Sweet, sweet badass dynamite

BLACK DYNAMITE (2009)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

Not too long ago I saw an early 1970's blaxploitation parody called "Darktown Strutters," a slight but occasionally catoonish film that had some lulls yet scored just as many laughs. "Black Dynamite," however, goes much further - it is uproarious and captures the grit and underexposed lighting (and some snazzy bright colors) of those 70's pictures perfectly, complete with awful acting and technical malfunctions that will please film buffs more than anyone else.

Michael Jai White (best known for "Spawn") is the superhero ex-CIA agent and Vietnam Vet with the big afro known as Black Dynamite, who has the ability to smile without smiling. After Dynamite's brother is killed by some possible crime syndicate, he seeks full vengeance. After discovering his brother's actual role before being gunned down and learning how the crime syndicate is giving street kids heroin, Dynamite promises to clean up the streets in his community and get rid of the drug dealers. "But Black Dynamite, *I* sell drugs in the community," says one drug dealer.

Along with the help of a Pam Grier lookalike (Salli Richardson), the heroes discover that it all comes down to a plan involving malt liquor emasculating black men. There are also crooked cops, crooked politicians like our former President Nixon, a visit to Kung Fu Island, and lots of violence and sexual escapades, including threesomes. If you are easily offended by racial epithets, the N-word is said aplenty here (Spike Lee is hopefully taking notes). An added plus is a nifty and splendidly funny scene where Dynamite deciphers a top secret operation called "Code Kansas" inside of a diner. It is mostly a play on words and codes and it is cheerfully outrageous.

"Black Dynamite" loses a little momentum about halfway through and grows a little tiresome yet, when the energy level comes front and center in the exciting climax where Dynamite kicks ass and we see Tommy Davidson as a ridiculous character named Cream Corn, not to mention a hilarious cameo by Arsenio Hall as Tasty Freeze, I rolled with laughter. Pure deconstruction and mimickry of a long expired genre, "Black Dynamite" is a little uneven yet Michael Jai White (who should be a shoo-in for Luke Cage, if anyone's interested in making that comic-book come alive) captures the spirit and pizazz of a genre and decade that looks positively tame compared to today's ultraviolent action pictures. After it is over, you might happily sing the repetitive choral chord of "DYNO-MITE!!!" That is part of its charm.

Pizza, beer, bullets - Sway with me

THE THIRD SOCIETY (2002)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When even the main actor (who's also the director) refuses to be given top billing in the credits, you know you are watching movie badness at its zenith. Perhaps "The Third Society" is not as bad as any standard revenge tale with a female lead as the pistol-packing action hero but it certainly qualifies as the newest addition to the good/bad movie leagues of extraordinarily unintentionally humorous badness. And yet this is one of the most enjoyable of all the B and Z-grade pictures I have seen in recent years, so read further.

We have J.A. Steel as Cassandra Alexandra Reynolds, a low-profile LAPD detective and terrorist specialist who is also a martial-arts expert (specifically a Muay Thai kickboxer). She is after the Asian Mafia who (for unexplained reasons) had shot her mother to death (Cassandra had witnessed her murder as a child). Thus, Cassandra and her sister were put on the Witness Protection Program. Presently, Cassandra is known simply as Jones, a detective who hates paperwork and kills a dozen drug dealers in two weeks, while her sister works for some anonymous firm. Unfortunately, Jones's sister has been kidnapped by the Asian Mafia and the top leader wants Jones dead. So Jones dresses in a flashy bike uniform and rides that bike throughout the rest of the movie, kicking and firing weapons left and right.

Granted, director J.A. Steel had limited budgetary constraints and limited time to make her action flick really fly. But consider what happens in the film. There is a gratuitous sequence in a bar that simply marks time (though it allows for some brief fighting with the Asian fighters until Jones simply mows them down). Another sequence is set at an airport field where Jones rides her bike at ferocious speeds while three cars driven by the bad guys head in her direction unaware it is the lead character. Huh? That outfit and bike certainly stand out, unless the point is that the bad guys can't see through tinted windows? So while Jones unloads her gun and the bad guys get away, she kidnaps a helicopter while her boss and the air-traffic controllers tell her to land. Double huh? Then we have not one but two shower scenes where an FBI agent makes a rather rude entrance and surprises the naked lead actress. Apparently, she is not too upset by this but she also never kisses the guy once (maybe the agent was just trying to be buddies but then he later insinuates he wants more). And there are the flashbacks to Jones's mother's murder, shown one too many times.

J.A. Steel is seemingly uncomfortable in the lead role, and we never sense her inner rage at her mother's murder. She also seems to enjoy killing the bad guys, specifically anyone who uses the martial-arts. Curiously, on the DVD's behind-the-scenes special, she shows more charisma and humor than in the movie. But Steel obviously draws on humor to make this whole flick as silly as possible. Her character actually sways every time a bullet is fired at her and misses her (Rambo never swayed!) And there are at least two occasions where she plays dead after being shot. Still, she looks fetching when her hair is wet.

Shannon Clay as the blonde sister, Erica, who is an expert at transferring a billion dollars to different accounts, shows more finesse and presence than Steel (one wonders why they didn't switch roles). She is terrifically funny in a kitchen scene where she wants to be hospitable to the assassins by making coffee. It is a Tarantinoesque moment and delivers the biggest laugh in the film.

"The Third Society" is unintelligible trash and often hokey and haphazard in the editing and acting departments. The photography is gorgeous (particularly the presumably Asian waterfalls in one shot) but the slow-motion shots of guns being fired could have been staged better. Well, heck, the whole movie could have been staged better. And yet, I found myself laughing all the way through it. I had a good time but like most good bad movies, it is difficult to say if this was intended as a parody of those 80's action thrillers or as a very humorous postmodernist take on them (either way, I'll say that there is no way anyone could take it seriously). For a slow Saturday night where you have pizza and beer handy, "The Third Society" will long be remembered by me as the greatest movie ever made to watch with pizza and beer.

Make perfect love, write perfect letters

THE PILLOW BOOK (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Original review from 1997 theatrical screening)

 Peter Greenaway is the supreme film stylist of the 20th century. He creates tales, not stories in the conventional narrative sense, of our erotic desires and murderous impulses within the context of literature and art history. He said recently that films are more concerned with pop culture than with art. I couldn't agree more with the current schlock in cinemas nowadays. Arguably, his most profound work was the controversial "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover," a savagely funny tale of revenge and sex in a decadent restaurant. It was not for all tastes, but then who says art is? "The Pillow Book" is his latest film, and it is enticing, sexy and alluring though Greenaway often shies away from his basic premise.

"The Pillow Book" stars Vivian Wu as Nagiko, a flamboyant fashion model who is obsessed with calligraphy. Her first husband had no interest in her obsession and, as a result, their house was burnt down. Several years later, she develops a certain sexual obsession: she wants to find the perfect lover who can also paint calligraphy all over her body. Her obsession emanates from her childhood when her father painted words on her face. Her latest lover is a bisexual translator, Jerome (Ewan McGregor from "Trainspotting"), and she insists that he write all over her body. If man can make perfect love to her, then he also must be able to write perfect letters.

Peter Greenaway's gift as a director is his visual flamboyance - an ability to layer several images together to convey the erotic feeling of where mind and body integrate. He beautifully executes scenes of passion from the lovingly choreographed close-up shots of men painting on Nagiko's skin to lighting effects of Chinese symbols flashing and dissolving on the walls - the effect is grandiose yet thrilling. The technique of rectangular frames subdividing the screen and changing from black-and-white to color is marvelous to behold - this style of editing originated in Greenaway's "Prospero's Books." No other director can match the love and care that he puts into every shot of his films (except for Scorsese, Lynch and Kubrick). In the end, though, it is really more about Greenaway's own obsession of literature and art than it is about Nagiko's personal odyssey.

"The Pillow Book" becomes somewhat melodramatic in the last half when it erroneously stays away from the character of Nagiko. Greenaway (who wrote the film) devises a revenge plot involving Nagiko's father's employer - a homosexual whom Nagiko feels had destroyed her family. After Jerome begins to get involved with this character, a spooky and, literally, revealing thing happens to Jerome's skin. But instead of focusing on Nagiko's obsessive behavior, the movie opts for elements that negate the first half of the film - the sexual connection of flesh and writing. The revenge plot is typical of Greenaway but here, he loses the themes he explored beforehand and so the film becomes distracting and laborious. There are several scenes of naked bodies covered in writing confronting the evil homosexual, but they become repetitious and meaningless. However, when Nagiko plans to keep her lover, the idea of flesh and text is restored.

"The Pillow Book" is better seen than described. It is purely a filmic exercise in exploring themes rather than placing them in a narrative structure or plot. Greenaway should be commended for trying to push the boundaries of film structure in an age of homogenized hogwash. Nagiko is wonderfully performed with genuine emotion by the sensual actress Vivian Wu (her lovemaking sessions with Jerome are truly sexy). If only Greenaway chose a more internal frame of mind when exploring Nagiko instead of coldly pulling her out towards the end. "The Pillow Book" is a masterpiece of filmmaking but it is not as intricate or as intimate as Greenaway's other works.

Sexual pleasure by any means necessary

8 1/2 WOMEN (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Nope, this is not lost footage from Federico Fellini's own masterpiece, "8 1/2." This is Peter Greenaway's thoroughly underimagined, papier-mache account of old age and sexual pleasures called "8 1/2 Women." I have found most of Greenaway's films to be risky, shocking yet always mesmerizing and unforgettable. This film is sheerly dumb and valueless - an attempt to be comical and daring and succeeding only in being wanting in every sense of the word.

Fitting in with today's standards that sex matters more than anything, we are introduced to Philip Emmenthal (John Standing), a rich man living in his Geneva estate where his wife has just died. Joining him in his grieving process is his son, Storey (Sacha Vierny), who attempts to relieve his father's depression through sexual pleasure. The first attempt is through incest. Though it is implied, it is always clear that incest is an attempt (lest you think that fathers and sons do sleep together naked). After father and son watch Fellini's "8 1/2," they both decide that bringing eight women to the estate to have sex with and be ogled by is a far more successful venture. Some of the women they choose are gambling addicts, nuns, females as female impersonators (!), housekeepers, nymphos, and so on. One woman always gets pregnant and another one, representing the half, is in a wheelchair with no arms or legs. Oh, yes, and how can I forget the woman who rides horses naked (played by none other than Amanda Plummer). The most interesting woman is the nymphomaniac (Polly Walker) who claims to have slept with Philip long ago.

The idea for the film, sexual adventures in an estate with different women who have their own reasons for participating, is a novel one that could build with an erotic, comical charge. But Greenaway is the wrong director for a dark comedy of this type - at times, I felt like I was watching a weird Merchant Ivory production minus the wit. There are some shocking scenes of sexual byplay (like what happens when Phlip has sex with a woman who just had her period) but none of it is likely to seem the least bit erotic or playful to anyone. Greenaway is just interested in shocking the audience and places great emphasis on that prized male reproductive organ, but for what purpose exactly? Every major chapter is introduced by descriptions from the screenplay, but for what reason exactly?

Peter Greenaway is a fascinatingly complex director and sheerly audacious, but this "8 1/2 Women" is just marking time in being outrageous and touching on taboo subjects. There is plenty of nudity to spare but since the story is nonexistent and the acting borders on the extremely mannered, there is nothing left to look at. A major disappointment for Greenaway fans.

An adaptation that is bent out of shape

BENT (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Turning a stage play into a film is almost always a recipe for disaster. There have been the exceptions: David Mamet's adaptations of his plays such as "House of Games" and "Oleanna" come to mind. A film is a visual medium, whereas a play is an actor's and writer's medium. "Bent" is based on historic facts surrounding the Holocaust, but the two main characters seem to be stuck in a stage setting where they have to speak a great deal of dialogue.

Playwright Martin Sherman adapted his groundbreaking play "Bent" that focuses on a rare subject: the persecution of gays and lesbians who were the first rounded up under Hitler's regime in 1934. The main character is Max (Clive Owen), a Jewish homosexual who comes from a wealthy family. At the beginning of the film, in a wonderfully bizarre backdrop, we see Max cavorting with other homosexuals in a wild, all-night Cabaret party that includes Mick Jagger as a singing, black-stockinged transvestite on a swing! This particular night was known as the Night of the Long Knives, when homosexual Nazi commander Ernst Rohm and other bent Nazis were cleansed. The handsome Max and his lover Rudy (Brian Webber), a dancer at the club, escape and are accommodated by Max's gay uncle (Ian McKellen). Eventually, the two lovers are apprehended and taken on a horrifying train ride to Dauchau.

During this trip, Rudy is severely beaten and thrown from the train by the SS commanders. Max survives and finally arrives at Dauchau - it is there that he develops a relationship with Horst (Lothaire Bluteau) who wears the Pink Triangle. Max has to choose between wearing the Jewish Yellow Star or the Pink Triangle, a statement of gay pride - he sticks with the Yellow Star. The two end up working together in a mindless, excruciating job of moving rocks from one area to another. This is an attempt to drive them into madness and possibly suicide. "Bent" is basically an existential film about the determination to live, rather than to survive, in such a demographically undesirable environment. The problem is that the film resembles a Samuel Beckett play where the characters are stuck in one area and talk to each other endlessly. The setting is a bare area surrounded by walls and dozens of rocks, and it is the same setting for the rest of the film. The characters speak in quiet phrases (which makes sense since the SS is watching around the corner), but writer Martin Sherman and director Sean Mathias make no attempt to transcend the play's origins by making it visually arresting or compelling. And since the locations have an anonymous quality, it could therefore take place in any era, not necessarily the Holocaust.

Another flaw is the casting of Clive Owen as Max: he doesn't possess much in the way of charisma or interest, and is mostly portrayed as a cipher. The rest of the cast is splendid, but they appear in mostly fleeting cameos. Mick Jagger is bitchily perfect as Greta, the transvestite owner of the club, who resorts to betrayal and his old business suits to escape. Ian McKellen is remarkable as the closeted Gay Uncle - his one scene speaks volumes more than anything else in the film. Lothaire Bluteau gives a touching performance as the weak, sickly Horst who begins to love Max though they can't touch each other. It would have been better if Bluteau had a more interesting co-star: how about Jagger as Max?

"Bent" is a fascinating and important story and therefore it should be seen for that reason - I would have preferred, however, to see the unique play since it works better on the stage than on film. The end result is that "Bent" trivializes the Holocaust and, although, there are some superb visual pieces, including the Cabaret club, there's precious else to hold one's interest. An explosive ending made me wish that what preceded it was just as potent.

Pakistanis and British only meet halfway

EAST IS EAST (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There have been countless films about cross-cultural clashes in small villages or cities. We have seen everything from "La Cage Aux Folles" to just about every variation on the big city life of Italians mixing with Latinos from "West Side Story" and onwards. There are, of course, the big city films dealing with racism and mixed marriages from Spike Lee. "East is East" is one of the rare few that deals with Pakistanis living in a working class suburb in England. Although often fascinating and revelatory, the film is so uneven that you are never sure whether it is meant to be a comedy, a drama or both.

The film stars Om Puri (who has appeared in scores of Indian films, not to mention Hollywood films such as "Wolf" and "Gandhi") as George Khan, the Pakistani patriarch in a household that includes seven kids and his semi-tolerant British wife, Ella (Linda Bassett), in Salford, Manchester. The house is small yet seems accomodating for such a big family. Some of the more colorful kids includes Meena (Archie Panjabi), the daughter who has a predilection for soccer, Saleem (Chris Bisson), an art major masquerading as an engineering student, Tariq (Jimi Mistry), a disco-loving dancer who has a white girlfriend (Emma Rydal), the young Sajid (Jordan Rootledge) who is always wearing a parka and fears circumcisions, and Maneer (Emil Marwa), who is often serious and silent.

But there is friction in the house, mostly involving George and his ideals. A few years earlier, his eldest son, Nazir (Ian Aspinalli), refused to go through with an arranged marriage and was thus ousted from the family, declared by his father as "dead." Now the older sons, Tariq and Abdul (Raji James), are about to undergo a similar fate thanks to George's stubborn upholding of traditions past. What the father seems to forget is that he has married a white woman for the past twenty-five years, despite initially being married to a Pakistani woman. There is also the culture change and how the kids speak in the British tongue, not their own, and have developed and adapted according to their environment. But George will not listen to what his kids or his wife want, it is only what he wants for the family and it finally creates more harm than good.

"East is East" starts badly with the kind of heavy, indiscernible British accents you usually find in Mike Leigh's films, lots of cheaply comical innuendoes, and some desperate gags. Incredibly, when the film shifts its focus from the overall ludicrous shenanigans of the family to George, it starts to have more meaning and depth. It is no secret that Om Puri brings the film its soul, wavering uneasily between friendliness and seething anger. The transition is abrupt (as it was in "Not Without My Daughter" with Alfred Molina playing a comparable patriarch with similar shifting moods) and unshakable - after all, he is also a hypocrite for thinking that his kids will not see that their mother is not Pakistani. The fact is that even when Tariq acknowledges this to him, George still thinks he is right and that creates frustration with his family, not to mention physical abuse.

My big complaint with "East is East" is that the film never quite makes up its mind as to what kind of film it is. When it becomes dramatic and saddening, it really becomes serious. The comic relief is too reminiscent of low-grade Hollywood comedies so it certainly detracts from its high-minded darkness (there is a scene involving the purported Pakistani girl, whom Tariq is chosen to marry, and her family that involves some crude business with a piece of sculpture that would have seemed right at home in "American Pie"). This constant shifting of moods and tone may coincide with George's character but it does not prove to be as compelling or cohesive a film as it should have been. Somehow, the comedy and the drama only meet halfway.

Hooking till her dad comes home

ANGEL (1984)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

There are probably a hundred stories of teen hookers abandoned by their parents who eke out a life of hooking on Hollywood Boulevard. Angel is one of those hookers, hooking since age 12. By day, she is a straight-A high school student. At night, she is a prostitute who has three parental figures - a sassy drag queen (Dick Shawn), an old cowboy actor (Rory Calhoun) who spins tales of his days acting along cowboy legend Tom Mix to a willing crowd of listeners, and her lesbian landlady with painted eyebrows (Susan Tyrell) who paints in her free time.

"Angel" is a pure exploitation piece that benefits from a strong central performance by Donna Wilkes as Angel aka Molly, a tough girl who doesn't want her double life uncovered. At school, she is shy and doesn't participate in extracurricular scholastic activities, nor does she accept dates from nerds. Interestingly, Angel is never shown having sex or even entering a motel room with a john (except for one brief instance). The movie, wisely or not, decides not to get too sleazy. Instead, there is a focus on a mad slasher (John Diehl) who is killing all the hookers and is something of a necrophiliac. After his murderous and sexually twisted deeds are done, he bathes himself with a sponge as if to rid himself of his own immorality.

"Angel" is essentially two movies in one - an ideal double feature mesh for the midnight crowd. The performances are pretty damn good, especially a nicely sympathetic turn by Cliff Gorman as the paternal cop who is on the hunt for that mad slasher. Everyone is paternal to the young prostitute but her reasons for hooking are odd - her mother had died and her father abandoned her and, until he gets back, she will keep on serving the sexual needs of Hollywood's finest - that is, horny men. Why she does this is unclear to me, or what her father has anything to do with it.

"Angel " is serviceable entertainment, neither too gory or too sexy or too sleazy. The movie has a grungy, slightly washed-out Hollywood look from those neon-lit streets to scenes at a high-school that looks just as washed-out and, frankly, rather flat. I don't know what to take away from "Angel" except a drag queen can sucker punch a Hare-Krishna and if a retired cowboy actor doesn't wish to be sent to a nursing home, he might pull a gun on you. As for Angel, she is a sweet, precious soul but only the high-school cheerleaders show full-frontal nudity in the film's sole gratuitous nudity, shot in a locker room. Hmmm, what on earth does this mean?