Reel Thoughts: The Vamp Next Door

Now, come on! If Colin Farrell moved next door to you, in a dull, foreclosure-riddled Vegas subdivision, would you really wait more than five seconds before you were at his door asking for a little sugar? The new Fright Night is a meaner, leaner version of the 1985 classic, which changes up enough of the story to make it worth remaking. The original featured some bizarre casting including Stephen Geoffreys, a Tony-nominated actor who went into gay porn, and Amanda Bearse, playing Charlie’s virginal girlfriend a few years before she came out of the closet. William Ragsdale exhibited an acting range that rivals Zack Galligan in its lack of quality. Still, Chris Sarandon was a dark and sexy vampire nemesis and Roddy McDowell was a hoot as the faded TV ghost host Peter Vincent.

Fright Night 2011 takes advantage of the modern economic downturn to explain how a vampire could be preying on people without anyone noticing their absence. Families are fleeing their tract homes in Charlie Brewster’s (Anton Yelchin) North Vegas neighborhood by the truckload, so what who’s to know if they were foreclosed on... or fed upon? Toni Collette (who must have had Yelchin when she was 16) plays Charlie’s mother, a lonely real estate agent who is ticked at new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) who works nights in casino construction and has a butt-ugly dumpster in his front yard.

Narrative whiplash sets in as Charlie is informed that Jerry is a vampire by his nerdy former best friend Ed (McLovin’ himself, Christopher Mintz-Plasse) almost immediately. Ed had been tracing Jerry’s movements and managed to not-capture him on camera, and he begs his old friend to help him take the bloodsucker down. Once Charlie realizes that Ed was right, his buddy is missing, so Charlie seeks out Vegas Goth magician Peter Vincent (David Tennant, channeling Russell Brandt and Chris Angel), a dissolute so-called vampire expert. The drunken lothario is not very supportive, to say the least.

Fright Night ramps up the action above the original with Jerry baring his fangs early and launching an all-out assault on Charlie, his mom and his hot girlfriend, Amy (played by the unfortunately-named Imogen Poots). While the original’s acting was sitcom-my, Farrell’s hot, dangerous performance makes the new version sexier and funnier. Wait until you see how Jerry gets around the old, “Vampires can’t come in if you don’t invite them” rule.

Even the ubiquitous 3-D is used well in Fright Night. While Yelchin is a little long in the tooth to be a high schooler, he’s way better than Ragsdale, who inexplicably had a career after the 1985 opus. While Geoffreys was creepy and cringe-worthy (“You’re so cool, Brewster!”), Mintz-Plasse actually gets some sympathy as the spurned friend. Poots does well in the thankless girlfriend role, and Collette is fun to watch and really knows how to wield a realty sign!

If you’re looking for a fun night with a few frights, Fright Night should be just right.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reverend's Reviews: Iranian Girls Gone Wild

The Islamic fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, definitely wouldn't approve of the award-winning, pro-LGBT drama Circumstance (opening today in Los Angeles and New York). Maryam Keshavarz's sensual look at two girls from opposite sides of the tracks who fall in love shines a more revealing light than ever before on Iranian culture and politics. Not surprisingly, GLBT people bear the brunt of the current regime's repressive tactics, and can even be put to death.

In Circumstance, Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri), who comes from a wealthy family, meets lower class, orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazmy) at an underground dance party in Tehran (the film was shot in Lebanon). Despite the constant threats of surveillance and raids by Iran's Morality Police, the girls and their teen/young adult friends can't resist the time-honored temptations to dance, drink, try drugs and have sex. The biggest surprise to Shireen and Atafeh is their unexpected, mutual attraction to each other.

Naturally, they know to keep their relationship a secret. It becomes more difficult to do so once Atafeh's brother (Reza Sixo Safai) returns home from prison. Having embraced extremist religious and political views while incarcerated, he increasingly forces his conservative expectations on his family and threatens to uncover the forbidden love between Shireen and his sister.

Circumstance has swept the major awards at many of this year's film festivals, including Sundance, New Directors/New Films (a.k.a. Newfest) and Outfest, and Boosheri was honored with Outfest's Best Actress award for her film debut as the conflicted Atafeh. While I didn't find much new in the film's girl-girl romantic dynamics, it's setting and social-political commentary are certainly above the norm. Writer-director Keshavarz, who is Iranian herself, structures and frames her story beautifully, with scenes gradually moving from open and airy settings to tighter, more oppressive settings and camera shots. The performances from the mix of experienced and neophyte actors are uniformly excellent.

In an online chat with critics, Keshavarz related the many risks that she, her cast and crew members took in making the film. "I had serious discussions with the actors that we likely couldn't go back to Iran after making the film," she wrote. "Even shooting in a liberal country, like Lebanon, was still difficult; it is still illegal to be gay there." Keshavarz has been thrilled, however, with the "amazing," positive response Circumstance has received from GLBT audiences in the US as well as from younger Middle Eastern immigrants who have seen it.

While homosexuality remains a criminal offense in many Middle Eastern countries and other parts of the world, there is hope to be found in Circumstance. As history has shown — and can currently be seen in Libya and other former dictatorships — the more repressive/oppressive the environment, the more emboldened the oppressed become. This is true of both political and religious structures. Shireen and Atafeh are our latest cinematic heroines in the GLBT community's growing call for acceptance and justice.

Reverend's Rating: B+

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

Men on Film: Two Critics, One Day

Reverend's Reviews: One (Not Very Fine) Day:

July 15th is revered in Anglican Church circles as the feast of Saint Swithin (sometimes spelled Swithun), a 9th-century bishop of Winchester known for — in the words of his Wikipedia entry — "posthumous miracle-working." Swithin is referenced several times in the new movie One Day, opening nationwide today. If only the good saint's miracles extended to cinematic adaptations of bestselling novels; One Day could use one.

An uneasy mix of romantic longing and thwarted fairy tale, the plot follows two British friends and occasional lovers over a 20-year period beginning with their initial encounter on July 15, 1988. A middle-class, ambitious wannabe-writer, Emma (played by American actress Anne Hathaway), meets the wealthy, uninhibited Dex (Jim Sturgess of the Beatles-inspired musical Across the Universe) following their college graduation. The film subsequently revisits the pair each July 15th thereafter, and we watch the ebb and flow of their careers and angst-ridden relationship via vignettes accompanied by period-appropriate pop songs.

This "annual checkup" conceit ultimately proves precious and plodding, despite the occasionally clever ways each date is worked into the scene visually. I haven't read the novel by David Nicholls upon which the film is based (Nicholls also wrote the screenplay). A co-worker who has read the book informs me that the years and events aren't presented chronologically/sequentially on the page as they are on screen. I therefore suspect that events in the novel are presented in a more nuanced and layered way than they are in this heavy-handed movie version.

At least viewers are privy to some lovely scenery in Great Britain and France (shot by Benoit Delhomme) while we watch the lead characters struggle, work, love, grieve and skinny dip. By film's end, one of them learns "Whatever happens tomorrow, we've had today" as the result of a tragic twist so heavily foreshadowed in the moments before that it should surprise no one.

The cast can't be faulted for One Day's shortcomings. Hathaway and Sturgess are fine in their roles and have good chemistry. I am already weary, however, of Hathaway playing tortured romantic victims following this and last year's Love & Other Drugs. Here's hoping she gets to bust loose and kick some ass as Catwoman in next summer's The Dark Knight Rises. Patricia Clarkson (Far from Heaven, Easy A) is good as always in her brief turn as Dex's doting, terminally ill mother.

Directed by Lone Scherfig, One Day serves as a disappointing follow-up to her more subtle, Oscar-nominated film of 2009, An Education. It also represents a rare misstep for the usually reliable Focus Features, maker of such gay-interest successes as Brokeback Mountain, Milk and Beginners. Some fellow critics and audience members may find One Day miraculous somehow. By it's final 20 minutes, though, I was praying to Saint Swithin for deliverance.

Reverend's Rating: C-

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

On the other hand...

Reel Thoughts: A Blue Valentine (That People Will Actually Want to Watch):

From Same Time, Next Year to (500) Days of Summer to last year’s brutal Blue Valentine, films that unfold on timelines are fascinating, because you get to see the characters change, sometimes radically, from date to date. One Day is like Same Time, Next Year in that we follow Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess on the same date over twenty-three years, starting with a night of passion on the graduation day in 1988 all the way to 2011. At first, the date skipping from year to year seemed too quick and too facile, but as the film progressed, you grow to love Emma and Dex, flaws and all. July 15th, or St. Swithin’s Day as Dex informs Emma after their not-completed tryst, grows dramatically in significance as the pair grow older.

David Nicholls has adapted his best-selling novel masterfully, showing Dex’s rise as a smarmy television host and Emma’s escape from a dead-end restaurant job to become the teacher and then novelist she always wanted to be. Of course, Dex’s superficial fame leads to a drug-addicted, sex-drenched superficial life that is bound to burn out, and it does. Through everything, Emma’s and Dex’s friendship and love survives, and this is what makes One Day so powerful and moving.

Everyone has regrets and wonders how there life might have been different if they had engaged with that one elusive person. Writer Nicholls and Danish director Lone Scherfig (An Education) frankly show the highs and lows that fate gives us, and never stoop to easy laughs or unearned payoffs. Hathaway and Sturgess each give incredibly nuanced performances, aided by the luminous Patricia Clarkson as Dex’s mother and a cast of fine British actors. Emma and Dex’s relationship is presented in a real, mature fashion, full of the fights and reconciliations that every couple faces.

Anyone who has ever experienced the highs of love and the devastating lows of loss will want to experience this One Day. Its hopeful ending will comfort you with the promise that life can rebound, even when you think it cannot. With Sarah’s Key, The Help and now One Day, the best movies of the year are finally arriving.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.

Reverend's Reviews: Darwin or Bust

While most of us long to live in a place that truly accepts us just as we are with no questions asked, few of us would like that place to be anywhere in the vicinity of Death Valley. Long considered one of the most inhospitable places on earth, Death Valley has nonetheless been called "home" for 150 years by the varied residents of tiny Darwin, California.

Nick Brandestini's illuminating new expose of the locale — appropriately titled Darwin — is now playing as part of the 15th annual DocuWeeks in New York and Los Angeles (showtimes and more information may be found at the film's official website). The town is currently inhabited by 35 generally eccentric men and women, a mere 1% of Darwin's population of 3,500 at its peak in 1877. They proudly boast in the film of having no government, no church, no children and no jobs, save one. "I got the best job," says local postmaster Susan, "because it's the only job." Virtually everyone else lives on Social Security or disability benefits alone, and everyone has a past.

Darwin's other residents include Monty, an originally very handsome man with artistic longings who moved there in the 1950's to work as a lead miner, and his wife; Hank and Connie, who have embraced paganism after abandoning their formerly conservative Christian lives; and Hank and Connie's transgender son Ryal, who was born a girl but found in Darwin a tolerant community that supported his transition to male. Ryal and his partner, Penny, have since moved away from Darwin, hoping to find similar acceptance in the world beyond Death Valley.

As if Darwin's position on the map wasn't enough to discourage habitation, it is also located near a Naval Weapons Station established in 1943. The residents' only apparent, enduring fear aside from their water supply potentially being cut off is of one day having a nuclear bomb "accidentally" dropped on their community. Interestingly, the town's most prominent, longtime inhabitant is Michael Laemmle, grandson of the great Carl Laemmle, who founded Universal Pictures and supervised many westerns and other movies shot in the vicinity of Darwin during the 1930's-50's.

As someone is quoted during the film, "There sure is a lot of wasted talent in Darwin." The real-life characters depicted, though, more often than not credit their isolated home with bringing true peace and fulfillment to their previously troubled lives. They clearly have no regrets. Darwin is not only revealing but also quite funny due to things the residents say. To its credit, the documentary never leads viewers to laugh at the subjects' expense.

The Swiss-born Brandestini (who last made an acclaimed film about artist H.R. Giger) writes in the film's press notes of how he became fascinated with America's "living ghost towns" such as Darwin. He not only directed and produced the result of his interest, but personally shot the doc in vivid, hi-def style that captures the landscape's natural drama and edited it as well. While I haven't personally visited Darwin, I won't soon forget it thanks to Brandestini's haunting travelogue.

Reverend's Rating: A-

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and the Blade California.

Reel Thoughts: Ch-Ch-Changes

The Change-Up is a "Career-Down" for everyone involved, a piece of cinematic baby poop so noxious, it could wipe out the rain forests. I was personally offended by every single minute of this stupid, curdled monstrosity. It is all the more depressing for how it sours the charisma of Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, Olivia Wilde and especially poor Leslie Mann. The scene where Mann is forced to sit on a toilet and fumigate the bathroom with her Thai food diarrhea is the kind of thing you would force an actor to do when you really, really hate them. Similarly, Reynolds’ debased slacker and Bateman’s mopey drip make you wonder why they’re stars at all. My "Worst Movie of the Year" list just got a lot easier to compile.

Easily the worst entry in the Freaky Friday body swap oeuvre, The Change-Up presents us with two equally awful baby-men who exchange pea brains after peeing in a magic Atlanta fountain. Dave Lockwood (Bateman) is a work-obsessed family man while Mitch Planko (Reynolds) is a repulsive womanizer who trolls Lamaze classes for his sex partners. Alan Arkin plays his hugely disappointed father, echoing the audience’s feelings. Once they’ve traded places, each man ruins the other’s lives, and we couldn’t care less.

Trust me when I tell you that after the opening scene where Dave’s baby shoots projectile poop straight into his mouth not once but twice, the film only goes downhill from there. The story has no point, the characters change from scene to scene from hating the switch to loving it and the narrative has the momentum of a clogged sewer line. Only the least discriminating viewer could laugh at the admittedly outrageous and sometimes sickly funny sight gags without feeling supremely guilty and dirty afterwards.

The Change-Up even looks cheap and low budget. Supporting characters like Arkin’s newest wife look like they were plucked from a mall contest, and the Atlanta setting feels like the winner in “the cheapest filming location” sweepstakes (watch out, Albuquerque!). I hope that Bateman and Reynolds can change up their agents and get better parts in better movies.

Reel Thoughts Rating: F

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.