With Great Movie Titles Comes a Greater Responsibility

 HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (2011)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Watching "Hobo With a Shotgun" is like having your toenails pulled with a pair of pliers. It sure feels painful and not much fun at all. That almost says everything you need to know about this movie but let me go a little further.

There is a town called Hope Town that is infested with sickeningly ugly crimes; violence to the point of cameramen shooting video of people getting stomped on; a TV producer named Drake (Brian Downey) who owns the whole town and stages violent bloodbaths as if was a TV show for terrified bystanders; and there are Drake's two psychopathic sons who wear sunglasses and beat and kill people inside a club for fun! One of them wields a bat embedded with hundreds of razor blades (imagine if we saw that in "The Walking Dead"). Neither son cares about anyone, not even themselves. These guys also torch a school bus and the young tots on board! 

Enter the Hobo (Rutger Hauer) who enters the town after hopping off of a freight train. He sees the violence rampant on the streets and does his best to ignore it and collect soda cans in a shopping cart. Eventually he arms himself with a shotgun after he's unable to stomach anymore violence and blows away everyone who commits a crime. A pimp is shot in the face. A pedophile dressed as Santa Claus is also shot in the face. Meanwhile the hobo is protective of a young prostitute (Molly Dunsworth) who lets him stay in her apartment. The hobo endures a lot of physical torture himself, including getting stomped on the back with ice skates worn by one of Drake's sadistic sons. He also gets carved on his chest with a knife by the other son, Slick (who is anything but). 

More scenes of bloodbath delirium are exposed. A woman's fingers are cut off by a rotating fan until we see nothing but a bloody stump. One character is shot in the genital area with his you know what exposed and torn apart. Hobo is forced to eat glass for twenty bucks for a video cameraman. I simply cannot go on. 

I have enjoyed some of Rutger Hauer's other movies in the past, particularly his underrated "Blind Fury" which was a fun and kooky take on the blind swordsman Zatoichi movies. This movie is not fun, not even grisly fun, not even at the level of bloody-intestines-pulled-by-the-hero fun as it was in "Machete" which is a Merchant Ivory production compared to this (both Hobo and Machete originated as faux trailers in "Grindhouse.") When a man's head is decapitated while wearing a manhole cover (do not ask) and blood sprays like a fountain while a nearly naked woman bathes in it, I am lost in seeing how any of this is remotely entertaining (Sadists might get a kick out of it). "Hobo With a Shotgun" is numbing and repetitive in scenes of allegedly shocking violence - there is no shock value in it because wetting the screen with blood and viscera is not enough for a movie, not even for an exploitation movie. Director Jason Eisener can disguise it all with solarized colors and high contrast yet with no rooting interest in any character, not even B movie king Rutger Hauer (who at least has one good scene where he talks to newborn babies about their future), then you have nothing, zilch. The movie says that this world is nihilistic and we are all prone to excessive violence and heavy ingestion of cocaine. All I can say is that with great movie titles comes a greater responsibility.  

Where were you?

 THE EMPTY MAN (2020)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I don't think I have figured out "The Empty Man" but I wouldn't say it left me feeling "empty" either. I also believe that like many of David Lynch's own labyrinthian puzzle pieces (his "Inland Empire" is still somewhat inexplicable to me), "The Empty Man" requires attention and patience and yet once we discover some of its hidden truths, we are still at a bit of a loss to understand what the film is saying.   

The opening scenes, which last a good 25 minutes, didn't exactly strike a chord with me. Four hiking partners are walking through the cold and desolate Ura Valley in Bhutan. They are at a high elevation in the Himalays and one of the hikers, Paul, falls through a crevice on the mountainous rock (after all successfully walk through a dangerous bridge). Paul initially heard a distant noise, as if someone was communicating with him, and is found by his friends in a cave kneeling before a Lovecraftian skeleton with tentacles -  it looks like a demigod to be worshipped. Paul is catatonic and is whisked away by his friends to some remote log cabin during a snowstorm. A tragedy results in two of the hikers getting slashed with a knife by Paul's girlfriend and then she purposefully plunges herself to the bottom of the mountain. Suicide or was she forced to do it?

"The Empty Man" is far more interesting and scary after that opening prologue when we are introduced to an ex-cop named Lasombra (James Badge Dale) who is investigating a series of murder-suicides where a cryptic phrase is written on a wall that reads "The Empty Man Made Me Do It." Of course, he is not a cop anymore but it doesn't stop him from checking out these strange cases, especially the disappearance of his next-door neighbor's daughter (Sasha Frolova, her cherubic face exists on some other plane of  existence - good casting) who has that phrase written in blood on the bathroom window! Who is the Empty Man? Slender Man's Cousin? Who knows though he can be summoned by blowing onto a glass bottle on a bridge - that is part of the legend and sure enough, in one of the movie's two scariest sequences, someone is kicking bottles and making noise on the other side of the bridge. When Lasombra finds four kids that have hanged themselves at the bottom of the bridge, we know this entity or phantasm is not playing around. But what does the Empty Man want? Great question.

"The Empty Man" borrows or perhaps patterns itself after films like "The Babadook" and "The Ring" - both of which are more straightforward than this movie. But I do love ambiguity and debuting director David Prior has a lot of ideas about the metaphysical world and what is real and fundamentally true versus what is often punctuated through repetition that could just be a "refrigerator magnet" (some of this philosophy is provided by the leader of a terminally strange institute played by Stephen Root, a great character actor who is just as creepy as the guy he played in "Get Out"). Those moments of philosophical discussion really piqued my interest. On a narrative level with the main characters, I was far more invested in Lasombra and his pill-popping, heavy drinking stretches (he lost his wife and child in a horrible car accident), especially the fractured friendship between him and his neighbor Nora (Marin Ireland) - she also lost her significant other. Both James Badge Dale and Marin Ireland are so damn good, so honest in their portrayals of lost souls who try to repair their damaged psyches that a whole film just about them would've been grand. That is usually the mark of a good horror flick.

But by the time we reach the frenetic, heavy clicking sounds and deep-bass-tremors-in-the-soundtrack climax (I had some idea about Lasombra's possible true identity halfway through the film), I felt a little underwhelmed. That is not to say that the film's supernatural climax isn't stirring - it definitely is - but it negates the soul dimensions provided by Dale for his ex-cop Lasombra and the stunning Frolova for Nora's daughter. Despite the uninvolving prologue, there is much to admire in "The Empty Man" which has its share of scares and spooky atmosphere and it leaves you with a lot of questions (its philosophies will stay with me).  After it ended, I just felt more hoodwinked than enlightened but definitely not disinterested.

Comedic Management Prescription

 ANGER MANAGEMENT (2003)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

What can you say about a movie when Adam Sandler shows more restraint than loose cannon Jack Nicholson? Not very much, I'm afraid. Though I'd hardly call "Anger Management" Adam Sandler's worst comedy, it is definitely one of his weakest. With a dependable premise and a promising cast, the film sinks without ever adhering to its own ideas.

I hate to use the same old phrase that most critics use but this film does have a great premise. Adam Sandler plays Dave Buznik, an employee for some conglomerate who has just received a promotion. His girlfriend (Marisa Tomei?) is excited by his job success but is dismayed that he can hardly reciprocate the love they share. Then on an airplane flight, Dave asks for a headset so he can watch the in-flight movie. He keeps asking until finally he ends up in a scuffle with the airline stewardess. This scene is funny because Sandler uses whatever expert timing he has to deliver the right facial reaction and, his slow burn segueing to slowly mumbling his words with quiet ease before erupting, is stimulating to watch. This is, of course, what audiences expect from Mr. Sandler, his anger resulting in beating the heck out of everyone around him. But then we are left with arched-eyebrowed, goateed Jack Nicholson as a doctor with anger management experience who wants to cure Dave's boiling temper-tantrums. We are also introduced to peripheral characters who do nothing except induce severe groans (at least they do to me). John Turturro, Heather Graham (mouthing chocolate cake and mumbling) and Luiz Guzman play such arcane stereotypes that I was amazed not one of them could make me crack a smirk. Even reliable John C. Reilly, as a reformed Buddhist monk, literally kicks some butt but to no end. Like most of the movie, the idea is funny but the execution is wanting.

"Anger Management" has maybe two scenes that offer a chuckle or two - one is Sandler's response when he discovers Nicholson wants to date his girlfriend. The other is Sandler and Nicholson's duet to a song from "West Side Story." A few unusual cameos by John McEnroe and Rudolph Guiliani simply mark time - nothing comes of them. The movie has as little to do with anger management as it does with surrounding Sandler with guest star cameos and over-the-top mugging. And to show how the movie eradicates its original concept, it ends as yet another mediocre romantic comedy! What the film needs is strictly narrative and comedic management.

Pancake brought his girl to the Waffle House!

 THE LADYKILLERS (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Viewed on April 10th, 2004

The Coens have done it again. In 2003, they made one of the unfunniest comedies ever made, "Intolerable Cruelty." In 2004, they have crafted one of their funniest works by far, "The Ladykillers." Though the concept and ideas behind this dark comedy are not new, the Coens's wit and sharp edges enhance this caper comedy to the max. Like I said, the Coens have fooled me again.

The opening shot is vintage Coens. It is a high-angle view of a bridge separated by two gargoyles while a barge passes underneath. It may not mean much to most but it establishes the tone immediately - death looms in the horizon. Then the Coens continue their playful digressions by introducing Marva
(Irma P. Hall), a churchgoing no-nonsense woman who despises hip-hop music (especially the recurring use of the N-word). She complains about such music to the police, who pay her no mind. One sunny day, a genteel, goateed professor known as Professor G.H. Dorr (Tom Hanks) inquires about renting the room in her house. This professor is not the quiet type - he talks incessantly and speaks in the florid tones of his favorite authors. In other words, like some real-life professors, he speaks nothing but gibberish. Marva is not easily misled but she does allow him to rent the room when he mentions his classical music band and the necessary rehearsals for an upcoming concert.

Of course, the Professor is not what he seems - he is a robber who plans to steal money from the Bandit Queen casino. The idea is to crack through Marva's cellar door walls and make a tunnel to the casino. He gets help from Pancake (J.K. Simmons), an explosives expert, who has a girlfriend named Mountain; Lump (Ryan Hurst), a dumb football player, who can tear down the walls; Gawain
(Marlon Wayans), a Bandit Queen janitor who has access to the money; and the General (Tzi-Ma), a Vietnamese chain-smoker who knows a thing or two about tunnels. The good Professor must find ways of evading the police (who turn up at Marva's house) and pretend they are in a band while tunneling their way through her cellar (they keep a cassette player handy to play classical music).

"The Ladykillers" is one of those rare delights in movies where the characters, as cliched as they may be, keep the movie running at a lively pace (though the plot turns may be predicted by most). Part of the charm are the actors who do their damnedest not to go over the hill for laughs. Tom Hanks gives one of his most playful, energetic performances in a long while, focusing on the character's brand of peculiar, intellectual speech patterns that I never thought he could muster with such finesse. Marlon Wayans gives us the pizazz of a real live-wire, and his facial reactions are sidesplittingly funny (including
an encounter with Pancake and his girlfriend at the Waffle House). J.K. Simmons gives us a mustachioed explosives expert who would be right at home in a Warner Brothers cartoon - his Irritable Bowel Syndrome symptoms during moments of crisis are extreme yet done with the right touch of sly humor. And Tzi-Ma's Vietnamese General is a masterful performance of silent comedy - he handles
cigarettes with a magician's ease. But the highlight of the film is Irma P. Hall's Marva, delivering some of the best one-liners in the film. Her own speeches to the portrait of her late husband are also a major tickle to the funny bone - she has the energy and confidence of a woman who will not back down from her own decisions.

"The Ladykillers" is the remake of the Alec Guinness picture of the same name, and though it is not nearly as sublime as its original counterpart, it is in a class all its own. The Coens have many tricks up their sleeves and aim to deliver with the spit and polish that is lacking in many of their outrageous
comedies. It is a cartoon alright, and damned if I wasn't laughing through the end credits.

Humans want their Earth back

 LAND OF THE DEAD (2005)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally viewed on June 24th, 2005

I must confess that I enjoy zombie movies. 2004's black-humored, scary spoof "Shaun of the Dead" and the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" were among the best the genre had to offer. So maybe George A. Romero, the father of the zombie genre, had been out of the loop for too long to come up with anything comparable or different. Not true. His "Night of the Living Dead" still scares the bejesus out of me, and his original "Dawn of the Dead" is more comical than frightening but still delivers an occasional shock or two. "Day of the Dead" left me wanting yet Romero's latest, "Land of the Dead," an
occasionally effective horror picture, is a marked improvement but no great success. It has Romero's personal stamp written all over it and the occasional satiric touches but its meaty themes need more, um, seasoning.

The movie begins with close-ups of zombies walking around an abandoned gas station (a prominent sign reads "Eats"). Our heroes, who are human, notice that the zombies are playing musical instruments, trying to fill up a gas tank, and so much more. Maybe these zombies are learning to adapt to their state of mind. Certainly Big Daddy is, a tall zombie with more brain cells than anyone else in the entire movie (he's played by Eugene Clark who has more presence than anyone else in the film). He knows how to communicate with others of his ilk, especially when humans are nearby watching them through binoculars. The flesh eaters even start to arm themselves against their human adversaries using a machine gun, a baseball bat, a meat cleaver, and so on. This is one of many original aspects that was hinted at in "Day of the Dead" - they can become the aggressors who have learned by observation (Well, Big Daddy has - he leads them and instructs them on how to fire a gun!) 

There are human mercenaries who work for the arrogant Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), an egotistical, wealthy man who hires them to keep zombies out (including the lower class starving denizens of the sparsely populated city). Kaufman and the rich live in a tower called Fiddler's Green, a luxurious paradise that seems out of place in a zombie-ridden city. One of the mercenaries, Cholo (John Leguizamo), wants to move in to this paradise but, hey, there's a long waiting list and the implications are that Cholo's ethnicity doesn't fit in with the upper class! There's also Riley (Simon Baker, from TV's "The Guardian"), the reliable head of the mercenary group, who wants to go north to Canada and get away from the madness. We also get a sweet-natured hooker named Slack (Asia Argento), who is saved by Riley before being eaten in a ring by two zombies while an audience watches! Yep, Romero seems to be saying once again that humans are no better than zombies - we use zombies for exploitation at a geek show (like the Roman gladiators did with humans, of course), which is rather sickening and apropos.

For zombie fans, Romero delivers plenty of gore and plenty of explosions (I think there are more explosions than scenes of zombies ripping out guts or eating fingers, though the unrated cut leaves a lot of the gore intact). We get numerous scenes of zombies used as target practice or as buffoons or sport for spectators. We also get the traditional scenes of zombies getting shot in the head. There is also a powerful armored vehicle named "Dead Reckoning" that is some sort of anti-zombie tank (no different
than the one used in the "Dawn" remake yet more stable). There are also those ads for Fiddler's Green that promise paradise for all, even if it is exclusively for the rich. And for fans of Tom Savini, he returns as a biker zombie carrying a machete.

I appreciate many things in "Land of the Dead" but I suppose that, in this steady diet of flesh eaters at the cinema, I expected so much more yet I was definitely not disappointed. Romero made something strangely eerie and unique with his original "Night of the Living Dead" - he painted a bleak picture of a world of indifference between humans. The last shot of that film always shook me and riveted me - it said more about humanity or inhumanity than any zombie film had the right to. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" was about consumption of a material lifestyle - once you have all the material possessions at a shopping mall, what the heck is left? "Day of the Dead" began to show that zombies could evolve
with the proper help of doctors. I was hoping that "Land of the Dead" would evolve along those lines but it does so fitfully, not wholly. Don't get me wrong: "Land of the Dead" has some scares and is never boring. There is much here that relates to a post-9/11 world (did Cholo actually use the phrase
"jihad?") and nobody can stage gore like Romero can. I just sense that Romero had more to say and either chose not to or was forced to trim the film to a bare 93 minutes. It is slightly above average fare but you may wish there was more to, um, consume.

Mall walkers, beware

 DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally viewed on April 3rd, 2004

The new "Dawn of the Dead" is a feverishly paced nightmare - a roller coaster ride of bloodcurling thrills and chills. Who would have thought that a zombie movie could be a roller coaster ride? This remake of the 1978 George Romero film is not better, just sharper, faster and, at times, scarier.

Immediately, in the film's pre-credit sequence, we are lured into a nightmare before we can say boo. Sarah Polley plays a nurse who hates to work overtime. She comes home to her beau, and all seems well after a long day at work. They make love in the shower and ignore the news warnings on television (amazing how many people leave their TV's without ever truly watching them). They should
have listened! People are running in the streets! Hysteria! Cars crashing into each other! Explosions in the distance! And what is all this, a new form of terrorism? Nope, people are turning into zombies, infected by bites from other zombies! More hysteria, especially when a young girl from the neighborhood bites the nurse's beau! Oh, my, what do we do now? What is especially frightening about this sequence is that it establishes an apocalypse brought on by an uncontrollable virus - it is nicely exemplified in an aerial shot where we see suburbia becoming a haven of chaos within minutes.
The nurse takes off in her car, runs into a barricade, is found by a cop (Ving Rhames), finds other survivors who are not zombies, and head to the local mall.

There they find a triad of mall security cops who want nothing to do with these survivors. But there is no time for macho bull as these zombies begin to proliferate. And they do not walk slowly or fall onto each other - they run like maniacs, eager for fresh flesh. Yes, a bit that may have been cribbed from
the imaginative, forceful "28 Days Later," but this movie is even scarier. There is no respite from the madness of these flesh eaters - they devour and shake and twist, but you can't keep a good zombie down for long. As more survivors enter the Mall of Refuge, they also forget the zombies as well. They
get on the roof and shoot any that look like celebrities, as well as another expert marksman staying above the roof of a gun shop. Will they ever escape? Is there any refuge on any island nearby?

"Dawn of the Dead" is pure, unmitigated horror, relentless and intense beyond belief. I swear that you will be clinging and crouching in your seats, waiting to see what new horror awaits these survivors. We see silhouetted garages, dank gun stores, brightly lit mall hallways, sprinklers, fences, trucks, chainsaws, and lots of guns - a necessity since a zombie can only be killed by a direct gunshot to the head. And for gore fans, there is some involving a pregnant woman strapped to a bed that may make you squirm worse than anything in "The Exorcist." There are also countless zombies mowed down and run over so often that it becomes numbing yet never flags attention (unlike the recent, thrill-less remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre").

First-time director Zack Snyder sets this Romero tale on overdrive, never stooping for such intricacies as character development or the consumerist satire of the original. But I am not too let down by this because the original "Dawn" is still a classic and it has its own feverish excitement - the mall
setting of that film opened up the story for some black humor. There is not much humor in the new "Dawn" but the characters, with certain exceptions, draw us into the chaos and we hope they survive their ordeal. Ultimately it is Sarah Polley, the intelligent actress from Atom Egoyan country, who rescues the film with authority, toughness and a sincerity that makes all the other characters seem like automatons by comparison (the actress is a Socialist, after all). Ving Rhames and Mekhi Phifer have great presence and share a terrific scene in the lavatory, discussing the hell they are confronting. And
the guy at the gun shop leaves us also hoping he gets out alive (in a touching moment, he communicates his hunger by writing on a white board). 

"Dawn of the Dead" is one of the best horror remakes ever made. It is one solidly hellbent ride, riding on full-throttle and delivering a pure adrenaline rush. And its apocalyptic urgency and sense of dread will leave you gasping for air. A hellish experience.

I love eating...BRAINS!

 THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

An appreciation by Jerry Saravia

The first R-rated movie I saw in theaters by myself was "The Return of the Living Dead" back in good old 1985. I saw it at the now defunct Cinema City 5 theaters in Fresh Meadows, NY and I must say it was exciting to see an R-rated movie, let alone an R-rated horror flick (Today, aside from a few curse words, this movie would probably be rated PG-13). The lights went down and I was introduced to a whole new world of punk music, punk characters, a couple of chemical facility workers in their mid-50's, and rampaging zombies who ran and lunged themselves at victims (this is the first zombie flick to feature running zombies). Oh, yes, and the commonplace sight in TV and film screens in the 1980's, a nuclear explosion.

"The Return of the Living Dead" felt like a nuclear explosion, and it still is. It is chaotic from the first frame to the last with no end in sight of its unrelenting chaos and complete anarchy. The director Dan O'Bannon (his directorial debut) was influenced by director Howard Hawks' own chaos in his early screwball comedies. The movie begins with what we would now associate with Quentin Tarantino in terms of dialogue featuring meta associations with previous movies - James Karen (truly memorable) as a Darrow Chemical employee tells a new recruit (Thom Andrews) about how their basement has mistakenly delivered metal drums from the Army containing dead bodies. These bodies were the inspiration behind George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" movie ("Did you know it was based on a true case?"). When Karen shows the incredulous kid these supposedly airtight drums, a green gaseous vapor shoots out and turns them, slowly but surely, into zombies. 

Clu Gulager (I love that he made this movie - he and James Karen give it an ounce of integrity) is the boss at Darrow Chemical Plant who investigates the chaos of reanimated corpses thanks to that green gas. More chaos ensues when Gulager and company try to convince the local moratorium's owner (bug-eyed Dan Calfa) to burn the reanimated corpse they chopped up (at first, Gulager tells Calfa they are "rabid weasels"). This creates more problems when the fumes start to resurrect the dead at the Resurrection Cemetery, which happens to be occupied by a punk party group who just want to party! The standout is Linnea Quigley as Trash, a girl who is fascinated and turned on by death. Quigley, true to form, does full frontal nudity dancing on top of a gravestone. The rest of the kids are distinctive enough in their look though not the most memorable, except for the punkish, leather-jacketed, chain-pierced rebel named Suicide (Mark Venturini) who is trying to make a statement with his look and supposedly has no interest in having sex with Trash! 

The zombies in this movie have ravenous appetites that includes mostly eating brains ("It takes away the pain of being dead," exclaims one limbless zombie). Oh, yeah, the zombies talk and always scream, "Brains!" For more intellectual types, this movie might be disposable B-movie trash. For me, there is terrifically timed black humor, solid performances, a tongue-in-cheek attitude, Linnea Quigley dancing naked, split dog specimens, and an explosive ending. I wouldn't call the ending uncompromising but it is unexpected. For a teen kid in the 1980's, this was a great R-rated movie. Now, it is simply a great horror comedy.