Freedom at whatever cost

 TRISTANA (1970)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Sadness pervades throughout Luis Bunuel's ultimately poetic and brazenly acted masterpiece, "Tristana." The name Tristana is derived from French and Welsh origin and it means sad (in Spanish, we just say "triste" which sounds more exclamatory). It also stars one of the most glamorous women of French cinema ever, Catherine Deneuve, exuding sadness in every movement of her body language, even her graceful walk or when she becomes ill. Whether she is indoors or outdoors (and mostly indoors), her sadness and her mournful state over the loss of her mother in the opening scenes lend much gravitas and humanity to her plight. 

 An old man set in his ways, Don Lope (Fernando Rey), becomes ward to the young, lovely though steadfastly in mourning Tristana (Deneuve) - she wears black and never leaves the house unless under express permission from Don. Don has antiquated thoughts on everything, including women who he believes should stay home and serve him. Tristana abides by him, removing his shoes when he comes home and putting on his slippers though she finds it odd that he keeps them on when his colleagues come over. Tristana is seen as the mistress of the house whereas the maid of the house, Saturna (Dolores Gaos González-Pola), prepares the meals and makes the beds. Of course, the old man still wants to be the playboy of his youth and decides that Tristana is not just a daughter to him, she will become his lover. She doesn't budge yet over time, she leaves the house and hooks up with a male painter, Horacio (Franco Nero) who is more progressive in his attitudes towards women and life. He sees a future with her, and she does...for a while. Tristana also feels disgust over Don for deflowering her.

"Tristana" unveils a portrait of people living under a Catholic umbrella yet still act on their own romantic and sexual instincts. Saturna has a deaf-mute son, Saturno (Jesus Fernandez), who can't hold a job and is attracted to Tristana (in a famous scene, Tristana opens the windows and reveals her body to the young shocked kid). Saturna is the only one that presumably holds on to her faith. Don Lope is simply a sinner, treating a young woman as a sexual object whom he is supposed to treat like a daughter. Tristana eventually frees herself from Don's clutches and lives with Horacio until illness enters both of their lives. Tristana slowly changes, becoming meaner after having a tumor-infected leg amputated and is more inclined to help herself than anyone else. Circumstances also develop where she has fewer choices and you can feel how it chokes her to return to Don Lope. Deneuve shows her nuanced range of emotions in sequences towards the end of the film that are truly spellbinding. She feels free yet compartmentalized by her choosing to marry Don and leave Horacio - it is still her choice and that is what makes her feel free.

Luis Bunuel's "Tristana" is a masterful, morally complex view of a woman seeking to be free by the strictures of religion, faith and antediluvian attitudes towards women. She succeeds at any cost.

Wasted lives

 CLOCKERS (1995)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The grisly, graphic photos shown in succession of young black men shot in the head, a litany of corpses, opens Spike Lee's compelling "Clockers." It is based on a gritty Richard Price novel and it is far removed from the world of "Boyz N' The Hood" or "Menace II Society" - this time, Spike Lee focuses on the projects ("The Nelson Mandela Homes") and the drug dealers running the streets with little impressionable kids watching them. It is a business with the police always around the corner, strip searching them much to the embarrassment of families looking on. 

The clockers are the drug dealers and many of them do not partake - they just sell and usually to wealthy white kids coming in to their Brooklyn neighborhood. Strike (Mekhi Phifer) is our focus, the main clocker working for Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo), the drug lord who has a grocery store that is a front for selling drugs. Rodney means business, intimidating but quiet and caring for Strike whom he sees as his "son." Yet most fathers never ask their sons to commit murder and yet Rodney asks Strike to kill a rival cocaine dealer working at Ahab's Restaurant. This is meant as a promotion, to get away from the "bleachers" and move up in the organization (one wonders how far up the food chain Strike can go). Meanwhile, Errol Barnes (Thomas Jefferson Byrd), a murderous enforcer for Rodney, walks the streets like some sort of ghost with haunting eyes and has no problem scaring anyone in his path (his past with Rodney is shown in one of the most harrowing passages in the entire film). The cocaine dealer at Ahab's is shot dead and it is Strike's older brother (Isaiah Washington) who confesses to the murder but did he do it or is he protecting his troubled brother? We never quite get the impression that Strike is a violent 19-year-old despite owning a gun.

"Clockers" also deals with the racist police detectives (Harvey Keitel, John Turturro) who visit every crime scene and crack jokes, sort of gallows humor. Rocco (Keitel) and his partner (Turturro) have a shot of alcohol while driving to the usual violent crime scene - it is their duty and you feel that the police never catch a break anyway. Their view of the projects and drug dealers is that the residents, namely the clockers, are only killing themselves with no end in sight - self-imposed genocide. This is a slightly different view than the other inner city tales of L.A. and you also get the feeling that the drug dealers share that view yet they can't help themselves. Only Strike may see some sort of future if he's willing to pursue it and part of it is his fascination with trains.

"Clockers" gets a little too entangled with the murder investigation that plays like a police procedural. Nothing wrong with that since it practically replicates the novel's same plot but it is something that infringes the narrative, especially Strike's story that could've used more oomph. I was more absorbed by the depiction of a wasted way of life, both from the cops' and the clockers' point of view, and how it is an endless recycling of violence and lack of justice and that should have stayed on track. Strike tries to help one kid from facing the same wasted life, to deter him from the "adults" and their illegal business. He might have succeeded, or we can only hope.     

Bobby's Hollywood daydreams

 HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE (1987)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Racism and stereotypical roles given to all minorities, including blacks and Latinos has been a staple of Hollywood for far too long. During the 1980's, there might have been exceptions like Morgan Freeman's stunning, blistering pimp in "Street Smart" but they are few and far in between. Robert Townsend's writing and directing debut "Hollywood Shuffle" hits at many targets yet not hard enough, at least not to me. Townshend's approach is softer, more genteel when he needed a shot of raw nerve from the school of Spike Lee to really provide some biting commentary. 

Townsend is an out-of-work actor, Bobby, who is hoping to get the role of a pimp named Jimmy, courtesy of Tinseltown Pictures. He practices his lines in the voice of a whiny stereotype, something his grandmother (Helen Martin) is well aware has nothing to do with reality and is a step down from say the likes of Sidney Poitier. She just wants him to work at the post office but Bobby has his dreams of making it in Hollywood - daydreaming where he is an actor who wins 5 Academy Awards! He doesn't want to be stuck at the Winky Dinky Dog restaurant. 

Bobby's other daydreams includes potshots at film noir detective movies, Rambo, actors pretending to be Eddie Murphy (hilarious, especially when they imitate Eddie's trademark laugh), a Black Acting School where blacks are schooled in jive talk, even Siskel and Ebert. Some of these skits are funnier than most, though the Black Acting School is a tad repetitive (I would have stuck with the clip about slaves running to the North and exposing some of those one-dimensional stereotypes). Some other bits run a little too long such as when the NAACP President (played by none other than Paul Mooney) finds that Bobby's superstar status is in trouble with the negative roles he's been playing. 

"Hollywood Shuffle" is at its best when dealing with Bobby and his little brother Stevie (Craigus R. Johnson) who reveres his older brother, and the grandmother's disdain at the Hollywood roles being offered to black people. Some of the Winky Dinky Dog restaurant bits just don't work and I barely smiled at them, despite the presence of John Witherspoon and Keenan Ivory Wayans. Still the movie works more often than not and one of the last scenes, where Bobby plays that awful pimp while his brother and grandmother look on, strikes a chord of real truth that gets to you. That is the heart and soul of "Hollywood Shuffle."  

Graveyard pranks

 ONE DARK NIGHT (1981)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"One Dark Night" is juvenile horror with scant scares, an incoherent storyline and not much narrative thrust. Well, there's the thrust of the movie's climax inside a mausoleum although "Phantasm" beat that to the punch with more vivid thrills two years earlier. Still, for such a silly horror picture, I was rather taken by it.

A bizarre set of murders have taken place inside an apartment where an old Russian occultist, with telekinesis powers, is found dead along with a few dead young women in a closet. In what looks like an infinite number of ambulances rolling in to recover the bodies, one paramedic is struck by how objects are protruding through the walls. Some older man wearing sunglasses observes this chaos. Then he reappears at that dead Russian man's daughter's house, telling her that her father had special powers. Naturally such powers extend beyond the grave and the mausoleum where he is confined. And wouldn't you know that some high-school girls who have a clique called "Sisters" are prepared to give one tempted girl (Meg Tilly) an indoctrination to their group if she stays overnight at the mausoleum! All she has to do is sleep there overnight. Two of the three "Sisters" group decide to scare her at the mausoleum with a Halloween mask! Oh, my, all this to be a member of such a small group.

"One Dark Night" is too damn silly to take as a serious or even as a goofy horror picture - it is probably on the level of a young adult horror story that might have been featured in the 80's collection book of "Scary Stories." Nothing makes a lick of sense, nor does this putrid dead man whose coffin breaks through the walls of the mausoleum and electrical charges emit from his dead eyes. This somehow reanimates all the corpses in the mausoleum with coffins bursting ad infinitum. The girls see the horrors and scream, and run from one end of this locked edifice to the other. You know what you are getting when you watch it, minus any blood or gore, but the movie is far more absorbing with Melissa Newman as the daughter of this Russian yet every time she appears (along with Adam West as her husband), the narrative is threatened by these stupid prankish girls and Meg Tilly's boyfriend who is looking for her in his motorcycle! Trim such mischief and mischievous "Sisters" characters, beef up Meg Tilly's part beyond her being scared silly and give Melissa Newman more screen time and you might have had a true sleeper. It is sort of creepily entertaining at times with truly creepy atmosphere inside that mausoleum yet "One Dark Night" would have benefitted from a clearer focus. 

Buck stands out from the pack

 THE CALL OF THE WILD (2020)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It is hard to fathom a bad cinematic version of Jack London's 1903 novel, "The Call of the Wild," and this new 2020 version is not bad at all. In fact, there are many stunning sequences of the Yukon Territory by way of California and CGI-filled soundstages but this film version just as often feels hampered by Buck, the dog who is a complete CGI creation. If you are going to use CGI animation for dogs, you better animate everything else. It gives new definition to the phrase "standing out from the pack."

Buck is a big husky dog, a mix of Saint Bernard and Scotch Shepherd, who also creates havoc with his current owners when he devours an entire six-course meal! The otherwise friendly dog is punished by staying outdoors during a cold, rainy night and is eventually kidnapped and abused with a club (readers of the book, beware because there is much of that in the beginning - book is tougher on Buck). He is shipped by freighter from California to Alaska where he is to be among a sled of dogs delivering mail. Buck is uncertain at first, then eventually he finds his footing as he runs along with the other dogs through miles and miles of treacherous ice and snow. The jaunty Perrault (Omar Sy) and his largely reserved partner Francoise (Cara Gee) are the mail runners and every sequence of the dog sledding, as it dissolves from night to day, is flawlessly done. Yet oddly there is not much urgency, especially when Francoise almost drowns in ice water with Buck rescuing her (he rescues dogs and people in danger and can kill easily, all mentioned in the book). The lack of urgency and panic is due to the animated Buck and I largely felt unconvinced that this was a real dog. As I mentioned earlier, if the whole film had been animated, it could have worked but combining the live action elements deters our emotional attachment no matter how well animated the dog is. The other sled dogs are also animated yet they seem more convincing, maybe because they are not replete with facial expressions every few seconds. 

A long white-bearded Harrison Ford as Thornton truly makes for a compelling frontiersman and he has an uncanny ability in making us believe all this is happening. Still, when you consider that past filmed versions of Jack London's novel have used real dogs, it makes me wonder why they couldn't do the same here. Save for some amazing scenery (though I wished they actually shot in the Yukon) and the magnetic Ford, I was too underwhelmed by this movie. It is adequate entertainment but the CGI Buck just didn't help to suspend my disbelief. 

No easy answers in Uruguay

 STATE OF SIEGE (1972)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I was a mere adolescent in my native Uruguay during the 1970's so a political assassination was hardly on my news radar. Nevertheless, the chaos of a country in slow financial ruin in 1972 was the catalyst for guerrilla fighters trying to overthrow their government in the fact-based, marvelous thriller by Costa-Gavras called "State of Siege."

Yves Montand is convincing as an A.I.D. (Agency for International Development) American official who has just landed in the city of Montevideo, Uruguay. He is Philip Santore, actually based on Daniel A. Mitrone, an actual official who had been murdered by the Tupamaros. In actuality, Santore was serving more as an American police advisor for Uruguay since he had performed similar duties in other Latin American countries. Uruguay had been beset by the Tupamaros, urban guerrilla fighters who rob banks, casinos, and perform a whole lot of kidnapping of major government officials and citizens. Unfortunately, they sometimes kill which makes them less popular in the eyes of the country. The citizens are used to their operation as their cars are often obtained more than the people, but the officials never quite believe that the Tupamaros have the effrontery to kidnap them. Political prisoners are being held in Uruguay and the guerrillas want them released or else they will kill their latest kidnapped official, Santore. 

The bulk of "State of Siege" features Santore as he is interviewed and questioned by a masked Tupamaro and we learn that Santore has endorsed torture techniques used by the CIA - some of these include electric shocks delivered to all parts of the body. Through the Santore recorded interrogation, we learn that Santore is a guinea pig for the government, he's only following orders like he did in Chile and elsewhere. Montand crucially shows the humanity of an official who might be powerless just like the Tupamaros are in truly implementing change. No change can be expected when a democracy is expected to flourish and yet the definitions of democracy change from official to official - it is implied that they barely care about a democracy and more about maintaining wealth and prestige, at least among themselves. The sharp-witted journalist, Carlos Ducas (O.E. Hasse), can see through all the bureaucratic nonsense and he is just as present in the film's narrative as Santore is - whether or not he is on the side of the officials or the Tupamaros is never addressed. 

"State of Siege" is a sharply conceived, concisely contained thriller that starts with the murder of Santore and is carried along by flashbacks. It is a beautifully constructed narrative and there are moments that make you take pause, one in shock and horror followed by a deeper understanding of the country coming apart at the seams (there are also some humorous bits about the kidnapped officials). There are no easy answers and director Gavras has no solutions, nor does he take sides. Unlike what George Stevens, Jr. once said about withdrawing the film from being shown at the AFI, the movie never rationalizes the murder of an American official. "State of Siege" does try to interpret how fascism and the rise of violence are not answers.  

Intimacy where it has not gone before

 STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The summer of 1984 had some blockbusters that went beyond the call of entertainment duty such as "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "Gremlins" yet "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" chose to underplay, to let us breathe and take in character details and exposition. It is just as good as "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and it is a fitting, infrequently somber yet excellent conclusion to part II's open-endedness with regards to Spock's death.

The Enterprise crew is all back, and they are all shaken up by Spock's sacrificial death. The distraught Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) wants to head back to Genesis, a planet terraformed in the previous installment that happens to house Spock's coffin. Top Federation officials say returning to Genesis would be hazardous, politically of course, and declare that the Enterprise is not to exit the Spacedock. Naturally this is not to be as the determined Kirk; Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) who harbors Spock's spirit transferred by Spock; Scottie (James Doohan) who factors engineering problems by a factor of four; Sulu, the lieutenant commander, who doesn't like being called Tiny; Walter Koenig's Chekov who navigates the Enterprise and, of course, Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, chief communications officer (instrumental in beaming up the crew to the Enterprise), are intent on getting to Genesis in warp speed time.

"Star Trek III" is chock full of the usual Trek specifics, including the Klingons as villains. This time, it is the nasty Klingon named Kruge (Christopher Lloyd, who plays him to the hilt), who wants the Genesis device and is ruthless in killing his own species and a girlfriend of his! We also get the slow rebirth of Spock, played by a variety of actors at different ages, as the adjustment to the surroundings is monitored by another Vulcan, Office Saavik (Robin Curtis skillfully replacing Kirstie Alley), and the inventor of the Genesis device, Kirk's son Marcus (the late Merritt Butrick). It is typically a race against time since Genesis is a dying planet.

Last minute rescues, last minute beam-me-ups, a jubilant score by James Horner, astute direction by debuting director Leonard Nimoy, extraordinarily restrained performances, a completely convincing new ship called the Bird of Prey and there is even a fistfight on an imploding Genesis that is short and sweet. Most significantly, "Star Trek III" is that rare sequel that is even more intimate with its characters than ever before.