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.

Always san-chôme no yûhi (Always, Sunset on Third Street)

Felt strange watching a Japanese film that wasn't full of monsters, samurai warriors, or drug addicts and femme fatales. Apparently, there's a huge market for melodramas and tear jerkers in Japan as well. Who knew! Takashi Yamazaki's Always san-chôme no yûhi (Always, Sunset on Third Street) is one such melodrama and it tugs at the heartstrings while presenting colourful characters in an urban setting. The narrative is basically divided along artistic and mechanical lines. Ryunosuke Chagawa (Hidetaka Yoshioka) dreams of becoming a famous noteworthy writer and ending his days composing mainstream popular books. He was cast out by his family for pursuing the literary life and is consistently ridiculed by the hot-tempered garage owner Norifumi Suzuki (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi). Norifumi employs Mutsuko Hoshino (Maki Horikita) who has just arrived from the country and is none to pleased when she discovers his garage is not a prosperous automotive plant. While Ryunosuke is characterized by meekness, Norifumi expresses himself through rage, and the two form an entertaining odd-couple relationship. Poverty and manners of representation are examined throughout, most characters being forced to make tough decisions as a result of their predicaments. But as they make these decisions friendships grow and personalities change as responsibilities increase and families multiply. Sure, Always san-chôme no yûhi doesn't have a group of survivors boldly holding out against the mighty Godzilla, and the ancient code of the samurai is neither interrogated nor referred to. But it does showcase the ups and downs of following your dreams in a sentimental fashion that is more enlightening than maudlin, and it felt good to get caught up in its quotidian routines. With reversals and adventures and orphans and heartbreak, Always san-chôme no yûhi may be a bit much to take at times, but it still successfully develops a vibrant, convivial, volatile life of its own, more compelling than incorrigible, for which everything does not work out in the end.

The Yacoubian Building

Eygptian filmmaker Marwan Hamed's The Yacoubian Building insightfully examines the vibrant culture of Cairo. Yacoubian smoothly intertwines several narrative threads, creating a realist mosaic which seductively highlights the hardships confronting the haves and have-nots within Cairo. Everyone has their price, and Yacoubian's chilling conclusions soberly elucidate the complicated consequences of either living or contradicting some version of a pious life. A coming of age tale that challenges the nature of coming of age itself, The Yacoubian Building houses poignant characters and sinister resolutions, its stories packed with controversial ideas which challenge the foundations of modern Cairo.