter serves as an obstruction. This life is one that has been compared to members of the incel community - I just don't see a celibate person here. I just see a sick, diseased mind from a profoundly disturbed and delusional individual and that is all. Or maybe that is enough.

I don't feel that Todd Phillips' film "Joker" cuts any deeper than that though. The movie is not a bore but it can be an irritating chore to sit through. It is ostensibly a dark character study inspired by Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and "The King of Comedy" but the movie never gives us much depth to the Joker, certainly not enough to warrant such comparisons and homages. Phoenix's Joker is not an engaging or remotely cunning personality - nor does he need to be - but the conception of a guy who is as empty and devoid of emotion as the world around him doesn't make for stirring entertainment or a full-bodied character study at 2 hours and 2 minutes. Drawing more comparisons, the late Heath Ledger showed us a Joker as a tortured clown who could defeat Batman yet never felt more out of place in Gotham than Batman - society needed those two to exist or it would've been necessary to invent them. Phoenix's Joker is, as evidenced in "The Master," a dour one-dimensional sociopath who is not allowed one honest emotion through the whole movie (his skeletal torso revealed when Joker takes off his shirt is far more intriguing - his spine looks like it is barely hanging on to his body). At least in "The Master" Phoenix gave us two notes of expression. This Joker is given one - smile or force that smile by faking it and laughing (the latter is a medical condition that is expressed in a medical card he carries). That is the whole movie and the whole performance. 

"Joker" is set in the early 1980's in Gotham and that is about as original as the film gets (a small treat to see Robert De Niro as a late night talk show host). There is no moment worth savoring or salivating over - "Joker" has the mojo to work on your nerves but at the expense of any real human dimensions. Sometimes the film is riveting particularly the first half-hour (his aforementioned medical card made me laugh) where there's momentum developed between Joker living at home with a mentally ill mother (Frances Conroy), and a supposed romantic relationship he has with a next-door neighbor. But these moments are so arbitrary that they never build to anything - they exist as fleetingly as Joker forcing a smile while looking at a mirror or dancing on a staircase to the tune of "Rock and Roll Part Two." The violence emanates from Joker aka Arthur Fleck because he can't take the craziness of Gotham City anymore (and his medications are no longer available due to the Mayor cutting the budget on mental health care) but, again, no real buildup. When the violence occurs, it is as distancing as any superhero movie might show. When the film was over, I respected individual moments that clearly ape Scorsese and Sidney Lumet (the "Network" finale) and even (intentional or not) "Erendira," but I felt as indifferent to the Joker as I did to the movie. I did not feel sorry for him, I just wanted him gone.