What does KGB stand for?

 SPIES LIKE US (1985)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia 

If Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd team up in a movie, make it one worthy of their comic talents. As such, "Spies Like Us" is fitfully amusing with a few chuckles strewn through the last half of the picture. The first half is often uproarious but I still feel, after close to 40 years when I first saw it, that the potential was not fully realized. 

The opening half-hour has plenty of laughs as we have a legacy government employee, a womanizing diplomat's son named Emmett Fitz-Hume (Chevy Chase), who doesn't disclose much to the press by pretending his mike is getting cut off (very funny stuff). Then there's the smart Austin Millbarge (Dan Aykroyd), a code-breaker who is relegated to working in the basement of the Pentagon and never allowed much advancement. Both of them have less than 24 hours to take a Foreign Service Exam which Emmett tries to cheat by use of a false arm sling and an eyepatch and asks Austin, "What does KGB stand for?" Neither passes the exam of more than 500 questions and yet they are promoted as spies! Say what? Well, they are actually decoys since the Defense Intelligence Agency doesn't expect them to complete their mission; they are meant as a distraction from the real spies. There's also the launching of a Soviet ICBM nuclear missile that is part of a laser guidance system in space and...everything goes wrong. 

Chevy Chase is at his best when sizing up a situation by minimizing it, particularly during a G-Force training scene where he glibly says, "Piece of cake." He is fantastically funny when he cheats on the exam in an extended sequence that stands out as flat-out comedy magic. Less funny is the Pakistan desert footage with an excruciating moment where everyone addresses themselves as doctors when, in fact, there are no actual doctors. Ha! Bob Hope, by the way, pops into frame playing golf and I had wished the movie had more of that kind of lunacy. Director John Landis is known for his in-joke cameos and this movie could've used more of them. When Chase and Aykroyd arrive at the Soviet border in below freezing temperatures, the movie packs up a little more heat with the doofus pair dressed as extraterrestrials as they try to fool the Russians. 

I will say Aykroyd is naturally adept at delivering nuclear jargon like an automaton and he is as always immensely likable. Chase, though, seems to walk away with this movie yet I wished the writers (including co-writer Aykroyd) tried to make the twosome more compatible. Still, on director's John Landis comedy meter, not as good as his "Animal House" or "Trading Places" though miles ahead of most other nuclear comedies such as the excruciatingly unfunny "Deal of the Century." And I still don't remember what KGB stands for.

Wenders' Existential Dream

 THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A virtually self-indulgent Wim Wenders film is not a bad thing, and self-indulgence is something to be expected from any film director looking to make their individual mark in their outlook on the world and humanity. Perhaps what I just wrote sounds self-indulgent. "The American Friend" is not a typical Wenders film - crime and noir mystery is not his usual subject - yet he makes it into a hypnotic existential dream and that usually can describe Wenders to a tee.

Set in Hamburg, Germany, Bruno Ganz plays a picture framer, Jonathan Zimmerman, who is dying of a blood disease or so he thinks. His doctor tells him that he will live for a while longer than expected and not too worry. Jonathan has a wife (Wenders regular Lisa Kreuger) who works and they are raising two kids and though they may be struggling a bit, they somehow manage. One day at an auction, a painting from a "dead" artist is sold for huge sums of money. Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper, odd casting to play Patricia Highsmith's sociopathic antihero) is at the auction and is introduced to Jonathan who sees right through him - Ripley is involved in art forgery and Jonathan knows that the painting is "too blue." Jonathan doesn't give Ripley a warm reception so Ripley lies to others that the picture framer's disease is fatal. Though Ripley is trying to be friendly with Jonathan at his place of employment, a scheme is developing involving hiring Jonathan to kill a gangster. Raoul Minot (Gérard Blain) emerges from the criminal underworld and asks Ripley to do the job and when Ripley resists, Jonathan is next in line (naturally, he has no experience as an assassin). 

I will not reveal much more to "The American Friend" because it unravels at such a leisurely, graceful pace that it proves to be a mesmerizing drama with muted thriller aspects. All the actors, including the typically hot-tempered, discombobulated Dennis Hopper, are low key in performance though the humor quotient is there in spades (major kudos to colorful cameos by Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray). There are also some suspenseful scenes at a train station, virtually comical, messy murders inside a train, and some gunfire in and around Ripley's virtually empty roundhouse. Finally, it is Bruno Ganz's Jonathan who realizes his end is near and we wait for the inevitable. Was anyone really lying about Jonathan's disease or is his doctor simply not telling the whole truth? Whatever it is, doom is around the corner in often bright daylight scenes and a serene beach with a burning ambulance - all of it is the antithesis of what we expect in a noir story involving Ripley. "The American Friend" is not a perfect film but it is certainly one of the most absorbing and beautifully made of all Ripley adaptations. 

American Prometheus had blood on his hands

 OPPENHEIMER (2023)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Christopher Nolan's 3-hour "Oppenheimer" is an emotionally draining, occasionally exasperating yet deeply haunting biopic of the "father of the atomic bomb" himself, the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. It does reach the heights of greatness and yet, for such an expansive, richly layered film, it also does have a few edges that peel off the screen revealing some flawed characterizations and an elongated section involving hearings that runs on way past the tolerable meter.  

Nolan, per his refined storytelling prowess, flashes forwards and backwards between the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) hearings on Oppenheimer's loyalty to the U.S. that includes his past Communist leanings and the possibility of a spy in Los Alamos while creating the atomic bomb, to his less than sparkling marriage to an alcoholic wife, Katherine "Kitty" Puening (Emily Blunt) who was also a Communist, to his recurring affair with a troubled Communist, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), where sex, martinis and the quoting of the Hindu verses from Bhagavad Gita result in heated sex, to the truly momentous and riveting sequences where Oppenheimer is testing math equations of Quantum Mechanics while his team of scientists build the bomb in Los Alamos, testing each separate core in a series of explosions.

Though introspective and fascinating in its own right, it is a risky move for writer-director Nolan to invest copious amounts of time to the security hearings with Oppenheimer, his associates and even his wife who handles herself better than expected - these hearings figure heavily in the last hour of the film. Only Oppenheimer is not looking for a fight and never has and Nolan details this man as singularly obsessed with the atomic bomb and nuclear fission (lots of metaphoric shots of raindrops falling on lakes) - the women in his life exist peripherally while the bomb is very real to him. These detailed hearings go on for long stretches of time, testing Oppenheimer's loyalty to the U.S. and if his Communist affiliations are enough to take away his government security clearance. They kind of tested my tolerance as well because they detract from the nature of such a historically infamous powerful bomb that changed the world and Oppie's (his nickname) views on war - no longer were men needed to fight on ground level if Fat Man and Little Boy could decimate entire cities in the blink of an eye. The man himself is depicted as slightly sorrowful and critical of the bomb and filled with some measure of remorse. There is truth to Oppei's change of heart and despite showing his slight guilt as shown by Cillian Murphy (a performance worth a thousand suns burning through your consciousness - yeah, it is a nuclear performance of enormous weight), the real Oppenheimer defended the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima until his dying day. Nolan is not invested in that as much, nor does he show much of the destructive nature of the bomb (we get glimpses from Oppie's point-of-view about what it could do to the human body and brief glimpses of charred corpses). The Trinity test merely looks like a regular explosion at first - something that is not powerful yet somehow scaled back as if everyone at Los Alamos saw it as just another explosion. Then you wait and you can see  how it becomes increasingly more dynamic and dangerous, particularly the shock wave. Keep in mind, in those days, everyone had the gravitas and imagination to create a powerful weapon but never truly considered the repercussions of such a bomb and the vast amount of radiation. Nolan fills the screen with fire but at first you don't gather the enormity of such a weapon - although I have seen my fair share of actual filmed nuclear tests, they do not compare to those who were there firsthand.

The women in Oppie's life are shown as tortured and belligerent yet they are short-shrifted in the screenplay, and this is one aspect of the film I felt needed more investment. I wanted to have a clearer view of Oppie's wife Kitty and we get mostly a dissatisfied woman who supports her husband yet takes a drink at every interval - Emily Blunt has one moment where she challenges questions at the AEC but that is as deep as her character gets. We just get quick flashes of her pregnancy, their marriage and their life in Los Alamos and she consistently yells at Oppie. Same with the Jean character, an intelligent woman with a mental illness who can't stand receiving flowers from Oppie. Their affair is strained since he is married but there is not much more divulged from their get togethers. You get more of a sense of who the antagonistic AEC chairman Lewis Strauss is (a dynamo of a performance by Robert Downey Jr.) than gleaning any real insights into the women in Oppie's life.

"Oppenheimer" is a titanic, expertly made production full of much sound and fury and some of it could be considered experimental in terms of editing - sometimes you feel you are being pummelled into believing a catastrophe awaits your eyes (again, interesting that the one atomic explosion we do see faintly resembles the magnitude and force it really had). There are times that the soundtrack fills us with thunderous, piercing sounds and feet thumping on bleachers from almost anywhere - you feel the screen is about to be ripped apart by some delayed detonation. Cillian Murphy plays Oppie as a man who doesn't fight back against AEC or anyone - he fights back tears when Jean Tatlock dies from suicide. He almost always threatens to detonate, to unleash some fury upon others and he never does. Only the bombs do the detonating for him.

Payne sketches pain with joy

 THE HOLDOVERS (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Irresistibly bittersweet describes most Alexander Payne films, at least to me (though I have yet to see "Downsizing"). At his best, and that is pretty much all the time, Payne evokes emotional clarity and deep pathos for his troubled, flawed characters. He wants us to like the people we see on screen regardless of their flaws and their often manic behavior. Such was the case with Paul Giamatti in "Sideways," one of the best road movies ever made where merlot was a plot point, and such is the case again in casting Giamatti in "The Holdovers" which is Payne's first film set in that awkward era, the 1970's. I always felt that the 1970's was a way of finding one's groove, one's own personal link to society and the world. "The Holdovers" has that in spades and it is also unequivocally a great film and one that stands proudly with his other supreme directorial efforts such as "Nebraska," "About Schmidt," "Election" and "Sideways." 

Set in the 1970's at Barton Prep School in New England, Giamatti (in the most perfectly realized role he has played in quite some time) is the erudite, pipe-smoking, Jim Bean-imbibing European history teacher Paul Hunham. The students all hate him because he gives honestly deserving exam grades such as D's and F's (to be fair, his students don't seem all that bright). Mr. Hunham is blunt, perhaps too blunt, and not just with his students but also with the dean of Barton. Thanks to the faculty head, Hunham is the newly elected teacher to stay with holdovers over the Christmas break. He doesn't care that he has to stay in his usual academic environment but the few students who can't stay with their families do care. One of them is the lanky, intelligent Angus Tully (played by first-timer Dominic Sessa) who scores the higher grade in Hunham's class. Angus is angered by his mother who tells him he can't come to visit due to his stepfather and some planned honeymoon. Throughout the environs of this school, the cafeteria's head cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is also staying behind though she had hoped to see her pregnant sister. Outside of Angus, the rest of the students manage to leave after all and now it houses the sole student Angus, Hunham and Mary. Hunham can smoke his pipes and read all the books he wishes yet Angus wants to venture to Boston and Mary would like to visit her sister. 

Pain and deep sorrow informs the lives of Angus and Mary, the latter especially due to losing her son in Vietnam. Angus has issues with his mother and the purported loss of his actual father - he also feels that nobody really likes him. Hunham may have issues yet pain and sorrow are not in his desolate life - he has never been married and seems to carry no regrets although you sense that he wished he had a romantic partner in his life (Barton's administrator, Lydia, almost leads to the possibility of a romance in Hunham's mind until he discovers she's involved already). In one truly magnificent scene of self-revelation, Hunham confesses that life is bitter and complicated and "that it feels the same about me." This scene alone encapsulates what we love about Giamatti and his difficult yet slowly approachable character of Hunham - his life is not easy and he has to work harder to get people to approach him. Same with Angus, a kid who has his whole future ahead of him and seems to have a more finite understanding of it than anyone else. 

"The Holdovers" expertly deals with these three characters with such sensitivity and humanity that you almost feel like you've never seen people like them before. Astutely written by David Hemingson (though you feel Payne must have led an uncredited hand in it), every singular moment and every scene has a crackling vibrancy to it as if we are witnessing actual lives being led. Along with Giamatti, the bold newcomer Sessa and the sympathies we especially feel towards Da'Vine Joy Randolph (she was memorably cast in TV's "People of Earth"), "The Holdovers" becomes that rarity in cinema today - a first-class act of wonder all the way around. Sweetly tempered tones, richly textured characterizations, quotable dialogue particularly from Hunham's mouth, absorbing mix of academic life along with road movie aspirations and a touching and witty finale, movies just don't get much better than "The Holdovers." And they don't get much better without Alexander Payne at the helm.  

Not a care in the world

 THE KILLER (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

David Fincher's "The Killer" is methodical, cold, cynical and deeply impersonal, much like the titular protagonist himself. We are not meant to care about him, to feel any empathy or to draw any emotional stance, like the protagonist himself. That is both a risk and a detriment to the film itself.

Michael Fassbender is the Killer, an assassin who is meticulous about his habits and how he performs his job. He is staking out a wealthy target in Paris, a city that he describes as slow to awaken unlike other cities. He does yoga, listens to the distinctive sounds of "The Smiths" and is in some half-finished apartment where he can spot the target across the way. He pretends to be a German tourist-of-sorts and eats McDonald's for the protein. Unfortunately, he misfires when the target arrives and kills a dominatrix! He takes off back to his hideout in the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately for the Killer (he has no name though he uses aliases from classic TV shows in his various passports), he finds his girlfriend is in the hospital and has been violently attacked. Naturally the client that the Killer works for was ready to kill him (how the girl managed to survive such a brutal attack is one lingering question). Now the Killer wants revenge and hunts down those responsible. 

"The Killer" is absorbing in its own clinical way from start to finish and, at first, I got a kick out of the Killer's voiceover where he goes on about his lack of belief about anything - the guy is sort of an existentialist with a narrow point-of-view of humanity. This all makes sense considering he's an assassin yet much of his voiceover becomes cliched and tedious - I suppose I have heard such pronouncements frequently throughout the years and hearing them from an assassin is not always interesting. They almost serve as justification for what he does yet we learn nothing about this robotic killer, other than the fact that he has a girl. When I think back to similar films such as the extremely glum "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" or the thrilling "No Country for Old Men" or even the kinetic "Collateral," there was a sense of mystery and personality to these hitmen. Fassbender is such a quixotic presence that it didn't bother me he didn't have much to do other than appear. He is like a snake, sliding in and out of buildings, garages and restaurants without being spotted - a boring anonymous assassin. That makes sense for the movie but it leaves us with not much else.

David Fincher is a true marvel of a director and his own clinical approach to this remorseless killer's methods holds one's attention (Tilda Swinton, in a compelling cameo, also keeps you watching). Once we arrive at the end of the film where he may or may not be at peace, I just didn't care - much like the protagonist himself.        

Not for the He-Man crowd

 HEAVY METAL (1981)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Juvenile, adolescent animated anthology of a hybrid of sci-fi/sword-and-sorcery stories from the minds of Heavy Metal, a sci-fi/fantasy magazine that I might have flipped through the pages of an issue back in the day. I am not sure I love 1981's film adaptation of the magazine, "Heavy Metal," but I was quite mesmerized by it. 

There's a powerful green orb that talks, women naked and wanting sex anxiously more than in any cartoon I've ever seen, a cab driver of the future harboring a wanted femme fatale, gratuitous violence, etc. Did I mention the naked women and their big breasts? Did I forget to mention a young kid zapped into space who manages to have Herculean strength and has sex with two women, one as a prerequisite to obtaining that green orb? That green orb has a mind of its own clearly because some unlucky people pick it up and it melts them, whereas others pick it up and it turns them into zombies.  

I have no idea what this movie is about it, and I do not care. Coherence and characters worth caring about are not the mainstay of these tales that include Harry Canyon, the aforementioned futuristic cab driver who thinks nothing of having sex with some woman on the run. When the fleeing woman has the orb (known as the Loc-Nar) in her possession, she will sell it to some gangster and split the profits; yeah, right. Meanwhile, lots of sex scenes with introductions of women always baring their breasts and that includes a fierce, silent warrior fighter named Taarna who flies around on the back of a prehistoric-looking bird! She is shown naked, gets dressed with a slim outfit yet when she's about to be tortured, she's naked all over again! If I was a 9-year-old watching this way back when (I saw the non-animated "Flesh Gordon" at that time), I might've been salivating over the nudity. At my age, this just looks like it all came from the mind of a 10-year-old in a never-maturing 30-year-old body.

I could have lived without the B-17's during World War II and less of that Captain Lincoln F. Sternn which has no tonal consistency with the rest of the film (more Harry Canyon would've been nice). "Heavy Metal" is junk food, sci-fi gobbledygook and pure fantasy mish mash with razzle-dazzle effects and plenty of breasts - sort of a pulpy, nasty, grotesquely violent movie you watch late at night and hope nobody notices. Not for the He-Man crowd.  

Mollie Burkhart: Osage Heart and Soul

 MOLLIE BURKHART: 

THE HEART AND SOUL OF KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
Written by Jerry Saravia

Some film critics on Youtube and printed media have said that the depiction of Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" is unfocused. Further criticism indicates that Mollie's point-of-view is not shown and that the film would've worked better had it been her story, not the greedy white men who steal from the Osage natives and kill them for their oil headrights. Though some of this may be true in hindsight, the true story itself involves all participants, both Osage and the white Oklahomans. Make no mistake: Mollie informs Scorsese's film more so than the excellent David Grann book of which it is based on. 

Here's an example of what Anthony Lane from the New Yorker wrote: "It is Ernest Burkhart whose fortunes we are invited to follow. Huh? This dumb dolt, with bran for brains? Why should he take center stage?" There is no doubt that Ernest is shown as a dumb dolt, someone who can't fathom any deep understanding of anything other than licking his lips at the prospect of money, even if you kill your wife for it, right? Ernest is the Forrest Gump of this movie, only Gump showed a smidgeon more intelligence and virtue (think about it, what does that say about Ernest?) When Ernest's youngest daughter, Little Anna, dies of a whooping cough (in the book, there's understandably suspicion of foul play amongst the Osage), he screams in almost agonizing pain in prison while his Machiavellian uncle Hale (Robert De Niro) also seems affected. Ernest's pain mirrors Mollie's scream earlier in the film after a suspicious house explosion kills yet another sister of hers. Ernest decides to turn state's evidence and tell the truth of what he did during this Reign of Terror. This does not excuse his actions and Mollie, who is one of the few survivors of this Reign of Terror, is perplexed by her husband whom she still loves. 

Mollie's story, in fact the whole Osage tribe, really informs "Killers of the Flower Moon" and the proof, as far as the tribe is concerned, is in the opening and closing sequences of the movie. The opening features a ceremonial pipe buried by the Osage elders followed by the rain of oil spurting like a fountain from the ground - Black Gold has risen and will make them rich. The film closes with the Osage tribe performing a ceremonial dance, a vibration from the ground up only it is not oil but their drums that bespeak their culture, their spirituality and it lives - the wealth that had since eroded in that part of the world no longer has value. Prior to this stunning sequence, we witness a radio program called "The Lucky Strike Hour" that ends with director Scorsese offering his briefly emotional eulogy to Mollie Burkhart. She died, forgotten by history books (until now with David Grann's 2017 book) without any mention of the murders of her family. I came away from "Killers of the Flower Moon" with Lily Gladstone's Mollie Burkhart etched in my brain, impossible to deny or forget her existence. She knows why Ernest wants to marry her and has no delusions of anything other than love of money by the "coyote." She never imagines that Ernest would try to kill her and is told by her sisters that Ernest already has wealth thanks to his uncle. This must mean that Ernest does love her. But how much money is ever enough? This theme of unbridled greed first began in Scorsese's "Casino" and continued with Wolf of Wall Street" yet, other than Sharon Stone's drunk Ginger in "Casino," we never saw how it affected the victims of the protagonists' actions. We certainly never see the victims of Jordan Belfort's greedy practices or Ace Rothstein imposing too much control on everything from his job as casino director to his long-suffering wife who falls into a deep pool of drugs and alcohol. In "Killers of the Flower Moon" though, we see how it affects the victims, the Osage members whose wealth has raised the interest of white people flocking to their land to take whatever they can get at any price. 

 

It is impossible to tell this story without the white antagonists, chiefly the insidious Hale and the woefully ignorant Ernest and, though the subjectivity shifts to them frequently, we are not asked to identify with them. DiCaprio and De Niro show the humanism of these characters through their charm, their slight humor yet we are not asked to think of them as anything but corruptible murderers. It is history, the history of this Oklahoman region in Osage County and not including Ernest or Hale would mean not telling the story. Mollie Burkhart, beautifully played by Lily Gladstone with subtle notes of grace and regret, informs the film with her presence which glows and brings some light into this dark world. Mollie is unsuspecting of foul play and murder but she sees, as the tribal council makes clear, that too many Osage members are dying and it is clearer and clearer who the culprit is. Even then, as mentioned in the book, nobody suspected that Hale who lived in the Osage county for so long would be responsible - Hale loved the Osage natives and so why take their money when he has his own wealth as a cattle rancher? Mollie knows some dark forces are at play here and her gradual sickness, fueled by Ernest who poisons her insulin that is meant to curb her diabetes, is another murder waiting to happen. When Mollie questions Ernest and asks for the truth about whether or not he poisoned her, he can't tell her yet she already knows.  

"When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists -- as it surely will. Then act with courage."

- Chief White Eagle, Ponca