Working the Graveyard Shift is more exciting

 GRAVEYARD SHIFT (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Video Review detailing differences between the short story and the movie

There are slave-paying jobs that I do not regret ever being offered. A slaughterhouse would be one. A textile mill overrun with hundreds of possibly disease-carrying rats would be another. "Graveyard Shift," the worst Stephen King adaptation of a short story or novel I have ever seen, is so ugly, so mean-spirited and so dull that I wish I never sat through it. 

A somewhat aloof drifter named Hall (David Andrews) arrives in a small Maine town looking for work at the textile mill (he arrives by Greyhound bus). Stephen Macht is Warwick, the mean-spirited, truly vile boss who thinks nothing of smacking and punching his secretary in front of all the workers - he's sleeping with her to boot. This textile mill looks run down and the interior is not any improvement - rats dominate the basement where numerous other workers have died. Apparently, a monstrous rat bat (you read that right) devours its workers so, sure, you could say there is a worker shortage. Meanwhile Hall slings diet Pepsi cans at the rats, is teased by other workers, and starts to hang with Jane Wisconsky (Kelly Wolf) though their romantic interest only comes down to a simple kiss while they are sullied cleaning up the basement. The conclusion has all the workers working double time while this monster has its feeding time. I think quadruple pay would be warranted - let's speak to the union.

Brad Dourif appears as an overzealous exterminator (a character not present in the short story) and he is the one thrilling aspect to this dreary slog of a movie. The rats are disgusting and so are the people who are merely disposable, unsympathetic character types whom I would never want to meet. This execrable film is based on the collection of nail-biting short stories from Stephen King's "Night Shift." To say that this "Graveyard Shift" is worse than the "Maximum Overdrive" adaptation is being kind - it is the kind of movie you watch glimpses of on a TV monitor while working 11-7am and realize that your job is far more exciting.  

If you can't shoot the dead then it is like it didn't happen

 DIARY OF THE DEAD (2007)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

You could almost say, seen one zombie film, seen them all. George Romero's "Dead" series has nuances that go beyond mere fright factor of slow-walking zombies who are hungry for human flesh. "Diary of the Dead" is not as political as "Land of the Dead" and a bit more of a freak show yet it still shows Romero can swing this sort of uneasy horror with ease. I am just not sure he has anything new to say.

The film begins as an assembled edit of a found footage film called "The Death of Death," and that is the film we see for 90 minutes. The narrator is Debra (Michelle Morgan), one of the survivors of a group of college film students who are making a mummy movie in Pittsburgh. News reports roll in about a zombie apocalypse where people are eating each other - you know the drill. Jason Creed (Joshua Close) is the director of their mummy film and the found footage is mostly from his camera's point-of-view as he never puts it down, recording the shootings of the dead coming back to life. This group drives a Winnebago in what looks like a road trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania. We shouldn't forget that the group includes their teacher Maxwell (Scott Wentworth), who drinks booze and reacts with indifference at the sight of the dead. Maybe the booze numbs the senses but he also used to be in an unspecified war - Gulf War I perhaps? 

Nothing in "Diary of the Dead" is remotely new though there are a few scares (two made me jump out of my chair, one includes Debra's younger brother). The cast, all theatre actors, are not quite a memorable group but you still hope they get out of this bloody mess and all the entrails that follow (Scott Wentworth's teacher and Michelle Morgan's Debra stand out). The settings include a luxurious home with a secret room, a huge garage-like hideaway housing armed survivors, and an Amish barn (!) and they all keep the intensity going long enough until we get to an ending that, though still gripping with the sight of blood trickling like a teardrop from a severed head, is essentially recycled out of Romero's earlier Dead films. You know the lines that embody Romero's theme of man's inhumanity - we are no different from the dead because some of us might use the Dead as target practice. The film also suggests that we rather observe gory car accidents than help our fellow humans in any said accident. All this observation can only happen with a camcorder or else it doesn't exist. 

I respect George Romero and, for the most part, have enjoyed his zombie flicks. "Diary of the Dead" is enjoyable too and has enough moments of fright to elevate it above most others of its ilk. I just wish he would still find a newer angle like he did with the separation of the classes in "Land of the Dead." Here, it is all camera and surveillance technology that trumps humanity, only that conceit was hardly original in 2007 by way of ubiquitous found footage movies. Either way, decent horror fare and worth checking out for Romero fans.  

Third-Tier De Palma thriller

 DOMINO (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The last thing I expect from Brian De Palma, our Hitchcockian imitator who has shown a flair for more adult themes than the late Hitch, is a fair movie. Fair? Yes, just fair, just okay thriller dynamics from a director who has a flair for overhead shots and dynamic dolly shots in long takes that seem to run on forever. His newest film is a decent thriller called "Domino" with a mixed bag of tricks and only a few notable scenes for what is seemingly a rushed product rather than a full-fledged genuine thriller.

Just watching the opening scenes gave me the nagging feeling that someone else's hands had touched De Palma's project (and, according to the director, nothing is further from the truth). A Danish cop named Christian (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has a cop partner named Lars (Soren Malling), who appears to be an unhappily married man. We sense that immediately as early scenes show Christian having dinner with the married couple, and later Lars is sitting in the dark contemplating his life as he ignores his wife who calls him. These scenes are edited so hastily that it was hard to get involved in them. Cut to Christian with a date and a wild night as he is ready to go back on the streets, and he leaves behind his gun! When the cop duo are out investigating a domestic dispute involving a Lybian with blood-stained shoes, Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney from De Palma's "Femme Fatale"), chaos ensues as Ezra slits Lars' throat and Christian is hanging from the rafters of an apartment, you know "Vertigo"-style. 

Christian is taken off the Lars murder case for the unethical sin of abandoning his gun (say what?) that led to Lars' death (okay, I get it), and partners up with Alex (Carice van Houten), herself a former lover of Lars. Christian and Alex go to Brussels and then southern Spain to find Ezra and there is more up the sleeve than we realize when we are introduced to a smarmy CIA agent (Guy Pearce) who is actually looking for a truly dangerous terrorist, Sala Al Din (Mohammed Azaay). No surprise that Al Din has plans to kill as many people as he can at a bullfighting ring in Spain. Ezra wants Al Din dead, and so do the cops.

The only original angle to this messy, convoluted script is how Al Din has his fanatics set up their suicidal bombing - they are all livestreamed for all to see. This is further set up in the stirring, thrilling finale that shows De Palma's mastery of juxtaposing shots from alternate angles and alternate points-of-view to build suspense - few can do it better when it comes to cross-cutting from one specific location to the other.

Other than that, "Domino" is third-tier De Palma, though it is watchable and occasionally diverting yet the cast, with the exception of Guy Pearce and the powerful presence of Eriq Ebouaney, are a little flat.  The screenplay never quite develops its few ideas of ISIS using technology to make their terror accessible, and the character of Alex seems to have been left on the cutting room floor (the truth according to De Palma was that the troubled production was underfinanced and perhaps De Palma had more to shoot). The ending is puzzling as it repeats an earlier ISIS suicide bombing at a film festival - it left me wanting and perplexed. Okay De Palma thriller yet clearly lacking his mojo to distinguish it from the norm. 

Empty Hollywood Tale from the Front Line

 WHAT JUST HAPPENED (2008)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I watched "What Just Happened" with such an air of indifference that I felt nothing during or after it was over. The film just sits there (a commonplace truth) but, in this case, it is the literal truth. "What Just Happened" has no zeal, no real satirical Hollywood targets we haven't seen skewered before, and actually nothing of real consequence to say. 

The ubiquitous Robert De Niro plays a movie producer losing his edge who needs a hit because he has two ex-wives and some children to support. Two film projects are in trouble - one is in post-production that involves the hideous killing of a dog that preview audiences are hating, and the other project has been given the green light yet the major star, Bruce Willis, refuses to shave his Grizzly Adams beard. Other than that, De Niro speeds his way through Los Angeles in time-lapse motion shots that grate the nerves, and wants one of his ex-wives back, played far too thanklessly by Robin Wright. 

Other than that, there is not much more to "What Just Happened" and that is a shame coming from a director like Barry Levinson. The film feels weightless and perfunctory and doesn't add much punch to its targets, you know, the soulless Hollywood game where money is the deciding factor. Geez, where have we heard that before? 1992's "The Player" is still the top of the ranks when it comes to Hollywood satire and how Hollywood producers behave (geez, even a mild Hollywood insider comedy like "The Muse" had more laughs). Nothing here feels like it has any real value or verve (truly, the book by Art Linson, "What Just Happened?: Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line," must have some lifeline).

 De Niro appears and exists in the movie, and that is the best I can say for him. The only real life and blood of the film is Michael Wincott as an alcoholic, pill-popping, capricious film director who hates movie cliches and wants his integrity to remain firm (despite not having final cut) which includes the shooting of the dog at the conclusion of his movie. Speaking of firm, Catherine Keener provides plenty of it as a studio chief who wants the ending fixed. What Just Happened? A boring, empty movie, that's what.

Diminishing, futile Cold War

 THE FOURTH WAR (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When you watch a second-rate, ridiculous action picture like "The Fourth War," you have to check your brain at the door. Not that the film is brainless technically yet nothing in it seems remotely believable. 

Roy Scheider plays an Army colonel and Vietnam hero, Jack Knowles, who is something of a colossal screw up, a malcontent who has been moved and stationed in so many Army bases that you wonder why he did not lose his command already. His newest station is West Germany, right on the border of Czechoslovakia, and he has retained his command, albeit briefly. One bright sunny day, Jack is on patrol with other soldiers and notices that at the border, a refugee is trying to defect and is shot down by the Soviets. Jack impulsively orders his soldiers to fire at the Soviet helicopter yet thankfully there is resistance. But you can't keep a malcontent hero down for long. At night, Jack crosses the border and tries to engage the enemy, first by holding three Soviet soldiers down and forcing them to sing happy birthday because, you know, it is the Colonel's birthday. On yet another attempt in crossing the border (this becomes a running gag), Jack sets fire to their command post and throws a few grenades for good measure. All I could do was laugh at these ridiculous scenarios - is he trying to start World War III?

Scheider is a strong, competent actor who shows iron will in his character and his performance is enough reason to see the movie. Also watchable are Tim Reid as the Army's second-in-command who starts to wonder about Jack's motives (I am not sure what they are either other than continuing a fight that, by the time of the film's release, was over), and the always reliable Harry Dean Stanton as Jack's old war buddy who knows Jack is a screwup and a hero. Unfortunately Jurgen Prochnow as the Russian Colonel Valachev is given so little screen time that we never quite see him as an adversary until there is a twist involving another defector. I sensed the screenwriters were aiming for a cat and mouse game yet it never evolves into such a scenario.

"The Fourth War" is capably directed by John Frankenheimer yet its view of a diminishing, futile Cold War is not given enough expansion - we get scenes in and out of a Czech camp that look like Rambo leftovers. As unintentionally funny and sporadically entertaining it is at a tight 91 minutes, "The Fourth War" is so far removed from the psychological war games and mind control of Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate" that it resembles nothing more than a near-parodic parable. 

You Will Not Forget Alana or Gary

 LICORICE PIZZA (2021)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Paul Thomas Anderson's deliciously sweet and strangely hypnotic "Licorice Pizza" is one of the finest films of his career - so abrupt in its own curlicue rhythms and so hypnotically alive in its romantic notions of adolescence that it stands out with paramount greatness. It is suffused with love over romance between young people and with collectively distant memories of a time and place in the pre-teen years when everything was somehow strange and wonderful. That collection of memories and deeply-rooted nostalgia of a time and place reminded me of Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" yet, rather than focusing a story told through the decades, "Licorice Pizza" is told through a shorter amount of time and almost as brilliantly. A charming knockout of a movie. 

Of course, there are two shifting points-of-view in "Licorice Pizza" and only one character is a pre-teen, a certain Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, Philip Seymour Hoffman's son) who is an actor in commercials and TV variety specials. He is bright, energetic, whimsical and also has an entrepreneurial spirit (he manages to open a waterbed company and a pinball machine arcade!) He also falls head over heels for Alana (Alana Haim), a 25-year-old girl photographer's assistant with a stubborn side and yet a lively spirit who can stomach a lot of heartache (oh, she can drive a mean truck with no gas in reverse too). Alana tries to push away Gary yet she is amazed at his tenacity, asking her to just come by and say hello at his favorite restaurant. Alana shows up and, as framed by director Anderson (who serves as one of the cinematographers), she is in the background and we only see the back of Gary's head in the foreground. She avoids eye contact at first and then she turns to him and says, "You are being creepy." The honest delivery of that line by Alana Haim took me back to my adolescent years and "Licorice Pizza" becomes fixated on that initial element of surprise and attraction in ways I had not seen before in a delicious long take. It is snapshot of a memory, and the whole film operates on that level. 

Gary tries his hand at selling waterbeds but eventually it goes broke during the oil embargo crisis of the 1970's because, you know, oil is necessary to make rubber (Alana reminds him, amazed at his obliviousness). Eventually Gary tries his hand at a pinball arcade after pinball is legalized, while Alana wants to mature by going her own way and not being Gary's business partner. She wants to hang with the adults, not adolescents, yet she is still tickled by Gary who is wiser, at times, beyond his years. Alana eventually works for a mayoral candidate and tension breaks when someone may either be trying to blow up the headquarters or be a reporter. We never quite find out who the mystery person is and the whole film revolves around adults whose world the younger people cannot comprehend. 

There are strange scenes involving the adult characters performing actions that make us question them as well. It was then I realized that they were being seen through Cooper and Alana's point-of-view and they see the world as strange and difficult. When we get scenes of a bearded Bradley Cooper as a womanizing, haughty Jon Peters who insists that Cooper pronounce Barbara Streisand's last name correctly, the movie almost loses us for introducing such a wild and crazy privileged Hollywood type who tries to beat the gas line by threatening the gas station's customers with a match. Jon smashes windows and has such total disregard for anyone or anything, all of which is seen from Alana's point-of-view. Then we get scenes of a seemingly calm Jack Holden (Sean Penn), an actor not unlike the late William Holden who is smitten with Alana whom he hopes to cast in his new movie as a character named Rainbow, talking about Korea yet in cinematic terms, almost like he is reading lines from a script and seeking approval from others. During a conversation fraught with tales of behind-the-scenes movie jargon and other indiscernible situations between Holden and his drunk director (high-pitched performance by Tom Waits), Alana is puzzled and says, "what are you guys talking about?" This sequence ends with Holden on a motorcycle and Alana falls to the ground and Gary, who had been watching this whole incident from afar, comes to her rescue.

That is at the offbeat heart of "Licorice Pizza" - Gary and Alana's unconsummated love for each other overcomes all obstacles. A literal running gag is that every time something happens (like Gary's arrest for a murder he did not commit), Gary and Alana run to each other and embrace. They remain loyal to each other no matter the jealousies or any pain or guilt. That in of itself makes the film doubly romantic, more so than any movie about young people that I've seen. Once the film is over, you will not forget the faces of Alana or Gary (the two actors make their amazing debut in this film and I expect great things from both of them in the future). They make us remember the power of distant memories from our early years and Paul Thomas Anderson has made those memories palatable. A wondrous achievement that you will not forget.    

Woody Allen-lite relationships

TRUST THE MAN (2005)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

20/20 hindsight might dictate this frothy comedy-drama as a near-miss but it is surprisingly entertaining, enough to warrant a pleasant night of viewing, perhaps with a significant other. "Trust the Man" is perhaps negligible entertainment, a sort of Woody Allen-lite comedy on relationships, but it coasts by on its sense of humor and lightness.

Set in New York City, we focus on two modern couples, one that is married and the other that isn't. House-husband Tom (David Duchovny) is married to his actress-wife, Rebecca (Julianne Moore), who both have a seemingly super-duper marriage, until it is made clear that Tom desires frequent sex whereas Rebecca doesn't. They go to therapy only once a year, which may not help matters. The other couple is writer Tobey (Billy Crudup) and his girlfriend of seven years, a publishing house receptionist, Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who are not married because Tobey knows they are all going to die in the future so who cares. He also refuses to drive Elaine to work because his car is where he does his best writing, and he refuses to change parking spaces (Having once lived in New York amongst those that drive, I totally understand).

I suppose it is no surprise that these couples resolve their differences through infidelities. Before you can say "Manhattan" and any Woody Allen film since (the writer-director Bart Freundlich is a
fan), we get relatively little time devoted to what drives the men and women to have affairs. Rebecca has a fling with one of her fellow young actors at the theatre but it is treated with almost no emphasis
at all, except through a painful montage sequence that made me cringe. Tobey has a fling with an old college female buddy (Eva Mendes) that seems to have been left on the cutting room floor. And Tom's minor fling with a female parent who has lost her husband seems abrupt and half-baked. Elaine is the only character who had the courage to break up with her significant other.

Okay, so what does work in "Trust the Man"? For one, the four principal actors, which include Julianne Moore, David Duchovny, Billy Crudup and Maggie Gyllenhaal, are exceptionally good, vibrant actors
who keep you glued to the screen despite how undernourished some of their characters are. The writing is also occasionally smart and spot-on, with delicious zingers and one-liners. None of the dialogue feels rushed or forced, except for the rather inane ending at an opera house that feels less like the work of writer-director Bart Freundlich ("The Myth of the Fingerprints") and more like something a desperate, mediocre screenwriter might have concocted.

"Trust the Man" is uneven and truncated, but it has a breeziness and charm that almost makes it more captivating than it has any right to be. Many scenes register with truth and humor, and some do fall flat
when it opts for slapstick (punches to the lower male extremities never quite make me laugh). Still, for its rather rare sense of humor coming from the usually morose Freundlich, "Trust the Man"
occasionally works but it is nowhere near the level of what Woody Allen could attempt with these New Yorkers.