What's Happening in this Day of the Stiffs?

THE HAPPENING (2008)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

M. Night Shyamalan is a master at setting the audience up - he knows how to fuel the buildup so we sit there wondering what will happen next. "Lady in the Water" was a stranger, ambitious film in his oeuvre, a convoluted mermaid fairy-tale that never quite found its pulse. "The Happening," however, is an eager attempt to re-establish what he does best: a slow, uneasy uncovering of something mysterious that will keep you guessing. His best films ("The Sixth Sense," "The Village") kept the mystery alive because he showed compassion for his characters until the inevitable surprise ending. "The Happening" contains a remarkable sense of dread and foreboding in the first fifteen minutes, and it goes severely downhill afterwards with perfunctory characters.

Something is happening in the city of Philadelphia. Pedestrians on the streets stop dead in their tracks, look as stone faced as Medusa, and suddenly kill themselves. Constructions workers fall to their deaths, some stab themselves on the neck, cops shoot themselves and there is general hysteria here. Mark Walhberg is a high-school science teacher who runs for the hills along with his nearly listless wife (Zooey Deschanel), his fellow teacher friend (John Leguizamo) and his own daughter (Ashlyn Sanchez), heading to a presumably safe haven, unaware of what is causing all this mass suicide. They take the trusted SEPTA train only to be stuck in some small town, outside of Philadelphia, and they cavort in the countryside hoping that what seems like a terrorist attack will end soon. Well, it is not terrorists spreading deadly nerve gases but rather plants and trees. If the weather gets overcast and the wind starts to rustle the foliage, watch out, run, and don't stay in groups of more than four!

Unfortunately, there is not a heck of a lot more to say about "The Happening." There are some unintended laughs along the high mortality rate but nothing to latch onto - no real basic story other than a dangling premise that would be hardly meaty enough for a "Twilight Zone" episode. Even the rules established by Wahlberg are not followed since a small group of people can still invoke suicidal tendencies, although how do the trees and bushes know or care how many people to attack and instill with such violence is beyond my understanding. This not exactly "Day of the Triffids" - it is more like "Day of the Stiffs." The actors, including a very wasted Zooey Deschanel (in more ways than one), seem forced in their reactions to this madness and clearly misdirected. My favorite scene, full of unintended laughs, has Wahlberg trying to convince a house plant that he just wants to use the bathroom. It turns out the plant is plastic. Do yourself a favor: watch TV's classic "What's Happening" instead.

Can't turn away from sadism

QUILLS (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2000)

When I think of the Marquis De Sade, I think of sadism, pure and simple (heck, the word comes from his name). Others may see him as a pornographer, a brutally harsh man, bestial, etc. It is a surprise therefore to see that director Philip Kaufman ("The Unbearable Lightness of Being") has sanitized the grand old Marquis somewhat, making him less the dangerously lecherous man and more the swooning, almost sympathetic writer dying to write his devilishly seductive prose with his needful quills.

Geoffrey Rush is De Sade, shown living in a dank stone cell in a mental institution known as Charenton. De Sade delights in writing and in speaking in gentle, arousing tones, embellishing and enunciating each and every syllable as if the English language were his own. Though he is imprisoned, he continues to write his novels, particularly the controversial "Justine," with the help of a chambermaid (Kate Winslet), a secret courier who delivers his work to the nearest town to be published anonymously. Of course, most of the townspeople know it is De Sade's work, only he could publish such scandalous writings.

Naturally such published works cause controversy and so the institution sends Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine), a brutish, callous man to cure De Sade of his fiendish talent by way of torture. De Sade's work gets so out of hand and causes such scandals everywhere, including one involving Collard's own youthful wife, a former nun who reads De Sade's work with relish, that the writer is stripped of his talents, physically and emotionally. His quills are taken away, as are his clothes. You can't censor a good writer for too long since he uses any available means of writing his prose, including his own blood (by pricking his fingers) and his feces. This lunatic cannot live without writing, and never before have I seen such a slowly developed emotional catharsis for an artist intent on making his work come to fruition in any way possible.

"Quills" is quite prescient in its look at censorship, and how the writer of what some have described as pornography can be used as a scapegoat for the ills of society - certainly such lascivious prose would not cause women to act lustful now would it? And what about the other patients in the institution who act out his plays regularly - are they capable of misinterpreting his work and using it as an excuse to commit violent acts?

The centerpiece of the film is the naive young priest (Joaquin Phoenix), who believes that De Sade's work is immoral yet still admires the man for his tenacity. Still, the priest does manage to read some of the man's work and it may be possible that it causes him to develop feelings for the beautiful, buxom chambermaid.

"Quills" works mainly because of Geoffrey Rush's magnificent, fully alive performance - he wretches, he cavorts, he has a devilish laugh and smile, and basically he is irresistible. I think the real De Sade must have been too, and his work shone with equal engagement. The chambermaid may find De Sade too intensely passionate for her blood, but she is nevertheless intrigued by him and sexually connected to him. De Sade turns out to bring out the best and worst in everybody close to him, including his long-suffering wife and, in a couple of startling scenes, the hypocritical Dr. Royer-Collard.

Exquisitely acted and often hauntingly beautiful in its bleached, murky look, "Quills" is about a madman who writes such erotic, violent words that it causes trouble not only for him, but for everyone around him. We can't stand to bear his pain or his enclosed surroundings yet we are unable to turn away and that, in the end, was the beauty of De Sade's art.

Boobs in Fantasy Land

BABES IN TOYLAND (1986)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When a fantasy movie is so third rate that it is devoid of magic, a sense of wonder or anything approaching a sense of fun, I get irritated. "Babes in Toyland" is threadbare Clive Donner crap (a director who has done far superior work, including 1984's invigorating "A Christmas Carol" with George C. Scott) that is unlikely to move an impatient toddler.

Drew Barrymore is Lisa Piper, a Cincinnati 11-year-old girl who cares for her family and apparently does all the cooking. Her older sibling, Mary (Jill Schoelen), works at a toy store and is forced to push sales of teddy bears by a demanding boss (the wonderful Richard Mulligan). Keanu Reeves plays Mary's boyfriend who also works at the toy store. When Lisa gets wind that her mother (Eileen Brennan) will not be in time for dinner due to a severe snowstorm while the TV antenna's signal is cut, little Lisa runs to the toy store and asks for her sister's help. They all drive merrily home while singing "C-I-N-C-I-N-N-A-T-I" until there is a car wreck! Guess what happens! Lisa is transported to Toyland where her sister Mary, now Mary Contrary, is getting married to the dastardly, wicked Barnaby (Mulligan, again) who lives in a giant bowling ball! The marriage is intervened and we also get a roster of talented stars such as Eileen Brennan (again) as Mother Goose; Pat Morita as a Toymaker who turns out to be (SPOILER ALERT!) Kris Kringle himself, and a host of pale-green-faced creatures and actors wearing immobile animal costumes including teddy bears who serve as crossing guards! I think I also spotted Humpty-Dumpty with a movable, wandering eye. "Wizard of Oz," it is decidedly not (The stage musical of "Oz" served as the inspiration for the operetta of "Babes in Toyland" back in 1903).

The Cincinnati opener is actually decent and sort of fun, while it lasts. Jill Schoelen and Drew Barrymore work so well together that you wish they had more screen time as sisters before embarking on the Toyland adventure. Once we enter the colorful Toyland, it disappointingly looks like an amusement park, not a lived-in fantasy land. Worse yet, despite a game cast, the movie is insufferably dull and practically unwatchable. There is no flair or sense of magic in this land - it is dreary and artificial at best despite the brightly colored art-direction. Mother Goose's Shoe House and those Go-Carts are fun for a while (I like Brennan's line: "I will not allow such radical thinking in my shoe!"), and it is somewhat interesting that it is always daylight in Toyland but the whole setting resembles a western that just happens to have odd creatures. Other than that, the movie sinks fast with unmemorable songs and a climax with the toy soldiers that is so shoddily staged (witness Drew pelting monsters with tomatoes and a wooden soldier shedding a tear) that it is hard to believe anyone like director Donner would've shaped it. Everything about this movie is wooden, both in design and staging and performance (Pat Morita and Eileen Brennan bring some measure of intermittent sweetness but lovely Drew is misdirected as if she was a rotten actor who couldn't emote beyond a sunny smile). If you are a babysitter and wish to put the kids to sleep, show them this movie. 

Film is not reality, reality is not film

FULL FRONTAL (2002)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Steven Soderbergh's "Full Frontal" is quite a movie experience but it is not a coherent one, and I kind of appreciated that. Soderbergh has created a mini-canvas of lives in Los Angeles but without the multi-layered connections of a Robert Altman or an Alan Rudolph flick, or for that matter Paul Thomas Anderson.

"Full Frontal" takes place in Hollywood where movie stars like Brad Pitt make movies on the city streets and people walk around dressed in full Dracula costumes. This is also the Hollywood of screenwriters, massage therapists, producers, reporters, personnel directors, animal doctors, and so on. They are all conflicted in their lives because of bad relationships that need desperate mending. Lee (Catherine Keener) is a personnel director who loathes her job and humiliates her employees by asking them personal questions (get it?) while holding a globe. She is unhappily married to Carl (David Hyde Pierce), a screenwriter who also writes magazine articles and gets fired from that job because he has confused quirks with standards. Lee feels frustrated and takes her frustrations out on her sister Linda (Mary McCormack), a masseuse who can't find the right man in her life so she looks for one on the Internet. Their relationship is the most arresting and fascinating of the lot.

Meanwhile, there is a director named Ed (Enrico Colantoni), who Linda is about to meet for the first time in Tucson. He is working on a new play about Hitler as some sort of buffoon (it is entitled "The Sound and the Fuhrer"). The terrifically funny Nicky Katt is playing Hitler though there is a method to his madness - he likes to rewrite the stage directions and insult the actors. And let's not forget Blair Underwood as a movie star in the film-within-the-film called "Rendezvous," who begins to explain the method to his madness and his standing as a black actor to a smitten reporter (Julia Roberts). So what we are seeing is a movie relationship and the real relationships in "reality" - what is the real truth being explored here? Or perhaps Soderbergh is saying that life is like a movie, hence all relationships are like movies. It is possible we are not seeing a "realistic" relationship in the entire film.

"Full Frontal" is one quirky film alright, as playful and entrancing as Soderbergh's "Schizopolis." The point of the movie may be that a movie is a movie, never a reality. This is not a new conceit. Consider that Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain" had the director appear in the last scene showing that his film was not a real film, hence a film crew is seen in the shot. Ah, but a film is still being made and someone is still shooting a scene of the director making his remarks. The point is that film is not a reality anyway, only an approximation. Still, the last shot of "Full Frontal" is what I call a "glass breakage" scene where the reality of the film is broken by its reflection of an inner truth nobody was aware of, or thought of. It's nothing new but it did catch me by surprise.

"Full Frontal" is shot on grainy, low-grade video and 35 mm film. Again, the technique of applying different film stocks is nothing new but it feels appropriate for the material. It feels like Soderbergh made this film to renew his faith in the magic of filmmaking at a guerrilla stage, and who can blame him? After making the excellent "Traffic" and the fluffy "Ocean's Eleven," he is back on track making the kind of films that gave him his shot of recognition in the first place. Maybe in a few years I'll look back at this review and say to myself, "how could I have given 'Full Frontal' a rave review?" Well, nothing will hinder my praise - "Full Frontal" is one of the few engaging films of 2002.

Han Solo and Rambo together, oh, if only

THE EXPENDABLES 3 (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Sylvester Stallone has become far more interesting nowadays, thanks to his gravelly voice and his been-there-done-that-older-wiser repartee. He looks like an older lion who still has the stamina and strength to crush you, yet he can also have a good time at a bar drinking with the rest of them. Unfortunately, "The Expendables" movie series has gotten more banal with each entry and this third chapter is inexplicably a two-hour snoozer. Stallone tries to save it but his presence is not enough.

Stallone is once again Barney Ross, the mercenary who wants to kill a former Expendable-turned-psychotic-arms dealer, Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson, looking as if he wants to be home screaming at someone - perhaps his agent). The problem is that Ross's boss, an impatient CIA operative (Harrison Ford, who looks like he'd rather be piloting the Millennium Falcon), wants Stonebanks alive so that he can be tried for war crimes. A mission where Conrad, presumed dead, is initially discovered by Barney results in the near-fatal gunshots suffered by Hale Caesar (Terry Crews, always a spirited and fun actor). Ross decides to disband his older cronies for newer, fresher blood. These new recruits barely got my attention except for Ronda Rousey as a tough bouncer and mixed martial-artist - she has a tender and vicious side that makes her a perfect new Expendable. However, you start to miss the reliable pros of 80's and 90's action pic fame like Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford - they are AWOL for almost 60 percent of the film.

"Expendables 3" is not as cartoonishly empty as the second film but it is nowhere near as decent as the first film. In the end, the movie is about nothing more than amassing a huge body count and the chance to hear Harrison Ford say the word "fuck." I am all for the small pleasures in life but with such an extraordinary cast that can bring you goosebumps when you hear all their names together, the end result is nothing but numbing monotony. 

Alcoholic, thieving, sexed-up Santa

BAD SANTA (2003)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The only words I have for "Bad Santa" is that it is indisputably funny. Many will disagree but you can't expect anyone to have the same formal opinion when it comes to a movie about an alcoholic, foul-mouthed thief who dresses up as Santa. The reason this movie works so well is because of Billy Bob Thornton, a remarkable actor who continually surprises me.

Good old Billy Bob plays Willie, an alcoholic safecracker who has a long-time partner, an angry dwarf named Marcus (Tony Cox). They have been robbing department stores at Christmas time for eight years. The basic setup is simple: Willie gets a job as Santa and the dwarf is your basic elf. By the end of the holiday season, Willie and the elf will wait for the store to close and rob it blind. They prove successful in their exploits, enough to where Willie can afford to drink himself into a drunken stupor until the following Christmas. Sadly, the newest attempt proves a disaster from the beginning. Willie obviously hates being Santa, hates kids, hates department stores, and naturally hates himself. He is always drunk, is foul-mouthed to everyone (including his employer played the late John Ritter), incessantly uses the four-letter word, has sex with customers in the dressing rooms, etc. Nobody can play a mean drunk half as well as Billy Bob Thornton.

Suspicions abound when the store's security chief (Bernie Mac) is on to the duo and wants a cut of the profits. There are also some other obstacles. Willie meets a kid (Brett Kelly), known in the credits as The Kid, who insists that Willie is Santa Claus and will do anything to help him. This includes the Kid letting Willie stay at his house, while Kid's father is in jail and the only parental guardian is his almost catatonic grandmother (Cloris Leachman). Another obstacle is Sue (Lauren Graham), a bartender who loves to boink guys in Santa suits. Willie is no exception, and the relationship seems to be nothing but sex. That is until we slowly learn that Sue has feelings for a drunker-than-thou Santa Claus.

What can we expect to see in "Bad Santa"? I saw the unrated cut (known as "Badder Santa"), which includes some extra boinking scenes (including a moment where Willie demonstrates to an underage girl how to play pinball with more thrusting), Bernie Mac getting his toenails manicured, a dazed and confused Cloris sleeping through most of the movie, the Santa-loving kid with the occasional snot in his nose, Willie knocking over reindeer models, and so on. Yes, filth and vulgarity galore. I've neglected to mention that I found this movie funny throughout. Yes, I got a kick out of it.

True, Billy Bob seems almost too intelligent to make stupid mistakes. Also true that the movie is slightly overlong (including a far-too extended and slightly sappy climax). The Kid is not always the most appealing character to look at, what with all that snot in his nose. And I would've loved more scenes with Sue so that we got an inkling as to her attachment towards Bad Santa.

Still, "Bad Santa" is funny and mean-spirited in good, healthy doses to make one smile. There is a touch of humanity thanks to Billy Bob that could've easily been nothing less than a one-joke movie with any other actor. With Billy Bob and director Terry Zwigoff ("Ghost World"), it is a socko comic triumph with plenty of belly laughs. 

Jill Schoelen is an angel pointing the way

AN ACTOR CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

By Jerry Saravia

Celebrities (actors, actresses, directors, etc.) are people first, celebrities second. I always thought of Jill Schoelen as a person first, not a movie star or an actress. To those who are unaware of who Jill Schoelen is, she is the star of films like "The Stepfather," "Popcorn," "Rich Girl," and "When a Stranger Calls Back," among other films. From my own experience, I guess it has to do with "The Stepfather," the first film where I first took notice of her. Her Stephanie Maine character in that film instilled confidence in me that I might meet someone special later in life, and of course I have - my darling, wonderfullest Dana who has been my better half since 2003. I first saw "The Stepfather" on late night TV in the fall of 1989, not long after graduating high school. In high school, I was a loner and never had much luck with women, and didn't try to. I can't explain it but Jill Schoelen's sweetness and rebelliousness in that film was hitting me like a flash of my future - that a woman like that could be in my future and take an interest in someone like me. She was like an angelic sister at my side, somehow directing me to where I am today. It may sound odd but that is what she did for me. Although Jill is not a friend of mine beyond facebook nor have I ever met her, I would thank her for giving me the confidence to communicate with women, without feeling agitated or nervous about it. I don't know where I would be had it not been for that late night in the fall of 1989...it was fate I suppose and it still took some work (I hardly became an overnight Lothario). Of course, I don't know where I would be without my Dana either. Jill Schoelen was the first step in making a difference in my life. Thank you Jill!