Walking Contradiction

 AMERICAN DHARMA (2018)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Steve Bannon is an articulate, educated man who ended up on President Trump's team as an advisor and you wonder how that happened. Did Trump pick him because he was a fan of Breitbart news where Bannon had once worked? Not even Bannon truly knows and he comes across in Errol Morris' documentary, "American Dharma," as a man of foolhardy convictions, discussing politics and globalization in such broad strokes that I couldn't figure out where he really stood or what he was getting at. 

There is nothing I can say about Steve Bannon, the surly, often unkempt man of Trump's team (who still looked unkempt even while wearing a suit) that everybody already knows but there are a few details I had not known. When Bannon was present at his daughter's West Point volleyball practice, he saw the words "MADE IN VIETNAM" on the uniforms. This proved disconcerting to him and finally made him angry about the state of the U.S. when clothes were being manufactured in a country where 50,000 American lives were lost during that horrible war. Eventually director Errol Morris, who asks him direct questions and reveals his own political views (sort of a first for Morris), digs deeper when Bannon reveals the insight into dharma, that is the consistency of being true to one's nature. Bannon brings up films he loved that inspired him and his ideology such as "Twelve O'Clock High," "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "The Searchers." I still don't see how these movies shaped his populist views or his feelings on illegal immigration, the shipment of jobs overseas, or globalization. "Twelve O'Clock High" is about Air Force bombers in World War II and I wondered what Bannon thought the movie was actually about. The enemy of our nation according to Steve Bannon is globalization, not Nazis (a question about Charlottesville is left open with no real concrete answers). The only cinematic parallel I can see unmistakably is when Bannon discusses "Chimes at Midnight" and Falstaff's role as a man who knew that King Henry V would forsake him because, that's what happens. Yet Welles' teary-eyed Falstaff sees that he lost a friend, someone he trusted - one of the most emotional scenes of Welles' career as an actor. I thought Bannon would see Trump as the king who forsakes him but Bannon interprets according to his own ideology. I suppose they were not really friends. 

"American Dharma" can be often riveting and Bannon, filmed at different strategic camera angles inside a constructed aircraft hangar (he was also a political strategist as well), is sometimes mesmerizing to listen to. He is not an obvious crackpot and I do not agree with all of his ideological views yet I am not asked to it. What may come across as fascism to some, others may see as reasonable right-wing politics for a nation that lost its way. Director Morris never quite asks the harder questions about Bannon's contradictions or they are never answered - Bannon often leaves things dangling especially thinly veiled populist views that do not mesh with his relationship to the elites. Bannon is more excited and informative when discussing Trump's successful and controversial campaign, and the strategy of beating Hillary Clinton. 

Morris has often succeeded in past documentaries with just observing his subjects through the use of his Interrotron camera that allowed the subjects to be looking at us and we studied them - in other words, let them do all the talking. With Steve Bannon, Morris is present on camera, often seen from behind. He should have let Bannon do all the talking and we would've seen Bannon as the white nationalist who consistently contradicts himself. In "American Dharma," he is just a dangerously hollow personality. 

Tickled Pink By Its Feminist Tract

 BARBIE (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

After watching the colorful, vibrant and thoroughly pleasurable "Barbie," I felt the need to have a delicious ice cream sundae. Yeah, there are movies like "Babette's Feast" and "GoodFellas" that make you feel hungry because they feature copious amounts of food. "Barbie" is not filled with 31 flavors of ice cream every few minutes but its delicate shades of pink and light strawberry colors in its art direction and production design, particularly of various Barbies' homes, will make you want ice cream. I am certainly not buying a Barbie doll after seeing it.

In a hilarious opening sequence and nod to "2001: A Space Odyssey," girls are seen in a rural region playing with baby dolls. Suddenly a monolith, well, actually Barbie herself (winningly played by Margot Robbie) appears, transfixes the girls who throw away and destroy their dolls - Barbie is the Second Coming. Then we venture into Barbie Land, an actual place that is practically all pink-colored featuring houses with no walls and landscapes that are as fake as anything in "Asteroid City." The Barbies all say hello to each other every morning, especially Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie. She starts her day floating down to her cute convertible and says hello to all the Kens, including the winsome Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling). Beach Ken is only happy when Barbie says hello to him. Beach Ken also surfs and other Kens mock him when his surfboard hits the plastic wave that makes him bounce off and fall right back on the beach. Beach Ken wants to have a night together with Barbie yet she is only interested in Girls Night where they all sing and dance to their hearts' content (naturally, Ken has no idea what spending the night actually entails). One night while Barbie is dancing with the others, she screams out, "Do you guys think about dying?" She tries to correct herself and the following day, she doesn't feel the same. Her feet become flat and, horror of horrors, she has cellulite! She consults the help of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) who tells her to venture out to the Real World. Not if Ken can't come along! 

It turns out that in the Real World, a sour-faced preteen named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), the presumed owner of the Stereotypical Barbie, might have infused an existential touch of mortality in her Barbie doll. It turns out that Sasha's mother (America Ferrera) actually had a hand in it since she is a Mattel employee and has played with Barbie dolls all her life. Just to be clear, Real World and Barbie World coexist and so Barbie and Ken show up as fish-out-of-water oddities in Venice Beach, California where Barbie discovers sexual misconduct like a man smacking her posterior. Meanwhile, the enthusiastic Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) gets word of what is happening and hopes to put Barbie back in her box.

"Barbie" is shrewdly written by Greta Gerwig (also the movie's director) and Noah Baumbach and they bring on some inventive ideas about Barbie World, mainly that the women are all doctors, lawyers, astronauts and one is a Nobel Prize Winner while the men just cavort in the beach and surf while displaying their abs. Women have succeeded in this world yet in the Real World, they are not holding as many positions of power. When the CEO of Mattel is a male and all the associates are male (other than Ferrera who is simply a desk employee), the movie erroneously claims that women are not the success they are in Barbie World. This is a fallacy since our real reality shows women in powerful positions so it is unclear to me what the movie is trying to say other maybe our actual Planet Earth is not Barbie Land? 

The movie also shuts itself down with the introduction of Ferrera when we want to know more about the daughter, Sasha, though of course Sasha doesn't play with Barbie dolls (she calls Barbie a fascist). Ferrera ventures with Sasha and Barbie back to Barbie Land which has been turned by Beach Ken into a man's paradise of horse iconography and fur. Yeech! There is a turning point when Ferrera has her speech about woman's place in society in terms of appearance and emotions that brings the movie back up to speed (it is quite a sobering speech and, you bet, it is pushing an agenda but the movie was leading up to it. It doesn't feel forced for all you anti-woke and anti-agenda folks). It also brings Barbie up to speed on her questionable worth as a person - where does she fit in with the other Barbies and in the Real World? These are much deeper questions than I expected for a Barbie movie.

"Barbie" is exuberant and often exhilarating, thanks in no small part to Robbie and the rest of the cast who bring their A game here. The script by Gerwig and Baumbach is witty, satirical, often hilarious and aims to bring out a full-throttle feminist tract into play. Still, I could have done with less singing from the Kens especially Gosling (far more dynamic here than any role I've seen him in) and less of the Kens' dull production number on the beach. Despite such misgivings, "Barbie" is superb entertainment and I was tickled pink by it and its pro-feminism views. Time to eat some ice cream.

Truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable

 THE THIN BLUE LINE (1988)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line" may appear like something you might see on any forensic crime TV channel but look closer. "The Thin Blue Line" is unlike any crime documentary I've ever seen and it is just as powerful and riveting today as it was in 1988. It is considered rightfully a landmark documentary that used reenactments to decipher the truth - boy, have reenactments been done to death ever since. More tellingly, they serve a very direct purpose and it is their repetition from different angles that show how truth can be obscured by eyewitnesses whose identification of a shooter is less reliable than anyone imagined. 

Seeing it again recently, I was reminded how flimsy the eyewitness accounts really were, particularly their observation of a late night suspect in a car on a deserted road. Not any of the three eyewitnesses could positively identify the alleged suspect yet they claim to know what the suspect looked like - all eyewitnesses, including a woman named Emily Miller who says murder is rampant in her town and around her house! She has her reasons for declaring one man as the culprit, the shooter of a Dallas police officer who died at the scene - she is something of a criminal herself. 

The alleged murder suspect was Randall Adams who was at a motel the night of the murders with his brother. He was fingered as the murderer by a 16-year-old named David Harris, an explosively violent kid who kept getting himself in trouble throughout the years of Adams' incarceration including having killed a man whose house he invaded! Adams says Harris must have killed the officer, driving a blue car whose make is not made immediately clear even by the slain officer's partner - she sat in the vehicle and shot at the car yet had no memory of the license plate number. Suspicion arises from all different sides of the coin - could it have been a set-up? No, not at all (unmentioned in the doco but it occured to me). Did David Harris actually shoot the officer and blame it on Adams? A more likely scenario when you consider how Dallas's justice system and the D.A. just wanted capital punishment to run its course - the rationale being they didn't want to ruin a young man's life but an older man, sure why not. 

Murder and death are key factors in "The Thin Blue Line" - they run more rampantly than even Emily Miller claims in Dallas, Texas. Fashioned as a deconstruction of a wrongly convicted man tale using every cinematic tool in the book that went beyond normal documentaries (including Philip Glass's evocative musical score), Morris' "Thin Blue Line" establishes truth as its only asset but the justice system is still blind to it or doesn't care. The only expression of emotion is ironically from David Harris, separate from the crime he later admits to committing, as he tells the story of his older brother who drowned in a neighbor's pool when they were younger. You know the story is true because the details flow easily and disturb him. Truth can sometimes stare at you straight in the eye and not flinch. "The Thin Blue Line" is one of the more revelatory documentaries ever made about the justice system and the environment surrounding it. A true landmark in cinema history. 

Promises, promises, promises

 IMAGINARY CRIMES (1994)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

As told from the firsthand perspective of a teenage girl who sees more than she lets on, "Imaginary Crimes" is all implied in scene after scene by what Sonya (Fairuza Balk) witnesses. She knows her father is a con-man, a faux mover and shaker who keeps his two daughters at bay promising riches. He delivers nothing because there are no riches, no solid deals being made. What he can deliver are lies and pure deceit.

Ray Weiler (Harvey Keitel, perfectly cast) is the deceitful con man, a dreamer without a dream because such dreams cannot come to pass. In beautifully composed flashbacks, we see Ray married to his wife (Kelly Lynch) who can see the lies, the shape of a fictitious future. They live, along with a younger Sonya and a baby on the way, in a basement apartment and Ray keeps on promising them a dream home (it is all Ray's wife wants). He has invented gadgets and has procured patents, or maybe not. The present story is set in 1962 where Sonya attends a private school that Ray seemingly cannot afford but since he promised his deceased wife that Sonya and her sister would attend said school, a promise is a promise regardless. 

Sonya sees through her ambitious father, knowing that his latest deal about mineral deposits in the Rockies are unlikely to be claimed by Ray or his partner (Seymour Cassel). One day, Ray brings a boatload of money and pays the six months of unpaid rent and Sonya is startled - could her father have finally gotten lucky? Alas, not so. Meanwhile, Sonya is fixated on her English teacher (Vincent D'Onofrio) who waxes on in class about Walt Whitman and seems fixated on the prose in such a way that he forgets he's supposed to be teaching a class. Maybe Ray is not the only dreamer. 

"Imaginary Crimes" is shrewdly directed by Anthony Drazan and he has an eye for capturing an era where innocence was at an all-time high in Middle America - after all, this is Sonya's story yet she's much smarter than we think. Fairuza Balk vividly shows Sonya's observations about her world and of her father whose dealings are never on the up and up. Harvey Keitel also draws more nuances and an emotional sensitivity, more so than the script by Kristine Johnson and Davia Nelson provides, so that he shoehorns us into the dangerous small-time cons that we almost believe might deliver. What is most fascinating is that we are never sure if Ray truly believes he will strike gold or if he knows, deep down, he never will. 

"Imaginary Crimes" never quite made it clear how Ray could keep up a deception and move around so often without ever holding a menial job. I had wondered if he had saved some money or if he's truly broke because nobody can tow two children around without any cash, even in the early 1960's. His business partner as played by Seymour Cassel is also left on the sidelines - is he just as much in on the con as Ray? Yet I was still quite moved and captivated by the performances, particularly Keitel who is one of our most underappreciated actors and Balk who is even more underrated. Kudos also go to young Elisabeth Moss (later known for TV's "Mad Men" and "The Handmaid's Tale") who is naive because she truly believes in her father. Gee, I almost did as well. 

Not Every Problem has a Solution

 THE FLASH (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Superhero travelling at super-sonic lightning speeds that can stop time and reverse it (with potentially damaging repercussions like paradoxes, wouldn't you know?) Yes, Virginia, DC's very own Flash has his own movie. Is it as good as "Aquaman?" You bet. Is it as good as any Marvel movies? Well, it is superior to 2003's "Daredevil" starring Ben Affleck. You see what I did there? I went back in time to a world where superhero movies were not glutting the marketplace every single month. Back in 2003, we just had "Hulk" and "Daredevil" and I am not sure what else. "The Flash" is one of only a couple of comic-book movies I have seen in the last year, and the best one to feature multiverse timelines and characters is still "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (not to mention the animated "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"). "The Flash" is not nearly as good as those but it will do for pure entertainment, wickedly funny scenes and some emotionally true moments. 

Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) works in forensics and is trying to clear his father's name who has been accused of murdering his own wife. Barry knows he is not guilty - all due to a can of tomatoes! Barry spends his time as the superhero Flash who can run faster than Superman on a good day, and can cross the streams of time and bend them a tad while saving dozens of newborns falling from the top of a crumbling building! That is just the opening of the movie, which features cameos by Ben Affleck's Batman and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman who are trying to catch some robbers! Yet Barry is fixated on the murder of his mother (Maribel Verdú) by an unknown assailant so he does what any anxious, mother-loving son does - he runs faster than the speed of light and prevents the murder by making sure his mother buys that tomato can. Unfortunately, this creates a paradox and an alternate timeline where Barry's mother is alive yet Zod (Michael Shannon), the Phantom Zone villain from "Man of Steel," comes back to Earth and is ready to kill billions of people. This timeline is so screwed up that the movie "Back to the Future" actually stars Eric Stoltz, not Michael J. Fox! More importantly, Barry runs into himself (oh, this movie pays more than just mere homage to "Back to the Future") and tries to convince his doppelganger to become the Flash because alternate Barry no longer has superpowers - all the other Barry has to do, 2013 Barry that is, is to get electrocuted at the precise minute during a rainstorm! Yep, Marty McFly indeed. 

"The Flash" is loads of superkinectic fun and the razzle-dazzle special-effects are fantastically realized - it is fun to see such an upbeat kid who is so innocent. That is thanks to Ezra Miller who embodies Barry and the Flash (and the doppelganger) with wit, humor and major appeal. It is also terrific fun to see the return of Michael Keaton as Batman in the alternate timeline - a role he has not played in thirty years. Not as much fun is the new Supergirl (Sasha Calle) who forecasts so much one-dimensional gloom and doom that it kills the narrative, albeit briefly. The inclusion of Supergirl doesn't jell with Flash's emotional gravitas and the third act has too many explosions, fight sequences and rotation and repetition of the same events to the point of tedium. Sure, it is loud and explosive and it is showing the 2013 Flash trying to save lives but it is all overdone and never-ending - the urgency seemingly fades after a while when we got to worry about the powerful Zod. I think I would have left out this whole Zod business altogether. 

For long stretches, "The Flash" works electrifying wonders and Ezra Miller manages to bring some ebullience amidst the overcaffeinated CGI work. Barry learns that not every problem has a solution, and that creating alternate timelines can create more chaos than necessary. It is a simplistic notion but sometimes our pain, our scars, makes us who we are. 

Shut your pie-hole Dwight!

 THIS BOY'S LIFE (1993)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Tobias Wolff's teen years of relentless abuse from his mean, bullish stepfather might not appeal to most viewers and it didn't back in the spring of 1993. Never mind that this was Leonardo DiCaprio's first major movie role that put him on the map or that he got solid support from pros like Robert De Niro and Ellen Barkin - this often distressing film would be a tough sell at any time no matter who was cast. Don't let that stop you because Michael Caton Jones' wonderfully evocative "This Boy's Life" will knock your socks off with its powerful 1950's coming-of-age tale of a miserable existence in a small town. Nostalgia will not come to mind - this is Toby's subjective point-of-view.

Tobias (Leo DiCaprio) is a cocky kid prone to trouble in school, always getting into fights. He likes to be called Jack, not Toby ("He reads all those Jack London books"), and he and his lovely if unfocused mother, Caroline (Ellen Barkin), are always picking up some belongings and running from town to town across America. If there is a bus available to Phoenix or Seattle, either one will do depending on which one leaves sooner. Caroline and Jack end up in Seattle and it is there that she meets Dwight (Robert De Niro), a sharply-dressed former Navy man who works in a Washington town called Concrete (he is also handy with a cigarette lighter). Eventually Jack and Caroline move in to his backwater house where Dwight's other kids live. The adjustment is not easy but slowly we discover that Dwight is a drunk animal - a man who provokes a fight. His reasons are his own and, as played by De Niro, he is often scary, often drunk and pretty much looking for any reason to punch, kick or physically assault Jack. Dwight knows Jack likes to get into trouble yet he mostly hates this kid because Jack loves to read, sing and dance around. De Niro and screenwriter Robert Getchell ("Mommie Dearest," "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore") also tend to show Dwight's clumsiness and how Jack can sometimes one-up his stepfather.

Jack finds himself befriending greasers with ducktail haircuts who want nothing more than to drink and engage in frank sexual talk about girls. He finds solace in a smart kid, Arthur (Jonah Blechman) who is gay, and they both develop a friendship after an awkward muddy fight where Jack insults him. They also share their love of the piano which points to Jack's need to exit Concrete and go to prep school. Easier said than done.

"This Boy's Life" is strong stuff though a little undernourished when it comes to Jack's mother, Caroline, and Dwight's actual children. Caroline is a woman who keeps running away from mostly temperamental men, and drags her son with her to any town where such men don't exist. And yet she keeps ending up with them - wouldn't she have seen what a hotheaded mess Dwight was from the start? As Barkin's Caroline heartbreakingly says at one point, "I don't know what to do." Ellen Barkin makes the character sparkle and come alive yet there is precious little inner life and she's practically cut out of the last half of the movie. Dwight's own children are also left in the dust - you wonder if Dwight had treated them the same way as Jack.  

"This Boy's Life" has the requisite 50's rock and roll and doo-wop songs but it has a far more personal, deeply unsettling subtext than most other 1950's-type movies of its ilk. It unveils the violent impulses of a reprehensible man who knows of no other way to discipline Jack. De Niro shows you the darkness and shadowy exterior of such a man, and DiCaprio thrillingly shows the hopeful light at the end of the tunnel for any kid who wants to get away from the clutches of hell. I know that hell all too well. 

Plodding alternate realities

 THE MATRIX (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Looking back at my thoughts on the IMDB newsgroup reviews back in 1999, I noticed a few negative comments towards my lambasted review of "The Matrix." I never cared for it, never cared for the sequels and found the whole franchise to be a confounding mess. Sure, I love the idea of the distinction between reality and fantasy and when they can merge yet David Lynch I connect with more readily. As a matter of fact, at the time there was also the release of David Cronenberg's "eXistenZ" which I found more involving than "Matrix." I have tried to watch the original film again many years later and I still could not get behind it. The visual effects are impressive and immersive yet Keanu Reeves is too much of a bore. Carrie-Anne Moss I actually found to be a more stimulating presence but the movie did not engage me or excite me. Anyways, below is my 1999 review intact, with perhaps references to other sci-fi films that are not always fair but so be it. 

Original 1999 Review:

Has there been a halfway decent science-fiction picture beyond the spectacular "Dark City" in the last ten years? The mind boggles. In one word: no. And the senseless, monotonous "The Matrix" will hardly qualify as anything but pure visual candy, yet the candy will rot rather than cleanse your cinematic spirits.

In an unsuccessful attempt to make us forget "Johnny Mnemonic," Keanu Reeves plays yet another emotionless, stone-faced cyber hacker nerd named Neo who sells illegal jack devices for virtual reality games. It turns out that Neo is living in a world that is a virtual reality game itself, an artificially created environment designed by aliens in Reservoir Dogs suits, otherwise known as The Matrix. The Matrix designed this world to learn about...human nature? What makes us tick? Who knows, yet a group of leather-jacketed freedom fighters with superhuman computer powers (and sunglasses) intend to fight the aliens and prevent more humans from being...programmed? They are Morpheus (Laurence
Fishburne) and the attractive, interesting Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), along with the aptly named Cypher (bald-headed Joe Pantoliano). Later, it appears that Neo is in fact the Matrix...or so we would think. Yes, in typical sci-fi glory, the Matrix will restore the world to what it was before becoming a live-action computer game.

I admire directors like David Lynch who take us into Byzantine labyrinths - endless mazes with circular loops that ask us to make our own interpretations. But "The Matrix" is not that film. The movie simply
has an idea - the Matrix - but no story or fleshed-out characters worth caring about. The idea simply sits there while we watch fantastic special-effects fill every inch of the screen. There are some beautiful
slow-motion shots of guns firing and bullet casings grazing every inch of concrete on building rooftops - a keen reminder of John Woo's wild comic-book pyrotechnics. I also enjoyed watching the flips in the air and the frozen movements suddenly turning back into motion. If "The Matrix" were simply a financial ploy for an incredible, imaginative sci-fi picture, I would have said that I loved it. But the movie is an exercise in pyrotechnics, nothing more.

Instead of some intelligent dialogue and imaginative story structure dealing with the mysteries of virtual reality and real life, the movie opts for straightforward action, predictably formulaic
thriller elements, and bland characters. Keanu Reeves can't even smile or wink, much less emote any expression (What happened to this actor?) Fishburne, one of the most distinctive actors on the silver screen, mostly stands around and utters epiphanies about the state of the world. The one actor who stands out is Carrie-Anne Moss, who turns from a full-fledged kung-fu expert to a simple girlfriend for the seemingly indifferent Neo. What a sham!

"The Matrix" simply recycles elements from "Dark City," "Strange Days," and every other tired sci-fi thriller in the last year or so without investing any interest outside tentacled spider robots and kung-

fu fights. If this is the state of the genre now, what can we expect in a decade?