It is good s**t

BURN AFTER READING (2008)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2008)

How do I review the Coens latest wacky comedy? Tough to say except that it is blazingly original and wacky and schizophrenic and, occasionally, hilarious and spectacularly uneven. You know, the usual brand of Coens humor.

John Malkovich is CIA analyst Osborne Cox, who is beyond upset that his services are no longer required due to rampant drunkenness. He is unhappily married to Katie (Tilda Swinton), who is having an affair with one of the strangest Coens characters ever, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a married and paranoid federal marshal who has a predilection for dildos! Harry navigates an online dating service where he meets Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who works at a gym called Hardbodies. It is there where the foolhardy and foolish Chad Feldheimer (the hilarious and truly zonked-out Brad Pitt) comes upon a computer disk that supposedly contains CIA secrets ("It is s**t and more s**t.") Somehow all this leads to the irascible Osbourne Cox, who is trying to write his memoirs, Cox's CIA boss (J.K. Simmons) who hopes to make sense of all this, Pfarrer's paranoia thinking he is being followed, and some business revolving around Litzke's planned plastic surgery and the alleged CIA disk being sold to the Russian Embassy.

On the Coens scale of pure frenetic idiocy, this is not as much fun as "The Big Lebowski" but it is far superior to "Hudsucker Proxy" and "Intolerable Cruelty." All the actors in "Burn After Reading" pretty much overact and do it as well as you can imagine. Brad Pitt comes off best as the most idiotic and memorable character in the Coens universe, salivating every syllable of the Coens language to the nth degree. Clooney is rather creepy in this film, playing a very mysterious character to say the least. McDormand is always fun to watch as is the underrated Richard Jenkins, the manager of Hardbodies who doesn't like espionage. Malkovich gives the F-bombs a special kind of lunacy with his temperamental diction - you swear he is saying the words as if they were written by Shakespeare. Brilliant, I say.

"Burn After Reading" is manic, riotously funny and rather empty. It is full of calories but it pretty much dissolves after its abrupt ending and you wonder, what the heck was that all about? Why am I still hungry after it is over? I love jokey, harebrained movies like this, which are hardly a dime a dozen, but I am not sure what to take away from it. Just like its equally jocose cousin, "The Big Lebowski," that movie also ended before it should have. I guess the best way I can describe it is like this: "Big Lebowski" was about a stained rug that managed to involve bowling alleys, cremation, violent Vietnam Vets, mixed identities and Yma Sumac. "Burn After Reading" is about a CIA computer disk that involves gyms, plastic surgery, dildo contraptions, unfortunate encounters, paranoia and some other s**t. It is good s**t but don't ask me to analyze this s**t.

Brilliant rock and roll film; sour, cold portrait

THE DOORS (1991)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"The Doors" is a hallucinatory acid-trip of a rock and roll movie...and a bummer. Ray Manzarek (Kyle MacLachlan) even tells rock superstar Jim Morrison that his last acid trip was a bummer. Exactly. There is no joy, no celebration of rock and roll as an art form in "The Doors," only as a creative means of expression fueled by drugs and nothing more. That is not to say that the movie is worthless, it is often quite brilliant and vivid and furiously alive, but there is precious little to Oliver Stone's vision other than a drunkard who did his best to appear on stage and make himself into a loud raving lunatic.

Jim Morrison is first seen in a truly hypnotic flashback as a kid who observes a car wreck involving a Native American family. The image haunts and fascinates him, and the rest of Stone's Rock and Roll Odyssey shows a Jim Morrison obsessed with death. Val Kilmer plays the young rock and roller who is at peace as a poet living on a rooftop, searching for something transcendental and falling in love with the tragic flower that was Pamela Courson (Meg Ryan, in a role that far out shadows her overbearingly cutesy rom-coms of the late 90's). When Morrison can't bear the criticism of his NYU short films, he starts writing lyrics and lets his pal, Ray Manzarek (MacLachlan), hear them as he sings. Before you know it, a band forms as they record songs such as the iconic "Light My Fire" (when Morrison takes his first crack at it, written by Robby Krieger, it will give you goosebumps).

The band calls themselves The Doors but Jim often sings at clubs with his back to the audience. Pretty soon, he faces them and begins to improvise ("This is the End" has some impromptu lyrics with regards to, well, incest that shocks the audience). The band members, including Ray on keyboards, John Densmore on drums (a fantastic Kevin Dillon) and Krieger on guitar (the underrated Frank Whaley), aren't receptive to Morrison's drug-fueled rages on stage and off. When Morrison isn't allegedly exposing himself on stage, he urinates inside a bar. When he isn't tripping on acid in the middle of the desert, he is destroying a Thanksgiving meal prepared by Pam, hoping she will stab him to death. He is an unwieldy, defiant soul who needs death to be lurking (Death makes a frequent cameo appearance in the guise of a bald man) to obtain potency when having sex. When Jim isn't screwing every groupie on tour, he finds some measure of solace with reporter Patricia Kennealy (Kathleen Quinlan), a Celtic Pagan whom he marries though he doesn't take the ceremony seriously.

Sometimes Morrison changes the lyrics when performing on the Ed Sullivan stage, sometimes he makes pronouncements that come out of left field ("Let's make a road movie in black and white. We will call it Zero"). More often than not, the man is not really attuned to his surroundings - he is outside of them.

For a visual journey back to the late 1960's and early 1970's, "The Doors" is a hyperkinetic, expressively high-pitched and poetic assault on the senses that captures the essence of the times - it is like stepping into a time machine and going back to an era I never got to witness. Never has the desert looked so beautifully mesmerizing in any film (excepting Antonioni's "The Passenger") and never has concert footage looked and felt so remarkable, as if you were there with the audience at a live show (the show stopping "Break on Through to the Other Side" number is an unbelievable sequence that has to be seen to be believed). No one can argue that Oliver Stone is an immeasurably gifted director with a keen visual eye (thanks largely to gifted cinematographer Robert Richardson). Some scenes inspire awe, such as Morrison in one of several trance states at a party where he meets Andy Warhol (Crispin Glover, relishing his cameo while licking his lips) while Lou Reed's "Heroin" plays in the background; Mimi Rogers as a sexy photographer who captures a glorious, iconic image of Jim as he removes his shirt during a photo shoot; the stunning overhead shot of Venice Beach as Ray tries to meditate as the McCoys' "Hang on Sloopy" plays; an accurate depiction of a college audience's reaction to Jim's "pretentious" student film (the student film is not an actual recreation of any of Jim's work); the desert and the caves where Jim sees the ghosts of Native Americans from that horrifying car crash of his youth, and much more. Stone has captured the look and feel of the era but not the man, and that is largely his fault. Anyone who has read a book on Morrison or seen the 2009 documentary "When You're Strange" knows that Jim may have been a hardcore alcoholic and an unrepentant drug addict, but that is only half the story.

I've seen "The Doors" in theaters twice and on video several times, and every time I watch it, I am riveted...and depressed. Those reactions may be the intentions of Oliver Stone, a director who makes you feel numb by the end of most of his films, but I wanted more out of Jim Morrison. There are half-second flashes of Morrison's humor, especially when after a recording of one his songs, his groupies are told to leave the studio and he says, "Okay, see you all later." I also love the moment when Jim tells a crowd outside of the Whisky a Go Go, "Come on! How many of you people know you are really alive?" It is Jim sending his message of opening the doors of perception. The tragedy, perhaps a false one, is that Jim stayed in a druggy trance until the end of his life. The real Patricia Kennealy had once stated what Jim wrote to her in a letter: "My side is cold without you." That is the Jim Morrison we only see flashes of - Stone's fervor feels cold without it.   

Neither here, nor there

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2001)

I can't figure the Coens out. First, they craft a beautifully filmed atrocity like "O'Brother, Where Art Thou?" and the next year, they craft one of the best films of their career, "The Man Who Wasn't There." Go figure. The Coens are nuts but I like the fact that you never know what they will come up with next. "The Man Who Wasn't There" is a return to their film noir roots, originated by "Blood Simple" and later followed by "Fargo." What is astounding is not so much the noir elements of their latest story but that the look and feel of the film is an homage to the film noir of the 1930's and 40's with rich blacks and silhouettes clouding every scene. And those who consider black-and-white photography to be pretentious have no concept of what film noir is.

Billy Bob Thornton stars as a laconic barber named Ed Crane who works in the small town of Santa Rosa, California, circa 1949. He is married to the usually drunk Doris Crane (Frances McDormand) who is cheating on him. It turns out she is having an affair with her boss, Big Dave (James Gandolfini), who is ready to improve his store and make adjustments. Ed Crane indirectly sends a note demanding 10,000 dollars from Big Dave in exchange for keeping quiet about the affair. Only Ed has something else in mind with the money. A fastidious dry-cleaning salesman (Coen regular Jon Polito) needs a partner for his business and Ed happily obliges. Of course, it is unwise and unfair to say much more because the film is not as dependent on surprise as it is on characters who act on instinct, thus surprising us at every turn with their motives. 

The Coens have expressed their admiration for the late "dirty" novelist James Cain, who penned the deliciously naughty film noir classic "Double Indemnity." But the Coens are not as interested on twists and turns as they are on Ed's dilemma that shifts from a murder where someone else is wrongly held responsible to a life where he questions his own existence, adding an analogy about how hair grows back even when someone is dead. There are hints of other aspects to Ed's life, namely that he is living a pointless existence. He is a damn good barber and sees himself as more than just a barber, but what else is he? In one tense scene, Big Dave even asks Ed, "what kind of man are you?" Ed barely smiles much, has nothing to say and pays particular attention to other people's thoughts. He is not happily married but is devoted to his wife enough to shave her legs while she takes a bath, knowing full well she is adulterous. Ed also wants to help a seemingly talented pianist, Birdy (Scarlett Johansson), despite the fact that she has no interest in a musical career. It is obvious that Ed is unhappy in his station in life and wants to move on to other things, like the dry-cleaning business. 

In the world of film noir, the fatalistic antihero is usually virile and potent in his sexual drive, drawn to circumstances beyond his moral control. Ed is not your usual protagonist - he is not quite virile, definitely asexual and possibly impotent but he also means well. He is not quite driven to circumstances beyond his control because he basically instigates them - he just has no control of the consequences. Ed is also an observer of other people and their actions and Billy Bob Thornton is superb at evoking simple gestures through looks and glances - he is such a powerfully magnetic actor that his eyes say it all. Moments like the dinner sequence come to mind where he sees his wife laughing up a storm with Big Dave while he sits quietly nodding and barely smiling. I also enjoyed the scene where he observes Birdy talking to a male friend of hers and you see a glimmer of jealousy in his eyes. But the sexuality of Ed is also put to the test, such as the scene where the perspiring salesman makes a pass at him, or where Birdy wants to please Ed for his interest in her future in ways he had not intended. Ed wants to help people if for no better reason than to improve his life or bring some joy to an empty, pointless one.

"The Man Who Wasn't There" is consistently intriguing and gratifying from start to finish. The Coens and cinematographer Roger Deakins have encapsulated everything about noir they have learned, to instill a sense of dread and impending doom. Just like David Lynch's "Muholland Drive," there is also a fascination with the era of the late 40's and early 1950's when Roswell and communism were majorly hot topics and when couples had to learn how to live inside a house together after the war. Some of this is beautifully realized in the scenes between Ed and Doris who seem uneasy in their comfortable home - they just learn to get used to each other.

"The Man Who Wasn't There" is film noir with a postmodernist edge only in its depiction of a man who is not quite here or there - he is a nobody with no ego. Like "The Deep End," it represents a new route for the film noir leading men and women characters where they remain unaffected by the twists and turns their lives take, unaware of what is coming ahead. Pure fatalism in an existential climate where men and women do not participate in their fates as much as observe them.

Coens traveling nowhere

O'BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2000)

I sat watching the Coen Bros. latest film, "O'Brother, Where Art Thou?" in stunned silence. I certainly watched with admiration that the Coens would be interested in the Depression era. I liked the art direction and the cinematography by gifted cinematographer Roger Deakins, who also photographed "Fargo." The film has a sense of time and place, and it has all the hallmarks of a wonderfully crafted period piece. The problem is that there is no attitude, no edge, no life. In fact, this remains the most lifeless, laughless comedy I've seen in years, and the Coens are to blame entirely for this misfire.

The film begins promisingly enough with the shot of a chain gang working on a railroad. Three prisoners escape and keep ducking across an open wheat field, unseen by the prison guards. They are Ulysses Everett McGill (thin mustached George Clooney), Pete (John Turturro), and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) - three fools with not one brain cell to their name. Nevertheless, Ulysses considers himself the leader of the group as they try unsuccessfully to hop on a freight train. Later, their chains are cut by a local who turns them in to the cops. The trio escape, finding themselves in one comical situation after another. Ulysses's intent is to find some secretly stashed money that they can split among themselves. Along this journey, they encounter trigger-happy Babyface Nelson (Michael Badalucco) who hates to be called Babyface; a one-eyed, vicious Bible salesman (John Goodman); members of the Klu Klux Klan; a remote radio station man (Stephen Root) where the trio cut a record as the Soggy Bottom Boys, and three sirens by a river who luxuriate their sex appeal in one of the most surreal setpieces the Coens have ever devised in their career.

And yet I was mortified by how little any of this made me laugh, much less chuckle. I sat watching all these events unfold on screen yet none of it engaged me on any level. Every sequence is flat and joyless, including a KKK rally that is neither ominous nor remotely funny. There is one brief segment involving the possibility that Pete has turned into a horny toad but it never leads anywhere. The sequences hang loosely with no weight or substance.

The actors do not help in the least. Clooney, Turturro and Nelson merely react with artificial expressions that seem less alive than those found in a Norman Rockwell painting. The Coens refuse to invest any humanity in these characters so that every single situation, every actor, every line is reinforced with a robotic mentality that produces no chemistry, no interest and no imagination. Holly Hunter shows up in a throwaway cameo as McGill's previous lover who finds him less than "bona fide." She shows some strength and vitality and refuses to come off as an automaton or a cartoonish caricature, unlike the rest of the cast.

"O'Brother, Where Art Thou?" reminded me of the frenetic road comedy by the Coens known as "Raising Arizona," which has become something of a cult classic and which I less than admire. I suppose their over-the-top brand of humor of the anything-goes school of comedy doesn't click with me at all, as I was also one of the few who heavily disliked "The Hudsucker Proxy." I admire their intentions in creating a zany comedic period piece (and thus basing it on Homer's "The Odyssey") but I found nothing here to connect with me on any level. Perhaps it is time for them to go back to their film noir roots, "Blood Simple" and "Fargo," two of my favorites by the Coens. Here, the Coens seem to be dangerously close to traveling nowhere.

Abandon ye Millions

A MILLION TO JUAN (1994)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Paul Rodriguez's "A Million to Juan" seemingly wants to be a raucous, wild comedy about greed, perhaps a touch of "Brewster's Millions" with a Latino edge. Rodriguez, serving as a debuting director, constructs "A Million to Juan" as a comedy with more dramatic moments, accentuated by a commentary on illegal immigration and the fear of reporting on slumlords that could lead to deportation. The film is not a total success but it is a suitable enough entertainment to make one wish it took more chances.

Rodriguez is the title character, an undocumented L.A. citizen (not an illegal immigrant) living with his son, Alejandro (Jonathan Hernandez), and two roommates in a tight slum of an apartment. The apartment building is in such shambles that the slumlord (a wicked bastard played by Paul Williams) refuses to fix the heating system. Juan wants a life with his son that doesn't include him selling oranges on the street corner by the freeway. One smoggy day in East L.A., an unseen stranger in a white limo hands Juan a million dollar check. The catch is that Juan can spend it, as long as he gives it back by the end of a 30-day trial period (not sure I really get the point of that - at least in "Brewster's Millions," the main character was able to spend the money and earn more if spent under strict regulations. Of course, this is based on Mark Twain's "The Million Pound Bank Note" where this presentation of the note is enough to warrant full credit at any store). Nevertheless, Juan and his two roommates show the check to the bank and plenty of high-end businesses and he never spends a dime - showing the check grants Juan collateral to get free meals, free groceries, free cars, free everything, including a Latina who craves a man with a nice car and a job. In actuality, Juan has his romantic sights set on an INS case worker (Polly Draper) who is impressed by Juan's ambitions to someday run a restaurant.

"A Million to Juan" is a safe, family-friendly film that barely exploits its premise. It never takes its central idea and runs with it - it mostly runs circles around it. Juan never spends a dime and would rather be working and do away with the check - are you kidding me? The screenplay by Robert Grasmere and Francisca Matos spends its time instead with the INS case worker and other supporting characters, particularly some neighbors that results in a tragedy which does little for the comic output of the movie.

I am not completely disregarding "A Million to Juan." Paul Rodriguez is a likable enough actor and his and other characters are hardly depicted as stereotypes (well, with the exception of the Latina and Mr. Gerardo's "Rico, Suave" act). The characters are mostly written with a touch of humanity and the immigration issues are brought into the mix with honesty and some biting humor. But none of this holds enough water for its premise that is open to so many possibilities - all squandered for the sake of a predictable plot and an ending that is sweet yet hardly unexpected. I was expecting a comic tale of greed where Juan learns that money isn't everything. Instead, I got a movie about a familial, romantic, nice guy who has no greedy inclinations and just wants to open a restaurant. 

Disney on Ice again

FROZEN (2013)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Frozen" is a delicate, tasty Disney treat...that we kind of have seen before again and again. Based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" (which it barely resembles), it is fun for the whole family but like P.L. Travers had said about the Disney film adaptation of her "Mary Poppins" book, it is heavily diluted.

The green land of Arendelle has got two distinct princesses, both sisters who love to play with snow and ice. Thanks to Princess Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) special power of creating both snow and ice, the younger princess Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) loves to slide up and down the snow hills that are created right in her huge bedroom. A near fatal accident for Anna causes grief for Elsa and her parents, who are told by a rock Troll King that she must hide her powers from her precocious younger sister. This means no more snowmen or snow hills, and almost no real contact (Elsa stays insider her bedroom, never coming out to build any snowmen for fear of killing her only sister). As the years go by, Anna meets, falls in love and wants to marry a prince, Prince Hans (Santino Fontana), but Elsa forbids it. An argument during Anna's coronation as Queen leads to chaos as Elsa accidentally turns the whole land into ice and thus creates an eternal winter. Anna leaves and creates her own icy Fortress of Solitude.

Nothing that happens in "Frozen" can't be anticipated. There is the cute and funny comic relief, Olaf (Josh Gad), an amiable snowman who follows Elsa on her dangerous trip to reconcile with Anna; the mountain man and inevitable true love for Elsa, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), and his trusty reindeer, Seth, and the wicked and greedy, ah, I will not reveal that one but there is a character who does a 180 that you'll see coming through the hazy, windy frozen tundra. Andersen's original fairy tale "Snow Queen" is vastly different in tone and characters and a darker, though no less magical vision (No princess sisters in that tale, they are actually young neighborly friends, plus there is also an evil Troll and a magic mirror. The Snow Queen is more of a mysterious figure). "Frozen" almost feels like a repeat of "Brave" but far less idiosyncratic. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy "Frozen," I did and I love the songs (a comment you won't hear from me often when it comes to recent musical animated tales) and you can't help but like the two princesses, but the movie feels like warmed-up leftovers from other tastier confections in the Disney and Pixar canon. I only wish someone followed "Snow Queen" more closely to the letter but Disney is not in the business of riskier family fare, just more family-friendly fare.

Holocaust as a farcical game

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (LA VITA E BELLA) (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1997)

Roberto Benigni is the modern-day Chaplin - quixotic, energetic and clownish. He's always surrounded by societal misfits and higher-ups who want no part of him, yet Benigni always finds a way to immerse himself in their company and conform to society's expectations, all the while still remaining buffoonish. "Life is Beautiful" is his latest film as writer-director, but this time he's confronted by a deeper reality - the Holocaust.

Benigni stars as Guido, a Jewish-Italian buffoon who continually runs into a pretty schoolteacher (Nicoletta Braschi), whom he desperately longs for. The first time, he confronts her at a farm where he makes off with some eggs. Then he makes a merry trip to one of the picturesque villages of Tuscany, seeking employment as a waiter and living with his uncle. Of course, he keeps running into the schoolteacher, who admires his persistence. In one incredibly riotous scene, Guido impersonates an official who is to lecture a class on races. Guido makes such a spectacle of himself by undressing in front of the class and making observations about racism that it practically had me falling out of my seat laughing. Guido finally wins the teacher's heart and they get married, have a son, and run their own bookstore. During the last hour of the film, Guido and his son are captured by the Nazis and taken to a concentration camp. It is here where Guido tries to convince his son that it is all a game, a contest played by military-style officials where the grand prize is a real tank!

The first hour of "Life is Beautiful" is sweet and comical, among Benigni's finest moments on screen. It is on par with the rampant silliness of "Johnny Stecchino." The second half is not as ingenious, and I think mainly because Benigni chose a subject that is difficult to take on any comic level. The notion is that Guido tries to shelter his son from the horrors of the Nazi death camps by accentuating that it is all a game, a farce that can be reckoned with. In doing so, Benigni has removed all the inhumanity and horror from the Holocaust - he turns it into another one of Guido's comical pranks. Some of it is successful - I like the scene where Guido serves as translator for a German commandant who explains what the duties of the prisoners are in the camps. There is also a brief moment where Guido sees a mountainous hill of corpses, all photographed as if they were a glass painting. By the end of the film, though, the theme of survival and sacrifice is lost when we don't really see what was lost or gained from the experience. It doesn't help that the camps and their surroundings are photographed in the same colorful, picturesque quality as the Tuscan village scenes.

"Life is Beautiful" is a paradox in theory - it presents the Holocaust as a fairy tale, and expects us to laugh along with Guido. If we had seen it from Guido's son's point-of-view, the comical scenes would have worked better. His son surely would have had his own wild-eyed view of one of the 20th century's greatest atrocities. And the last scene of the American tank arriving at the camps reeks of Spielbergian sentiment.

In general, "Life is Beautiful" does so many things right, and is often wonderful and touching. Benigni is one of the few uncommonly pleasurable actors in the movies today, and he has agreeable chemistry with his real-life wife Braschi ("Down By Law"). It was a mistake, though, to transcend the meaning of the Holocaust by turning it into a farce. The movie doesn't have the atmosphere or the sardonic pull of the similar Lina Wertmuller classic, "Seven Beauties," which accepted the reality of the war and had the superb comic actor Giancarlo Giannini at its center, saving his own life by sleeping with the commandant. Sure, we all make sacrifices, but sometimes we need to see what we're making them for.