Claustrophobic up to a point

PANIC ROOM (2002)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally viewed on April 1st, 2002

David Fincher's "Panic Room" is an intense, sweat-inducing, claustrophobic
thriller. It moves with the ease of a craftsman who ably pulls one visual
stunt after another, keeping us on the edge of our seats as the situations
grow more and more haywire. Like last year's "Joyride," it is remarkably
tense but it is also dramatically hollow at its core.

Jodie Foster plays Meg, a rich divorcee who has just bought a three-floor
brownstone with her teenage daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart), in New York City. It
is a remarkable apartment, spacious yet eerie in its openness. It even has a
secure safe room, or panic room, in one bedroom. This safe room is secure
indeed, designed to make rich people safe from harm in case intruders break
in. It also has a surveillance system that keeps track of every single room
in the house. Meg likes it but suffers from claustrophobia, and chooses not
to finish securing it with its passcodes and installed phone line.

Meg does not have a cheery life and keeps mum with her daughter about her
ex-husband, an owner of a pharmaceutical company. She drinks wine swiftly in
major gulps, and cries in her bathtub. She is definitely not a happy camper.
Even her daughter, Sarah, a hypoglycemic, seems adrift and aloof.
One night, three intruders break into the house. They include Burnham (Forest
Whitaker), a builder of safe rooms; Junior (Jared Leto), a slow-witted guy
with dreadlocks, and the psychopathic Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) who has brought
a gun to a situation that is a simple robbery. They are looking for a safe
that contains millions in bonds, and it is of course located in the panic
room. When Meg discovers her house is being invaded, she hides in the panic
room with her daughter. The room is impossible to penetrate unless it is
opened by the occupants in the room.

"Panic Room" takes place entirely in the house, that is its only setting.
These are usually my favorite kinds of films - think of the enclosed settings
of films like "Assault on Precinct 13" or "Reservoir Dogs" and you will get
an idea of what this film is like. Fincher keeps the pace swinging at a
swift, bloodcurling speed involving us with Meg's plight and with the three
intruders who conspire, bicker, argue and finally come apart in their endless
attempts to get the money. It is all about survival, and Fincher is brilliant
at keeping us scared as well as exploring the house itself through crevices,
phone wiring, outlets, keyholes, etc. In other words, everything we take for
granted is used as a means of survival, on both sides of this cat and mouse
game.

As thrilling as all of this is, "Panic Room" never stops to make observations
on who these people are. For one, Meg is barely given much character
development at all, and her scene in the bathtub ilustrates a side of her
that is never tapped into again. We must also not forget she is
claustrophobic, yet the movie carelessly avoids making that point again since
she is after all in the confined panic room through the whole film. I
expected more from her character than merely reactions and physical activity,
especially since she is played by Jodie Foster who turned down "Hannibal"
because the Clarice Starling role was severely truncated and she did not
agree with the character's behavior. Meg is no doubt the most physically
demanding role Foster has ever played, but it is a two-dimensional character
or did Jodie not notice.

The three burglars have interesting personalities, and the movies spends its
time studying their interaction. Forest Whitaker is the ambiguous antihero,
Jared Leto is the overcaffeinated, extremely dumb wise ass, and Dwight Yoakam
is the chillingly laconic psycho ready to kill anyone.

"Panic Room" is quite a wild ride and, on that basis, I give it high marks.
It is a well-oiled thrill machine, expertly directed and acted. I just
expected something more of a psychological thriller than a standard issue one
coming from the combined forces of David Fincher and Jodie Foster.

Nobody has improved the 1973 classic

 THE POPE'S EXORCIST (2023)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"The Pope's Exorcist" is hardly an original piece of work and nothing, not one iota or drop of narrative thread, is new or exciting or remotely scary about this movie. It is also unintentionally funny and essentially rips-off all the iconic imagery and some William Peter Blatty lines of dialogue from "The Exorcist" - of course, demonic possession movies have done this forever in the last 50 years. This one is just louder than most.

This is based on a true story of the late Father Amorth, a chief exorcist who may have believed in exorcisms and the presence of evil yet also knew mental illness and trauma could be contributing factors in any alleged possession. Such thoughts from Amorth are quickly abandoned when a young male child is the latest possession case. The bony, sickly looking child is Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) and is the son of Julia Vasquez (Alex Essoe - looking merely distraught through all this). There is the also the terminally annoyed older sister (Laurel Marsden) who flips her mother the bird! Incidentally, both kids listen to their walkmans and have no interest in moving in to a creepy, inhospitable Spanish abbey passed on to them by their late father. Naturally all the action is inside the abbey and literally fireworks go off rather prematurely in this movie when a fireball nearly consumes two construction workers! I would say in the fine, disreputable tradition of creepy houses, abbeys or apartments in the "Amityville Horror" vein, "GET OUT!"   

Russell Crowe plays the bearded Father Amorth in pretty much the way you expect - humorous, wicked and completely over-the-top. He's the saving grace of this overwrought, overdone and hysterical movie that bears little resemblance to the Father Amorth as seen in William Friedkin's chilling documentary, "The Devil and Father Amorth." This movie may as well be about any priest and the family in crisis demon mode lack any measurable depth or identity - they are in trouble before we have had any time to get to know them. As a late-night potboiler horror/possession movie, "The Pope's Exorcist" will satisfy anyone who loves twisting necks, kids hurling obscenities, blood gushing out of mouths, levitations and pigs blown away by shotguns with a slight touch of theology. In 50 years, though, nobody has yet to improve on that 1973 classic. 

Exciting and familiar visual tonic of a movie

 THE VAST OF NIGHT (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I have seen my share of films about aliens in the sky in small, remote towns and I never tire of seeing them. There is something about the remoteness of a small town, a small community, that feels germane to the oft-told concept of otherworldly visitors. "The Vast of Night" works wonders with imagination and skillful direction and it is a crackerjack story that could have lead anywhere, other than where it leads. Maybe I was hoping for some other entity, maybe something more mysterious and ancient and its lead up to an alien mothership just made me feel a tad cheated. 

Set in the fictional town of Cayuga, New Mexico during the late 1950's era, we are introduced to a quick-witted radio DJ for WOTW station, Everett (Jake Horowitz), and a loquacious and excited 16-year-old switchboard operator, Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick). They both walk to their jobs from the school gym late at night, discussing his tape recorder and she talks it up with reference to magazine stories of future technologies like having a phone with a video signal! Once they start their work for the night, Fay starts receiving a call with an ominous, clickety tone. No one knows what it is and as she calls various people in the community, they have no idea (other than one nervous caller) and then they are cut off. When Fay reaches out to Everett, he is nonplussed to learn that his news broadcast was cut off by this unknown signal. Later, Fay gets a call from a man who is aware what that signal is. An interview takes place as this mysterious man's call is played live on the air. 

A striking, often mesmerizing feature debut by director Andrew Patterson, "The Vast of Night" is sort of a grainy, low-key, dimly lit movie that somebody found in their VHS collection and hadn't played it in years. In that sense, there is something foreboding about the whole movie as it is wrapped in a deluge of paranoia and wonder. Both Horowitz, who exhibits a beatnik cool factor about himself, and McCormick's Fay stand out and their banter and tech-trivia conversations are a joy to listen to. Yet, despite the expected factor that it's all about aliens (as I said, I am a fan of those stories), I was still hoping for something more, something more cataclysmic that did not revolve around the typical otherworldly presence. "The Vast of Night" has three or four standout sequences that have everything to do with an active mobile camera in endless tracking shots such as roaming around town at a breakneck speed, or when a shot is held for 10 minutes as it focuses on Fay switching calls trying to decipher that odd sound, or when Everett and Fay walk in an early opening sequence. Such tell-tale, tantalizing moments seem to lead to an ending that could have been a supernova of thrills and surprises. We see an alien mothership and it is quite a sight...but not an unfamiliar one. Still, such a gripe doesn't take away from its overall hook on me. "The Vast of Night" is often quite a visual tonic of a movie and I'll take it over the middling repetitions of "Midnight Special."

Precious and Mercifully Short

 THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Wes Anderson has an uncanny ability to hook us in to his whimsical stories, and then they sometimes come up short with whimsy slowly overwhelming everything. This isn't always true of Anderson's formal, symmetrical plots and strategic camera placements - only "Asteroid City" and "The Darjeeling Limited" are tedious exercises ("The French Dispatch" is 2/3 wonderful and then 1/3 of flagging interest). Anderson has now crafted something that feels akin to his whimsical, cartoonish look at the world and it is Roald Dahl's short story, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar." Wes Anderson has adapted one of the author's works before ("The Fantastic Mr. Fox," unseen by me) but this one is light on its feet and has a hilarious, breakneck and consistently buoyant tone. It is precious and mercifully short.

The story begins with Roald Dahl himself (Ralph Fiennes) telling the story from his book about the wealthy Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch, who has a tremendous voice that can rattle your cage) who spots an unusual book in his friend's library. The thin book is written by Dr Chatterjee (Dev Patel) and it is his patient who can see without his eyes. Say what? That man is Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley) who proves to his doctors his magical ability by having his face completely bandaged and walking through hospital corridors and riding a bike with ease. How is that possible? Khan claims it is a part of the body he has trained for years to manage such an unfounded ability, but what part? We never find out.

Most of "Henry Sugar" is wonderfully adroit and seamlessly edited - it is a near-perfect little film. My objections are the sliding of sets revealing one different setting after another (something which I also found annoying in "Asteroid City"). I was also a bit miffed to watch the actors breaking the fourth wall and read the full Dahl text by including the descriptive prose. Not everything has to be word for word, but then again it is marvelous to watch a film based on a book using such deliciously pronounced words.

Compelling, deeply troubling and uneven Aronofsky

 THE WHALE (2022)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The sight of a morbidly obese man in Darren Aronofsky's "The Whale" is not a disturbing or offensive one at all - it is the main character's emotional frailty and stubbornness that is the offense. Director Aronofsky and Brendan Fraser's amazingly layered performance lends the film its gravitas and importance. 

Fraser is Charlie, the obese professor living alone in a dimly lit apartment. He struggles to get up, struggles to shower, and never answers his unlocked door. He doesn't struggle for food since he orders pizza and it arrives at his doorstep, money in the mailbox for a delivery driver he never sees. Charlie tries to teach creative writing to students via zoom on his laptop yet he covers his camera so the students don't see him. His visiting nurse and best friend, the long-suffering Liz (Hong Chau), puts up with much and checks his blood pressure. She insists he go to the hospital since the blood pressure is too high and yet Charlie stubbornly refuses (I think some of us who have been caregivers at one point or another have been there and understand). Liz could stubbornly refuse to bring him meatball subs but she still does, out of some obligation or unrequited love. 

Charlie's life and backstory doesn't end there. His mean, conflicted, excessively selfish daughter Ellie (played by Sadie Sink) shows up only because Charlie asked her to. She's failing high school and he opts to write her English essays for her- he also decides to bribe her by promising her his 120,000 dollar life savings. She doesn't cave in too easily though she still shows up to his place, often in an understandably angry mode. Then there's the Christian missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) who enters Charlie's apartment at the most inappropriate moments. Wait till you meet Charlie's ex-wife (an unrecognizable Samantha Morton), an emotional wreck who has many numerous contentious issues revolving around him. 

"The Whale" is at its most impactful when we see Charlie's devoted friend Liz and her attempts to take care of Charlie which are so strongly depicted, showing such unconditional love for a self-destructive man, that I was floored by her character. They have a history involving her deceased brother's relationship with Charlie that sharply ended his own marriage. Liz's conversation with the missionary is also one for the ages - Hong Chau deserves every award for that scene alone. Unfortunately, I found myself uninterested and distracted by Charlie's impossibly unforgiving and completely hateful daughter, Ellie. This is not Sadie Sink's fault because it is her character, not the performance, that grates even if she does eventually come around. I just found her an unlikable girl who can't begin to understand what her father is going through. I have no problem with unlikable characters in films or novels as long as we are asked to feel more measure of empathy. I did not find it with this vaguely two-dimensionally monstrous girl - as I said, her anger is clear and embittered yet her actions are impossible to identify with (of course, I am not a high school teen girl in the 2020 decade so sue me for not understanding). Sure, some critics have lauded and despised Charlie as if he's portrayed as some monstrous behemoth. Not true at all since Fraser shows great humanity despite his self-destructiveness - Ellie is the destructive princess who may as well be hanging out in "Game of Thrones" land and placing crushed Ambien in everyone's food. Charlie might have ruined his family but he is mostly ruining himself. 

I ended up admiring "The Whale" a lot more than expected yet still resisting the grotesque depiction of Ellie and the largely unnecessary character of the naive missionary - the latter seems like an artificial addition despite originally appearing in the Samuel D. Hunter play. Perhaps that is director Aronofsky's point - to illustrate that certain people in Charlie's life are far more grotesque and flawed than Charlie himself. Or maybe Charlie is more guilt-ridden than anyone and his freedom will be attained once he forgives himself (Liz is the exception). "The Whale" is uneven, frustrating yet compelling.

Philadelphia State of Mind

 ERASERHEAD (1977)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
One of the top 20 films of all time

Henry Spencer is not an enigmatic character, he is a lost individual who has no sense of identity. It is not his fault - how do you find your identity in a world of obscenely loud industrial machinery sounds and intense humming radiator noises? The beauty of a bewildering cult classic like David Lynch's "Eraserhead" is that story interpretation isn't as important as the held-back emotions and feelings, notably Henry's. "Eraserhead" is the one of the most haunting, violently troubling and exasperating disturbances of fractured human souls in cinema history, more threatening and heart-stopping than the surrealism of Luis Bunuel. There is no safety net and not much of an escape - you are held in a trance of nightmarish proportions at least until the end.

Jack Nance plays Henry as some dark-suited factory worker who first appears looking back at something, as he comes home from work, walking past mound-sized mud hills and pools of dirty water. He lives in an apartment that is squarely hidden away from society - call it an entrapment as our ill at ease protagonist feels throughout this movie. The lobby is deserted and the doors to the elevator take forever to open and close. His apartment which looks small and sullied has one window facing a brick wall and piles of mulch. The drawers of his dresser have objects that don't belong, like a bowl of water with coins in it! The next-door neighbor is a sultry woman (Judith Anna Roberts) who seems to have emerged from some B-movie noir and her few exchanges with Henry have an intoxicating stillness. The sounds from the outside world though overwhelm everything, including the humming from the radiator (that radiator houses the Lady in the Radiator who has extremely puffed-up cheeks singing about Heaven). When Henry visits Mary, his girlfriend (Charlotte Stewart), he has to deal with her parents who are cooking "man-made chickens" which spurt blood when you try to cut into them ("Just cut them up like regular chickens," says Mary's father who has bad knees). Mary gets occasional epileptic seizures and is also pregnant, a fact the mother disapproves of. Mary's mother also disapproves of Henry though she tries to make a pass at him. I have not even gotten to the subhuman, deformed baby devoid of limbs who cries and sometimes laughs, particularly at Henry's failure at continuing an infidelity with the woman next door. That last bit made me laugh. Oh, and the scarred man pulling levers that emit sparks in the unreal world, possibly controlling Henry's sperm count.

"Eraserhead" is not a digestible narrative nor is it completely surrealistic. Within the unreal world lies a real world and David Lynch, in his striking directorial debut, is saying the real world is hardly manageable but the unreal world, that's suicidal. Unlike Luis Bunuel's first film "Un Chien Andalou" which was just pure surrealism and not of nightmarish intent, "Eraserhead" is a blackened, smoky and fractured nightmare of Henry's own nightmare world. The whole film is his subjective look at himself and he's trying to break away from this sickeningly unhealthy world and find solace. Mary is his nagging wife who can no longer live with Henry and that endlessly crying, misshapen baby. Henry is left alone to take care of it and the baby becomes a nagging, sickly child whom, depending on how one sees it, is killed by Henry - why is hard to say other than putting it and himself out of misery. Meanwhile, we are treated to imagery of dead and living sperm flung from one space to another (one is a comical stop-motion animated sperm that grows larger and larger); Henry's severed head that travels from the unreal to the real world and is used in an eraser factory, and lots of billowing, unhealthy smoke and eraser shavings that look like falling snowflakes. Did I mention how Henry's head is sometimes replaced with the baby's head as it is screaming? Are these moments Henry's own nightmares, separate from the real and unreal worlds? 

Then there's the appearance of the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near) - she is the one that could bring him solace (she steps on Henry's sperm that falls onto the stage while she performs a dance routine). Others have interpreted her as Death but I am not sure that Henry's escape from the real (and possibly unreal) world means he's dead and has committed suicide. In the most spiritually heightened final sequence I've ever seen, amidst the soundtrack of choral voices, Henry is hugged by the Lady in the Radiator and she smiles. Henry seems relieved, as does the audience. He might have temporarily found solace. 

David Lynch has described "Eraserhead" as some sort of Philadelphia state of mind, the real Philadelphia story nobody talks about. It can also be seen as the strangest coming-of-age story ever of a parent who is unfit to be one. Or it can be the strangest, more bizarre take of an unfit parent who is unfit for society. Henry might have found peace with a deformed angel instead of a deformed baby, but it seems he's at peace by the end. Lynch's masterful and transcendental "Eraserhead" will be studied and debated for ages to come.  

We must increase our bust!

 ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It took a half-century to adapt Judy Blume's archetypal and "controversial" novel "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" to the big screen. Author Judy Blume has always had reservations about having her popular pre-teen novels adapted but have no fear, Margaret is finally here. I have never read a Judy Blume novel so I know I am not the intended target audience but this movie is jolly good fun with a zestful Abby Ryder Fortson as Blume's 11-year-old protagonist who is concerned about issues such as her period. Like I said, I know I am not the intended audience.

That is not all there is to the movie as Margaret is unhappy moving from their NYC apartment to a house in the New Jersey suburbs. Both gleefully happy and spirited about the move is Margaret's mom, Barbara (Rachel McAdams), who is gung-ho about leaving her teaching job since dad (Benny Safdie) got a promotion (imagine not having both parents work). Margaret makes new friends almost immediately including her neighbor Nancy Wheeler (Elle Graham), who indoctrinates Margaret into a girl's group where they talk about bras, boys and their impending periods. They are all classmates at the same school and pretty soon Margaret adapts rather quickly to this new environment. 

"Are You There God?" doesn't stop there as we also examine Margaret's uncertain religious affiliations since her mother is a non-practicing Christian and her father is a non-practicing Jew. Which persuasion fits with Margaret always asking God for advice and solutions to pressing problems? Her colorful, blunt-as-a-whistle grandmother (ideally cast Kathy Bates) takes Margaret to temple though she has no idea what the rabbis are saying since they speak Hebrew. Her parents and her grandmother are deciding her affiliation for her without asking her what she wants. 

These were questions I was far more invested in than Margaret's period issues (though the conversations between her and her friends are animated and quite funny especially about bra sizes and their daily physical exercise of wanting to increase their bust). I was also invested in Rachel McAdams as the mother who tells Margaret in a beautifully written and sensitive scene about why her own mother and father have disowned her (interfaith marriage has something to do with it). McAdams always come alive on screen - she sizzles and charms us every step of the way. 

Abby Ryder Fortson is exceptional as the Margaret of a time (the year is 1970) that no longer exists. She is not only authentic in her performance and warmly sensitive and engaging, she also looks like a girl from that period (no pun intended). She is the heart and soul of this wonderfully tender movie and I hope Judy Blume is proud of that.