Stardust (2007)

January 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Stardust (2007) movie poster

director Matthew Vaughn
viewed: 01/20/2012

Adapted from a novel by Neil Gaiman, Stardust was one of a number of fantasy/adventure films that came out a few years ago, attempting to horn in on the Harry Potter empire.   Now Stardust was not from a series, but it shares something perhaps with the film version of The Golden Compass (2007) in that it’s a big epic fantasy film with a cast with lots of cachet that got middling to poor reviews and tanked at the box office.  Actually, I imagine that most people are probably going, “Stardust?”

Neil Gaiman is more interesting a writer that many and with the kids into fantasy films/stories, it seemed like a reasonable thing to watch even if the reviews weren’t that strong.

The story involves an alternate world that lies behind a hole in a stone fence in long-ago England.  The world beyond is called Stormhold and in it, a crazy king wants his 7 sons to murder each other to earn the right to take his throne.  His daughter is abducted by a witch, but fathers a child with the one Englishman who ever ventured over into Stormhold.  This child, as a young adult, is the hero (Charlie Cox).  There are witches, led by Michelle Pfeiffer (quite often in uber-ugly old hag make-up, who want to find a fallen star to use its energy to become young again.  And the star is actually Claire Danes, fallen to Earth in human form.

So, you can see there is a lot of story there.  More than I care to attempt to re-cap entirely.

The film is directed by Matthew Vaughn who has gone on to direct X-Men: First Class (2011) and Kick-Ass (2010), though before this his only feature had been Layer Cake (2004).  While not an impeccable resume, it’s also not by any means a dire one.  In fact, it’s pretty decent.  Still, Stardust really didn’t show him at his best.

The tone of the story is funny and fun, which I kind of liked.  And really, though it doesn’t manage to be quite as epic or enthralling as the best of the fantasy genre films go (and is a poor comparison to the source material so I’ve heard), I found myself kind of liking it.  The kids liked it too, perhaps Clara a bit more so than Felix, but with the core story being about “love”, it’s not the most compelling subject for them at present.

Robert De Niro shows up as a closeted cross-dressing sky pirate who captures lightning with his band of hearties.  It’s a kind of painful thing to watch.  He minces around a bit in the most cliche forms of “fey”, though the character is couched in a more positive attempt at addressing the stereotypes.  He hides his cross-dressing from his tough crew, thinking he has to maintain the appearance as a cutthroat to keep them following him, but ultimately they all know who he is and they still follow him.  De Niro didn’t have to be quite so bad in this.  It could have been pulled off with more flair and ingenuity, but it’s pretty awkward and a bit troublesome.

I don’t know.  It was also interesting to see Pfeiffer, still stunningly beautiful, playing the hag in make-up, having just watched her not so long ago in another fantasy film, in Richard Donner’s Ladyhawke (1985).  Twenty-two years separate the two films, and in Hollywood, as in perhaps all of Western culture, the measure of beauty is so fixated on youth that there is something uncanny about considering these multiple visions of her, young in  Ladyhawke, still lovely as her present self, but aging back and forth throughout the film.  It’s hardly the focal point of the story, just something that flickered through my mind throughout.

Filed under DVD, With the kids

The Kid (1921)

January 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Kid (1921) movie poster

director Charles Chaplin
viewed: 01/14/2011

Charlie Chaplin’s first feature-length film, The Kid, highlights as much of Chaplin’s pathos as much as his humor.  Who knows, maybe even more?

My kids, when queried what they were up for on movie night, said “a classic.”  I’d long been holding back on this, figuring it would do well with them.  It did.

What struck me most were the images of poverty portrayed in the film.  This isn’t the Great Depression, but the stark images of the poor are very  much of their time yet strikingly timeless as well.  Poignant for today’s world perhaps more than one might initially realize.  Most striking for me were images shot on location on downtown Los Angeles’ Olvera Street (I’m a sucker for location shoots, capturing landscapes in place and time as they do.)  More than however dressed up the sets were or the cast was is how the images of need are as commonplace as they are, as simply readable.  From Chaplin’s Tramp’s clothes to the begging, scamming, and other hardscrabble means that people are portrayed as living by.

“The Kid” is Jackie Coogan (who would go on to becoming one of film’s first child stars and eventually become a well-known character actor as well, including notably Uncle Fester from TV’s The Addams Family.)  Coogan’s story is interesting in itself, how his parents spent all his money and left him broke, something that eventually led to laws changing the way that child actors’ money is managed.  But Coogan is as cute as they come and a wily, lively, miniature of Chaplin with his knack for physical humor.

Oddly, and it could just have been the time I was watching it, but I think it’s my favorite of Chaplin’s features that I’ve seen while tracking such things in this film diary.  Not to say that it’s necessarily “the best” of those films, just my favorite.

Filed under Charlie Chaplin, DVD, Silent Film, With the kids

Tabloid (2010)

January 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Tabloid (2010) movie poster

director Errol Morris
viewed: 01/13/2012

Documentarian Errol Morris’ latest film, Tabloid, recounts a racy tabloid news story from England from 1977, known popularly as the “Mormon sex in chains” case.  The reality behind the reality is that of Joyce McKinney, a pretty young woman who stalked (from America to England) a young Mormon man, who she and accomplices helped to kidnap, taking him to Surrey, where she chained him to a bed and had sex with him for several days.

Her version of the story suggests that the young Mormon man was somewhat more complicit (or willing) and that all of this was done “for love” against the brainwashing of his church.  The papers had a field day with the material, for obvious reasons…the story had it all.  And it just kept getting better and better.  As for the Mormon fellow, he declined to be interviewed for the movie, and if decades of life tell outside of the limelight say anything about him, he was quite likely the victim of a stalker, a pretty loopy stalker, though possibly a moderately benign one in the grander scheme of things.

McKinney is the main interviewee of the film, telling her version of events in great detail, answering back about nudie pics that surfaced by the press, further stalking issues, and finally, oddly, her return to the limelight as a cloner of her favorite pet dog.   Since the film, McKinney has come out in protest of its portrayal of her.

Unlike some of Morris’ best films, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999) or The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003), Tabloid doesn’t seem to reach some transcendent discourse beyond its core subject.  While there is at the heart a question of “the truth”, a version of reality not unlike the elusive facts (a la Rashômon (1950), in which several accounts of a story depict a missing level of truth while suggesting a greater, less knowable version of truth), it ultimately plays out as a strange, somewhat humorous lurid tale, teasingly made palatable by the “barking mad” but quite charming McKinney.

Still, it’s not at all uninteresting.

Filed under Documentaries, DVD

The Tillman Story (2010)

January 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Tillman Story (2010) movie poster

director Amir Bar-Lev
viewed: 01/12/2012

There may be many ways to feel about the reality behind The Tillman Story but it’s hard for me to imagine any variation that doesn’t include being extremely pissed off.

Pat Tillman was the former NFL star who enlisted in the Army Rangers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, abandoning a multi-million dollar contract to fight for his country.  Tillman did fight in Afghanistan, but he was also tragically killed by “friendly fire,” the euphemism for being killed by one’s own side by mistake.

This, in itself, was perhaps an accident that didn’t have to happen, an unfortunate situation that probably bore various degrees of inevitability.  In “the fog of war” it is something that is tragic but understandable, amid the chaos of firefights, foreign lands, with death and ambush all around at any time.

But the thing that is the pisser is how Tillman’s story was spun.  So very much against his wishes.

Like perhaps many people, when a square-jawed football player jumps on the war bandwagon, the thought is that “this guy is your typical American war-hawk, full of pride, but blindly following a military force that God knows how such blind faith will be rewarded” (or some such thing.)

This is a discredit to Tillman.  From a long line of American military men, who had served in many wars and fought for the ideals of the country, he wasn’t your average jock by any means.  Growing up outside of San Jose, he was a local boy (to us here) and his family, while strong on many traditional American values were also not entirely of that world either.  They were atheists for one.  They believed in an individualism of American values that far exceeded that of others willing to put their lives at risk in defending.

The bottom line is that Tillman was not a glory-seeker.  He signed documents when he enlisted asking specifically not to be made into a model, hero, martyr.  He was serving for his own beliefs.  His notoriety was not something that he pursued.  And once he had served some time, he started really questioning American foreign policy.  The film suggest that he even met with Noam Chomsky, a noted critic of American foreign policy.  Tillman was serving his time, and dutifully, but he was at odds with what was really happening in the war.

And the government tried to use him as a model of American ideals.  Against his wishes.  And that thing about being killed by his own side?  That was something that needed to be suppressed.

This is a story of lies and subterfuge, an attempt to make a martyr and hero of a man who was certainly heroic, but humble.  The irony is that his heroism had as much to do with “the truth” and free speech as it did with “fighting the good fight”.  The administration wanted to use him, his image, his surface as an icon, a football player, enlistee, a true fighting American, while ignoring his own desires and the truth of his ignoble death.

One of the great moments from this story, caught for the film, is when his brother is at the big, military funeral, broadcast widely and attended by many important people, proselytized by many.  His brother says thank you to the people but that Pat was not up in Heaven.  He was an athiest.  He was “fucking dead”.

The integrity of the Tillman family comes through in a way that is extremely compelling, a family of unquestionable American ideals, including those that don’t gibe with becoming a war hero, a military emblem, a campaign image.  Beyond this, they’ve had to fight for the truth of Tillman’s death, through the lies of the government, the true “gratitude” handed out to someone who offered themselves for their country.

It’s a story of crude ironies and yet of true heroism and American values.

Filed under Documentaries, DVD

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

January 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011) movie poster

director Troy Nixey
viewed: 01/11/2012

Maybe it’s my own fault for thinking that the trailer for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark looked kind of good early on.  Co-produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), among others), it seemed to keen in on one of his stronger themes: childhood fears and fantasy.  But maybe it’s more of a testament that this was one that he chose not to direct.

Adapted from a made-for-television movie from the 1970′s (was there really another decade where they did such things in earnest?), del Toro was drawn to his own childhood experience of the film.  It scared him.  It stayed with him.  I don’t know if I have or haven’t seen the original.  It’s vague in my mind.  But the key way in which he updated the story, by making it focus on a child rather than an adult, seems the best intuitive choice that he made with the new film.

The film stars Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce as a couple who are restoring an estate somewhere in New England, a grand building that had been the property of a great artist.  Pearce’s daughter Sally from a previous relationship comes to stay with them.  Sally is unhappy, on medication, and is aware that she’s being passed off by a mother who doesn’t really want her.  So when Sally first discovers these strange, creepy voices coming through the vents, she is keen to make friends with them not to fear them.  Big mistake.

The film is visually polished, with cinematography that is more sweeping and swooping than the sum of the rest of the film’s parts.  The story is not well-thought out, the characters are not terribly plausible or believable, and for all its effort, it’s just really hard to care.  When Sally sneaks in to unbolt the sealed basement tunnel where the creatures live, it’s hard to believe that she really thinks they’re going to be friendly.  The hiss very quietly, almost subliminally, and I would think that even a lonely, depressed kid would be more wary than that.

Actually, this is another missed opportunity for the film.  There is perhaps a weird subcategory of horror films in which the children are the ones who believe in the fantastic horror while the adults fail to believe.  The kids are considered insane.  Child’s Play (1988) has been a personal favorite of this perverse order.  We do have a child on medication here, supposedly over-medicated by her absent mom, but somewhat depressed as well.  Without delving directly into psychology, there is much the plumb in the way of the child fantasist, the psychological versus the real world monsters, the loneliness of isolation of the world not believing in you.  But it’s all for naught here.

So, the script is bad, the direction is blah, the acting is not great either.  It’s sort of unkind to criticize a child actor, but Bailee Madison who plays Sally is not particularly sympathetic or engaging.  Actually, it’s kind of funny but I have for a long time said that Guy Pearce only seems to show up in good movies, whether it’s a starring role in a small film or a small role in a bigger film, the films that he’s in are usually surprisingly consistently good.  I suppose the exception proves the rule in this case.

It’s not an atrociously bad film, it’s just a frustratingly bad film.  The creatures are kind of cool, the story idea is kind of cool.  There was room for this to be a decent film.  But like I said, maybe del Toro knew it wasn’t such good material and skipped directing this one.  Who knows?

Filed under DVD

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

January 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) movie poster

director Brad Bird
viewed: 01/07/2012 at AMC Loews Metreon 16, SF, CA

I don’t dig Tom Cruise.  I haven’t seen one of his movies in the theaters since War of the Worlds (2005).  I didn’t see the prior Mission: Impossible III (2006).  So why see the cumbersomely titled Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol?  Good reviews alone would not have got me there, though good reviews there have been for this fourth installment of an action movie franchise that was a “re-boot” of a 1960′s-1970′s television show.

It came down to the fact that this was the first live-action film directed by Brad Bird.  Bird is best known for his stellar animated features, The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007).  Actually, it’s the confluence of good reviews and Brad Bird that piqued my interest to see a Tom Cruise movie in the cinema.  With the kids.  I don’t know that either of those facts alone would have done it.  Though I’m keen on Bird’s work, Mission: Impossible didn’t sound exactly like a match made in heaven.

Well, go figure.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol surprisingly is one of the best action films of its kind in a long, long while.  This is a James Bond-like thing with big action scenes, world-trotting locations, spy action, and explosions.  It’s a formula of sorts but it’s a formula that rarely makes it to the screen intact as a really exciting and thrilling movie.

It has a silly premise.  A rogue Russian genius wants to initiate a nuclear war to start a new era of life on Earth.  He gets the codes to launch the bombs, he gets the tool to launch the bombs, and just needs a satellite to launch the bombs.  And the M;I team has been “disavowed” by the government, setting them in “ghost protocol” (still the worst thing about the movie is the stupid title).  They’ve got to save the day on their own.

Tom’s team includes Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, and Paula Patton as the comic relief, the mysterious “is he good or evil” guy, and the sexy ass-kicker, respectively.  And everyone deports themselves well accordingly.

When I first saw trailers for the film, with Cruise dangling from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (currently the world’s tallest skyscraper), I was seriously nonplussed.  But the reality is that that scene in the movie, is the best sequence.  Bird has taken something that on the surface seems a bit cliche and overdone and really manages to induce not just vertigo but some crazy, athletic excitement.  It’s really quite something.

The whole film, while perhaps not achieving some transcendent level of that elusive quality of “greatness”, is a truly surprisingly entertaining and enthralling action film.  I was surprised.

The kids both liked it pretty well.  But I thought it was telling that Felix also commented that the worst thing about the film was its title (unsolicited by me).

Filed under Theatrical, With the kids

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

January 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) movie poster

director Vincente Minnelli
viewed: 01/06/2012

Some classic films that I watch with the kids are not only their initiation with the material, but my own as well.  I once used to note that no one has seen every interesting or important classic film, everyone has holes in their experience, so don’t be so surprised that I’d never seen it.  That said, in telling people about the movie the next day, I was surprised how many people hadn’t even heard of it.

Go figure.

Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Meet Me in St. Louis is one of Judy Garland’s most known and beloved films.  Set in the early part of the 20th century, it’s a family drama/comedy/entertainment that is interestingly already wistful for a bygone time of innocence in American culture.  Based on the writings of Sally Benson, it recalls a middle class family in St. Louis in the year leading up to the 1904 World’s Fair, which was held there.  Garland plays Esther, the second eldest daughter of the Smith clan (which includes three other sisters).  The joys and adventures are comprised of riding the trolley, riding shotgun with the ice delivery man, Halloween shenanigans, building snowmen and going to dances.  And wooing young men.

Some humor is made of the “invention” of the telephone, the newfangled device that allowed a person in New York to talk to a person in St. Louis “as if they were just in the next room” (via shouting and misunderstanding).

The film is shot in Technicolor and is a pretty pure delight.  It debuted such classic songs as “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, two of the film’s many highlights.  It’s also interesting that second-billed Margaret O’Brien played the youngest of the sisters, Tootie.  She’s a total hoot, a wild almost tomboy of a character, who gets most of the laughs and a bit of the drama.

Made in 1944, during WWII, the film is a diversion of diversions, reckoning of a wholesome America.  The film’s largest drama revolves around the father’s plan to uproot the family for a promotion in New York City.  The film is of course a tribute to the St. Louis of the early century, which received the World’s Fair’s cosmopolitan fantasia, “right in old St. Louis” (or something to that sentiment.)  St. Louis represents the ideals of the American family, and the joys and traumas therein are of that of nearly broken hearts and almost abandoned homes.  But the whole thing is too happy and upbeat and cheerful (despite the sentiment of ”Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that things will be better) to end with anything but a smile.

The kids really enjoyed it.  Felix had specifically asked if we could watch some more musicals and this was one that I’d always wanted to see.

Filed under DVD, Musicals, With the kids

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

January 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) movie poster

director Apichatpong Weerasethakul
viewed: 01/03/2012

Winner of the Palme D’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives was somewhat of a surprise.  Writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film is a mixture of realism and fantasy, or at least of some traditional Thai spiritual beliefs.  Based on a loosely on a book about a man who claimed to really be able to recall his past lives, the story is really a meditation on life, spiritual belief, death, and in some other ways, Thai cinema.

Clearly, it’s not a film made for just everybody.  In fact, Weerasethakul wasn’t even sure if his film would even be released in his native Thailand.  I’d never seen any of his films before, though I’d heard of Tropical Malady (2004).  While I wasn’t sure what I would think, I was intrigued.

The film is loaded with haunting imagery, evocative moments, and even some banal realism.  The actors are not necessarily professional, which adds to the realistic quality but also stilts some of the moments of out-and-out weirdness.

Uncle Boonmee opens with a particularly strange scene of a cow, tied to a tree, who loosens itself and then wanders into the jungle.  When the cow’s owner comes to retrieve it, a shadowy figure with red glowing eyes appears in the darkness without explanation.

Uncle Boonmee is dying from kidney failure.  He lives on a farm in the jungle and is visited by his ex-sister-in-law.  Soon he is also visited by the ghost of his dead wife and the form of his lost son, who disappeared into the jungle to become a monkey ghost (turns out he’s the furry thing with glowing red eyes).  All of this weirdness is taken in relative stride, living amid a reality that allows for such things.

The film shifts in its slow-going pace from moments of strangeness and weird beauty to lingering moments of dull everyday reality, normal conversation that transcends into discussion of life and beyond.  And then there is a sequence of a disfigured princess who has a sexual encounter with a catfish.

I’m not entirely sure what I think in the end.  Is it brilliant?  Is it naff?  Is it sublime?  I’m not sure.  I feel somewhat haunted by aspects of the film, moments, scenes, images.  But I wasn’t overwhelmed and invested to the level in which I would say that this film was indeed some tremendous feat of cinema.  I’m still a bit at odds with it.  But it is something strange and at times beautiful, at times a deeper, more audacious cinematic effort than most other films.  It lingers.  But does it stay?  We will see.

Filed under DVD, Thailand

Harvey (1950)

January 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Harvey (1950) movie poster

director Henry Koster
viewed: 12/31/2011

I hadn’t watched a movie on VHS in so long….  I actually had to figure out how to re-hook up my VCR.  And it took some work.

With my kids back from Australia, I wanted to find a good movie for our New Year’s Eve movie night.  I wanted a classic and the movie that I’d ordered from Netflix had not yet come in, so I trundled down to the now nearly anachronistic “Ye Olde Video Shoppe” and browsed to see what they had to offer.  Harvey was actually one of the top ones that I was looking for.   I had an odd feeling for The Poseidon Adventure (1972), which has the New Year’s Eve thing going for it.  Oddly, I recall seeing that film a number of times as I was growing up.  But the pickins was slim but ultimately I found Harvey on VHS.

In the end, Felix had a bit of a migraine so it was just Clara and I that watched it.  Great fun, I must say.

Though as a kid I watched The Poseidon Adventure many times, I had never seen Harvey (not that these films have anything in common, mind you).  Not until a friend enlightened me some 20 or so years ago and I was brought in to the wonder and enjoyment of this classic film.

I have always loved Jimmy Stewart, ever since I recall being first introduced to him via cinema.  Harvey was one of his personal favorite roles and it’s doubtlessly one of his best.  Adapted from a Pulitzer-winning play by Mary Chase, Harvey is the story of Elwood P. Dowd, a man without a care in the world whose best friend is a 6 foot something invisible rabbit.

Of course, everybody thinks he’s crazy.  Especially his older sister Veta (played by the amazing and Academy Award winning Josephine Hull) and his niece, Myrtle Mae (Victoria Horne), both of whom are trying to re-connect in the town’s society and find Myrtle Mae a man.  Embarrassments lead Veta to finally try to have Elwood committed.  Nearly slapstick insanity ensues when Veta gets committed instead.

The whole film plays off of Elwood’s sublime charm, ease, and happiness.  He’s unflappable, blissed-out almost, a model of kindness, gentility.  He’s also a drunk.

Interestingly, the film treats his alcoholism blithely.  He’s never shown to be “drunk”, per se, though he is constantly ordering two martinis, one for him and one for Harvey.  If alcoholism is potentially a cheerful state of being in the film, psychiatry is anything but.  The story is a paean to the mystical, magical world of fantasy to which we all can belong in strict converse to the “reality” that drugs and forced cold baths bring about.  Ultimately, it’s a cab driver who notes how he meets all kinds of wonderful folk on the way to the sanitarium but they always come out as gruff realists, unfriendly and unkind.  This is what ends up saving Elwood.

Surely, psychiatry around 1950 featured probably as many curses as cures, but let’s face it, who’s ever met a perpetually cheery, benign, open, gentlemanly drunk?

In the end, it’s revealed that Harvey is a “pooka”, a Celtic fairy spirit that takes animal form quite often and thanks to a few little effects, it’s made clear that he does exist.  So there is a magical world, after all.  Harvey is a big invisible rabbit, not a pink elephant.  And the kindness and gentility of Edwood P. Dowd is more of a testament to how people would be well-suited to slowing down, showing one another courtesy and interest, and knock back a few martinis while you’re at it.

Clara enjoyed the film quite a bit.  As did I.  And it is indeed one of the best Jimmy Stewart films there is.  And there are a lot.

Filed under Video, With the kids

Fright Night (2011)

January 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Fright Night (2011) movie poster

director Craig Gillespie
viewed: 12/28/2011

Compared to a lot of modern horror re-makes, Fright Night is indeed a cut above the rest.  Compared to the film which it is remaking and updating, Fright Night (1985), it’s still the lesser entity.

This Fright Night stars Colin Farrell as a hunky loner who moves into an isolated suburbia somewhere outside of Las Vegas.  Anton Yelchin is Charley, the suspicious neighbor who pegs Farrell for the vampire that he is, and who has to try to convince the rest of the community of the same.  The typically appealing Toni Collette plays his mother and this is where there is any qualitative parallel with the original, that the casting is slightly above average.  But the film is not as committed to creating a believable diegetic world and is happy to simply throw up characters as caricatures.

Take the re-vamp of “Evil” Ed from the original.  In the original is played with nerdy aplomb by Stephen Geoffreys, one of the film’s best characters.  Geoffreys was also given a few scenes before the drama started going to build his character and his relationship to Charley.  Here “Evil” Ed, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin of Superbad (2007) and the villain of Kick-Ass (2010)) is thrown on screen as the dweebish/insane former friend with whom Charley was a nerd before Charley got cool enough to land a super hot blond girlfriend.  Ed’s already onto the vampire, he’s the one who’s figured it out here.  But he’s also just a cheap nerd type.

Similarly, Peter Vincent, vampire slayer, has changed from the classic character of Roddy McDowell to a lampoon figure of a Criss Angel/Russell Brand (in a role that was seemingly written for Brand).  In the re-make, he’s played by David Tennant, who does pretty well with the foppish, drunken bad boy of the Las Vegas strip.

I highlight these changes to underscore the alterations as variance from the original but also steps down from the original.  Still, it’s a sight more than the average A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)-type of re-make of 1980′s horror films.  It’s still got more going for it than most of these cynical enterprises.

I watched the films back-to-back because it had been a long, long time since I’d seen the original and it seemed a good way to go with a re-make, too, which had actually gotten mixed but decent reviews.  It offered me a melancholy perspective on how the 1980′s were oddly enough still quite a fecund period of genre exploration in horror.  Fright Night (1985) was in many ways a throwback to the horror films of the 1950′s, teens in trouble kind of adventure, with a healthy amount of comedy supporting it.  It is an original story at the least.

While the new film maintains aspects of the qualities of the original, including the levity, it’s still a shell of a thing, not entirely by the numbers, but certainly lacking any original verve.

 

Filed under DVD

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