Nexus is no Genesis

 STAR TREK GENERATIONS (1994)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Generations" is one of the black sheep of the Trek cinematic and TV universes, the other being the very much maligned "Star Trek V." "Generations" is silly and some of its story is incomprehensible and defies logic. Truthfully, I never look for logic in science-fiction unless the movie is so inert and badly-paced that asking logical questions becomes part of the fun. This is a fun, diverting movie but, boy, do questions abound after it is over. 

From the start, I felt I was in Star Trek heaven, a sort of nirvana of excitement, after a champagne bottle (a Dom Perignon, vintage 2265) is floating in space and is smashed on the newly minted Enterprise ship. Captain Kirk (the delightful William Shatner) is retired and merely there for a photo-op and as a casual observer! He is joined by reliable old Scottish engineer Scotty (James Doohan) and Chekov (Walter Koenig), whom are both presumably retired. Something goes ballistic immediately with the Enterprise when it is near a deadly energy ribbon (known as the Nexus) that destroys two El-Aurian ships (the El-Aurians are a Race of Listeners). The new captain from the Starfleet Academy (Alan Ruck, what weird casting) is unprepared for this maiden voyage since the ship has no torpedoes but they can simulate a torpedo to drive them away from the ribbon! The Enterprise gets bruised and reliable Kirk is killed, or at least floating in Nexus. 

Cue to 78 years later to the Next Generation cast having a ball celebrating Worf (Michael Dorn) as lieutenant commander, a celebration aboard a holographic 17th century ship where this Klingon is brought out with shackles and has to step into the plank.. Before long Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) has the tragic news that some of his family members died, thus causing much grief as he pores over photo albums. There are some truly intimate scenes between Picard and counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) where he breaks down crying over the loss - a humanity that anchors the best that Star Trek has to offer. Speaking of humanity and emotion, android Data (Brent Spiner) is implanted with an emotion chip that causes him to laugh at jokes from several years back. Levar Burton is back as Geordi La Forge, the engineer with a visor that allows him to see, and he is perplexed by Data's emotions. So is the whole Enterprise crew when Data starts singing about lifeforms as he's looking for any in other planets. 

The central plot has Dr. Soran (wickedly bulging-eyed Malcolm McDowell), an El-Aurian, who wants to be on Nexus, an energy ribbon that takes you to a state-of-mind place where you feel joy and time doesn't exist (think of it as memory implants that create a fake environment you can revisit over and over). However, Soran believes that by destroying the planets near Nexus, he can have a proper alignment on an iron bridge in the planet Veridian III where he can be immersed in the Nexus. Also on Nexus is Captain Kirk who is at his original domicile before leaving for the Starfleet (his wife is shown on a horse in a blurry long shot), but his memories can also shift based on his mood, I gather.

A more clearly defined plot would've been welcome, just as it was for the planet Genesis from the earlier Star Trek films. Here, it seems Nexus can be anything and though its limitless possibilities are entrancing, they still confuse me with Soran's plan to destroy planets when Kirk and Picard do not have to engage in such evil acts to gain entrance. Or something like that. I am sure Trekkies have studied this ridiculous plot and made some sense of it.

"Generations" is still fun and engaging with the Next Generation cast (though many have abbreviated roles though it is a treat to see Whoopi Goldberg as the bartender Guinan) and it is a hoot to see Stewart and Shatner team up. It all comes down to a fistfight on that iron bridge with Soran and the two captains and, I suppose, I would not have it any other way when it comes to Star Trek.  

The More You Drive, the Less Intelligent You are

 REPO MAN (1984)
Reassessed by Jerry Saravia

"Repo Man" is a junkyard fight of a movie, a rambling cuckoo clock of low and high extremes. It is somehow the story of repo men, you know, those in the dangerous business of repossessing cars from owners who don't make their payments. We learn rich people never make their payments because they don't care. We learn regular, normal people are assholes. We learn repo men dress in business suits so they can look like private detectives. And there is some business about a stolen 1964 Chevy Malibu that has something "hot" in its trunk. Not "hot" as in a stolen car, just literally hot. So hot that no one dares open the trunk or else, well, it will be "Kiss Me Deadly" time. 

Emilio Estevez is Otto, a hotheaded 19-year-old kid trying to pass for 21 who wears a crucifix earring (in 1984, this was a big deal but, nowadays, many males wears earrings). He does not have a legitimate girlfriend, loses his supermarket job by cursing out the manager, and tries to get money from his pot-smoking hippie parents to no avail. One day, Otto walks around the streets of L.A. and ends up repossessing a car, unbeknownst to him, while helping out Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who claims his wife has to go to the hospital. It is all a ruse and Otto reluctantly becomes a repo man. Bud teaches him the tricks of the trade, including how most repo men stay alert by taking speed. Bud teaches Otto that life of a repo man is intense and he doesn't like commies or Christians in his car.  

Meanwhile, that Chevy Malibu is stolen repeatedly, including by a punk gang that loves "to do some crimes" including eating sushi for free! Government agents are also interested in that Malibu that is fetching for twenty grand if found, and you can bet those repo men want to get their hands on it. A lot of this can get repetitious, and the inclusion of some wild crazy scientist who initially drives the Malibu can irritate after a while. When Estevez and Stanton are on screen, the movie's kinetic energy is back on and is often crudely entertaining. 

Alex Cox's freewheeling direction is everywhere and anywhere - there is a restlessness to the film that continually stops and gets revved up all over again like some sputtering car engine. I don't think there is any sense to be made from "Repo Man" and there are no concrete ideas or any focused themes - it is simply a cartoon movie, a cult comic come to life, with quotable lines delivered with an idiosyncratic tone. I have to say that I admire that - we sometimes needs movies that just exist in their own vacuum and invite us on unusual journeys. Other than Stanton's memorably raggy repo man Bud and the hilarious Sy Richardson as a fearless repo man who carries a gun with blanks, Estevez's Otto is the one I gravitate to - an animated character who doesn't care about anything except for Bud. Bud and Otto develop a mutual understanding without the philosophizing of a sullied mechanic (Tracey Walter) who believes in aliens and time-travel. When the film is over, there is nothing to take away from it other than you want to revisit the whole experience. 

Defending the freedom to not snitch

 GUILTY BY SUSPICION (1991)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia 

Other than Martin Ritt's brilliantly intoxicating "The Front" with Woody Allen, the 1950's McCarthyism era doesn't get much cinematic treatment at all, largely because it was such a dark period in American history and there were no happy endings, no happy results and people's lives were ruined. Debuting director (and sometime producer) Irwin Winkler doesn't sugarcoat or sentimentalize this turbulent period at all and that is one of the strengths of the watchable and fascinating "Guilty By Suspicion" that succeeds at finding the heart and freedom of any American citizen - to practice the idea of independent thought on any principle or system outside of a democratic, capitalist one. It is also about the right to not snitch on anyone based on such principles. Ethics, imagine that.

That doesn't describe the restrained, workaholic Hollywood movie director David Merrill (Robert De Niro) who has come back from a European vacation to an America where a Communist witch hunt has commenced. David sees his friends have either named those affiliated with Communism or they have fled the country to escape their subpoenas. The bitter screenwriter Larry Nolan (Chris Cooper) names names for the committee, the dreaded HUAC, and this affects his alcoholic wife, Dorothy (Patricia Wettig), whom he names as well. It is not clear from the start if David is keenly aware of what is happening around him until his boss, producer Darryl Zanuck (Ben Piazza), tells him to meet with a lawyer (Zanuck is the only actual real producer/Hollywood affiliate in this movie; everyone else is a fictionalized combination of actual people). David has been named as someone with Communist leanings from having attended a couple of past meetings, and maybe he can name those he associates with or is friends with. One gregarious film director flees to England (magnificently played by the fast-talking Martin Scorsese, who shaved his beard to play this role) and now David is faced with an unenviable task - should he snitch in the name of alleged patriotism or will he be blacklisted? David chooses the latter, though one wishes director Winkler let the blacklisted screenwriter Abraham Polonsky keep the original idea of David as a strict Communist intact (Winkler took over the writing duties). As the movie stands, David is simply a guy who attended a couple of meetings.

"Guilty By Suspicion" doesn't let anyone off the hook when it comes to the clutches of McCarthyism. It wasn't just that you couldn't get a job anywhere if accused - your dignity and your freedoms were being oppressed. David moves to New York to get a job and can't stay long enough at any job (including one at a camera store) with the Hoover boys watching his every move. Consequently, Ruth, his ex-wife (a woefully underused Annette Bening), moves out of her house with their son to an apartment and David ends up moving in with her. Ruth resumes teaching and you feel that the FBI can also ensnare her since she attended radical anti-nuclear bomb protests. Nobody is safe, not even a writer named Bunny Baxter (George Wendt), David's best friend, who feels the pressure of giving up David's name so much that he even asks him for permission!

"Guilty By Suspicion" moves along at an adequate pace with tensions filling the air of discontent. It is not a movie about the thrill of moviemaking or the victory lap of doing the right thing and showing McCarthyism in and of itself was on the wrong side of history. It is about ratting out your friends in the name of political freedom from anything un-American. If you are an American, you bear witness to Communism as an evil threat and it shan't be practiced on the streets or in the comfort of some secluded place for a meeting. The truth is that many Communists saw value in such a system, or at least a new way of looking at our system of democratic values. "Guilty By Suspicion" is not invested in that complexity but it is a film of dread, pessimism and unhappiness where one character would rather commit suicide than keep living through this pressurized nightmare.  

Divinely Absurd Days of Rage

 ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

P.T. Anderson has held my interest since 1997's "Boogie Nights" and, after seeing his terrifically sharp 1996 directorial debut "Hard Eight," he has grown on me rapidly like fern moss. None of his films seem like anyone else's and we can be grateful for that (although "Magnolia" is his most Altmanesque). "One Battle After Another" is quixotic, highly flammable filmmaking where I could feel the edges of the screen getting tighter and practically burning and peeling away. The movie operates on pure adrenaline, clocking in at an acidic 2 hours and 42 minutes replete with kinetic action and a completely absurdist momentum of surprises that never lets up. It is one of the few exciting movies I have seen in recent years. 

A leftist revolutionary movement known as the French 75 have infiltrated a detention center where illegal immigrants are being held (boy, this film can't get more on the nose in terms of today's heated, divisive climate on immigration). The French 75 are all armed revolutionaries, including "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun aka Bob Ferguson (a hirsute, wacky Leonardo DiCaprio) and his tough, practical girlfriend Perfidia Beverly Hills (a truly scene-stealing role by Teyana Taylor) and they release all the immigrants. Perfidia is the one who confronts the malicious, patriotic-to-the-bone Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (a malevolently cartoonish performance by Sean Penn). She tries to embarrass the colonel (and they later have a sexual rendezvous or two) and he is drawn to her and loves her. All this is unbeknownst to Bob Ferguson as the French 75 continue on their plans to bomb politicians' offices, rob banks to finance their artillery and way of life, etc. One particular bank robbery results in Perfidia killing a security officer, where she later gets arrested and names the members of her group in exchange for witness protection.  She is too rebellious to live a cozy suburban life and runs for the hills somewhere in Mexico. Oh, I neglected to mention the fact that she's pregnant, delivers her child, and has Bob nurturing their daughter while she does her thing prior to her arrest. One strikingly bold image has Perfidia doing target practice while exposing her pregnant belly - this could be a propaganda poster for French 75's cause.

Cut to 16 years later and Bob is living with his practical teen daughter, Willa (an auspicious turn by Chase Infiniti), in some sanctuary in the middle of the woods. Bob is a paranoid wacko drug addict, sleeping late and uncertain of Willa's friends. Bigger fish to fry when word gets out of Bob and Willa's hideout with Willa running with one French 75 member to a nunnery that is anything but. Meanwhile, Bob runs from the military and makes calls to French 75 without knowing the crucial passwords. To make matters worse on this elongated chase picture is the Colonel who wishes to join a white supremacist organization called The Christmas Adventurers! I almost wanted to laugh at such an absurd name - they may as well called themselves the Polar Express. One major caveat for joining - to maintain purity, you can't date or have sex with a black woman and certainly can't impregnate one! The trouble is that Willa may not be Bob's daughter. Uh, oh, it is the Colonel's time for killing just to be a member. 

What I found fascinating about "One Battle After Another" (extremely loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's novel "Vineland") is that some of the male characters are dumb and make stupid mistakes yet the women know how to survive in a contentious, malicious, nihilistic world. Bob Ferguson is not exactly a hero or an antihero in this movie - he is unsuited to be any meaningful revolutionary but he cares about Willa and has to save her from the Colonel's iron grasp. Even the Christmas Adventurers own hitman can't quite hit its intended target right. And what of Perfidia? We never see her again, only a letter sent to her daughter. It is a touching final scene done with elegance, much like most of "One Battle After Another."

Do I have any probing issues with the film? Sean Penn is memorably disgusting to watch in this movie and he filled me with complete revulsion - I just couldn't stand him and wished to see less of him (the Christmas Adventurers seem more normal by comparison). That is not the fault of the actor who gets to show off his arms with bulging veins but he is far more cartoonish than I expected. Still, this is an absurd film with a capital A yet it has velocity and feels startlingly alive from the start. The purposely intrusive music score by Jonny Greenwood is propulsive and guides us through one crazy sequence after another. From the rooftops at night with Bob running with ridiculous shades and a robe, to the desert sequences that truly enrapture including a final chase scene that feels just right, to Bob's hideout off the grid, to the remote nunnery where they have no wifi and, finally, the actual lair of the Christmas Adventurers which has to be seen to be believed.

"One Battle After Another" intermittently shows the pain, the fatigue and the soul of a broken family living in a chaotic world. I would not mistake this film as political or lending much of an insight into a revolutionary group akin to the real-life Weather Underground group, though it is clear that the French 75 doesn't believe in holding illegal immigrants in cages. It is all aces as an action picture yet it also has gravitas, style, absurdist humor, histrionic acting by Leonardo DiCaprio and a very capable turn by newcomer Chase Infiniti as Willa who can hold her own like nobody's business. Bordering on satire with bold strokes of dramatic conflict and suspense (the DNA test on Willa scene made me nervous), "One Battle After Another" is a cinematic marvel that kicks your butt hard. A welcome change from the norm.    

Raises the pulse without a pulse-pounding pace

 FRUITVALE STATION (2013)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The inevitable is near. A senseless murder will occur and we will wonder what specific circumstances lead to it. Ryan Coogler's impressive feature debut, "Fruitvale Station," begins with actual, horrifying video footage of the killing of Oscar Grant III by a police officer. The setting is the BART train station in Oakland, California and the unbearable tension begins. 

Michael B. Jordan is Oscar, a 22-year-old father who has lost his job at a food market due to chronic lateness. Oscar lives with his girlfriend, Sophina (Melonie Diaz), who is unsure of her man after she caught him having an infidelity. Oscar can sell some weed but chooses to throw it in the sea instead, opting for a life where prison is not in the horizon. In a stirring flashback, Oscar is in prison and is visited by his honest-to-the-bone mother (Octavia Spencer) who loves her son but not his attitude. In the fairly intense exchange between mother and son, she leaves hastily after seeing him almost get physical with another prisoner. Still, Oscar's mother knows he has a good heart and a good soul and that he is trying vainly to support himself, his girlfriend and their daughter. It is New Year's Eve as Oscar hangs with his friends and Sophina to watch the fireworks, little knowing what danger looms ahead.

What is doubly fantastic about director Ryan Coogler's debut is how he builds tension even in the smallest, most trivial moments. Oscar picks up his daughter at a daycare and they run in a slow-motion shot that suggests such familial horsing around is etched in time. The birthday party for Oscar's mother shows how close this family is, whether they are joking about sports teams or when Sophina asks what she can do to help with cooking, etc. Most movies feature moments that can be heart-rending yet this all spells heartbreak. Most unsettling is the train ride to the city where something seems off and we are not sure why until a fight breaks out, seemingly out of the blue, as Oscar's name is shouted by a young woman (this gets Sophina's attention immediately). This woman was a seafood customer in an earlier scene where Oscar convinces her to speak to his grandmother on the phone about frying fish. You'll kinda wish that this woman never uttered his name.

Coogler's "Fruitvale Station" is not dissimilar from Gus Van Sant's day-in-the-life of high school students drama, "Elephant," where one senses an inevitable tragedy moment by cringing moment. Coogler frames Oscar as a young man who is trying to figure out how to move forward and, most significantly, how to change his ways. We know his life will be cut short violently yet, thanks to Coogler's intimate handling of familial drama that is never overplayed or melodramatic (including a dog's death due to a hit-and-run), the film raises your pulse without reverting to a pulse-pounding pace. Oscar's normal 24-hour-day plays like a routine day, a life of uncertainty with a healthy optimism. It is a nuanced, firecracker performance by Michael B. Jordan, often conveying so much without revealing through words. This is as close-to-the-bone as real life gets. 

Shock and awe on the air

 TALK RADIO (1988)
An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

Oliver Stone has always been an incendiary, provocative film director and who better than Stone to tell the story of an incendiary and provocative talk show host. This shock jock is so incendiary that when he attends a basketball game as a guest speaker, he is relentlessly booed and the crowd practically drowns out his speech. The hostile radio personality is Barry Champlain (Eric Bogosian) who is not a racist or prejudiced, nor a misogynist (he pokes fun of them with a less than delicate hand). The calls Barry receives on his high-ratings show generally are racist, prejudiced and misogynist, and some are worse than that. Of course, scene after riveting scene, Champlain loves getting these calls - it feeds his appetite and is what makes the show a ratings bonanza in Dallas. He gives the people what they want, and he relishes it and devours it without blinking. Or does he? Is it starting to consume him, all these random callers?

Bogosian's Barry is an unhappy, paranoid, obnoxious man who was once married and now has a tolerant girlfriend (Leslie Hope) who is his producer (though he shamelessly refers to her as his secretary). The man always had it in him to berate his callers and call them out on their stupidity, their histrionic comments, etc. In a truly stirring and powerful final sequence, Stone rotates his camera 360 degrees to capture Barry baring his soul to his listeners, arguing and yelling at them and trying to figure out what they want from him. Watching "Talk Radio" now in this day and age of innumerable podcasts (some of which are probably as incendiary as Champlain is), baring one's soul is not something you see or hear and certainly not to this degree. Based on the true story of a Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg (who was shot and killed by white supremacists), you start to wonder where the needle falls in terms of shock and awe - is there a chance Barry goes too far? Is going too far reducing his chances with a media company who has an interest in making his show go nationwide? Barry's job is to weed out his listeners who call in, and hang up on them. As "Talk Radio" progresses to a gradually intense finale, he is not hanging up on them - he is listening and yet hates himself for doing it. Or is Barry just a self-hating man who taunts his callers, including one who is a Holocaust denier who may or may not have sent him a mysterious package? How much of a future is there in being a relentless shock jock?

The flashbacks in the middle of "Talk Radio" are sepia-toned flashes of a long curly-haired Barry working in a men's clothing store who meets one of his talk show idols. Barry's voice is enough to suggest a future in radio and we see, almost immediately, how he shuns and cheats on his displeased wife (Ellen Greene). They get a divorce yet she still loves him and tries to break through him when she calls in to his show. Unshakable truths are conveyed and she realizes he will not change for anyone.

I once saw Bogosian perform his thrilling, hilarious one-man show, "Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll," and the overall effect of being confrontational is the exact same effect I had watching "Talk Radio." Only Bogosian liked what he was doing - there was a joy of performance on stage that was incalculable. I don't think Champlain enjoys what he does.  

Hair-raising up to a point

 WOLF MAN (2025)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A troubled young married couple make the reluctant trip to Oregon. The man of the house, and a most dutiful dad, has found out that his father is officially deceased. The adult son now has to move the old man's things out of the remote house in the mountains. Only trouble is that the rental truck almost runs over a creature on a winding road and the family eventually makes it back to that house on foot, turns on the generator and, well, lycanthropy happens. Yes, Oregon, a werewolf is on the loose. If you are aware that the mountainous area near your childhood home has a werewolf nearby, would you go there? Not me. The hell with my father's belongings.

"Wolf Man" is the latest horror flick from director Leigh Whannell and he has some good ideas here with regards to lycanthropy, that is seeing it as a ravaging disease that eats you up bit by bit. Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) is the father who protects his daughter at any cost and that includes his father's domicile (the daughter is played by Matilda Firth, who is as cute as a button). Charlotte Lovell is the mother, a journalist (very thanklessly played by Julia Garner who fared better in "Weapons"), who is seemingly unhappy in the marriage yet never admits to it - her character also feels lost who can't reciprocate the love bestowed on their daughter by her husband. Nevertheless, Blake has been bitten by the werewolf during a hair-raising truck accident. He is slowly consumed by the wolf within and in his blood. I love how he scratches himself where he was severely bitten, or how he almost enters a fourth dimension where he can't comprehend his own family - words are like animal grunts to him, a nice touch. So we have two werewolves to deal with, a ham radio that doesn't function (no cell phone service out in these woods), the generator is a mess, and no time for love or making peace with Blake and Charlotte's marriage on the rocks.

"Wolf Man" skirts past any character development of any kind. We know something is amiss in the marriage and it is then forgotten. We know Blake doesn't want to yell at his daughter when she does something wrong, and that is all there is to that father-daughter dynamic other than they love each other. Once they arrive at the house, all hell has already broken loose and all we can do is wait for inevitable werewolf attacks. Director Whannell can direct the hell out of this film and he sets up fairly decent shocks and scares. Still, without an ounce of character personality beyond one dimension and a half, "Wolf Man" is slim shadings of a monster tale that might have been better as a half-hour anthology episode.