Tapping into the extraordinary

THE IRON GIANT (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1999)

The 1950's is an era that has always fascinated me, and so any film that focuses on such a long forgotten time and place of innocence and sensibility is one I look forward to. Earlier this year, there was "October Sky," a film centered on an ambitious boy's dreams of rockets in a West Virginia mining town. "The Iron Giant" is the latest film set in the 1950's when the Cold War had just started, focusing on a farm boy befriending a giant metal robot unaware of its potential harm.

The film begins with an innocent, likable lad, Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal), who desperately wants a pet but his single mother (Jennifer Aniston) will not allow it. One day, the antenna at the house fails to work, and Hogarth notices that something gnawed and bit its way to his house. He searches in the middle of the woods near the power station and finds a giant metal robot wrestling with the electrical power lines. The boy is mystified and in awe of this giant creature - he slowly observes how calm it is and befriends it. Of course, how can he explain to his mom that his new pet is over twenty stories high? He tries to hide it in the barn, but it manages to make the other parts of its body function on their own. In one hectic scene, Hogarth pants and squirms trying to push the robot's hand out the bathroom window while his mother knocks on the door.

"The Iron Giant" has a little bit of everything. There are mad generals, insanely clumsy government agents, lazy beatniks, Mad magazines, disbelieving townsfolk, Atomic Age training films, junkyards, etc. Just about anything associated with the 1950's is presented here with no shame (those training films are hilarious), as well as various rock songs from that period.

"The Iron Giant" also has charm and pathos to spread, and it does it convincingly with the simple metal giant who is also a weapon sent from the enemy (possibly the Russians?) It is friendly, jovial, learns how to speak and eats anything metal, but it can also fire missiles when threatened to defend itself. The advertising for "The Iron Giant" and the look of the robot strangely reminded me of the short Nazi animated film shown in 1991's "The Rocketeer" - a combination of shock and terror at the possibility of something threatening our world during a time of political chaos.

"The Iron Giant" is often preachy, reverential and its anti-gun message could not come at a better time (This review was written in 1999, not long after the Colombine Massacre, but it could be relatively more subtle than proclaiming that guns are bad). There are the typical stereotypes and cliches but in a sense, none of that matters. For an animated film that is as well-designed and clever as this one, this is entertaining, boisterous, simple fun thriving on simple pleasures. "The Iron Giant" taps into our dreams of finding a genuine friend in the form of something extraordinary, and it delivers.

Hit the Road with Grandma

TAMMY (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Melissa McCarthy has an unquestionable talent of making us care for her, no matter what her character does. In the case of a screw-up like Tammy, this is a woman who is clumsy, late for work, unhappily married, something of a dolt and has very few scruples. Most actresses could not pull this off unless they had a solid director at the helm and the ability to show some level of empathy. Melissa does it in spades in "Tammy," a sweet and often hysterically funny film.

Tammy is shown as an irascible, butterfingered woman right from the start. She hits a deer with her car (the animal survives and nearly kicks her), is fired from her Topper Jack's retail job, finds out her husband is cheating on her, and decides to skip town and start over. Of course, Tammy always makes such pronouncements when something goes wrong, as her mother (Allison Janney) reminds her, so she takes an impromptu trip with her diabetic, hard-drinking grandmother (Susan Sarandon) on a road trip to Niagara Falls. Tammy changes her mind and is ready to go back home, but her grandmother persists (the car belongs to her after all) and off they go. Butterfingered, yes? Yes, indeed, as Tammy gets into many chaotic incidents. One mishap involves a rented motorboat; another involves a married man, Earl (Gary Cole) and his son, Bobby (Mark Duplass), at a restaurant where Grandma gets lucky in the backseat of her car with Earl. Tammy is smitten with Bobby but sex is not in the wind beneath her wings (Eeek! I can't believe I just wrote that). More chaos ensues when Grandma and Tammy are jailed, and then there is the robbery of a Topper Jack's of all things.

As I said earlier, none of this would work if it were not for the crucial casting of McCarthy (a brilliant comic actress who has done her best work on TV's "Mike and Molly" and SNL host duties) and Susan Sarandon, a performance where she injects just enough depth to what could have been a cartoonish role - she embodies doses of frailty, humanity and strength. Same with McCarthy as the frail Tammy who learns to move past her own troubled existence to a higher plane. It takes a lot to get there but she manages.

Kudos must also go to Kathy Bates as Lenore, Pearl's lesbian cousin, who is always magnetic on screen and gives the movie extra juice whenever she appears (credit the writers, McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone, for not making her lesbianism a major plot point). Mark Duplass brings a restrained charm to his role as Bobby - you know he will end up with Tammy because he is tickled pink by her aggressive personality. Only character actor Gary Cole and the reliable Toni Collette appear to be short-shrifted in roles that could've used more screen time.

Directed with a measured depth of grace and ample notes of humanity by Ben Falcone in a movie that could've been a wild, demented, one-dimensional farce, "Tammy" is an enjoyable lark, often spirited with many laughs, and fast on its feet when it needs to be. The film was hated by the critics and Melissa McCarthy may not be revered for this film in the long run, but it should not be dismissed either. The film has a lot more heart than anyone might realize. 

Indie roots need more flavor

JUMP CUT (1993)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

After watching five minutes of "Jump Cut," a pseudo-documentary about the making of a film that details the making of a film, I was ready to throw in the towel and watch something else. This is not a normal reaction of mine but this film almost made me say something Larry David once said before performing stand-up for a crowd: "Uhhhh, no." But I do try to give every film a chance (Lord knows I've tried with the comedies of Yahoo Serious). The opening of "Jump Cut" features three guys with their hands tied from a ceiling. Why? I don't know. Next we have several endless shots of a van traveling through the highway while we hear a family squabbling and the daughter pleads to use the bathroom. This goes on for an eternity until the family finally pulls over at a gas station, at which point the married couple do some more squabbling while the daughter says she doesn't have to use the bathroom. The van pulls out and then the daughter pleads again to pee!

After a nerve-wracking, mind-numbing, dreary opening, "Jump Cut" actually improves when we learn that all this is part of the making of a movie. We know this because the writer-director Lawrence Gardner, who plays David Larson (the director of this movie), breaks the fourth wall and tells us. Most of "Jump Cut," which is seemingly shot in 16mm color film that resembles some 1970's flick, is about David Larson trying to make a movie for $350,000. He's got filmmaking experience and has one or two less than viable connections in the industry. He procures help from Jack (Roy Conrad), a wannabe entrepreneur who make a living collecting trash from drive-ins and restaurants, whom David selects as a producer. The cameraman is Jack's brother, Glenn (Peter Petty), who tries to create art with metal and works alongside Jack (though these two hardly look like brothers). Before trying to make a movie, they try to find work filming projects on the side and most go disastrously wrong.

Much of "Jump Cut" features the minutiae of shooting a film and Murphy's Law - what can go wrong will go wrong. I enjoyed watching Lawrence Gardner, a laid-back, patient man who is trying to make the best of everything. Roy Conrad is very funny as the rather impatient producer who also tries his best to get financing, often to no avail. Peter Petty is pretty much a disaster as the lunkhead of a cinematographer.

The pleasures are few in "Jump Cut" - some of it is drawn out, rather dreary and is a little painful to watch (especially those opening scenes). Some scenes stand out - I love the shooting of a commercial where the lead actor does nothing but complain. I have seen better films about making films but I would not totally count out "Jump Cut." See it just once, and you'll like it a little more if you have ever been involved in the making of a low-budget film. But like shooting any film, it is a bit of a pain to get through it.

Footnote: "Jump Cut" was actually made in 1987 but it seemingly got no distribution until it was picked up by Peacock Pictures in 1993, a UK company, and eventually was released on DVD in 2003. According to imdb, writer-director Lawrence Gardner disappeared and never made another film.

Consume mass quantities of America

CONEHEADS (1993)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I only faintly recall the SNL sketch with Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman as extraterrestrials from the planet Remulak who crash land on Earth and are accepted into society. Their most distinguishing characteristic is that their heads are shaped like cones, and Earthlings could care less. That concept carries over in the movie version of the Coneheads, a slight but very agreeable, pleasant diversion that at least shows a decent movie can be made out of a SNL skit.

Beldar (Aykroyd) and Prymaat (Curtin) are the Coneheads who matriculate into society, with the hope of eventually returning to their home planet. Beldar works at fixing electronics, drives a cab with a turban around his cone, becomes a driving instructor, and eventually buys a nice middle-class rancher house. Prymaat vacuums the house and sucks the dust and debris into her mouth. She eventually gets pregnant and let's say that the Coneheads' mating style is not even close to how humans mate. Naturally, they have a daughter (Michelle Burke, replacing Newman) who has the temerity to get a tattoo on her conehead and date a boisterous auto mechanic (Chris Farley, not as boisterous as he would become). The plot, a thin one at best, involves the INS agent Mr. Seedling (Michael McKean) who wants to capture the Coneheads since they are literally illegal aliens. David Spade plays another INS agent who is forced to take calls for Seedling; he is more of an errand boy than an agent. Some of Seedling's hopes for eliminating illegal aliens crossing into the U.S. border will strike some as all too timely nowadays in our Donald Trump climate.

"Coneheads" is more sweet and upbeat than consistently funny. More scenes of the Coneheads' neighbors, especially Jason Alexander with a toupee and a lawnmower malfunction, could have lent a form of social satire to the proceedings. I still give the movie a pass because I like the Conehead family and their eventual clinging to the American Dream ideal. They are accepted as the mainstream nuclear family unit they are. It is a shame that the writers, including Aykroyd, didn't delve deeper into the irony of it all. The Coneheads consume mass quantities of everything (toilet paper, waffles, not necessarily in that order) and America is all about consumption of materialistic things. They fit right in. 

A Nightmare about Freddy's Nightmares

WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994)

Re-reviewed by Jerry Saravia (October 31st, 2001)

Freddy Krueger is a horror icon on the same level as Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, King Kong. Even lead actress Heather Langenkamp, more or less playing a version of herself, knows it. The character is Wes Craven's invention and it still is an imaginatively created character. Freddy has the burnt pizza face, the glove with four sharp razor blades, a red and green sweater, a fedora hat, and an attitude. The original "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is among the best and most original horror films ever made - a scarefest that examines the psychological dreams and the subconscious of unruly teenagers living on Elm Street who are being pursued in their dreams by a child killer named Freddy. If he kills you in your dreams, you'll wake up dead. The inevitable sequels were not quite on the same level as the original but they were creative, visual tour de forces with excellent special-effects and a jocose Freddy and, in some cases, teen characters worth caring about. Wes Craven was not involved in any of the follow-ups (except for Part 3) but he came up with a new idea in 1994 - a film-within-the-film treatise on the danger of the "Nightmare" movies and how they affect the cast members. It is a noble idea, a postmodernist take on the horror genre, literally deconstructing it. It often works and does manage to deliver some new themes and ideas. 

"Wes Craven's New Nightmare" stars Heather Langenkamp as herself, an actress whose life dramatically changed since she completed the "Nightmare" movies. She has a nice house in L.A., a faithful husband (David Newsom) who works on movie special-effects, and a seemingly disturbed young son named Dylan (Miko Hughes) who watches scenes from the original "Nightmare" movie and even speaks like Freddy (he also loves to read "Hansel and Gretel"). Not all is well as we discover something ominous is happening in the Langenkamp residence. There are the numerous phone calls from an obsessed fan (maybe Freddy); several earthquake tremors; Dylan screaming at the top of his lungs; her husband killed in a car accident (could be Freddy's fault); and so on. Heather meets with several of her movie co-stars (John Saxon and Robert Englund as themselves) to determine what is happening. My feeling is that she dotes on and is overly protective of her son, Dylan, but that's just a thought. Perhaps Dylan shouldn't be watching any of those movies in the first place. What do you think, Heather?

It turns out that Heather is being offered a new role in a new "Nightmare" movie, hence the movie we are watching. Wes's new script had been devised to get rid of the demon who has been unleashed into the world after killing off the fictional character in "Freddy's Dead." As Wes explains in one of the best scenes in the movie, this demon is more powerful and more evil than Freddy and Heather must try to stop him from getting her and her son. It is art imitating life in the broadest sense, and this is possibly the best and most twisted idea in the whole series by far.

Unfortunately, Wes screws it up a tad because he doesn't allow the screenplay to play for some clever thrills and psychological meanings. Instead, he opts for clever inside jokes and unwarranted hysteria. Being a confessed Freddy Krueger fan myself, I enjoyed seeing all the puns and jokes, and I liked seeing some of the actors as themselves (look quickly for Tuesday Knight from "Nightmare 4"), the agents, New Line president Robert Shaye, etc. The movie plays like a docudrama and that's when it works best. It's the dramatic, maybe personal stuff, that doesn't work nearly as well.

The biggest flaw is the crucial casting of the Dylan role: he's played by Miko Hughes who overacts to the hilt and delivers fake screams. This kid is often intolerable and it is difficult to build any kind of sympathy for him or his plight. His performance here reminds me of the insufferable "Pet Sematary" where at least he had an appropriately creepy demeanor. Heather Langenkamp does a relatively fine job of playing herself (and, in one teasing moment with Saxon, as Nancy) and she is at her best in the opening scenes where the phone continually rings and her son continually screams - her dazed, agitated behavior is superbly realized. For the rest of the movie, though, she seems to be playing the character Nancy and not herself. I like the scenes where Heather is more relaxed, such as when she meets with John Saxon at a park or when she converses with Wes at his house. Of course, she may be dreaming the whole film that we are watching which is likely, though if that is not the case then it is hard to say where the distinction lies between dreams versus reality. In fact, Wes's film might be his first official "Dream Film," where it is all a nightmare and where the reality is the nightmare itself. The film is deeply rooted in horror but the psychological is what makes it so unique.

Some of the obligatory dream sequences are excellent, including the magnificent (and overlong) inferno ending where Freddy nearly swallows Dylan! I also liked the terrifying sequence where Dylan walks across a highway where dozens of cars and trucks nearly hit him. But most of the movie tries, and fails, to build suspense through countless earthquakes and numerous telephone rings as in Craven's "Scream." Nothing in the film is particularly as thrilling or compelling as one might hope - it also becomes a little emotionally numbing after a while but never boring.

I saw this film four times because the critics thought so highly of it, and I thought maybe I missed something. The first time I saw it, I hated it - it seemed nothing like the previous films (which, of course, was the whole point. Silly me). The second time I saw it, I thought it was just plain awful. The third time, I saw it on a TNT special (hosted by Joe Bob Briggs) and I appreciated some of the minute subtleties, and the performances that were a lot better than I had anticipated. Director Wes Craven just missed the mark by not investing the psychological, real-life horror of horror movies taking over the lead actors' lives and their families. It's hinted at but it could have been so much more.

In hindsight, "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" is hardly a terrible movie but it is somewhat unfocused - just being self-reverential is not enough. Still, if you're a Freddy Krueger fan and appreciate the postmodernist irony of "Scream," you should check this last Krueger film for the clever puns and the infrequent brilliant nightmare scenes. Wes certainly has more imagination than the average horror director.

Misery Loves Music

HIGH FIDELITY (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally Reviewed: March, 2000

I could not identify with Rob Gordon's unique ability to not only remember the names of past lovers and the extent of their relationships, but to also know which pop/rock and roll songs were playing at the time, exclusively on vinyl. Music is an identifiable factor for Rob, it includes a different era of Fleetwood Mac and Paper Lace, and that is at the heart of Stephen Frears' delicately oddball romantic comedy "High Fidelity," which is more oddball comedy than romantic but it delivers in nearly equal doses and that is part of its charm.

Based on Nick Hornsby's 1995 cult novel of the same name, John Cusack plays the record-loving Rob who owns a small Bohemian-like record shop in Chicago called Championship Vinyl, which specializes in selling records wrapped in plastic (vinyl has not lost its touch since it is still sold in record shops, especially in New York City or Princeton, N.J.). Rob speaks directly to the camera, ruminating on his past top five breakups, most recently Laura (Iben Hjehle), while giving us the pop history of each breakup - the song that played and where it played as a reminder of that misery. Or as Rob puts it, "I don't remember if I was miserable when I listened to pop music or if listening to pop music made me miserable."

Laura has left Rob's pad but he loves her too much to just let go. She lives with a sexual hippie (hilariously portrayed by Tim Robbins) who is a martial-arts master. We get more than a few scenes of Rob dripping wet like a madman in the rain while calling Laura from outside her new home - this almost seems like an extension of the classic "Say Anything" by director Cameron Crowe that also starred Cusack in a similar scenario. All Rob has left in his life, minus Laura, is his record store and two employees, the geeky, apologetic Dick (Todd Luiso) and the musically encyclopedic, irascible Barry (Jack Black) who is ticked off by anyone who does not share his music tastes. I love the moment when they discuss "Evil Dead 2" and its "great soundtrack" or Barry's recommendation to use "You Can't Always Get What You Want" at Laura's father's funeral:

Dick: 'That is an immediate disqualification on the grounds of it being used in "The Big Chill".'

Barry: 'Oh, God. You are right.'

Besides his listless life without Laura, Rob is a part-time DJ and briefly beds a sexy singer (Lisa Bonet) who shares Rob's lovelorn disappointments and sings Peter Frampton songs. And we get glimpses of Rob's obsession over his past loves, shown in brief flashbacks. He is so obsessed that he arranges to meet all five and figure out why he has failed them. Most memorable of these ex-girlfriends include Lili Taylor as an unhappy yet sometimes cheerful woman (only Lili can credibly play such a part) and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a rich, wild, pseudo-intellectual woman who is confused by Rob's need to explain why she left him.

"High Fidelity" is familiar turf, a lot of is reminiscent of some of the best parts of "Singles," one of my favorite comedies of the 90's. Still, thanks to director Stephen Frears' offbeat direction and Scott Rosenberg and Cusack's writing, the laughs come in with terrific precision mainly due to Cusack's dead-on, quirky line readings. The cast is richly entertaining to watch, including the histrionic, energetic Jack Black, and a marvelous Joan Cusack as Rob's friend who is shocked to discover how Rob treated Laura. I also enjoyed the presence of Hjejle - for once in these comedies, a real human being of the opposite sex shows how deeply hurt she is by a man's transgressions. Though the film loses momentum in the last half hour building to the predictable final act with Laura, "High Fidelity" has oodles of charm and a consistently jerky funny bone. It's uneven, like Cusack, but you expected that.

Lord of Darkness steals idyllic light

LEGEND (1985)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Like most Ridley Scott films, "Legend" is far and away one of the most beautifully crafted films in eons, but in terms of story, it is extremely hollow and that can spell danger for a fairy tale of this kind. Feeling like a compendium of fairy tales and magical tales like "The Lord of the Rings" and Grimm's stories, it offers much to be excited by but little to be moved or inspired by.

"Legend" begins with Lil (Mia Sara), a young woman who represents innocence and who is deeply in love with Jack (Tom Cruise, in his first long-haired-hippie-look role), a forest dweller. They live in a land of innocence, and everything is in bright, beatific colors with the sun shining brightly everywhere. Lilies and flowers and tremendous trees fill the area. Unicorns run through the misty waters. Nothing could ever upset this idyllic view, but something inevitably does. There is the prince named the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry) who wants to shut the sunlight from this land forever. He gets help from snickering, ugly creatures with big snot-noses to turn the cheery countryside into a land of gloom and doom. And the one code to live by in this world is to never kill a unicorn but the creatures successfully manage to do just that, causing storms and inclement weather to destroy the serenity.

But this is not enough of a story to make a film of such beauty work. We see fascinating creatures of every size and shape, we see the customary gnomes, fairies, elves, goblins, unicorns and so on, but little here stirs our imagination or involvement. The main human characters, Jack and Lil, are given little depth or any real emotions - they seem to be replicants from director Scott's own "Blade Runner." Whatever love story exists is lost since Cruise and Sara have no durable rapport. The special-effects and the dazzling cinematography take precedence over story and character development.

It is a shame really because "Legend" has some bravura moments. I especially like how Lil approaches a unicorn in one scene, or the dance sequence where Lil is possessed into loving Darkness (a deleted scene from the European version). There is plenty to admire and Scott is efficient at creating a strange new world. Someday, he may put a little more effort into the people that inhabit such a world.