Malpractice and murder

THE HOSPITAL (1971)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The best satires play it straight and to the point, and are concise and controlled in tempo and black humor. Most scenes in "The Hospital" are played so straight that you almost think the filmmakers are being serious until you catch the exaggeration that is practically hidden. The movie is not on the same high of hilarity mixed with serious topical issues as "Network" (both written by the brilliant seriocomic mind of Paddy Chayefsky) but it is unnerving and often funny in a way that feels like life. You won't come away bored by "The Hospital" but you will get a mild headache due to its brazenness and humorous asides - probably the way anyone would feel after visiting a hospital.

A New York teaching hospital is coming apart at the seams. Patients clog the main artery of the building, the emergency room, seeking help while only one nurse asks each and every one of them if they have health insurance. Two doctors and a nurse are murdered though nobody knows who did the deed - one young doctor is found dead after having had sex with a nurse. To top it all off, protesters gather outside the building knowing that the hospital annexed an adjacent slum building to expand their quarters, and the protestors include some Black Panthers. George C. Scott is Chief of Staff Dr. Bock who is going through a crisis - he wants to commit suicide, is divorced and impotent, and his kids (one who is a Maoist) hate him. Enter Diana Rigg of all people, as the sexy former nurse who is at the hospital for her comatose father (Barnard Hughes) and wants to take her dad back to Mexico to be among the natives. Cue Dr. Bock whose impotence is relieved after a one-night stand with the ex-nurse, and she tries to convince him to go to Mexico as well. 

"The Hospital" is messy, a little disorganized yet never less than blisteringly funny with an ache that stays in your head. George C. Scott has some magnificent scenes of dialogue as the tortured Dr. Bock, mostly with Diana Rigg that results in some of the best work he's ever done. A lot of scenes perk up when Scott and Rigg appear but the movie piles on too much of a killer subplot that detracts from the satire yet the inner workings of this disastrously managed hospital keeps one's interest - will this place ever be up to standard? Scott's Dr. Bock character adds a lot of flavor and meaning and his occasional outbursts come out of the hysteria of his own life and the hospital - both are in shambles. Chayefsky and director Arthur Hiller might be working overtime to entertain with a few extraneous scenes but you can't say that you won't come away from this less than drained with a little smile on your face. Just make sure your insurance is airtight if you visit this hospital.

Friedkin made your heart skip and your blood pressure rise

WILLIAM FRIEDKIN (1935-2023) : 

A LOOK BACK AT 1987's RAMPAGE 

By Jerry Saravia

William Friedkin has passed away at the age of 87, a formidable director who reawakened people's senses with two iconoclastic 1970's films that challenged their respective genres. Those would be "The French Connection" and "The Exorcist," two major classics with one featuring one of the best car chases ever filmed and the other featuring some of the scariest supernatural thrills of all time. Of course what made these films so furiously alive and vivid in our collective imaginations is that Friedkin made them feel grounded - they were realistically conveyed and "French Connection" almost felt like a documentary with some hair-spinning hand-held camerawork. "The Exorcist" felt like an examination of evil in the least likely place - a pre-teen girl's bedroom. 

It would not be fair to highlight only those two films because his talent was evident elsewhere, especially his early documentary work. A Friedkin film that is still underappreciated and has been lost in the shuffle is 1987's "Rampage" which features a dynamic, scary performance by Alex McArthur as Charles Reece, a serial killer. This was no average killer (based on a true story of the Vampire Killer of Sacramento) - he went into people's homes and mutilated his victims and drank their blood (in one truly spellbinding scene, shot in slow-motion, he slathers blood over his body). Eventually, he's caught and sent to prison and Michael Biehn plays an idealistic District Attorney/prosecutor who seeks the death penalty for Charles despite being initially against it. Meanwhile it is determined by doctors and a psychiatrist that the killer is mentally insane and should be in a mental hospital. 

All sorts of legal questions are raised in "Rampage" and some of them are uneven and not always convincing, particularly Biehn's switcheroo with respect to what he considers ethical punishment. Still, the root of the film's success is Alex McArthur's chilling, persuasive performance as a seemingly innocent-looking man wearing a red windbreaker who suddenly reveals an animal bent on blood lust. Director Friedkin once again keeps the material grounded in an unshakable reality that occasionally brings up similarities with the monumentally frightening "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." And just like "Henry" which couldn't find a distributor for years, "Rampage" had been completed in 1987 through DEG (De Laurentiis) company until it went belly up. Released through Miramax Pictures five years later in limited release, "Rampage" still held its own against any exploitative slasher flick - this was serious, urgent material given a boost by its death penalty vs. insanity defenses. There are also scenes of such unbridled, unhinged madness from the killer's point-of-view that your heart will skip a few beats. William Friedkin was that in a nutshell in his best films - he made your heart skip and your blood pressure rise. 

Bloodbath in every sense of the word

 EVIL DEAD RISE (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There are bloodbaths and then there are literal bloodbaths. "Evil Dead Rise," not unlike its 2013 predecessor, has its victims literally bathed in blood up to their necks. Blood fills the screen and spurts and spurts to the point of having its victims drenched in blood with perfectly bloodied faces. In terms of graphic disembowelment, stabbings, eating glass and eye gouges, the 2013 "Evil Dead" fit the bill more closely though that movie was a numbing bore. "Evil Dead Rise" is actually entertaining and has a very thrilling climax but you may want to take a shower after seeing it. Use some good bacterial soap to get those heavy blood stains off.

Alyssa Sutherland is a memorably wicked Deadite mommie who is so vicious and so psychologically torturous to her kids that you want to see her eviscerated. She is Ellie, a single mom raising three kids, one of whom discovers the Book of the Dead and a couple of cryptic LP's in the parking garage of their high-rise apartment building (this is after a brief earthquake that creates a hole in the garage). This building is the kind of creepy place where the hallways are barely lit and all I could think of is that someone needs to pay the electric bill or install more lights. Anyway, Ellie's DJ-aspiring son finds and plays the records and the incantations are read from the Book of the Dead and the usual demonic spirits are unleashed. 

Ellie is the first to get possessed and Sutherland makes her into a scary, demonic hellbreaker spirit - she is not someone you want to invite for a get-together. Aside from the kids who are scared beyond their wits, there is Ellie's visiting pregnant sister, Beth (Lily Sullivan), who is more than a little concerned about her sister's contorted body and ability to float and avoid blinking when a fly walks on her eyeball. We feel great sympathy for the family and for Ellie and I hoped Ellie was going to get this demon out of her body - no spoiler but, um, no chance.

"Evil Dead Rise" is quite a horrific ride and its new residential setting for evil spirits (which may bring up unwanted memories of the high-rise in "Poltergeist III") does work in the story's favor rather than the traditional log cabin of previous films. The movie is still a little too blood-soaked and I do miss the wicked humor of the original trilogy and the long-chinned star of Bruce Campbell. Still, this movie is in capable hands and it works right up to its last feverishly sweat-inducing last scene. I do recommend antifungal antibacterial soap after sitting through it. 

God's Children are not for sale

 SOUND OF FREEDOM (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Tim Ballard sounds like someone I should trust if I want my child found. Jim Caviezel plays Tim as he's played most other roles since the heyday of playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," a beatific and saintly figure in repose. Never mind that Tim is not a saint or sinner - he is a man on a mission to save "God's children" from child traffickers. "Sound of Freedom" almost sounds like a Mel Gibson movie yet Gibson might have made a ticking time bomb of a movie with urgency felt in your veins while watching it. "Sound of Freedom" is a low-key, somber affair yet somewhat indistinguishable from any movie that might play on TV on the same subject.

Caviezel's Tim works for Homeland Security as a Special Agent assigned to arresting pedophiles who make their presence known on the Internet. Tim finds and arrests many of them, but what about the kids who are kidnapped, bought and sold into sex slavery. This is a fascinating premise in a sense - can we ever find the missing kids (and adults) sold into these elaborate, profitable trafficking schemes? Since Homeland Security is not keen on finding the kids, viewed as an impossible task, Tim becomes the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, O.U.R., an anti-trafficking non-profit rescue organization.  One of their first goals is to find the sister of "Teddy Bear," a recently found Mexican kid who was found at the Mexican border. There is a short bit here where one of their mission is to convince these traffickers that they can bring children to a wealthy guy's island. Later on, there is far more dangerous terrain in a remote part of the Amazon jungle in Colombia where a rebel enclave exists and Teddy Bear's sister is possibly being held there.

I can hardly dismiss "Sound of Freedom" and the movie does have an understated power in its best moments, especially seeing one older man carrying a drink as he's ready to take advantage of that little girl, closing the red blinds as we know what unspeakable act is about to take place. Yet the movie plays it so low-key, the outrage is so muted and so softly rendered that you only feel a modicum of anger when you hear Mexican songs sung by child-like voices. "Sound of Freedom" never gives you a rush of adrenaline or intensity with regards to such disturbing subject matter. It assumes Tim's righteousness is enough, or least the tears on Jim Caviezel's beatific face.  

I'll Be Watching You

 EAGLE EYE (2008)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Eagle Eye" is basically Shia LaBeouf running down one busy street after another with an intelligent woman in tow. They run, they hide, they drive, they run again and hide. All this time a female computer-generated voice is calling Shia's cell phone repeatedly, telling him where to go and where to be. If he doesn't answer his phone, the voice sends messages through visual bulletin boards or on highway signs, etc. "RUN" or "GO TO GATE 17" - you know, basic commands from the old days of BASIC computer language. 

How is this happening? The computer voice yields from a new surveillance system straight from the Pentagon that has gone haywire. How haywire? It not only deposits money in Shia's bank account to the tune of 750,000 dollars, in addition to sending him tons of guns and bombs in his apartment which he never gets to use, it also wants to assassinate top officials in the government starting with The President of the U.S. Now if this computer has such top-notch surveillance across all 50 states and can even kill someone by somehow cutting live power lines (!) then why does it need Shia or a poor, single mother (Michelle Monaghan) at all when it can accomplish its own dastardly methods?

This supercomputer is known as ARIIA and it is the most evil computer since HAL 9000 yet not the most challenging - how exactly did this evil technology suddenly became automated is not clear. While watching the movie's hyperkinetic Hitchcockian turns courtesy of director D.J. Caruso (who helmed the underwhelming "Disturbia," a knock-off of "Rear Window"), "Eagle Eye" is run-of-the-mill running and jumping and copious car-crashes that are at best generic with not enough of a visual eye. Headache-inducing with whirlwind use of hand-held camera moves and Michael Bay millisecond cuts, "Eagle Eye" is never believable and feels like a more high-tech version of "Enemy of the State" though any stimulating questions about government surveillance are zapped by the movie's falsely urgent explosive action scenes. You might get exhausted by the end but you'll come up empty.

Joyless Tolkien mixed with Star Wars clone

WILLOW (1988)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Sword-and-sorcery swashbuckling, epic battles on horses with spears thrown, giant castles too high to scale, revolting witches, beautiful princesses, chivalrous heroes, boar-like creatures - geez, what's not to like? "Willow" has an assembly line of all the expected tropes of such fanciful tales of yore yet there is no real sense of fun or magic. Sure, a few thrills but nothing you haven't seen done before and better. It's "Princess Bride" mixed with some "Star Wars" and that is no surprise the latter comparison, considering "Willow" is a story conceived by George Lucas.

Warwick Davis is Willow, a little person in a village full of them. His prospects are not high but he is married and, one day, finds a baby on a raft floating on the water. The villagers and some Merlin-like wizard (Billy Barty), whose tricks are not always up to snuff, decide that Willow along with another villager should take the baby back to the Kingdom of Daikini after being attacked by those aforementioned man-eating boars! Now mind you, they should be aware that Daikini is where the baby came from in the first place, and there is a cruel Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh) who kills mothers that send their babies out of the kingdom! Didn't anybody from this village read the Daikini Gazette? 

Along the perilous journey, Willow (who can assume wizard-like powers summoned with a stick) meets a Big Person named Madmartigan (Val Kilmer), a Han Solo-like warrior, who can be clumsy and has a sense of humor (he wears a full female costume after being caught committing adultery). Along the way we also meet a couple of Lilliputian-like people who even tie up our heroes (Gulliver's Travels, anyone?) They are known as Brownies! And you Star Wars fans went psychotically nuts when Lucas went into his midichlorians phase in "Phantom Menace"?

As you can tell, I came in late to this mediocre cinematic 1988 offering clearly pilfering from the J.R.R. Tolkien bible. There is plenty of clanging sword action, an extended battle climax with one character wearing a Skeletor-like mask and a few chase scenes that do work, but the joy is not quite there. Kilmer and Warwick Davis are up to the task and they give animated performances but the movie directed by Ron Howard never quite takes a real flight of imagination. Aside from a fire-breathing two-headed dragon, nothing in "Willow" will surprise or delight you with sights and sounds you haven't seen or heard before.   

Man Version of Events

 PRISONER'S DAUGHTER (2022)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

If it wasn't for the magnetic, ironclad presence of Brian Cox, it might be easy to turn away from this oft-told story of a rough prisoner with a horrible, criminal past who is returning home to rekindle what he lost. Yet Cox is not the only one on board; there is also Kate Beckinsale in an almost unrecognizable turn as this prisoner's troubled daughter and Christopher Convery as her intelligent, bullied son that gives this movie a higher pedigree and a few rich layers in its characterizations.

Cox is Max, a cancer-stricken prisoner who is being let out of jail to stay with his daughter since he only has a few months to live. Beckinsale is Maxine, who begrudgingly lets her dad stay with her and her smart-alecky son prone to epileptic seizures, Ezra (Christopher Convery). Naturally, this will not be a smooth transition and Max and Maxine's troubled history involving Maxine's drug-addled, suicidal, long gone mother is brimming to the surface. Max has an ankle monitor so he can't venture far from his home, and Maxine wants her son to believe he is his "uncle and not blood related." Ezra catches on fast that his uncle is his grandfather. Meanwhile, Maxine has her own problems including trouble holding down a job and dealing with Ezra's drug-addicted drummer of a dad. Ezra is being bullied at school yet it takes Max to teach his grandson how to fight back, thanks to Max's past days as an amateur boxer.

"Prisoner's Daughter" is nothing new and will not score points on originality (though I was shocked by the brutal ending) but I don't go to see movies like this for original plots. The purpose of "Prisoner's Daughter," keenly observed by director Catherine Hardwicke ("Thirteen"), is to illustrate a complicated, unsentimentally portrayed family dynamic and that is where the movie really sings. Brian Cox is absolutely credible as a prisoner with a hinted barbaric past and a desperate need to belong to a family again despite being out of the picture for 12 years. Kate Beckinsale proves what an astute actress she is, displaying calm and muted rage with knowing touches of humor to show she can recognize how awry her present situation is - her scene with Cox where she tearily mentions the parental neglect that made her into an adult is impactful. Kudos also go to Christopher Convery who conveys the weaknesses and the intelligence of a 12-year-old readying for adulthood, seeing beneath the surface of everything and always wanting to hear the "man" version of unfolding events.

Most of "Prisoner's Daughter" can be predicted yet I never felt as if I was travelling the same old waters of an aging man learning to pick up the pieces of a tough life. The actors give it enough dramatic pull and emotional honesty to make it seem new all over again.