Shoot to Kill again and again

 THE HITCHER (1986)

Endured by Jerry Saravia

I was a teenager when I first saw "The Hitcher" on good old VHS in the mid-80's and thought that it was an extremely nasty and violent movie. Almost 40 years later, I watched it again and it is exactly the same thing. It is a thriller exercise in the "Duel" vein except it has absolutely nothing to say - this is brutality for brutality's sake. "Duel" had suspense built on the average working man not knowing why a truck is relentlessly chasing him. One can argue that brutality was the name of the game with "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" yet that film was potent - a never-ending nightmare of seismic proportions and it stayed true to its convictions. "The Hitcher" is some superhuman villain who can materialize anywhere and everywhere in those desert highways and kill freely. But for what purpose and why does he taunt the young man who is driving on those roads to California? 

C. Thomas Howell is the young kid who picks up a mysterious stranger on a rainy night. The stranger is John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) and their dialogue almost immediately conveys brutality - this Ryder was already picked up and he dismembered that poor driver. Gee, think Howell can survive this? I should think not yet the movie grows repetitive and wearisome before the end of the first reel. Ryder kills indiscriminately though he certainly loves killing the police officers on his tail. Well, the police actually think it is Howell who is committing murders left and right. When Howell shows up at a cafe and we are introduced to the waitress (played rather dimly by Jennifer Jason Leigh), more blood and guts is headed our way as he eats french fries and almost consumes a severed finger! When the Hitcher vanishes without a trace, the police apprehend Howell who then escapes after the Hitcher kills everyone at the police station. Then Howell is at a phone booth about to make a call when he seizes the opportunity to hold two cops hostage at gunpoint! The Hitcher appears and reappears and is finally apprehended as well. Howell is found innocent and then seizes the opportunity to hold another cop at gunpoint! And on and on. 

The Hitcher has no singular purpose other than to kill, kill, kill. But he does not kill Howell nor does he seem to be interested in killing him at all, so what gives? Some critics at the time ascertained a gay subtext, as if that made it any better. Yet if the filmmakers wanted nothing more than a one-dimensional homicidal maniac on the road, then why get the charming, powerful presence of Rutger Hauer to do nothing except aim a rifle and shoot and throw himself through windshields? You could have gotten Schwarzenegger to do the same thing and called it (at that time) "Terminator 2." At one crucial point, the kid asks Ryder why he is pursuing him. Ryder responds, "You are a smart kid. You'll figure it out." I still couldn't figure it out when the Hitcher pulls apart Leigh who is suspended between two trucks with police swarming the area. The movie is on a nonsensical hyperdrive mood and I suppose I wouldn't call it boring. It is all gratuitous violence and noise and, in retrospect, about as pointless as any 80's slasher picture. 

Roeg goes rogue with Hitchcockian thriller

 DON'T LOOK NOW (1973)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When there is a succession of quick shots through the almost mazelike streets and bridges of Venice, all seen from a character's point-of-view, you would think it would become monotonous. Making it hand-held throughout could make you seasick (hence all the included shots of the waterways). In the capable hands of wunderkind director Nicolas Roeg, they all add up to the thrill of the mystery. You keep wondering what is around the corner, and where did that red-hooded little person run off to. That is just one of the pleasures of "Don't Look Now," a truly absorbing mystery dealing with the occult and the loss of a loved one. 

"Don't Look Now" could have been a depressing and bleak tale. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are the parents of two young children who play in the outside garden of their English country home. Christine is the young daughter playing with a doll who accidentally drowns. The moment is so powerful, so emotionally draining that it will leave you devastated. It begins with Sutherland, playing an architect named John Baxter, looking at an unusual picture slide of the inside of the church he will renovate, and seated is some red-cloaked figure with their back facing the lens. Suddenly, John is alerted to something awful that is about to happen, hence the drowning of his daughter. And the church slide frame slowly becomes submerged in red liquid dye in ways both suspenseful and achingly unnerving. Stunning, haunting and beautiful, which describes the rest of the film to a tee.

Julie Christie is Laura, John's wife, and she is grief-stricken but not in ways we normally see in the movies. When John and Laura are at a restaurant, older siblings sit at a nearby table taking notice of John (the siblings are played with a sliver of eerie foreboding by Hilary Mason and Clelia Matania). John doesn't know them yet Laura assists them to the bathroom since one of the siblings has something caught in her eye. The other sibling is blind and clairvoyant (Mason) and can not only sense Laura's sadness but she can see Christine as well. 

"Don't Look Now" is disorientatingly beautiful as only Roeg can manage. It is strongly affecting and increasingly dramatic (though the suspense is not exactly cut from the same brand as Hitchcock), from Sutherland's John getting drunk to getting angry with Laura, to the red-cloaked figure running around Venice like a mouse, to the police who have John followed, to sightings of Laura in Venice when she's supposed to be in England, and much more. The church itself seems ominous with danger lurking somewhere, anywhere, within its confines. Nothing ever seems safe or secure, especially the hotel that is closed for the winter - its setting seems claustrophobic. "Don't Look Now" not only contains some of Sutherland's and Christie's most potent work of their careers as a married couple who try to remain balanced in their emotions, it also operates as a puzzling dream and one of not regret, but remorse for the loss of a child. Can the parents ever move forward after such a devastating loss? The answers may surprise you.  

Is this the future of America?

 CIVIL WAR (2024)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Civil War" is a hypothetical, disturbing and incomplete fantasy that will hopefully never come to fruition. It is disarmingly apolitical yet I would have liked some politics thrown into the mix, some measure of discourse about where the U.S. is now and where it may be going. I came into this film after the 2024 election so maybe its warnings are not anything we should take heed of, or should we?

America is in the midst of chaos in some uncertain future date. Journalists roam the cities recording riots and suicide bombers - it is bloody mess. Kirsten Dunst is Lee Smith, a hard-bitten combat photographer who has seen it all and is unaffected by any violence she witnesses. She is accompanied by Reuters press reporter, Joel (Wagner Moura), who lives for combat and for general chaos. Stephen McKinley Henderson is an older writer for the New York Times, Sammy, who knows that the President of the U.S. is unlikely to do a sit-down interview with Joel. Finally, there is the young Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), an ambitious photographer, who worships Lee's altar and slowly overcomes her fears of piercing bullets and people dying in front of her. They are on their way to Washington, D.C. and you know this will be no easy journey.  

Bloodshed follows them every step of the way, including an unflinchingly powerful scene with Jesse Plemons as a racist soldier who encounters the press group and asks them if they are American. This character is exactly what we might expect now more than ever, yet the movie shuffles between bloodbath incidents and more impending bloodbath. You just know that during a freewheeling carefree car chase between one set of reporters and another, something bloody this way comes. The movie also decisively ends on a sour note that has no real buildup. If the divisive and fascistic President, who gets a third term (!), is targeted for execution and if there is a secession movement going on, why on earth are not we given the essential political ingredients to understand how this fictional America got to this point? Without the political stance (and I do not mean political party affiliation), "Civil War" is no different than a George Romero zombie apocalypse except that there are no zombies. 

"Civil War" is a strong, thoroughly watchable film of mysterious purpose - it is no more political than the grossly overdone "The Hunt" from many years back. I think director Alex Garland wanted to make a picture devoid of politics yet somehow speaking to our times within some subtext. Well, he managed the apolitical yet the subtext is lost on me. He chickened out.   

Trippy Delusions

 THE TRICK 

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It has been a long time since I've seen a film that truly tackles what we see as reality versus what is only our perception. That is surface level and at a concrete level in Neal Wynne's "The Trick" though it is not as prototypically dreamlike as David Lynch's work. From Neal Wynne, this is an attempt to probe further into fragile minds that need their pituitary glands opened.

Writer-director Wynne has a simple enough set-up to explore these ideas. A wanna-be rapper and an older man covered in white makeup playing a vampire are set against a green screen stage for a music video. This video is meant to draw up visuals of the sci-fi, dystopian nature. Something seems off from the start when, after the filming, the older guy asks for more money for his contribution. Jake Squire is Steve, the bearded young director who is uncertain of his work and so is his collaborator Jessica (Jacqueline Kramer), who is hard to please. The older guy (Gregory Cohen), who turns out to be the Master, a hotel owner, takes the drugged-out, almost permanently stoned rapper to his hotel. After a terse exchange between the two with the Master telling the rapper, Aidan (Rafael Moreira), that he's untalented and his work means nothing, I thought for sure we were entering some horror movie scenario. What does the Master intend to do with the rapper at the Winnedumah hotel? Why is there a green fluorescent cross that keeps getting dismantled? Why does the Master's daughter always eavesdrop on her father? And what are we to gather from Jessica's Catholic school dress and making faces at her reflection in the mirror?

"The Trick" will not answer any questions nor does it raise any. It is a film meant to draw us from our own reality and question it - usually a desert setting helps to invoke such cerebral thoughts of the meaning of our existence. There are philosophical questions and ruminations regarding righteousness and I would have loved a deeper insight into such complex thoughts. For a 77-minute film, though, there is plenty of story and there are supporting characters who are not insipid but rather intelligent, and some humorous moments between Jessica and Aidan (Aidan's supposed music is truly terrible). Though the relationship between Steve and his girlfriend leaves a lot to be desired, "The Trick" keeps us on our cerebral toes with some deft handling of green screen imagery and an enveloping sound design that truly hooks you in and startles you. This is a film you can revisit and still be unsure on how it all coalesces. The very definition of trippy delusions.    

Love test subjects and depressions

 BAD TIMING: A SENSUAL OBSESSION (1980)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Bad Timing" gives us micro impressions of a scorching and emotionally troubling affair, and that is probably how it should be. It is a sensual obsession in its strictest terms, dealing with a troubled man who is unwilling to empathize with his partner. His partner has troubles of her own, many of which he cannot bring himself to comprehend. Maybe Freudian analysts all have the same problem.

Of course, not all Freudian analysts look like curly-haired Art Garfunkel in the late 1970's but what do I know.  Garfunkel plays a rather emotionless Dr. Alex Linden, the psychoanalyst who meets free-spirited Milena (Theresa Russell) at a party. He notices her and she replies by blocking his path with her leg, refusing to let him pass. Milena is funny, shrewd, an alcoholic and extremely promiscuous - she flaunts it in front of Alex's eyes and he doesn't mind it at first. He is so taken with her, with her ability to disassociate herself from everything except love. It turns out that Milena is already married to Stefan (Denholm Elliott, in a far too abbreviated role) though she denies it at first. Alex researches her past history with the help of a government agency (long before the Internet adopted search databases) and is aware of her marriage. And...so what? Alex doesn't care if she has affairs yet soon he is seeking commitment from Milena who, in turn, desires to live "in the moment." 

Director Nicolas Roeg can be flamboyant in his flashback editing structure which is often abrupt (as in "Don't Look Now"), from one connected moment of realization to another using a traumatic incident - Milena's attempted suicide and her hospital tracheotomy - as its basis. When Alex sees a red fire extinguisher, it immediately reminds him of Milena's lipstick and her refreshing smile. A gallery showing Gustav Klimt's painting of "Judith and the Head of Holofernes" often mirrors Milena's colorful dresses and, in one particularly garish scene, where she wears Kabuki makeup pronouncing herself as a new version of Milena. Sometimes Roeg opts for crude transitions such as a vaginal exam connected to a moment of ecstasy from an earlier moment in this couple's passionate relationship. Yet Roeg is aiming for something far creepier and more complex - the realization that Dr. Alex Linden is not the most compassionate or lovey-dovey type of guy we think he is. As the film progresses, Linden becomes more analytical in his obsessions and it becomes clear that he is using her as a psychological experiment. He loves her and it is an obsession that leads directly back to his work - a Freudian obsession, perhaps. 

Theresa Russell has a profoundly difficult role here as Milena, a woman with severe clinical depression who is able to find solace and meaning with Alex - she still wants to be that free spirit and we almost sense she may come around for a committed relationship. Art Garfunkel is a man who is nearsighted when it comes to Milena - he wants the love to be reciprocated though we sense that it has to be on his terms only. Curiously both actors don't have much chemistry together but I do believe Russell's Milena is the more optimistic partner. A heartbreaking scene shows her wanting to talk, to have a conversation with Alex, and all he wants is to keep their sex life going and not much more. She becomes distressed and he leaves while she confronts him in the apartment stairway and they fiercely go at it. Milena hates herself, and he got his heavenly moment of ecstasy. If no other proof is needed, this shows how brave and dynamic an actress Theresa Russell really is. 

"Bad Timing" is all about heartbreak, shock, nausea, sexual proclivities and the need to belong to someone, the belief that romance still matters regardless of the mental issues both partners have. Milena seemingly wants to work it out with Alex, whom she painfully loves. Alex has other ideas. This is not a happy film but it is a necessary and mesmerizing one to consider. 

Are you okay, Mr. Shyamalan?

 TRAP (2024)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Ever feel like there are too many police barricades at a live concert show? Ever feel like the police are watching your every step at a live concert show, knowing you have committed a crime? Ever feel like pretending to be a food worker at a live concert show after turning up the heat on those fryers and throwing in some glass bottles while watch a poor worker get third degree burns? Ever wonder what it is like to push a young girl down a small flight of stairs just to see what the police might do? Ever wonder why your daughter, an avid fan of a superstar singer at that same live show, keeps asking you, "Are you okay, Dad?" I could ask that same question, and a host of others, to the director of this movie "Trap," M. Night Shyamalan. 

"Trap" is not a movie - it is an idea in search of a movie. Shyamalan has a neat little concept about a serial killer known as the Butcher attending a live concert with his daughter (Ariel Donoghue), unaware at first that the whole concert is actually a trap to find him! As ridiculous as it sounds, that could work as a thriller exercise about how many different methods the Butcher employs in seeking to escape from the concert. As for the revelation that the concert gig is a trap, it would work if it wasn't revealed until halfway through the movie. Unfortunately a worker who sells concert shirts decides it is okay to tell the Butcher (Josh Hartnett) about the plan. The Butcher knows something is up prior to being told the movie's singular twist (mistakenly revealed in the trailers) because hundreds of police officers are everywhere, including hundreds of FBI agents surrounding the whole area. There is one nifty moment where the Butcher steals a police scanner with an earpiece and keeps tabs on what the police and FBI are communicating to each other. Wouldn't it have been grandly thrilling and suspenseful if halfway through the movie, the Butcher steals the police scanner and discovers that they are searching for him?  

Josh Hartnett is flatly over-the-top in this movie - he is not believable for one second as a brutal serial killer. He plays the part well of a doting father, but that is it. Every calculated move he makes in one incredulous scene after another is overplayed and obvious - this guy sticks out like a sore thumb. Anyone spending 5 minutes with this smirking guy would know he's the killer and the fact that nobody does simply makes them stupid, including a moment where he pretends to be an employee and enters a room full of SWAT officers! A mildly spine-tingling scenario involving the superstar singer, Lady Raven (played with conviction by Shyamalan's daughter, Saleka Night Shyamalan, an actual singer) and the Butcher left me wanting to know how it was going to resolve itself. It takes two more endings to get there and so many damn contrivances and sheerly unbelievable scenes of the Butcher somehow managing to make himself disappear and reappear at will when confronted by the FBI (watch the movie and tell me that is not the case), that all I could do was laugh at this mildly entertainingly bad movie. Are you okay, M. Night Shyamalan?   

Quintessential Nightmare Movie

 SKINAMARINK (2022)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It has been a long time since a film truly terrified me to such a degree that I had to cover my eyes and step away from the screen at arm's length. There is one moment where the scratchiness on the soundtrack gets louder and louder, so much so that I had to put the volume down. Yes, I know people aren't so easily scared nowadays unless something is a gorefest but I will say that of this millennium since the year 2000, "Skinamarink" is doubtlessly the scariest film I have seen. It left me completely uneasy and my nerves were shot to such an extent that I had trouble calming down. Well, it took me ten minutes to calm down.

The best approach to viewing "Skinamarink" is to understand it is an exercise in terror. It is about exploiting the childhood fears of being in the dark, of not seeing or seeing something that you can't understand or fathom. Set in 1995, there are young siblings, a brother and sister, and they walk around in their pajamas. The brother, Kevin, has an unnamed injury due to sleepwalking. The father takes him to the hospital and brings him back home. Kaylee is the sister and both siblings start hearing thumping noises. Toilets and other objects and furniture pieces disappear and reappear. They watch cartoons in the living room yet the hallways lights do not turn on. Mom is sitting on the bed with her back to Kevin. Dad informs Kevin to look under the bed but nothing is there. Is this house haunted or is Kevin having a fever dream? Kaylee also disappears, and Mom might be missing her...oh, I shan't say. 

"Skinamarink" is not just an unrelenting horror film - it is shot either at low angles or high angles or somewhere in between to the point that Mom or Dad or the kids are never seen in profile. They are almost always shot below the waist or we just see their feet. We see much of the TV showing cartoons (sometimes the toons freeze and repeat their previous actions), and we see various shots of dozens of Lego pieces and that most terrifying toy (well, it was for me when I was a tot in the 1970's) and that would be the Chatter Telephone. Some moments recall "The Shining" with the use of one particular subtitle ("572 days") that scared me almost as much as anything else. Never mind the long hallway of isolated Legos (I have no interest getting near those toys again). 

"Skinamarink" looks like a recently uncovered lost film shot in grainy, colorless footage (as if it was shot with a Fisher Price camera) with various dust prints and a scratchiness in the soundtrack that may grate your nerves at first until you get used to. This is not a normal horror film and sometimes you don't know what is hidden in the darkness, or which room in this house feels safe. This is a visual representation of the most basic childhood nightmares and fears - the nagging feeling that something is in the dark that could hurt you, and that awfully agonizing feeling that Mom and Dad are not what they seem and might not protect you. "Skinamarink" is the quintessential nightmare movie.