Brazilian cries, whispers and pulsating with life

 THE SECRET AGENT (2025)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Best Film of 2025 

(shared with "One Battle After Another")

Nothing makes me smile more than seeing an intricate, involving and entrancing film that takes you on a leisurely ride where its destination is not predetermined. Swiftly moving from past to present with acute timing and precision, "The Secret Agent" is our 2020 answer to a risque political film from the 1970's probing deep questions about truth and the political machinations of an era few have experienced in our lifetime. It is absolutely riveting entertainment.

Our titular secret agent is Armando (an ideally cast Wagner Moura), a university professor who has been labeled a communist. Truth is Armando is not affiliated with communism nor capitalism in the Brazil of the late 1970's. This is Brazil during a time of military dictatorship and he is stopped at a gas station (where a corpse is on the ground covered by cardboard) and questioned and searched by the police. Armando complies and what is a little amazing is how often we see scenes like this in modern-day movies and expect a bout of violence to emerge. There is no violence and the police take off, yet tension rings in the air. Armando is headed to Recife, the capital of the Brazilian state Pernambuco, to see his child who is living with his in-laws. His in-laws love and miss him but they also know it is dangerous for him to be present (his wife Fátima had passed away). Armando stays with some political dissidents in a sort of hidden refugee enclave, and finds a job at an identity card office building where he tries to find information on his late mother. He has adopted an alias, Marcello, so as to not be discovered by others. Meanwhile, two unlikely hit men are hired by a racist and sexist (to say the least) industrialist named Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli) who had a past blow-out at a restaurant between Armando and his wife Fatima (Alice Carvalho, in a firecracker of a performance that lasts only a few minutes).  

Directed with a virtuoso power by Kleber de Mendonça Vasconcellos Filho, every scene clicks and involves us, from the mundane existence of living in close quarters inside an apartment building, to the identity offices that look and feel banal, to the carnival sequence itself that vibrates with a vivid energy, to the movie theaters showing "The Omen" and "Jaws" where a one couple indulges in fellatio in the crowd, to the busy and crowded street scenes that feel lived in, "The Secret Agent" pulsates with the flavor of life. The film has a burgeoning golden glow throughout, not quite sepia-toned, in its look at a Brazil of carnivals and alluring women, not to mention gays indulging in sexual acts out in the open as one cruises through the city's various parks. 

The performances are sublime including the quiet magnetism of Wagner Moura as Armando; the seen-it-all 77-year old woman, Donna Sebastiana (Tânia Maria); who provides a refugee home, or the captivating belly-laughs and charms of the insidious police chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes). The present day scenes involve a female journalist listening to recorded sessions between Armando and a patient political resistance leader Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido). What is most stimulating about the film is that it is mostly cries and whispers, as if the world will collapse if anything leaks in this dictatorship because all ears are open. 

What is also special about this film is that it brings back memories for me as a 6-year-old living in Sao Paulo in 1977-78 (the film is set in 1977). The golden glow of the streets seems just right to me (though Sao Paulo was heavily polluted at that time so I can't speak for Recife). I also feel I have seen older spirited women like Sebastiana and I do faintly recall those close quarters in homes where adults would discuss politics. My father even had a beard like Armando has in the opening scenes. So, personal memories aside, "The Secret Agent" deftly works as a passage of time that no longer exists. I would compare it to Costa-Gavras masterful "State of Siege" which dealt with Uruguay's political strife in the 1960's through the 1970's. "The Secret Agent" is a cinematic powerhouse and a real treat.   

GIVE US FREE

 AMISTAD (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Cinque is seen in extreme, sweaty, bloody close-up trying to pry a rusty nail from a rotted wooden floor. He is one of several African slaves who have been violently abused and treated like animals on board a Spanish sailing ship called La Amistad. The nail sets Cinque free from those piercing iron shackles and a revolt takes place against the Spanish crew. Judging from this justifiable insurrection, you'd think that "Amistad" is Cinque's story but it is not, only in a secondary maybe tertiary way. 

The insurrection leads Cinque (Djimon Hounsou) to be hoodwinked into thinking he'll return to Africa - he is redirected to New York with the others. They are to be tried for murder yet nobody in the courtroom can decide who these slaves really belong to and it becomes rather comical when the Spaniards lay claim as well as Navy officers. Ultimately, this whole shebang is proof that they see these slaves as nothing more than commodities, property, cargo, but not human beings. So when a real-estate lawyer gets involved, Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey, who looks like some 1960's hippie professor who smoked one too many blunts), he provides a perceived slam dunk case since the slaves were clearly kidnapped from Africa, not Cuba, and the revolt happened outside the U.S. A couple of abolitionists, Lewis Tappan (Stellan Skarsgard) and his associate Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman, standing out more as a symbol than a character), a fictional former slave, find documents and inventory sheets that can prove their case. However, under the cold hands of President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne), a new young judge takes over and he decides they should be free. Not so fast when the legal machinations face an appeal and the case has to be retried. Who better to make things right than the sleepy John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) who can stand before Supreme Court justices and deliver a preachy sermon where he names drops past U.S. Presidents and the Constitution. It is beautifully summarized in that context but it does little to provide justice for these slaves.

"Amistad" has a staggeringly powerful flashback sequence, "the Middle Passage," where we see how these slaves were treated on board that ship, from being thrown overboard in a chain link to some whipped to death and starved, etc. One woman with a child throws herself overboard. This is Cinque's subjective and troubling view of being a simple man driven to rage and murder by ruthless, money-grubbing captors. "Amistad," unfortunately, loses its primary focus on Cinque to the lawyers who are trying to prove they were captured and not born slaves. It leads to one stirring moment - the movie's best scene - where Cinque is in court and repeatedly says, "GIVE US FREE!" The courtroom is awed by this earth-shattering pronouncement and it should've been sufficient cause for seeing Cinque as a wronged man but we do not get enough of Cinque's own individualism. He is an angry slave yet he's also a man who had a family in Africa and was taken away. Seeing it more from his perspective rather than involving the two lawyers and a handy translator makes "Amistad" more of a potent courtroom drama articulating a virtuous issue than a story of a man driven to and from hell. It is a watchable picture but it could have been so much more. Spielberg should've just let Cinque be free to tell his story. 

Ephemerol is needed after watching this haywire movie

 SCANNERS (1980)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When I was about 10, I saw "Scanners" on home video and all I took away from it were the gory special-effects. Hard to forget a head blowing up or enormous veins popping out of someone's face and arms. It was all I could remember. Now, Cronenberg's intellectual horror film is a cautious warning about experimental pharmaceutical drugs and human evolution involving ESP. It may not all make sense but it is Cronenberg at his finest, using shock, scares and an unrelenting sense of gloom over the proceedings. You might still get a migraine after watching it.  

Scanners are special human beings who possess ESP and can telepathically cause someone to have headaches and nosebleeds. Others with evil intent on their minds can blow someone's head apart, including a scanner's head. One opening sequence shows a derelict-of-sorts, Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), who eats other patrons' leftovers at a mall cafeteria before scanning a woman who gives him disapproving looks. She suddenly goes into convulsions and Cameron turns away, perhaps in disgust at what he has done or unable to know what he has done, and is chased by government agents who shoots tranquilizer darts at him. Next we have am auditorium session with scanners and a demonstration is necessary with a volunteer. Of course, nobody in the audience wishes to participate except for one, a purely evil man named Revok (a perfectly cast Michael Ironside). Yes, this is where the head exploding scene occurs that became the highpoint of the film's trailer.

Cameron is eventually taken to Dr. Ruth (Patrick McGoohan, speaking with a soft, articulate tongue that may drive you bananas), an expert on scanners and on the board of ConSec who owns a pharmaceutical company that the good doctor had initiated. The mysterious doctor hopes Cameron can track down an underground scanner group that includes its supposed leader, Revok. It seems there may be various scanner groups and they can all scan in unison! We find a reclusive artist named Ben Pierce (Robert A. Silverman), a viable lead to this underground movement in a sequence that is both funny and genuinely bizarre. Pierce's laugh sounds sarcastic and fake but then I read that it was meant to evoke Alan Alda!

"Scanners" starts off with potent scenes of violence and Revok being able to scan agents and force them to kill themselves. Once you get past those gory moments, the movie settles down a tad and becomes a frenetic chase picture with a soundtrack that sounds like it was designed by a scanner. Cameron runs along towards the last half of the picture with another scanner, Kim (Jennifer O'Neill), as they try to evade assassins, agents and guards before discovering the truth of ephemerol (a drug meant to tranquilize a scanner's abilities that also might be used to create a new army of newborn scanners). Unbelievably, in what seems like a last-minute plot contrivance, Cameron scans the ConSec computers by using a payphone. Still, despite its often ludicrous nature, Cronenberg plays the film straight and keeps you riveted even if you occasionally laugh at yourself for taking it seriously. I will say there are powerful moments that caused me to have some nausea, a couple of stomach cramps but no nosebleeds. Maybe I was feeling under the weather when I watched it twice again recently. Or maybe Cronenberg just has that effect on his audience. 

I can't stand Americans fighting Americans

 1941 (1979)

Endured by Jerry Saravia

I am all for pure chaos in any movie. Throw in the kitchen sink while you are at it! A wild World War II movie with pure comic chaos is a great idea. Throw in the kitchen sink, a few tanks, a Ferris Wheel, a Japanese sub, out-of-control war planes and general havoc. Steven Spielberg's "1941" is all that but it is not comical - it is just an expensive dumpster fire with unbridled chaos and nothing else. 

The anarchic script by Bob Gale, Robert Zemeckis and John Milius doesn't seem written at all - they must have screamed the lines to each other and expected the actors to deliver in an over-the-top mode by screaming as well. The story takes place in the days following the tragic Pearl Harbor event of December 7th where an Imperial Japanese Navy sub is spotted in the Pacific Ocean. It is commandeered by no less than the titanic presence of Toshiro Mifune! Christopher Lee plays a Nazi officer on board the sub for reasons only clear to the writers of this unfunny mess. Since there are fears of another brazen attack by the Japanese (there is an interest in bombing Hollywood), every American is scared and they run around in a frantic pace. The military is preparing for this but their leader in command, General Stilwell (Robert Stack playing a real-life general), would rather cry at a theatrical showing of "Dumbo." You do have the lone swimmer from the opening of "Jaws" gracing the opening of this movie where she is almost impaled by a...Japanese sub. Darn. Then there is Slim Pickens as Hollis P. Wood, a lumberjack who tries to chop down Christmas trees inhabited by Japanese officers. Yeah, real funny stuff for about a second. 

I enjoyed Ned Beatty as someone defending his home turf with an anti-aircraft arsenal that ends up destroying his own family home. Other than that and the zaniness of John Belushi (in a mostly extended cameo) as Wild Bill Kelso chomping on a cigar and flying through the streets of L.A. causing general mayhem, "1941" is needlessly overlong and overbaked and ultimately a "nothing" movie. A great cast flounders in this movie because they have zilch to do. There are no memorable characters or situations - Spielberg is directing traffic and reaction shots and not much else. I came away bored, not exhausted, and many of the film's racial jokes do not work and will cause mostly eye-rolling looks.The USO dance sequence is fun for a while but it is overextended (you'll forget Treat Williams is in this movie playing a character with an aversion to eggs). This movie is about endless destruction, fist fights and not much else - chaos is not by definition funny. Maybe it is about director Steven Spielberg's attempt to show America at war when it entered World War II. It feels more like Spielberg at war with himself.