Hell on Earth with no chance of survival

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

A Reconsideration by Jerry Saravia

Sometimes there are films that creep up on you, that shatter you to the very core of your very own soul. Good war films can manage that feat, great ones prove earth-shattering. When I think of cinema's great war films, I immediately think of "Paths of Glory," "Apocalypse Now," "The Deer Hunter," "Platoon," "The Big Red One" and "Full Metal Jacket." "Saving Private Ryan" is a curious case for me because those first few words I wrote apply manifestly to Spielberg's World War II film and to the short list of great war films I added. I have admired "Saving Private Ryan" far more than I did in 1998. I knew at the initial 1998 screening that it was a very good film yet maybe some of it felt gratuitously mawkish. I thought, as many other critics did, that there were too many cliches that befell the dialogue between Captain Miller and his troop of the kind of stereotypical grunts we often saw in WWII movies of the past - you know, the medic; the Brooklyn-accented, arrogant soldier; the reluctant German and French translator, etc. Yet I felt for these men, I identified with their plight, with their fears of what bloodshed might be around the corner. Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" contains some of the best war battle scenes in motion picture history, thrillingly and vividly realized by Spielberg. The D-Day footage alone is so remarkably frightening and fraught with so much raw emotion that it is nothing less than the most vicious, unrelenting vision of violence and carnage upon soldiers that you will ever see in the battlefield, no holds barred (a common term to be sure but it definitely applies here). Having seen the film several times in the last twenty years, I must say the cliches do not feel like cliches anymore and there is nothing one-dimensional about the Miller's troop or Private Ryan or certainly Captain Miller himself. In other words, "Saving Private Ryan" is a solid A war film, a penetrating and fearsome machine of a movie that is nonstop in its look at war as not just hell, but Hell on Earth with no real chance of survival. That encapsulates our hold on the soldiers and our hopes they will move on if they ever find Private Ryan. The theme and its vexing morality of war is what drives the film forward from first frame to last. 

"Private Ryan" begins on D-Day at Omaha Beach, amid a flurry of bullets and cannon blasts, as the American troops approach the beach to fight the Nazis. The graphic, brilliantly choreographed footage shows dismembered bodies, in all their blood, guts and glory. Tom Hanks plays Captain Miller, the leader of his troop that underwent the furious Omaha assault. Along with the members of his troop (Edward Burns as the Brooklyn-accented, arrogant soldier; Tom Sizemore as the tough, devoted Sergeant Horvath; Barry Pepper as the Bible-quoting sniper Private Jackson; Giovanni Ribisi as the pale medic Wade, and Jeremy Davies as the bony, scared Corporal Upham), they go on assignment to find a Private Ryan from another platoon stationed in the French countryside. It turns out Ryan is
the sole surviving brother of the enlisted four who died in action. As one soldier remarks, "This Ryan better be worth it" - he better be if they are going to fight more Nazis.

"Saving Private Ryan" is terrifically frightening and compelling in its battle scenes, particularly the final epic battle in Ramelle amid rubble and wobbly tanks. These scenes are not just feverishly intense - they are framed intimately with the characters amid the chaos. Pepper's Private Jackson is shown in one scene shooting from a concrete tower and his skill at almost killing one Nazi after another while quoting Scripture is unforgettable. What also works extremely well in "Private Ryan" is the maturity and frailty of Captain Miller, wonderfully played by Tom Hanks. Miller's trembling hand and sorrowful glances suggests that he's only human and can surely fail in such a mission. Hanks also suggests that even in an apocalyptic frenzy, a heroism can still exist however unwanted considering he's an English teacher, not John Wayne. One scene shows Miller off on a hill by himself, sobbing because what else can one do when you start losing men left and right. John Wayne would never do that but this is very far from being a "Green Berets" update. Miller also makes it clear he wants to be home, to return to his wife and his presumably idyllic existence which he hopes will be justified by saving Ryan.

My other favorite character is the arrogant, Brooklyn-born soldier played by Edward Burns ("The Brothers McMullen") who refuses to play by the rules. I also enjoyed Jeremy Davies ("Spanking the Monkey") as the cowardly Corporal Upham who loves hearing Edith Piaf on the radio, but is choked with terror by the possibility of picking up a rifle. When he finally does, the morality of war comes into question - can Upham be any different than the one German soldier Miller refused to kill whom Upham runs into yet again? War where complex decisions have to be made about who dies and who lives gives "Saving Private Ryan" its impetus, its reason for being. 

I am far from being a left-leaning anti-war protester who feels any war is a crime, no matter how you justify it (a quote attributed to the late Ernest Hemingway), but I know my initial 1998 criticism, "Spielberg and screenwriter Robert Rodat seems to think that any war, no matter how unjustified, still warrants a hint of heroism and bravery," was an error in judgment because the heroism is clear, the actual World War battle was justified historically and it would be a mistake to link this most crucial war with the likes of Vietnam or Iraq. "Saving Private Ryan" is not an anti-war film nor does it contain a flag-waving, patriotic, jingoistic bent to it - it falls somewhere in the middle of a war picture whose pure intent is to show what our very young servicemen suffered, how they died and those who survived - all in the service of maintaining our freedoms. Even the graphic, unrelenting war footage of D-Day is not Spielberg's attempt to be against the war in any way nor are the dynamics of a boat approaching a beach where bullets cannot be evaded criticized. The craziness of war where a young soldier crouches in fear behind dead soldiers, or a dazed soldier looking for his severed arm, or killing Nazis who are surrendering are the complications of battle that will never be understood by anyone except those in combat. Spielberg is not showing us the dehumanizing effects of war - he is just telling us that this war was the last Great War. The opening and closing shots of a faded, desaturated American flag suggests heroism tinged with the regret of the loss of so many lives. 

Assembly line of nothingness

 HOUSE II: THE SECOND STORY (1987)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There are bad movies assembled out of derivative parts of other movies and then there are bad movies that are just simply assembled. "House II: The Second Story" is one of those "movies." I hesitate calling it a movie because it is not - consider it the most poorly assembled piece of crockery since "Manos: Hands of Fate." This is not high praise or a recommendation; just a warning.

The original "House" with William Katt was a good-bad movie of the haunted house variety and it was tongue-in-cheek in its attitude even if not a complete success on any level. I was entertained by it. "House II" is not entertaining - it is a queasy, endless chore to sit through. The cast is white bread bland with expired mayonnaise on top. Arye Gross is Jesse who has moved in to his parents' mansion where they were murdered by some ghostly gunslinger from the Old West! Jesse and a party-hearty friend of his (Jonathan Stark, who was put to better use in "Fright Night") exhume the great-great grandfather at the cemetery because the skeletal remains may be in possession of an Aztec crystal skull! Only the great-great grandfather (Royal Dano) rises from the dead, and the "heroes" decide to keep him in the basement of the mansion while he watches old westerns on TV. This dead cowboy, affectionately referred to as Gramps (oh, how original!), starts drinking like a fish and parties with young women and loves to drive fast cars!

"House II" is meant to be comedic but it falls flat quickly with the blandest actors imaginable (yes, that includes Bill Maher as a record producer) and cartoonish juvenile hijinks that features a caterpillar dog, a baby dinosaur and some grunting barbarian. So much for hauntings. The movie looks as if it was made in a hurry and marches through at a snail-paced rate of speed. Don't sell this house, torch it instead. 

He's finished

 THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"There Will Be Blood" is the kind of misanthropic, twisted, repulsive and consistently watchable movie where the main character, a misanthropic, greedy man who slowly becomes a monster, takes hold and shapes the entire film. That is quite an audacious feat for a movie about the turn of the 20th century when drilling for oil was worth more than anything. Only Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview seems to think he should be the only one drilling for oil - anyone else is somehow a marked man.

The opening moments of "There Will Be Blood" exceed anyone's expectations about the power of images and oblique sounds to establish an uneasy mood (complete with music cues that sound distinctly Kubrickian). Daniel is digging for silver in the southwest, and as he continues to, he falls and breaks his leg. He props himself above ground and manages to get a silver certification for the discovery, eventually moving up the ranks as he becomes a wealthy oil magnate. His sole purpose is to drill in California communities where he promises wealth and enrichment. Eventually Daniel adopts a child belonging to a worker who died while in the cellar of the oil rig. Now the presentation is complete - Daniel is robust, commanding and persuasive. Even a holier-than-thou preacher (Paul Dano) can be bought and sold in his community despite his reservations. Naturally the preacher feels anyone can be saved but he doesn't know Daniel. 

Unease is evident in every frame of "There Will Be Blood," so much so that director Paul Thomas Anderson ("Boogie Nights," "Magnolia") can practically drown you in it. I am not sure it is necessary to prominently feature that intrusive music score which overdoes that unease - the masterful scenic shots, long takes and Day-Lewis himself is sometimes enough. Only Daniel Day-Lewis's performance sometimes made me impatient - his John Huston-like accent and maddening stares and grimaces can grate the nerves. This is infrequent to be fair because Day-Lewis is a revelation in every scene - he holds the movie together with his larger-than-life persona of a man who goes off the deep end. Daniel Plainview has no scruples or moral code when it comes to protecting his legacy as an oil magnate. When his adopted son (Dillon Freasier) becomes deaf during a gas blowout, he nurtures him but has little sympathy for the kid's loss of hearing (he later has the kid sent to a San Francisco school in a heartbreaking, devastating scene). And then the madness settles in even deeper when Daniel's half-brother (Kevin J. O'Connor) arrives making us uneasy at reveals of Daniel's past, or is the half-brother a fraud?

"There Will Be Blood" is audacious in its context of a capitalist who has no bounds, no moral compass and little regard for humanity. "I hate people," he says and not with a shred of irony. Daniel Plainview doesn't represent all oil magnates but he does represent a cold-blooded man who has some shimmer of humanity when recalling the family he might have had, and his failings with his adopted son whom he practically cuts off in latter years. Still, Daniel is so relentless in his business agenda that he almost loses it all when he sells to different investors. He can't stand someone telling him how to raise his son and, by the end, he can't even hold on to that. Sad, pathetic rumblings of a conniving, insular man who is left with an expansive home with a bowling alley and nothing else other than the raw nerves of a sociopath. He's finished. 

Earther bounty hunter in Star Wars/Mad Max hybrid

 SPACEHUNTER: 

ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE (1983)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" falls in line with the truly tone-deaf, idiotic 3-D movies that were released in 1983. I did not watch this in 3-D nor did I happily enter any theater in 1983 to watch it, and thank goodness for that. Despite some fairly dim moments of humor, "Spacehunter" is a dreary, badly filtered mixture of junky desert warfare from "Mad Max" mixed with "Star Wars" galactic adventures, only it is less galactic and more desert-prone.

Spacehunter is a reckless bounty hunter (Peter Strauss) who is made to resemble Han Solo but with a five o'clock shadow. The guy is a seemingly suave bore and has a female android (Andrea Marcovicci, mercifully exiting the movie early on) who sleeps in a chamber and is scantily-clad in his dilapidated junky ship. I did not realize she was an android until 10 minutes later. Spacehunter intercepts a signal where three women have crash-landed in a desert-barren, plague infested planet known as Terra 11. Once he arrives, there is a pirate ship and some minor conflict and a very young, naive, grimy-looking Molly Ringwald as Niki, more of an orphaned brat who won't shut up than the Brat Packer she eventually became. There is a pale-faced villain named Overdog (Michael Ironside) who is kept alive with various electrical cables and has two enormous claws. This nasty villain seems to love watching young, nubile girls undress before his very eyes before making them go through a deadly obstacle course involving fire and traps full of sharp blades. 

Aside from all the women appearing scantily-clad and poor old Molly being forced to wash her hair, "Spacehunter" has the barest amount of camaraderie and humor between Strauss and an old friend played winningly by a bald Ernie Hudson. These two should've been the focus of this "Star Wars" rip-off instead of the bratty, sometimes incoherent Niki who wouldn't mind wearing diapers (Yep, you heard that right). The film is a one-dimensional effort overall with no consistency or reason of being other than to quickly cash in on the 3-D craze, advertising itself as the first 3-D movie in the 1980's to be set in space! Only most of the movie is set in a wasteland known as Utah, filling in for Terra 11, that is shot with various hazy camera filters so that it looks worse in reddish brown 2-D than 3-D. "Spacehunter" has no real story, no real colorful villains, no depth, no sense of adventure and hardly much in the way of well-choreographed action. Even the Overdog's lair, the Forbidden Zone, looks robbed of visual imagination - it looks like a dark, cavernous nightclub in underground New York City crossed with a dingy auto repair shop. Watch any Star Wars movie instead.

Hush, Hush Sweet Abbott Family

 A QUIET PLACE PART II (2021)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The freshness and emotional depth of "A Quiet Place" centered on a family struggling to survive amongst an unspecified alien species. These blind alien creatures have markedly hypersensitive hearing and respond to any sound decibels as low as the breaking of dried leaves on the ground (though waterfalls were an exception). The highly uneasy and brilliantly suspenseful sequel, "A Quiet Place Part II," retains much of that intensity and the emotional depth of the surviving Abbott family though it is not nearly as resonant as the original. That is a minor quibble because director John Krasinski is such a smart director that if you place this family in the same situation without aliens, it would still work as a finite piece of Apocalyptic fervor.

Day 1 is the title card we see in the opening flashback portion of the film where the Abbotts (including Krasinski as Lee Abbott, the father who sacrificed himself in the first film) are at a baseball game where their youngest, the deaf Marcus (Noah Jupe), is at bat. Everyone is distracted by some undetermined flaming object in the sky. Before anyone can figure out its significance (though we the audience know what it is), those aliens creatures arrive in this small town and decimate practically everyone. Flashforward to a year later and starting off right after the last frame of the original film where Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt), the mother, has killed one of the creatures with a shotgun and her deaf daughter, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), has figured out their weakness - her cochlear implant's increased volume is the creatures' Kryptonite and can kill them. The Abbotts approach a steel foundry where a nearby survivor lives, Emmett (Cillian Murphy), who doesn't want to help them despite knowing who they are and how they used to attend baseball games together. He feels certain people are not worth saving. Cut to a radio broadcast signal that picks up Bobby Darin's "Beyond the Sea" and that that signal may be coming from a possibly inhabited island. Regan wants to get to that island, hoping there are survivors, and all she needs is a boat. Will Emmett help Regan get to that boat at the marina and will Evelyn allow it knowing how unsympathetic Emmett is at first? 

If the emotional resonance of the first film that included a pregnant Emily, a resourceful Evelyn, and Krasinski as the worried father who struggled to keep the family together doesn't make the same impact this time around, it is only because we have seen them in their crisis survival mode already. We have already seen these wickedly fast creatures who look like the equivalent of huge daddy long legs with razor sharp teeth. Yet Krasinski as a director can still make us respond with shock and awe as if it was new all over again and that is a rare feat for a sequel, especially horror, to practically rehash the original and still find us clinging to our seats. Rehash may seem like a harsh criticism but it is not - "A Quiet Place Part II" more appropriately gives us ample reasons to reinvest ourselves in this lonely, empty world in Upstate NY. 

The suspense scenes still work wonders and still utilize quietness, if not as frequently as the original. For my money, Marcus keeping the crying infant inside an air tight bunker while the creature prowls outside of it is so tantalizing, so highly charged at such a maximum level of fright that I almost passed out. One sequence also had me clutching the arms of my theater seat when Regan finds a lonely train car with corpses - it is a scene that needs to be seen to be appreciated.

Noah Jupe is still the same frightened Marcus whose eyes well up in horror each time these creatures appear. Emily Blunt still exudes the warmth and determination of a mother who now has to protect three kids by herself sans the unfortunate demise of her brave husband. Cillian Murphy is an apathetic bastard at first yet he comes around, connecting with Regan and sharing the loss of family members in this Apocalypse.

Towards the finish line of this feverishly paced movie, we briefly encounter a group of feral humans who are not any less evil than the creatures - I wish this subplot was given more weight since I can't fathom why they live near the Marina. That may be the one minor flaw of an otherwise incredibly suspenseful, pulsating thriller that keeps you riveted from start to finish. I will say without question that Millicent Simmonds stands out as the true star of this movie - her strength and her drive to survive in a scarcely populated world of impending death gives her hope for a better, more beatific world. Now if only those pesky creatures would stop getting in the way.

Respectable Evil Dead clone

 HOUSE (1986)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I knew so little about "House," a haunted house tongue-in-cheek comedy from 1986, that I was really only aware of it starring the sincere-looking William Katt. He is one of those actors that sells sincerity, whether he believes it or not (oh, wow, just when I wrote that I realized his TV show "The Greatest American Hero" had that last line as one of its theme song lyrics). Pop culture reference aside, I approached "House" as a serious horror flick and, to my surprise, it was insanely funny. Then I realized the humor was not unintentional, this movie is supposed to be funny. It is bizarre and frequently humorous though it is not as dementedly high-pitched in inventiveness as "The Evil Dead" or its sequels were. 

Katt is a best-selling author named Roger Cobb who is sick and tired of writing horror novels - he would rather write about his traumatic experiences in Vietnam. And what better place to write about such experiences than in the very house where his aunt had recently hung herself? Ah, yes, perfect. Cobb has his share of personal problems like a child that had drowned in the very pool of the house he is occupying (is this house the most appropriate setting for writing a novel?) Let's not omit the fact that Cobb was once married to an actress (Kay Lenz) who is worried about his mental health. Roger also has a very nosy neighbor (George Wendt, dead-on perfect casting and extremely funny) who is a fan of Roger's books of course. A curious thing about Wendt's character. He lives in the house next door yet only sleeps in the second floor in a couch! And he takes phone calls there yet never once do we see the rest of his house! Should it matter? I guess not but if you pay close attention, he seems to live alone in a bedroom that looks like some sort of office. 

"House" has spooky-goings-on throughout including a poor man's H.R. Giger monster with tentacles in Roger's closet! There are other ugly creatures like Big Ben (Richard Moll), Roger's Vietnam buddy who holds a grudge against him - Moll looks like one of those Romero zombies from "Day of the Dead." In addition, the bathroom mirror is a portal to otherworldly beasties with wings! Some of the humor involving a decapitated monster's hand that Roger tries to hide from a beautiful woman next door is right out of "Evil Dead." Most of this movie owes more of a debt to "Evil Dead" than any other haunted house movie.

"House" is respectably comedic without ever getting gratuitously gross or gory. Katt is the ideal Everyman I suppose. You'll forget most of this movie after it is over but I can't say it won't leave you with a respectably silly grin on your face.  

Communication is universal

 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS 

OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

It is still hard to fathom the experience of watching "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" back in the 70's on a big screen, and seeing it since on video. It is a wondrous, often enthralling film yet something about it still holds me back from seeing it as one of Steven Spielberg's crowning achievements. Maybe there is an emotional reserve to it, perhaps the characters don't strike me as memorably as those seen in "Jaws" or "E.T" or any other Spielberg film since "Close Encounters." That is not necessarily a detriment to the overall film because there is a degree of excellence to it in terms of pacing, sustained moments of mystery in elongated sequences where we are not sure if the aliens mean harm or not, familial conflict, and overall sense of joy and wonder during the last half hour when we witness the enormity of the alien mothership. 

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is exactly the type of encounters two key characters experience in the film. First is Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), a testy lineworker who is often asked to work ridiculous hours in the middle of the night (asking for directions from passing motorists who tell him to get off the road, his most obscene reply to them is yelling "Turkey!"). He's a normal family man who is commissioned to fix electrical problems, unbeknownst to him the latest issues are caused by UFOs. Melinda Dillon plays a single mom named Jillian who has a young son and their house becomes a target of interest by these UFOs. The aliens kidnap the giddy son who is more than bemused by them in some of the most startling scenes of an invasive presence on a domestic home I have seen until Spielberg's own "E.T." Both are aware of an alien presence and Roy gets more than a bad sunburn on his face from those oppressive UFO light beams. Pretty soon whole communities witness these UFOs that do not look like the average flying saucers - they are flying ships of indeterminate size and shape with colorful lights (there is a miniscule ball of light that travels in formation with the other ships).  

"Close Encounters" also has scientists investigating these paranormal incidents such as the reemergence of 1940's World War II planes that had been missing since that decade or the discovery of the SS Cotopaxi in the middle of the Gobi desert! Many of the inhabitants of North India claim to have heard a distinct 5-tone musical code that came from the aliens - a chance to communicate to the humans. Francois Truffaut is a French scientist who has a smile that tells us he is optimistic about this hopeful encounter - he sees it as a peaceful transmission. 

As I said, the movie is glorious and often enchanting in terms of mood and exposition. Spielberg was already showing the mastery of sustaining interest by not revealing too much, too soon. The shot of Dreyfuss looking for directions in his truck with a flashlight at night as he motions a motorist in his rear to drive past him, not knowing of course that it is an alien ship that levitates, still gives me goosebumps. The scenes of the 3-year-old kid's sense of childlike wonder at these aliens and how they make his mechanical toys come to life foreshadows similar scenes in "E.T." - Cary Guffey as the kid is easily the most memorable character in the film and we believe his reactions and his precious smiles. The aliens are not visible till the end of the film and that in and of itself was a masterstroke - show them too soon and the mystery is lost.

Still, I found little to empathize with Dreyfuss - he is a great actor but he doesn't seem to register with me in this film. I understood his obsession with creating the vision in his head of Devil's Tower manifested by crudely using mashed potatoes, fence wiring and so on but his obsession turns his family away completely who understandably leave him. It is a different side to Spielberg than what he showed in the 80's and beyond - some of this could've been written with more intimacy between Dreyfuss and his wife, played with raw nerve by Teri Garr. So when he takes flight with the mothership at the end, I felt precious little emotion for him except knowing that this was a monumental cosmic adventure as it would be for anyone (The director's cut features the inside of the mothership). But when the alien communicates with the scientists by a hand gesture that complements the famous 5-tone music phrase, I felt a deeper understanding of Spielberg's intentions. Communication, no matter what planet you are from, is universal.