Bogart some other joint

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Maybe if I had laughed more than I had in the first twenty minutes, I might have given "Pineapple Express" more than a pass. But after twenty minutes of spontaneous chatter about marijuana, the show "227" and some high-school theatrics, "Pineapple Express" becomes a depressingly and distressingly moronic and monotonous time-waster.

Seth Rogen is Dale, a process server who wears various disguises to deliver subpoenas. Dale loves to smoke weed and buys it from a drug dealer named Saul (James Franco), whose very existence is on being an intercontinental expert on weed. Oh, yes, Saul loves to smoke too, especially a type of weed called "Pineapple Express," the kind of weed that smells like "God's vagina" and smoking it is the equivalent of killing a unicorn. These types of absurd metaphoric lines are what makes "Pineapple Express" special at first - a sort of "Harold and Kumar" or Cheech and Chong stoked on an absurd, nirvana high. These scenes give the movie a special lively kick of zonked-out humor played with a certain level of restraint. Seth and Franco seem relaxed, confident, and stoned.

But then Dale witnesses a murder at Ted Jones' house - Ted Jones (Gary Cole) is supposed to be served with one of Dale's subpoenas but that can obviously wait. Jones also buys weed from Saul, especially the pineapple express which no one else outside of Ted or Saul smoke. Yes, Dale smokes some, and throws it out the window when he sees the shooting. A drug war starts between the Asian crime syndicate (do not ask) and Ted Jones and his band of incompetent hit men. They are looking for Dale, whom they mistake as Asian. Rosie Perez pops up as a crooked cop who participated in the murder. We get car chases, brutal beatings, shootings, burnings, crushed bodies, and a poor soul named Red (Danny R. McBride) who is shot several times but manages to survive, ready for battle. Then there is Dale's high-school girlfriend and Ed Begley, Jr. as the girl's father and more confusion inside suburbia, and the movie rambles on and on.

Unfortunately, precious little of this is funny. "Pineapple Express" automatically thinks that such a wayward, formulaic plot is funny, but it is nothing more than a toked remake of "True Romance" (Franco's stoned character is based on Brad Pitt's stoner in "True Romance"). In fact, director David Gordon Green amps up the violence to such a degree that you might think you stepped into a high-octane action picture. Tarantino could handle this sort of thing with flair and comic timing yet "Pineapple Express" becomes grossly overdone and thrusts on overkill with a huge body count. I won't say it rivals a Rambo picture but there are more killings than in "Pulp Fiction." There is a solidly hilarious car chase involving two police cars and Saul's leg stuck through the windshield. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of these wild, frantic visual gags as such. Compared to the Coens' classic stoner comedy, "The Big Lebowski," itself a stoned noir comedy that gradually loses interest in its own plot, "Pineapple Express" falls quite precipitously by comparison.

Seth Rogen is smartly cast and has a good rapport with James Franco - they have their bromance that actually works. Their early scenes at Saul's apartment or their endless chatter when stuck in the middle of the woods are witty and pungent. The rest of the movie just wallows in hysteria and drawn-out gunfire and repetitive stabbings, beatings, slashings, immolation, etc. It just leaves a nasty aftertaste for the alleged stoner comedy of the first twenty minutes. It needed more of "The Big Lebowski" stoned flavor to really be (s)toked.

Getting high on life

UP IN SMOKE (1978)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Stoner comedies are not my particular cup of tea but Cheech and Chong, the stoner duo du jour, can often make me laugh. Some of their subsequent comedies like "Nice Dreams" and "Things are Tough all Over" had the occasional laughs. Then there was the atrocious "Still Smokin," which I imagine one could endure by being injected with sodium pentathol so that one can safely sleep through it. "Up in Smoke" is clearly the best Cheech and Chong comedy ever, resorting to some pure laughs and silly standout sequences that will make you smile.

The movie establishes a stoner feel from the opening scenes. We see Cheech Marin as Pedro De Pacas, a stoner to be sure who wakes up from his couch and finds his foot in a bowl of cereal! Then he dances a little jig before getting into his car that has an interior of blue fur and other colorful assortments (reportedly Jack Nicholson's actual car at one time!) and the soundtrack cranks up a perfect stoner's song (or so I've been told), War's "Low Rider." Pedro picks up a drummer, Anthony "The Man" Stoner (Thomas Chong), whom he mistakes for a woman! Then The Man hands Pedro a fattie as humongous as fatties can get. This is followed by a brief dose of acid before being pulled over by the cops while Pedro laughs hysterically. Yes, it is that kind of movie.

Hot on their tail is Sgt. Stedenko (Stacy Keach), a determined cop who has incompetent partners and uses a cleaning service van as a cover. Nice idea. Meanwhile, Pedro and The Man get hold of a rinky-dinky van made out of potent hash and have to drive it from Mexico to California, without getting pulled over by the cops. Along the way we get plenty of laughs involving awry sting operations by the cops, Tom Skerritt as a Vietnam Vet with a noticeable birthmark, Cheech and Chong getting stoned out of their minds from scene to scene, a red-haired woman who has an accent that is difficult to discern, a dog that passes out from smelling that mary jane smoke, and a fairly rousing battle of the bands climax (though there is no real ending).

There are some lulls and one too many scenes of Chong falling flat on his face yet this is a sweet, likable, thoroughly spirited movie. "Up in Smoke" will still depend largely on your tolerance level towards Cheech and Chong. If it is high (no pun intended), you'll enjoy the heck out of it. If it is low, consider smoking a big fattie instead.

Imagine a peaceful nation

THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON (2006)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2007)

When I think of the late John Lennon, I think of one word: Peace. That is what encapsulated the meaning of his famous song, "Imagine," and more obviously, "Give Peace a Chance." But peace can be seen as a threat to the national order, specifically our government, and especially during a time of war. The latest documentary about Lennon, "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," focuses on the goverment's attempt to shut him up and bring him down.

John Lennon has always been the abrasive, outspoken Beatle, despite his pacifist, ideological views. In a sense, he was the most confrontational and the one people really listened to. No other celebrity has ever managed to have a bedroom protest for days with the media present, sing "Give Peace a Chance" repeatedly and have others sing along, give numerous interviews on the "Mike Douglas Show" and the "Dick Cavett Show" and, in short, make our goverment and our own President of the U.S. nervous. The real question is: why did Lennon make them nervous? Perhaps, Lennon's savvy skills as a PR person, as well as maintaining press conferences, giving interviews, spreading his message of peace and trying vainly to end the Vietnam War were all too prevalent - clearly, the message was working. Yoko Ono was his partner, but radical activists who decried the war are also mentioned, including the late Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Lennon took it a step further - he became a latter-day Gandhi and used rock n' roll as his tool, and bed-ins for instrumenting change.

The film's time period runs roughly from 1966 until Lennon's unfortunate murder in December of 1980. We see the mop-topped Beatle was no ordinary Beatle at all - he infamously claimed that his band, the Beatles, was more popular than Jesus. Though later Lennon clarified his error, he did say that they were in fact more popular after all. As everyone knows, the Beatles didn't remain a group forever, thus enabling John Lennon to carve his own personal niche with his own songs, recorded his way (we hear over 40 of them from "Well, Well, Well" to the tear-inducing, powerful peace anthem "Give Peace a Chance" to "Beautiful Boy"). Interestingly, as high profile as Lennon got (and he certainly eclipsed Hoffman and Rubin), the more trouble he was for the Nixon administration. Nixon, the late Strom Thurmond and the other powers-that-be bugged Lennon's phones, followed him everywhere (and not always incognito) and even tried to get him deported due to a marijuana charge back in England! As clearly stated by John Dean, former White House Counsel for Nixon, the peace demonstrations were a definite concern. Let's not forget the "War is Over - If You Want It" signs/billboards that were plastered all over the world.

The problem is that some of this focus is lost when we hear only incidental interviews from certain parties. Jerry Rubin, Angela Davis, Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale, liberal author Gore Vidal, and Yoko Ono contribute some positive insights about Lennon and the paranoia of the times. As for the negative insights of this Beatle, we hear strong words from G. Gordon Liddy who feels that if Lennon hated America and its war, he should've left (Mighty strong words coming from someone who contributed to the Nixon resignation in such ugly times). Incredibly, Liddy feels even less apologetic about the Kent State massacre. But we hear precious little about Lennon's thoughts on the unpopular war, or even from those close to him. We do know that after Nixon got re-elected, Lennon stayed out of the limelight - perhaps he knew that peace was not an option anymore. But why did he give up? What happened in those years after Nixon got re-elected and Vietnam ended? And is there an implication from Yoko that Lennon was killed by the government, hence Mark David Chapman, Lennon's assassin, and that he was a trained CIA operative? Did the government still feel Lennon was some sort of threat to the upcoming Reagan era?

As a film, "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" definitely recaptures those trying times and the hope that things could change. In many ways, it is still relevant in the Bush era, considering we have an unpopular war that hardly anybody wants. But nobody is expressing peace or hope the way John Lennon did during Vietnam - we have no one to motivate us and spring for a change and counter the way our goverment behaves. All we have, for better or worse, is Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Maher, John Stewart and a host of comedians doubling as political experts who bash Bush and the war any chance they get. But nobody is truly saying, "Give peace a chance." Maybe it is too scary a thought in this day and age, even for our Democratic presidential candidates, to utter such a word. Lennon did use it, and meant it. He saw beyond politics, as even the late John F. Kennedy did.

I certainly admire "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" but I think it shortchanges John Lennon, presenting him more as the myth than the man. We know he had his foibles and flaws, and I only wish the filmmakers showed more of that. Or maybe they just want to continue to provide Lennon as the synonym for peace. Maybe that is not such a bad idea after all.

Space Oddity rivets the attention

MOON (2009)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Moon" is an odd duck of a movie, so relentlessly sad and despairing that it might make sentimentalists crazy. Of course, "Moon" is also a throwback to a bygone era, the 1970's sci-fi flicks that told stories in imaginative and unusual ways in unusual settings. Yep, some of them had sad endings too.

Sam Rockwell is Sam Bell, an astronaut at a lunar station, and his three year stint of sending canisters of helium-3 back to Earth (our planet is in worse shape than it is now) and tracking harvesters, which extract helium from moon rocks that provide pollution-free power back to our home planet, is coming to an end. This job looks quite boring and he is the sole occupant of this station. Sam does talk to computers, specifically a talkative, sometimes intrusive HAL-9000-type computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) who is his eyes and ears to any transmission sent or received to Earth, including video messages sent by Sam's wife and daughter. But something is happening to Sam. He hallucinates and thinks a girl is in the station that could be his daughter. A video transmission is apparently tampered with. When he investigates problems with the harvester in his rover, there is an accident and somehow Sam is dragged back to the infirmary. How is this possible if GERTY is always inside the station? Is there someone else on the moon?

I rather not give away too much information but, suffice to say, there may be more going on the station than Sam Bell is aware of. The trick in a film dealing with loneliness (and what can be more lonely than space?) is finding the right actor to keep us motivated and compelled. Debuting director Duncan Jones could not have chose anyone better than Sam Rockwell, an underappreciated actor whose offbeat nature keeps us guessing and wondering. Rockwell doesn't have a predictable bone in his range of mannerisms, and supplies just enough credibility and compassion to make us care for his plight. There is also some business about how Lunar Industries, a fictional company, is implementing cost-cutting measures to have their lucrative business kept afloat without losing a dime. I will not reveal how this is happening but I can say Rockwell and especially GERTY keeps us wondering. Once the truth is out, the film grows more despairing and more thoughtful.

"Moon" reminds me a lot of "Silent Running," a highly offbeat sci-fi picture from the 70's that starred Bruce Dern. Whereas "Silent Running" dealt with environmental concerns, "Moon" deals with the fragility of humanity in intriguing ways, and the dire cost of outsourcing jobs. I can't say more than that, or maybe I have said too much already. GERTY might have recommended keeping this review down to a single paragraph to avoid potential spoilers. If you like sci-fi films that deal with ideas, put your thinking caps on and you will have quite an experience with "Moon." I am sure GERTY would agree. 

9/11 Reimagined as a Monster Movie

CLOVERFIELD (2008)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Cloverfield" is an anxiety-ridden, claustrophobic nightmare of a movie. It is 9/11 reimagined as a monster movie, only the monsters are not terrorists but rather an actual monster with a Godzilla-like snarl and rage against anything in its path. The fact that it is set in New York City makes this movie impactful and the monster significantly scarier than I had imagined. 

"Cloverfield" states from the beginning that we are watching a government file - found footage of a horrific night in New York City. Anxiety seems to set in right from the start. Yuppies are at a going-away party held for the young vice-president of a company, Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who is travelling to his new job in Japan. We are watching a hand-held camcorder capturing these events and if you are reading this and saying, "God, not another amateur found footage flick a la "Blair Witch Project," think again. We know something is about to happen, but what? The new vice-president is royally pissed that his platonic female friend, whom he had slept with, is seeing a new guy. And then, the horror starts. An earthquake sound rattles everyone. An explosion is seen in the distance. The severed head of the Statue of Liberty rolls along the city streets. Pandemonium sets in. It is a monster with a lethal tail, destroying any and everything in its path. But why, and where does it come from? "Cloverfield" never answers these questions.

"Cloverfield" is a straight-faced, interminably terrifying rush of a movie, laced with a real sense of terror. The monster is barely seen so we have to imagine its rampage, eliciting from our hand-held point-of-view shots only glimpses (we really get a sense of the enormity of the creature at the end). The movie never slows down for a second and the anxiety of getting away from the terror builds, even for its rather short 74-minute excursion. It helps that we care about the characters. Michael Stahl-David's Rob cares about his newfound girlfriend, even if she cheated on him, and races to find her in easily one of the most thrilling rescues I've ever seen (let's say it deals with a nearly toppled apartment building). Hud (T.J. Miller - hilarious stand-up comic in real life) is the camcorder-carrying member, documenting all the action and providing a few nervous laughs (as the late Roger Ebert suggested, how much power does that camcorder battery have that it lasts through an entire night into the next day?). There is also Marlena (Lizzy Caplan, a hypnotic presence), the dizzying and dazed girl whom Hud has a thing for. We care just enough about these characters to hope they make it out alive, and director Matt Reeves allows for a few contemplative moments where we get to focus on the trauma and the impact it has on its victims.

"Cloverfield" is a great movie experience but it may be a bit much for those who are still conflicted and traumatized by 9/11. There is a lot of that imagery here, including clouds of dust that may make you squeamish, more so than in Steven Spielberg's dark, bleak remake of "War of the Worlds." Aside from Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass, fewer and fewer films have truly dealt with the tragedy of that fateful day. Action movies, horror films and other genre pictures have used the iconic imagery of 9/11 to spice up their own films. "Cloverfield" feels utterly real and in the moment, words which I never imagine using to describe a Godzilla rip-off/homage. But this movie is not eye candy - it is an emotional response to caring for one another and trying to survive in these tough times. This is where "Cloverfield" really strikes its chord.

Skippy as a metalhead!

TRICK OR TREAT (1986)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I am no fan of heavy metal music nor am I a fan of Marc Price. Therefore it seems unlikely both would be linked together in a movie. "Trick or Treat" has no tricks up its sleeve and is no delicious treat to sit through.

Marc Price plays Eddie Weinbauer, an introverted heavy-metal fan who is obsessed by one metalhead, Sammi Curr (Tony Fields). Curr dies in a hotel fire and now Eddie is devastated (he hears this news while writing a letter to him). Eddie feels Sammi is the only one that could understand him, and he is definitely right (both are from the same high school). The local DJ (creepily played by Gene Simmons) gives Eddie the only copy of Sammi's last record. But when Eddie plays the LP, he notices that there are hidden messages conveyed when the record is played backwards. The messages contain instructions on how to torment and kill all the school bullies that are hounding Eddie.

Though it has a good enough premise for a low-budget horror flick, the movie flounders after a nicely effective opening. Marc Price, formerly known as the nerdish, oblivious Skippy on TV's "Family Ties," is completely unbelievable as someone who would love heavy metal music, much less dance to it. His line readings in close-up shots reek of complete implausibility - he stares and winks while delivering jokey sentences. I am not surprised that Price has never gotten far beyond the confines of this disastrous horror pic - all I can say is that he has less charisma than on the TV show. He doesn't look like a heavy metal fan, and his long black hair and puppy dog eyes elicit zilch in terms of nuance or any emotion.

The movie flounders with many setpieces where Eddie confronts the bullies and is terminally tricked and embarrassed in front of the whole school (my favorite is when Eddie is thrown naked out of the shower into a women's gym class). A nice touch is seeing heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne play a reverend who considers heavy metal music immoral. I also like a bit involving a reptilian creature that has its way with a horny teenage girl in the backseat of the car (though I hope someone can enlighten me on what the creature has to do with the rest of the movie).

"Trick or Treat" has no wit, no surprise, no atmosphere and no scares. Trick and treating is probably more fun than watching this steaming pile of junk.

Buscemi's Ode to Valley Stream

TREES LOUNGE (1996)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(Originally written in 2002)

"Trees Lounge" is the story of Tommy, an unemployed drunk who flirts with the ladies and lives in a depressing small town on Long Island, New York. He can't find work as an auto mechanic so he starts driving an ice-cream truck after the owner dies of a heart attack (played by veteran Seymour Cassel). Tommy can't help but drink himself to a stupor at the Trees Lounge bar where he maintains an apartment upstairs. Night after night, he drowns himself in disillusionment with his friends. Tommy's life might have some meaning, though, when he has a brief dalliance with a teenager who can't inhale cigarettes, Debbie (Chloe Sevigny). Problem is she's too young and her father, Jerry (a terrifyingly funny Daniel Baldwin) may just kill  Tommy if he finds out.

The movie is packed with a great cast of actors including an old drunk David Lynch-type named Billy (Bronson Dudley) who continually stares into space; the fat drunk moving company owner, Mr. Hyde (Mark Boone Jr.); Tommy's old and pregnant flame, Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco); Chloe Sevigny as the aforementioned ingenue who enjoys going for a ride in Tommy's ice-cream truck; and Tommy's former angry employer, Rob (Anthony LaPaglia) who is Theresa's husband.

Most of all, it is Steve Buscemi who makes a big impression as writer, director and star of an exuberantly 

fresh and wonderfully made sleeper. His rat-like features and skeleton body underlie a deeply troubled soul 

searching for some escape from this town. At its best, "Trees Lounge" looks and feels like a depressing smalltown where life continues to go on, even if its inhabitants do not.                                               

It is time that the Academy Awards recognize the talent of independent spirits like Steve Buscemi (as of 2002, they still haven't). If Hollywood hasn't learned the sad truth yet, it's that quantity isn't everything.