You think Jackie is funny?

FIND ME GUILTY (2006)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

For 21 months in the late 1980's, the government persecuted 20 members of the Lucchese crime family of New Jersey on over 70 criminal conspiracy counts. This actual trial has been known as the longest criminal trial in history. A clownish, seemingly honest mobster represents himself as his own attorney and turns the court into a circus. Sounds like it could be decent subject matter for a movie. Only director Sidney Lumet has converted this fascinating trial into a listless, lifeless mess of a movie.

Vin Diesel is the wisecracking mobster, Giacomo "Jackie Dee" DiNorscio, who in the opening scene of the movie, is nearly left for dead after he's shot by his cousin. Then, an impending trial hangs on him - the prosecutor tells Jack he can rat on everyone or get a 30- year-plus sentence. Jack maintains a loyalty to his crew, even to the disapproving mob boss, Nick Calebrese (Alex Rocco) who, for reasons never explained, hates Jack. What is there to hate? Jack is flamboyant, energetic and throws one-liners and get applause from the jury. The presiding judge (Ron Silver) objects and holds him in contempt of court more often than Joe Pesci did in "My Cousin Vinny." But Jackie also loves everybody, even the cousin who betrays him and runs to the feds. I think Jackie might've been out of place in the world of "GoodFellas," but what do I know.

If "Find Me Guilty" had the audacity to poke fun at this relentless trial that makes a mockery of justice, then it might have been a winner. Instead Lumet and his co-writers T.J. Mancini, and Robert J. McCrea play it too straight and narrow - they don't see or acknowledge the humor. This should not be an episode of "Law and Order" - it should be the "Network" of courtroom dramas. It should focus on the ridiculous stature of our legal system. After all, the film seems to say that even if you are a murderer and a drug abuser in the mob, as long as you act like Jay Leno in court, you might have a chance to beat the system and win over a jury. Since that is the theme of this movie, why do the filmmakers exhibit a monotonous level of energy throughout?

Vin Diesel seems like such a clown as Jackie that, had the film been wittier and more pungent, he might have not been miscast. Considering the serious-mindedness of it, he is miscast though he tries to breathe some life into it. I did like the underused Alex Rocco and the magnetic casting of Peter Dinklage as one of the defense attorneys. Also worth noting is the cameo by Annabella Sciorra as Jackie's ex- wife who is stunned Jackie can't attend his mother's funeral. But "Find Me Guilty" lacks energy, focus and punch. Its best passages are narrowed by truly extended, overlong, dull courtroom setpieces that don't amount to much except an outrageous verdict. If only the film had been as outrageous.

The Tale of a Mermaid and a fruit wholesaler

SPLASH (1984)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

Ron Howard's "Splash" is a festive, funny, joyful kind of romantic comedy. It puts you in a silly frame of mind, evoking pleasure through its likable characters and original concept. How often do you see a movie where a guy unknowingly falls in love with a mermaid? (1946's "Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid" perhaps, though a whole different kind of picture). In 1984, it was certainly an original and fresh take on the usual romantic couplings. Since then, we have had a TV movie sequel (unseen by me), M. Night Shyamalan's eccentric and overlong drama/comedy/thriller/something called "Lady in the Water" which starred Bryce Dallas Howard (ironically, Ron Howard's daughter) and a Hong-Kong inspired tale from 1994 called "Mermaid Got Married." But "Splash" rises above most because it's got Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah as the lovebirds, it's got New York City as its setting, and the lovable eccentricities of John Candy as Hank's brother.

Hanks is Allen Bauer, a co-owner of a a fruit and vegetable wholesale business who finds himself in Cape Cod on a whim. Once there, he gets knocked out by a motorboat and is rescued by a blonde mermaid (Daryl Hannah). Allen wants to get to know her but she is mute. Finally, she finds him at his address thanks to Allen's missing wallet. In a nod to immigrants that came to Ellis Island and perhaps saw their first welcoming landmark, the Statue of Liberty, our mermaid of the wandering seas is at the famous monument completely in the buff. Allen and the mermaid finally reunite, and she calls herself Madison after seeing a Madison Avenue sign. Madison quickly learns English by way of repetitive TV watching and is adept at using Allen's credit cards at Bloomingdales! But when Allen learns that Madison is only in NYC for a short time and that she refuses to give up her big secret, things get a little heated and complicated.

What is a little amazing about "Splash" is how winsome and innocent it is, and how the Allen character is permitted to act a little upset at the unknown dilemma centering on Madison amid all the innocence. Hanks doesn't shy away from losing a little control (there is something a little fierce about how he breaks down the bathroom door when Madison doesn't answer). Yet the movie also features one of the sweetest gifts ever given to anyone that you just started dating - a mermaid fountain that somehow finds its way into Allen's swanky apartment. How it gets in there is not as important as the gift itself and how it was obtained, which is best discovered by first-time viewers. A marriage proposal by Allen is first turned down, then accepted. Allen just deeply loves this mysterious woman, unencumbered by her origins or her secrets - he just wants to know her. If that is not true love, I do not know what it is.

"Splash" also has some comedic bits, more or less on the slapstick side. Hanks can be funny (check out his fumbling about in a taxicab) but it is John Candy as Freddie Bauer who shows warmth and an easygoing attitude - he is a party boy but not an excessive party boy (this is a Disney flick after all). Freddie loves his brother whom he feels should loosen up and pick up more women at bars. Candy is allowed some tomfoolery when playing racquetball and hitting himself on the head, or dropping change on the floor so he can look up women's skirts. This is easily one of Candy's best roles ever, far eclipsing almost anything else in his career. Watch his role in this movie, and then see him as a leading man in the underrated "Only the Lonely" and you will see a dramatic actor of sublime restraint who was often shortchanged ("Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and "Uncle Buck" excepted).

Another actor who brings a barrel of laughs is Eugene Levy as scientist Walter Kornbluth, who is absolutely certain that a mermaid is walking around New York City. He gets into a few accidents when he can't catch up with Madison and inadvertently sprays a water hose on the wrong women! The idea is that the water hose will change Madison's legs into fins, thus proving his theory.

"Splash" is an intoxicating romantic treat, blending belly laughs and a romance between two leads of blissful chemistry with ease. This might easily be one of Ron Howard's finest films, showing that there are true cinematic pros who can make this kind of upbeat movie just right. I have seen my share of romantic comedies, perhaps one too many post-"Splash" that do not even have a tenth of what makes "Splash" work or any of the classics from way back in the day. The lovely last shot alone possesses a lyricism that defines what true love is. You may shed a tear.

Throw this dog out the window

JUST MARRIED (2003)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Harmless, inoffensive and dumb. Those are three words to describe "Just Married." Also, a major inactive pain to the funny bone in the sense that your funny bone will not be jerked by the maddeningly unfunny movie that transpires. No pain, no gain.

Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy are a young, likable couple who decide to get married. She is rich, he is not (he loves sports and just has to watch them at a bar in Venice, Italy). They are on their honeymoon and get into one scrape after another with each other's attitudes. Their rental car breaks down and they are snowbound for a whole night. The hotel management is not very accommodating. There's an old flame, a hot blonde that tries the moves on Ashton; a poor dog that jumps out the window; unwanted cockroaches; heavy sex in a bathroom in an airplane, and I think you get the point.

We all know that despite the incessant fighting between Kutcher and Murphy, things will work out and they'll recognize that they are in love. Like I said, this movie is harmless, inoffensive, dumb and highly unnecessary with a couple of chuckles along the way (to be absolutely fair). There are, however, too many of these disposable wastes of cliched romantic comedies out there. My advice: make out with your girlfriend instead and throw this movie to the dogs.

Lifetime is a little clueless

THE BRITTANY MURPHY STORY (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It is an impossible task to cast an actress who has the puppy dog eyes and glimmer of danger that the late Brittany Murphy had. Brittany was a unique, quirky actress who had a face that spoke of love and warmth, but with a slight edge. You could love the girl as she showed us naked honesty, but you also sensed that you could not wrong her or you could end up in trouble. She was the girl who could listen to music by, say, the Beatles but you might believe she was a closeted Ramones or Clash fan at heart. Amanda Fuller plays Brittany but Fuller looks too sweet, too wholesome minus the edginess - she looks more like an innocent Ellen Page. There ya go, Lifetime, cast this actress for the Ellen Page Story.

Amanda Fuller and Simon Monjack

"The Brittany Murphy Story" purportedly tells us about the rise and fall of the actress who hit her stride with films like "Clueless" and "Don't Say a Word" and hit her low with "Just Married" (a rom-com with Ashton Kutcher whom she had a brief relationship with). Most of this Lifetime biopic focuses on Brittany's loving, devoted relationship to her mother (Sherilyn Fenn) and her topsy-turby relationship with Simon Monjack (Eric Petersen, who appears more jovial than the real Simon who also passed away), a con-artist who happens to be a screenwriter and occasional press photographer (his screenwriting duties on the film "Factory Girl" have been disputed and settled out-of-court). Far more interesting is Adam Hagenbuch as Ashton (and boy is the resemblance uncanny), showing he had really cared for Brittany, but he disappears far too soon.

The real Brittany and Simon - see the spark?

"Brittany Murphy Story" could have used an infusion of energy - most of the film is flat and flatly photographed in monochromatic tones. It is almost as if Brittany's life is depicted as one of lost hope from the beginning and the allegations of drug abuse are mentioned again and again, but there is precious little attention attached to the films she made (not a word on "Girl, Interrupted" or "Sin City"). I wanted to see actress Amanda Fuller spring to life with the dynamic gusto that Brittany Murphy showed in her own films. Fuller infrequently casts a spark in the role - she is mostly dour and unflatteringly photographed. Though the film does not skimp on Brittany's dizzy spells or doldrums or bipolar condition, it makes no real distinction between early Brittany and down-in-the-dumps-curtains-closed Brittany. It only shows her in a dizzy spell from start to finish.  

In Space, there is only more Space

GRAVITY (2013)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Make no mistake about it - "Gravity" is often edge-of-your-seat suspenseful and has amazing visuals of space that really envelop you. It is a film about a terrible accident at a space shuttle, and it is often astounding and marvelous to see the panorama of the Earth as we and the characters orbit around it and try to keep breathing amid chaos. But, at the end of the day, the movie ends too soon, leaving us with fewer impressions than we had. It is an entertaining footnotes kind of movie, lacking anything tangible to latch onto.

Sandra Bullock is Dr. Ryan Stone, a Biomedical engineer aboard her first space shuttle mission, the Explorer. George Clooney is Lt. Matt Kowalski, the leader of the Explorer team. They are fixing the Hubble Space Telescope as Kowalski does his spacewalk in circles. It is an astounding sequence, filmed in what seems like an unbroken shot that runs forever. It is transfixing and there is a terrifying beauty about it - the idea of hovering above the planet Earth while engaging in matters that are beyond normal human means. In a sense, director Alfonso Cuaron ("Y Tu Mama Tambien") is also implying how Earth is not within anyone's grasp when you are running on oxygen for a short amount of time, hovering over the home planet where no one else can see you. Was mankind meant to be hovering in space? Then Mission Control in Houston warns the crew that flying debris from a destroyed Russian satellite is making its way in the astronauts' direction. It is time to abort the mission but complications ensue - Dr. Stone and Lt. Kowalski feel the impact of the debris as it strikes the Telescope, the shuttle and the space station. The shuttle is beyond any repair and the entire crew is also dead. The Space Station has only one malfunctioning module. Their situation now is really dire.

I rather not give away much more of this 91-minute science-fiction thriller but I can say it involves more explosions and space stations. Bullock's Stone also has one rather absurd hallucination, thoughts of her long-lost daughter and her need to get back to Earth. She expresses little emotion about the other dead astronauts, and that is rather odd considering it is her first space shuttle mission, nor does she shed tears for Kowalski who performs an action in the film that has been criticized by scientists for reasons I cannot spoil. As I had mentioned earlier, "Gravity" is quite a cinematic experience and in an IMAX theater in 3-D, it might be even more thrilling.

The issue is the movie is only 91 minutes long, or maybe it is too long to tell a tale that could've been shortened to a half-hour. Or maybe too short to tell a tale that could have used more character exploration. "Gravity" feels like the last thirty minutes of "2001: A Space Odyssey" expanded to feature length. It does the job of entertaining the audience but I expect more from a Clooney-Bullock-Cuaron team up.  

Surviving 9/11

WORLD TRADE CENTER (2006)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Oliver Stone is known for his fire and brimstone approach to filmmaking where every point is made with a hammer yet loaded with an emotional ferocity. His best films ("Platoon," "Born on the 4th of July," "JFK," et al) pop with such exuberance and emotional power that they become more than films - they are vivid portraits of calamitous events painted with a human face. "World Trade Center" is definitely a powerful film but its approach is not as incendiary or full of layered images upon images in the typical Stone style post-"JFK." This time, Stone takes a backseat to visual and aural overload because this survival story doesn't need it.

Set on the early morning hours of 9/11/01, we follow two Port Authority cops, Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) and John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage, at his restrained best), as they prepare their daily routine of awaking in the wee hours of the morning and traveling from Long Island, NY and New Jersey to Manhattan. Jimeno is the average cop on the lookout for a missing person. McLoughlin is the sergeant who commandeers his unit, and has kept a close eye on the World Trade Center since the infamous 1993 bombing. Of course, he has never dealt with the enormity of the situation at hand - two planes have flown into the World Trade Center. A major rescue mission is at hand but how on earth can they rescue people when the towers implode and crumble to dust while they are in the WTC lobby? Both Jimeno and his partner and friend, Dominick Pezzulo (Jay Hernandez), are stuck with McLoughlin under the rubble of smoke and debris and the occasional fireball. Pezzulo is eventually crushed to death, leaving only Jimeno and McLoughlin to talk to each other about their families so they don't fall asleep and possibly die (keep the brain active, as they say, so you don't fall into a coma).

Oliver Stone has not made a conspiracy film about 9/11, so don't go expecting a paranoid, political twist on modern events on the order of Stone's "JFK" or "Nixon." Stone has crafted something here that is akin to "Platoon" and "Salvador" in its individual story of survival. The difference, in the case with this film, is that it is an apolitical story of two protagonists who serve to protect and are in dire need of protection from certain death. Stone and writer Andrea Berloff also evoke the complications of almost losing someone on that dreadful day through the protagonists' wives. Jimeno's loving pregnant wife (astutely and honestly played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) is an emotional wreck who is waiting for the call that says Jimeno is alive and has been rescued. McLoughlin's wife (exceedingly well-played by Maria Bello, sporting striking blue eyes) tries to distance herself from the catastrophe, hoping McLoughlin is alive yet realizing that their love of each other might have soured prior to 9/11.

"World Trade Center" is essentially a story of strength and survival in the most dire and inhumane of catastrophes. It doesn't exploit the 9/11 tragedy but merely embodies it, as seen through the eyes of two heroic cops who did their damnedest to help others. The scenes of Jimeno and McLoughlin trapped in the rubble are about as intense as you might expect in an Oliver Stone film (despite discussions on "G.I. Jane" and a vision of Jesus, which the actual Jimeno saw). And also as expected, the scenes between the wives and their families glued to the TV screens, waiting to hear good news, are emotionally devastating. In fact, Bello and Gyllenhaal have scenes of such unparalleled power that you will grow more than misty-eyed - they are affecting in such a deep way as to make you remember how the day affected just about everyone.

I am a fan of Ollie Stone's critical dissent on politics but, this time, I can say I am glad he found the nerve to tell a simple survival story through the prism of 9/11. Some say Stone may have lost his touch and cleaned up his paranoiac fervor. Not so. How many filmmakers would dare to make a film about 9/11? Exactly.

The Day the World Changed

UNITED 93 (2006)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2006)

I am thankful that the filmmakers of "United 93" did not exploit the 9/11 tragedy and turn it into an "Airport" version of the story. "United 93" is a white-knuckled, thoroughly intense and emotionally devastating movie - it is so intense that many viewers could easily pass out. We all know what will happen and the eventual outcome, and it is that knowledge that makes the film almost unbearable and riveting from start to finish.

"United 93" begins with a recitement of the Koran by two of the suicide hijackers before they board the United 93 flight from Newark. One of them shaves all the hair from their body, and another one remains almost unsure of himself. They board the plane without a problem. We see all the passengers on board, including the flight attendants, stewardesses and the airline pilots. There is a 30-minute delay which makes the hijackers nervous, including the leader. We almost don't want that plane to take off but it does, and the intensity begins. We see the military commanders in a station getting ready to conduct a NORAD test. There are also air-traffic controllers in airport towers and at a control center in Ronkokoma, NY. It is business as usual, making sure all flights are in communication with the air-traffic controllers. Then, a hijacking is reported. Then one of the flights disappears in a radar scope (we know what's happened at that moment) and all hell breaks loose. The World Trade Center has been struck by aircraft, the Pentagon is in flames, the President is nowhere to be found, and the F-16's are not getting any confirmation on what to do or where the missing aircraft is. Communication is at a standstill, and Flight 93 is unaware of the hysteria until the hijackers attack the passengers and take control of the aircraft.

You know what you are in for when watching "United 93." What makes the film riveting and involving is director Paul Greengrass ("Bloody Sunday") who has employed a hand-held camera immediacy to the proceedings. Hand-held cameras are often used in manufacturing a documentary-look to a fictional recreation of a historical event. What Greengrass and writers have done is make us bear witness to a tragedy unfolding in real time without ever truly knowing the passengers. This is an inspired stroke, in a sense, because the audience will feel as they are aboard that plane with them (and how often do you get to know the passengers when you board a plane). The immediacy places you squarely in this infamous day's events in ways that not even the newscasts could ever accomplish. We feel for the passengers and their anxieties and fears, especially when they learn the pilots are dead and that they are part of a suicide mission. It becomes relentless because we feel helpless and want to do something.

All the actors perform as credibly and realistically as possible, and some of the air-traffic controllers and other personnel are played by the actual participants (Ben Sliney plays himself as the chief of air-traffic control). In fact, there is not one frame of "United 93" that feels false or inaccurate. And the movie doesn't inflate the patriotism of our first freedom fighters (as the passengers on board this plane have been known as), especially a key moment where Todd Beamer says the famous words, "Let's roll." When the moment happens, it is caught as a glimpse rather than a grandstanding moment where the audience can cheer.

"United 93" is a controversial film largely because of the subject matter. Was it too soon to have a film depicting the events of 9/11? I would say no: a film like this, as honest and intensely emotional as it is, is never premature. A bad, exploitative, dishonest take on these events would've been premature. Thankfully, "United 93" is the former.