Running from the law with belly laughs

THE WRONG GUY (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It is an amazing endeavor to find a lost treasure. Sometimes there is a movie that has either been forgotten or left out to sea with no appeal of rediscovery. "The Wrong Guy" is such a movie - a hilarious Canadian comedy by the hapless, silly-minded Dave Foley of "Kids in the Hall" and "Newsradio" fame. When you consider the studio either had faith in it or not and that it went direct-to-DVD a mere five years after it was filmed, you'd rightfully expect a disaster. Most comedies of the late 90's into the 2000 and 2010 era have been of the gross-out variety, packed with fecal or other bodily fluid gags. Not this movie. I also have not laughed so consistently at a movie comedy from this era in quite some time so to discover "The Wrong Guy," thanks to my wife who bought a copy of the film and laughed along with me, is tantamount to a miracle. A miracle of laughs and proof that Dave Foley is a comic treasure.

Dave Foley is the perfect hapless, naive dummy in a slew of predicaments. He is Nelson Hibbert, who says hello to every employee at an office building, reminding himself and everyone it is a big day. Nelson expects a promotion as president of am unnamed company, and is passed over because as the boss who is exiting reminds him, "You married my other daughter, who is a great disappointment to me!" Nelson is so upset he has a crying fit and confronts the boss who he discovers is murdered. Nelson has another crying fit, grabs the bloody knife and takes off. Right from the start, "The Wrong Guy" could easily fall apart with either too much black humor and not enough whimsy, or too much whimsy laced with too little black humor. The surprise is that "The Wrong Guy" actually aims for belly laughs laced with a cartoonish, wacky tone. This works in favor of Dave Foley who so perfectly encapsulates naivete and fallibility with honest-to-goodness charm that nobody else could've been an improvement. He's got the expert comic timing and the body language of a wiggly clown with no common sense.

There are so many terrific comic set pieces that I laugh at myself just thinking about them. The frequency of silliness is admirable, whether it is Nelson trying to avoid police by pretending he has an extensive nosebleed or wearing a towel over his head, or how he is ready to hotwire a jeep that has keys in the ignition. His habit of running from side to side down a road shows off a certain Buster Keaton tomfoolery, not to mention jumping onto an open train car and landing on the other side of the tracks! Adding to the tomfoolery is Colm Feore as a clever hitman who is the real killer of Nelson's boss, and he sidesteps the police easily but never seems to catch up with Nelson whom he believes is an FBI agent! There is also Jennifer Tilly who suffers from narcolepsy and falls in love with Nelson rather quickly but, hey, this is a 96 minute comedy. Also worth noting is the hilarious shenanigans of Detective Arlen (David Anthony Higgins), who finds that an FBI expense account allows him to frequent Broadway shows and get Asian blonde escorts rather than using the resources to catch the killer.
 
I laughed so much at "The Wrong Guy" that I even surprised myself at how often I was doubled over with laughter. As co-written by "The Simpsons" writer Jay Kogen and Dave Foley not to mention David Anthony Higgins, the film mixes homages to Hitchcock's thrillers of mistaken identity with a wink, especially "North by Northwest" and "Sabotage." In fact, this film is a huge improvement over Mel Brooks' own occasionally funny Hitchcockian homage spoof, "High Anxiety," in that it stays true to the hapless nature of its central character (I am sure I spotted a few "The Fugitive" nods as well). You can't help but root for Foley's Nelson. "The Wrong Guy" is exceptional comedy gold.  

Tall Man's last infernal outing

PHANTASM: RAVAGER (2016)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

Watching "Phantasm: Ravager" is like watching a series of rhythm-less outtakes cobbled together without any refinement or elegance. Unless you have seen the previous four "Phantasm" films, nothing here will make a lick of sense. I have seen them all and I still can't fathom what they were attempting here, though I have my suspicions.

Reggie (Reggie Bannister) is the main character as he is out on dusty roads leading to nowhere, holding a shotgun and ready to destroy the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Sometimes Reggie is at a remote farm with hopes of bedding a redhead young female, other times he wakes up as an aged patient in a hospital suffering from dementia, or he is out on the road in his beaten up Plymouth Barracuda and entering an alternate dimension where the Tall Man resides in what looks like Dante's Inferno with giant spheres populating the red sky. We still get the freakishly monstrous dwarves who appear at the mausoleum, and we get scenes where Mike (A. Michael Baldwin, who has been in all the films except number 2) appears and reappears without a whole lot of consistency - he has a golden sphere in his head though details are never forthcoming. The killer spheres reappear as well yet I was more interested in the blimp-sized spheres which we learn little to nothing about them. There is a brief appearance by Mike's dead brother, Jody (Bill Thornbury), though I thought he was a sphere himself in previous sequels. The film ends with a stunning hellish cityscape shot that opens the door for another sequel, or maybe this movie should've started with that final shot instead!

The "Phantasm" movies are cinematic puzzle pieces that never come together, but sometimes they came close. The trouble is that it is hard to get a handle on what is happening other than some otherworldly chase picture where we lose sight of who is being chased and why, and what sort of definitive closure we are supposed to get. Reggie is willing to settle his differences with the Tall Man as long as he gets his family back. He seems to, at one point, and yet the repetitive chase goes on with a group of gun-toting rebels who are rendered anonymous at best. Rocky (Gloria-Lynne-Henry), Reggie's love interest from Part III, returns so briefly and delivers so much charisma, you kinda wish the filmmakers opted to have her on the road with Reggie from the start.

"Phantasm: Ravager" is fair as far as umpteenth horror movie sequels go, thanks to the entertaining Reggie Bannister who has to carry the movie on his shoulders. The late Angus Scrimm is still terrifying though the hellish landscape of the 4K digital dimension looks like an ad for a video game, not a movie. I'd prefer this sequel over the endless, monotonous "Oblivion" but do not expect the surreal aspects of the first three films. 

Stranger Things in Upstate N.Y.

A QUIET PLACE (2018)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

My favorite kind of horror film usually has locations in isolated, sometimes uninhabited areas, specifically the woods ("Evil Dead" and its brethren usually come to mind). So "A Quiet Place" already had me at the forest with a farm somewhere in the middle of it. Of course, the threat are giant creatures with tentacle-like legs and arms and an acute sense of hearing (they bare a resemblance to the monsters in "Stranger Things"), so if you drop a lantern in your farmhouse, these creatures speed through the horizon of corn stalks and trees like speed demons and arrive to destroy whoever caused the noise. Sounds like a B, C or Z-grade schlock yet with director John Krasinski involved, it is classy A horror dependent on the unexpected and finding the humanity in a tight-knit survivalist family at the center of chaos or, basically, silence to prevent chaos.

Krasinski plays the father, Emily Blunt the pregnant mother, and they have two children (one of them is deaf, played by real-life deaf girl Millicent Simmonds, and one other is killed in an alarming early sequence). They all communicate by sign language because any sound of verbal communication can cause these killer creatures to emerge (I am amazed that they can't whisper, wouldn't that sound be in line with walking barefoot on sand?) Actually any sound is problematic - dinner is served on lettuce leafs, footstep markers exist on stairs and floors where no creaky wood noise will ring, and sand footpaths are laid out, between their domicile leading to the bridge and the local uninhabited stores. This family is not completely alone - others live by and also have to live by silence. The real suspense kicks in when we know Emily Blunt will have to give a natural birth, and she may have to scream in agony!

Krasinski as a director and actor kept me on my toes throughout "A Quiet Place." The movie is an unnerving, shivering, truly nail-biting experience at just barely 1 and 27 minutes. It is probably the right length for an old-fashioned chiller and there are enough intimate family moments for everything to fall in place - a family we sympathize with and we hope this predicament is resolved. How it is resolved is one of the film's neatest surprises - all I can say is that it has to do with an improved hearing aid.

As a pure exercise in terror (especially the dynamic sound design and abbreviated uses of silence), "A Quiet Place" fills the bill. I don't know if it will become a classic but it will stand as one of the niftiest scare surprises of the 2010 era. Watch out for that protruding nail on the basements steps!

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Elton John Must be Loved Properly

ROCKETMAN (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

My 1970's memory of the effervescent Elton John was always tuned to his oversized frame-colored glasses and his flamboyant costumes which were never garish nor were they otherworldly like David Bowie - to me, it meant an artist having a ball and we were invited to the party while he played rock and roll music in his trademark piano with the passion of entertaining the audience. He was the rockin', euphoric clown who could light up any stage with fireworks of giddiness, the guy who could bring down the house because he loved to perform. "Rocketman" may at first glace appear to be the standard biopic of a rock musician yet it has an inner joy and a deeper complexity than the norm, stemming from a man who found a way to battle his demons through his music - it was no easy road.

"The Bitch is Back" is played in an outstanding opening musical number at a rehab center, so you know this will be a spirited, hell-on-sparkling wheels journey. We watch Taron Egerton as Reginald Dwight with a later adopted stage name of Elton John, ready to divulge his past to strangers while wearing a devil costume. Right from the flashy opening number (partially sung by a younger Elton), we are invited to his world of pain and pleasure. Pain stems from a largely absent, scornful father who has no faith in Elton's musical abilities, and an indifferent mother (a stunning performance by Bryce Dallas Howard) who reacts with equal aloofness when Elton reveals his homosexuality. Pleasure is his music and he has an amazing gift of adeptly playing any classical piece on the piano just by listening to someone else play it. He has lyrics that scream his pain and loneliness yet composed with a lyrical liveliness so that it can't depress anyone too severely (unlike one record producer, yep, we have seen that scene before of a producer who sees no potential in the singer yet there is strong support from the band members, friends, etc). Elton is a revelation in the music scene, specifically in his Troubadour debut in Los Angeles where he performs "Crocodile Rock." The scene establishes a hesitation from Elton at first, and then the joy and ecstasy of performance and of the crowd melts away any reluctance. These scenes are electrifying and form the basis of the whole film - even in Elton's darkest hours, an upbeat tempo is subtly invoked because, hey, it is Elton John and he has to live. Music is what he lives by so lively musical numbers every once in a while is to be expected. 

The rest of the film follows the expected trajectory of any musical biopic, you know, the singer becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol, and there's a scene where Elton almost drowns in his swimming pool and visions of his past and the young Reginald at the bottom of the pool haunt him. Of course, we get the usual shenanigans of the rock star becoming aloof to the people closest in his life, including his (still) long-time lyricist and friend Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) - a relationship that could've used more depth. As I said, the expected tropes of this genre are clearly defined and no real risks are taken here (unlike say Todd Haynes's audacious "I'm Not There" that featured several different actors playing Bob Dylan accompanied by multiple interpretations). Despite its same-old, same-old narrative, what sets "Rocketman" apart from the norm is its infectious joy stemming once again from Egerton's persuasive performance as the bitchy, emotional Elton who may say goodbye to the yellow brick road yet familial pain still rests on his shoulders. He wants to be loved properly (the tempestuous nature of his sexual relationship with his music manager John Reid is hardly love) and he eventually finds it, postscript. Along with the equally infectious "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Rocketman" is a beam of light that welcomes music as an evolutionary step to being loved, to share in the poetry of attaining that love. Being properly loved is no easy task.

Funny is Eddie's Game

DOLEMITE IS MY NAME (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Why this movie was not made a decade ago or longer I'll never know. "Dolemite is My Name" is the perfect comedic role for Eddie Murphy, based on the real-life comedian/filmmaker known as the Godfather of Rap, the late Rudy Ray Moore. This is a delectable match made in heaven and I am glad to say it is one of the best Eddie Murphy movies ever made. We can all now forget "Norbit" and his shortchanged role in "Tower Heist" - Eddie Murphy electrifies the screen and proves once again, with the right script and director, he can knock our socks off. 

Set in the 1970's at the height of the blaxploitation era, Rudy Ray Moore (Murphy) wants to make his mark in the world, to showcase his talent beyond just making comedy records with "ghetto expressionism." He works at Dolphin's of Hollywood record store in L.A. and is consistently bothered by a homeless man named Rico who is a street-talking raconteur. Moore also works at a nightclub where his emcee standup barely causes a rift in between singing engagements. One day, Moore is inspired and takes notes while recording Rico's stories. Thus, at the local nightclub, Dolemite is born, a pimp who tells the audience all sorts of profanely (accent on the profane) funny rhymes, the kind you don't want to recite to grandma. Moore was always somewhat racy but this kind of profane humor mirrors Eddie Murphy's own rawer than raw days from 30 years ago.

But the story does not end there - Moore wants to make a Dolemite movie with boobs, action, violence and kung-fu. Rather than the straight "Shaft" movies or the various blaxploitation efforts by cigar-chomping Fred Williamson, he wants to play it for laughs, procuring a local playwright of serious drama to pen the script, Jerry Jones (Keegan-Michael Key). Ray knows zilch about directing and eventually gets D'Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes) to direct - a filmmaker known for having appeared as an elevator operator in "Rosemary's Baby." To say D'Urville is reluctant to take part in an amateur flick is to be polite - he resents being there and hates the script. Clearly, the film is done for laughs to the point that a raucous sex scene breaks down the ceiling in an obvious soundstage, not to mention watching Ray beating up villainous minions with no grace or style whatsoever (Jim Kelly he's not). Everything that could go wrong, should go wrong yet surprisingly it all works out.

"Dolemite is My Name" is delirious fun, wackily written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, both of whom penned the equally hilarious and inventive "Ed Wood" back in 1994. "Dolemite is My Name" would be the perfect double bill on low-budget, non-Hollywood filmmaking with "Ed Wood" - both films feature zanily enthusiastic filmmakers who want to entertain, at any cost. Whereas Ed Wood was a dubious creator who had an insane vision of the world, Ray Moore wants the audience to have a good time, to give them their money's worth. When he watches the premiere of the film with hundreds of spectators, he has the widest grin of self-satisfaction, reciting the dialogue to the crowd with a zeal that is contagious.

With a gallery of colorful supporting performances from the likes of Snoop Dogg, Chris Rock, Da'Vine Joy Randolph (truly a star in the making as a single mother who joins his crew), Craig Robinson and reliable pros like Bob Odenkirk as a film producer and a truly spry Wesley Snipes, "Dolemite is My Name" is purely engaging, foul-mouthed fun with a new spin on the oft-told filmmaking stories we have seen countless times before. If there is one thing I miss, it is those notable moments of truth that Eddie sometimes allows us to peer in. Still, let's not get too critical - Eddie Murphy is infectious, and so is the movie. Funny is his game once again. 

A Rudimentary Thinking Man's Thriller

BRAINSTORM (1983)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

What I remembered most about "Brainstorm" when I first saw it back in the 1980's on good old cable were the images of a car's point-of-view as it flew off the main road towards the mountain side. I also recall images of a man having sex with a woman, again from his point-of-view. These images were recorded in 70mm and, on video in the 80's, much of the image size was lost as was the impact. Nowadays, on Blu Ray and DVD, we can get the widescreen version we all richly deserve. Now as for the storytelling basics, "Brainstorm" is often stunning to look at yet dramatically inert and it shortchanges its initial ideas in favor of a rudimentary thriller format.

The idea is remarkable: a sophisticated technological headset allows one to view and record another person's sensations, visually and emotionally. There is something else it can do - it can directly tap into past emotional memories of said individual wearing the headset. The institute behind this amazing discovery has two brainiac scientists, Michael (Christopher Walken) and chain-smoking Lillian (Louise Fletcher). The head of the institute behind this research (Cliff Robertson) has other ideas on how to use this device, for military application of course and quite possibly brainwashing.

"Brainstorm" is shot on two different ratios, so that whenever we enter someone's subconscious via the headset, the film switches from 35mm to 70mm and it is richly detailed and amazing to behold. There is also a terrific montage of when Michael first met his estranged wife (Natalie Wood, sadly her last role and underused) as they talk about inventors like the Wright Brothers, their marriage, their happier times. At first, "Brainstorm" evolves with a sure hand as we discover what other facets lurk beneath such an inventive device - in the wrong hands, it can obviously be used for dastardly purposes. In another instance, without revealing who the character is, it can be used to record someone's death and thus the person viewing such a recording can suffer the same deadly symptoms unless they quickly switch off the controls. This is such an intriguing idea for a movie that unfortunately such mind-blowing concepts are never fully explored. "Brainstorm" decides to become a race-against-time thriller with the scientists against the powers-that-be and all emotional attachment to the characters and to the powerful device and its implications are shoved aside. It is about good scientists vs. a villainous military command - why resort to scenes of archaic robots running amok and computers destroying an institute while the bad guys are unable to enter the facilities?

I liked "Brainstorm" for the most part yet, during its concluding third act, there is a shaky abruptness and a hasty resolution that give us so little to contemplate (though the final scenes that show an almost death-like paralysis of one character is quite emotionally stirring). "Brainstorm" doesn't want to deal with the ethics and morality of such a scientific breakthrough - it assumes that the set up is enough along with some minor thrills. Intriguing to be sure but could have been so much more.  

It is what it is

THE IRISHMAN (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Let's get this out of the way immediately: "The Irishman" is not "GoodFellas" revisited nor is it close to the heart of "Mean Streets" or the excesses of "Casino." "The Irishman" is a different kind of mob film, it has an elegiac tone and a disquieting unease about itself. Whereas the earlier Martin Scorsese mob films focused on the rapturous allure and romantic, thrill-seeking pleasures of being a gangster, this film is more about the business model without any passion or yearning to be in that underworld. It is more stately and shows an even more insidious nature about the mob than Scorsese has shown before.

Based on Charles Brandt's fantastic and hotly debated book "I Heard You Paint Houses," we get the lead character Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a Teamster and meat-packing truck driver and occasional contract killer for the Northeast Pennsylvania mob - he is a Hoffa man at heart. Once Sheeran meets with the calculating mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci, exquisitely restrained), first at a gas station and then at a restaurant, the motions are set in - he is deeply entrenched in the mob and with the Teamsters. Sheeran moves quickly through powerful circles, introduced to hotheaded Jimmy Hoffa (an absolutely mesmerizing Al Pacino) who is naturally the Teamsters president. Hoffa is in a world of trouble with attorney general Robert Kennedy (Jack Huston), and is looking at jail time not to mention insulting a Teamster vice president in NJ and captain of the Genovese family, another hothead named Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano (Stephen Graham). The scenes between Hoffa and Tony Pro have an electrified tension, one accusing the other of racial slurs, lateness for a meeting, and the importance of wearing suits - it is both comical and furiously intense.

"The Irishman" unfolds at a leisurely pace with a series of flashbacks at its center, all told from the point of view of an older, sicker Sheeran at a nursing home. There is no breakneck pacing from the days of "GoodFellas" and no rock and roll soundtrack with the Rolling Stones - it is more sedate yet interest never flags (and we get  far less showier soundtrack tunes in the style of Jerry Vale). The slower pacing and the lyrical rhythms may be Scorsese's own way of using Sergio Leone's gangster opus "Once Upon a Time in America" as its framework (both films starred De Niro and Pesci) though I think John Ford's own elegiac "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" could serve as its filmic antecedent - Ford looking back at the Western genre with tangible strokes of sadness and deglamorization could be how Scorsese views his own past revitalizing takes on the mob. Even more saddening is seeing how Sheeran, in his ailing years, picks his own coffin and where he should be buried while trying to reconnect with what's left of his family and failing miserably. He seems like a warm-hearted guy yet he is also a remorseless killer who is estranged from his daughters and never spends a whole lot of time at home. His one daughter, Peggy (played by Lucy Gallina as a young girl and Anna Paquin as an adult), sees a disturbing side to Sheeran, one day privately noticing him packing a gun before claiming he is off to work. Peggy has no real love for Russell either, yet she is all smiles as an adult around the charismatic Hoffa.

After "The Irishman" was over, I still did not get a firm handle on Frank Sheeran and maybe I am not meant to. Sheeran merely follows orders like the WWII soldier he once was, but never seems emotionally involved in anything. He has a look of concern over JFK's death, sensing Hoffa knows more than he is leading on. Sheeran is fiercely devoted to two men in his life, Russell and Hoffa, and one of them will be betrayed. Finally, he is isolated from the rest of the world in a nursing home and deservedly so. De Niro has a coolness, an indifference to the world around him as Sheeran - everything is business as usual under direct orders from the mob. Those of you looking for the sympathetic Henry Hill-type who is changed by his experiences in the mob despite loving the life will not find it in the remote Sheeran (though he is not as remote as the robotic Ace in "Casino"). One chilling scene, in retrospect, has Sheeran reassuring Hoffa everything is fine during a car ride - the tension is felt in every frame without heightening it one bit and we sense a subtle sense of regret from Sheeran. Ultimately "The Irishman" sends a fervent chill to the bone throughout its running time, eerily accompanied by the opening and closing strains of the Satins' song "In the Still of the Night." It removes the glamour and allure of the mob completely and tells us "it is what it is."