Exciting and familiar visual tonic of a movie

 THE VAST OF NIGHT (2019)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I have seen my share of films about aliens in the sky in small, remote towns and I never tire of seeing them. There is something about the remoteness of a small town, a small community, that feels germane to the oft-told concept of otherworldly visitors. "The Vast of Night" works wonders with imagination and skillful direction and it is a crackerjack story that could have lead anywhere, other than where it leads. Maybe I was hoping for some other entity, maybe something more mysterious and ancient and its lead up to an alien mothership just made me feel a tad cheated. 

Set in the fictional town of Cayuga, New Mexico during the late 1950's era, we are introduced to a quick-witted radio DJ for WOTW station, Everett (Jake Horowitz), and a loquacious and excited 16-year-old switchboard operator, Fay Crocker (Sierra McCormick). They both walk to their jobs from the school gym late at night, discussing his tape recorder and she talks it up with reference to magazine stories of future technologies like having a phone with a video signal! Once they start their work for the night, Fay starts receiving a call with an ominous, clickety tone. No one knows what it is and as she calls various people in the community, they have no idea (other than one nervous caller) and then they are cut off. When Fay reaches out to Everett, he is nonplussed to learn that his news broadcast was cut off by this unknown signal. Later, Fay gets a call from a man who is aware what that signal is. An interview takes place as this mysterious man's call is played live on the air. 

A striking, often mesmerizing feature debut by director Andrew Patterson, "The Vast of Night" is sort of a grainy, low-key, dimly lit movie that somebody found in their VHS collection and hadn't played it in years. In that sense, there is something foreboding about the whole movie as it is wrapped in a deluge of paranoia and wonder. Both Horowitz, who exhibits a beatnik cool factor about himself, and McCormick's Fay stand out and their banter and tech-trivia conversations are a joy to listen to. Yet, despite the expected factor that it's all about aliens (as I said, I am a fan of those stories), I was still hoping for something more, something more cataclysmic that did not revolve around the typical otherworldly presence. "The Vast of Night" has three or four standout sequences that have everything to do with an active mobile camera in endless tracking shots such as roaming around town at a breakneck speed, or when a shot is held for 10 minutes as it focuses on Fay switching calls trying to decipher that odd sound, or when Everett and Fay walk in an early opening sequence. Such tell-tale, tantalizing moments seem to lead to an ending that could have been a supernova of thrills and surprises. We see an alien mothership and it is quite a sight...but not an unfamiliar one. Still, such a gripe doesn't take away from its overall hook on me. "The Vast of Night" is often quite a visual tonic of a movie and I'll take it over the middling repetitions of "Midnight Special."

Precious and Mercifully Short

 THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Wes Anderson has an uncanny ability to hook us in to his whimsical stories, and then they sometimes come up short with whimsy slowly overwhelming everything. This isn't always true of Anderson's formal, symmetrical plots and strategic camera placements - only "Asteroid City" and "The Darjeeling Limited" are tedious exercises ("The French Dispatch" is 2/3 wonderful and then 1/3 of flagging interest). Anderson has now crafted something that feels akin to his whimsical, cartoonish look at the world and it is Roald Dahl's short story, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar." Wes Anderson has adapted one of the author's works before ("The Fantastic Mr. Fox," unseen by me) but this one is light on its feet and has a hilarious, breakneck and consistently buoyant tone. It is precious and mercifully short.

The story begins with Roald Dahl himself (Ralph Fiennes) telling the story from his book about the wealthy Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch, who has a tremendous voice that can rattle your cage) who spots an unusual book in his friend's library. The thin book is written by Dr Chatterjee (Dev Patel) and it is his patient who can see without his eyes. Say what? That man is Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley) who proves to his doctors his magical ability by having his face completely bandaged and walking through hospital corridors and riding a bike with ease. How is that possible? Khan claims it is a part of the body he has trained for years to manage such an unfounded ability, but what part? We never find out.

Most of "Henry Sugar" is wonderfully adroit and seamlessly edited - it is a near-perfect little film. My objections are the sliding of sets revealing one different setting after another (something which I also found annoying in "Asteroid City"). I was also a bit miffed to watch the actors breaking the fourth wall and read the full Dahl text by including the descriptive prose. Not everything has to be word for word, but then again it is marvelous to watch a film based on a book using such deliciously pronounced words.

Compelling, deeply troubling and uneven Aronofsky

 THE WHALE (2022)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The sight of a morbidly obese man in Darren Aronofsky's "The Whale" is not a disturbing or offensive one at all - it is the main character's emotional frailty and stubbornness that is the offense. Director Aronofsky and Brendan Fraser's amazingly layered performance lends the film its gravitas and importance. 

Fraser is Charlie, the obese professor living alone in a dimly lit apartment. He struggles to get up, struggles to shower, and never answers his unlocked door. He doesn't struggle for food since he orders pizza and it arrives at his doorstep, money in the mailbox for a delivery driver he never sees. Charlie tries to teach creative writing to students via zoom on his laptop yet he covers his camera so the students don't see him. His visiting nurse and best friend, the long-suffering Liz (Hong Chau), puts up with much and checks his blood pressure. She insists he go to the hospital since the blood pressure is too high and yet Charlie stubbornly refuses (I think some of us who have been caregivers at one point or another have been there and understand). Liz could stubbornly refuse to bring him meatball subs but she still does, out of some obligation or unrequited love. 

Charlie's life and backstory doesn't end there. His mean, conflicted, excessively selfish daughter Ellie (played by Sadie Sink) shows up only because Charlie asked her to. She's failing high school and he opts to write her English essays for her- he also decides to bribe her by promising her his 120,000 dollar life savings. She doesn't cave in too easily though she still shows up to his place, often in an understandably angry mode. Then there's the Christian missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) who enters Charlie's apartment at the most inappropriate moments. Wait till you meet Charlie's ex-wife (an unrecognizable Samantha Morton), an emotional wreck who has many numerous contentious issues revolving around him. 

"The Whale" is at its most impactful when we see Charlie's devoted friend Liz and her attempts to take care of Charlie which are so strongly depicted, showing such unconditional love for a self-destructive man, that I was floored by her character. They have a history involving her deceased brother's relationship with Charlie that sharply ended his own marriage. Liz's conversation with the missionary is also one for the ages - Hong Chau deserves every award for that scene alone. Unfortunately, I found myself uninterested and distracted by Charlie's impossibly unforgiving and completely hateful daughter, Ellie. This is not Sadie Sink's fault because it is her character, not the performance, that grates even if she does eventually come around. I just found her an unlikable girl who can't begin to understand what her father is going through. I have no problem with unlikable characters in films or novels as long as we are asked to feel more measure of empathy. I did not find it with this vaguely two-dimensionally monstrous girl - as I said, her anger is clear and embittered yet her actions are impossible to identify with (of course, I am not a high school teen girl in the 2020 decade so sue me for not understanding). Sure, some critics have lauded and despised Charlie as if he's portrayed as some monstrous behemoth. Not true at all since Fraser shows great humanity despite his self-destructiveness - Ellie is the destructive princess who may as well be hanging out in "Game of Thrones" land and placing crushed Ambien in everyone's food. Charlie might have ruined his family but he is mostly ruining himself. 

I ended up admiring "The Whale" a lot more than expected yet still resisting the grotesque depiction of Ellie and the largely unnecessary character of the naive missionary - the latter seems like an artificial addition despite originally appearing in the Samuel D. Hunter play. Perhaps that is director Aronofsky's point - to illustrate that certain people in Charlie's life are far more grotesque and flawed than Charlie himself. Or maybe Charlie is more guilt-ridden than anyone and his freedom will be attained once he forgives himself (Liz is the exception). "The Whale" is uneven, frustrating yet compelling.

Philadelphia State of Mind

 ERASERHEAD (1977)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
One of the top 20 films of all time

Henry Spencer is not an enigmatic character, he is a lost individual who has no sense of identity. It is not his fault - how do you find your identity in a world of obscenely loud industrial machinery sounds and intense humming radiator noises? The beauty of a bewildering cult classic like David Lynch's "Eraserhead" is that story interpretation isn't as important as the held-back emotions and feelings, notably Henry's. "Eraserhead" is the one of the most haunting, violently troubling and exasperating disturbances of fractured human souls in cinema history, more threatening and heart-stopping than the surrealism of Luis Bunuel. There is no safety net and not much of an escape - you are held in a trance of nightmarish proportions at least until the end.

Jack Nance plays Henry as some dark-suited factory worker who first appears looking back at something, as he comes home from work, walking past mound-sized mud hills and pools of dirty water. He lives in an apartment that is squarely hidden away from society - call it an entrapment as our ill at ease protagonist feels throughout this movie. The lobby is deserted and the doors to the elevator take forever to open and close. His apartment which looks small and sullied has one window facing a brick wall and piles of mulch. The drawers of his dresser have objects that don't belong, like a bowl of water with coins in it! The next-door neighbor is a sultry woman (Judith Anna Roberts) who seems to have emerged from some B-movie noir and her few exchanges with Henry have an intoxicating stillness. The sounds from the outside world though overwhelm everything, including the humming from the radiator (that radiator houses the Lady in the Radiator who has extremely puffed-up cheeks singing about Heaven). When Henry visits Mary, his girlfriend (Charlotte Stewart), he has to deal with her parents who are cooking "man-made chickens" which spurt blood when you try to cut into them ("Just cut them up like regular chickens," says Mary's father who has bad knees). Mary gets occasional epileptic seizures and is also pregnant, a fact the mother disapproves of. Mary's mother also disapproves of Henry though she tries to make a pass at him. I have not even gotten to the subhuman, deformed baby devoid of limbs who cries and sometimes laughs, particularly at Henry's failure at continuing an infidelity with the woman next door. That last bit made me laugh. Oh, and the scarred man pulling levers that emit sparks in the unreal world, possibly controlling Henry's sperm count.

"Eraserhead" is not a digestible narrative nor is it completely surrealistic. Within the unreal world lies a real world and David Lynch, in his striking directorial debut, is saying the real world is hardly manageable but the unreal world, that's suicidal. Unlike Luis Bunuel's first film "Un Chien Andalou" which was just pure surrealism and not of nightmarish intent, "Eraserhead" is a blackened, smoky and fractured nightmare of Henry's own nightmare world. The whole film is his subjective look at himself and he's trying to break away from this sickeningly unhealthy world and find solace. Mary is his nagging wife who can no longer live with Henry and that endlessly crying, misshapen baby. Henry is left alone to take care of it and the baby becomes a nagging, sickly child whom, depending on how one sees it, is killed by Henry - why is hard to say other than putting it and himself out of misery. Meanwhile, we are treated to imagery of dead and living sperm flung from one space to another (one is a comical stop-motion animated sperm that grows larger and larger); Henry's severed head that travels from the unreal to the real world and is used in an eraser factory, and lots of billowing, unhealthy smoke and eraser shavings that look like falling snowflakes. Did I mention how Henry's head is sometimes replaced with the baby's head as it is screaming? Are these moments Henry's own nightmares, separate from the real and unreal worlds? 

Then there's the appearance of the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near) - she is the one that could bring him solace (she steps on Henry's sperm that falls onto the stage while she performs a dance routine). Others have interpreted her as Death but I am not sure that Henry's escape from the real (and possibly unreal) world means he's dead and has committed suicide. In the most spiritually heightened final sequence I've ever seen, amidst the soundtrack of choral voices, Henry is hugged by the Lady in the Radiator and she smiles. Henry seems relieved, as does the audience. He might have temporarily found solace. 

David Lynch has described "Eraserhead" as some sort of Philadelphia state of mind, the real Philadelphia story nobody talks about. It can also be seen as the strangest coming-of-age story ever of a parent who is unfit to be one. Or it can be the strangest, more bizarre take of an unfit parent who is unfit for society. Henry might have found peace with a deformed angel instead of a deformed baby, but it seems he's at peace by the end. Lynch's masterful and transcendental "Eraserhead" will be studied and debated for ages to come.  

We must increase our bust!

 ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It took a half-century to adapt Judy Blume's archetypal and "controversial" novel "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" to the big screen. Author Judy Blume has always had reservations about having her popular pre-teen novels adapted but have no fear, Margaret is finally here. I have never read a Judy Blume novel so I know I am not the intended target audience but this movie is jolly good fun with a zestful Abby Ryder Fortson as Blume's 11-year-old protagonist who is concerned about issues such as her period. Like I said, I know I am not the intended audience.

That is not all there is to the movie as Margaret is unhappy moving from their NYC apartment to a house in the New Jersey suburbs. Both gleefully happy and spirited about the move is Margaret's mom, Barbara (Rachel McAdams), who is gung-ho about leaving her teaching job since dad (Benny Safdie) got a promotion (imagine not having both parents work). Margaret makes new friends almost immediately including her neighbor Nancy Wheeler (Elle Graham), who indoctrinates Margaret into a girl's group where they talk about bras, boys and their impending periods. They are all classmates at the same school and pretty soon Margaret adapts rather quickly to this new environment. 

"Are You There God?" doesn't stop there as we also examine Margaret's uncertain religious affiliations since her mother is a non-practicing Christian and her father is a non-practicing Jew. Which persuasion fits with Margaret always asking God for advice and solutions to pressing problems? Her colorful, blunt-as-a-whistle grandmother (ideally cast Kathy Bates) takes Margaret to temple though she has no idea what the rabbis are saying since they speak Hebrew. Her parents and her grandmother are deciding her affiliation for her without asking her what she wants. 

These were questions I was far more invested in than Margaret's period issues (though the conversations between her and her friends are animated and quite funny especially about bra sizes and their daily physical exercise of wanting to increase their bust). I was also invested in Rachel McAdams as the mother who tells Margaret in a beautifully written and sensitive scene about why her own mother and father have disowned her (interfaith marriage has something to do with it). McAdams always come alive on screen - she sizzles and charms us every step of the way. 

Abby Ryder Fortson is exceptional as the Margaret of a time (the year is 1970) that no longer exists. She is not only authentic in her performance and warmly sensitive and engaging, she also looks like a girl from that period (no pun intended). She is the heart and soul of this wonderfully tender movie and I hope Judy Blume is proud of that.

Walking Contradiction

 AMERICAN DHARMA (2018)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Steve Bannon is an articulate, educated man who ended up on President Trump's team as an advisor and you wonder how that happened. Did Trump pick him because he was a fan of Breitbart news where Bannon had once worked? Not even Bannon truly knows and he comes across in Errol Morris' documentary, "American Dharma," as a man of foolhardy convictions, discussing politics and globalization in such broad strokes that I couldn't figure out where he really stood or what he was getting at. 

There is nothing I can say about Steve Bannon, the surly, often unkempt man of Trump's team (who still looked unkempt even while wearing a suit) that everybody already knows but there are a few details I had not known. When Bannon was present at his daughter's West Point volleyball practice, he saw the words "MADE IN VIETNAM" on the uniforms. This proved disconcerting to him and finally made him angry about the state of the U.S. when clothes were being manufactured in a country where 50,000 American lives were lost during that horrible war. Eventually director Errol Morris, who asks him direct questions and reveals his own political views (sort of a first for Morris), digs deeper when Bannon reveals the insight into dharma, that is the consistency of being true to one's nature. Bannon brings up films he loved that inspired him and his ideology such as "Twelve O'Clock High," "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "The Searchers." I still don't see how these movies shaped his populist views or his feelings on illegal immigration, the shipment of jobs overseas, or globalization. "Twelve O'Clock High" is about Air Force bombers in World War II and I wondered what Bannon thought the movie was actually about. The enemy of our nation according to Steve Bannon is globalization, not Nazis (a question about Charlottesville is left open with no real concrete answers). The only cinematic parallel I can see unmistakably is when Bannon discusses "Chimes at Midnight" and Falstaff's role as a man who knew that King Henry V would forsake him because, that's what happens. Yet Welles' teary-eyed Falstaff sees that he lost a friend, someone he trusted - one of the most emotional scenes of Welles' career as an actor. I thought Bannon would see Trump as the king who forsakes him but Bannon interprets according to his own ideology. I suppose they were not really friends. 

"American Dharma" can be often riveting and Bannon, filmed at different strategic camera angles inside a constructed aircraft hangar (he was also a political strategist as well), is sometimes mesmerizing to listen to. He is not an obvious crackpot and I do not agree with all of his ideological views yet I am not asked to it. What may come across as fascism to some, others may see as reasonable right-wing politics for a nation that lost its way. Director Morris never quite asks the harder questions about Bannon's contradictions or they are never answered - Bannon often leaves things dangling especially thinly veiled populist views that do not mesh with his relationship to the elites. Bannon is more excited and informative when discussing Trump's successful and controversial campaign, and the strategy of beating Hillary Clinton. 

Morris has often succeeded in past documentaries with just observing his subjects through the use of his Interrotron camera that allowed the subjects to be looking at us and we studied them - in other words, let them do all the talking. With Steve Bannon, Morris is present on camera, often seen from behind. He should have let Bannon do all the talking and we would've seen Bannon as the white nationalist who consistently contradicts himself. In "American Dharma," he is just a dangerously hollow personality. 

Tickled Pink By Its Feminist Tract

 BARBIE (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

After watching the colorful, vibrant and thoroughly pleasurable "Barbie," I felt the need to have a delicious ice cream sundae. Yeah, there are movies like "Babette's Feast" and "GoodFellas" that make you feel hungry because they feature copious amounts of food. "Barbie" is not filled with 31 flavors of ice cream every few minutes but its delicate shades of pink and light strawberry colors in its art direction and production design, particularly of various Barbies' homes, will make you want ice cream. I am certainly not buying a Barbie doll after seeing it.

In a hilarious opening sequence and nod to "2001: A Space Odyssey," girls are seen in a rural region playing with baby dolls. Suddenly a monolith, well, actually Barbie herself (winningly played by Margot Robbie) appears, transfixes the girls who throw away and destroy their dolls - Barbie is the Second Coming. Then we venture into Barbie Land, an actual place that is practically all pink-colored featuring houses with no walls and landscapes that are as fake as anything in "Asteroid City." The Barbies all say hello to each other every morning, especially Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie. She starts her day floating down to her cute convertible and says hello to all the Kens, including the winsome Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling). Beach Ken is only happy when Barbie says hello to him. Beach Ken also surfs and other Kens mock him when his surfboard hits the plastic wave that makes him bounce off and fall right back on the beach. Beach Ken wants to have a night together with Barbie yet she is only interested in Girls Night where they all sing and dance to their hearts' content (naturally, Ken has no idea what spending the night actually entails). One night while Barbie is dancing with the others, she screams out, "Do you guys think about dying?" She tries to correct herself and the following day, she doesn't feel the same. Her feet become flat and, horror of horrors, she has cellulite! She consults the help of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) who tells her to venture out to the Real World. Not if Ken can't come along! 

It turns out that in the Real World, a sour-faced preteen named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), the presumed owner of the Stereotypical Barbie, might have infused an existential touch of mortality in her Barbie doll. It turns out that Sasha's mother (America Ferrera) actually had a hand in it since she is a Mattel employee and has played with Barbie dolls all her life. Just to be clear, Real World and Barbie World coexist and so Barbie and Ken show up as fish-out-of-water oddities in Venice Beach, California where Barbie discovers sexual misconduct like a man smacking her posterior. Meanwhile, the enthusiastic Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) gets word of what is happening and hopes to put Barbie back in her box.

"Barbie" is shrewdly written by Greta Gerwig (also the movie's director) and Noah Baumbach and they bring on some inventive ideas about Barbie World, mainly that the women are all doctors, lawyers, astronauts and one is a Nobel Prize Winner while the men just cavort in the beach and surf while displaying their abs. Women have succeeded in this world yet in the Real World, they are not holding as many positions of power. When the CEO of Mattel is a male and all the associates are male (other than Ferrera who is simply a desk employee), the movie erroneously claims that women are not the success they are in Barbie World. This is a fallacy since our real reality shows women in powerful positions so it is unclear to me what the movie is trying to say other maybe our actual Planet Earth is not Barbie Land? 

The movie also shuts itself down with the introduction of Ferrera when we want to know more about the daughter, Sasha, though of course Sasha doesn't play with Barbie dolls (she calls Barbie a fascist). Ferrera ventures with Sasha and Barbie back to Barbie Land which has been turned by Beach Ken into a man's paradise of horse iconography and fur. Yeech! There is a turning point when Ferrera has her speech about woman's place in society in terms of appearance and emotions that brings the movie back up to speed (it is quite a sobering speech and, you bet, it is pushing an agenda but the movie was leading up to it. It doesn't feel forced for all you anti-woke and anti-agenda folks). It also brings Barbie up to speed on her questionable worth as a person - where does she fit in with the other Barbies and in the Real World? These are much deeper questions than I expected for a Barbie movie.

"Barbie" is exuberant and often exhilarating, thanks in no small part to Robbie and the rest of the cast who bring their A game here. The script by Gerwig and Baumbach is witty, satirical, often hilarious and aims to bring out a full-throttle feminist tract into play. Still, I could have done with less singing from the Kens especially Gosling (far more dynamic here than any role I've seen him in) and less of the Kens' dull production number on the beach. Despite such misgivings, "Barbie" is superb entertainment and I was tickled pink by it and its pro-feminism views. Time to eat some ice cream.