White Sands: My Brief Time as an Extra

 WHITE SANDS (1992)

Remembering my time as an extra 

by Jerry Saravia

The shooting dates for the occasionally tantalizing Roger Donaldson thriller, "White Sands," were August 13th, 1991 to October 31st, 1991. I lived in New Mexico at the time and we got word they were looking for extras at a rodeo located somewhere in Santa Fe (not sure where exactly, it has been a while). It was a cold, bitter night and the scene being shot involved Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's character, Lane, riding a horse while crowds were cheering. Willem Dafoe and Mickey Rourke were in attendance since their scene was shot a few times that night as they sat on the bleachers. The scene was shot and then the 1st AD reminded the crowd to be quiet and mimic shouting and hollering while they recorded ambient sound, I imagine. Naturally, the crowd forgot to mimic and yelled. "CUT," said the 1st AD. This was going for three hours already and then myself, my mom and my brother decided it was time to leave. It was too damn cold and New Mexico nights can be cold, you know, higher elevations. 

My younger brother ran into Mickey Rourke at the bathroom and they shook hands (presumably after they were done with their business). Mickey told my brother that he was glad he came out. That's pretty cool. I did see Samuel L. Jackson lurking about as he passed our seats but nobody knew who the hell he was. I did, after seeing "Jungle Fever" especially, but he was not a big movie star yet. Mastrantonio was not present that evening as her riding scenes were performed by a stunt rider. So it goes. 

My final thoughts on being an extra (and mind you, I don't think our scenes made the final cut) was the exactness of Willem Dafoe's entrance to the bleachers as he sat down next to Mickey Rourke after several takes. It was amazing to behold. The movie itself is hardly fantastic though definitely watchable. That night though was quite memorable.  

111 million wasted pints of blood

 TERRIFIER 2 (2022)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I said that the original sadistic freak show called "Terrifier" was the equivalent of 11 million pints of blood splattered across the screen. "Terrifier 2" is no different other than maybe it is more like 111 million pints this time around - call the Red Cross and donate all that blood. Just don't call Art the Clown.

"Terrifier 2" is more blood and gore and entrails served up to make the screen as reddishly violent as possible, so much so that it may as well have such scenes fade to red. Yes, that is how violent it is. The mutilations includes gouging and plucking eyes, removing beating hearts, stuffing mashed potatoes into blown-out-faces-with-a-shotgun, and relentless stabbings and disembowelments and decapitations and head-scalpings galore. One particularly vicious beating and stabbing lasts about 3 minutes and the poor mutilated girl is still not dead! Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) does the bloody deeds with a smile and a little of his "Oh, what did I just do?" demeanor makes it doubly disturbing...but never scary.

The story has Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) as a young woman who has panic attacks and vivid nightmares but tries to stay strong. She lives with her tough-as-nails mother (Sarah Voigt) and her younger brother, Jonathan (Elliott Fullam), who has a predilection for serial killers and for Art the Clown. The film is set during Halloween and the little guy wants to dress up as Art the Clown, much to the understandable disapproval of Mom. Meanwhile, Sienna is developing her Xena-like bronze-plated costume yet, one night, it goes up in flames due to lit candles. Sienna's mother is quite upset after putting out the fire and yells at Sienna, though she claims she never lit the candles. Jonathan finds a dead possum with a couple of schoolmates, then later finds the dead animal in the hallway as Art the Clown and a Little Pale Girl throw it at him! Guess what happens? Jonathan is accused of vandalism! The Little Pale Girl is sometimes present and sometimes not, and though we might think it is a spectral entity - it might not be.

"Terrifier 2" drags on for 2 hours and 18 minutes with a poorly developed family dynamic dependent on screaming matches than anything else. Two of Sienna's friends, both of whom are shallowly set up for slaughter, are killed so viciously that you wonder why Art the Clown does what he does. He's a supernatural monster dressed in a black-and-white clown outfit with a little black top hat strung around his head. This figure is frightening all by itself, including the Little Pale Girl with occasionally yellow piercing eyes and a terrifying smile. Copious amounts of blood, gore and severed body parts camouflage any real story or rooting interest in any character. The purpose of a movie like this is to allegedly thrill you and scare you but it only manages in becoming an endurance test. For the rest of you, it might be a bloody good time. Or you might want to donate blood to the Red Cross after seeing it. Either way, good luck.    

High Comically Frenzied Art

 THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (2014)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(One of the best films of the 2010 era)

I have admired the idiosyncratic and preciously designed films of Wes Anderson but I wasn't quite anticipating this superb discovery of a 2014 film. "The Grand Budapest Hotel" seems to push the boundaries of Anderson's previous films, evoking more of a comic spirt and liveliness that doesn't seem to echo anything I've ever seen before. It is the first cartoonish comedy I've seen that actually looks animated - nothing in it looks or resembles anything that actually exists and that makes it doubly special.

The most liberally perfumed man in Europe is Monsieur Gustave H. (a brilliant tour de force role played by Ralph Fiennes), the Grand Budapest Hotel's exceptional and precise concierge (I am sure he is meant to encapsulate the perfectionism of the film's director). He is so precise that even as he tells the "LOBBY BOY" all the tasks he needs to perform in a desired time frame, he kind of stops himself - too much precision may be a bad thing. The film begins with an author of the book, aptly titled "The Grand Budapest Hotel," narrating until it switches to F. Murray Abraham as the elderly Zero (the lobby boy in the 1930's section played with perfect timing by Tony Revolori) in the 1960's telling his incredible, hypnotic adventures dealing with Monsieur Gustave H. The concierge bedded many wealthy, elderly dowagers and also has an inheritance that includes a sought-after painting called "The Boy with Apple" thanks to his latest relations with Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), the owner of the hotel who has passed on. Naturally, nobody from Madame D's family wants Gustave to acquire any of her money or acquisitions as mentioned in a will. 

Most of "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is an absurdist comedy of epic proportions, and no shot is ever wasted and no frame or composition seems to be simple. The film would probably require multiple viewings just to catch all the references and subtle clues. I've seen it twice before and I still am not sure I caught everything - the constant whip pans from one enormous space to another makes you quiver in your boots at the sheer magic of it all. The hotel is a grand design with so many windows, floors, and spacious hallways that you might think this hotel is the biggest of its kind in the world. Scenes of cable cars, prisons, interior train cars, wintry outdoor shots of skiers skiing much faster than humanly possible and so much more are intricately designed and shot - every interior is as ornate and as grandiloquent as any film I've seen since possibly anything directed by Visconti. Expansive on a level unseen before by Wes Anderson, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is a true marvel to witness. 

The actors all perform up to the speed and clarity Anderson invests upon this world hinted as a specific time and place that no longer exists. Ralph Fiennes is a revelation, and so is the Tony Revolori as the lobby boy Zero - the scenes of him running around the hotel or on rooftops exude a breezy comic feel (I just laugh looking at him). There are also peak notes of hilarity from absurdist characters played by Jeff Goldblum as a moralistic lawyer; Harvey Keitel as a bald, tattooed prisoner; Saoirse Ronan as Zero's girlfriend with a major birthmark on the right side of her face; Willem Dafoe as some sort of cretinous hitman who throws cats out of windows, and Edward Norton as a sharp police detective. 

I was just swept away by "The Grand Budapest Hotel" more so than Anderson's other films. I never felt as if everything was too stagy or beyond comprehension (unlike say "The Darjeeling Limited"). An original work of high and comically frenzied art from a master director.  

Women are like salt. You can do without, but it's lousy.

 DO YOU REMEMBER DOLLY BELL? (1981)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I've always had a fondness for watching adolescents and their view of the world as they mature. "Do You Remember Dolly Bell?" is almost a Truffaut picture of adolescence, rough and raw and completely realistic. Only this directorial debut by Bosnian director Emir Kusturica is not quite "The 400 Blows" - it has its own microcosmic view of a world that seems in ruins and yet optimism flourishes through one kid.

Set in 1963 Sarajevo (pre-Civil War), the world is seen through the eyes of 16-year-old Dino (Slavo Stimac) whose daily mantra is "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." He recites this with his friends especially while dunking his head in water and trying to shift his eyes several times. They are about to form a band and there is one single solitary song they are commissioned to sing - "24 mila baci" (about the only song that ever plays on the soundtrack). Slobodan Aligrudic is Otac, the drunk and sickly father with Communist leanings who regularly speaks of Marxism and controls their tiny apartment not as a tyrant, but a tough demanding father who knows what's happening in every corner. He believes in the ideals of Marx but his son is prone to hypnotism and auto-suggestion, thinking it works on everyone including prostitutes. Ah, he's just a kid, what does he know. The father, though, implicitly sees that Dino has an intelligence that goes beyond his other sons, one of whom dictates what his father says in a notebook. 

Dino has five brothers and they live with their parents in this small, cramped apartment with a bed facing their living room. Dino also has a fixation on a prostitute named Dolly Bell (Ljiljana Blagojevic), adopting the name of an actress, who is housed in Dino's attic. She is to be kept there until her oily pimp returns. Dino falls for Dolly yet something always threatens this sweet relationship (the pimp notwithstanding). Dino's world is coming apart as his dad is slowly dying. There is quite a moving scene where the whole family looks at the patriarch's X ray knowing the end is coming. Otac takes it in stride. And so does Dino.

"Do You Remember Dolly Bell?" is Kusturica's amazingly absorbing directorial debut and it curates Dino as this young novice who is smart and alert to his world, a Socialist world of diminishing impact. Roughly hewn as a semi-documentary, the lighting changes from a grainy, overcast unblinkingly raw look to a subtle use of shadows to rare bursts of color that goes beyond its documentary look (the color film of actress Dolly Bell, dressed in red, as seen by a young audience; Dino drenched from the rain as he listens to Dolly, the prostitute, having sex while a faint yellow lamp light or flashlight shines on him). Maybe this is all to illustrate that Dino feels this gray world might change but he knows it will be sometime before it happens, if at all. At least he finds solace in singing "24 mila baci." 

Repetitive Monsters on the Loose

 THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2011)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I firmly believe that "The Evil Dead" has been one of the most influential horror films of the last 40 years. Ash himself is an icon but it seems his character has been less influential. Case in point would be "The Cabin in the Woods" which has an intriguing premise and not one character that carries a smidgeon of Ash's personality. Not one, but the filmmakers sure try in replicating the horror with a tongue in cheek attitude.

Five friends take off on a road trip through the mountains to a fairly small log cabin. Okay, so it is the same size as the one from "Evil Dead" - in fact, it is a replica. Naturally not one of these younglings ever heard of "The Evil Dead" or else they would not have come to this remote area. The gas station owner is odd and sees young women, such as Jules (Anna Hutchison), as nothing but whores. Nice guy. He gives directions to this cabin, as they often do in these movies, yet I am shocked how the gas stations are always in decrepit condition and, in this particular case, he is not even selling gas! We still get the obligatory shot of the gas station owner looking rather ominously at the group as they take off in their RV. Gee, whatever could be wrong with that cabin.

A lot is wrong. There is a two-sided mirror through two adjoining rooms, though only one is see-through. Jules is dared during their Truth or Dare game to lick and kiss a wolf's head on the wall! Chris Hemsworth, by the way, plays her boyfriend though I'd feel uncomfortable with my girlfriend lustfully licking anything in front of other guys. One guy is a weed addict (Fran Kranz) and conspiracy theorist. Perfect because it turns out that their cabin is being surveilled by some underground lab that monitors their every move. Monsters and zombies start to emerge from the ground and attack and kill these kids, much to the delight of lab technicians and engineers, two of them memorably played by Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford. Apparently this vast network of a lab controls similar scenarios in other countries and if the victims win against their monstrous threat, the word FAIL appears in red letters on their innumerable monitors. Why this is encouraged when the participants are unaware they are being tested or how this is some sort of sick variation on "The Hunger Games" is beyond me.

Great premise with no real logic but who cares. We came for the scares, the monsters and hopefully these kids have a personality. Only the weed kid really does, and he has one hell of a bong that comes equipped with a coffee mug. The monsters bored me - they were just stock monsters. The zombie was stock, the thrills are very few and I hardly cared. During the climax that involves several monsters, they are all CGI created and appear so fleetingly during the frantic cutting of one image to another that it all becomes a blur. There is a fantastic cameo at the end, and I did like the lab employees and their camaraderie and gallows humor. "The Cabin in the Woods" is just not much of a movie - it is an insipid test reel that never gets its motor running. Watch "The Evil Dead" again.

Boring stiffs

 CLASS (1983)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Class" starts off strong with a progressive comic spirit, so strongly that I figured this was going to be a modern day update of Mike Nichols' fabulous "The Graduate." It is imperative that I mention how I can start off by saying how a movie starts strongly (and this is commonplace in reviews) and how it flies off the rails so quickly. The issue here is complete abandonment of a terrific premise for an alleged college comedy.

Andrew McCarthy is the new student at a prestigious prep school (well, how many aren't prestigious?) He is Jonathan Ogner, and he's already made a boo-boo in terms of college etiquette - he has worn his uniform on the day he arrives on campus! I am not sure what the issue is exactly but I went with it. He meets his roommate, Squire Franklin Burroughs IV (Rob Lowe), an upbeat prep student also known as Skip with a knack for partying and fondling uptight women. Skip fools Jonathan into wearing women's underwear outside the school only to be mocked. Jonathan ups the ante and pretends to cry at the cafeteria and hangs himself! Of course it is all a prank and Skip got fooled into believing he committed suicide. So far, so good, so preppie. When Jonathan goes to a bar in Chicago to have a sexual experience, he fails and is consistently mocked until he meets Ellen (Jacqueline Bisset) and they have an affair. It gets steamier and steamier as they have sex in an elevator and in hotel rooms. Jonathan never tells her he is a preppie student, claiming instead to be a Ph.D student. Ellen is older and turns out to be Skip's mother! Whoops, Sexual Apocalypse!

Unfortunately, what starts out as a prankish, almost black-humored "Animal House" tale then develops a sweetness with the striking Bisset, and then becomes self-serious. We have a dinner party at Skip's house where Jonathan is invited and he and Ellen see each other - the affair gets placed in the backburner so as not to reveal to Skip who the mystery woman in Jonathan's life is. Then we are introduced to the patriarch (Cliff Robertson) who doesn't exude an ounce of humor or elegance - he is just a boring stiff. And Ellen starts drinking too much and becomes a neurotic stiff. Likewise Skip. A whole bunch of stiffs stuck in some movie that loses its identity. Then we get too much talk about the SAT's since Jonathan cheated on them and told Skip about it, not to mention an investigation on students' whose SAT's scores do not match their college grades. There is also a muddy fight on rolling muddy hills that goes on far too long. 

"Class" was seemingly designed to be a raunchy version of "The Graduate" and instead it becomes an unironic movie about nothing. Ellen is eventually placed in a mental institution and we get too much of Jonathan's guilt, and somehow whatever comic aspersions were cast erode quickly. Too serious for its own good.

Multiple Personality Disorder Horrors

 IDENTITY (2003)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

James Mangold's "Identity" had me fooled with its twisty twist. I suppose calling it that makes it less M. Night Shyamalan and more Mangoldian twist. I was fooled and despite a very rocky, incongruous beginning, I was eventually swept in by this movie even though I am not sure it is the horror version of "Sybil." "Sybil" was already horrific and based on a true story, and Brian De Palma's "Sisters" and various other multiple personality horror films might be superior yet "Identity" still holds some ground.

From the start, I was immediately put off by the mean-spirited characters and situations that are set-up and then rewound to show how they got there. Well, there isn't much, at first. Amanda Peet is a high-class Las Vegas call girl who wants to move to Florida and have her own orange grove. Her car almost get stuck in a current bad rainstorm. John Cusack is a former cop and now limo driver to a pompous actress (an unrecognizable Rebecca De Mornay). They are also in the midst of this rainstorm and stop at a motel, just like Peet's character, and he runs over a woman on the road! Then there is truly reliable Ray Liotta as a cop bringing in a prisoner (creepy-as-ever Jake Busey) - they also go to the motel because it is only the one available for miles. There is also a family with a young son whose mother is the one that gets runs over by Cusack! I shan't forget Clea DuVall and her new husband and they are as annoying as you can imagine, relegated to screaming matches! Meanwhile, one by one, people get killed at his motel. The motel owner (John Hawkes) is a dubious personality, to say the least. And there is much hate from him towards Peet due to her profession. I would not want to be anywhere near these people. 

"Identity" starts off with a mean streak as these characters are too selfish and do stupid things, like in any slasher flick. Run and scream in the rain, why don't yah? Still, the story picks up speed when we realize there is something ominous at this motel that has more up its sleeve than random killings. Don't quite cue "The Shining" yet because it all evolves with a double twist that knocked my socks off. It was the most surprising ending since maybe Shyamalan's "Unbreakable."

John Cusack always holds my interest and we are pulled along by this mystery just as he is, and it is a major plus to have the presence of Ray Liotta (though I did suspect he wasn't exactly who he said he was). Amanda Peet kind of grated my nerves and Clea DuVall was wasted - a real shame for an actress of such vitality. Overall, a decent effort by director Mangold to suggest a multiple personality disorder frame of mind within the confines of a horror slasher.