Near Dark

The carefree mosey experimental random newfound chill relations, inspire paramount misfortune archaically clad nocturnal vision.

He (Adrian Pasdar as Caleb Colton) must admit he likes her (Jenny Wright as Mae) but is still critical of what he's become, after her loving playful bites lead to vampiric transformation.

The sudden shocking discovery of a mobile team menacingly manifested, leads to trepidatious tumult potential incompatibility. 

He needs to feed to gain their trust but humanistically can't take lives, resultant vehement disputes suggesting alternative pair bondings.

But she wants him to hang around and freely lets him gourmandize, until there's trouble at a round up and he lets a terrified victim flee.

Mistrust immoderately showcased his life in danger Caleb pleas, before a gallant move reinstates fidelity through hearty cursed chagrined hiatus.

Yet his family's on the move engaged in heartfelt search and rescue, they manage to kindly find him, and introduce novel transfusion. 

Back amongst the living regenerated soulful sessions.

The reunion somewhat brief.

Acerbic obfuscation. 

Kathryn Bigelow's chilling Near Dark keeps things focused on the present, haunting vampires there may be, but there's little discussion of origins or community.

It's a visceral macabre romance featuring moribund exclusivity, that keeps things raw refreshed immediate impassioned daring bold l'amour.

Endemic confidence upholds spirits as declarations intertwine, direct unflinching pains existence accredited frank anon disclosure. 

I'd never heard of Near Dark and was eager to watch Bigelow's take on vampires, co-starring so many Aliens alumni, that may be a cool double feature.

It doesn't create a world like Twilight or revel in myth and legend.

But its forlorn ritualistic candour.

Still facilitates crazed verisimilitude.

Bizarro romance.

Passion.

What We Do in the Shadows

Heightened rationalized improbability permeates What We Do in the Shadows, productively enlivening the confines of the undead, with shattered/rebuilt staggering susceptibility.

Incinerator.

4 vampires have been living together for some time in Wellington, New Zealand, tediously, nonchalantly, constructively, and impetuously approaching eternity, sort of learning and growing together as one, individuality integratively asserted, within their infernal domestic.

A camera crew is granted access and follows them around as they socially interact.

Debating, observing, feasting.

The film successfully works its way into the mockumentary cleavage, adding a bizarre sense of feisty unrealistic yet applicably pertinent ironic existential banality to its hemorrhage, asinine arteries and viscous veins wickedly yet lovingly distributing its worn permanence, like the genre itself is transformatively expired.

A skulking pantheon.

As they explore the external world and attend festive gatherings, favourite representatives of various divergencies emerge, their conversations occasionally fraught with bitterness and decay, a clash with the lycans, everything held together by Stu (Stuart Rutherford).

Stu is the human friend of recently converted vampire Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), and he aloofly yet essentially stylizes the film.

Nick builds Deacon's (Jonathan Brugh) character by contrasting his youthful rebelliousness with rash exuberance, the two growing ensemble, clueless direct un/concerned advice intact.

Some of the jokes don't work, like swearwolves/swerewolves.

More could have been done with the vampire hunter and the Unholy Masquerade.

Still, as far as people awkwardly placed within a time period they neither understand nor care to get to know goes, taking the time to formulate opinions and conclusions which both validate and empower them regardless, even if they subconsciously recognize their inherent weaknesses, What We Do in the Shadows serves to obscure while lucidly contemplating, as discoveries are made, and friendships develop.

It would be nice to see what Clement and Waititi could pull off with a larger budget and more time.

What We Do in the Shadows could make a funny show, there's plenty of material to work with.

Dracula Untold

Dracula revisited, often portrayed as a vicious bloodthirsty tyrant, recast as a loving devoted father, husband, and ruler, willing to risk everything to secure the social prosperity of his dominion, brought up as a warrior, who excelled beyond limitation, against his will, trial by fire, impeccable excretions, having returned home a free man, to govern his people with wise, trustworthy gentility, through the art of thinking critically, and the continuous deployment of tribute.

Yet battle once again demands his obedience, a battle that can't be won through earthly means, and a pact is made with transcendent deviance, limitless power, for an insatiable thirst for blood.

Thus the iconic villain is torn, invincible at war, romantically condemned by his true love.

It's a different take on Dracula, Gary Shore's Dracula Untold, the latest vampiric franchise to tenderly and ravenously strike.

It's alright.

Somewhat cutesy at times, which is odd for a mass produced vampire film, making derelict lesions and hallowed imperfections seem direly quaint by comparison; however, its protagonist is rational and his love undying, his fidelity to the centuries, like twilight's eternal fountain.

Missed Jarmusch's Adam a bit while viewing, but it's unfair to compare the two visions.

Glad Jarmusch made that film.

Jodorowsky and vampires?

It's not too late.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Utilizing a peculiar rhetorical strategy, Jim Jarmusch romanticizes cynicism and satisfaction through naturalistic, artistic, appetitive, and historical entanglements, engendered and coded by the discussions of an aged vampire couple, a perennially rebellious scamp, and a literary legend, the men weary and woeful, the women full of life, united in their unyielding craving, for fresh, universal, blood.

Living in Tangiers, L.A., and Detroit.

Exploring the depths of sundry melodic intersections for centuries while observing disenchanting impacted awakenings have led Adam (Tom Hiddleston) to orchestrate various funeral arrangements, thereby expressing his enduring distaste, intravenously harmonizing his scrutiny.

Partner Eve (Tilda Swinton) remains more upbeat, still observing the world with an urbane reconnaissance, versatile and prim, eruditely beaming.

One's resounding disaffection materializes the novel, while the other's fascination with the unexpected, the appearance of a skunk for instance, impresses it more literally.

More could have been done with Ava's (Mia Wasikowska) character.

The script interrogates pretension by calling into question time's passing to the point where ego and redirection become facets of a limitlessly cloyed perpetuity.

Brothering a thrust.

With recourse to the enviable.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln.

Vampire hunter.

His chosen weapon: an axe.

His cause: the abolition of slavery.

His purpose: just.

His approach: universal.

During his set of historical circumstances, piecemeal strategies simply don't cut it.

And alternative methods must be idealized.

Fighting an age-old evil whose tyrannical agenda is constantly seeking to revitalize its divisive malignant incredulity, Mr. Lincoln, with the help of an incredible woman who believes in the strength of common persons, and many other friends, including Christian Slater, decisively acts by any-means-necessary, his initial youthful personal vendetta evolving into a prolonged politico-cultural crusade.

Guided by wisdom.

And driven by faith.

Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is poignantly pulpy and genuinely clear.

Incisively laying a lucid altruistic track upon a dismantled phantasmagorical transcendence, he uses the tools prominent within his own set of historical circumstances to popularly reconstruct its influential engine.

Working within the system without preaching to the converted.

Or worrying about critical repercussions.

Great film.

Dark Shadows

Tim Burton's Dark Shadows revisits an American gothic soap opera that ran from 1966 to 1971 and is therefore supposed to be superfluously tactless.

Not that the emancipated 18th century vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is lacking in sensitivity, it's just that he rigidly abides by a strict moral code through which he hopes to reconfigure his family's fortunes and reanimate its pseudo-aristocratic position within the town of Collinsport.

Okay, he is lacking in sensitivity, and a bit of a prick, and bloodthirsty and unforgiving and functionally clueless.

But he also embodies a raw nocturnal decisive magnetism which sanguinely yet solipsistically cultivates the melodrama (the film focuses too intently on him to the detriment of the supporting cast).

In the 1760s, his family sailed to the New World and established a successful fishery, for all intents and purposes administrating the town thereafter.  While growing up, Barnabas caught the eye of many a local  maiden including one his servants, Angelique (Eva Green). Unbeknownst to him, Angelique was a witch who proceeds to curse his family after he scorns her. She eventually turns him into a vampire and has him chained and buried deep below ground, proceeding to use her witchcraft to incant a fishing business of her own afterwards. When Barnabas is accidentally unearthed in 1972, her business has expanded significantly and the Collins family is in a state of practical ruin.

And she still desires him.

Barnabas remains uninterested however although he does reflexively entertain. His actions engender her fury in the aftermath when she discovers that he has once again fallen for another.

Another who is the spitting image of she whom Barnabas left Angelique for all those centuries ago.

Dark Shadows could have been good had its writers nonchalantly taken their uninspired subject matter more seriously (in order to concoct something terrible yet fun). Having Johnny Depp in your film, giving him the majority of the lines, and having him hypnotize characters within does not spontaneously conjure happy returns.

Further, working uncritically within kitschy commercially feudal fantastic frames serves to romanticize patriarchal socio-economic representations (which is probably the point).

Thus, noble Barnabas feasts on construction workers and itinerants and the only successful female characters used spells to achieve their goals or are punished severely for their transgressions.

There are flamboyant moments but their affects are localized and therefore don't pervasively instil the narrative's underground with a recurring thematic foil (and the film isn't much fun).

There may not be a foil, but one over-the-top scene where Angelique briefs her best and brightest, all of whom are men, seems to cast doubt on the fact that higher corporate echelons were almost uniformly masculine in the seventies, through the use of excessive exaggeration, which sinisterly places the film's manifested patriarchal focus within its subterranean realm by suggesting that male dominated boards of directors were perhaps not as permeated with testosterone as progressives would have you believe, thereby hyperbolically challenging the 21st century ideological playing field by conservatively deconstructing historical reality.

Dark shadows to be sure.

Underworld: Awakening

Vampires and werewolves are at in again in Awakening, the latest instalment in the Underworld series.

Fan favourite Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is set free from her chamber after having been preserved on ice for a dozen years at a medical corporation known as Antigen. Instantaneously regaining her combative flexibility, she terrorizes the surrounding security forces in order to acrobatically escape the premises.

In search of lover and vampire/lycan hybrid Michael Corvin.

Little does she know that during her cryogenic slumber she gave birth to a hybrid child known as Subject 2/Eve (India Eisley) whom the lycans now viciously seek.

She rescues her daughter from their clutches and is then fortunately provided with sanctuary at a secretive coven by the curious and friendly David (Theo James).

But the lycans soon come calling and successfully recapture little Eve before taking her back to home base.

Serene must now break into Antigen and rescue her daughter before the diabolical Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea) can cut her to pieces.

And proliferate his cure.

Oh, and humans caught on to the existence of vampires and lycans and killed most of them during The Purge which took place at the time Antigen acquired Serene.

If you really like the Underworld series and don't mind that its lore isn't significantly internally diversified or particularized, and are only seeking an hour-and-a-half of fast paced tormented action, Awakening will work for you, as it contains that which you desire.

If you are seeking the historical element that made some of its predecessors more noteworthy steer clear as there's little of tangential yet critical value within besides a brute examination of different generational attitudes concerning survival, a regenerative super-lycan (whose presence goes nowhere) (Kris Holden-Ried as Quint Lane), and a visionary cop (Michael Ealy as Detective Sebastian) who doesn't want to recondition The Purge's hysteria.

Headstrong, stunted and brief.

Could have used less hyperactivity.

Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in)

Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) offers a discursive examination of exclusion which awkwardly yet agilely provides a malleable definition for the phenomenon. Little Eli (Lina Leandersson) has been 12 years old for some time and ensures her longevity by drinking the blood of the living. Little Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is picked on in school and must find a way to fight back against those who bully him. The two strike up a strange friendship full of silence and short conversations, Oskar learning to speak with girls, Eli reminding him that she is not one. As bodies pile up throughout town, Oskar strikes back against his foes, Eli's supplier of blood dries up, and a group of cats embrace their bellicose instinct. Friendship becomes vital to Eli and Oskar's perseverance as they duel with their enemies and carve a place for themselves in their culture's underground.

Awkwardness abounds in Let the Right One In and the film effectively examines what it means to be an outcast. Oskar's parents are divorced, he's thoughtful and quiet, bullies pick on him, and he doesn't have any friends. Hence, when he meets Eli it's awkward, especially since she possesses the confidence and personality he lacks, the two functioning as social and communal opposites. Alfredson captures the maladroit nature of a child's first encounter with a member of the opposite sex well and the sensibility that governs their interactions flows through the rest of his film. The teachers have awkward relationships with their students. Eli's discussions with 'guardian' Håkan (Per Ragnar) are awkward. The group of strangers Håkan tries to ignore are awkward and their awkwardness incrementally increases as the film unreels. All of this awkwardness never allows us to feel comfortable for more than a millisecond as it agilely transmits itself from scene to scene, developing a frustrated interminably visceral aesthetic whose parts shift to align and forge a chilling climax which detonates its disenfranchised integrity. Being a teenager can often be awkward, as can being a vampire. Let the Right One In distills said awkwardness into an irresistible piece of dexterous disenchantment, delegating its vanquished restrictions for days to come.

Nadja

Pleasantly awkward ridiculous dialogue effectively normalized and elegantly delivered, in scene after scene, as if an electromagnetic butterfly is quietly lamenting its misshapen cocoon, delicately fluttering from one petal to the next, breathing in the air, analyzing the moisture, multiple seductive themes variegating its flight, the wind's benevolent seniority quaintly clarifying its path, Michael Almereyda's Nadja revitalizes Bram Stoker's Dracula through sheer complacence and subterranean muses, voluptuously illustrated, magnanimously debated, by a multidisciplinary soundtrack, a haunting, viscidly structured purpose, a metamorphosis incarnated, a resurrection infuriated, mesmerizing, juicy tidbits lusciously lounging within your consciousness, united, shattered, synthesized, compartmentalized, with no particular goal, no definite objective, besides a sister's love for her brother, a husband's undying devotion, a nurse's attentive care, and a hardwired eccentric romantic. Like Nathalie Parentau's paintings, Nadja's subjects are surreal, affectionate, verbose, and dynamic, uttering convulsive resurgent facts, determining sundry, fervid pronouncements, observing dreamlike, rustic reverberations, and organic, felicitous statements. Immediate and everlasting, it gently settles in the underbrush, and shivers.

The Death of Alice Blue: Part 1, The Bloodsucking Vampires of Advertising

Really enjoyed Park Bench's The Death of Alice Blue: Part 1, The Bloodsucking Vampires of Advertising. It's creative, self-reflexive, energetic, well written, consistently comfortably awkward, intertextual, and hilarious. Several scenes exist as part of the general narrative while hovering above and developing an existential life of their own. Studying the innovative ways in which Bench comedically uses repetition should be high on the list of every up and coming filmmaker. Parts of the film even reminded me of David Lynch (particularly not generally). Bench's uniform and self-indulgently irresistible aesthetic effectively works with classics such as Re-Animator while moving beyond them in terms of depth and style. Overtly, it's as if we're watching an extremely low budget film with a terrible script, questionable performances, and "I don't give a shit writing." But Bench is well aware of these dimensions and he plays with and molds them into a scintillating, dark, jaunty cocked eyebrow, continually progressing and self-effacing from start to finish. It gets to the point where many of the myriad plot twists go nowhere but you don't care because what's happening in the moment is so compelling. There's no need for things to make sense or for there to be closure or an explanation or an explanation that makes sense. While the set is generally stark, particular scenes and random devices are meticulously and originally crafted, like a structural tribute to an engaging and unpredictable individuality, creating a wild, evenly paced, ridiculously sublime crescendo. Its desolate and superficial depiction of the general advertising world (and Raven Advertising's 12 cabals) boldly yet modestly calls into question mainstream post-modern cultural coordinates, while redesigning and elevating them in a productively haphazard and unconcerned manner. It's really well done and I was glad to have the chance to see it in Toronto theatres considering that it's Canadian and situated and shot in Toronto. Wish there had been more than two people other than me in the theatre but what can you do. Alex Appel performs exceptionally well, her multidimensional talent showcased in the same manner as the production design (long evocatively mundane stretches broken up by momentary flashes of brilliance [until the last twenty minutes where their powers are unleashed]), and my favourite scenes were those she shared with Detective McGregor (Conrad Coates). Production design by Anthony Morassutti.

Vampires (Fantasia Fest 2010)

Presenting documentary evidence regarding the life and times of a community of nosferatu, Vincent Lannoo's Vampires comedically chronicles the social, familial, educational, and political practices of the Belgian undead. Focusing on one specific family and their peculiar dissatisfied neighbours, we meet George (Carlo Ferrante), an aristocratic disaffected patriarch, his eccentric wife (Vera van Dooren), their son Samson (Pierre Lognay), whose laissez-faire ways cause them to be exiled, and daughter Grace (Fleur Lise Heuet), who likes to play suicide and wishes she was human. These vampires can be serious: they have their own school, leader, and legal code, all of which coalesce to provide them with a particularized sense of communal individuality. But their concerns are generally care free, and apart from sticklers who meticulously follow the rules, their lives are blissfully discharged at a carnivalesque pace. The film's really funny, using vampires to lightheartedly satirize and elevate Belgian cultural codes, while the larger-than-life cast apathetically yet energetically discusses the quirks of their daily lives. Internal questions persist concerning the ease with which these vampires conduct their activities, different vampire communities live remarkably divergent lifestyles, and it's high times for the coffin business. The most creative and dynamic vampire film I've seen in a while, Lannoo's offbeat mockumentary will have you consistently laughing and cringing while you try to relax and suck back that slushy.

Queen of the Damned

It's surprising how subdued Michael Rymer's Queen of the Damned is, considering that it showcases the reawakening of Anne Rice's famous vampire, Lestat (Stuart Townsend), and his subsequent rise to rock and roll superstardom. To its credit, Queen of the Damned doesn't provide formulaic crests and valleys as it unreels its dark and sombre narrative. Instead, it proceeds by introducing shocking scenes in a sedate manner that melancholically mediates the sensational subject matter. Lestat is awake after sleeping for a hundred years and ready to embrace the twentieth century. As his popularity grows and he continues to openly claim to be a vampire, his fellow creatures of the night grow increasingly irate and seek to ensure that he delivers a final performance. Unfortunately for them, Lestat's music awakens another slumbering vampire, the ancient Queen Akasha (Aaliyah), who admires Lestat's unabashed openness and seeks his assistance in subjugating humanity. Observing the events is Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau) of the paranormal activity monitoring group Talamasca. Her burgeoning humanistic interference is all that stands in the way of either a resumption of the habitual vampiric code, or the unleashing of a monstrous new world order.

I'm not sure if Rymer meant for the film to be so laid back or if he simply failed to dramatically execute the traditional climactic build up (either choice explains why his film was panned), but Queen of the Damned's absent cataclysmic content supports its subterranean form. You would think Queen Akasha would have had a more prominent role but Marius (Vincent Perez) almost receives as much screen time (if not more). I liked how the film's primary focus was relegated to a secondary role for it formally highlights the ways in which supporting players often have a more prominent effect than their political object of desire. But all of these reversals and sedatives aren't surrounded by an inspiring entourage of symbolic pillars (although the musical accompaniment worked well [original music by Jonathan Davis and Richard Gibbs]), which, unfortunately, causes the film to fall flat.

New Moon

I've seen better films than Chris Weitz's New Moon. In fact, I've seen much much better films that Chris Weitz's New Moon. I enjoyed Twilight because I wasn't familiar with the story or any of the characters, generally like vampire films, and was entertained by its down home country charm. But in Twilight's sequel these characters are supposed to dynamically grow and change and develop and evolve, which, I'm afraid, they don't, in fact, most of the film just follows around heartbroken Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) as she pines for lost love Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) while taking unfair advantage of the feelings of Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) whose too ingenuous to know any better. And when it comes to choosing between them does she pick bucolic Jacob, with his intricate knowledge of blue collar affairs and humble well-meaning disposition? No, no she does not, she chooses aristocratic Edward so that she can fly high with the elite and enjoy a fast-paced urbanized existence even though Jacob is better for her which can't help but tear ya up inside. Perhaps she should go for both of them and give birth to Aristotle's golden mean, a werewolf-vampire; not sure if that's what Aristotle was after but who knows! Apart from that, unless you want to watch a teenaged girl lament her failed relationship while engaging in reckless acts and crying for 90 minutes, I suggest you steer clear of New Moon and wait for Eclipse to be released this June.

It's bound to be better.

Daybreakers

Vampire films. I'm a sucker for vampire films, especially when they receive a glowing review in The Globe and Mail. The Spierig Brother's Undead was a solid horror flick so I was pleasantly surprised to see that they crafted Daybreakers as well, this time with a significantly larger budget. Within, vampires have taken over the earth and humans have become farm animals, brutally supplying their eternal masters with a bountiful supply of blood. But humans have become scarce, and, without their abundant blood supply, vampires are turning into bat-like creatures known as sub-siders, more animal than humanoid. Modest vampire Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) (who refuses to drink human blood) searches for a blood alternative but his experiments come up short as time begins to run out. Enter Lionel 'Elvis' Cormac (Willem Dafoe) and partner Audrey Bennett (Claudia Karvan), two tough-as-nails humans looking for a way to mass market the cure for vampirism they've discovered, much to Dalton's surprise. The three form a tenacious triumvirate of dedicated researchers avidly searching for an experimental miracle. Fighting them are the forces of Bromley Corporation, lead by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill), who prefers the taste of human blood and isn't that interested in finding a cure. In the end, there's a sensational showdown quirkily equipped with a blistering bloodbath, dramatically delineating the high interest stakes.

While generally entertaining, Daybreakers is seriously predictable. Didn't have to use much brain power to figure out what was going to happen next. I also didn't take to the plot twist involving Bromley's daughter Alison (Isabel Lucas) and thought it could have been replaced with something more subtle. Ethically, the Spierig brothers seem to be saying that if everyone wants to be part of the elite, eventually their blood supply, the working person, will run out, and the only cure for their unholy elitism will be to become human once more. However, that transformation needs to be slowly nurtured (as the scene where the soldier vampires devour one another indicates) for otherwise revolutionary chaos will ensue ala The Soviet Union. Of course the only people capable of leading this quiet revolution have no means of marketing their humanitarian solution, but at least they're aware of the problem and are trying to do something about it.

Twilight

Catherine Hardwicke's new teenybopper flick Twilight explores the hearty hardline separating vampires and their human counterparts. Human Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves from Phoenix to the small town of Forks, Washington, to live with her father (Billy Burke as Charlie Swan) and resume her studies. But Bella wasn't counting on meeting Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a member of a local family of vampires who denies their natural thirst for human blood and feast upon animals instead (and also enjoy playing baseball). Their ferociously subdued romance turns heads and homesteads as members of the Native community (descended from wolves according to legend and wary of the Cullens) keep a sharp watch on Edward (whose family is supportively patronizing). Their foes are many and their attachment precarious but these streams still cross affectively, aptly demonstrating the illustrious intrigue engendered by a star-crossed couple unafraid to unleash their picturesque passion.

Thereby defeating Gozer.

Definitely the most romantic vampire film I've seen, Twilight's easy going slow moving pacing is problematically perforated by the introduction of villains. S'pose some kind of overt conflict's to be expected in a vampire flick, and it was made for a younger audience, but removing the formulaic evil presence (clearly included for the males of the species) and investigating the covert cultural pressures more sanguinely would have enhanced Twilight's clandestine charm, thereby structurally reflecting the sun's scintillating effects upon the Cullen's skin. Rich in bucolic beauty, drenched in kitschy sophomoric artistry, Twilight magnifies the lengthy measures a coruscating couple must resiliently recite, while wisely suggesting that it's worth it.