Disinformation about a Veep

THE CONTENDER (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Original Review written in April, 2001

Rod Lurie's "The Contender" has been criticized for taking a strongly liberal, Democratic side as far as the political race is concerned. I hasten to disagree though one can argue but why carp? "The Contender" is about the race for political office, and how in this post-Clinton climate, a presidential nomination is based on one's personal life, not the political.

The fabulous Joan Allen ("Pleasantville," "Nixon") stars as the fierce, determined, stubborn, sexy Laine Hanson, a senator who has just been appointed as a vice-presidential nominee by the President of the United States (Jeff Bridges). Laine is everything a promising new candidate should be: she has a loving husband, a young son, and loves politics. Problem is she is also a woman, and has a sketchy past (not to mention she is an atheist). It is discovered that she may have been involved in explicit sexual acts with several guys while in college. GOP Rep. Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman) is determined to blast the news all over the media - his agenda also stems from his disapproval of a woman in office, regardless of her past actions.

Hanson's solution is clear: either admit to these past indiscretions or admit that they never transpired. But Hanson is fierce and stubborn - she also has some sense of decency. She refuses to admit to anything and would rather keep mum than fall for Runyon's own stubbornness and sense of moral code. What Runyon does not realize is that his own obsession with Hanson's sexual past is likely to put him in conflict with the President and cause a genuine lack of credibility.

"The Contender" can be considered liberal-minded but I take issue with that. I think the film mainly wants us to see how devalued the political process has become. We should not judge a political candidate based on their sexual or personal history. Our focus should be on the candidate's stand on political issues. I am sure everyone can agree that it should be the case with Republican or Democratic parties. Should a woman take office if she could get pregnant while in the midst of a nuclear crisis? Or if she got her period? As Hanson threateningly says at one point to Runyon while having lunch: "If someone has to push that button, be sure it is a woman who is getting laid."

There is a subplot involving an FBI agent inquiring about Hanson and another vice-presidential candidate caught in some hot water over an incident resembling Ted Kennedy's own Chappaquiddick incident. The candidate is Gov. Jack Hathaway (William Petersen), who failed to rescue a woman trapped inside a car in the river. Hathaway's noble yet failed attempt at a rescue risks his chances of becoming vice president. Again we are asked, why should a man's nobility in a decidedly apolitical incident ruin his political future?

"The Contender" has great performances and several robust sequences of cunning direction and acute sensibility. Not one shot or line of dialogue is wasted. Everything flows with terrific precision. Oldman's snickering and Bridges's authoritative understanding add to the potency of the material. But it is Joan Allen's robust performance that takes us deep inside the political process and asks us not to question her actions or past indiscretions as much as whether they really matter in the end.

Plan an alternate trip

VACATION (2015)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I have to admit, I laughed three or four times while watching this sequel/reboot of "Vacation." That is already more times than I laughed during 1997's very unfortunate "Vegas Vacation," meaning I did not laugh at all at that abomination. However, despite two appealing central performances from Ed Helms and Christina Applegate, the whole movie smacks of being wanting and rather desperate. Some astonishingly crude scenes will leave a sour taste in your mouth (which reminds me that anything bloody usually works better in Monty Python country).

Ed Helms is Rusty Griswold, the eldest son of the Griswold clan, who is taking his family on a vacation to Walley World. That is the reboot subplot of the movie; as you will recall, it was the Griswolds' destination in the 1983 film with Chevy Chase. The rest of the film is the actual trip with Rusty's increasingly bored wife (Christina Applegate) who is looking for a new spin on vacation locations that do not include the same-old log cabin. Some of this is slightly hysterical, such as Applegate's Mama Griswold proving that she can physically compete with the new alma mater sorority girls. I also enjoyed the consistently malfunctioning Albanian car that Papa Griswold drives (it even has a Swastika button in the remote). But the movie cheapens itself with gags that never amount to much of a payoff. The reprise of the famous Christine Brinkley-flashing-her-smile-while-driving scene from the 1983 original ends in a nasty collision (occurs offscreen). When the clan takes a dip in a presumably hot spring, it turns out to be raw sewage. When Papa Griswold tries to impress Mama by driving a scooter, he plows into a cow and let's say bovine intestines fill the screen in a scene that would even make Quentin Tarantino vomit. Speaking of vomiting, Mama Griswold vomits at a college sorority, trying to show the girls who is boss. Yuk.

This "Vacation" movie is full of excessive gross gags with nary a trace of humor. Accidentally killing a cow, for example, is presented as the "joke." Consider the original 1983 film where a dog's leash was left tied to the stationwagon's bumper. The joke is when the patrolman pulls Chevy Chase's Clark Griswold over and tells him how horrifying this accident and death of a dog is while holding a leash (the dog is never seen again). Clark doesn't quite see it the same way and stops himself from smirking. Okay, admittedly it is not hilarious but it has some measure of drollness along with empathy for an animal.

Aside from three or four laughs and a couple of chuckles about Chris Hemsworth's huge member, nothing in this "Vacation" is likely to be reminisced thirty years from now despite the talents of Ed Helms and Christina Applegate who deserve a richer vehicle than this old, dusted off revisit. Plan an alternate trip. 

Pat Hitchcock should sue

A PERFECT MURDER (1998)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Although I am not as disconcerted when director Brian De Palma apes Hitchcock, I am more offended when someone removes all the qualities that made Hitch's best films memorable. The key was suspense through nuance and insinuation dictated by sumptuous performances and exemplary camera moves, the latter never being obvious yet always in sync with the emotions of the characters. My favorite example is when Norman Bates carried his mother out of her room in a high-angle shot in "Psycho." In "Dial M for Murder," I would say the defining moment is when Ray Milland wipes clean every object he touches as he explains to the hired killer how to carry out the murder of his wife, thus not incriminating Milland himself. It is no surprise that "A Perfect Murder" is a remake of "Dial M" but it is an insult to my intelligence and to the audiences who already feel remakes are needless in the first place. Not that "Dial M For Murder" could not stand to be remade since it is one of Hitch's lesser achievements, but this so-called suspense yarn is not it.

Dialogue through nuance and diction are thrown out the window in favor of bloody, suspenseless thrills every few minutes. Michael Douglas, in one of the lesser performances of his career, makes his motivations and murderous impulses easy to spot from the opening sequence, playing a reptilian, Gecko-like character who knows his wife is having an affair. Where is Ray Milland when you need him? Why is Douglas's wife, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, so naive as to think her husband is not up to no good? How does Douglas know Paltrow will answer the corded phone at the precise moment she will be killed when she could easily let the answering machine...oh, who cares. Not even Viggo Mortensen as her lover can convince her that her husband is a bastard. And Mortensen's character changes wildly from its original design as he engages in a plot to...well, you might see it coming for miles.

So there are histrionic performances from cold-blooded characters who elicit antipathy, not empathy, not to mention Paltrow and Mortensen as the most unromantic pair of lovers in many moons - they could not even warm a pair of cold bricks. In addition, there are more red herrings than needed and a tasteless, protracted "Fatal Attraction" finish that will make you puke from disgust and anger resulting in one of the most anemic thrillers ever. "A Perfect Murder" needs more than a blood transfusion - it needs Hitch. Patricia Hitchcock should sue and as of 2001, she still hasn't.

Sex is not just about intercourse

KINSEY (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Original review from January 4th, 2005

In today's world, sex is sold and manufactured as if it were a brand name. Look at the titillating magazine issues of "Blender," "Stuff" or even the occasional flash of nearly nude women in "Entertainment Weekly" or "Vogue." Consider the media, particularly when Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction was one of the main cultural events of 2004. So sex is packaged yet President Bush and the religious, puritanical right contend that it is a demonic act. In many ways, we seem to be reverting back to the ideals of the 1950s. Dr. Alfred Kinsey broke the mold of sexual hygiene and sexual performance. Suddenly, America learned that sex was not just about intercourse.

Liam Neeson plays Dr. Kinsey, an Indiana University professor, who at first shows a keen insight on the mating customs of gall wasps, so much so that he teaches a course on it and publishes a book. Somehow, we know the able doctor is capable of so much more. He falls for and marries a student in his class, Clara McMillen (Laura Linney), and on their wedding night, they have some difficulty copulating. They go to see a sexual therapist who reminds Kinsey that his penis is just too long! Nevertheless, Kinsey discovers that mating customs have prohibited and misguided married or unmarried couples in maintaining a good sex life. According a published book of its time, "Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique," masturbation and oral sex were considered deviant acts, specific reasons of which are more fun to read about or discover when seeing the film. Kinsey wants to revise the rules, namely the traditional missionary position, by interviewing people from across the United States to find what men and women really do in their bedrooms. To his shock, he discovers that they do perform many of these sexual acts but the majority of couples seem to live in the dark ages. In 1948, he publishes the highly controversial "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," and in 1953, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female." Storms of protest follow and the media and the good citizens of the country call it smut, considering the blunt sexual and clinical terms used such as vagina, penis, etc.

Kinsey himself gets curious as well, performing some of these acts with his wife. The problem arrives when he hires his first researcher, Clyde (Peter Saarsgard), who sleeps with Kinsey. Clara gets furious yet, after some time, accepts it and is asked for a romp in the hay by Clyde! Meanwhile, Kinsey hires more researchers and more controversy follows, especially when he has his own researchers sleep with each other's wives. It is only research, though one gets the impression that not everyone is comfortable with the notion of sex as an experimental tool. Eventually, funding begins to evaporate and the general feeling is that sexual frankness has its limits.

There is a basic character trait of Kinsey's that is left unexplored. Writer-director Bill Condon ("Gods and Monsters") depicts Kinsey as a stern, ruthless experimenter and attuned to detail, so attuned in fact that it is as if sex is nothing more than sex to him. He forgets that there is such a thing as making love, though he obviously loves his wife. Did Kinsey ever know that sex is not purely an animal act devoid of love? That extramarital affairs, regardless of justification, can have dire consequences for the couples involved? Or was he ever in love?

Liam Neeson plays Dr. Kinsey as well as he can, but I felt something was amiss. The Neeson of "Schindler's List," and of earlier films like "The Good Mother," always felt like he embodied the characters he played. Even a misfire like "Rob Roy" felt like a majestic Neeson performance. Here, playing a nearly stodgy-like character despite his predilection for the mysteries of sex, Neeson is too physically imposing and, dare I say, larger than life. I can't picture Neeson as a doctor who sees no flaws in his experimentation and as someone who defends all odds to show the world that sex is more than it can be. Neeson feels uncomfortable in that skin, as if he is dying to get out of the insides of this character. He twitches, gives us those glaring facial expressions and expected screams, but I always felt a sense of discomfort. I highly doubt that the real Dr. Kinsey was this way, but I could be wrong.

Laura Linney is exceptionally and straightforwardly good as Clara, slowly believing in Kinsey despite radical changes in her sexual appetite. Also worth noting is the restrained Peter Saarsgard as the sexual provocateur, Clyde - he asks for a sexual favor with such delicacy that no woman, or man, can turn him down. Chris O'Donnell is also superb as another researcher who knows his limits when it comes to sexual deviancy. I also enjoyed Timothy Hutton and the always memorable Oliver Platt as the President of Indiana University - he is one of our finest, most colorful character actors. Kudos must also go to John Lithgow in an underwritten yet powerful cameo as Kinsey's father, a staunch minister.

Bill Condon showed his strengths as a storyteller with "Gods and Monsters" and still proves he can make bios that breathe with simplicity and clarity. But the central character of Kinsey still gnaws at me, and Neeson doesn't help make it any easier. By the end of the picture, you get the impression that Kinsey was none too comfortable with the sexual revolution he helped developed.

Time-travel radio signal

FREQUENCY (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Time-travel can be an exciting arena for the cinema because it defies all logic and pretense. After all, it does not seem feasible that we can travel backwards in time, but the very notion does bring up all kinds of strange paradoxes, as does traveling forward into the future. But then you have a film like "Frequency" which asks not so much to defy logic but to defy reason.

Consider the premise of the film. You have a sullen cop named John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel) who removes an old ham radio from his closet. He plays with it and discovers one night that he can communicate with his father (Dennis Quaid). Here is the catch: John's father, a dedicated firefighter, died in a horrific blazing fire while in the line of duty. So it is John in 1999 having conversations with his dad who is alive and well in 1969! How can this be? Can it be the strange forms of lights in the night sky that are causing a break in the space-time continuum? Or, to be more radical, could it be that it is all in John's mind? Nevertheless, we are left with suspending logic temporarily since John realizes his father will die in that fire within a few days in 1969, just before the Mets play their first game in the World Series! Can John prevent his father from dying in the past? And wouldn't that rupture the space-time continuum?

I am willing to suspend disbelief at the cinemas as much as everyone else, but there is something horribly wrong from the get-go. Though the story is not possible by any stretch of the imagination, in terms of just pure scientific reasoning, how could John be talking to his father from the past? Would that not be changing the future at all just based solely on that premise alone? And how can John only feel that the future has changed until his father changes the past at the approximate time that coincides with the time in the future? Why should that matter? And if everything can be erased as it is with (*SPOILER*) John's father surviving the fire, then how can John feel an alternate time line existing when no one else can? Just a matter of logic and reasoning based on the filmmaker's rules. Stephen Hawking would have a field day with all this.

All paradoxes aside, the basic problem with "Frequency" is that I never believed the relationship between John and his father. Simply put, there is no chemistry between Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel - they do not make a fitting father-son combo. And frankly all the time paradoxes, and an implausible serial-killer plot to boot, distracts from the emotional connection to the story, which is simply about a father and son trying to communicate. Added to that is the lack of an explanation about Jim's girlfriend, who leaves him at the beginning, and then does not recognize him later after the past had been changed. A little nod to "It's A Wonderful Life" to be sure, but the subplot is left dangling like an unexposed wire in a time machine, and thus she is never seen or heard from again.

If nothing else, it is a pleasure seeing Dennis Quaid back to his clever, sly, cocky self - sort of a grown-up version of his character in "Dreamscape." He is often like a live wire, ready to explode at any moment (the opening sequence where he survives a fire is followed by a sampling of Martha Reeves' "Heatwave.") "Frequency" is too just too low on the voltage meter to follow Quaid's live-wire act.

Up where she belongs

UP AT THE VILLA (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally viewed in 2000

"Up at the Villa" is a strange movie experience, possibly because such a polite film of manners and delicacy switches gears and becomes something other than what you might expect. It has the grandly theatrical look and feel of 1999's "An Ideal Husband" but it develops into something akin to an Agatha Christie mystery.

Kristin Scott Thomas stars as the widowed, highly composed Mary Panton who locks herself inside a beautiful villa, often contemplating her lack of passion while sitting out in her garden (my, my, how great it must be to be rich). Mary is unsure of whether she should accept a marriage proposal from a courtly diplomat (James Fox) but she must answer soon since he is going on a trip (and gives her a gun to protect herself from the roaming refugees on the streets). She leans more towards a married, debonair American (Sean Penn), though she resists him at first due to his honesty. Then there is the pity she feels towards a young, poor Austrian violinist (Jeremy Davies) who is also a refugee. One thing leads to another and when she tries to resist the young, passionate fellow, things get rather awry.

This is where the big switch in tone and style comes in, and "Up at the Villa" becomes more of a moral tale where immorality takes the day. Yes, immoral, considering the choices Mary makes when confronted with danger. A film like this would not have existed during the Production Code days where protagonists had to be punished for their crimes. Mary and the American get involved in a crime that evolves into a highly political situation - even the Italian police are corrupt.

The performances deliver for the most part, all very classy acts to be sure. Kristin Scott Thomas has a difficult role, exuding sensuousness, duplicity and beauty all in one package, often at the most inappropriate moments. Still, she has class and elegance and maturity - though not at the same breadth as in "Angels and Insects" (directed by Philip Haas who helmed this one as well). Anne Bancroft is the gossip-mongering neighbor married to Italian royalty who is as freewheeling and flirtatious as they come. Sean Penn is the added sparkle to this fine cast, his nuance and diction are as far removed from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" as you might expect and he is far more restrained than he usually is. He also has the right flair and chemistry in any scene he shares with Scott Thomas. Kudos must also go to Derek Jacobi's brief role as a flamboyant tour guide of sorts.

"Up at the Villa" is an uneven film, never quite finding the consistent tone that it needs, but it is slick and involving enough. Sometimes, picturesque settings and Kristin Scott Thomas wearing any colorful wardrobe she chooses is often enough for me. "Up at the Villa" has plenty of both.

Cameron Crowe's Eyes are Wide Shut

VANILLA SKY (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally viewed late December 2001

"Vanilla Sky" is a Cameron Crowe rock n' roll movie trying to be a sophisticated, ambiguous thriller and it is reason enough to conclude that Hollywood is dying. To some it may be dead already but "Vanilla Sky" will not win any new fans of La-La Land. Those who found Cruise's offbeat, artistic endeavors through Kubrick and P.T. Anderson's worlds cumbersome will find his return to such dreamlike territory a lot less than thrilling. Either way, "Vanilla Sky" has compelling material delivered in a perfunctory and unbelievable manner.

Cruise plays David Aames, a rich, hotshot publisher of a "Maxim"-like magazine called "Rise." David is not liked by his business partners who all feel slighted that they did not inherit the magazine from his father. He calls all the shots but hardly seems to care about the business. He has a luxurious apartment with a great view of New York City, a splendid woman friend, Julie Ganni (Cameron Diaz), whom he sleeps with on occasion, lavish parties where a hologram of John Coltrane can impress his guests, and so on. Is he really deserving of such a life or is his life an empty, lonely one? That may all change. The night of his 33rd birthday party, David meets his best friend's new date, Sofia Serrano (Penelope Cruz), and instantly falls in love with her. Sofia is charmed yet unimpressed with David and realizes that Julie (who comes to the party uninvited) is a sad woman in love - "the sad girl with the martini." But Julie gets jealous and begins stalking David. Before you can say "Fatal Attraction," Julie drives off a bridge with David in it. David gets disfigured, Julie dies, he loses his friends, almost loses his acquired business, is suspected of murder, and begins to wonder if everything is real or simply a dream or if he is in a coma. Or perhaps David is simply shut out from reality permanently. Maybe he is dead. By the three-quarter mark of this movie, I could not care less for David or his constant whining.

Based on Alejandro Amenabar's "Abre Los Ojos," "Vanilla Sky" has intriguing ideas lurking beneath a Cameron Crowe movie that is less interested in building its theme of a discovery of one's awakening reality than being an overlong homage to rock n' roll. Yes, this is Crowe at work here but this was not meant to be "Almost Famous" with David Lynch overtones. The tone of the movie is off, wavering uneasily between romantic comedy, a thriller, and a David Lynch nightmare. There are rock songs playing on the soundtrack every few minutes to remind us to stay awake while Cruise wears a mask explaining his past, present and future to a psychiatrist (Kurt Russell). The mask reminds one instantly of Cruise's far superior role in "Eyes Wide Shut." There are twists and turns piled up so often that they made me feel like my leg was merely being pulled from one extreme to the other. "Open your eyes" is the phrase said with great repetition in the film. So why was I so insistent on closing them?

None of this would seem distracting if at least we had a glimmer of sympathy or empathy for David. As played by Cruise, he is a bitter fool with a nice smile who has no inner life - a spoiled rich kid, nothing more. The movie has no degree of subtlety or nuance, even in terms of dialogue. There is no feeling of a change occurring in David because he seems like a cipher from the beginning. He has no inner dimensions to speak of and it was hard to feel sorry for his disfigurement at any moment.

As I said, the dialogue certainly doesn't help matters. One line that had me cringing (and there are many) includes a ludicrous scene in a bar where a disfigured David tries to get the bartender to make eye contact with him. "Look at me, bitch," says David. Not one of Tom Cruise's proudest moments or Crowe's. And the constant referral to Julie as a "f--- buddy" left me wandering my eyes to the nearest exit. I am no admirer of "Jerry Maguire" but I'd rather sit through that again than this garbage.

"Vanilla Sky" is a reference to the clouds in a Monet painting, and thus the basis for a Paul McCartney title track. But it is one putrid, laughably obvious trifle of a movie with Cruise merely going through the motions. With an underwritten role for Diaz, an always smiling Penelope Cruz who steals the movie, a sometimes masked Cruise and a shockingly awful, over-explained finale, I left the theatre in great haste and disgust. Here is a fitting alternative to seeing this movie: close your eyes and take a nap for a couple of hours.