Wildly demonic version of Upstairs, Downstairs

 PARASITE (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

“The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.”

―  Arundhati Roy

This quote perhaps doesn't apply to a film but I think it has relevance here. Bong Joon Ho's masterpiece of a black comedy/drama with more intense moments than any conventional thriller, "Parasite," could definitely be ascribed to this oft-used Internet meme of a quote. More importantly, "Parasite" is a roller coaster ride of unimaginable horrors and also serves as a deft examination of the class system between the poor and the fabulously wealthy. Color me doubly pleased.

A poor South Korean family lives in a basement with smells that permeate their household. The smells are emanating from the streets where a young man vomits or urinates every night and since this tight-knit family keeps their windows open, it is unmistakably unpleasant. This is the Kim family, starting with the exhausted patriarch Ki-taek (Song Kang Ho) and the matriarch Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) and their two smart and alert children, the clever brother Ki-woo (Choi Woo Shik) and the intelligent, brassy and cleverer sister Ki-cheung (Park So Dam). The Kim family are at the poverty level, always seeking a Wi-Fi signal from a coffeehouse and needing work and, basically, folding pizza boxes for a pizzeria is not sufficient income. Ki-woo learns from a college friend of his of a wealthy family seeking a tutor for their daughter. Meanwhile, the Kim family starts getting jobs, one by one, at this wealthy home belonging to the Park family whether it is the father becoming a valet or the mother becoming a housekeeper or their daughter using a pseudo-psychological background to help nurture the family's wild young son who loves to pitch a tent in the yard during thunderstorms. 

The rich Park family consists of the parents, a naive, nervous mother (Cho Yeo-jeong) who believes anything she's told and the cool detachment of the father (Lee Sun-kyun), a savvy tech business type. Not unlike the Kim family, they also have two children, the young daughter who needs tutoring and is smitten with Ki-woo and of course the troubled young brother, prone to seizures, who loves to pretend he's a Native American firing arrows. The Kim family deceitfully enter their lives and find imaginative ways to get the Parks' dutiful employees fired so they can have their jobs. I'll give the Kim family points for their successful attempts, such as using peaches that the normal housekeeper is allergic to as an excuse for something worse that she doesn't have - tuberculosis.    

To reveal more of the surprises and unforeseen twists in "Parasite" would be to cheat first-time watchers, especially during the unbearably suspenseful last hour. I came into "Parasite" just recently without knowing anything about it, including its implicit take on class struggles - the fact that it is set in South Korea doesn't change the universal message that the wealthy and the underprivileged exists everywhere. A notable example is watching Ki-taek who is happy to be the Park family's valet yet, slowly and transgressively, he is aware that the wealthy view their world superficially. Everything to them is on a surface level and can be bought, especially the embarrassment of Ki-take having to dress as a Native American at a yard party (Mr. Park sternly and cooly tells him: "I am paying you"). Do valets have to participate in such nonsensical nonsense for the rich? I don't know. Mr. Park also asks for an initial test drive from Ki-taek who has to command the road and drive it without ever having Mr. Park spill his coffee. 

"Parasite" also has a strange and horrifying turn of events with a former housekeeper, who could spill the beans about the Kim family of con artists who ultimately just want more money. They may use deceit and manipulation through very unethical means but they deserve more of a chance at life than their below par living arrangement. That coupled with writer-director Bong Joon Ho's visuals of showing the disparity between the wealthy Park family's far too spacious modernist home with a large yard (and a secret bunker) and the Kim family's basement dwelling that includes a toilet in a far too cramped space to sit in. Both are families you could root for and root against - the gray scale is wide yet they are still people whose lives are determined by their wallet size. "Parasite" is a wicked, demonic and thoroughly engaging thrill ride version of "Upstairs, Downstairs" and Robert Altman's excellent "Gosford Park." A true original that you can't unsee.

Dazed and Confused in a Fog

 RUMBLE FISH (1983)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Think of Francis Ford Coppola's immensely watchable "Rumble Fish" as a science-fiction version of "Rebel Without a Cause" adopting the gritty look and feel of German Expressionism mixed with film noir. "Rumble Fish" is more than an oddity from a positively (and rightfully) eccentric director, it is a tad empty in terms of story yet its stylistic flourishes are so sharply focused that they become the subject of the movie.

When you watch "Rumble Fish," you are taken in by its atmospheric black-and-white shots, so much that you are soaking in them. The immensely foggy streets, the huge amount of smoke trailing from a bus, the silhouettes of cats and policemen with nightsticks, etc. No single shot seems to possess normal skies either - the daytime clouds race by in time-lapse fashion (this is meant to evoke that time is passing by faster than these wasted youth can fathom). The fish in a pet store are in color. You begin to wonder what Coppola is doing with a simple S.E. Hinton teen-angst drama - he is making "The Outsiders" except as an "art film for kids." Say what? Does he think kids will dig a stark-looking black-and-white film with deep, receding shadows as anything reminiscent of S.E. Hinton?   

Matt Dillon is the smart (but not "word smart") teenager who hates school, hates authority and likes to hang with his tough buddies (Chris Penn, Nicolas "Coppola," and Vincent Spano) and fool around with girls, party, drink and get into knife fights. Mickey Rourke is the Camus-like philosopher, ex-gang leader and older brother of Rusty, known as the Motorcycle Boy, who seems disinterested in life completely and is incapable of relating to anyone. He is practically an alien who comes back into town and we are not sure if he is crazy or just aloof. Diane Lane is Rusty's Catholic School girlfriend who worries Rusty might get killed. Dennis Hopper is the consistently drunk father of Rusty and Motorcycle Boy who knows their mother who ran off is not crazy. No, she might not have been crazy but everyone in this movie is in some sort of daze and state of confusion, especially Matt Dillon in a performance that calls way too much attention to itself. Dillon never seems focused as Rusty and is always moving or jerking his head like an eagle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know he drinks a lot, he's young and energetic but compare this to his later performance in the masterpiece, "Drugstore Cowboy," and you will see a world of difference.

I have to say that "Rumble Fish" is one hell of an experimental film by Coppola and I appreciate that he chose to shoot this film in such Byzantine fashion. It is one of his few 1980's films that indicates Coppola's interest in just going for broke and shooting for the stars - think of it as a mood piece that you love to listen to and watch (I do on occasion). I just haven't the foggiest idea what it all means. 

Weep for Cardellini

 THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The ghostly manifestations of La Llorona herself, a woman dressed in what looks like a white wedding dress, are not exactly original. You could substitute the demonic nun from "The Nun" and it would not make much of a difference other than their backgrounds and style of dress. "The Curse of La Llorona" is not anything new, exciting or fresh in the horror movie world presented here, which suspiciously looks like it is drawn from "The Conjuring" universe. The filmmakers say otherwise but when you see an Annabelle cameo, you might think differently.

Linda Cardellini is a single mother, Anna Tate-Garcia, raising two young children, Chris (Roman Christou) and Sam (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) in the early 1970's. She is a family case worker who is concerned about a case involving a distraught, scared mother who keeps the candles burning in her apartment while her two children are padlocked in a closet, all of them frightened beyond belief. La Llorona, the weeping woman, is a demonic force who wants to kidnap her kids and, it seems, drown them. You see the original incarnation of this demon is a Mexican woman (Marisol Ramirez) who, back in the 1670's, had drowned her two children because her husband was cheating on her. When she realized what she had done (while wearing her white dress and veil), she committed suicide. Now she is an angry ghost who preys on Mexican children, in this case, Anna's kids, and well there you have it.

Questions spring to mind quickly. The opening prologue showing these kids and the Mexican woman are too abrupt to make enough of an impression but it begs the question, why drown the children and then kill yourself? Why not just kill yourself or kill the cheating husband? Why is she murderous from the start? And what is her plan with Anna's kids really? If she drowns them, then what? She drowns the other mother's kids but what does that do for La Llorona? Does she become more powerful? 

This movie just seems short on inspiration, short on exposition, and short on family dynamics that go beyond Anna and her kids running and hiding from this evil presence. One child, Sam, decides it is a good idea to retrieve her doll outside the door where La Llorona waits. Why other than to draw a child in danger, and to show that they can be as stupid as the adults. Linda Cardellini is a fantastic actress who deserves better material to match her talents (watch her in "Return" for proof). You care about her as a mother protective of her kids and we get the obligatory priests, including one who lost his faith with the church, yada yada yada. "The Curse of La Llorona" has a few shocks but it is too thinly veiled. I weep for Cardellini. 

Roundabout Scenes of a Marriage

WE LIVE IN TIME (2024)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I always admire an adult approach to a mature, honest-to-the-bone adult relationship. Nowadays, we do not see enough romantic dramas that offer a realistic account of the trials and tribulations of a relationship matriculating into marriage and dovetailing into life's hardships. Not every romance is idealized, and not every marriage is perfect. Suffice to say that watching director John Crowley's "We Live in Time" is to be reminded of how precious a film like this is. It is not a great film nor will it be a classic (though time will tell) but it has two highly effective, potent, humanistic performances by Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield that should warrant repeat viewings.

I must say that I was initially a little put off at first by the rambling and random non-linear narrative (it can work infrequently, and sometimes it is brilliant as in "Pulp Fiction"). There are flashbacks and flashforwards that can disrupt this developing relationship between the no-nonsense, tough and intelligent Almut (Pugh) and the awkward, loving, somewhat shy Tobias (Garfield). Almut is a talented chef who owns a restaurant. Tobias is a rep for Weetabix cereal (this is set in the U.K) so it would seem that these two are not likely to meet under any circumstances. Sometimes, fate takes a chance and Tobias is accidentally run over by Almut's car. That is their initial meeting but it takes a little while before we get there when we see life unfolding between these lovebirds from their points-of-view. One scene has Tobias getting ready for work and living in a single bedroom - he also has his hair cut by his boisterous father. Another moment has Almut vomiting, though we recognize it could be that she's either pregnant (notice the hair length) or she's fighting stage 3 cancer. They already have their child in the opening scenes of the film, though later the two have a tiff over having a child since Tobias is serious about being married to Almut.

As I said, non-linear narrative can sometimes work on film, and other times it can be cumbersome. The truth is that director John Crowley and screenwriter Nick Payne let this film unfold like a series of footnotes in a decade-long relationship. I don't mind it but some scenes do not flow as smoothly or as evenly in terms of transition as others, if only because this potency doesn't remain fluid. When Almut is diagnosed with cancer and has to undergo chemo, we then see her wanting to get pregnant and failing until she finally gets her wish and Tobias's, who wanted a child even more than she did. I was more invested in her chemo, where she has her hair shaved by her husband while she's also trying out for a cooking competition. The moment she gives birth in a bathroom at a petrol station is quite moving, though I felt it came too late in the film. This is the kind of romantic drama that might have benefitted from more consistency in the depiction of a marriage where not everything is rosy. 

Pugh and Garfield, however, play such a sweet couple who take nothing for granted and do their best to keep their marriage secure that you hope everything can work out. You hope Pugh's Almut will beat the cancer and have her tumor shrunk so the doctors can operate. You hope Garfield's Tobias can maintain their family unit no matter what hits them. Sometimes, though, fate plays it hand and challenges of the mental and physical kind can affect a couple's future. That is the strength of "We Live in Time" - it stays firmly rooted in reality.    

Like Life

 THE MONKEY (2025)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

After his truly nerve-wracking, spellbindingly scary "Longlegs," I couldn't wait to see director Osgood Perkins' next picture. "The Monkey" is his grisly adaptation of a Stephen King short story from King's own "Skeleton Crew" and it is a very funny horror comedy done just right in terms of tone and style. It has the atmosphere of a blood-curling page turner that you feel you should not be reading yet you can't wait to tell others about it. Think "Creepshow" and then think "Tales from the Darkside" and you will get a good feel for what you are in store for.

Two twin brothers, Hal and Bill (Christian Convery in a dual role), live with their honest-to-the-bone mom (a fantastic turn by Tatiana Maslany). Bill is bullish and the other brother, Hal, is quiet and a bit of a nerd. He is consistently bullied by other students whether it is having bananas thrown at him or being forced to take off his pants ("Who wears the pants in your family?"). After digging through their deadbeat father's belongings (he deserted his kids for reasons that become clearer at the end of the film), they find an old-fashioned, creepy organ grinder monkey with a drum set. You have to turn the key to making the monkey active, which it begins by flashing a smile and then it starts to beat its drum. Only problem is that the monkey can make people die when it beats its drum. The one who turns the key doesn't die yet random people will in elaborate, freak accidents that are too absurd to believe. The twins' babysitter's head is decapitated all on its own at a Japanese restaurant. The twins' mother dies abruptly from an unusual aneurysm that only affects one in 44 million or some absurd statistic. Death follows them until they decide to throw the monkey doll down a well. 

25 years pass by and Hal (played by Theo James, once again, a dual role) works in some convenience store, and has a son Petey (Colin O'Brien) whom he only sees for one week a year. Before long, after taking Petey on a road trip, freak accidents begin yet again. Hal and Bill's stepmother dies in a freak accident involving her stove and plunging her head into a real estate sign! That definitely has to hurt. It turns out that the monkey is active again and somebody has turned the key, but who?

"The Monkey" is freshly funny and engaging from start to finish. Do not be alarmed - there are some wild gory scenes here but they are short and bloody sweet. There is a tongue-in-cheek attitude to the gruesome kills that are of the Rube Goldberg variety (some say "Final Destination") - you may wince while watching but you won't be fleeing the theater. Director Osgood Perkins sets up the story by beautifully dramatizing this menacing, threatening looking monkey - I would not want something like that in my house, no thanks. The way the monkey twirls its drum with its right paw before banging its drum is unnerving and will scare the pants out of you! With invigorating performances by Christian Convery and Theo James (both playing twins seamlessly), not to mention Tatiana Maslany as the sardonic mother who believes in dancing with her boys after a funeral and Osgood Perkins himself as a stepfather with heavy sideburns, "The Monkey" is a macabre, pulse-pounding delight that will leave you in stitches. It would suck if you miss this one.     

You must change your life

 ANOTHER WOMAN (1988)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"You're such a perceptive woman. How can you not understand his feelings?" 

- Marion's sister-in-law

A teenager will not understand much of what is happening to the 50-year-old characters in "Another Woman," if only because scattered emotions and repressed feelings over past relationships and failed marriages require almost a lifetime to gain any solid perspective. Any teenager watching this film will relate more closely to Martha Plimpton's teenage character than anyone else. I first saw "Another Woman" in late 1989 and I reacted to it as something that only adults could appreciate. I was swept in by it but I did not understand the fundamental problem of its main protagonist, Marion (Gena Rowlands), and that she's repressed and can only relate to intellectuals on her level. Well, I did not fully understand it but I had met people later in life who prided themselves on being intellectually superior - it was their mainstay and the jobs they held in universities as professors justified it. Essentially a prig, the word Gene Hackman's character uses in the film to describe Marion's husband. This may be read as a stereotype of a smarmy intellectual, a prig, but what resonates in "Another Woman" is that Marion slowly realizes the tragedy of her life and has to fix it...soon. 

Gena Rowlands is pitch-perfect as the philosophy professor Marion, who sublets a flat in New York so she can write her new book. The problem is that the ventilation in the building allows her to hear a sobbing woman's therapy session. The woman is Hope (Mia Farrow) and she might be suicidal yet this takes a hold of Marion - she cannot help but be fascinated and intrigued in someone's private life. Marion starts to realize that she is questioning her own existence as a result, and everyone around her. She starts to see the seams of her rather aloof marriage to another intellectual, Ken, a physician (Ian Holm), or how she treated her brother (Harris Yulin) as an embarrassment and her criticisms of his attempts at writing, or her dear old father (John Houseman) and she imagines that maybe her own mother was not someone he loved too deeply. In some instances, Marion is imagining some of the scenarios and entering them as her 50-year-old self not unlike similar scenes from "Wild Strawberries" (Allen has always dealt with Ingmar Bergman's inventive flashbacks). Does this mean that some of the imagined scenarios are just that, or is it because Marion has found that deep emotions and deeper undercurrents of repressed emotions have been plaguing people in her own life and she never noticed? The look of the film has a brown, grayish palette as if any bright cheery colors have been sucked out of this world (lensed by Bergman's cinematographer, Sven Nykvist). It complements Marion's moods that veer subtly from repression to openly expressing her feelings.

There are two scenes of sustained intensity that feel invasive and honestly nail-biting. One involves Ken's ex-wife (a wickedly harsh cameo by Betty Buckley) who speaks bluntly on her husband's adulterous affair with Marion in front of their friends. Another involves Marion's old friend, Claire, a married theatre actress (Sandy Dennis, absolutely brilliant) whom she runs into and they have a drink. An awkward situation develops when Claire's husband is engaged in a conversation with Marion shutting out Claire. Claire then relays her feelings about Marion and how Marion always managed to swoon over her boyfriends. 

Woody Allen's "Another Woman" feels more true, more optimistic, more nuanced than some of his prior serious dramatic efforts.  Gena Rowlands encapsulates Marion to a tee, and just about every scene has Rowlands in it. It is her own point-of-view where bottled up emotions come to the surface recognizing that what is on the surface is not real. She can see how bottled up her husband is, who still cheats on her and can't spend time alone with her without friends. Her own intellectualism can be her own undoing and life can be disorganized, messy and out-of-control. Everyone else is going through a crisis and Marion would rather not be a part of it. She learns that you can't ignore it and the people in her family and her friends desire something more than knowing about philosophy, art, culture and the prose of Rilke. Most people need to feel, to love, to be human, to have children and don't need art and their own professions to shut themselves out of their existence. They don't want to be cold, stuffy, prigs or snobs. Hope gives Marion reason to rise like a phoenix and feel again. 

Navy has seen better days

 THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT (1984)

Endured by Jerry Saravia (again)

In the annals of urban legends, there is one legend that persists from the 1940's and entered popular culture. The supposed story of the so-called Philadelphia Experiment is from 1943 where the US Navy experimented with making the USS Eldridge (a Navy destroyer) undetectable by radar, rendering it invisible on radar only (though it never docked in Philadelphia). The story took many shapes and twists and turns over the years where it was alleged that the ship did actually become invisible and thus appeared two days later in Norfolk, Virginia (UFO's being the culprit with dubious scientific theories presented in a non-fiction book called "The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility"). Many of these accounts have not been substantiated, and time travel was never an integral part of this legend. 

In the cinematic world of "The Philadelphia Experiment," the year is the same yet time travel is sort of the twist to the legend. There are two Navy sailors, David and Jim (Michael Pare, Bobby Di Cicco), affected by a warp or wormhole of some sort on the ship that sends them from 1943 to 1984! Culture shock hits them like a super-duper sonar of inexplicable waves, as in seeing a young man with a mohawk! Or a television at some anonymous desert cafe showing the movie "Humanoids from the Deep"! Video games are being played, and there are Coke cans that the sailors are unable to open! Then there is the token young woman (Nancy Allen, always a bewitching, perky presence) who learns that her new job is not tenable! Guess what happens when Jim's body is surging with electricity and accidentally destroys the video game unit causing a ruckus - the cafe owner asks for money to fix what is broken until David threatens the owner and its patrons with a gun. Jim and David force the young woman (Allen) to drive them out of Nevada (!) to Philadelphia while a wormhole in the sky is causing heavy wind storms across the entire West and East coasts. It is about that point that I gave up on the movie, as I had when I originally saw it years back and did not recall much of it. I still can't recall much after seeing it again.

"The Philadelphia Experiment" is mostly dull and bereft of any fun. Michael Pare barely makes enough of an impression and Bobby Di Cicco is mostly writhing and screaming in pain from all those electrical charges. Nancy Allen is always a plus in any movie but she is relegated to being the standard girlfriend. There is no sense of wonder or mystery to any of this - the movie just sits there and leaves you feeling numb. A documentary on this hoax might be a better alternative.