Dark Shadows (4/5 Stars)

Death to Hippies

 It may surprise you in this age of vampire saturation that director Tim Burton, the reigning godfather of cinematic spookiness, has never done a vampire movie before. “Dark Shadows,” is his first. The same goes for his frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp. He has been pale and gothic plenty of times but he has never actually sucked blood. He does it well, or at least he does it better than they do it in “Twilight.”

The vampire in question is Barnabas Collins, the son of a very wealthy fishmonger merchant. Circa 1772, the father founded a fishing colony in New England, named it Collinswood, and built a huge gothic mansion on a really big hill overlooking the sea. Barnabas had a youthful fling with the housemaid, but never committed, instead marrying a woman of more noble birth. Unfortunately for him, the maid was a witch. Out of mad love, she killed his parents, murdered his wife, and turned him into a vampire. Then after he still refused her advances, she revealed to the townspeople his accursed nature and they buried him alive in a coffin in the middle of the woods. There he stayed wide-awake for two hundred years. In 1972, a modern day construction crew accidentally uncovered Barnabas’ coffin. Barnabas, always so polite, apologizes before murdering everyone. He was so very thirsty.

 If any of this seems like kind of heavy stuff to you, you wouldn’t be Tim Burton. To a guy like that, this is the set up of a comedy. Well, sort of. I wouldn’t exactly call Tim Burton a comedian. But there are plenty of small jokes. Mostly fish-out-of-water stuff involving the interaction between gothic horror and hippies. Sort of like Scooby Doo in reverse. Now that I think of it, Scooby Doo wasn’t all that funny either, but I still liked it. And this movie too. I liked this movie.

 At this point in my Tim Burton fandom, I have decided it is okay to overlook the things he has always been bad at because he does other things so well. For instance, with any other director, I would be dismayed if they spent so much time doing remakes and adaptations. Tim Burton does almost nothing else. (“Alice in Wonderland” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” “Sweeney Todd”). But this is okay, because Burton has consistently proven that when he is not following an already completely worked out story, what we generally end up with is a narrative mess (“Mars Attacks!” “Planet of the Apes” “Sleepy Hollow”). What he excels at though is art direction, makeup, costumes, etc. and in this he can be considered one of the best.

 “Dark Shadows,” is apparently a remake of a 70s soap opera melodrama. I bet it was really bad. Anyway, its basic story affords Burton a chance to put his trademark look on something he has no business sticking his dreadfully macabre hands on: flower power. You’ve never seen hippiedom look so pale and haunted. We are at the point probably where we tend to take for granted the amount of vision and effort Burton puts into the look of his movies. This movie, just like his others, is ridiculously gorgeous. The best parts of the movie involve the juxtaposition of the ancient occult Barnabas with beanbags, disco balls, and a van full of hippies. My favorite scene takes place around a campfire where Barnabas describes being locked in his coffin for 200 years and other horrors. All the hippies think he is really deep and weird and stuff. I can only imagine that this might parallel what Tim Burton faced in the 70s when he was growing up. He seems not made for that time. I bet he really got a kick out of having Barnabas murder all the hippies at the end of the scene for no particular reason. I know I did.

 Artistic direction in a Tim Burton doesn’t end with inanimate objects. The actors themselves are cast because they look like they belong in a Tim Burton movie. The perfect example of this is Helena Bonham Carter with her bone-white complexion and large eyes. Nobody looks better undead. Then there is Michelle Pfieffer, that most skeletal of beauties. Chloe Grace Moretz appears in her first Tim Burton movie and fits right in as well. A nice surprise is the witch, played by Eva Green. She is not one someone would expect to see in this type of movie. Her abnormal attractiveness is more suited for normal movies. She was after all a very good Bond Girl in “Casino Royale.” But notice the way she smiles just a little too widely or the way she swivels her head on that just a little too long of a neck of hers. As a witch, her beauty is only skin-deep and she has found a way to play that really well.

 Of course, nobody is better at downplaying attractiveness than Johnny Depp who has basically made a career out of it. What him and Burton seem to have completely in common is a strong aversion to sensuality. It is a rather common theme in their movies (Edward Scissorhands, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd). Having said that, this movie has plenty of sex in it, or at least plenty for a Tim Burton movie. (Vampire sex it must be said is incredibly violent. I wonder if that’s a modern evolution of the character or whether all the old books described it as such as well.) That doesn’t mean that anyone besides the witch is enjoying it though. Depp in particular is as stiff as possible about it like he always is, which I have always found humorous and still do.

 One more thing about Depp must be mentioned: his extravagant vocabulary. It’s ridiculously first-rate and has been for about a decade in almost every movie he has been in (Pirates of the Caribbean, Rango, Rum Diary etc.) As all these movies have different writers I am beginning to think that Depp must be smuggling a thesaurus to work each day and punching up his lines.
 

Hugo 3D (3/5 Stars)

I love movies that much is for sure. But my love is a love with certain limits. A good movie may change a man, it may mold the way he empathizes, teach him something new, or inspire him to his own adventures, but there is no truly special quality within a man that gives him the ability to make movies. In other words, the Academy Awards are nice to have because movies are culturally important, but the nominees and even winners do not deserve the heaps and heaps and heaps of idolatry and praise that they receive. The difference in importance between a world famous great actor and an obscure great accountant is negligible. They both require natural talent and learned skill. The difference is that one is on a big screen that lots and lots of people will see see while the other sits in an office and has but a few clients. Thus the actor’s importance is distorted to an obscene degree while the accountant goes shamelessly unnoticed. Actually, I take that back. It probably takes far more to be a great accountant. (I would also argue that people recognize the greatness of actors and athletes far more readily than scientists and doctors because the greatest of an actor or athlete is very easy to understand. You may need a PHD before you understand just why a particular doctor is great.) That’s why I am sad to say, I was not overwhelmed and enraptured as Martin Scorsese probably felt I should be by the presence of Director Georges Meliere on the screen of this movie, even though he did make some of the best movies at the dawn of cinema. There should be a rule that stops directors of movies from making movies about movie directors. (The same goes for writers that write books and screenplays about writers.) I say you are sipping the poison fame cocktail that distorts your importance and inflames your ego to an insufferably pretentious degree.

Not that this movie is too insufferably pretentious. It is directed by Martin Scorsese with that subversively excessive amount of brilliant flair. It stars Asa Butterfield as a young boy named Hugo Cabret. Hugo’s father (Jude Law) dies in a fire one day and his uncle claude (Ray Winstone) adopts him into his work apartment at the Paris Grand Central Station and teaches him his job of winding all the clocks in the station. Then Uncle Claude goes AWOL on a drunken bender, leaving Hugo in the station alone. As long as he keeps the clocks in order though, nobody will check to see who is occupying his uncle’s apartment amongst the machines. When he needs food, he steals it. When he needs mechanical parts for the secret ??? he is building in his apartment, he steals it from the toy store run by a crusty old man (Ben Kingsley) who may just be the forgotten father of cinema Georges Meliere. Chasing the young thief in hope to catch him and send him to an orphanage is the imposing station inspector played wonderfully by Sacha Baron Cohen. Playing Meliere’s granddaughter is none other than Chole Grace Moretz, that girl of fourteen with such maturity her face could pass for twenty-five.  

The story is simple like all children’s stories and basically consists of Hugo's quest of fixing the secret ???? and getting old cranky Meliere to appreciate his past greatness all while outrunning the station inspector. The movie looks great, but don’t all movies nowadays. The camera moves deftly and in great long shots like other Scorsese movies, but these ones are obviously helped with special effects and other types of cheating so they do not have the same type of impact. The kids when going off on an adventures find themselves in libraries reading books or in movie theaters watching new movies (by that I mean very old movies. This is the twenties.)  Is that exciting? Uh, well, let’s get back to that a little bit later.

There needs first to be said something about the acting chops of children. I find that children act much better in movies opposite adults in scenes. Think of such great child acting movies like “The Road,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Sixth Sense.” They all have kids interacting with adults.  When children act with each other it yields less fruitful results (because let’s face it, acting is reacting and children do not know what they are doing (perhaps we can make an exception of Jodie Foster and Dakota Fanning)). Chloe Grace Moretz in particular is not a very good actor. I can picture somebody on YouTube doing something rather funny with her line, “Don’t you just Love Books?!?” Asa Butterfield is forgettable. I wonder if Kodi Smit-McPhee was busy or something. I feel he could have done much better. Not to mention Kodi and Chole had already successfully worked together in “Let Me In.” Perhaps that might have helped.

The one that steals the show quite consistently is Sacha Baron Cohen. He has the vast majority of the movies laughs and delivers his scenes with that peculiar quality only a comically tall man can apply. Ben Kingsley as George Meliere for his part spends far too much time crying. He may have good reasons for it or not. All of this, and whether libraries and movie theaters are adventurous, hinges on whether one would think that Melieres is just the greatest thing since sliced bread. I would think only a couple of people in the audience (and most likely none) would have even heard of the guy. Well, I have heard of him. And I have seen his masterpiece: A Trip to the Moon. In fact, I have seen almost all of the old movies that are sampled in this movie from Harold Lloyd’s "Safety Last," to Buster Keaton’s “The General” to Louie Brooks in “Pandora’s Box,” to Charlie Chaplin. It is so common for critics to fawn all over these movies and say they are the best ever and that movies were never so good since. My opinion: These movies are generally okay but not great movies. The exception would be the average Buster Keaton movie, which I find works astonishingly well in the 21^st century. But overall, we make better movies today. We have a better idea of what we are doing, we have a century worth of trial and error knowledge, and we are armed with technology that makes what we want to create much more easier to accomplish with tightened budgets. George Meliere’s was a pioneer no doubt, but his sci-fi epics come off rather amateurish by today's standards. "A Trip to the Moon" had only one long distance camera shot. There was no acting or dialogue to speak of and absolutely no character development. The totally super famous shot in “A Trip to the Moon,” where the rocket lands into the moon’s face is well, iconic to say the very very most. It is worth seeing this movie like it is worth knowing who won WWI, but it does not a great movie make. And if like me, you think it isn’t all that worth hooting about, you will feel rather detached during “Hugo,” which treats that movie like it is so totally all that. It isn’t. Take my word for it. You wouldn’t want it too last much more than its running time of ten minutes.

By the way, this will be the last 3D movie I ever see. Not once did I feel I would be missing something if I paid five dollars less and saw the movie in 2D. If Scorsese can’t pull this technology off than nobody can. It doesn’t deserve to exist. Too dim, too distracting, too disturbing. Please stop.

Let Me In (4/5 Stars) October 6, 2010

“I must be gone and live or stay and die. Love, Abby” 
That’s a quote from Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ a play that a twelve-year-old boy named Owen is studying at his school. It is used though by Abby in a post-it left by Owen’s bedside after a chaste night the two spent together. But it isn’t simply a sentimental romantic line. It literally is true. If Abby stayed with Owen until the dawn, the light of the sun would cause her flesh to catch fire and she would be burnt to a crisp, dead. Abby is a vampire. She’s also twelve, but she has been twelve for a very long time. 




“Let Me In” is a remake of a haunting Swedish horror movie titled, “Let the Right One In.” (see previous review). Watching this movie made me proud to be an American. We did it. Go USA. ‘Let Me In’ is on the same par and arguably even a little better than the original. The writer/director Matt Reeves has done an admirable job of keeping all that was great about the first movie especially its tone, atmosphere, and deliberate pacing. But he has also added many little details here and there that round out the character of Owen, makes clearer the relationship between Abby and her “father,” and creates much more effective scenes of violence. On top of that, we have two great performances by Chloe Moretz (500) Days of Summer) and Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road). But let me be clear. I don’t recommend watching “Let Me In,” instead of “Let the Right One In.” I recommend you see them both. They are especially interesting from a craft perspective. Effective storytellers need not always agree on exactly how to tell a story. The differences between these two movies are not better or worse. They are simply a matter of taste. The story itself is worthy of multiple interpretations. Just like Shakespeare. I wouldn’t mind seeing another remake of this movie. 

Poor Owen. He lives in suburban nowhere and it is the midst of winter. His parents are going through a divorce and spend all of their time arguing with each other on the phone. The class bully and his buddies have singled him out for ritual punishment. He has no friends. When he isn’t at school and in a state of perpetual terror, he is at home completely alone and bored out of his mind. He spends his free time binging on “Now and Later” candy and acting out revenge fantasies in the mirror. And then Abby moves in next door. She shows up one day in the empty and dreary courtyard where Owen usually sits alone. This is an Event. It’s not exactly love at first. It’s more like Robinson Crusoe finding Friday. She is another kid his “age,” seemingly the only other one in the entire apartment complex. And she is quiet and she is sad. Just like Owen. Perhaps they could be friends. 

I remarked in my review of “Let the Right One In,” that the story reminded me of Hitchcock in that it keeps the audience in a state of moral twilight. Watching this movie, you can’t tell if what you are hoping will happen is the right thing to be hoping for. Owen as a character couldn’t be more sympathetic. You can’t help but feel for the kid. Abby, by definition, is a mass murderer. But strangely, because she is Owen's only friend, she is also sympathetic simply by association. In one scene, Owen asks Abby if she will go steady with him. I heard several people in the theater audibly sigh as if they were watching the cutest scene in the world. But pay attention to the implications and take notice of your feelings when you watch this. Sure, it’s nice that Owen has fallen in love, but is it a good thing for him to fall in love with a vampire who needs blood to live? The single best scene in the movie (which isn’t in the original) comes shortly after Owen realizes that not only is Abby a vampire but that her “father” was his age when he first met her. Owen calls up his own father and asks him, “Do you think there is such a thing as evil? Can people be evil?” His father is distracted and less than helpful but take notice of what Owen is really asking: Can the only person in the world who is kind to me be completely bad? Would you be able to forgive a killer if they were your only friend? What about the last scene? Is it mass murder? Is it an act of kindness? Could it possibly be both? How do you feel about what happened? How should you feel about it? 

The A-list for children movie stars is a very short list. Child Actors are understandably notorious for not being incredibly reliable or professional. So, a child who proves that they can carry a movie is special indeed. Here, both Chloe and Kodi have proven they are very capable of pulling off challenging roles. (This romance is iconic. I wouldn’t mind having the picture shown above as a wall poster.) Every casting director who has a difficult part for a child will surely notice them. In fact, Chloe has been cast as the lead in Martin Scorsese’s next movie. Welcome to the A-List.

(500) Days of Summer (5/5 Stars) July 23, 2009

Boy meets Girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn’t. Agony and Ecstasy ensue. (500) Days of Summer is the directorial debut of Marc Webb and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a boy named Tom and Zooey Deschanel as a girl named Summer. It was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Webber, a team that according to IMDB was also responsible for Pink Panther 2. Go figure. Anyway this time they’ve penned a cinematic gem that should join the short list of great romantic comedies like Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Watch for this movie come awards time because this is just the kind of Original Screenplay the Academy loves giving the Oscar to. 
Tom is introduced to us as a boy who believes in love. Summer confesses at one point that she doesn’t even know what that word means. She doesn’t want to date Tom and says so. That being said, she will sleep with him and indeed starts everything herself one day in the copy room by walking up to him and, without saying a word, kisses him. Poor Tom, he never had a chance. The movie creates some very inventive ways to illustrate how Tom feels about Summer. It employs an omniscient narrator, direct to camera soliloquies, flashbacks and flash-forwards, karaoke, at least one heartfelt resignation speech, and black and white artistic renderings. At one point it ventures into a black and white documentary and we are informed that Summer’s high school yearbook quote was a song lyric that sings, “Colour my life with the chaos of trouble.” Another inspired spectacle occurs when Tom, high on love, walks down the street super happy and the entirety of Los Angeles breaks into song and dance all around him to the tune of “You Make My Dreams,” by Hall & Oates. When Tom feels the agony of bona fide rejection the movie feels it too, the entire screen morphing into a black and white etching and deconstructing before our eyes. 
But what really makes this movie special is the details. The attention paid to the specifics draws the movie into pure cinematic poetry in some scenes, like when Tom and Summer play house in an Ikea, or when Tom draws the LA skyline on Summer’s arm, or when the movie splits the screen showing what Tom’s expectations of a rooftop party would be on one side, and what the reality is on the other. I especially loved the work that went into the Greeting Cards that Tom works on. (I haven’t mentioned that yet. Tom works at a Greeting Card company. Summer is the new assistant at the office.) Some of them are pretty damn good like, “Everyday I am proud of you, but today you get a card.” Or “I Love Us.” Or how about the first scene in which they talk to each other. They are both standing in the elevator when Summer hears ‘The Smiths’ through Tom’s headphones. She breaks the ice by saying she like ‘The Smiths,’ compliments his taste in music, and sings offhand one of their lyrics. The lyric they chose for her to sing in this tiny little moment was so perfect and profound that my reaction to it was the same as Tom’s: “Holy Shit.” 
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been quietly pulling together a very impressive track record of small independent movies. Here, he should formally carry on the torch of Heath Ledger as the most promising young actor in the business. Zooey Deschanel matches him in every scene. She infuses her character with this innocent confidence that is both terribly cute and infuriating. One can completely see why Tom, when asked whether he would rather marry, boff, or kill her, says he’d like to do all three. I especially liked it when he surmised that she might be an evil robot. Boy that takes me back. Could these two get nominations? I don’t know, but I will say this, I am starting to warm to the idea of the Best Picture category holding ten nominees instead of five. This type of movie wouldn’t have made it in the past, but with the extra room it should be able to get in handily. It is certainly one of the best movies I have seen this year. It’s the best romantic comedy I have seen since ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall.’
Did I mention that this movie was funny? Well it is. It’s not all love and misery you know; it’s got wit, warmth, quick one-liners, a fight, comic vignettes, keen juxtaposition, and clever coincidences. Heck what more can I say. This movie has it all. I really hope it comes to a theater near you soon.