Merida could be a fitting Katniss Everdeen ally

BRAVE (2012)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Brave" is one of the most pleasurable, romantic and charming Disney films I've seen in quite some time. I'll go further - it is a sumptuous fantasy with a heroine we can root for and believe in. Sound hokey to cynics out there? Read further.

Merida (voiced by Kelly McDonald) is a long curly-red-haired girl who is also an expert archer. She is daughter of the strict Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) and the carefree and boisterous King Fergus (voiced by Billy Connolly) who both hope to have their feisty daughter married to a prospective suitor from one of the clans of Macintosh, MacGuffin and Dingwall. An archery contest will prove who can hit the bullseye and marry Merida but Merida will have none of that. She is a free spirit who wants to follow her heart's desire. Merida loves to ride horses, shoot arrows, and watch the waterfalls.

She doesn't see eye to eye with her mother - so much so that Merida visits a witch and puts a spell on her mother to persuade her to not force her daughter into marriage. Queen Elinor has become a bear (not quite what Merida had in mind) and King Fergus (who had lost his leg while fighting a bear) is ready for another confrontation, unaware his wife is an oversized animal.

The film had me entranced from its beautifully orchestrated opening shot of the Scottish Highlands - it is so richly detailed and so intoxicating to watch that Pixar outdoes itself. The animation is amazingly gorgeous, from the lush greens of the countryside to the cascading rivers, to the foggy forest where will-o'-the-wisps reside in bluish disappearing streaks, to the scary bears and scarier-looking crones. Of course, as always, all this would make a sweet empty visual treat if not for the characters who are believable and come alive in bewitching ways.

Merida is full of sass, as is her father. The mother learns to see that her daughter is more worthy and brave than she had thought. One scene in particular has Elinor as the bear witnessing how her daughter makes the warring clans see how marriage should not be arranged and seeks to break an ancient tradition - it is a cliched moment to be sure but it is given a touch of humor (Elinor uses charades to guide her daughter) and depicts an emotional truth in Merida.

"Brave" is Pixar's first fairy tale and uses elements of Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm to tell its story (it is also Pixar's first attempt to have a female lead headlining their movie). Some critics found the plot underwhelming but it had me hooked, though I wasn't surprised by how it ended - the quixotic journey of getting there is what makes it so transfixing. "Brave" has got magic, fantasy, a stunning conclusion, some terrific gags involving Merida's younger, pie-loving brothers, and a brave heroine whom I won't soon forget - she has as much pluck and determination as Katniss Everdeen from "The Hunger Games." More young female types like this should be encouraged. "Brave" is perfect entertainment for kids and adults without a false moment in its 93-minute running time. Bravo!

A Banal Risk

GENUINE RISK (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Genuine Risk" is a train wreck of a film, dependent on implausible coincidences and rampant gunfire than on building the mood of a genuine film noir. The opening has that promise and, for a while, we lurch along noir tropes such as the typical femme fatale, the screwed-up antihero who needs a job, the threatening big boss, and so on. But the filmmakers then decide to chuck it all to the demands of an overwrought melodrama. To end a noir picture with a car chase is to underestimate the audience.

There is the gambler and petty thief, Henry (Peter Berg) who always bets big and always loses. He lives in a small apartment above the town bar in Anywhere, USA. One night while playing pool, Henry sets his eyes on a mysterious woman (Michelle Johnson), simply known in the credits as the Girl, seen sitting at the bar (the kind of low-rent bar where a glamorous woman has no place). He asks her to his room for a free drink, and they almost have sex until her beeper sounds off. Henry has a beeper as well when he is offered by his childhood friend, Cowboy Jack (M.K. Harris), a job with the mob kingpin Paul Hellwart (Terence Stamp). Henry doesn't want the job, knowing it involves violence, but he takes it anyway. Eventually, we are privy to a bloody shootout, a fistfight involving a jockey, more sex, more bloody shootouts, etc.

The overall effect is not nauseating since the violence is punctual and explosive, but what is the point? Same with the sex scenes - Peter Berg and Michelle Johnson are attractive looking but they are barely believable as a pair of lovers. There is no real tension or sense of peril since the Girl and Hellwart's intentions are never clear - she is Hellwart's moll and carries a beeper and that is all we learn about her. As for Hellwart, we just learn he is mean, abusive and a former 60's British pop star! This thin material is written by Kurt Voss (who also directed), who wrote a similarly wafer-thin noir called "Delusion."

Most of "Genuine Risk" is superficial and glossy yet Terence Stamp rises above the material as the icy Hellwart. He has a great line about women and racetracks: "A racetrack is like a woman...a man weathers so much banality in pursuit of the occasional orgasmic moment." A great line in a movie full of cliched, banal line readings, uni-dimensional characters and the occasional orgasmic moment.

Enid sees ghosts

GHOST WORLD (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
One of the ten best films of the 2000 decade

(Original review from August, 2001)

It is rare to see a film that transports and moves me in such a way as to be breathtaking. A film that leaves me so ecstatic and excited by cinema all over again - a sublime experience in an era of dumbed-down, mediocre pictures. For the 1980's, "The Breakfast Club" was the ultimate statement about teenagers in high school. For the 1990's teen way of life, perhaps something like "American Beauty" stands as definitive about how teenagers think and talk nowadays (unless you prefer "American Pie"). But a defining statement of the world today is clearly felt in "Ghost World," an unparalleled masterpiece of pop culture attitudes and more specifically, teenage alienation and discomfort in an era of Internet hype and media hogwash. I was planning on seeing Kevin Smith's latest the following day but I just couldn't. After seeing "Ghost World," you may not want to see anything else for a few days since it gets under your skin so thoroughly that you will feel compelled to buy the graphic novel from which the film is based on or listen to the soundtrack or both. It is that good.

Based on the comic book by Daniel Clownes, "Ghost World" is a bleak view of America today in an suburban town where 50's retro diners coexist with politically correct art teachers. It is also a world of lonely, miserable people who can't help being where they are in their station in life. Enid (Thora Birch) is the offbeat, downbeat, ironic, contradictory, sarcastic teenager who has just graduated from high school. Her best friend, Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), has also graduated and is relieved. Their relief does not translate to collegiate futures - they have their own plans. Enid and Rebecca plan to work full-time jobs and rent an apartment and basically make ironic statements on people who surround their field of vision. Enid not only spouts ironic commentary, she lives by it. She hates any and everything except for her friend Rebecca. She sees a bald man and his wife at a cafe and immediately suspects they are Satanists. Both Enid and Rebecca decide to spend their time gazing and talking. One day, Enid responds to a personal ad where some guy had seen a blonde and felt they shared something special. Enid pretends to be the blonde and calls for a date. The guy, Seymour (Steve Buscemi), comes to one of those 50's retro diners to meet the blonde, who is of course not present. But something curious happens - Enid follows Seymour around and begins to like the fact that he is representative of everything she doesn't hate. He is a dork in her estimation but he also loves to collect 78 rpm records of old blues singers. More importantly, Enid can relate to Seymour's loneliness.

Enid's home life is not pretty. Her father (Bob Balaban) eats jelly with relish and dates a woman she hates. He does try to support his daughter but she is unresponsive and selfish. Enid lives in her own fantasy world of irony and of dancing to Indian music - she does not see that she alienates people by hiding or being cleverly ironic. After alienating even Rebecca and Seymour, Enid feels lost - a lost soul in search of her inner self. "I don't know what I am doing," says Enid at one point and that statement sums up her life. If Enid hates any and everything and can't commit to a job, then where is her station in life? Can it be with the summer art class where she has to contend with a politically correct art teacher? Can it be the old man who waits for a bus that never comes? Who can Enid relate to now if she can't hold on to her own friends?

"Ghost World" is not likely to appeal to the same teenagers who love "American Pie" and its score of imitations. After all, Enid's preoccupation in life is not sex - she would like to belong to something but she is too honest in this media age to belong to anything she doesn't already despise. The same is true of Seymour who is offended by shouting radio deejays and modern blues songs. He may feel that times are better but he is still rooted in the past, particularly with offensive minstrel ads and old blues songs. But he is a loner too and despises society yet works for a corporation to support himself and his collection of 78's.

Thora Birch encapsulates the modern alienated and alienating teenager perfectly in Enid. She is a wonder to watch as she unfurls her commentary on screen with winking nuances and explosive fierceness, always wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Look at the scene in a zine shop where she dresses up in original punk rock clothes, combat boots and green hair and claims her fashion statement as irony - none of the clerks in the store see it that way. Birch screams, crackles, hollers, whispers, laughs and cries and she is sarcastic, not to mention touching in her weaker states where she starts to lose what she had. It is a brave, risky performance by Birch that embellishes the promise she showed in "American Beauty."

Also noteworthy is Scarlett Johansson as Rebecca, also ironic in her own way but also looking ahead in the future - she does not wish to stay in the same town forever. Her dry, low monotone voice is in direct contrast to Birch's occasionally high-pitched delivery. Johansson first came to prominence in the sweet film "Manny and Lo" and here, she is maturing into a fine actress.

Finally, there is Steve Buscemi in one of his best roles as the lonesome Seymour. He connects with Enid but also wants to move on in his own station in life. The tragedy of his character is that he can't despite trying to. Buscemi is as restrained as ever and gives measured poignancy to Seymour's downfall.

"Ghost World" is directed by Terry Zwigoff, who helmed the fabulous, disturbing documentary "Crumb" a few years go (there's even a nod to Crumb's rock band). This is Zwigoff's first non-documentary film and it is a great, poetic masterwork - his restraint and static camera style are perfect for the observations of this ghostly world as seen through Enid's eyes. And the ambiguous ending will haunt you for days as to where Enid's future lies. It is as moving and poetic as any film you will see this year.

Eric Binford fades from memory

FADE TO BLACK (1980)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2002)

A scrawny, unlikable weakling is an unlikely character lead in a movie but "Fade to Black" is one of those low-budget stinkers that tries a little too hard to be clever and ends up delivering nada in return.

Dennis Christopher ("Breaking Away") is the unlikable, scrawny weakling, Eric Binford, who loves movies more than life itself. He believes movies are life and among his favorites are "White Heat," "Kiss of Death" and anything with Marilyn Monroe. Eric works at a film studio handling film reels, and does the job badly. Everyone at work hates the kid including his boss. Eric lives at home with his aunt who is in a wheelchair, watches old movies all night and assumes the identities of famous characters in real life. Eric's identity crisis goes a little too far as he begins killing people in various disguises, including Count Dracula, Hopalong Cassidy, the Mummy, and so on. Meanwhile, a coke-sniffing psychiatrist (laughably played by Tim Thomerson) feels that the kid is a victim of society and can be helped. This conceit is nothing new and very popular nowadays in light of recent crime cases involving Colombine high school and John Grisham's uncle killed by hallucinating teens inspired by "Natural Born Killers ," but I digress.

"Fade to Black" has a terrific idea defeated by the most unlikable, unpleasant characters to surface in a movie in a long time. No one emits the slightest care in the world about anything and that makes it harder to care about them. Even Eric's aunt is unsympathetic and loud. Only Linda Kerridge as a Marilyn Monroe lookalike who takes a liking to Eric is borderline normal, but what does she find appealing in Eric?

The filmmaking is amateurish and the cinematography is badly photographed to the point where scenes are so dark that I had trouble figuring what was happening. I am assuming the filmmakers were aiming for a realistic documentary look in the style of George Romero's "Martin" but it hardly meshes with the underdeveloped story and characters. A climax at a movie theater is as ludicrous and laughable a climax as I have seen in a long time, and I thought "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" was bad.

"Fade to Black" seems to have been made for people who hate movies. In that spirit, it fades from memory long before it is over.

Footnote: Look for an early appearance by Mickey Rourke as a studio employee who knows everything about "Casablanca" except the full name of Humphrey Bogart's character.

1950's swathed in Nostalgia

BOOK OF LOVE (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The Fifties remains an era I am always fascinated by. I think the main reason is because it only seemed so innocent and innocuous but, underneath, there might have been what one Beatnik poet referred to as "intense psychic pain" due to the missile crisis and other factors at that time. Yet movies like "Book of Love" insist that the fifties was an era of innocence and nothing more. Isn't every era innocent?

Jack Twiller (Chris Young) is the new kid on the block. He looks smart, is well-dressed, and takes up dancing lessons thanks to his doting mother. His buddies are Crutch (the always dependable Keith Coogan) and Floyd (James Cameron Mitchell), who looks like a Beatnik poet. They spend their time getting inebriated, taking more dance lessons, driving around and generally goofing off, not to mention lip-synching to "Earth Angel."

Jack is head-over-heels in love with the blond, teasing, beaming Lily (Josie Bissett), who is of course dating a school bully named Angelo (Beau Dremann). Jack wants to take Lily to the school prom, but finds himself ironically asking Gina (Tricia Leigh Fisher), the switchblade sister of the school who is also Angelo's sister, to the prom.

I first saw "Book of Love" back in 1990 with a date and found it funny and pleasing. Seeing it again recently, I found it lesser in quality than I had thought. As directed by Bob Shaye (president of New Line Cinema, who never directed another film since), it is cloying and a little too precious. There are lots of visual gags, like the bodybuilder who emerges from those famous ads to persuade Jack to lift weights, but some of it gets trite after a while. Jack is never a fully developed character - his biggest scene is when he apes Jimmy Dean in "East of Eden." I would have liked to learn more about him as an individual, and why he had such aspirations to become a writer. His buddies are fun to watch but are given little screen time to do anything other than sing and goof off. Ditto the underused Tricia Leigh Fisher as Gina, a bad girl who suddenly shows a sympathetic side. It is hard to see the attraction between Jack and Gina and her tough-girl tomboy image is given meager screen time to make any kind of impression.

There are bookends to "Book of Love" with an older Jack (played by Michael McKean) reminiscing while looking at his high-school yearbook. But this is no "American Graffitti" or "Diner." "Book of Love" safely assumes it is enough to be nostalgic.

Batman Rises to the Occasion

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

 I guess I was wrong. The trailer for "The Dark Knight Rises" rubbed me the wrong way. I was dismayed by what was seemingly a comic-book movie that looked like "The Departed" or any of Sidney Lumet's cop pictures. I was also underwhelmed by the casting of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and thought to myself, after the stunning conclusion of "The Dark Knight," there was no place to go. Even director Christopher Nolan stated as such. But I do believe that seeing the final product is believing and "The Dark Knight Rises" is as great as the 2008 sequel and closer in spirit to "Batman Begins," the finest Batman film ever made. What "Rises" does is bring us closer to Bruce Wayne, closer than ever before and that is a major plus.
 

This sequel takes place eight years after the debacle involving the murder of attorney Harvey Dent by the Joker, a crime mistakenly attributed to Batman. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has been in hiding at Wayne Manor all this time, walking around with a beard and a cane and eroding like some pale imitation of Howard Hughes. The public has not seen him or the Dark Knight but Bruce can't let go of the tragedy of his girlfriend's death, Rachel Dawes (played in the last sequel by Maggie Gyllenhaal). It has kept the billionaire playboy as insular as ever. His dutiful servant, Alfred (Michael Caine), is worried for him. When Selina Kyle aka The Cat (Anne Hathaway, a better-than-expected and puurr-fect performance) slips in a maid's uniform and gets a sample of Wayne's fingerprints, it breaks Bruce and makes him confront Gotham City and all its denizens. When the muscular Bane (brilliantly played by Tom Hardy) holds Gotham hostage by blowing up football fields, killing Wall Street brokers, trapping thousands of police officers underground and threatening to blow up the city with a fusion reactor converted into a nuclear bomb, Bruce comes out of his shell and dons the rubber suit. However, Bane, the masked villain who inhales analgesic gas to keep himself alive and free of pain, is a tortured, pained individual who either wants to get rid of the ruling classes or blow up the city or both. Batman never had to face this much anarchy.
 
"The Dark Knight Rises" juggles a lot of characters and perilous situations with ease, thanks to writer-director Christopher Nolan. I haven't mentioned the return of Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) where his police record comes under scrutiny; Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a headstrong police detective who believes Bruce Wayne and Batman are one and the same; Marion Cotillard as Miranda who has a vested interested in Wayne's fusion reactor and becomes his love interest, and returnee Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox who provides Bruce with all the high-tech weaponry.  All the characters come together and have their own share of practically equal screen time that allows their roles to breathe without the constant bombardment of explosions. When the action does set in, it is as dazzling and as sweeping as ever before. The final hour of the film supplies enough dramatic moments amidst an imminent terrorist bombing and jaw-dropping action that supersedes anything you might find in any current superhero action flick.
 
Bruce Wayne's attempts to come to terms with being a redemptive hero in the Gotham city crisis is this movie's highlight. When dumped into a prison by Bane which precious few humans could ever escape from, Wayne finds his own inner strength to preserve what he has left to give to Gotham. This is where Christian Bale really brings his Bruce and Batman character to full fruition - it is astoundingly nuanced and formidable acting that is resplendent in its authority.  It is what was missing in "The Dark Knight," a great movie that was resolutely about a clown-faced terrorist who beat Batman with piercing words. "Rises" reestablishes Batman as our nocturnal hero, our own dark knight whom we can root for all over again. Nolan has closed out one of the most fascinating, ambitious and serious-minded comic-book films ever with a delectable coda and a stirring climax. The Bat Signal shines brighter than ever.
 
Footnote: "Rises" did face controversy in July with the unfortunate Aurora, Colorado shootings that mirrored, intentionally or not, the dreary world of Christopher Nolan's own revisionist take on the DC hero. I have written about this and having seen the film, I was wrong to think that the world of the movie, which I had not seen at the time, was the same as our world. Nolan deals with real-life, 9/11 pre-occupations and terroristic activities, in addition to post-Bush paranoia. With "Rises," he exploits Occupy Wall Street paranoia and anger. None of this has anything to do with the Aurora shooting because in the end, despite such doses of 9/11 reality, this is only a Batman movie at heart and it never sides with the "liberating" efforts enforced by Bane.

20-minute time-travel warning

RETROACTIVE (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

 

Time-travel is such a fanciful fantasy plagued with so many intricate problems and paradoxes that it might not be worth the trouble. In the case with "Retroactive," the issue is stopping not just one murder but several murders. Good luck with that when you got a 20 minute jump start.

Karen (Kylie Travis), a psychotherapist, has car trouble in the middle of the desert. She is helped by Frank, a boisterous and very rough Texan (Jim Belushi) who treats his wife, Rayanne (Shannon Whirry), like garbage. Karen wants a ride to get a mechanic, but Frank has other ideas and one of them involves murder. Rayanne is shot in the head and Karen runs into a conveniently located government facility where a scientist named Brian (Frank Whaley) is conducting a time-travel experiment with mice thanks to a particle accelerator. Can Karen use the experiment to prevent the killing of Frank's wife?

"Retroactive" has a few lapses in time-travel logic, if such a thing even exists. How can Brian prepare a videotape of himself and have it be viewed once he goes back in time, approximately ten minutes before he kills a mouse (DO NOT ASK!)? The movie's internal logic makes no sense because the movie never establishes that alternate timelines coexist or merge. So when Karen keeps going back 10 or 20 minutes before Rayanne's murder, no other action committed by Karen remains in the future timeline she keeps returning to, which means there are alternating timelines. Whew!

"Retroactive" is an action thriller with a sci-fi concept but the movie manifests as nothing more than a series of endless shootings. Karen shoots at Frank and practically misses every time. Frank shoots back, is thrown through glass partitions, drives like a maniac and keeps shooting. Shooting after shooting after shooting - what an exhausting time travel cycle that must be to return to. The movie becomes a wearying chore to sit through and lacks any psychological aspects or fun character types (a family in a stationwagon and M. Emmett Walsh's nervous impulse with, again, the trigger of a gun is as sharp a character definition as you will get). The movie never lets us in on Travis's Karen, the protagonist we are supposed to root for - she got into some haywired mess in the past but it is barely dealt with. Jim Belushi's Frank is a one-dimensional side-burned psycho who keeps getting pounded and shot at but he is nothing more than a cartoonish Terminator on the loose. Whirry's Rayanne is a looker but precious little is divulged about her aside from being physically abused by Frank. I wish I could go back in time and say something different but "Retroactive" is a numbing bore.