Van Helsing and Dracula mano-a-mano

VAN HELSING (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 2004)

A friend of mine told me that today, movies are aimed to thrill at every second that counts. Audiences want not just vampires in their sleek, creepy-crawly mode, they want vampires that shoot other fang-bearing animals and indulge in fist-fighting. It isn't enough for someone like Professor Van Helsing to confront Dracula with a crucifix and a wooden stake, the good professor must also be able to fight mano-a-mano with the Count. My, the glory days of Universal horror films when the biggest special effect was usually seeing a transformation scene or a vampire changing into a bat.

In this frothy adaptation of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein," Van Helsing is now Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) who may or may not be working for the Vatican (and he is no professor). This Van Helsing is like a secret agent, a hired killer, sent to kill his share of vampires and werewolves, not unlike the crossbow-packing James Woods character from "John Carpenter's Vampires." His first encounter is with Mr. Hyde (Robbie Coltrane), shown as an overgrown, hulkish sociopath, though he appears too animated to be realistic. Next mission: find Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) and kill him. Also up for the impossible mission is the beautifully seductive Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale), the last of her family's ancestry whose sole mission had always been to destroy Dracula. Why? Well, Dracula is not just a bloodsucking vampire. He also has numerous offspring which can be brought to life by electricity. The offspring are, by the way, not just vampires but vampire bats in womb-like cocoons (not unlike "Aliens"). In this wisp of a plot, a whining Frankenstein's Monster (Shuler Hensley) also figures into the action, as well as the Wolf Man. And I'll be darned if there isn't a nod to James Bond, as well as "League of Extraordinary Gentleman."

"Van Helsing" is chock full of special-effects and CGI effects - in fact, the movie has more effects than characters. Vampires morph into winged vampires, electricity shines ever so brightly and strongly in Frankenstein's laboratory, and there are several werewolf transformations that are not any better than the transformations in "Hulk." We also see the traditional burning windmills, ostentatious masked balls (there may be a nod in there to "Fearless Vampire Killers"), carriages that careen wildly, crucifixes, torches, silhouettes, etc. There is even a stupendous opening sequence in black-and-white that is a hark back to what made those early horror films so much fun. But this new movie is not much fun, just a lot of fire and brimstone with too much rapid-cutting and far too many effects. Though there are some brief moments of excitement and a couple of scares (and Beckinsale is always a fetching visual), there is not enough to sustain a feature-length film. It is as if director Stephen Sommers ("The Mummy") was packing in as much as he could in every frame to keep the audience awake. Did he think he was making "Lord of the Rings"?

"Van Helsing" is chock full of itself, a big, lumbering, excessively loud whimper of a blockbuster. There are moments when human characters are flung across the screen with such force that you're surprised their bones remain unbroken. Scenes like that remind you what an unbelievably preposterous movie it really is.

Death of Imagination

THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT (2006)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I am no prude of any existing order. If a film's subject offends me, then it means it is working to some degree - it is asking me to question why I find it offensive (and this is before I even see it). Some films are morally objectionable in that regard but only if one is prudish and perhaps one may find that there may be more than meets the eye after seeing it. That is to say, the objectionable material that one deems offensive may only be of secondary or tertiary importance. "Pulp Fiction" is a good example of a film that is seemingly amoral and extremely violent; looking back, the film is actually more morally grounded than its infinite copycats and its violence is hardly the subject of the film. Then there are films that are morally problematic - "Birth of a Nation" may be the most famous example of a film that offends because it is racist and had inspired more people to sign up for the KKK than any other. Purposeful or not, it offends our sensibilities because its unflattering and stereotypical view of black people (who are mostly played by whites in blackface) is meant to draw a superiority complex. That is what one can infer as the primary subject of the film.

The same can be said of "The Death of a President." This is a film that is about the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush. Although the film uncovers an FBI investigation into the matter and a Muslim man from Syria as the probable assassin, "Death of a President" is only interested in the assassination per se - it never evolves into anything else. Yes, there are interviews with Dubya's closest advisers and the disgruntled FBI men and some of this is convincing in its faux-documentary style but it gnaws at you for what the set up is, and the set up is wrong in theory. A fictional president would've been more noteworthy for what is a fictional assassination. To use (at the time) an actual sitting President as the basis for a worthless film exercise is more than offensive - it feels like downright heresy. This is something that not even Michael Moore would attempt, and his "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary was about as anti-Bush as anyone could get. There are some not so subtle references here to JFK's assassination and the notion of a lone gunman as well, and not much more I am afraid.

The end titles reveal that the Patriot Act III will come into fruition (Vice President Cheney becomes the sitting President - talk about heresy) and these laws will further limit the civil liberties of the average American citizen. If the filmmakers had the balls to make a film that deals with our civil liberties post-9/11 and sans a pretend assassination, then it would have made for a powerful political commentary. All we get is an assassination and the death of imagination.

Master of the House in Connecticut

THE STEPFORD WIVES (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally reviewed in June, 2004

I think men today would love to have a wife who can completely nurture them. I mean, what man loves to wash dishes, cook, do the laundry, and clean house? So the notion that a woman can still be subservient to the man of the house is not just antediluvian thinking - heck, when my father remarried recently, he was looking for that ideal woman. The original "Stepford Wives" was an examination of such values, just when the women's liberation movement was in full swing. I am not sure the film was a condemnation of such attitudes since its ideas were wrapped around a thriller, focusing on how women are turned into robots. This new "Stepford" film is clearly condemning such thinking and, instead of utilizing the original's thriller mode, it opts to turn the whole story into a comedy. Success or yet another needless remake? I think it succeeds.

A brunette-haired Nicole Kidman stars as Joanna Eberhart, a successful TV executive of reality shows who is suddenly jobless. She tries determinedly to hold back her anger, yet she lets out a shrill yell when she exits her job via the elevator. Then there's Joanna's husband, Walter (Matthew Broderick), who resigns from the same network - the twist being that he works in a lower position than Joanna. Then Walter announces that they are moving to Stepford, Connecticut to work out their marriage flaws. This is presumably a place where most troubled married couples go to, thanks to the supervision of the impossibly shrill, always beaming Claire Wellington (Glenn Close). Wellington is the real-estate agent and the woman whom all Stepford wives look up to.

But this "Pleasantville" town seems to perfect to be true. Wellington teaches an aerobics class where the women wear dresses instead of sweats and instructs them to be "washing machines." Each house in this community comes equipped with a computer system that locks all doors, checks room temperature, offers diet advice, and reminds one of food products needed when the refrigerator is empty. Oh, and for some reason, there is a robot dog that is as clumsy and irritating as a real dog. This is also a town where the women have a book club discussing a Christmas decorations book, where the rallying cry for a men's club is simply "To Stepford!", and where nobody seems to occupy a job (my kind of place). The joke is that all the Stepford wives were once CEO's and, if I understood correctly, the men worked under them. Seems like the ideal place for Joanna and Walter.

Something is off in this town, though. The women of Stepford may be robots (I guess we are still not ready to accept female CEO's) thanks to the men who still believe in female enslavement. There is a creepy, frightfully funny scene where Walter discovers one wife is used as an ATM machine! The one who seems to be running this town is Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken), Claire's husband, who has politically incorrect ideas about women as shown in another creepy moment, a Stepford educational film done in the style of the 1950's. If you are ugly, we can make you beautiful and subservient.

The original "Stepford Wives" had an anonymous air of indifference to the town of Stepford, it seemed like the town was no different from any other town in America. That may have been the point but I do prefer the look of the pristine, far too sanitary look of this new Stepford. Shots of the clean supermarket, the elegant bedrooms and the refinery of the study rooms all pinpoint to a sense of discomfort. That is why it is fun to see one Stepford wife, Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler), an author of memoirs with sarcastic titles, living in a house of a seemingly irreparable mess. And some other wives, like the gay, Viggo-Mortensen-loving Roger (Roger Bart), seem to play along with the absurdity.

As written by Paul Rudnick and directed by Frank Oz, "Stepford Wives" aims to be comedic and ironic rather than horrifying. The original was more straightforward and occasionally thrilling, but its bland direction took away some of the bite. Here, we get more bite and more acerbic writing simply because the concept couldn't be played so straight nowadays. The movie aims to be satiric, to ridicule the idea that women would ever want to be slaves to their groom. It ups the ante on the original by saying that men do not wish to be equal to women, and they certainly never want to work for them.

Nicole Kidman shows enough edge and pain in her performance to take it just slightly over the top. As evidenced by her opening scene, she is a master of exaggerated haughtiness who knows when to restrain it and when to explode (as she did in "To Die For"). The character is as full-bodied as Katharine Ross's in the original and there is one scene, where she breaks down in front of Walter after admitting she was a workaholic, that is indicative of Kidman's emotions coming to the surface in a town where such emotions are suppressed.

As for the rest of the cast, it is a relatively mixed bag. Beer-bellied John Lovitz as Midler's husband? Matthew Broderick seems lost as Kidman's husband, neither convincing nor serviceable in the role. Christopher Walken seems adrift in a typically strange role - just his mannerisms can give you the creeps yet by now they are too predictable. Faith Hill could have had more scenes as another Stepford wife in the background - her smile is so forced that it does indeed seem robotic. Only Glenn Close rises to the challenge of playing a wicked caricature with the most delicate subliminal gestures and facial reactions to indicate something other than a happy woman - this is among her best work since "Dangerous Liaisons." And Roger Bart as the only homosexual of this group (a novel touch) has dozens of delectable one-liners and zingers.

"The Stepford Wives" is a ridiculously tame movie yet always entertaining and alive. The climax leaves more questions than answers. Still, it has some pointed notions of women's place in a working society where men want to reclaim their position as the master of the house. As Claire Wellington says at one point, "Where can you find such a place? Well, Connecticut, of course."

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.