Newman brings panache to age-old noir tale

TWILIGHT (1998)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Twilight" is as much about growing older with grace and wisdom than it is about its fairly tame noir plot, which could be written in the back of a napkin in one sentence. You know, there is a dubious suicide that has frustrated a cynical detective and it is about to be solved as a murder with probable suspect(s). Nothing new here nor does "Twilight" bring anything new into the mix - there is no Tarantinian or Coen Brothers mix of urgency and neo-noir twists in its plotting at all. What it reminds us of is the noir tales from the 40's, its only updates being that it was shot in color and it has a little more graphic violence, yet all told with Paul Newman's voice-over as the retired detective on one last call to right some wrongs.

It makes little sense to divulge much of the slim plot beyond a 20-year-old suicide of a man who was Catherine Ames' first husband, Catherine played by the always stunning Susan Sarandon. Catherine is a former actress married to former actor Jack Ames (Gene Hackman), who is dying of cancer. Jack asks Harry (Paul Newman), retired cop and detective and living with the Ames rent-free, to deliver a package to some address. This turns out to be payoff money that leads to the murder of another detective (M. Emmett Walsh, one of the shortest cameos he has ever given in a movie) who had investigated the decades-long suicide. The bare-bones plot involves some silly business with Harry's former Mexican sidekick who is more than a little inept, a fight in the beach that is awkwardly shot, some random shootings and a guy's head thrust into a plate of chicken wings.

The best parts of "Twilight" are the conversations between the real pros, the consummate actors of our collective film history, playing characters we love to listen to. Gene Hackman is always watchable despite not having much of a role to play here. James Garner is a magnetic actor who can make any line of dialogue sparkle - his last scene with Newman is a revelation in its subtlety. Same with Susan Sarandon, though her one scene of rage comes off a bit forced. The whole film could've chucked its plot and been about older people reminiscing about the good old days and that would've been right at home with writer-director Robert Benton (who previously helmed the wonderful "Nobody's Fool" with Newman, another graceful role about aging). But this movie truly belongs to Paul Newman, at the time 73-years-old, who brings finesse and grace to a tired detective who has seen it all. He is like fine wine and gets better with age, giving a slightly mediocre script and perfunctory murder plot a dose of real style and panache.  

Fantastic Tales of The Boy Wonder Who Grew Up

SPIELBERG (2017)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

In the 1970's, Steven Spielberg was the new boy wonder of filmmakers - an assured, enthusiastic, talented and young Hollywood film director who brought the house down with 1975's "Jaws" and 1977's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," the former being a genre movie that redefined suspense and thriller mechanics of B movies and the latter with a certain wondrous, exhilarating take on aliens visiting Earth without zapping to us to death. In the early to mid-1980's, however, he reached stratospheric heights as the King of Popcorn movies, blockbusters that in retrospect prove he knew not just how to entertain the audience, he had reached the populist movement that was once reached by Frank Capra. Whether it was Indiana Jones' swashbuckling adventures that redefined the summer escapist movie model or another alien tale of a lonely extra-terrestrial on Earth who wants to phone home, Spielberg wowed us with eye-popping spectacles and sentiment and genuine emotion. But his filmography started to include more serious work even in the 80's with his superb and controversial adaptation of Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" or his epic "Empire of the Sun." The tone changed extensively in the 1990's with "Schindler's List," a profoundly moving Holocaust story of a Nazi businessman who decided to save 1100 Jewish lives. Ever since then, Spielberg occasionally dabbled in escapism but his pop movies also had remnants of real-life terror using the prism of 9/11 with respect to aliens and privacy invasion namely the deliriously entertaining "Minority Report" and the frantic and effectively downbeat "War of the Worlds."

"Spielberg," which is written and directed by Susan Lacy, traces Steven Spielberg's career from his early days in suburbia making home movies, to his parents' divorce (reasons which were revealed only recently), to his days of making TV movies like "Duel," to hanging with the Movie Brats club (which included Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, to name a few), to making films that either were thrillingly escapist or serious-minded or both. Spielberg admits to not being the right director for "The Color Purple" (he was shy of showing some sex scenes, which he later depicted in films like "Schindler's List" and "Munich") though he doesn't share his thoughts on one of a couple of colossal disasters in his career, the dull and frenetic "Hook." He is shocked that nobody caught on with "1941," a bizarre comedy of Pearl Harborian proportions (one that John Wayne turned down due to its un-American attitude).

What is most fascinating aside from his films is Spielberg's upbringing as a Jewish kid who faced more than the occasional anti-Semitic remark. Therefore, as a result, Spielberg rejected his Judaism only until he made "Schindler's List" in 1993. Even more startling is that his parents divorced due to his mother having an affair with his uncle! This fact was unbeknownst to Spielberg and his sisters until very recently - their father claimed he was divorcing her but nobody knew Mama Spielberg was the real culprit. Considering Spielberg's films have touched on personal themes of divorce and father-son estrangement, this may have all played out very differently had the truth come out early in his childhood instead of when he reached his 60's.

 As for select film choices, the behind-the-scenes panic of trying to make the fake shark work in "Jaws" is the stuff of legend where Spielberg had to prove himself as a director by physically shooting in the water as opposed to a soundstage. His defense of the moral ambiguity of "Munich" is compelling, more so than the rather uneven though well-made depiction of that terrorist tragedy in 1972. It is fun to see a restored print of Spielberg's first major short film, "Amblin," and to hear Lucas describing this new boy wonder as a little too Hollywood-ish. I also love never-before seen photos of Kate Capshaw, current wife of Spielberg's, standing by the Bearded One's side while making "Schindler's List." Also of note is the personal connection he had to making "Close Encounters," especially the young kid in it who screams "Crybaby!" at his father (Richard Dreyfuss). This was the same word Spielberg used at his teared-up father when divorce was announced.

At the end of day, director Susan Lacy (who interviewed many people in his life, including Spielberg himself) shares Spielberg's own words as the filmmaker who is a "patriot," a man who is concerned with "separation and reconciliation." I always think of Spielberg as the artist who evokes the working class Everyman from suburbia as the hero, a hero from a time when America was Exceptional but also where the hero always wanted to go home. Spielberg applied it to fantastic thrillers and adventure stories, wondrous tales of aliens (both peaceful and antagonistic), and then eventually migrated to real-life historical tales of missing boys during WWII, American soldiers fighting the Great War or U.S. Presidents trying to work within the confines of a democracy for the greater good. Sure, Spielberg did it with sentiment, style and audience manipulation at its very core but those are tools of American and sometimes European cinema. He is not just an artist of populist cinema, he also makes the best mainstream movies. He is our Frank Capra and our Cecil B. DeMille.

Screenwriter Guidance Suggested

MR. MOM (1983)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

When "Mr. Mom" ended, I felt a certain emptiness. Ostensibly a comedy-drama about a married couple with one partner laid off while the other is forced to work, the movie is a mildly comical trifle, an innocuous film that treats its subject matter with far too much innocence. And yet, even for its early 1980's timeline, I am sure most audiences watched this film and said, "Eh, I have been thru that and it is much harder work." The urgency is missing in "Mr. Mom" because the film is a cartoonish comedy, not a real-life evocation in the form of a solid comedy-drama but hey, the movies glamorize just about everything.

Follow me on this simplistic tale. Michael Keaton is Jack, a Detroit car engineer fired by his company, or more appropriately, laid off to save money. He is married to Caroline (Teri Garr, always appealing) who, once she discovers that her hubby is unemployed, decides to pursue her dream of working in advertising. Caroline is trying to help a tuna company sell its expensive product to regain its profits - her radical idea is to reduce the price of tuna by half. This delights the CEO which I found hard to swallow.

Meanwhile Jack is Mr. Mom, a stay-at-home dad who is struggling to find an engineer job. No surprise that hiring is practically nil in Detroit in the early 1980's when car manufacturers started belly-flopping. So Jack watches three kids who make a mess of the house while the vacuum cleaner operates on its own, the washer acts up thanks to Dad mixing powdered laundry detergent with the liquid detergent, burns breakfast for the kids in the kitchen, and plays card games with Caroline's female friends. Oh, he grows a beard and lays low in the couch all day fantasizing about a soap-opera love affair with one sizzling friend of Caroline's (Ann Jillian). Before you know it, thanks to Bill Conti's rousing "Rocky" score, Jack becomes a fastidious Mr. Mom, cleaning the house top and bottom and making fantastic candlelit dinners while Caroline is working long hours and never makes it home in time for a meal. Do you see where this is going?

"Mr. Mom" is a laid-back, respectable enough comedy but it fails at being a comedy of manners. Michael Keaton does not milk the role for wildness and true comic fervor the way Chevy Chase might. The film needs a real dose of adrenaline as well, never quite going the extra mile. It plays it far too safe and although the main performances by Keaton and Teri Garr are sincere enough, the movie doesn't feel like it is enough. The foreseeable ending makes one wish that the whole screenplay by John Hughes was rewritten with more genuine heart than the slight pathos of a TV sitcom. "Mr. Mom" (a great title) never really cuts loose.

Interview with Catherine Mary Stewart: Seeing Beyond the Horizon

An Interview with Catherine Mary Stewart: 

Seeing beyond the horizon 

By Jerry Saravia
Reprinted with permission by Steel Notes Magazine

Back in the 1980s, you could call Catherine Mary Stewart the girl-next-door type. You could also call her the woman with dreams and aspirations, someone who saw beyond the horizon and caught wind of some sort of indiscernible future. That defining quality is omnipresent in most of her films, ranging from her acting debut in the bizarro, truly magnifique musical “The Apple” to her cult status in 1984’s subversive “Night of the Comet,” to even something as mindless as “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Even as the girl-next-door type in 1983’s “A Killer in the Family” or “The Last Starfighter” (a far meatier role), I always sensed Catherine as a woman who had ambitions, who sought some meaning beyond her current status in life. She has penetrating, sincere eyes and a wide grin -- the impression being that of a soul searching for something deeper in the universe (now that I think about it, the ending to “The Last Starfighter” is far more fitting than I thought). That is my impression and when you listen to her words about her career, past and present, you can’t help but think Catherine Mary Stewart is looking forward.

Robert Hays and Catherine Mary Stewart in 1987 TV-Movie Murder By the Book

Jerry Saravia: I looked through “Murder by the Book” with Robert Hays again. I am guessing I had seen it back in 1987, and I found it remarkable how innocent and playful it frequently was. You sort of play a femme fatale to a certain extent and you got to work with Fred Gwynne, Christopher Murney and Robert Hays. How did this project end up at your doorstep? 

Catherine Mary Stewart: I don’t remember the exact circumstances of how “Murder by the Book” landed in my hands, but I believe it was an offer. Believe it or not, I had to refamiliarize myself with who Robert Hays was. I quickly remembered him from “Airplane”, one of the funniest movies ever. Bob is an absolute doll. I grew up with Fred Gwynne as “Herman” in the “The Munsters.” It was one of my favorite series so it was surreal to actually work with him. What a presence. Christopher Murney is hilarious! He played a sort of “Columbo” character in “Murder by the Book.” He had us cracking up all the time.

JS: Aside from “Murder by the Book,” you have a host of television credits to your name. One I found noteworthy is the canceled soap, “Guiding Light,” where you played Naomi. Expand on the colorful character that you played in two episodes -- it must be the first time I have seen you speak with a Southern accent (“Has the butter slipped off your biscuit?”)

CMS: I believe I did 10 episodes of “Guiding Light.” That role was a lot of fun for me because it was different from any other role I’d played up to that time. “Naomi” was a shady kind of con-woman who mysteriously appears claiming to be friends with “Lorelei”, actress Beth Chamberline’s character. It was very liberating playing this broad southern character. My husband is from Virginia, so I borrowed some sayings from his family and him. The producer was pretty flexible about letting me play with the script so I would call up my in-laws and incorporate some of their flip little sayings in my dialogue. I wish I’d written them all down. They were hilarious. It was fun!

Catherine Mary Stewart in 1983's A Killer in the Family

JS: I want to ask, as a precursor to “The Last Starfighter,” about working on the intense 1983 TV movie, “A Killer in the Family.” You played James Spader’s girlfriend in it, a rather brief part where you are also a waitress at a pizza restaurant. Mr. Spader wasn’t really well known yet -- I am assuming you had a good rapport with Spader? And did you get to meet Robert Mitchum, playing the title role?

CMS: “A Killer in the Family” was one of my very first jobs in LA. One of the best fringe benefits of being an actor is the opportunity to work with or at least meeting acting legends. I don’t think we actually had a scene together but I met Robert Mitchum. It’s hard to describe how cool that is. James Spader really wasn’t the established actor that he is today, but it was evident that he was going places. He was very serious and focused. He was very kind to me.

Catherine Mary Stewart in 1984's The Last Starfighter

JS: I find it interesting that in the Reagan-era of the 1980s, a little movie about a sweet couple living in a trailer park, “The Last Starfighter,” became a sci-fi picture with a lot of heart. Most fascinating to me is the idea that Maggie joins her b/f in a space adventure at the end. He hints that they will come back. It seems to me that a lot of teen movies and/or teens in genre pictures featuring your first love resulted in being together eternally. Cameron Crowe’s “Say Anything” had the same notion. Looking back, would the movie have worked just as well if he said his goodbyes to Mags and took off. Did Mags have to be in the ship or was this a way of showing Mags was willing to move on?

CMS: I think the theme of “The Last Starfighter” spoke to the notion of possibility. This is what I love about the movie. It inspires those who are young and impressionable to reach for the stars and hold on tight, to paraphrase “Otis” (Vernon Washington). “Maggie” goes with “Alex” because she loves him and wants to be with him. “Granny” encourages her to go for it, to get out of the safety of the trailer park and explore her own potential. What I also love about “The Last Starfighter” is the
characters are not cartoons, which leaves them available to the young audience. The audience can relate.

JS: On a side note, ever play the Atari game of “The Last Starfighter” and, perhaps a silly question, was the actual game playable on the set?

CMS: I have not played “The Last Starfighter” game and, no, it was not playable on the set. All that digital stuff was put in later. Nick Castle just explained to us what was happening, basically. I believe he was off-stage giving us directions as to how to react to a blank screen.

Catherine Mary Stewart in 1980's The Apple

JS: We have to talk about “The Apple,” a sci-fi, supernatural, Faustian musical with Biblical overtones that I find hard to put out of my mind. I think it is quite good with a nervous, frantic energy about it, hardly a good-bad movie in my opinion. Working with such solid, magnetic actors like Joss Ackland and Vladek Sheybal is amazing for your debut film -- did they provide sage advice on how to proceed with your acting career?

CMS: “The Apple” was a wild and crazy ride. I was studying dance in London, England when I
auditioned as a dancer for the movie. I had no previous experience as a professional actor so when I was offered the lead role I had no idea of what to expect, nor did I really worry about it. There is a certain freedom to innocence. By the time we shot the movie I knew it inside out. I could have recited everyone else’s lines, so I don’t remember really feeling nervous. I was as prepared as I could be and I just took it one day at a time. I didn’t think about what it meant in terms of my career or the impact of the movie itself. I don’t recall Joss Ackland or Vladek Sheybal giving me sage advice. Joss was lovely and is an amazing actor, as was Vladek. They both had enormous charisma and talent. It was a pleasure to watch them work.

JS: Why did you have such a small part as Amy Smart’s aunt in “Love ‘n’ Dancing?” A movie about dancing, which you had studied, and you barely get to strut your stuff?

CMS: I guess it was the extent of the character within the confines of the story and script. It was a lot of fun to learn some ballroom dancing with the handsome Gregory Harris. I enjoyed the sort of stuck-up ballroom dancer character. My daughter Hanna made her film acting debut in that movie.

JS: I always ask of every actor the following: Is there a defining role or project that you would love to be part of in the future, especially now that you are taking up directing?

CMS: I want to be a part of making this industry more available to women of on every level. It is high time that there are stories about women of all ages, more women directors, writers and producers. I see it slowly evolving. I want to use whatever influence or power to help make that happen. I think audiences are starving

Catherine Mary Stewart and Jonathan Silverman in 1989's Weekend at Bernie's

JS: Lastly, you often play women who cannot be controlled by the man, nor do you play women who actively seek control in a relationship either -- which I find fascinating and noteworthy. Even with “Weekend at Bernie’s,” you stormed off from Jonathan Silverman’s advances when you discovered what a creep he was (of course, things change at the end). Did you actively search and hope throughout your career to play women, not girls, who were not victims?

CMS: I’ve never felt like a victim in real life and perhaps that comes off on screen or in auditions. I certainly come from a long line of very strong, intelligent, independent women. I have had the opportunity to play such a huge variety of characters and that is what I strive for. If I can encourage girls or women to believe in their own strengths and power through the roles I play, then I’m very happy. I find that the male audience enjoys strong female characters at least as much as the female audience. The idea that a female character is always subservient to a male character is an antiquated notion.

For more on Catherine, check out the following: Catherine Mary Stewart’s website: http://www catherinemarystewart.com Twitter: @cmsall FB: https://www.facebook.com/catherinemarystewart/

Bearing witness to the scream

THE WITNESS (2016)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Reprinted with permission by Steel Notes Magazine

38 witnesses in an apartment complex claimed they saw and/or heard a woman screaming in agony after said woman had just suffered the first of two stabbings in the street below. Nobody did anything, nobody called the police. This became a moral lesson for an adage that is now spoken and distributed ubiquitously: If you see something, say something. In the case of Kitty Genovese, a young 28-year-old woman who was brutally stabbed outside of her apartment in Kew Gardens, NY back in 1964, if you hear something, say something. In the entrancingly disturbing, emotionally draining and very moving documentary “The Witness,” people did in fact hear her screeching screams of help yet, allegedly, nobody saw her. What is most revealing is that witnesses did in fact call the police and someone did help her during her last remaining moments she had left. This is the first of many disclosed truths that were ignored at the time.

Told from the point-of-view of Kitty’s youngest brother, Bill Genovese (a Vietnam Veteran),“The Witness” is a full-throttle attempt to find out the truth, the whole concealed truth of Kitty’s murder. Bill Genovese takes on the obsessive and difficult task of finding the truth to a 50-year-old murder. He is a double amputee riding around in his wheelchair, sometimes at the crime scene and often visiting those who bore witness to the crime during the aftermath (many other witnesses have long passed). It is the work of a top-notch sleuth -- he even goes so far as to interview “60 Minutes” own Mike Wallace (who did a piece on it back in the day); Abe Rosenthal, former New York Times editor (who helped to craft the alleged myth of witnesses’ anomie); Gabe Pressman, an NBC reporter who said the Times, the paper of record, would not be challenged by the news organization, and of course the surviving witnesses. One witness, Sophia Farrar, a close friend of Kitty’s, was there to comfort the dying Kitty in the hallway of the apartment building. We also learn from a witness who knew Kitty as a young boy that the blood hand prints on the walls were not Kitty’s but his mother Sophia’s, the one who was trying to comfort Kitty. New York Times would not hear of it, claiming it was Kitty’s and photographs of the hand prints were taken.

Most fascinating is the coverage of Kitty’s life as a celebrated barmaid who was loved by many, a free spirit who loved life. Kitty was romantically involved with Mary Ann Zielonko and they were roommates in the Kew Gardens apartment they shared. Kitty is also shown in various photographs and home movies as an exuberant, spirited woman who longed to spread love around. In a touchingly tactile way, “The Witness” depicts an angelic presence who was compassionate and possibly empathetic. This makes her murder that much more disturbing -- a life taken away without any justification. The murderer, Winston Moseley (who died in prison in 2016), stabbed her repeatedly without any real provocation (allegedly, Kitty used a racial slur against him), disappeared and then promptly came back to stab her again. It was a vicious crime that should never have happened. This is what drives Bill Genovese’s search for the full truth. Could something have been done to help Kitty sooner? Were the police contacted promptly?

We learn the New York Times’ writer Martin Gansburg may have embellished the truth about the witnesses, and certainly misrepresented the facts which were dependent on the information supplied by police commissioner Michael Murphy (the opening paragraph of the original Times article states that witnesses viewed the murder in its entirety when, in fact, nobody saw the murder in its entirety since the killer walked away and then came back around to poor Kitty. Case in point, here is how the article’s paragraph read: “For more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.”) Apathy, however, was not part of the equation on that dreadful night. Bill finds that his older sister’s screams were heard by many in the apartment building yet (despite a couple of crucial witnesses) nobody saw the crime, and calls were made to the police though it is never established how many people actually called in. One certifiable fact is that 38 or more witnesses definitely heard the commotion and some looked out their windows, one even shouted at the killer to stay away from her. Still, when Bill hires an actress to relive Kitty’s last moments by delivering the high-pitched screams that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anything other than the agony of a wounded, dying animal, you wonder how anyone could think differently and not respond. It is a scene of undeniable power, making us feel more empathetic for Kitty than ever.

Director James Solomon has assembled a riveting documentary that serves as revisionist history, righting the wrongs of perceived anomie in NYC. Of course, if the New York Times article had been rewritten differently with more clarified accounts from witnesses, then Kitty’s name would not mean as much as it does today more than 50 years later. When Bill Genovese goes so far as to interview Moseley’s son, he still doesn’t get real satisfaction considering Moseley's son was unsure about meeting Bill whom he assumed was Mafia-related, hence Bill's last name! The conclusive irony is that Bill arrives at something much more fulfilling -- the Genovese family has finally embraced and celebrated Kitty rather than trying to forget her namesake via a headline-making murder. It is how she lived that spreads joy -- her name has been restored to the loving family member she always was. That is Bill’s satisfaction, and ours. 

Old Hollywood tale sparkles

RULES DON'T APPLY (2016)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I'd be remiss if I did not state that the opening 15 minutes of "Rules Don't Apply" were uninvolving and a little dull. Sometimes a film can evolve and engage us and I was taken aback by this Howard Hughes bio tale because it did not grab me. Then, something happens and the film got me when it decided to get more intimate with its characters. The intimacy shone like a bright light from the gods of La La Land and, by the end of the film, I was engaged by this entertaining, elegant love letter to Old Hollywood.

Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich) is a handsome young chauffeur for the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, a man that Forbes has yet to meet. At the start of the film set in the late 1950's, Forbes drives Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins, Phil Collins' daughter), a Baptist beauty queen from Virginia, to her screen test for a new Hughes film. Also in tow is Marla's mother (Annette Bening), a far more devout Baptist, who sees that Marla and Forbes are smitten with each other and doesn't approve (Forbes is already engaged). At this point, I thought this was going to devolve into some sort of cutesy, syrupy romance tale of puppy love with a loony Howard Hughes (Warren Beatty) only existing incidentally in the background. I was wrong as the film carefully segues, sometimes abruptly (scenes often just stop before cutting away rather abrasively to the next scene) between Hughes's business dealings, the Spruce Goose near-debacle and plane voyages, to Marla's ambitious plans of becoming an actress who eventually sleeps with Hughes after she has already been fumbling about with Forbes! Not such a pristine Baptist after all.

"Rules Don't Apply" works it melancholic charms best when it comes to Warren Beatty's interpretation of Howard Hughes as a capricious man whose wealth defined him and carried him to plateaus that few others could reach. Whether it was flying the massive plane called the Spruce Goose (which he likes to look at while eating a burger) or cavorting with young women, like Marla, or flying to any destination on a whim or requesting all the Banana Nut ice cream that is left, Howard is the megalomaniac whose tastes run hot and cold. He could get anything he wanted, whenever he wanted, at any price. Warren Beatty portrays Howard Hughes like an adult version of Beatty's own unpredictable stand-up comedy character from "Mickey One" from ages ago, making Leo DiCaprio's equally mercurial portrait of Hughes in 2004's "The Aviator" look normal by comparison. To be fair, the hearings over the Spruce Goose are not as invigoratingly portrayed as they should have been, yet everything else (including the controversy over a writer who faked a biography on Hughes, based on the real-life Clifford Irving) is exciting to watch. You'll even be chewing your fingernails during a hectic plane ride to Acapulco where Howard hardly seems to be attentive to his piloting.

Written and directed by Warren Beatty after a 15-year hiatus, "Rules Don't Apply" gets off to a rocky start and its pacing is unwieldy. Still, once it introduces Beatty's uncontrollable Hughes (almost always shown in deep shadows or silhouette), it flies with passion and verve. The love story between Marla and Forbes also gets a lift, as if Hughes' own passions enliven the potential romance between the couple. The finale is about as romantic and sweet as anything I've seen of late, and this is amazing because I did not care for this Marla/Forbes romance initially. "Rules Don't Apply" is a moody and often elegant tribute to Old Hollywood melodramas, in addition to being faintly melancholic over Hughes' later years. Exquisite and original, once the motor gets going. 

2/3 great, 1/3 blood-soaked Ten Little Indians

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"The Hateful Eight" represents some of the best and worst habits of Quentin Tarantino. On one hand, it has terrifically framed dialogue scenes inside a stagecoach and a Haberdashery where the characters expound on issues such as the Civil War, slavery and what it means to be black in America in the 1860's. On the other hand, the film can indulge forever in ways that would even make the late Sergio Leone (no stranger to overlong westerns - his "Once Upon a Time in the West" is exceedingly overlong but still a masterpiece) say, "how much longer are we going to be inside that Haberdashery?" It is that aspect of overlength and some grotesque violence that exceeds even my endurance test levels. Though not a complete success like Tarantino's other works, "The Hateful Eight" should hardly be dismissed either.

Tarantino's near 3-hour claustrophobic western has scraggy, scraggly hangman and bounty hunter named  John "The Hangman" Ruth  (Kurt Russell), his murderous criminal Daisy Domergue (black-eyed Jennifer Jason Leigh) whom he wants to hang at Red Rock, going to their destination in the snowy blizzard conditions of Wyoming inside a stagecoach. Along the hazardous journey, they pick up a bounty hunter named Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) who is supposedly pen pals with Abraham Lincoln and carries around a personal letter from the 16th President (Warren is notorious for killing various Confederate soldiers during the war), and a new Sheriff of Red Rock named Mannix (Walter Goggins) who just happens to be wandering the area and is hardly the smartest Sheriff in town. Cut to Minnie's Haberdashery where they serve jelly beans, hot coffee and stewed potatoes. A newly-appointed Mexican employee (Demián Bichir) is taking over for Minnie in this one-room log cabin with one bed, while other people passing by are staying at this remote location. They include Tim Roth as a Christoph Walz-type hangman, Michael Madsen as Joe "Cow Puncher"  who is on his way to visit his mother for Christmas (!) and a former Confederate General (Bruce Dern) who is so racist that it becomes almost spooky. Good luck with Major Warren dealing with this nasty individual.

There is much to savor in "The Hateful Eight" and the tension builds on occasion, especially during a sequence where the coffee poisons almost everyone who drinks from it. There is also one sequence where Major Warren confronts the elderly Confederate General with a tale of how the Major tortured the General's son - it is done in flashback with Jackson's voice-over and is likely to make most viewers squirm and laugh nervously at the same time. That is the underlying beauty of Tarantino and why he rocks cinematically harder than any of his copycats with his pulp revenge tales - when forceful dialogue and dazzlingly powerful performances create a sustained mood of wickedness crossed with black humor in ways that can make audiences unsure of how to react. That is Tarantino's game, playing the audience like a piano. By the end of the gross-out extended climax, he is not playing the audience anymore - it is more like getting your fingers broken in agony while exploding heads, blown-off genitals and an offputting hanging grace the 70mm screen. You are left wallowing in excess gore which means the filmmaker is also left wallowing in it. The late Sam Peckinpah, no stranger in his heyday to stomach-churning, slow-motion ballets of violence, might have vomited while watching this grotesquerie. Ever since the cartoonish aesthetically over-the-top violence of his "Kill Bills," Tarantino has become the victim of what he was once criticized of being in the "Pulp Fiction" years - a director who really loves violence so much that it becomes dangerously close to being the subject of his movie. Let me be clear, the violence does not become the subject but it left a bitter taste in my mouth, almost but not too bitter.

In hindsight, the nasty, unendurable violence of the last third of the film do not take away from the primal power of "The Hateful Eight." It is Tarantino's ode to Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" albeit with characters of excessively low moral repute. I will not soon forget Samuel L. Jackson's duplicitous nature or his discussions of racism in post-Civil War years (he may as well be talking about what is happening in America in the 2010 era); Jennifer Jason Leigh's savage blood-soaked smiles or her moment of grace when she plays the guitar; the shocked looks of Bruce Dern's Confederate General; Russell struggling to get a cup of coffee while handcuffed to Leigh; the entrance door to the Haberdashery that must be nailed shut each time it is opened and, of course, under the amazing lensing of cinematographer Robert Richardson ("Natural Born Killers," "Casino"), the few outdoor mountainous shots of Colorado standing in for Wyoming including an extended take of a Christ statue in crucifixion pose. There is plenty to admire about this western and I still love Tarantino as a demonically talented filmmaker who can still make smart, wickedly funny revenge tales. Yet "The Hateful Eight" is far too long in spots, far too bloody and a little too uneven. It is 2/3 a great film, and 1/3 a nauseatingly blood-soaked "Ten Little Indians."