Sinking history down the drain

PEARL HARBOR (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally viewed in May, 2001)

I recall a short 1995 film by director Hugh Hudson made in conjunction with the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Lumiere films. The film focused on a group of Japanese children running through a playground as the camera tracks them and we hear explosions in the soundtrack. The area they played in was a Hiroshima bombing site. The film was a meaningful, poetic way of conveying the message that war can destroy dreams, especially those of innocent Japanese children. Not that I expected Michael Bay's souped-up, more-bang-for-your-buck extravaganza to capture such poetry but it could have at least tried. "Pearl Harbor" is "Armageddon" for people who love revisionist, dumbed-down history for the sake of some special-effects. Considering that "Harbor" and "Armageddon" come from Bay, I should have known better than to expect a serious treatise on one of the more tragic events in American history.

The bulk of "Pearl Harbor" is a tired, cliche-ridden - not let's rethink that. The bulk of the film is a bland, superfluous romance suffused with enough syrupy music and dull melodrama to make women swoon for all the wrong reasons. Ben Affleck is Rafe McCawley, the flyboy pilot whose aspirations outweigh his romantic charisma. He falls for a nurse (Kate Beckinsale) after being injected with hypodermic needles in his arse. They fall in love too quickly even for standard screen time, and it is no wonder since neither has much inner life or interest beyond blind love. Rafe's childhood buddy, Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett), is also an ambitious pilot. He falls for the nurse exactly three months after Rafe has been presumed dead from being shot in the skies by enemy fire. I am sure you'll know what to expect next. I would have thought that a soap-opera plot like this would have died eons ago. Honestly, why would such a simplistic love story interest anyone now in this millennium?

About one hour and a half later, the film gets to the Pearl Harbor tragedy where over 2,500 people died after being bombed by Japanese fighter planes. The whole frenetic sequence lasts forty minutes. Then we segue back to the love story itself before we get a climax where the U.S. bombs Tokyo in retaliation (the inspiration for the novel and film of the same name, "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo"). In the meantime, the Japanese commandants are briefly shown to be dubious of their attack strategy, only to be shown as inhuman villains for the sake of some forced heroic chutzpah from the Americans in Tokyo.

The two attack scenes are full of razzle-dazzle effects and plenty of explosions but something feels off in the execution. The attitude is all wrong and that should come as no surprise for those who enjoyed the popcorn mentality of "Armageddon" (I was among the minority). Director Bay enjoys visual overkill and he loves Dolby-ized explosions but all at the expense of human involvement and human tragedy. He does not present it as a post-"Saving Private Ryan" reality where we feel the loss of innocent lives by unforeseeable forces. Instead, it is an exciting sequence but almost too exciting - the thrill is sickening knowing how many people actually suffered and died (especially those trapped inside the "Arizona" ship). We may as well be watching "Rambo" rather than a serious World War II film.

If the attack scenes were omitted, we would be left with two hours of an interminable, sappy romance that lacks passion and chemistry. Ben Affleck can't cut it as a romantic leading man. Josh Hartnett is simply fodder for Affleck so he can have at least one bar fight and a final reconciliation that smacks of pure sentimental hogwash. Kate Beckinsale comes off unscathed but compare her thankless role to her work in "Last Days of Disco," and you may be left wondering what a potentially exciting actress is doing in a movie like this.

With Affleck as a witless flyboy, Jon Voight as former president F.D.R. who seems ready to have a stroke, Alec Baldwin as the pontificating Col. Dolittle and Beckinsale as the love object of the two pilots, not to mention a characterless tragedy portrayed as the latest in flag-waving American propaganda, "Pearl Harbor" manages to sink history down the drain and everyone involved with it.

Note: I have the feeling that nowadays, people can't handle or admit to certain truths. They rather have their history toned from an R rating so it is more acceptable to the masses, thus causing the least amount of controversy possible. It is disheartening to know that people will see this movie to see the Pearl Harbor fireworks sequence, forgetting that it should be upsetting to watch, not exhilarating.

Drabformers are back

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Michael Bay has a problem with staging action scenes without using a hand-held camera. By the end of this exceedingly overlong "Transformers" sequel, the action is so monotonous and ambiguous that it is only an action film by definition of explosions and much chaos per second, and not by any discernible weight.

Shia LaBeouf is back as Sam Witwicky, the hero of sorts of the last Transformers movie who holds a shard of the Allspark, the almighty Rubik's Cube that does something though I am not clear of what. An energy field for these transformers? Their life source? Anyways, after his parents' house is nearly burned to the ground, Sam readies himself to attend Princeton University where his roommate (Ramon Rodriguez) has some sort of command central Internet alien conspiracy database hook-up! The art direction is interesting because it looks like a command center that extends to two dormitories...like a "Real Genius" advancement except "Real Genius" had a better clue as to how freshmen really act. Then there is a hot blonde that has the hots for Sam and his Camaro, which is of course a transformer. Lo and behold, the blonde is also a transformer, one of the evil Decepticons. So that means a transformer can shape shift into a human being? I thought their disguise was only trucks and cars. Actually, she is a Decepticon Pretender, sort of like a Terminator. I am no Transformers expert - I simply looked it up.

Okay, let's get this straight so I understand it. The Decepticons want to destroy humanity by destroying the sun so they need a key, that only Sam has, to unlock the weapon that is inside an Egyptian pyramid. Okay, but if you destroy the sun, you destroy Earth because the sun is essentially 10 million nuclear bombs in one, so there will be no reason to stay on Earth and look for their precious Energon, their life source. So the story makes no sense but that would've been okay by me had it introduced even a third of the enjoyment I had from the original. No sale.

For humor, there is the curious case of the Witwicky parents who embarrass Sam at the university and it is saddled with the kind of humor that would've felt awkward in the cancelled Bill Engvall Show. Then there is the dog-sized transformer who loves to hump Megan Fox's leg and returnee John Turturro as the comic relief, an ex-CIA agent who we get to see in his underwear! And poor Shia makes a fool of himself as he writes all sorts of mathematical formulas that angers the professor so much that Shia is thrown out of the class! I guess nobody cares enough to find the next Good Will Hunting.

By the end of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," the exact purpose of this sequel, outside of revenge and bringing back Optimus Prime, a prime Autobot who can destroy the Decepticons, is superficial and transparent. It is virtually a rehash of the original film, with more explosions and more high-octane action but little joy or diversion from it all. All you get in this movie is robots destroying and beating other robots mercilessly in migraine and yawn-inducing hand-held shots with multiple nanosecond cuts, Megan Fox looking positively beautiful from three or four different camera angles at once, and Shia as the one-dimensional Sam who can be thrown thirty feet up in the air and land on a concrete slab without back injury. The last hour of the film is one big and mightier explosion after another to the point of truly Bay outdoing Bay action porn of the worst kind. For some that might be fitting entertainment, but for myself, the original "Transformers" offered more diversion than this scrappy metal concoction of a movie.

Armed and noisy giant robots

TRANSFORMERS (2007)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Transformers" is a bloated, excessively overdone, special-effected to the nth degree mess of a movie, or more appropriately an ad for great special effects that lose their appeal the fiftieth or sixtieth time we see them. This review could easily describe Michael Bay's own "Armageddon" (a guilty pleasure of mine) or the insanely stupid, falsely patriotic bent of "Pearl Harbor." Yes, this movie is excessive but it does manage to entertain and work overtime on pleasuring thrill-seekers. Still, despite liking some of what I saw, one wishes enough that someone told Bay to dial it down a few notches.

Shia LaBeouf is Sam Witwicky, a high-school teen nerd who is looking for a date with the hot, luscious Mikaela (Megan Fox) and hopes to seduce her with the yellow Camaro his father bought him. Problem is that the Camaro tends to break down and also play love songs when least expected, not to mention drive away from him! That's right, the Camaro is a transformer, an alien robot from the planet Cybertron! Mikaela understands Sam's nervous chatter since she sees that this Camaro is not your usual custom-made car. Before you know it, several other transformers, including Optimus Prime, have descended on Earth looking for Sam since his great-grandfather had been in the Arctic Circle once, witnessed a transformer, and there is something about his glasses that hold a secret to the discovery of the Allspark, a huge Rubik's Cube of sorts that can shift in size to the palm of your hand. So we have the good transformers, the Autobots, and the evil transformers, the Decepticons.

Yeah, this material is pure comic-book silliness yet director Michael Bay has made it fun and engaging in a poppy, humorous manner, thanks to writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. The humor continues along with the inspired casting of John Turturro as a federal agent, Sector Seven Agent Simmons actually, who wants answers from Sam and knows everything about Mikaela's juvenile record. These scenes, along with the lunacy of Sam's parents who have no idea that these giant robots are in their backyard, give this movie a lift. But once the kinetic robots go into action, the movie loses its sense of humor and decides that the audience needs its action overload set on super overdrive.

I am all for an action movie that is excessive, but Bay's rhythmic explosion and swooshing sounds and clanging metal robots thrashing and hurling and destroying everything in their path (all filmed with a hand-held camera) grows wearisome. Since these giant transformers are indistinguishable from each other, it is hard to know who to root for. Poor Shia and Megan Fox are relegated to the background rather than the foreground. Mostly, you'll pine for those early scenes of domesticity and high-school humor of the John Hughes variety. For some, "Transformers" is an action epic that gets the job done. Yes, it does and it is a marvelous sight to see these transformers in action, though they are at their best when they threaten or speak in Dolby-ized tremors that may shatter your eardrums. But once the movie is over, ask yourself the following: what worked best? The special-effects and explosions in the climax or the humor mixed with action in the first hour?

Totally Rad 1980's!

PING PONG SUMMER (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There has been a stunning retro need of late for any and everything related to the 1980's - a decade I would soon like to forget. I was a teenager then and, despite some occasional fun times during the summers, there is precious little I cling to from that decade aside from pop culture. "Ping Pong Summer" is yet another coming-of-age film about those awkward teen years in the 1980's, only the setting here is Ocean City, Maryland. The film itself only feels like half the story is being told.

Marcello Conte is Rad Miracle, the awkward teen who loves hip-hop, ping-pong and breakdancing. He and his family travel to Ocean City for the summer but all the kid can do is play ping pong inside of an arcade. His best new friend (actually Rad's only friend) is the Jericurled Teddy (Myles Massey) whom he plays ping pong with. There is also the object of some mere affection for Rad, Stacy (Emmi Shockley), who is slowly OD'ing on Funk Punch, an extremely sugary, non-alcoholic concoction that provides the euphoric brain freeze. Lyle (Joseph McCaughtry) is Stacy's rich ex-boyfriend who taunts and ridicules Rad, claiming to be the superior ping pong player. Rad loses one game with Lyle and insists on a big rematch, under the tutelage of the town pariah, Randi Jammer (Susan Sarandon).

For 1980's references galore, "Ping Pong Summer" is chock full of them but it has too little story and too many sidelined characters with fascinating eccentricities. John Hannah is the patriarch of the Miracle family, a State Police officer whose main character trait is that he is terminally annoyed by his daughter, a Goth Chick of sorts who could use an infusion of Vitamin D. Lea Thompson is the mother who mistakes her son's hip-hop mimicking in the shower for...masturbation! I would have loved to learn more about them or even Susan Sarandon's beer swilling Randi, easily the most interesting character in the whole film. There is also Rad's offbeat aunt and uncle (played by the energetic Amy Sedaris and Robert Longstreet) who sleep out in the beach, but they are also given minimum exposure.

Ultimately the film revisits "The Karate Kid" for its climax (and final freeze frame) but "Ping Pong Summer" is not nearly as involving or as entertaining as that 1984 sleeper. In fact, it is not half as colorful or as fun as 2013's "The Way Way Back," a similar coming-of-age that dealt with teenage awkwardness during a summer vacation getaway. Still, "Ping Pong Summer" has its heart in the right place and contains sincere performances. It only leaves us wanting more.

Here comes the sphere! DUCK!

PHANTASM (1979)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

At its core, "Phantasm" may be considered a junky, low-rent horror flick about cemeteries, mausoleums and a supernatural figure dressed in a black suit who screams "BOY!" Yet Don Coscarelli's film is not a throwaway exploitation picture - it is a unique film with a certain kind of dread and dreamlike power that should not be dismissed.

A teenage kid in a motorbike named Michael (A. Michael Baldwin) arrives at Morningside Cemetery during a funeral.  The kid is fascinated by the cemetery and the marble walls of the mausoleum (let's face it - such places do invite curiosity). One day Michael witnesses a man carrying a coffin into a hearse with no assistance, prompting the kid to mouth the words: "What the F&*%?" WTF indeed, as we discover that the cemetery's undertaker, known as the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), has been stealing corpses from marked graves and compressing their bodies into hooded zombie dwarves. It seems that in a planet or alternate existence or something maybe resembling Hell, the reanimated dead are slaves though I can't say for sure what their enslavement entails.

"Phantasm" doesn't make much sense nor do I fully understand the Tall Man's singular purpose in this cemetery. One shot reveals that this dark Satanic figure has been around for more than a century. A couple of scenes show him shape-shifting (through abrupt cuts) into a hot number called the Lady in Lavender, who picks up men at the local tavern and lures them to a cemetery where they are knifed! I can imagine a rendezvous with such a woman, but not if she is the Tall Man!

"Phantasm" has an evocative dreamlike power that keeps you in a bit of a trance. The film is not the digestible kind of clear-cut horror film where gore and mutilations take precedence over everything else, nor is it your average haunted mansion type of picture - the film holds your interest in its odd clues and even odder, murkier environments. The marble walls and floors of the mansion itself looks too pristine, as if something bad is about to happen. The cemeteries look just as uninviting. Director Don Coscarelli keeps us on the edge of our seat, throwing logic to the winds and silver spheres at our eyes (I am glad nobody converted to this 3-D because the sphere makes you duck already in two dimensions). I can't say what it all adds up to (and I have seen this twice more since it was on TV in the 1980's) but I will say the film is creepy, has a combative young hero at its center, and the most sinister villain since the days of Count Dracula. 

The ball of fear is back!

PHANTASM II (1988)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The original "Phantasm" film was original, messy and a little disorganized yet it felt like a half-remembered nightmare dealing with cemeteries and mortuaries. "Phantasm II" is more clever, wittier, gorier yet never oversteps its own nightmare logic. I do not know what it all means, and I can't say that we are meant to, but it is entrancing and unforgettable and completely original.

The 13-year-old Mike from the original was last seen awakened from a nightmare involving the creepy cemetery worker, alien from another world or something preternatural known as the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Of course, once Mike wakes up and has a tender talk with Reggie (Reggie Bannister), the nightmare begins all over again as psychically-inclined Mike faces the grim being from another world. Reggie rescues Mike from their house before it explodes, killing all those dwarf-zombies who are the Tall Man's minions. Before long, another house explodes, making this film one of the few I have seen in recent memory where two houses are destroyed in a fireball just after ten minutes of screen time. Fortunately, the movie is not a Jerry Bruckheimer action picture as it evolves into a subterranean horror flick with the elder Mike (now played by James Le Gros) still digging graveyards and finding empty coffins. Mike has been let out of a mental institution and pairs up with Reggie to find and destroy the Tall Man. You know this is an 80's movie when guns and flamethrowers are assembled so they can, as Reggie so succinctly puts it, "kick ass!" Meanwhile, there is an innocent blonde psychic teenager (Paula Irvine) who senses the Tall Man's whereabouts and seeks Mike's help. In addition, we get an alcoholic priest (Kenneth Tigar) who wants to stop the white-haired, yellow-blooded maniac's dastardly experiments, and some hitchhiking girl (Samantha Phillips) who only appears to be a sweet, beatific angel.

"Phantasm II" is directed with flair and a cool energy by Don Coscarelli, who helmed the original "Phantasm." This film works on your nerves, accentuating an acute use of silence and whispers before seguing to heavy murmurs in the soundtrack. The music score envelops you and never lets go. Though the film has more choice moments of gore than the original, it is not leaden or gratuitous (the flying sphere with multiple blades is thankfully not overused). Some of the gore is downright chilling to the bone, such as a bloodied, puppet-sized Tall Man that emerges from a girl's backside (watching this visual might make your spine hurt).

But what makes "Phantasm II" so much more than an average horror film sequel is its disquieting atmosphere inside those marbled mausoleums and forbidden cemeteries, or that netherworld of red skies and dwarf-zombies hidden in between two beams inside a deadly white room. The film doesn't pass up on the humor quotient either, especially a hilarious lovemaking session with Samantha and Reggie that just might have inspired a similar scene in "Hot Shots! Part Deux." It is Reggie and Le Gros, though, who keep us interested in this nightmare while the Tall Man and director Coscarelli fill us with dread...about the dead.

Going where Trek has already gone before

STAR TREK (2009)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

One of the joys of "Star Trek" throughout the years were the philosophical musings and logically sound statements made by Spock and his linguistic quarrels with Captain Kirk and Dr. Bones. This is what made "Star Trek" a notch above a space opera B movie like "Star Wars" (though that did have discussions on the Force, it was really an updated version of a Flash Gordon serial). The last few "Star Trek" films have not held my attention and practically seem recycled out of antique spare parts from "The Next Generation" TV series. If you want me to distinguish between "First Contact" and "Generations" (which was not half-bad), all I could tell you was that Kirk appeared briefly in one and not the other. J.J. Abrams has brought back a level of fun to "Star Trek" - he has also beamed back our favorite Enterprise team which includes a younger Spock, a younger Kirk and a far more alluring Uhura than we remembered. Is it a total success? Not quite since it dispenses with the philosophy and ups the ante on the fun factor with razzle-dazzle special-effects and various action scenes. Not a bad decision overall, but this movie resembles a souped-up "Star Wars" flick than a genuine entry in the Trek universe.

J.J. and his writers also dispense with some signature characteristics of Trek lore. For one, Jim Kirk (Chris Pine) is now a drunk hothead who likes to get into bar fights and quarrels with Spock over command posts in the Enterprise ship. At another point, a mad-as-hell Spock nearly chokes Kirk! This seems uncharacteristic of Kirk and Spock from back in the day (though forgive me if I cannot recall such an episode). Another odd change is seeing Spock and Uhura in a romance - I know Spock is half-human and half-Vulcan but he is supposed to keep his emotions in check, yes? The introductory flashback showing Spock as the victim of Vulcan bullies had me gagging a bit. And what is it with the very young Kirk racing his stepfather's car and crashing it near the site of the construction of the Enterprise ship? And did we really need a scene of Kirk in bed with a green-skinned woman while Uhura, the green chick's roomate, almost walks in on them? We all remember Kirk and his green-skinned girlfriend from back in the day but it seems J.J. just wants to cavort in nostalgia waters for the hell of it.

The villain in this revamped Trek universe is a Romulan commander named Nero from the future (Eric Bana) who is searching for Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy), who has been banished to some ice planet. This has something to do with Nero's family and his birth planet, Romulus, getting destroyed by a supernova that Spock failed to save in time. A red matter substance can form black holes that can also be injected into a planet and cause it to implode. But I am confused by Nero - he does not (SPOILER ALERT) kill Spock Prime yet he wants to vanquish the younger Spock when in fact, if he can time travel through this black hole, Nero could save his family from destruction. That would sound logical, yes? Or maybe I should have studied astronomy more closely when it came to sci-fi film narrative.

For the most part, despite narrative inconsistencies and plot holes big enough to fit through J.J. Abrams' nebulous imagination, "Star Trek" is often a blast to watch. It looks and sounds like a supernova ready to thrill you at every second, and it succeeds. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana (a knockout in more ways than one) fill the iconic roles with ease and panache, though part of me still misses the delicious wit of William Shatner's Kirk and the pronouncements of logic by Nimoy's Spock. Simon Pegg's Scotty and Anton Yelchin's Chekov verge on the surface of self-parody, while John Cho's Sulu injects his own personality. I love the scenes with Nimoy's Spock, the thrilling fight on top of a drilling platform, the moments of tension between Kirk and Spock, and the final supernova climax which is awesomely staged. "Star Trek" is a big-budget Republic serial with tons of cliffhangers, but little emotional resonance. I also venture to guess that Trekkies will not accept anyone else filling these iconic roles.