Restless L.A. anomie

 FLOUNDERING (1994)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

I was a twentysomething fool, a Generation X-er from the early 90's. X meant the unknown and addressed slackerdom, if that is the word for it. I myself felt aimless and sought something real but had no idea where to look for it. There were various Generation X films during the early 90's from "Bodies, Rest and Motion" to the far-too-polished though diverting "Reality Bites" to the diverting and somehow more mature "Singles" to Kevin Smith's slackers and retail clerks-for-life in the comical "Clerks." Yet it is really Peter McCarthy's "Floundering" that really hit the nail on the head. The search for one's self and some measure of spirituality that is forsaken for just getting it together is the heart and soul of "Floundering" and no better actor captured the 90's X-ers better than James Le Gros. Slacker, possibly, but it clearly draws more insight than expected into such an X-er.  

Le Gros is John Boyz, a single, 30-ish guy living on unemployment and alone in his Venice apartment. The 1992 L.A. riots are in the background, mostly playing on his TV as he fantasizes about the crooked police chief who talks to him through the TV. John fantasizes and daydreams a lot, especially about the woman collecting soda cans for recycling (he imagines that she could run a recycling business and his ideas are fairly sound and practical though forming a business costs money). He has a cheating girlfriend (Lisa Zane, never better) who is nonplussed by John's disapproval especially after catching her having sex with her boss ("We will have dinner...in 3 hours!") John has a paranoid brother (Ethan Hawke, who is spectacularly good) who is in and out of rehab. However, soon John's life gets out of control when the IRS seizes his bank account for unpaid taxes and his unemployment starts to run dry. 

John spends more time fantasizing and he has trouble sleeping, waking up every day at 3 am with doom on his mind. He imagines getting shot in the head. He starts to casually ingest cocaine with an ex-girlfriend (Olivia Barash, who contributes a song to the soundtrack) and smoke crack with neighbors who believe a revolution is imminent. John can shoot the shit with a philosophical buddy (John Cusack) while smoking pot and discussing the steps to actualize spirituality rather than just thinking about it. 

"Floundering" literally flounders from daily episodes of John's life, absorbing the drenching anomie, and again searching for something within himself - to understand himself and move forward. The statewide news is depressing, the people in his life offer support through their own understanding of L.A. and crime and the draining of life itself in this big city, but what can a guy do living his life day to day with no real direction?  Le Gros gets there eventually and I felt a kinship with this nice, nonviolent guy - the 90's archetype of a sensitive, selfless man. "Floundering" has it all and embodies the anomie of society without relishing it or explaining it - it just is. John Boyz knows that too well.   

It Couldn't Be Any More Ordinary

 LASERBLAST (1978)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Roger Corman could knock out a low-budget efficient B-picture in three days and make it a diverting enough romp to warrant a viewing. I am thinking of Corman's "The Raven" with Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre, or "The Terror" with a young Jack Nicholson. The makers of this atrocious, numbingly dull trash called "Laserblast" could have taken a cue from Corman. "Laserblast" has no sense of fun or danger about it - a nonsensical non-movie.

Shot in three weekends, "Laserblast" is about a mind-numbingly dull young man, Billy (Kim Milford) from California, who hates when his mother goes away for several weeks at a time to Acapulco. He drives around in a van barechested and tries to pick up his girlfriend at her house but her grandad (Keenan Wynn), a former military general, will not allow it. I can see why because Billy is completely uninteresting and has nothing of value to say about himself or anyone else (Sample dialogue from Billy's girlfriend: "Gee, Billy... why can't you be more ordinary.") There is a pool party scene which looks about as much as fun as watching somebody watching this movie - the extras look bored. 

Meanwhile, Billy flounders in the desert and finds an alien laser weapon which can be activated by wearing a metal necklace. Pretty soon we see Billy transforming into some green-skinned demented creature who fires the weapon and destroys cars, mailboxes, occasionally people and a Coming Soon billboard for the original "Star Wars"! Maybe for our generation, it should have been a billboard for "Star Wars: The Holiday Special" but never mind. When Billy is not destroying property and people, he is a simple dullard who either has sex with his girlfriend or drives aimlessly around the same California stretch of road. Other than the annoying presence of Eddie Deezen (his film debut) and one-day filming a piece for actors Keenan Wynn and Roddy McDowall as a small-town doctor, nothing in "Laserblast" will merit the slightest interest and that includes the brief appearance of stop-motion animated aliens looking like rejected models for that whining deformed baby in "Eraserhead." A sleep-inducing dud.   

Attica, Attica, and Wyoming

 DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" is one of the most peculiar, most offbeat and deeply involving crime pictures I've ever seen. Most bank robbery pictures since the 1970's revelled in the criminal element and the extreme violence, though usually the bank robbery was often a mere glimpse, a brief passage. Not so with "Dog Day Afternoon" where the robbery itself is mostly an afterthought - the robbers figure into the action and the whole film takes place in the bank on one especially humid summer day. 

Anxiety-ridden Sonny Wortzik (a spry Al Pacino) is ready to rob a Brooklyn bank with the help of the sinister, deadly quiet Salvatore "Sal" Naturile (John Cazale), though one other robber during the robbery in progress gets cold feet and flees. Trouble brews right from the start as they find that the bank vault only carries $1,100 rather than the huge amounts of cash they were expecting. Sonny has knowledge of the bank and their registers and what may trigger any alarms yet a small fire in a trash can where he burns the register brings the cops to the scene quickly (the vents show the smoke from the outside). This has now developed into a hostage situation with the bank tellers, the diabetic manager and the asthmatic security guard as the hostages. The air-conditioning doesn't work, the tactical police units are ready to barrel through the back entrance, and Sonny and Sal are left with their pants down. All they can do is ask for pizza, sodas (no beer) and a jet plane to take them to Algeria! 

The purpose behind this robbery is not for Sonny to have extra bucks to live on but to pay for a sex change operation for his lover and new wife, Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon). The remarkable thing about "Dog Day Afternoon" is that the screenplay by Frank Pierson doesn't revolve around this robbery motive or the specifics of the robbery alone but rather the environment of this chaotic situation. Eventually Leon is brought in to this crisis from Bellevue hospital and what occurs is a phone conversation between Sonny and Leon, though they are literally right next door to each other. It is both dramatic and sad since Leon doesn't want to continue a relationship with the temperamental Sonny - such a scene could occur inside their own home. The fact that this is during a failed bank robbery is not central to the film's effectiveness - "Dog Day Afternoon" is not really a crime picture but rather about the distilled humanity of a group of people who have nothing in common with each other. Sonny knows the ins and out of banks but otherwise he is just an average guy who becomes a celebrity with the spectators after yelling "Attica, Attica!" - you have to have some knowledge of Attica as a deadly prison massacre from years earlier. And after being shown on television, Sonny's marriage to Leon becomes public and he gets support from the gay community. As for the bank tellers, they grow accustomed to Sonny seeing him less as a threat and more of a misunderstood soul. Only Sal proves to still be a quiet threat.  

"Dog Day Afternoon" is not a rudimentary thriller nor a violent action piece. In fact, the only violence occurs at the end and it is very brief. The movie thrives on the mounting tension between the cops, the hostage negotiations and Sonny and Sal. In today's world of violent cinema, you know some hostages would've been killed and there would have been a Mexican standoff of some sort in its finale. "Dog Day Afternoon" is surprisingly chaste and all the better for it (check out 1973's "Friends of Eddie Coyle" for similarly less violent, anarchic situations). Lumet places us the viewer squarely in the bank, and everything else is seen from Sonny's point-of-view. Infrequently we see other points of view such as the hundreds of cops getting ready to fire, and we get the frustrated Sergeant Eugene Moretti (Charles Durning) who just wants this extremely volatile situation to end. Pacino in particular conveys so much without overacting - one of his finest, most emotionally centered roles ever. Sonny's like a puppy dog with big brown eyes lost in the confusion of his own life - his other wife, Angie (Susan Peretz), who is quite loquacious, is lost in this mess as well. I can't begin to describe my effusive praise for "Dog Day Afternoon" other than saying I did not want it to end - a day of chaos that is both exhausting and exhilarating. 

Destroyer of Worlds

 THE DAY AFTER TRINITY (1981)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Los Alamos. J. Robert Oppenheimer. Atomic bomb tests. Those three singular sentences should have never have coalesced yet, nevertheless, they did. Watching Jon Else's powerful, intrinsically fascinating and terrifying documentary "The Day After Trinity," it all hinges on how everyone involved in the infamous Trinity atomic bomb test thought that maybe the atomic bomb shouldn't have happened.  

Oppenheimer was not a man cultured in world news or politics, at least not in the beginning of his youth. He was principally a man of physics and mathematics that yielded a discovery by way of Albert Einstein and led to Oppenheimer's vision of an atomic bomb. After the horrific Pearl Harbor tragedy of 1941 and the worsening Nazi holocaust, it was rumored that Germany was building an atomic bomb so this ignited a patriotic charge in Oppenheimer. The rumor proved false since Germany failed to build that weapon yet the determined physicist took the best minds in the field of physics from around the world to the desolate desert of Los Alamos, New Mexico to build this bomb. It was in this expansive area that they were test the force of the bomb and to see just how destructive it could be. To say they were nonplussed and amazed by its sheer power would be an understatement; Oppenheimer himself was pleased it was not a "dud."

The rest is history as the bomb was tested on human lives, destroying two Japanese cities - Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The human toll was astronomical yet it led the Japanese forces to surrender and it is a historic chapter in World War II that either you bemoan or celebrate - the last war that America won otherwise known as the Great War. 

I am not sure "The Day After Trinity" is an anti-nuclear weapons film or anti-nuclear arms race film - Oppenheimer struggled with the government to end this race which he opined should never have proliferated the day after the Trinity atomic bomb test. It was too little and too late and Oppenheimer was attacked by Senator Joseph McCarthy at the time for being a possible Soviet spy and for his past Communist leanings. Oppenheimer's Atomic Energy Commission security clearance was expunged and he was never the same person ever since. (Note: As of December 16, 2022, United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm vacated the 1954 revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance.) Robert's brother Frank Oppenheimer, a particle physicist, feels quite a bit of sorrow through his constant body language of seemingly covering his head in shame - he feels what his famous brother might have felt. That sense of regret is carried over to interviews of other scientists and collaborators leading to and during the days of the Trinity test. 

"The Day After Trinity" is scary and at times pulsates with a nervous energy, as it truly opens one's eyes to the enormity and scale of destruction of such a weapon. Oppenheimer might have seen the awesome destruction and beauty of such a "marvelous" weapon yet he felt that a discussion of war as a principle measure of destruction and violence could have carried something meaningful in the future. It didn't yet, ironically, he was still the destroyer of worlds.

I am the Walrus Goo goo g'joob

 TUSK (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I was plainly sickened to my stomach by "Tusk," Kevin Smith's foray into body horror with a wink. The wink makes the palpable horror even worse and it becomes a geek show reducing its tension to that of an elongated farce with bloody body parts. I'll give it points for originality but it reminded me to completely avoid "The Human Centipede" for obvious reasons.

Justin Long is a narcissistic, obscene podcaster named Wallace who, partnered with Teddy (Haley Joel Osment), run a podcast called the "Not See Party" (a stupid idea considering the homophonic comparison to you know what). Wallace has a girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) whom he cheats on and has little else to offer in life (he considers his old self to be a loser). Yes, let's see just how narcissistic the prick really is with his newfound fame and his merch celebrating someone who belittles others. The newest target is the "Kill Bill Kid" who accidentally chops off his leg with a real sword in a viral video. Wallace and Teddy find the video funny and, thus, Wallace is ready to interview the Canuck kid whose video has more hits than his podcast. It is off to Canada and when he finds out that the Kill Bill Kid killed himself, Wallace is left dumbfounded rather than remorseful. Someone else needs to be his next target of ridicule and it turns out to be an old geezer named Howard (Michael Parks), who is wheelchair-bound and has left a notice at some bar that he wishes for companionship at his remote home in Bifrost. Wallace sees the note, visits the guy and the walrus becomes more than a topic of conversation.

"Tusk" is unsettling for the first third of the movie and the tension is tightly coiled. This does not surprise me coming from director Kevin Smith who maintained tension and suspense in equal droves in "Red State." The problems arise when too much happens too soon in "Tusk," and it becomes a practically barf-inducing and sickening joke. Michael Parks underplays beautifully and Justin Long is fantastic at playing an obnoxious jerk yet whatever sympathy we develop for Wallace is lost and introduced too late in the game by way of flashbacks. The connections, however minute by narrative design, occurred to me between the Kill Bill Kid's amputation and some of the body modifications that Wallace has to suffer. Suffice to say, once you see the body modification and melding of...eh, I can't even say; well, just be prepared to avert your eyes. Yet the movie opts for some humor with the introduction of an investigator (the surprise of who's playing him is more fun in the discovery) and that breaks the tension, though it felt necessary for me. Still, once we arrive at the conclusion, it felt like Kevin Smith was just trying to make us laugh at all this. I will not give away the final scene but it rang false for me, inducing more chuckles that seem to come from a horror parody. So did Howard's obsession with walruses and what Frankenstein-like experiments he wishes to do with Wallace. Michael Parks is an excellent, seasoned actor but he couldn't convince me of these unholy practices, unlike his Elmer-Gantry preacher in "Red State."  

"Tusk" is effective at times and I was not bored for a second but it is more of a sickening joke, a geek show with pretensions of horror laced with humor, than a genuine horror picture.    

I Love that Old Time Kevin Smith

 JAY AND SILENT BOB REBOOT (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Geez Mr. Kevin Smith, captain of New Jersey dick and fart jokes, why return to such puerile, infantile material? What happened to the dramatic horror effect of "Red State" or the sickening ugliness of "Tusk"? (Eh, don't wish to discuss that one again) What happened to the unfunny cop movie homage of "Cop Out"? Nah, don't answer that one either. Thank you is all I can say. I am a fan of the View Askewuniverse (or is it View Askew Verse?) and any New Jersey material mined around the edges of a town like Leonardo where the Quik Stop exists makes me deliriously happy. The last time we saw the stoners Jay and Silent Bob was in "Clerks II," which was a super good sequel. Now my little pot-smoking waifs, we got "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot" which is exactly what you might expect and then some. 

Jason Mewes as the somewhat moronic Jay who loves doobies is back along with his heterosexual mate, Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) who never says a word and texts how he feels via emoticons. Some of that humor can go a long way. Also, I must report Mr. Smith that the opening scenes of this movie fell flat and were troublingly unfunny, like freakin' "Mallrats" unfunny (Dude, or Your New Jersey Highness of the View Askew Order, did you really consider making a "Mallrats 2"?) Justin Long is a pop-cultured, prosecutor and defending lawyer of J & S and Craig Robinson is a judge, well versed in  Mighty Morphins trivia, and I was ready to say this movie was going to fall flat on its face. Little did I know that Mr. Smith had some snoogans in order, that is, he got me involved in a recycled plot from "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" where they try to stop a reboot of a "Bluntman and Chronic" movie called "Bluntman V. Chronic" only it is TV's "Supergirl" herself, Melissa Benoist, playing Chronic! Along their merry Mary Jane way with three saved potent pot cigs, Jay meets up again with Justice (Shannon Elizabeth), the giggly girl from the C.L.I.T animal activist group. It turns out Jay has a daughter played with electric energy by Hayley Quinn Smith (Kevin Smith's actual daughter). Anyway, the only way to stop this movie from being made is to go to Hollywood, and Jay's daughter also has some plans to head there as well.

Some gags really made me laugh, especially the whole comic-con version in the latter half (including an appearance by the real Kevin Smith playing himself who makes fun of himself). Included in the comic-con footage are terrific cameos by Val Kilmer as Bluntman and of course the aforementioned Melissa Benoist in a trailer for this fictional comic book movie.  It is also fun to see Ben Affleck back as Holden McNeil and Joey Lauren Adams as Amy, from "Chasing Amy" of course and the "Strikes Back" movie. I also found the Matt Damon cameo hysterical, playing that murderous angel from "Dogma." I could have lived without returnee Jason Lee as the irritating Brodie - something about that character sticks in my craw. A brief sequence involving a pedophile in a van just rang as tasteless and the "How High" pot-filled dream homage will make sense to only those that remember that movie. 

Jason Mewes, though, is the real star of the movie and just his ability to sniff out trouble in the winds or how he misinterprets everything as either sexual or otherwise makes me laugh. Kevin Smith can grate one's nerves as Silent Bob, though he does a fantastic homage to "Glengarry Glen Ross" during a KKK rally! Adding to valuable support to an increasingly silly universe is the incredible Harley Quinn Smith who brings the occasional Smith brand of genuine heart and soul. She's funny, smart and independent and slowly forms a strong bond with her stoner dad. I was incredibly moved by her in a movie that is meant to be raunchy with dick and fart jokes, or mostly dick jokes. Thank you Mr. Smith.   

It is HOT

 BODY HEAT (1981)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

"Body Heat" is one of the few films I've ever seen that seems to literally sizzle. Every stylistically framed shot, every acutely timed line of dialogue and every performance sizzles. Set in a coastal town in Florida, it is the hottest time of the year and sweat pours out of you even after taking a shower. Other than Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," never have I felt the heat so intensely and intrinsically as in Lawrence Kasdan's "Body Heat." It has been deemed the first neo-noir thriller though there is nothing neo about it. Kasdan obviously aimed to make a new spin on the classic "Double Indemnity" and possibly "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (the latter remade as a raw and singularly unimpressive Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange flick) and has succeeded beyond expectations yet still stays true to its fundamental traditions.

The characters in Kasdan's noir thriller, though, do not fit any of the traditional archetypes of the past. William Hurt is lawyer Ned Racine, a somewhat dim small-town lawyer who falls for Matty (Kathleen Turner) from the start, thinking only below his waist and not with his brains (She catches on quick when she says "You are not too smart are you. I like that in a man"). She is alluring, a sexual being who is married and tries to remain chaste. Ned is horny as a hound dog and says to her, "You shouldn't be wearing that body." Before one can say, "oh come over and just look at my wind chimes," Ned is asked to leave and bursts through her glass doors and makes passionate love to her. She wants it, and so does he. This is just the start of his troubles when Matty's husband (Richard Crenna), a wealthy businessman, comes back into town and the sexual pair have already decided to kill him. In this case, though, it is not for money or profit or anything other than this doomed pair wanting to be together because they love each other. Does Matty really love Ned or is it partially about money after all? It seems like it and, as you watch the film, it is clear that she is not just lusting after this man. Still, to make matters more complicated, Matty might have had a plan prior to their initial meeting. It is made more or less clear that she had him in her throes from the start.

Kathleen Turner, in her ravishing and hypnotic film debut, is not a one-dimensional siren nor is she a standard femme fatale. Her manipulative side is not made overtly obvious and that is Turner's strength as an actress. She loves men and she also wants freedom, so can she have both? Kasdan never makes that clear enough, making Matty one of those enigmatic femme fatales who knows how to play her cards right from the start. As Ned observes too late in the game, "She's relentless!" Yet Turner never makes it too obvious, always showing shades of false naivete in small spurts though never revealing how her mind is always at work and is one step ahead of everyone else. The final shot of the film is haunting, lyrical and beautiful yet quite sad. It should be victorious for a femme fatale of her nature yet it is not - we get the feeling she will never be quite at peace even in a scenic tropical island.

William Hurt also makes for a fascinatingly seedy man who beds many women who are either waitresses or nurses. He is just barely smart enough to know he's been had, though still dumb enough as well to not see what is happening with Matty. He thinks that his murder plan is his own when it is made abundantly clear that Matty has orchestrated the murder plot from the beginning (and that includes the drawing up of a new will). Hurt also has a sneaky way of making us care about him despite his seediness and his murderous mind - he loves this woman yet we can't get behind his taking a human life for love. This is all spun and orchestrated with far more humanity than the noirs of the past - you never sense a coldness arising out of these characters. Deftly and swiftly written by Lawrence Kasdan (his directorial debut),"Body Heat" has a clockwork plot that manages to never feel too complicated or contain any red herrings. Every piece falls into place because it really feels like the characters are orchestrating it rather than the feeling that some Chandleresque writer is at the helm. 

I am a lover of film noir in general, especially the postwar noir of the 40's and 50's. "Double Indemnity" holds a special place for me as having the most sparkling, deliciously spicy dialogue ever (Barbara Stanwyck was the siren in that film). "Body Heat" is not better but definitely its equal, containing more salacious dialogue and more honest sexuality yet never veering into crude, histrionic sexual scenes or heinous violence. That has become "Body Heat's" mainstay since very few thrillers during its wake have aimed for true sultriness and restraint or much else. The steam is what rises in "Body Heat" and leaves you satisfied with the lustful, somewhat romantic power of the film. "Body Heat" is the very essence of sophisticated adult noir.