Behind Liberace's Back

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA (2013)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

 "Behind the Candelabra" is one of the most honest Hollywood love stories I've seen and one of the most human, touched with an eccentricity that marks it a cut above any generic love story you might see from Nicholas Sparks.  It also contains, far and away, the most delicately fanciful and expressively gentle performance I've ever seen from Michael Douglas. Who does he get to play this time to give us such a warm, loving character? Why Liberace, of course. 

Director Steven Soderbergh chooses to open his movie in a most unconventional manner and yet well-suited to the ostentatious yet so very intimate love story at its center - he has Matt Damon as the farm boy and hopeful veterinarian, Scott Thorson, picking up a guy at a bar. No words are exchanged until they lock their eyes on each other - hypnotic to say the least. So is the rest of the film. Scott attends a Liberace concert where Liberace (Michael Douglas) is decked out in thousands of sequins and rolls out his glittery piano, ready to entertain and delight the audience. Backstage, Scott meets Liberace whom he has nothing but praise for the show and the performer, and Lee (Liberace's preferred nickname) himself is touched and in love. The pianist wants to hire Scott as his bodyguard, a go-between Liberace himself and everyone else. The two quickly fall in love and everything blossoms. Scott becomes Liberace's chauffeur, sells Liberace merchandise (and is mistaken for his son) and, the capper, Liberace legally adopts Scott as his son! The two also have plastic surgery done to their faces, and Scott is made to look like Liberace (a botched job) and has a chin implant per Scott's request. 

Naturally, their lives enter some chaos. Liberace and Scott agree to see other people since Lee has a sex drive that not even Scott can keep up with. Scott becomes addicted to weight-loss pills and cocaine. Liberace is merely addicted to sex and loves to watch porn. Things get more awry when Scott, steadily growing jealous of Liberace's sexual freedom, loses himself with his whirlwind addictions and is fired. The dream is gone and it is Scott who, from the inception of the relationship, wanted no part of the ostentatiousness of his partner's life and belongings - he just wanted love and a family.

"Behind the Candelabra" is based on the same-titled book, an account by Scott Thorson himself of his life with Liberace. The screenplay by Richard LaGravenese (who wrote one of my favorite films, "The Fisher King") wisely chooses to focus on the relationship between the two and not aim for much of the vulgarity and riches of Liberace's Hollywood palace (let's be honest - golden walls and a golden-plated car add a touch of vulgarity). This relationship is shown to come apart and dissolve, especially when Thorson sues Liberace for "gifts" he's entitled to, but they never lose respect or their admiration for each other. Liberace clearly liked 17-year-old boys but that may be because he wanted to be a father and a lover, to indulge in love and lust equally. This may be what put off Hollywood studio bosses when Soderbergh tried and failed to get studio financing (HBO ended up financing the film). It is a shame that, in this day and age, Hollywood is still somewhat afraid to tackle complex love stories that do not involve just a man and a woman - had this story been about an older man and a young woman, it might have yielded a different result from Hollywood (unless they had forgotten their 2005 success with "Brokeback Mountain"). Further proof that La-La land is hardly as liberal as it is purported to be.  

Freshly and pungently written, absorbingly directed by Soderbergh (his supposed last film) and acted to perfection by Douglas and Damon (who amazingly looks younger and less mature than usual - props must go to makeup and Damon himself), "Behind the Candelabra" is a hypnotic, strange and thoroughly moving love story. Under lesser hands, it could have been handled as a cheap, near-parodic mess reducing the story of a Liberace as strictly lascivious and nothing more. Thankfully Soderbergh and company dig much deeper than anything you might find on the E! channel. 

Craven and Blair make an unbeatable team

STRANGER IN OUR HOUSE aka SUMMER OF FEAR (1978)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Originally review from 2003

One night I was sifting through DVD's at the local Borders shop and came across a true oddity: "Stranger in Our House," a TV film from 1978 starring Linda Blair and directed by Wes Craven! I was dumbfounded! A Wes Craven flick with dear old Linda, the ultimate demon drenched in pea soup from everyone's fave horror flick? I had to purchase it, if only for the low price and my curiosity. I was pleasantly surprised. "Summer of Fear," the alternate video title, is quite good, if nothing outstanding, and a pleasant time-filler for curious Craven fans.

Linda Blair, in her puffy-cheek period, plays Rachel Bryant, a good-natured chick who loves horses (as does Linda in real life). She lives with her family in a nice neighborhood, has a curly blonde-haired brother (Jeff East), and two loving parents. One day, they get a call that Rachel's cousin, Julia (Lee Purcell), has suffered a tragedy - her parents have been killed in a car crash. Since she is an only child, Julia stays with Rachel and her parents until she calms down and gets over her grief. The trouble begins brewing when Julia takes an interest in Rachel's boyfriend, keeps potions and other strange artifacts in her drawers, drives horses crazy with fright, and makes red markings on Rachel's photographs! Lo and behold, there is an unintentionally funny moment when Rachel finds she has sores all over her body, and dammit if some of them don't materialize on her face! How can she ride her horse in the rodeo competition with sores on her face? How can Rachel's boyfriend ever be interested in her now? Time to give Julia the boot.

"Summer of Fear" is intriguing if only because it is a Wes Craven flick minus the gore and the typical beheadings. Based on a popular young adult novel of the same name, this is more of teenage flick where we deal with teenage concerns about appearances and who is dating whom. Julia is the older sister who takes advantage of her homely surroundings and turns everyone, including Rachel's parents, against Rachel. Everyone loves Julia, even Rachel's brother and her father who loves back rubs! But Julia is not what she seems - her sophisticated appearance and proper etiquette mask an evil witch!

"Summer of Fear" is fun and consistently entertaining with a lively performance by Linda Blair, who proves she was more than just a demonic, foul-mouthed, bed-wetting 12 year-old girl. It helps that Craven is a master of tension and unease, and he creates enough of both to make us feel uncomfortable. Lee Purcell is also unforgettable, not appearing like the typically beautiful witch next door - her restraint and sheer beauty make the horror quite palatable. Though this is not one of Craven's best films, it is occasionally campy and thrilling enough to make for a nice, relatively restrained night of horror.

Menage a trois

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I walked into a theatre showing "Y Tu Mama Tambien" without any prior knowledge of what I was about to see. I was surprised to see a film not unlike what Hollywood would churn out if they made far more explicit teen comedy-dramas. That is not to say that "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (translation: "And Your Mother Too") is standard fare as teen movies go (it has some degree of intelligence and is explicitly sexual in ways few movies are afraid to be) but it is not far from what you might expect either.

Set in Mexico, two horny, marijhuana-stoked teenagers, Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Tenoch (Diego Luna), spend their days discussing sex, masturbating to thoughts of Salma Hayek and who they would love to screw with, if only fleetingly. Their girlfriends have left to Europe for vacation, and now they have want to explore any woman of any race. At a wedding where the Mexican president is set to make an appearance, Julio and Tenoch attend and catch the eye of Luisa (Marible Verdu), a stunning beauty from Spain. They invite her to a beach called "Heaven's Mouth," never thinking she will come along considering she is married to a writer who is Tenoch's cousin. Surprisingly, Luisa accepts the invitation when she learns her husband is having an affair, and decides to chuck it all to hell. The three go on a long road trip to "Heaven's Mouth," not having any clue how to get there. Like most road movies, they get flat tires, meet colorful characters, get drunk and have sex with each other, leading to a surprise ending where we learn a character's secret.

"Y Tu Mama Tambien" is fairly conventional but there are some minor sparks that diffirentiate it from the norm. The amount of frank sexuality in it, not to mention the explicit words used to describe as such, may send Kevin Smith and others of his ilk reeling with envy. Every part of the male and female anatomy is mentioned time and again by the two teens and by Luisa. Despite such frankness in its road movie conventions, the film has a kinship with "Jules and Jim" and the underrated "Threesome." All three of these films deal with threesomes and the rack of guilt that coincides with such sexual highs and lows. The teenagers do not know better but they love Luisa for her body and nothing else...and yet by the end of the film, an honesty develops between all three that reminds them of their own humanity.

Unfortunately, "Y Tu Mama Tambien"'s coda did not sit well with me. I think the film works best as the menage a trois comic tale it wants to be, but then it heads for a serious road that seems too abrupt and tacked on to really believe. The film would have benefitted from more character development to deserve such a serious tonal shift. It's as if writer-director Alfonso Cuaron ("Great Expectations") felt he had to redeem the audience for exposing them to so much nudity, sex and marijuana.

"Y Tu Mama Tambien" is well-performed and well-directed to be sure, and there are quite a few laughs along the way, but its ending may lead you to believe you've seen something more than what precedes it. No creo.

Some Freakin' White Punk

S.F.W. (1994)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"S.F.W." is a movie that pretends to be important, that pretends to have something to say. It does not, thereby qualifying it as a pretentiously shallow movie whose message is the title of the film. So Freaking What?

I would love to end the review there but why should I? This generic Generation-X wannabe focuses on the most insidiously moronic and foolishly empty-headed hooligan in many moons. His name is Cliff Spab (Stephen Dorff) and he is something of a cultural hero. He has killed some terrorists in a convenience store where he and a teenage girl named Wendy (Reese Witherspoon) have been held hostage. Cliff's best friend was killed by these masked terrorists, dressed in white, who videotape the entire 36 day ordeal. When Cliff and Wendy escape, they are branded heroes, particularly after the video footage is aired in every news channel. Why is Cliff so popular? Because he repeats the titled catchphrase that becomes some sort of mantra. Wow. And why is Wendy always giving interviews? Because she knew Cliff and might have fallen for him. Intriguing, for the moment.

I wish I could say there was more to "S.F.W." but that is basically it. The movie has no level of satire whatsoever since it has prime targets that deserve skewering, like the media's relentless coverage of the hostage situation or the public's adoration of this new alleged culture hero. It doesn't contain any level of human interest in Cliff Spab - he is an uncultured idiot who mostly drinks beer, has sex, watches TV, and loves to trash his bedroom. How punk! Dorff tries to give the character some dimension, especially when he stares at a TV screen and sees the violence shown from the videotaped hostage events. It looks like it may traumatize him but Dorff and director and co-writer Jefery Levy indulge in a vacuum of nothingness. They assume that the catchphrase is the movie. Yes, indeed, and so f'ing what!

The Griswolds storm Wally World

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION (1983)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

(30 YEARS OF THE GRISWOLDS)

I usually scoff at anything with the title "National Lampoon," but I have a certain kind of affection for "Vacation," the hilarious 1983 comedy with Chevy Chase. It is a classic comedy in that its raunchiness and absurdity reaches levels of cartoonishness. Besides, Chase, in his better days, proved he was the funniest bloke on the block.

Chase is Clark Griswold, a family man with two kids, Rusty and Audrey (Anthony Michael Hall and Dana Barron) and a buxom wife, Helen (Beverly D'Angelo). They live in typical suburbia and a vacation is planned to Walley World, an amusement park on the level of a Disney theme park. Disaster is on the fringes of this road trip by station wagon, however, as one obstacle is hurled in front of them after another. The Griswold clan first visit Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) only to discover they need to take the dreaded Aunt Edna along (played by Imogene Coca). Money grows tight as they try to stay in a hotel, until Clark takes all the money from the register and runs. They crash their station wagon in the middle of the desert while Clark looks for the nearest gas station. They end up in a dangerous part of some city where their hubcaps are stolen. A flirtatious woman (Christine Brinkley) tries to get Clark to go swimming with her in the nude. And when they finally arrive at Walley World...let's just say it meets short of their expectations.

Watching "Vacation" will depend highly on your tolerance for Chevy Chase. I laughed out loud in a restaurant scene where Chase hits his head on an overhead lamp - this is much funnier than seeing Chase literally shoot himself in the foot in the wretched "Deal of the Century." There is an enjoyable shot of Clark and Helen looking at the awesome Grand Canyon for no less than two seconds. And there is nothing more hysterical than seeing Clark trying to talk to his son about adultery and other matters. And the ultimate gag, which may be a wee bit too black-humored for some, concerns Aunt Edna's denouement. I may add that Clark's indifference to Edna's situation may strike some as far too callous, even for a comedy.

"Vacation" is not one of the great comedies of all time, but it has occasionally high spirits and the Griswold family is as likable as they come. Just don't ever go on vacation with them.

Desperately Seeking Clouseau

CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER (1983)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I could live with "Trail of the Pink Panther" despite its incongruous and slim story - a film ultimately more of a tribute to Peter Sellers than an actual film with a plot. "Curse of the Pink Panther" was filmed immediately after "Trail" and it shows an increased desperation by director Blake Edwards to milk the franchise far beyond anything imaginable, especially without the needed presence of Peter Sellers.

The plot deals with the disappearance of the Pink Panther diamond, an object sought over the course of two decades of this D.O.A. franchise. Ted Wass is on hand as a clumsy New York police detective (selected from a computer - how very early 80's) named Sgt. Sleigh (as in One-Horse Open, the best comic line the writers could think of). He is selected to find Chief Inspector Clouseau, who is either dead or living with a Countess (played by the bewitching Joanna Lumley, who played the unnecessary reporter in "Trail"). Assassins are trying to kill Sleigh in case he finds Clouseau. Hijinks ensue with Wass filling in for Sellers' pratfalls and slapstick. Burt Kwouk reappears as Cato, as a reminder of how good this series once was. David Niven, the master of polite restraint (with his ailing voice replaced by impressionist Rich Little), is also on hand along with Capucine and Robert Wagner. The series' regulars merely have an extended cameo and it is a shame that Edwards did not use these actors to spice up the proceedings overall. Reliable Herbert Lom as Chief Inspector Dreyfus is hysterical as always.

"Curse of the Pink Panther" is technically well-done and has a few gags that work (love Ed Parker as he does a karate demonstration with a huge rock or the rainstorm that sweeps Sleigh off his feet). The final scenes are also funny with a surprise cameo but, unfortunately, it is Ted Wass who brings down the film to the level of cumbersome mediocrity. He is not even close to replicating Sellers' comic timing or finely tuned pratfalls - Wass comes across as a village idiot who pretends to be clumsy. Sellers made it work because he was believably clumsy and justified his every move. It is something that the actor who plays Clouseau at the end understands better than Blake Edwards or anyone else associated with this needless continuation. 

Depp deep undercover, Pacino in Wily Loman phase

DONNIE BRASCO (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Original review from 1997 screening)

Ever since "GoodFellas" burst into movie screens in 1990, there has been a renaissance of gangster pictures. The difference between the gangsters now and the gangsters from the cinema of the 1930's is the reality - the overwhelming verisimilitude of the scenario. We just don't see gangster plotting to kill others - we also see their family lives, their inner circles and their outbursts of violence, sometimes involving hacksaws and other gory methods. Some of these stories are based on actual events. To date, the best recent gangster pictures are Scorsese's ultra-realistic "GoodFellas" and "Casino" and De Palma's ferocious "The Untouchables." For more family-oriented, ethically acceptable gangsters crossed with a fascinating look at racial relations, you can look at Robert De Niro's directorial debut, "A Bronx Tale." Count "Donnie Brasco" among the best of the batch - a funny, brutal, galvanizingly emotional portrait of a man who risks everything just to join the mob. Never mind that this man is a cop.

Johnny Depp plays the real-life cop, Joseph Pistone, who went undercover in the mob in order to infiltrate them. His job was to have lasted 3 to 6 months - he went on for two years! Pistone assumes the name Donnie Brasco, a jeweler who can help Lefty (Al Pacino), an older man who wears gold-tinted sunglasses and works for Sonny Black (Michael Madsen), to determine if a diamond is a "fulgesi" or not. This mob group is at a lower chain on the Mafia meter, closer to the guys in "Mean Streets" than in "The Godfather." They wait in the streets in the freezing cold of Brooklyn for the chief mob boss. Some of them try to take anything they can for money, including the removal of parking meters!

Donnie is in this dangerous world almost immediately, thanks to Lefty who vouches for him. Lefty teaches Donnie the rules, like shaving his mustache, how wearing cowboy boots and jeans is a no-no, how to carry money (never put it in the wallet), never pay for drinks, and so on. Donnie is so involved that he fools everyone, especially after beating up a Japanese waiter for being forced to remove his boots. Eventually, after Sonny Black moves up in the ranks, more money is owed to Sonny Red (the chief boss is in jail, if I understood correctly). So Donnie brings up an idea of making money at a nightclub in Florida. They all agree, though Lefty has reservations. But Donnie is so deep in the Mafia life that he ignores his wife (Anne Heche) and three daughters - he only visits them when it is convenient.

"Donnie Brasco" avoid all the cliches and conventional trappings of most mob movies. The film, as written by Paul Attanasio, does not pussyfoot around Donnie's own safety in this organization or his downward spiral about becoming the very thing he is working against. Most films would show Donnie to be so banal and charmless and righteous that it would hardly strike a chord of truth. Johnny Depp shows this character inside and out, revealing layers such as his growing violent behavior (especially to his wife) and his incessant need to curse. And his vulnerability is also evoked as he develops a mutual friendship with Lefty - if Donnie leaves Lefty and is exposed, Lefty could be whacked for having vouched for an FBI agent.

Al Pacino plays Lefty as a weary, joyless man who has 26 hits under his belt and more experience than anyone in his crew, yet he is still working for someone else. Lefty is like the Wily Loman of Mafia types, and we grow to sympathize with a man who would love to leave the life and settle down with his girlfriend. Still, he hopes to make more money and Donnie could be the key to wealth - both men have a downward spiral to endure that is touching and intensifying to watch.

As directed with refreshing restraint and observational details by Brit Mike Newell, "Donnie Brasco" is one hell of a motion picture. It is explosive, humane, blackly funny and filled with some of the best written dialogue in eons. This is not the world of dynamic energy and profane violence of "GoodFellas" (though there is one scene that is not meant for the squeamish). Instead, it is really about friendship and trust, even if one of those is violated. Pacino's last scene, showing Lefty leaving his life behind him and his recognition of a deeper truth, is unforgettable. "Donnie Brasco" is about as great as a Hollywood movie can get.