Indie roots need more flavor

JUMP CUT (1993)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

After watching five minutes of "Jump Cut," a pseudo-documentary about the making of a film that details the making of a film, I was ready to throw in the towel and watch something else. This is not a normal reaction of mine but this film almost made me say something Larry David once said before performing stand-up for a crowd: "Uhhhh, no." But I do try to give every film a chance (Lord knows I've tried with the comedies of Yahoo Serious). The opening of "Jump Cut" features three guys with their hands tied from a ceiling. Why? I don't know. Next we have several endless shots of a van traveling through the highway while we hear a family squabbling and the daughter pleads to use the bathroom. This goes on for an eternity until the family finally pulls over at a gas station, at which point the married couple do some more squabbling while the daughter says she doesn't have to use the bathroom. The van pulls out and then the daughter pleads again to pee!

After a nerve-wracking, mind-numbing, dreary opening, "Jump Cut" actually improves when we learn that all this is part of the making of a movie. We know this because the writer-director Lawrence Gardner, who plays David Larson (the director of this movie), breaks the fourth wall and tells us. Most of "Jump Cut," which is seemingly shot in 16mm color film that resembles some 1970's flick, is about David Larson trying to make a movie for $350,000. He's got filmmaking experience and has one or two less than viable connections in the industry. He procures help from Jack (Roy Conrad), a wannabe entrepreneur who make a living collecting trash from drive-ins and restaurants, whom David selects as a producer. The cameraman is Jack's brother, Glenn (Peter Petty), who tries to create art with metal and works alongside Jack (though these two hardly look like brothers). Before trying to make a movie, they try to find work filming projects on the side and most go disastrously wrong.

Much of "Jump Cut" features the minutiae of shooting a film and Murphy's Law - what can go wrong will go wrong. I enjoyed watching Lawrence Gardner, a laid-back, patient man who is trying to make the best of everything. Roy Conrad is very funny as the rather impatient producer who also tries his best to get financing, often to no avail. Peter Petty is pretty much a disaster as the lunkhead of a cinematographer.

The pleasures are few in "Jump Cut" - some of it is drawn out, rather dreary and is a little painful to watch (especially those opening scenes). Some scenes stand out - I love the shooting of a commercial where the lead actor does nothing but complain. I have seen better films about making films but I would not totally count out "Jump Cut." See it just once, and you'll like it a little more if you have ever been involved in the making of a low-budget film. But like shooting any film, it is a bit of a pain to get through it.

Footnote: "Jump Cut" was actually made in 1987 but it seemingly got no distribution until it was picked up by Peacock Pictures in 1993, a UK company, and eventually was released on DVD in 2003. According to imdb, writer-director Lawrence Gardner disappeared and never made another film.

Consume mass quantities of America

CONEHEADS (1993)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I only faintly recall the SNL sketch with Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman as extraterrestrials from the planet Remulak who crash land on Earth and are accepted into society. Their most distinguishing characteristic is that their heads are shaped like cones, and Earthlings could care less. That concept carries over in the movie version of the Coneheads, a slight but very agreeable, pleasant diversion that at least shows a decent movie can be made out of a SNL skit.

Beldar (Aykroyd) and Prymaat (Curtin) are the Coneheads who matriculate into society, with the hope of eventually returning to their home planet. Beldar works at fixing electronics, drives a cab with a turban around his cone, becomes a driving instructor, and eventually buys a nice middle-class rancher house. Prymaat vacuums the house and sucks the dust and debris into her mouth. She eventually gets pregnant and let's say that the Coneheads' mating style is not even close to how humans mate. Naturally, they have a daughter (Michelle Burke, replacing Newman) who has the temerity to get a tattoo on her conehead and date a boisterous auto mechanic (Chris Farley, not as boisterous as he would become). The plot, a thin one at best, involves the INS agent Mr. Seedling (Michael McKean) who wants to capture the Coneheads since they are literally illegal aliens. David Spade plays another INS agent who is forced to take calls for Seedling; he is more of an errand boy than an agent. Some of Seedling's hopes for eliminating illegal aliens crossing into the U.S. border will strike some as all too timely nowadays in our Donald Trump climate.

"Coneheads" is more sweet and upbeat than consistently funny. More scenes of the Coneheads' neighbors, especially Jason Alexander with a toupee and a lawnmower malfunction, could have lent a form of social satire to the proceedings. I still give the movie a pass because I like the Conehead family and their eventual clinging to the American Dream ideal. They are accepted as the mainstream nuclear family unit they are. It is a shame that the writers, including Aykroyd, didn't delve deeper into the irony of it all. The Coneheads consume mass quantities of everything (toilet paper, waffles, not necessarily in that order) and America is all about consumption of materialistic things. They fit right in. 

A Nightmare about Freddy's Nightmares

WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994)

Re-reviewed by Jerry Saravia (October 31st, 2001)

Freddy Krueger is a horror icon on the same level as Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, King Kong. Even lead actress Heather Langenkamp, more or less playing a version of herself, knows it. The character is Wes Craven's invention and it still is an imaginatively created character. Freddy has the burnt pizza face, the glove with four sharp razor blades, a red and green sweater, a fedora hat, and an attitude. The original "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is among the best and most original horror films ever made - a scarefest that examines the psychological dreams and the subconscious of unruly teenagers living on Elm Street who are being pursued in their dreams by a child killer named Freddy. If he kills you in your dreams, you'll wake up dead. The inevitable sequels were not quite on the same level as the original but they were creative, visual tour de forces with excellent special-effects and a jocose Freddy and, in some cases, teen characters worth caring about. Wes Craven was not involved in any of the follow-ups (except for Part 3) but he came up with a new idea in 1994 - a film-within-the-film treatise on the danger of the "Nightmare" movies and how they affect the cast members. It is a noble idea, a postmodernist take on the horror genre, literally deconstructing it. It often works and does manage to deliver some new themes and ideas. 

"Wes Craven's New Nightmare" stars Heather Langenkamp as herself, an actress whose life dramatically changed since she completed the "Nightmare" movies. She has a nice house in L.A., a faithful husband (David Newsom) who works on movie special-effects, and a seemingly disturbed young son named Dylan (Miko Hughes) who watches scenes from the original "Nightmare" movie and even speaks like Freddy (he also loves to read "Hansel and Gretel"). Not all is well as we discover something ominous is happening in the Langenkamp residence. There are the numerous phone calls from an obsessed fan (maybe Freddy); several earthquake tremors; Dylan screaming at the top of his lungs; her husband killed in a car accident (could be Freddy's fault); and so on. Heather meets with several of her movie co-stars (John Saxon and Robert Englund as themselves) to determine what is happening. My feeling is that she dotes on and is overly protective of her son, Dylan, but that's just a thought. Perhaps Dylan shouldn't be watching any of those movies in the first place. What do you think, Heather?

It turns out that Heather is being offered a new role in a new "Nightmare" movie, hence the movie we are watching. Wes's new script had been devised to get rid of the demon who has been unleashed into the world after killing off the fictional character in "Freddy's Dead." As Wes explains in one of the best scenes in the movie, this demon is more powerful and more evil than Freddy and Heather must try to stop him from getting her and her son. It is art imitating life in the broadest sense, and this is possibly the best and most twisted idea in the whole series by far.

Unfortunately, Wes screws it up a tad because he doesn't allow the screenplay to play for some clever thrills and psychological meanings. Instead, he opts for clever inside jokes and unwarranted hysteria. Being a confessed Freddy Krueger fan myself, I enjoyed seeing all the puns and jokes, and I liked seeing some of the actors as themselves (look quickly for Tuesday Knight from "Nightmare 4"), the agents, New Line president Robert Shaye, etc. The movie plays like a docudrama and that's when it works best. It's the dramatic, maybe personal stuff, that doesn't work nearly as well.

The biggest flaw is the crucial casting of the Dylan role: he's played by Miko Hughes who overacts to the hilt and delivers fake screams. This kid is often intolerable and it is difficult to build any kind of sympathy for him or his plight. His performance here reminds me of the insufferable "Pet Sematary" where at least he had an appropriately creepy demeanor. Heather Langenkamp does a relatively fine job of playing herself (and, in one teasing moment with Saxon, as Nancy) and she is at her best in the opening scenes where the phone continually rings and her son continually screams - her dazed, agitated behavior is superbly realized. For the rest of the movie, though, she seems to be playing the character Nancy and not herself. I like the scenes where Heather is more relaxed, such as when she meets with John Saxon at a park or when she converses with Wes at his house. Of course, she may be dreaming the whole film that we are watching which is likely, though if that is not the case then it is hard to say where the distinction lies between dreams versus reality. In fact, Wes's film might be his first official "Dream Film," where it is all a nightmare and where the reality is the nightmare itself. The film is deeply rooted in horror but the psychological is what makes it so unique.

Some of the obligatory dream sequences are excellent, including the magnificent (and overlong) inferno ending where Freddy nearly swallows Dylan! I also liked the terrifying sequence where Dylan walks across a highway where dozens of cars and trucks nearly hit him. But most of the movie tries, and fails, to build suspense through countless earthquakes and numerous telephone rings as in Craven's "Scream." Nothing in the film is particularly as thrilling or compelling as one might hope - it also becomes a little emotionally numbing after a while but never boring.

I saw this film four times because the critics thought so highly of it, and I thought maybe I missed something. The first time I saw it, I hated it - it seemed nothing like the previous films (which, of course, was the whole point. Silly me). The second time I saw it, I thought it was just plain awful. The third time, I saw it on a TNT special (hosted by Joe Bob Briggs) and I appreciated some of the minute subtleties, and the performances that were a lot better than I had anticipated. Director Wes Craven just missed the mark by not investing the psychological, real-life horror of horror movies taking over the lead actors' lives and their families. It's hinted at but it could have been so much more.

In hindsight, "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" is hardly a terrible movie but it is somewhat unfocused - just being self-reverential is not enough. Still, if you're a Freddy Krueger fan and appreciate the postmodernist irony of "Scream," you should check this last Krueger film for the clever puns and the infrequent brilliant nightmare scenes. Wes certainly has more imagination than the average horror director.

Misery Loves Music

HIGH FIDELITY (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally Reviewed: March, 2000

I could not identify with Rob Gordon's unique ability to not only remember the names of past lovers and the extent of their relationships, but to also know which pop/rock and roll songs were playing at the time, exclusively on vinyl. Music is an identifiable factor for Rob, it includes a different era of Fleetwood Mac and Paper Lace, and that is at the heart of Stephen Frears' delicately oddball romantic comedy "High Fidelity," which is more oddball comedy than romantic but it delivers in nearly equal doses and that is part of its charm.

Based on Nick Hornsby's 1995 cult novel of the same name, John Cusack plays the record-loving Rob who owns a small Bohemian-like record shop in Chicago called Championship Vinyl, which specializes in selling records wrapped in plastic (vinyl has not lost its touch since it is still sold in record shops, especially in New York City or Princeton, N.J.). Rob speaks directly to the camera, ruminating on his past top five breakups, most recently Laura (Iben Hjehle), while giving us the pop history of each breakup - the song that played and where it played as a reminder of that misery. Or as Rob puts it, "I don't remember if I was miserable when I listened to pop music or if listening to pop music made me miserable."

Laura has left Rob's pad but he loves her too much to just let go. She lives with a sexual hippie (hilariously portrayed by Tim Robbins) who is a martial-arts master. We get more than a few scenes of Rob dripping wet like a madman in the rain while calling Laura from outside her new home - this almost seems like an extension of the classic "Say Anything" by director Cameron Crowe that also starred Cusack in a similar scenario. All Rob has left in his life, minus Laura, is his record store and two employees, the geeky, apologetic Dick (Todd Luiso) and the musically encyclopedic, irascible Barry (Jack Black) who is ticked off by anyone who does not share his music tastes. I love the moment when they discuss "Evil Dead 2" and its "great soundtrack" or Barry's recommendation to use "You Can't Always Get What You Want" at Laura's father's funeral:

Dick: 'That is an immediate disqualification on the grounds of it being used in "The Big Chill".'

Barry: 'Oh, God. You are right.'

Besides his listless life without Laura, Rob is a part-time DJ and briefly beds a sexy singer (Lisa Bonet) who shares Rob's lovelorn disappointments and sings Peter Frampton songs. And we get glimpses of Rob's obsession over his past loves, shown in brief flashbacks. He is so obsessed that he arranges to meet all five and figure out why he has failed them. Most memorable of these ex-girlfriends include Lili Taylor as an unhappy yet sometimes cheerful woman (only Lili can credibly play such a part) and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a rich, wild, pseudo-intellectual woman who is confused by Rob's need to explain why she left him.

"High Fidelity" is familiar turf, a lot of is reminiscent of some of the best parts of "Singles," one of my favorite comedies of the 90's. Still, thanks to director Stephen Frears' offbeat direction and Scott Rosenberg and Cusack's writing, the laughs come in with terrific precision mainly due to Cusack's dead-on, quirky line readings. The cast is richly entertaining to watch, including the histrionic, energetic Jack Black, and a marvelous Joan Cusack as Rob's friend who is shocked to discover how Rob treated Laura. I also enjoyed the presence of Hjejle - for once in these comedies, a real human being of the opposite sex shows how deeply hurt she is by a man's transgressions. Though the film loses momentum in the last half hour building to the predictable final act with Laura, "High Fidelity" has oodles of charm and a consistently jerky funny bone. It's uneven, like Cusack, but you expected that.

Lord of Darkness steals idyllic light

LEGEND (1985)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Like most Ridley Scott films, "Legend" is far and away one of the most beautifully crafted films in eons, but in terms of story, it is extremely hollow and that can spell danger for a fairy tale of this kind. Feeling like a compendium of fairy tales and magical tales like "The Lord of the Rings" and Grimm's stories, it offers much to be excited by but little to be moved or inspired by.

"Legend" begins with Lil (Mia Sara), a young woman who represents innocence and who is deeply in love with Jack (Tom Cruise, in his first long-haired-hippie-look role), a forest dweller. They live in a land of innocence, and everything is in bright, beatific colors with the sun shining brightly everywhere. Lilies and flowers and tremendous trees fill the area. Unicorns run through the misty waters. Nothing could ever upset this idyllic view, but something inevitably does. There is the prince named the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry) who wants to shut the sunlight from this land forever. He gets help from snickering, ugly creatures with big snot-noses to turn the cheery countryside into a land of gloom and doom. And the one code to live by in this world is to never kill a unicorn but the creatures successfully manage to do just that, causing storms and inclement weather to destroy the serenity.

But this is not enough of a story to make a film of such beauty work. We see fascinating creatures of every size and shape, we see the customary gnomes, fairies, elves, goblins, unicorns and so on, but little here stirs our imagination or involvement. The main human characters, Jack and Lil, are given little depth or any real emotions - they seem to be replicants from director Scott's own "Blade Runner." Whatever love story exists is lost since Cruise and Sara have no durable rapport. The special-effects and the dazzling cinematography take precedence over story and character development.

It is a shame really because "Legend" has some bravura moments. I especially like how Lil approaches a unicorn in one scene, or the dance sequence where Lil is possessed into loving Darkness (a deleted scene from the European version). There is plenty to admire and Scott is efficient at creating a strange new world. Someday, he may put a little more effort into the people that inhabit such a world.

Shepherding too many characters

THE SHIPPING NEWS (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A movie starring Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Scott Glenn and Julianne Moore? And directed by Lasse Hallstrom? I am there. Well, I was there and was underwhelmed. "The Shipping News" is fitfully engaging at times, but its haphazard moods and tones almost wreck it beyond belief, despite the talented cast and director.

For starters, Kevin Spacey has a most unusual role. He plays the hapless, dim-witted Quoyle, an inksetter for the Poughkeepsie News, who has an affair with a brunette tigress named Petal (Cate Blanchett). They get married, have a daughter named Bunny, and live in their own house. The trouble is Petal is having affairs on the side while Quoyle is left helpless raising their daughter by himself. "Why don't you get yourself a girlfriend," suggests Petal. One day, Petal leaves with Bunny, and a tragedy occurs where Petal dies and Bunny is left at some black market adoption agency. Naturally, Quoyle rescues her before his never-before-seen aunt, Agnis (Judi Dench), has come to collect the ashes of Quoyle's uncle. Oh, I forgot to mention that Quoyle's uncle dies.

At this point, "The Shipping News" has enough material for a feature-length film. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the movie's real journey begins when Agnis takes Quoyle and Bunny to Quoyle Point, Newfoundland, where everyone can get a fresh start. They stay at a house overlooking the countryside that is held by strong cables so it will not blow away (Canadian winds are fierce year round). Thus, Quoyle gets a job at the Gammy Bird, a newspaper where any fisherman can become a journalist with the right training. The newspaper's main stories involve car wrecks and oil tankers. Plus, there is a relationship involving a widow named Wavey (Julianne Moore, back with her eyebrows intact. I tend to notice these things when it involves my favorite actors). Wavey has a son and is grieving over the loss of her husband, or so we think.

"The Shipping News" runs 111 minutes and is too short for all the multiple characters and situations involved. For instance, the movie skims past Petal's character and her marriage to Quoyle in less than half an hour (and there are fleeting glimpses of Petal afterwards, particularly when Quoyle sees or talks to Wavey). Bunny is one of those odd children who is stubborn and unfriendly, and possibly a mental case according to Quoyle, and is able to see future events in her dreams. But after a while, the movie skips past her character completely and focuses on the journalists at the Gammy Bird, then focuses on Scott Glenn who plays Quoyle's boss, then shifts to Agnis's past, and on and on. The purpose of an adaptation is to basically focus on the theme of the novel, which is Quoyle's transformation from small-town loser to an articulate and assertive man who discovers his roots and his needs. Knowing this much would mean that Bunny, Agnis, Wavey and Petal are the characters responsible for Quoyle's transition.

I have read the novel by Annie Proulx and, after seeing this film, it is clear that there are too many underdeveloped characters as a result of the screenwriter's willingness to do too much. As I said, the cast is fine (though Dench struck me as being wooden), the breathtaking cinematography by Oliver Stapleton evokes a natural time and place, and the music by Christopher Young is enveloping in ways that most modern scores today are not. Yet Lasse Hallstrom's direction of the story's tonal shifts are garbled and perfunctory. The writing is unfocused, though peppered with some humorous touches (I like the headlines we hear in Quoyle's voice-overs). In the end, it's simply too much of a good thing.

Searching for a buffalo nickel

AMERICAN BUFFALO (1996)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1997)

Based on David Mamet's own fabulous play from the 70's, "American Buffalo" is the latest dark, uncompromising David Mamet work of two lowlifes. It is hard-hitting and gut-wrenching, and often tough to take.

"American Buffalo" is based on a David Mamet play from 1975, and it stars as Dennis Franz as Donny, the owner of a junk shop who mistakenly sells a buffalo nickel for ninety dollars reputed to be worth more than twice that amount. He conspires with the grungy Teach (Dustin Hoffman), who practically hangs out at the junk shop daily, to rob the nickel from the buyer's house. The trouble is that a semi-trustworthy kid (Sean Nelson) has bought the same nickel, but from whom?

The film is essentially a three-character play, and it succeeds in never being stagy or dull. Director Michael Corrente never chooses to be flashy for the look of the film - there is no need. The junk shop looks like a dusty junk shop with amber tones, and the town looks desolate with hardly a soul in sight.

As for the three characters, it would be difficult to imagine actors better suited to the roles. The magnetic Hoffman, appearing like a long-haired hippie, is often too frenetic but he performs with gusto as the loquacious Teach who mistrusts everyone. Dennis Franz is more restrained as a man slowly erupting in anger at the thought that a kid may have betrayed him - his verbal exchanges with Hoffman are about as juicy and profanity-laden as expected from the acid pen of Mamet. The ending shocks because we get to know the characters so well, that an unexpected single violent action may lead some to leap forward from their viewing chairs. It is refreshing to know one can care that much about characters (including Sean Nelson, the most sympathetic character in the film) who are somewhat seedy and have a solely vested interested in a coin.

 "American Buffalo" is not on the same wavelength as previous Mamet works such as "Oleanna" or "House of Games," but it is a captivating and engrossing look at failed, miserable men.