Schickel entertains but does little to enlighten

SCORSESE ON SCORSESE (2004)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

(Original review from 2004)

To be called America's best director is to put a lot of pressure on anyone. You wouldn't know it from watching "Scorsese on Scorsese," the latest documentary on the renown director that mostly recycles elements from past documentaries. It does have some new info that will please many, and will likely underwhelm everyone else. Entertaining in its own right, it seems slightly rushed.

To be fair, I am a huge Martin Scorsese fan and I've read just about every book that exists on the man. I've of course seen almost every film he's made, and I am well aware of his passion for cinema, preserving cinema, and his passion for making films. In "Scorsese on Scorsese," we definitely sense his passionate commitment to an art form that is rarely seen as such. Written and directed by Time critic Richard Schickel, we get mile-a-minute commentary by Scorsese on his background, his moviegoing days when he saw Howard Hawks's "The Thing" with a packed house, his anecdotes on meeting members of the mafia in his childhood, his films ranging from "Who's That Knocking at My Door" to his latest endeavor, "The Aviator," and his rebuttal on criticisms of stereotyping Italian-Americans as mobsters.

There is much to enjoy in "Scorsese on Scorsese" overall. I liked Scorsese's comments about his sarcastic mother, especially in his documentary, "Italianamerican," the nailbiting experience of making "The King of Comedy," the thriller aspects of "Cape Fear," the dementia and obsessive compulsive behavior of Howard Hughes in "The Aviator," the spiritual aspects of the controversial "Last Temptation of Christ," and one revealing tidbit about his father's similarities to Newland Archer's in "The Age of Innocence." Unfortunately, not much insight is given to films such as "Casino," "Bringing Out the Dead," "New York Stories" (surely working with Woody Allen and Francis Coppola on an anthology merits a comment or two), the black comedy classic "After Hours," or even some of his early short films such as "The Big Shave." Granted, not every documentary can cover every film of a director's career yet the documentary on Scorsese from the series, "The Directors," covered more ground in an hour's time. Here, we are afforded an hour and a half and there is still something lacking, such as the spiritual, moralistic weight of his work and why his films are typically not financial successes. Could it be that his films often feature immoral protagonists and that we get an interior emotional experience as if we were inside their heads? No mention is made of this in Schickel's film - he just parades from one film to the next, eschewing any context.

For Scorsese fans, this will be illuminating enough and some new facts are revealed. Still, for those who expect much more, it short-shrifts the acclaimed director's career more than expected.

Bad workplace, profits higher than ever

WAL-MART: THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE (2005)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(Originally reviewed in 2006)

I've been in a Wal-Mart a few times in the past. This was some time ago but my lasting impression of that store was how overstuffed it was. Products were all over the store and didn't all seem to fit into the shelves where they belonged, no employees were around to help with assistance, the aisles were too narrow for those damn carts to get around, and children wandered around aimlessly. In short, as a customer, I was dissatisfied with the store. And that is the perspective missing in this documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," namely, the customer's point-of-view. It is not a major flaw but it would have added more interest to the film's hugely negative outlook on this billion-dollar retailer corporation.

We learn that Wal-Mart drives away almost all other businesses, including mom and pop stores, paint stores, cafeterias, etc. The local businesses in the small towns are driven away because Wal-Mart receives subsidies that the smaller businesses can't receive. Some of Wal-Mart's subsidies are excruciatingly high, which also diminishes economical support for education, firefighters, and all other services that taxpayers pay for.

If those factors aren't bad enough, consider how Wal-Mart treats its employees. The employees can't find affordable health care through the company so some opt for welfare or Medicaid. Employees must always be working, sometimes off the clock. Surveillance cameras keep an eye on the employees but not the customers or the vast parking lots where kidnappings and murders frequently occur. Female workers are seen as useless, and if you are a black woman seeking a promotion, heaven help you. And for those who rightly complain about racist comedians, you might be truly offended by how Wal-Mart treats a black employee - let's just say it is morally reprehensible. Some lawsuits filed by employees are won, others are never considered whether it is based on racism or any kind of discrimination. Meanwhile, despite dissatisfaction from employees and managers and district managers, they all keep playing the game and smiling. And the CEO of Wal-Mart, Lee Scott, keeps talking with a straight face about all the high profits (which keep increasing year after year).

It is doubtful that anyone watching this documentary will not feel a smidgeon of intense dislike for such a reputable store. Negative reports have consumed the media for years about Wal-Mart's practices (especially with illegal immigrants) and their factories in China, but never have we been privy to the overall effect Wal-Mart has had on America. You almost feel that, within a few years, Wal-Mart will be the only mega store you can shop in. Strangely enough, that is the key ingredient missing in the documentary. Why does Wal-Mart rake in the big bucks? Because of the customers. If nobody shopped at any of the Wal-Mart stores in the entire world, then they couldn't make money. Yet the figures are in: as of November 2006, the retailer giant's revenue was at least 26 billion more than the previous year!

Robert Greenwald ("Outfoxed," "Steal this Movie") directed this documentary and does an admirable job of assembling footage of pro-Wal-Mart commercials intercut with facts and figures and key interviews (his sound mixing could use some work since music and soundbites are often at the same audio level). In many ways, Greenwald wants you to act accordingly and abolish any new Wal-Marts (some towns have successfully managed to do that). But, once again, it all boils down to the customers. If they didn't shop at Wal-Mart, there would be no profit. Sort of brings a new meaning to the phrase, 'The customer is always right."

Your wish is my command

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: THE DREAM WARRIORS (1987)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

(Originally written in 1999)

In light of the recent resurgence of horror movies instigated by the success of "Scream" and more respectable fare like "The Sixth Sense," I felt it was necessary to take a trip back in time to my nostalgic years, particularly 1987. This was the year of the Freddy Krueger craze, and everyone was talking about the latest "Elm Street" sequel. I saw it with a friend in Douglaston, Queens, New York, and I was immediately caught up in the hype. Granted, I saw the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" years earlier and it was scary stuff, but this one was so tongue-in-cheek and goofy and thrilling that I found it predated "Scream" by a decade. It was a sequel that tipped on the edge of self-parody but never over-the-top, and it was the first time Freddy was jocose before using his talon glove to slash the sleeping kids.

The heroine who put Freddy away in the original, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), is back as a psychiatrist visiting the last of the Elm Street kids at a mental hospital. They all have seen Freddy, and now Nancy will try to help them control their dreams, prescribing sleeping pills much to the chagrin of the hospital staff (which includes Craig Wasson and Laurence Fishburne!) There is also Patricia Arquette on hand (in her debut role) as Kristen, a supposedly suicidal patient who can kick ass when needed. Oh, and how can one forget Jon Saxon reprising his role of Nancy's father, a police captain too keen on alcohol. But Freddy has a way with words...taunting them any way he can.

The first Elm Street is still the best and the most original, but the third has moments of humor mixed with horror and satire that elevates it above similar movies. And do check out Patricia Arquette as the saintly, sweet Kristen - beautiful, dreamy, but she can fight like a true Dream Warrior. A romance could've been instigated by Nancy and the good doctor, nicely played by Craig Wasson. That and a rather disappointing finish do not undermine the colorful young patients (Ken Sagoes as the outspoken Kincaid, Jennifer Rubin as Taryn who sees herself as a punk rocker) and the truly thrilling nightmare sequences. One with a kid strapped to a bed by wagging tongues has to be seen to be believed. Goofy, taut and often scary enough (wait till you get a load of Amanda Krueger), "Nightmare on Elm Street 3" is a dizzying ride at the movies.

Too much mojo

AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The original "Austin Powers" was no great shakes but it was more fun than this monotonous, joyless sequel. That is not to say that this is a bad film - there are moments of great black humor - but it is too long, disjointed, gross, and silly to make me want to get involved in any future Austin Powers adventures.

The film starts off well with hairy-chested, 60's reject Austin (Mike Myers) having a romp in the hay with a beautiful Elizabeth Hurley. It turns out she is a Fem-Robot and fires bullets from her nipples!!! Then we are treated to a hysterical, off-the-wall dance number with Austin's derriere serving as the butt of jokes, no pun intended. Then there is the mysterious Dr. Evil (Mike Myers, again) who is soft-spoken and fights with a Ku Klux Klan member at a Jerry Springer show. His dastardly plans are to go back in time to the 1960's and steal Austin's mojo - his forceful sexual prowess in liquid form! Why Dr. Evil wants it, and plans on destroying Washington, D.C. with a death ray from a "Death Star," I am not sure.

Austin's shenanigans with the beautiful and sexy spy Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham) make up for some of the film's dead spots. There is an uncomfortably unfunny Scottish henchman named Fat Bastard (an unrecognizable Mike Myers) who smells and humps and thumps like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The joke involving his feces is as grossly underimagined as you might think, but this character quickly grows tiresome and has none of the spark of Myer's Scottish father in the underrated "So I Married an Axe Murderer."

Heather Graham seems to have been on a slump since her success with "Boogie Nights," and here she is bland and seemingly unfit for the crazy universe she is in. She looks bored each time she shares a scene with Austin. When Graham dulls my senses in a movie, you know you are in cinematic trouble.

"Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" works best when Dr. Evil appears and his counterpart, Mini-Me, and thus I enjoyed their conference scenes. I also liked Seth Green as Dr. Evil's spoiled son, and it is a pleasure to see a cameo by Tim Robbins as the President of the United States. But Myers unfolds his bag of tricks and jokes prematurely and his one-note persona ("Crazy, baby, yeah" or "Shall we shag?") grows repetitious. I was ready to say to Austin, "Zip it." Save for some brilliantly funny gags and one-liners, "Austin Powers" is too dependable on his mojo to really work.

A S#*t Shift

NIGHT SHIFT (1982)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

 

"Night Shift" has great comic ideas but it never fully realizes them. It is the kind of comedy that believes its ideas are good enough for laughs by definition, yet it never proves why.

Henry Winkler is Chuck Lumley, a quiet morgue attendant who reluctantly works a night shift. He needs his peace and quiet until he gets a new partner named Bill (Michael Keaton, in his debut performance). Bill is the kind of incessant pain-in-the-neck who's always talking about harebrained ideas, like feeding tuna to fish! To make matters worse, Bill uses their hearse for his limousine service. Chuck's home life is no big improvement, including living with a fiancee who thinks she is too fat and suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder (in the days before such a term was coined). Finally, there is Belinda (Shelley Long), a hooker with a heart of gold, who no longer has a pimp since he's been murdered. So Chuck and Bill decide to be her pimp, as well as service a bunch of other hookers with a benefits package! The pimping business and the limousine service are run at the morgue, including indulging in wild parties.

"Night Shift" sports a certain ingenuity in its setting and wild comic premise. The end result, however, doesn't elicit much in the way of a comedy or a black comedy. The fault lies with the screenplay, which hardly milks any laughs out of its plot or characters. Director Ron Howard often shows sincerity in a plot that doesn't require it. And a subplot about a pair of pimp killers (one of them is played by stand-up comic and "Law and Order" star Richard Belzer) who want a piece of the action seems to come from another movie altogether.

Henry Winkler is no real help either, showing indifference to the situations around him. Except for a hysterically funny scene involving Keaton with a tape recorder, there are no big laughs to be had. Michael Keaton reaches high but never fully delivers - being terminally annoying is not funny. Same with the miscasting of Shelley Long as the TOO NICE hooker - so nice that she is hardly credible as a New York streetwalker. Meg Ryan would have been a better choice.

The movie picks up some pace towards the end when Chuck suddenly goes ballistic as everything around him crumbles. It is the smartest move in a movie that is fatally inert at its core with indifference being the key word. My advice: sleep it off during the graveyard shift.

Patents: The first real WAR in movies

NICKELODEON (1976)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Nickelodeon" looks and feels like a warmed-over nostalgia piece. It is suffused with a sepia-toned glow and it reminds us of a different time and place when movies were just mere entertainments you could watch for a nickle. Peter Bogdanovich, a master craftsman, is the right director for this type of film, but the spirit and joy are missing.

Set in the 1910's, Ryan O'Neal is Leo Harrigan, an attorney who is close to losing a case involving assault. He somehow stumbles into a movie producer (Brian Keith) who urges him to write a film about a Texas Ranger (how this happens is part of the fun of the movie's few contrivances). After working in the film industry for many years, O'Neal turns from writer to director. Over some unfortunate mishaps (some of which are funny), O'Neal's luggage gets switched with a movie stuntman and horse rider's luggage, Buck Greenway (Burt Reynolds), and both men vie for the same breathless beauty, Kathleen Cooke (Jane Hitchcock) who has one pratfall after another because she is nearsighted. Meanwhile, slasptick ensues and we get a klansman on stage that gets cheers from the audience (times have changed); a tough little girl with a rattlesnake (Tatum O'Neal); more misplaced luggage scenes; the premiere of D. W. Griffith's notorious "Birth of a Nation"; actors putting on blackface, and not a heck of a lot more.

"Nickelodeon" is mostly aimless and inert, despite a game cast that includes John Ritter and Stella Stevens. Burt Reynolds comes off best, showing ample Southern charm that illustrates what a colorful character actor he might have become. Ryan O'Neal is so transparent that you could throw him through a sieve and he'd still be intact. Tatum O'Neal mostly recedes in the background, occasionally yelling so we know she is there. And Jane Hitchcock is radiant to look at but the underwritten screenplay dissolves her before the end credits.

Bogdanovich has misdirected "Nickelodeon," shifting tone and rhythm without any regards to the thin story involving patents, the first "real war in movies." There is one clever long take where we see several tents strung together with a different movie made in each one. It is such a good scene that I'd almost recommend it, but it is hardly enough.

Teabagging Pecker is more fun than watching Pecker

PECKER (1998)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1999)

There are always films that you are better off renting on video than seeing at a theater. "Pink Flamingos" is one of those films that I wish I had seen in a theater - it's designed for the midnight movie circuit. "Pecker" is one of those films designed for the Staten Island trash circuit. It is not meant to be seen in any cinematic form. It is so thoroughly revolting and unfunny that I have to hold my breath to remind myself that director John Waters made it. Revolting may not be the best term to use for "Pecker," since John Waters used to be the king of bad taste (hence "Pink Flamingos"). I am more astonished by how putrid the writing and directing are in "Pecker" - it has no redeeming value whatsoever.

This trash concerns a kid named Pecker (Edward Furlong), who works at a sandwich store in the run-down section of Baltimore. He constantly snaps photos of everything he sees, including steaks; his girlfriend's breasts; his sugar freak sister; a group of men "teabagging" customers at a local club; his best friend (Brendan Sexton III) posing before shoplifting from supermarkets; his grandmother's Virgin Mary statue, and on and on...but is any of this funny or remotely engaging? No.

Before you know it, Pecker is discovered by a New York art dealer (Lili Taylor) and becomes a media sensation, as does his whole family. He appears on the cover of Vogue magazine, invites comparisons to Diane Arbus, and attracts the attention of the famous photographer Cindy Sherman! But this story of how fame and fortune can be more damaging than staying true to yourself is a theme that has been done to death, and Waters does nothing to keep it new, fresh or interesting.

The actors are embarrassingly bland and uninvolving, including the always sprightly Lili Taylor. Furlong exudes little charisma or depth, and Christina Ricci as Pecker's girlfriend - an expert on stains - is needlessly over-the-top and unintelligible at times. The only actor that delivers an ounce of wit is Waters regular Mink Stole, as a voting booth attendant - she makes the screen sparkle for the few seconds she appears.

"Pecker" is brainless, unrewarding junk that will make you wince at how shockingly bad it is. Almost every scene is flatly staged and acted. Along with "Cry-Baby," this is Waters at the extreme bottom-of-the-barrel level.