Red Riding Hood's emerging sexuality

 THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Never say hello to strange huntsmen and never stray from the path to Grandma's house. This applies to Rosaleen in Neil Jordan's most peculiar and horrific fairy tale, "The Company of Wolves," one of the few films that really looks and feels like a Grimm fairy tale and, perhaps, does true justice to the famous Red Riding Hood tale from centuries past. 

The film begins in modern times where Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) lives in a country house, though there is already something peculiar about it. Her parents return home and Rosaleen's older sister climbs quite a few stairways to get to the top floor where Rosaleen is sleeping. Her room is locked and Rosaleen is having some sort of fever dream. I am no expert in British homes but it looks to me like there are several circuitous stairways to get to a loft, or an attic perhaps. I felt I was already in a strange fairy tale. 

Rosaleen dreams of herself as Little Red Riding Hood in a Hammer-horror environment. The setting is a small village where it is seemingly always overcast and houses a close community of peasants. Rosaleen lives with her parents (David Warner, Tusse Silberg) and she misses her older sister who was killed by a wolf, or more likely a werewolf. The peasants fear those vicious wolves in those endless moonlit nights. Rosaleen's dear old grandmother (Angela Lansbury, ideally cast) has a dim view of men and of wolves and is unsure there is a difference. She tells her granddaughter old wives' tales that turn out to be true, and to always be skeptical of men who grow their fur under their skin as much as outside of it. When Rosaleen recounts these tales to her mother, the mother tells her: "There is a beast inside every man, he meets his match in the beast inside of every woman." Ouch, very true. 

Based on the short story by Angela Carter, "The Company of Wolves" is a fever dream with a deliberate feeling of anxiety and trepidation - not too many moments ever feel purely safe. In one instance, Rosaleen (who is undergoing a sexual awakening) catches her parents making love and she senses that her dad might be hurting her and asks her mother to elaborate the emotions she felt. Love and pain seem inseparable to this young girl. Rosaleen is unsure of kissing the naive young boy who wants to go on walks with her. Somehow, though, an older huntsman who confronts her and almost kisses her seems less threatening. Rosaleen is take in by certain unnamed desires yet she doesn't follow through with them. Well, that is until the huntsman ends up in grandma's house and let's say that there are twists here that stray far beyond this oft-told fairy tale of a plucky young girl.

Director Neil Jordan fastens this story with unforgettable images such as the porcelain babies inside of hatched eggs! There are the mirrors Rosaleen often finds in the wild woods, and sometimes lipstick - she's seeking adulthood and knows what attracts men. The young kid that is presumably her age is not half as interesting as the huntsman. Rosaleen feels a kinship with the wolves and that is not quite to her detriment. Then there are the werewolves, one in particular shows a canine's snout emerging through a human mouth, a famous image used in the posters. But this is not so much a horror film as it is a fanciful folk tale told with distinctly humorous touches (especially the wedding banquet where everyone turns into a werewolf). It is also Rosaleen's coming-of-age story where she learns to care and sympathize with wolves, seeing their weaknesses and their emotions. "The Company of Wolves" is a true fairy-tale treating its young leading lady in red with a mature brush of development. A most unusual film. 

Have Gunn, Superman Travels

 SUPERMAN (2025)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Superman is one of our greatest comic-book heroes because he stands for truth, justice and the American way (implied in that last bit is that we are all Americans and all cultures are celebrated). The most political Superman flick has always been "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace" where Supe baby decided to get rid of all nuclear weapons around the world (in real life, this would have been a problematic issue for the UN). James Gunn's "Superman" is certainly political and apropos to the turbulent times we live in with not-so-subtle nods to immigration and wars in the Middle East. This is also a wondrously fun movie and very vibrant and alive with action scenes and special-effects that will leave your jaw dropped. Newcomer David Corenswet as Superman is also ideal casting and gives the role the oomph you expect. 

The opening scenes took me, to my extraordinary delight, back to my 1978 screening of "Superman" with Christopher Reeve. Superman falls from the sky and lands near the Fortress of Solitude in Antarctica (in some versions, it is the Arctic) and he's bleeding from having battled some supervillain known as the Hammer of Boravia. Superman delivers an earth-shattering whistle to his attentive superdog, Krypto, and after being dragged for miles, the Fortress of Solitude emerges from the ground. Keep in mind, this fortress is always underground and emerges when Superman needs to enter (and is greeted by dutiful robots). Is all this silly? Yes, indeed, and I had a wide silly grin face all through this movie. 

Superman has saved many lives after intervening on the fictionalized nation of Boravia from invading the neighboring country of Jarhanpur. There is criticism from Boravia's wildly boisterous, white-haired President Vasil Ghurkos (Zlatko Burić) and from, gasp, supersmart reporter Lois Lane (a sharp Rachel Brosnahan). Meanwhile, nerdy Clark Kent (David Corenswet) is getting the skinny from Superman while Lois hopes to interview the superhero. This banter between Clark and Lois is fake because it turns out, no surprise, that Lois is having a love affair with Superman and knows his secret identity! When Lois finally gets to do an interview in her cramped Metropolis apartment (a far cry from Margot Kidder's luxurious penthouse in the Chris Reeve versions), she tries to determine his ethical and moral dilemmas after intervening in a foreign war without consulting the Department of Defense and so on. I was so glad to hear that someone would dare question a costumed hero's actions and that said hero has little to say on such a discourse other than simplistically saving people from getting killed. "Superman IV" could have used some of that.

Meanwhile, evil billionaire Lex Luthor (a most volatile Nicholas Hoult) is something of an oligarch as he is sponsoring Boravia and has ideas of real estate property in Jarhanpur (what is it about Luthor and his affinity for beach front property?) Luthor has the powerful Ultraman (also played by Corenswet) who has superpowers like Superman yet needs to be controlled by Luthor's team of technicians who, I suppose, are video-game enthusiasts and every punch and kick is administered and controlled by them. What? Can't Superman find a way to destroy this most advanced technology and all those micro drone cameras? That's for another time. 

"Superman" is fantastically fun, colorfully goofy and purely comical (a scene involving Luthor gunning down a falafel vendor is Snyder-like, though). Some of the members of the Hall of Justice are shown including tech-savvy Mr. Terrific (a commanding performance by Edi Gathegi); a golden-bowl haircut version of Green Lantern (hilariously played by Nathan Fillion), and Hawkgirl (Isabella Merced) who rolls her eyes at any of the cocksure remarks made by Green Lantern. We get a mostly goofy Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) and a squeakier-version of Miss Teschmacher (Sara Sampaio) who is selfie-driven (and for a good cause). There are too many villains I suppose and maybe too-muchness yet this James Gunn movie is less overstuffed than his "Guardians of the Galaxy" trilogy. It is nice to see a revisit to comic-book movies that are colorful and colorfully designed and can also manage current political hot takes as slightly subtle subtext. I do wished for more time spent on Lois and Superman yet I must say that since the much maligned "Captain Marvel," I have not had this much merriment at a comic-book movie. This "Superman" soars.

I am not a drawing!

 PAPERHOUSE (1988)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

A pubescent, stubborn girl with intense dreams that mirror her drawings and real-life, Bernard Rose's "Paperhouse" leaves you thunderstruck with its potent imagery and emotionally grounded real-life drama. It is "Nightmare on Elm Street" except there is no burned jocose villain and no mortality factor in the slasher vein. It is a kid's idea of nightmares where a clear-eyed view of their world makes sense only to them, not to the adults who can't comprehend such horrific visions of wonder. Real-life and dreams seem to intersect and the joy of the film is in its ambiguity and its simplicity. 

Charlotte Burke is Anna, a very stubborn, rebellious young girl who is consistently in trouble at a private school and feigns fainting spells and ill health. The girl is as healthy can be - it is just her birthday and she just wants riding lessons. In a moment of ringing truth and those awkward moments where you start to hate your parents, Anna's mother (a sprightly Glenne Headly) is upset that her rambunctious daughter lied and takes her back to school. Almost immediately, something haunted this way comes. Anna begins having strange dreams of that very house she's been drawing. Eventually, she succumbs to her drawings and decides that a young boy (Elliott Spiers) should live there. Unfortunately, there are no stairs and the kid has no mobile use of his legs in a bedroom bereft of furniture. When she draws some legs, we get ceramic legs with no body exterior. Anna tries to erase some details of her drawings but is unable to. When we see the results of her scribbling over these finer details in her constant visit to this forlorn house, it leaves you unprepared and there is a chill felt in your bones.  

"Paperhouse" is not like any film I've ever seen before, even from a child's point-of-view. When I first saw it years back, it haunted me in ways that reminded me of "The Changeling." A notable added plus to director Bernard Rose's film is that there are barely any special effects, mostly creepy, mildly stark art direction and a spare-looking, empty, abstract and colorless house that looks like no house you would ever see except in a child's drawing. The walls look like they are made of papier mache. The window's view of a grassy field with ominous clouds and, in one truly terrifying sequence, a blind man appearing with a hammer left me shivering with fright. He resembles Anna's own absentee dad and these scenes are as scary and simplistic in their staging as anything from the Elm Street series. A scene involving the details of a photograph and reliving the moment will make you jump from your chair.

Anna's father is played by Ben Cross, who has the right side head for this film. It may sound strange but I saw a parallel between his rather swelled-looking head and that mysterious house. Perhaps I have had nightmares of this sort (and still infrequently do) about my late father appearing in them and seemingly angry at something I did. Those dreams were inexplicable, frustrating and left me breathless. "Paperhouse" taps into those interminable child-like insights that can fester for a long time.   

Nun with a dagger, Hanks playing basketball and Del Toro's delicious antihero

 THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (2025)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Wes Anderson's greatest films often centered on the humanity and strength of its flawed characters within absurd situations. One of his early great masterworks is "The Royal Tenenbaums," which had a dysfunctional family trying to remain functional with a sick patriarch making some amends (that film has the benefit of carrying Gwyneth Paltrow's finest acting job). Lately, Anderson has gone off the cartoonish deep end in films as disparate in tone to his earlier films such as the grandly hysterical and luscious "The Grand Budapest Hotel" to the almost incomprehensible rat-a-tat-tat dialogue of "The French Dispatch" or the cornball witticisms of "Asteroid City" (a film I still feel started a whole lot better than it ended). There is a marvelous, sumptuous beauty to "The Phoenician Scheme" in that it is self-contained and quite precious yet there is a fundamental humanity to one of its characters, a young nun, that elevates it above its precious cartoonish staging. It also contains quite a few laughs and many scenes that will get to your funny bone in retrospect.

Benicio Del Toro is the amoral antihero with some sort of glimmer of a heart of gold 1950's industrialist Zsa Zsa Korda. This guy has suffered countless assassination attempts and, each time, he is up in Heaven bearing witness to his sins (and his own grandmother doesn't know who he is). Each time, he makes it back to Earth and makes some changes. Korda's latest escape from death is in a single-engine plane and it is so close to death that the international papers and TV stations report him dead until he shows up and asks if someone can place one of his severed organs back in his body! Korda already wishes to make amends, and that includes placing his daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet’s daughter) as his sole beneficiary to his empire if he one day, you know, doesn't survive an attempted assassination. Bjorn (Michael Cera), Korda's cordial personal assistant, tutor and quasi-entomologist, travels with Korda and the uncertain yet intrigued Liesl to visit hopeful business partners in a Phoenician business "scheme" that involves not employing slave labor. Whatever it is, nothing screams ethical about Korda or his business practices or his alleged partners who will only contribute 50 percent? 

I am not very savvy when it comes to business or numbers and I do not watch Wes Anderson's films for intrinsic logic when it comes to such matters. I look for his wild and intricate production design and eccentric performances given by usually straight actors confined to a world that doesn't appear to exist (yeah, that goes double for Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as brothers who can play some mean basketball). Del Toro is made for this wild material and he has this curious habit of never quite making eye contact with anyone, except his daughter Liesl (who may not be his daughter and Korda may or may not have murdered her mother). An absurd mystery wrapped inside an absurd riddle. Major kudos to Mia Threapleton as a nun with definite religious convictions who has to contend with some atheistic characters. She carries a jewel-encrusted dagger and she likes to smoke (not your typical nun). Also noteworthy is Michael Cera who fits beautifully and snugly in the Anderson world as a young, harmless man who has a deep affection for Liesl. Last but not least is Benedict Cumberbatch as Uncle Nubar who has a long beard worthy of Tolstoy.    

"The Phoenician Scheme" is wild yet understated and a cartoon of extreme observations and extreme characters. None of them seems to inhabit the real world yet that is a plus for Anderson who has gone on a loopy ride of his own making since "Grand Budapest Hotel." It is all underscored by Del Toro's change in temperament as Korda who is willing to give it all up (how often do you want to survive assassination attempts) and Threapleton's consistently challenged dogma and willingness to accept Korda. Just don't ask me about the business deals.