Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) ***1/2

 

I saw this one in theaters, back when Winona Ryder was every guy's dream girl. I recall enjoying it, but Keanu Reeve's wooden acting and laughable British accent left a bad taste in my mouth. Reeve's cartoonish performance came to dominate my memory of the film, which is a shame, as he is just a supporting character. It was long past time to give the movie a second chance.

The tale starts in the year 1462. Prince Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman) defeats an army of Turkish infidels against great odds. Flush with victory, he returns to his castle to find that the clever Turks have sent out a false report of his death, leading his wife, Elisabeta, to fling herself from a tower. The high priest callously informs Dracula that, as a suicide, Elisabeta is condemned to hell. Dracula renounces God and the church, vowing to rise from the dead to avenge his bride. His grief and rage are so deep that the curse is effective.

Centuries later, in 1897, solicitor Jonathan Harker (Reeves) travels to Transylvania to help an eccentric client, Count Dracula, purchase some London properties. Dracula sees a photo of Harker's fiance, Mina (Winona Ryder), who looks just like Elisabeta. Convinced that his bride has been reincarnated, Dracula travels to London to seduce Mina, feeding on the city's inhabitants in the meantime.

At 2 hours 8 minutes, “Bram Stoker's Dracula” runs a bit long, but it is well worth watching. The film hews fairly closely to Stoker's book, and of the film versions of the tale I have seen, this is the best. Keanu Reeves drags the movie down a bit, but not as badly as I remembered. The rest of the cast is aces. Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost are charming and beautiful, and they look great writhing around in their nightgowns in the throes of vampiric fever dreams. Cary Elwes (from “The Princess Bride”) plays one of Lucy's many suitors, and musician/actor Tom Waites plays the character of Renfield, driven mad by Dracula's influence. Anthony Hopkins plays Van Helsing, and Gary Oldman is magnetic as Dracula. Oldman manages to convey the Count's menace, his seductive charm, and, ultimately his tragedy. The entire story is contained within one line, when Dracula tells Mina, "I have crossed oceans of time to find you."

3.5 stars out of 5

The Night of the Iguana (1964) ****

 

Based on a Tennessee Williams play, “The Night of the Iguana” tells the story of people at the ends of their ropes, coming together to help one another during one hot, fateful night in Mexico. We first meet the Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton), a preacher who loses his post after a sexual indiscretion. We next find Shannon directing bargain basement tours of Mexico. His current tour group, mostly a bunch of lady schoolteachers from a Baptist college, is not going well. The ladies are beset with dysentery and sick of riding in a hot bus. Worse, the youngest member of the tour, 16-year-old Charlotte (Sue Lyon) has taken a fancy to the much older Shannon, and her chaperone does not approve of how much time Charlotte spends chatting Shannon up. Trying to do what is right and keep his job, Shannon repels Charlotte's advances as much as he can, but she is very persistent, and, well, every man has his limits. In Shannon's case, we know that he has reached his limit more than once.

Desperate, beset by his own moral failings, Shannon drags his poe-faced tour ladies to an out-of-the-way hotel that he knows. The owner, Maxine (Ava Gardner), reluctantly grants her old friend and his group lodging, and then is convinced to give a room to a broke artist (Deborah Kerr) and her poet grandfather. Through a sweltering day and night, this motley crew work through their issues as only characters in a play can.

There are definitely times when you recognize that this is a play brought to film. In fact, James Garner claimed that he was first offered the Shannon role but turned it down, because “it was just too Tennessee Williams for me.” The movie is much more dynamic than most play-to-film adaptations, however, and I would say that director John Huston mostly succeeds in turning this story into a movie. There are definitely times when Richard Burton, accustomed as he was to stage acting, overplays his role. The characters' soliloquies sometimes grow a bit long and literary as well. Mostly, though, the film is funny, poignant, and very human, with beautiful black-and-white camera work. Ava Gardner is an absolute revelation, beautiful and full of life. Her acting is so naturalistic that it helps smooth over some of Burton's over-acting.

“The Night of the Iguana” won an Oscar for costume design, and was nominated for several more. Despite its odd title, this is a classic that should not be forgotten, a funny, sexy, existentialist meditation on the interplay between desire, conscience, and repression. Watch it on a hot, humid night with a date and a couple of rum drinks.

4 stars out of 5

The Hunt (2020) ***

 

Given all that has happened since January 2020, you could be forgiven for forgetting that 2019 even existed. If you scrape your memory, though, you may recall some controversy about a movie that Universal Pictures tried to release. “The Hunt” was a satire about political divisions in the U.S., and the film trailer ran headlong into those same divisions. Before anyone had a chance to see it, Donald Trump and his minions tweeted complaints about the movie, and then some maniac murdered a bunch of people in an El Paso, TX Walmart. Universal decided the timing was all wrong, and canceled their Fall release date. After things had cooled down, they scheduled a new release, for March 2020. You know how that turned out. Covid-19 shut down most theaters, and left the others mostly empty, and “The Hunt” was seen by almost no one. That's a shame, because it's not a bad movie.

The plot is that a group of liberal elites kidnap several conservatives, whom they refer to as “deplorables,” release them on a large manor, then hunt them for sport. You can see why this raised some hackles, but people, including Donald Trump, who complained about it without seeing it just showed their ignorance. “The Hunt” is a violent, humorous satire about the deep rift between Red State and Blue State America, and it does not pick on one side more than the other. Each side gets a chance to show its ass in this farce. Many reviewers have complained about this both-sides-ism, complaining that the film is nihilistic and refuses to make a political statement. I think these reviewers are just blinded to their own political partisanship, and they cannot enjoy a movie that fails to represent their own side of the partisan divide.

Even more than extreme political division, “The Hunt” is about the pitfalls of the online rage machine via which anyone who says anything that offends anyone, anywhere is subject to extreme levels of online bullying. This bullying can lead to people losing their sanity, their job, or their life. Every now and then, we hear about a suicide, and everyone tut tuts. But the next time someone expresses an unpopular opinion, there are always plenty of keyboard warriors waiting to crucify them, emboldened by numbers, anonymity, and their own self-righteousness.

Is “The Hunt” going to fix any of these problems? Not likely, but it's an enjoyable diversion, and star Betty Gilpin is foxy and entertaining. The toughest part for most will be deciding whether to be offended or not.

3 stars out of 5

Midnight Run (1988) ****

 

Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) is a man with a code, a code that forced him to leave his job in a corrupt, Chicago police department. Now, he works as a bounty hunter for a bail bondsman and pines for his ex-wife. Still, Jack has his code. He does what he says he is going to do, and he doesn't take payoffs. Hired to hunt down a Mob accountant and get him from New York to L.A., Walsh pursues his assignment single-mindedly, shrugging off bribe offers from the Mob and warnings from the FBI.

Walsh finds his quarry, a task at which both the FBI and the Mob had failed, but getting him from New York to L.A. proves challenging. Mardukas (Charles Grodin) is convinced that he will be killed in prison, so he is highly motivated to make an escape. Meanwhile, their journey by planes, trains, and automobiles is hounded by hit-men and FBI agents.

The story is definitely familiar: A cop chaperones a convict, they get on each other's nerves, and slowly, they become a team. It's fair to say that “Midnight Run” owes a debt to 1982's “48 Hrs.” I'm going to go out on a limb and say that “Midnight Run” is the better film of the two. Don't get me wrong; “48 Hrs.” is a great movie. Eddie Murphy's manic energy mates perfectly with Nick Nolte's acerbic grumpiness. “48 Hrs.” is a pure comedy, though, and there is never a moment when you doubt that things are going to work out for those two. Also, Murphy's personality is a lot to contain, and there are plenty of times when Nolte risks overplaying his growly demeanor to keep the movie from becoming “The Eddie Murphy Show.”

“Midnight Run” is much more a film for grown-ups. The film still rests on the chemistry between De Niro and Grodin, but the performances are much more restrained and believable, the jokes are more subtle, and the emotionally-satisfying ending feels well-earned. That ending, in fact, really stands out in this genre. Rather than the feel-good sequel setup typical of a buddy comedy, “Midnight Run” builds up to a genuinely moving conclusion for its odd couple. This isn't a flashy movie, but it's an enjoyable buddy comedy and well worth a watch.

4 stars out of 5

High Noon ****1/2

 

I'm embarrassed that I never saw this film until now. It is one of the classic westerns, and I don't really know how I avoided it. What finally brought me around to it was a “Sopranos” episode, where Tony asks, “What happened to the strong, silent types, like Gary Cooper in “High Noon”? … He just did what had to be done.” I figured an endorsement from Tony Soprano was a sign I should check this one out.

Cooper plays Marshall Will Kane, whom we meet as he is marrying a hottie named Amy (Grace Kelly). After the ceremony, Kane hands over his badge and gun. Amy, a Quaker, is a pacifist, and she has convinced him to give up the lawman's life to move away and run a store. Just as the happy couple are about to get on their way, Kane learns that Frank Miller, whom Kane had arrested for murder, has been pardoned. Miller is coming to town on the noon train, and everyone reasonably assumes that he and his gang will be coming for Kane.

Everyone, including Amy, wants Kane to hightail it out of town before Miller arrives. Something in Kane just won't allow himself to be run off, so he defies his wife, straps his guns back on, and sets about raising a posse. Only problem is, the townsfolk aren't so interested in risking their lives to help him face the Miller gang. Everyone has different reasons for begging off, but as an hour and a half ticks off to noon, Kane finds out just how alone he is in the town he had loved and protected.

“High Noon” is so rich in themes that graduate theses have probably been written on the film. For one, it's a criticism of civilization's tendency towards decadence. Will Kane found Hadleyville a wild place run by killers and rapists like the Millers. He tamed the town and made it safe for women and children, and he did it with the help of ordinary citizens who were willing to risk their lives to build a decent home. Now, those same townsfolk have gotten soft, and they reckon it's someone else's job to risk life and limb for their safety. The story is also a celebration of the kind of rugged individualism that is so out of favor nowadays, and don't get me started on the feminist themes.

I'll bet “High Noon” is popular in film classes as well. The movie is known for telling its story in more-or-less real time, meaning that the events all take place between 10:30a.m. and noon, and the movie itself is about an hour and a half long. This is a really effective way to draw the audience into the story. We are reminded of Kane's time running out by periodic shots of the clock ticking away towards noon, as well as by low-angle shots of the empty train tracks, which will soon be full of trouble. My favorite shots are those of Kane walking through the abandoned streets, looking for allies and finding none. He looks like the loneliest man in the West. Gary Cooper did without makeup, to enhance his character's look of haunted betrayal, and it works.

Cooper's haggard appearance also serves to emphasize my one complaint about the film, which is that Grace Kelly is badly miscast as Amy. The whole idea of Marshall Kane marrying a Quaker pacifist and retiring to be a shopkeeper is a bit far-fetched, and it requires a believable actress to sell it. The role needed someone who could hold her own against Cooper, like Katharine Hepburn did with John Wayne in “Rooster Cogburn.” Kelly just doesn't bring much to the role, and the age difference between her and Cooper is distracting (Kelly was 21 and looks about 17, while Cooper looked all of his 50 years.)

To my eyes, “High Noon” looks like a pretty classic story of a rugged, western hero, but it turns out the film was controversial. The film put off audiences with its lack of typical, Western-movie action until the very end. “High Noon” also got caught up in the Hollywood blacklisting movement. Screenwriter Carl Foreman was a former communist who refused to name names in front of Congress. I feel like today that should make him a hero to all decent people, but in 1951 it made him a traitor. John Wayne was originally offered the Kane role, but turned it down, refusing to work with Foreman. Blacklisted, Foreman ultimately sold his share of the production and moved to the U.K. Wayne called the movie “un-American,” which is ironic considering it was condemned in the Soviet Union as “glorification of the individual.” I figure any movie that managed to piss off both the Russians AND reactionary Commie-hunters here in the U.S. was doing something right. Not to mention, it got the Tony Soprano seal of approval!

4.5 stars out of 5

No Sudden Move (2021) **

 

Steven Soderbergh's directing career has been all over the place since he wrote and directed 1989's groundbreaking “Sex, Lies, and Videotape.” He did “Out of Sight,” “Erin Brockovich,” "Contagion," the soulless "Ocean's" franchise, and, inexplicably, the goofy-but-fun "Magic Mike."  Now, into this movie-starved pandemic year comes Soderbergh's latest, the crime caper “No Sudden Move,” and boy, are critics falling all over themselves to praise this movie! Me, I'm not so impressed.

Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro play Curt and Ronald, a couple of low level crooks in the 1950's hired to hold a family hostage while a 3^rd crook (Kieran Culkin) takes the man of the family to retrieve industrial secrets from the car company where he works. The job is inherently threatening, but the plan is for no one to get hurt. Things don't work out that way, and Curt and Ronald find themselves on the run from multiple criminal gangs as well as the police. They decide to get proactive and sell the industrial secrets themselves, a process that involves multiple double crosses as they parley with different parties while trying to figure out how much they can trust each other.

“No Sudden Move” is very stylish, beautifully-filmed, and well-acted. The pacing is good, and the movie reminded me for a while of the Coen brothers' classic, “Miller's Crossing.” The difference is that where the Coens bring everything together in the end for a satisfying conclusion, Soderbergh's story turns into a mess. Near the end, when Curt and Ronald meet the character known as Mr. Big (Matt Damon), Big goes into this long, scenery-chewing monologue that makes no sense in a film otherwise full of cool characters who spend their words wisely. There's also a big reveal about Ronald's past that adds nothing to the tale. Then, too, Curt's machinations give the impression, for a while, that he is always a step ahead of everyone else, but his schemes seem like nonsense by the end.

If you skip the last 20 minutes or so, “No Sudden Move” is a pretty solid crime thriller. Unfortunately, as with wine, a sour finish is unforgivable in a film. In the end, I found this film to represent a waste of a lot of talent on a half-baked story. I'm in the minority here, as most critics seem to love the movie, but I wonder if that's a symptom of how few movies have come out in the past year.

2 stars out of 5

Dune (2021) *****

 

I'm having visions of the future, visions of Oscar gold for Denis Villeneuve's “Dune.” I'm predicting Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and so many technical awards that the next Oscars is liable to get a bit monotonous. “Dune” is simply the most beautifully-filmed, most gripping, new movie I have seen in ages.

Most people are at least vaguely familiar with the existence of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel, Dune, the first book in what is one of the most popular and influential sci-fi series of all time. In 1984, director David Lynch took a stab at adapting the story to film. The result was cheesy, stilted, campy, unintentionally funny, and actually kind of awesome in a cult-classic kind of way. It was not even close to worthy of the novel. And so, fans waited. The Sci-Fi Channel aired a 3-part Dune Miniseries in 2000, which was successful by Sci-Fi Channel standards, but it didn't leave any lasting impression in the desert sands. Now, director Denis Villeneuve ("Blade Runner 2049") has given us the Dune adaptation we have been waiting for.

Timothee Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, son of Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), who rules over the planet Caladan. Across the way a bit, Leto's sworn enemy, Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) controls the planet Arrakis, a dry, desert world that is valuable for one thing, Spice. Within the sands of Arrakis is an addictive substance that extends life in small doses. In larger doses, Spice enhances clairvoyance in some, allowing starship pilots to navigate the galaxy at warp speeds. Spice makes interstellar travel possible, making it the most valuable substance in the universe. The Harkonnens have become obscenely rich from Spice mining, but now, the galactic Emperor has decided to transfer Arrakis and its riches to the Atreides family. It is a perilous gift for Duke Leto, as it means uprooting his House from their Caladan stronghold. Meanwhile, Paul is coming of age and coming into the powers taught him by his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson). Jessica is a member of the Bene Gesserit, a guild of women with such refined mental powers that they are essentially witches.

“Dune” is successful in part because it is forward-looking and old-fashioned at once. Democracy is apparently a flash in the pan, and future worlds are run by a familiar-looking, feudal aristocracy. Technology has created personal shields that render bullets useless, as the shield can only be defeated by the slow, steady pressure of a blade. Combat in this world is mainly hand-to-hand fighting with swords and knives.

Forewarning to the uninitiated: “Dune,” despite its swashbuckling ways, is not “Star Wars.” This is considerably darker sci-fi, and some might call it bleak.

But I'm telling you things that you will learn soon enough by watching the film, and you absolutely must! It's been a while since I saw a new movie that didn't disappoint me in some way, but “Dune” is just perfect. The screenplay honors the book without trying to stick with the source novel so much as to become plodding. The cast represents an impressive collection of talent, including Skarsgard, Isaac, Josh Brolin, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, and Jason Momoa. I admit to being skeptical about Timothee Chalamet. He has such a punchable face that I couldn't imagine him as the hero, but I have to admit that he is the perfect Paul Atreides. The music and cinematography also deserve special mention. “Dune” is truly a feast for the eyes and the ears. You will want to watch this on the big screen or on a good, high-definition TV. This is not one to watch on your phone.

Dune, the novel, is cool and fun, full of philosophy and swashbuckling adventure. “Dune,” the movie, skimps on the philosophy in favor of keeping the story going, which is clearly necessary given how much story there is. Even with a 2 ½ hour run-time (which feels much shorter), “Dune” only covers the first half of the book. Believe it or not, the studio only committed to this first movie, but given how well this turned out, it is hard to imagine that Villeneuve will not get to make the second half. I can't wait!

5 stars out of 5

The Thing (2011) ***

 

Prequels are, by nature, highly constrained. A sequel may have to start with what happened in the past, but it is free to take any path it wants into the future. A prequel to a movie, on the other hand, has to make sure that everything that occurs leads (hopefully logically) to what we know takes place in the original film. Despite these limitations, producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman made the right decision when they chose to update John Carpenter's 1982 classic "The Thing" by making a prequel. First, it would have been a travesty to remake the original, which is perfect as it is. Second, this is not a movie that demanded a sequel. The ending was perfect, and while it is possible to imagine a sequel, I cannot imagine one being anything other than a blight on the legacy of the original. The real untold story here, as Abraham and Newman realized, is, “What happened with that Norwegian team that found the Thing before it wandered into Kurt Russell's camp.” With writer Eric Heisserer and director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr, they managed to fill in that backstory in a way that mostly works, and which certainly does not sully the original.

If you are a fan of John Carpenter's film (and you should be), you may recall that it starts with a husky running through the snow, chased by a helicopter bearing the Norwegian flag. 2011's “The Thing” rewinds the clock to tell us how a couple of Norwegians wound up trying to murder a dog, and how their camp got into the state in which Kurt Russell's character finds it.

With a team of Danish and Norwegian actors, van Heijningen portrays a scientific team that discovers a flying saucer buried in the ice, and nearby, also frozen, they find something that might have been the pilot! They recruit some American researchers, including paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), to help them excavate the creature, which turns out to have some surprises for them.

John Carpenter's “The Thing” is a masterpiece of dread, perfectly-paced, and punctuated by a thrumming score by Ennio Morricone. There is no way van Heijningen's film was going to top that, and it does not have to. All it has to do is entertainingly tell the story of the Norwegian camp, which it ably does. This film lacks the humor of the original, and I would say that scenes in this film sometimes seem to be tracking similar scenes from the original. All in all, though, this is a serviceable prequel. Now the big question, one that is very familiar to Star Wars fans, is this: Now that a prequel exists, how should new viewers approach the franchise: in chronological order or in order of release? In this case, there is no question. A new viewer should watch John Carpenter's “The Thing” first, then 2011's “The Thing.” John Carpenter's film introduces the horror incrementally, slowly revealing what is going on as the characters learn it, and you do not want to rob yourself of that experience.

3 stars out of 5

(John Carpenter's “The Thing” earned 5 stars)

30 Days of Night (2007) **1/2

 

It's fair to say that vampires are hardly under-represented in Hollywood lore. Since 1922's “Nosferatu,” the blood-sucking undead have been a Hollywood staple. We've seen vampires in every flavor you can imagine: scary, funny, sexy, ugly, you name it. So what innovation does “30 Days of Night” bring to the table? Well, in most vampire movies, the characters just have to survive the night. If they can make it to morning, the sun will rise, the vampires will be forced into hiding, and the good guys get a chance to regroup. But what about the arctic, the Land of the Midnight Sun, the flip side of which is mid-day darkness in winter?

“30 Days of Night” is set in Barrow, now called Utquiagvik, the most northerly town in Alaska. The town is preparing for the darkest part of winter, when the sun doesn't rise for weeks. Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett) starts getting a lot of strange calls. Someone has sabotaged the town's communications and helicopter, leaving everyone stuck there incommunicado during a period when no one generally is able to enter or leave. Soon, the dark city is beset by vampires, and with sunrise weeks away, the townsfolk have no choice but to hide or fight.

This film does some things right, but it also gets a lot wrong. For one thing, it isn't just 30 days. The sun sets in Utquiagvik around November 18^th each year and does not rise again until January 22^nd. I guess “64 Days of Night” didn't have the same ring to it. I'll give them artistic license on that. The bigger complaint is that the way the film is put together, you really get little sense of the whole vampire reign of terror lasting even a month. One scene hops right to the next, and it really feels like the film takes place in one night. That's a missed opportunity, as this film's one original idea is the whole endless night situation.

All that said, this is not actually all that bad a horror film. The vampires are truly scary, and they speak a cool, Eastern-European sounding vampire language. The acting is decent for this type of film, and I generally enjoyed the movie, which is based on a comic series. It might be interesting to watch this back-to-back with Christopher Nolan's 2002 film, “Insomnia,” which is set during the Alaskan summer.

2.5 stars out of 5

The Empty Man (2020) **

 

The story of this film's creation is almost more interesting, and scarier, than the actual movie. Based on a graphic novel, the film was adapted and directed by David Prior, who started shooting back in 2016. Production was delayed a number of times, due to things like weather and studio politics. Around the time Prior was ready to finish the film, 20^th Century Fox got bought out by Disney, and Prior went through a couple of cycles of being rushed by the studio, then being ignored. He had to rush out a version for a test screening, which went horribly, then the studio tried to edit together their own version of the film before handing it back to Prior. Finally completed, the film sat on the shelf for a couple of years. Disney ultimately released it during the pandemic, and it screened for mostly empty theaters. Audiences and critics alike hated it, and the film seemed destined to die in obscurity. In a year when there just aren't many new movies available, however, the film found an audience on streaming services, and it has become something of a cult movie.

The story is about a detective who discovers a secret cult who worship an entity they call “the Empty Man.” The Empty Man can be summoned by blowing on a bottle near a bridge, and he may be the explanation for the deaths of several local teens. But before all that, there's a piece about some hikers in the Himalayas, who stumble upon a deadly curse.

The problem with “The Empty Man” is that it is really 3 movies, and they don't fit together very well. The first half hour, in the Himalayas, is actually a pretty cool, horror short all on its own. Then they abruptly shift to the story of the detective, and it's a pretty typical, derivative horror flick about teens daring each other to summon a murderous entity. Then it segues into the final section, about a secret cult. This is the most intriguing part, as it delves some into the warped-Buddhist, nihilistic philosophy of the cult, and there's an interesting twist to the story. Unfortunately, these 3 story lines are not knitted together well, and they amount to a run time of 2 hours 17 minutes, which is just way more of my life than this film deserves. I feel like there is a good movie in there somewhere, and director David Prior was never given the chance to piece it together. If he were given the opportunity to come back in and edit this thing, separate the wheat from the chaff, and get it down to about 100 minutes, he might come up with a movie that would leave me feeling less, well, empty.

2 stars out of 5