Raises the pulse without a pulse-pounding pace

 FRUITVALE STATION (2013)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The inevitable is near. A senseless murder will occur and we will wonder what specific circumstances lead to it. Ryan Coogler's impressive feature debut, "Fruitvale Station," begins with actual, horrifying video footage of the killing of Oscar Grant III by a police officer. The setting is the BART train station in Oakland, California and the unbearable tension begins. 

Michael B. Jordan is Oscar, a 22-year-old father who has lost his job at a food market due to chronic lateness. Oscar lives with his girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who is unsure of her man after she caught him having an infidelity. Oscar can sell some weed but chooses to throw it in the sea instead, opting for a life where prison is not in the horizon. In a stirring flashback, Oscar is in prison and is visited by his honest-to-the-bone mother (Octavia Spencer) who loves her son but not his attitude. In the fairly intense exchange between mother and son, she leaves hastily after seeing him almost get physical with another prisoner. Still, Oscar's mother knows he has a good heart and a good soul and that he is trying vainly to support himself, his girlfriend and their daughter. It is New Year's Eve as Oscar hangs with his friends and Sophina to watch the fireworks, little knowing what danger looms ahead.

What is doubly fantastic about director Ryan Coogler's debut is how he builds tension even in the smallest, most trivial moments. Oscar picks up his daughter at a daycare and they run in a slow-motion shot that suggests such familial horsing around is etched in time. The birthday party for Oscar's mother shows how close this family is, whether they are joking about sports teams or when Sophina asks what she can do to help with cooking, etc. Most movies feature moments that can be heart-rending yet this all spells heartbreak. Most unsettling is the train ride to the city where something seems off and we are not sure why until a fight breaks out, seemingly out of the blue, as Oscar's name is shouted by a young woman (this gets Sophina's attention immediately). This woman was a seafood customer in an earlier scene where Oscar convinces her to speak to his grandmother on the phone about frying fish. You'll kinda wish that this woman never uttered his name.

Coogler's "Fruitvale Station" is not dissimilar from Gus Van Sant's day-in-the-life of high school students drama, "Elephant," where one senses an inevitable tragedy moment by cringing moment. Coogler frames Oscar as a young man who is trying to figure out how to move forward and, most significantly, how to change his ways. We know his life will be cut short violently yet, thanks to Coogler's intimate handling of familial drama that is never overplayed or melodramatic (including a dog's death due to a hit-and-run), the film raises your pulse without reverting to a pulse-pounding pace. Oscar's normal 24-hour-day plays like a routine day, a life of uncertainty with a healthy optimism. It is a nuanced, firecracker performance by Michael B. Jordan, often conveying so much without revealing through words. This is as close-to-the-bone as real life gets. 

Shock and awe on the air

 TALK RADIO (1988)
An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

Oliver Stone has always been an incendiary, provocative film director and who better than Stone to tell the story of an incendiary and provocative talk show host. This shock jock is so incendiary that when he attends a basketball game as a guest speaker, he is relentlessly booed and the crowd practically drowns out his speech. The hostile radio personality is Barry Champlain (Eric Bogosian) who is not a racist or prejudiced, nor a misogynist (he pokes fun of them with a less than delicate hand). The calls Barry receives on his high-ratings show generally are racist, prejudiced and misogynist, and some are worse than that. Of course, scene after riveting scene, Champlain loves getting these calls - it feeds his appetite and is what makes the show a ratings bonanza in Dallas. He gives the people what they want, and he relishes it and devours it without blinking. Or does he? Is it starting to consume him, all these random callers?

Bogosian's Barry is an unhappy, paranoid, obnoxious man who was once married and now has a tolerant girlfriend (Leslie Hope) who is his producer (though he shamelessly refers to her as his secretary). The man always had it in him to berate his callers and call them out on their stupidity, their histrionic comments, etc. In a truly stirring and powerful final sequence, Stone rotates his camera 360 degrees to capture Barry baring his soul to his listeners, arguing and yelling at them and trying to figure out what they want from him. Watching "Talk Radio" now in this day and age of innumerable podcasts (some of which are probably as incendiary as Champlain is), baring one's soul is not something you see or hear and certainly not to this degree. Based on the true story of a Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg (who was shot and killed by white supremacists), you start to wonder where the needle falls in terms of shock and awe - is there a chance Barry goes too far? Is going too far reducing his chances with a media company who has an interest in making his show go nationwide? Barry's job is to weed out his listeners who call in, and hang up on them. As "Talk Radio" progresses to a gradually intense finale, he is not hanging up on them - he is listening and yet hates himself for doing it. Or is Barry just a self-hating man who taunts his callers, including one who is a Holocaust denier who may or may not have sent him a mysterious package? How much of a future is there in being a relentless shock jock?

The flashbacks in the middle of "Talk Radio" are sepia-toned flashes of a long curly-haired Barry working in a men's clothing store who meets one of his talk show idols. Barry's voice is enough to suggest a future in radio and we see, almost immediately, how he shuns and cheats on his displeased wife (Ellen Greene). They get a divorce yet she still loves him and tries to break through him when she calls in to his show. Unshakable truths are conveyed and she realizes he will not change for anyone.

I once saw Bogosian perform his thrilling, hilarious one-man show, "Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll," and the overall effect of being confrontational is the exact same effect I had watching "Talk Radio." Only Bogosian liked what he was doing - there was a joy of performance on stage that was incalculable. I don't think Champlain enjoys what he does.  

Hair-raising up to a point

 WOLF MAN (2025)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A troubled young married couple make the reluctant trip to Oregon. The man of the house, and a most dutiful dad, has found out that his father is officially deceased. The adult son now has to move the old man's things out of the remote house in the mountains. Only trouble is that the rental truck almost runs over a creature on a winding road and the family eventually makes it back to that house on foot, turns on the generator and, well, lycanthropy happens. Yes, Oregon, a werewolf is on the loose. If you are aware that the mountainous area near your childhood home has a werewolf nearby, would you go there? Not me. The hell with my father's belongings.

"Wolf Man" is the latest horror flick from director Leigh Whannell and he has some good ideas here with regards to lycanthropy, that is seeing it as a ravaging disease that eats you up bit by bit. Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) is the father who protects his daughter at any cost and that includes his father's domicile (the daughter is played by Matilda Firth, who is as cute as a button). Charlotte Lovell is the mother, a journalist (very thanklessly played by Julia Garner who fared better in "Weapons"), who is seemingly unhappy in the marriage yet never admits to it - her character also feels lost who can't reciprocate the love bestowed on their daughter by her husband. Nevertheless, Blake has been bitten by the werewolf during a hair-raising truck accident. He is slowly consumed by the wolf within and in his blood. I love how he scratches himself where he was severely bitten, or how he almost enters a fourth dimension where he can't comprehend his own family - words are like animal grunts to him, a nice touch. So we have two werewolves to deal with, a ham radio that doesn't function (no cell phone service out in these woods), the generator is a mess, and no time for love or making peace with Blake and Charlotte's marriage on the rocks.

"Wolf Man" skirts past any character development of any kind. We know something is amiss in the marriage and it is then forgotten. We know Blake doesn't want to yell at his daughter when she does something wrong, and that is all there is to that father-daughter dynamic other than they love each other. Once they arrive at the house, all hell has already broken loose and all we can do is wait for inevitable werewolf attacks. Director Whannell can direct the hell out of this film and he sets up fairly decent shocks and scares. Still, without an ounce of character personality beyond one dimension and a half, "Wolf Man" is slim shadings of a monster tale that might have been better as a half-hour anthology episode. 

Feels good to be a wolf

 WOLF (1994)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Mike Nichols is not a director ever associated with horror (or with the slapstick shenanigans of "The Birdcage" either, for that matter) but it doesn't mean that the great director of "The Graduate," "Working Girl" and "Carnal Knowledge" can't veer from his normal slate of sophisticated comedies or dramas. What is most amazing about "Wolf" is that it is a sophisticated werewolf picture in addition to an alert and savvy look at the cutthroat business of book publishing. The drama is all there in spades, including an increasingly tense albeit brief exchange of hurtful words between the main character Will Randall, a senior book editor (Jack Nicholson), and his cheating wife, Charlotte (Kate Nelligan). There is also the arrogant, lying and aspiring protege of Will's, Stewart Swinton (James Spader), who is eager to climb the corporate ladder and rise to the top no matter who gets hurt. And we can't leave out Michelle Pfeiffer in one of her finest roles as Laura, a modern woman who has seen it all and sees through the facade of her billionaire father (Christopher Plummer) and his control of the book publishing firm. 

"Wolf" is not a standard werewolf movie although there are the expected tropes - the killing of a deer, Nicholson's Will howling at the Moon, an old lycanthropy expert - but rather a movie about a man who loves being a wolf and is not sure if he is one. After getting bitten in the opening scenes on a lonely Vermont road, Will's bald spot becomes full of hair. He doesn't need glasses when he reads through manuscripts and his hearing and sense of smell become extraordinarily acute, to the point that he can hear conversations and smell people's breath "from a mile away." I can't say how much better is his sex life - he grows more amorous around his wife but then there is Stewart's scent all over his wife's clothes! Uh, oh. 

Will eventually finds solace and some measure of self-recognition with Laura - their first meal together is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Will sees through Laura's facade (and she is more self-aware than he might think) yet Laura finds a good man in Will, although she can't see the wolf he's slowly becoming. Can Will beat his werewolf transformations during those endless moonlit nights? Will Will get his job back and get Stewart fired? Is urinating on a man's suede shoes enough to show prowess? 

"Wolf" works as a slight satire on the book publishing business and the werewolf metaphor works in tandem as Will regains use of his ruthless maneuvers to show who is boss. This is Nicholson at his most subtle and nuanced role during the 1990's, exuding charm, elegance, anger and line readings delivered with polished comic timing. This is not the madman on overdrive acting of one of his most relished roles in "The Shining." The witty screenplay by Jim Harrison and Wesley Strick gives Nicholson a chance to do something rare in horror - relish the beast yet simultaneously show revulsion over his actions (he finds severed fingers in his pocket at one point). As a horror flick, don't expect copious amounts of gore. The finale with two werewolves going at it in a horse barn feels a bit off, at least in terms of execution (slow-motion lycanthropy jumps do not work for me). Still, James Spader is a maniac in fur, Plummer shines as a man who can't fathom Will's change in attitude, and the luscious, almost phantom-like presence of Pfeiffer at the end gives the ending a touch of melancholy. Some wolves prefer to howl at the moon.