Keeping Solidarity in secret

 MOONLIGHTING (1982)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A British home workman might charge more money to renovate a home than a Polish worker who just wants a chance to make a little money to, you know, to buy a watch and a bicycle. "Moonlighting" is about Polish workers who come into London with temporary visas to illegally renovate a Polish government official's home. This may not sound like an exciting story for a movie but when you consider the logistical complications of the Polish workman doing a job illegally and secretly while Poland is facing martial law, "Moonlighting" becomes one of the great, exciting, humorous political films of all time without bluntly throwing politics in your face.

Jeremy Irons is completely convincing as a Polish foreman, Nowak, who brings along his workers to London and he is the only one that can speak English. They move into the flat, demolish walls, work through the nights at times, paint and fall behind schedule too. The men need entertainment so the funds are used to buy a TV for forty pounds that has no plug and no antenna (referred to as "aerial") so they can watch sports. When the TV breaks down, it almost comes as a blessing in disguise because Nowak discovers through the British national newspaper that Poland is under martial-law (the Solidarity movement). The laborers can't speak or read in English and they also can't speak to their relatives or families in Poland since all lines are cut off. In addition, Nowak starts running out of money and finds a clever way of stealing from a local supermarket by misplacing his gloves. Will the Solidarity movement end before they finish their work or will they find out that their foreman has been keeping a secret?

"Moonlighting" is fluidly directed by Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski ("The Shout"), and all the possibilities and outcomes of such a dire scenario are played out with utmost skill and authority. Every frame of "Moonlighting" contains escalating tension between Nowak and his tired workers. Every detail is wrung out from Nowak collecting a neighbor's newspaper for the latest headlines, to stealing a bicycle when his own is stolen, to the supermarket managers catching on to his thievery, to Nowak's black-and-white picture of his wife, to trying and failing to pick up a salesgirl, and avoiding clashes with the apartment landlord who can't stand the loud construction noise during the night. Irons gets underneath the skin of Nowak, a man facing a monumental crisis of faith in himself and his native country. The final scene of revelation is a nail-biter, showcasing the realities of a world falling apart.

 Simply made with complex weaving of fragile emotions and fragile relationships between Nowak and his workers without seeing one frame (other than on a TV news channel) of Poland's Solidarity in late 1981, "Moonlighting" is essential cinema about a fractured, frenzied time that demands attention and recognition.   

This is not America

THE FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN (1985)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

What works best in John Schlesinger's absorbing Cold War-spy-drama-as-played-by-amateurs is that the movie never judges them nor does it celebrate, condone or admonish these traitors either. Based on a true story, it is a mistake to read "The Falcon and the Snowman" (the characters' sobriquets) as anything but traitors yet it is not how they view themselves. Well, not Christopher Boyce though Daulton Lee does see it that way.

Timothy Hutton plays Christopher Boyce and a highly unrecognizable Sean Penn plays Daulton, both California kids from well-to-do families and former altar boys. Boyce chose a vocation with the ministry and then opted out, though the reasons remain unclear. He goes out in the wilderness and sends his pet falcon to fly around catching birds. Daulton is a mess, a nervous wreck of a kid who goes out on drug deals in Mexico and does nothing else worthwhile in his life. Both of these 22-year-olds live with their parents and are best friends. Boyce's father is a retired FBI agent (fabulously played by Pat Hingle) and gets his son a job at RTX, a defense contractor in a separate, cryptic (in every sense of the word) section called the Black Vault. This is a secretive room within the building's confines that employs a Vietnam Vet (Dorian Harewood) and a flirty, engaging woman (Mady Kaplan) as they monitor CIA cables being sent and addressed to NSA regarding world affairs. Boyce can't stop himself from reading these cables and finds there is a wide U.S. surveillance using intricate satellite systems, specifically zoning in on Australia with regards to the prime minister. Clearly a lot of these cables are not meant for mainstream news thanks to national security.

"The Falcon and the Snowman" is based on Robert Lindsay's novel and is exceedingly good, spine-tingling filmmaking. It has nerve, poise and an attitude about spying as a generally slow-moving, intricate and dangerous process. Hutton's Boyce decides it is a good idea to sell some secret documents and codes to a Russian embassy in Mexico. Guess who the courier is? Why none other than Penn's Daulton who at first scoffs at the idea of selling top secret documents to an embassy for a then-Soviet Communist country. "I am a patriot...and proud of it," says Daulton. Daulton seems to have no political ideals though he is aware of dire political situations in the past, like the socialist Allende elected to Chile's government. Paranoid Daulton does it for the money, while Boyce is doing it out of some far-reaching idealism I couldn't quite fathom. His eyes are opened to the NSA's practices of trying to influence elections and foreign governments by spying on them. This is what Boyce can't get a grip on and somehow feels he has to let the embassy know they are watched. The boys are complete amateurs and yet, as voiced by David Suchet as Alex, a KGB agent, "the minute you took money, you became a professional." 

While watching "The Falcon and the Snowman," one becomes aware how these two professionals are anything but. Boyce just has to tell Daulton about the secret inner workings of our government. Daulton often lets the cat out of the bag to women friends and even to his own disbelieving family! Daulton also makes himself a prime target to the Russians by waltzing in to the embassy, sometimes climbing the wall to get in (who knew it could be that easy). That's what makes this movie potent and fully charged in its energetic storytelling - these are just kids who eventually realize they are playing with fire and it will lead to their inevitable downfall. Hutton shows the sullenness of Boyce - he's smarter and alert to what he's doing and to whom yet there is a fundamental loss of understanding I had about him. Is it really ideals or does he realize during this late 1970's period of Nixon and Watergate and Vietnam that disillusionment has settled in and he has nothing to lose? With Penn's Daulton, he just becomes a coked-up freak who is imbecilic and suffers pain and torture in the process before being arrested by the FBI. Despite becoming professional spies, they are still amateurs. 

Fuzzy, improbable journalistic tale

 STREET SMART (1987)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Every sparkling moment of absolute restraint and commanding power is supplied by Morgan Freeman in the slipshod and wholly unbelievable film, "Street Smart." Freeman plays a tough pimp who is wanted for murder and has built a notoriety that gives many people in the meaner streets of New York City pause. That would have made a far more engaging story than the one given in this ridiculous, below-par Cannon production effort.

Christopher Reeve plays Jonathan, a falsely intrepid reporter for a "New York"-style magazine who either finds a good story soon or loses his job. So Jonathan fabricates one about some pimp in New York City and the story gets published and has everyone at the magazine fooled (though this kind of practice has occurred in reality, it is somehow too easy in this movie where he just spends one night writing it). Jonathan might have everyone fooled but only his wife (a far too one-dimensional Mimi Rogers) knows the truth and, apparently, so does Fast Black (Oscar-nominated performance by Morgan Freeman), an actual pimp who knows the story is fiction as well as the details. Through the help of a charming, wickedly smart prostitute (Kathy Baker), she gets Jonathan access to Fast Black's life on the streets who goes along on car rides with the less-than-glorious pimp. What does Jonathan find? Fast Black can severely threaten his women if they try to outsmart him with money or have delusions of getting out of the streets. One good scene takes place at a basketball court and one of the players tries to tackle Fast Black - this is a rule-breaker because Fast Black always wins. If only the meandering screenplay played by the rules of its own story and fleshed out the details but the movie sputters going back and forth between Jonathan and Fast Black when we are more invested in the latter. 

Reeve's Jonathan is not a believable character for a moment - he makes too many stupid mistakes and I never believed that this fictitious article would cause a ruckus to the point that lawyers and the district attorney would think Jonathan was writing about Fast Black! Christopher Reeve doesn't have the look of a magazine writer - he seemed more believable as Clark Kent. The movie also never decides whether we should follow Jonathan's story as the protagonist or Fast Black's. At 96 minutes, the movie feels truncated and doesn't flow like the topical journalistic tale it aims to be. One minute, Jonathan is a star as a writer, and then the next moment he ends up on TV as host of a show called "Street Smart." Amazing career prospects! Only Freeman's frightening Fast Black and Baker's sweetly sensible prostitute seem to occupy a real world where morality is at stake. Jonathan walks on by, unaware and incompetent and facing legal challenges yet still on a career uptick. Who is this movie trying to fool?  

Sky is falling

 KNOCK AT THE CABIN (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Let it be said: the last time that M. Night Shyamalan directed an apocalyptic tale, it was a sign of an impending cinematic apocalypse. No Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were needed to foretell that impending disaster called "The Happening" and that was the last Nightman movie I had seen for a while. Until now. Only now the Nightman has chosen to adapt a novel and write it as a gloom-and-doom tale with some shred of optimism. "Knock at the Cabin" is intriguing for a while yet it falls apart towards its climax and leaves us with more questions than answers. Normally that would work within the framework of a movie like this but the questions linger and made me wonder why this tale needed to be woven this way.

7-year-old Wen (Kristen Cui) is collecting grasshoppers in a mason jar to study them and see how they react to their environment. Wen is in the middle of the woods near a cabin when she spots a huge figure in the background walking towards her. He is Leonard (Dave Bautista), a kind and gentle man who explains to Wen that he is on a mission and has to save the world. Before Wen can question Leonard's odd mission, three other people materialize out of the woods with makeshift weapons. Wen runs to her two adopted dads at the cabin, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and suddenly we think this is a home invasion. Or maybe these strange people emerging from the woods are bigots who feel same-sex couples are ruining our world. Let it be said that I did not expect these four people to be pontificating about an end of the world scenario where someone from the chosen small family unit needs to be sacrificed to save it. Will the disbelieving Eric or Andrew sacrifice Wen or themselves? Only one need be sacrificed, but why this family? Apparently Eric, Andrew and Wen show more purity and love for each other than anyone else on Planet Earth. But would anyone that pure of heart and mind really sacrifice one of their own for something seemingly unprovable? 

The other members of this Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are a nurse, Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird); an ex-convict named Redmond (former Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint showing major grit), and a slightly delirious cook who loves to feed people, Adriane (Abby Quinn). Each one asks the two dads, now bound with rope, to please consider sacrificing someone in their family to save 7 billion people! Each time one of the Four Doofuses are denied, they have to kneel, put a cloth over their heads and be bludgeoned to death by the others! Huh? Then to further prove their apocalyptic claims are true, news footage is shown on TV of tsunamis and planes falling from the sky. End of the World or some sort of clever sleight of hand? Some of the news is prerecorded, and later some of it is live. 

"Knock in the Cabin" still sort of held my interest for a while but once the plot was unraveled, I just couldn't buy it at all. The story is based on a 2018 novel by Paul G. Tremblay titled "The Cabin at the End of the World" and, though the novel is darker and more ambiguous, the story is relatively the same with changes in who survives and who dies. Director Shyamalan edges this story with very little suspense during some crucial scenes, and credibility is thrown out the window when the rules, despite being purportedly exacting visions, don't mesh with the storyline. Why would the downfall of humanity be centered on some log cabin in the middle of the woods? Why this particular couple? Why is murder a method of salvation? Shall I page Abraham from the Bible to find the answers? In Abraham's case, God merely tested the old man's obedience to the Lord. I suppose it is all Biblical at the end of the day but it doesn't jell in this movie and feels too heavily contrived, despite some urgency provided by Dave Bautista (he is becoming one hell of a character actor). All that urgency though is all for naught. God just doesn't figure in this apocalyptic equation.

Cliched small-town horror harbors some surprises

 THE VISITOR (2022)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Truly nothing escaped me about what to anticipate in "The Visitor," one of various Blumhouse horror pictures to have emerged as part of the Blumhouse Television and EPIX streaming deal. Almost from the start, I could tell where "The Visitor" was going yet how it got there really held my interest. Okay, a mildly enthused interest but an interest nonetheless. 

A newlywed couple, Robert and Maia, arrive in a small, strange town where the bartender might be a little too friendly, the hardware store owner who is a little baffled by the husband, a local priest who might be a little too holier-than-thou with respect to the Bible, and there is a cliched town historian and so on. It turns out that one of the newlyweds, Robert (Finn Jones), is seeing himself in various paintings in their new home and in other people's homes. Each painting is inscribed with the title, "The Visitor" and some sort of cryptic phrase. It is not a matter of just bearing a similar likeness - Robert looks exactly like this Visitor. Robert's wife, Maia (Jessica McNamee), senses that he's getting paranoid and that it is a result of him continuing to take his anti-anxiety medication. Their history is marred somewhat by the loss of their baby due to a miscarriage. Yet they press on and she eventually gets pregnant and all hell breaks loose involving a snake shedding its skin, frogs, locusts, etc. Nothing here you haven't seen before. 

"The Visitor" is still marginally effective and has a few jump scares that do work (no annoying zither music cues are used to highlight them) but what made the movie work is the decaying atmosphere, thanks to superb lensing by Federico Verardi (who also lensed the scary 2020 thriller "Alone"). There is a distinctly subtle muddy haze to this movie, intended or not, that embellishes the proceedings. The house they stay in doesn't feel safe (it is Maia's childhood home) and other places such as the interiors of an antique shop, the local church or the hardware store have a death-like feel to them. Also adding to the movie's frightful, unexpected conclusion is the solid work of Finn Jones (a face that is hard to forget that reminded me of Jude Law) and Jessica McNamee as the couple and the revelation of their past and future that comes as a real shock.

"The Visitor" starts off as a typical, cliched horror picture about apathetic town residents whose grins are a little too wide and where nothing is what it seems. As I mentioned earlier, the correlation between the paintings and Robert is none too surprising, at first. Once the story is really fleshed out and we arrive at the conclusion that I did not anticipate, I was taken aback. It is a dark, sick, often demonic and unsettling movie. Worth a visit.

Fright Lite

 GOOSEBUMPS (2015)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Just like "Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark" (one of many reasons back in my day to go to the library and read them voraciously), "Goosebumps" stories were mainly for kids about kids involved in none too perilous situations with ghouls, giant insect creatures, werewolves and so on. I don't have any particularly vivid memories of the R.L. Stein's books, some of which I checked out back in the 1990's (possibly a lot to do with my younger brother) but I am sure their thrills, chills and spills came close to this 2015 feature film version. "Goosebumps" the movie is successful at creating humor and mining it out of these creatures that run havoc on a small town and the teen characters doing their best to avoid them.  

A new kid on the block named Zach (Dylan Minnette), living specifically in a small Delaware town, has just moved in with his single mother (Amy Ryan - diverting in every way) who is the new vice principal of her son's high school. Awwkkkward. Meanwhile, there is a mysterious neighbor who is none other than a fictionalized version of R.L. Stine (played with real zeal and perfect pitch by Jack Black). Stine has a 16-year-old daughter, Hannah (Odeya Rush), who is lovestruck by Zach and there is a fairly romantic bit where they visit an abandoned funhouse. Trouble is nigh as Zach assumes Hannah is being held prisoner in her house and he finds out more than he bargained for. There are dozens of locked books written by Stine that once they are unlocked, every monster created in the books, including the Abominable Snowman and Slappy the Dummy, are unleashed and ready to eviscerate the entire town.

"Goosebumps" works best with its appealing, colorfully drawn characters including Jack Black's Stein, who knows his monsters could disrupt and destroy everything in their path; Dylan Minnette's Zach who can't begin to understand what is happening and is a bit of a scaredy cat; Odeya Rush's sweet Hannah who has a secret that may come as a surprise to Stein fans, and the rollicking comic relief of Ryan Lee ("Super 8") as Champ, who scares very easily. 

The monsters in "Goosebumps" are fun for a while yet they are CGI creations and there might be too much time devoted to them. Some of the special-effects in the climax are so overwhelming that you temporarily lose sight or focus of what you are seeing. Still, for Jack Black's fussy and determined RL Stein and its engaging cast, "Goosebumps" will do as an "Evil Dead" for kids. 

Chuck Norris's Best Picture Ever

 CODE OF SILENCE (1985)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It is hard to fathom how many wooden Chuck Norris performances there have been throughout the 1980's. I can't say for sure if he was far more animated in the late 1970's in his karate action pictures but he always possessed some measure of charisma by being resolutely steely-eyed. Norris is not wooden in "Code of Silence" but he isn't very animated either, yet his lack of nuance or facial expressions beyond a steely-eyed look work to his advantage in this entertaining Windy City police actioner. 

Norris is a tough, no-nonsense righteous cop, Sgt. Eddie Cusack, who has not a single blemish on his record. His record is not being put to the test yet his loyalty to the police department and its numerous detectives is. After a disastrous sting operation involving drug dealers from a gang called the Comachos and a rival mob that unexpectedly show up to mow down them down, there is an unfortunate killing of an innocent kid by a grizzled, alcoholic cop, Detective Cragie (Ralph Foody) who plants a gun in the kid's hand. Cragie's younger partner, Kopalas (Joseph Guzaldo), witnesses it and later lies about the incident at a hearing. Meanwhile, Cusack is determined to find the rival mob members - one who skips town has a daughter (Molly Hagan) who might be in danger. The Comachos have their drug lord, Luis Comacho (Henry Silva) whose smile is almost enough to kill you. 

"Code of Silence" refers to the code that cops have - don't sell anyone out for any criminal negligence or unethical violations. At first, I couldn't really buy that Sgt. Cusack would have an unblemished record and not been in the police force long enough to know that sometimes you do take the law into your own hands, ethics be damned. Aside from the hearing and the investigation subplot, nothing in "Code of Silence" is unfamiliar turf. Drug dealers and cop and drug lords, oh my; they had been a staple of dozens of police action thrillers of the 1980's (we won't even get into the ones that went into direct-to-video release). Norris gives it oomph and gets to kick ass with his stunning back kick (the scene at the bar shows him getting pummelled after kicking a few minions, which is far more realistic than most other Norris action pics or Steven Seagal pics). There is also the terrific debut of Dennis Farina as a wounded cop (who was an actual cop at the time) and some nice solid work from Mike Genovese as an angry mafia drug lord named Tony Luna (he looks more like a construction worker but he is still effective). Let's not forget the unsung, authentic Chicagoan Ron Dean as another tough cop who has appeared in "The Package" and "The Fugitive," which were all directed by the same guy, Andrew Davis.  

"Code of Silence" has a rousing finish involving Chuck Norris as a one-man army and the climactic buildup in this standard plot is captivating in its own way. He doesn't perform as many martial-arts fight scenes as in previous films yet he can still make you root for him regardless. I can't forget the inclusion of an armored, computer-voiced police tank called the Prowler that can shoot with great aim and barrel through anything. It just adds more oomph to an already colorful, ably acted if familiar action picture. Easily Chuck Norris' best picture ever.