Top Gun: Maverick and Tom Cruise

I went to see the movie Top Gun: Maverick today and was very impressed by it. I wasn't sure what to expect, since this sequel comes thirty-six years after the first Top Gun film. It's said that Tom Cruise held off on making the sequel; if so, I give him credit for having good instincts, because it comes at a time when society could use a real blockbuster film that draws viewers in and thoroughly entertains them. I'm talking about being entertained the way we were entertained by movies from the 1980s--'big' films, amazing flight/action sequences, little to no CGI, real stunts, decent plots and good acting. 

I preface this review by stating up front that I do not care about Tom Cruise's religious affiliations, his personal life, or how much he stands to make from this film. He made a film he believed in and worked hard personally to get it made and to actually make it. He doesn't need me to defend him against any criticism, that I know. But I thank him for making this film, because it restored my desire to go to the movies and not just sit night after night watching series and movies on streaming channels. There is something about the experience of sitting in a movie theater in the dark together with others that appeals to me and always will. I used to love going to the movies. If the movie industry can get back to making films like this, I'll be going to the movies a lot more often. I made a promise to myself that I will try to go to the movies at least once a week from now on. I prefer going to the movies rather than sitting in front of the tv night after night mindlessly flipping through the channels trying to find something interesting to watch. I'm picky, I know. I don't care. I'm 'seried-out', as in, I'm tired of watching/binging an endless series of series. What I want is to watch a really good movie, and Top Gun: Maverick fits that bill. Seeing the film also restored my faith in actors, in the sense that there are still actors out there who love what they do and it shows. They're not just going through the motions. I've got to hand it to Tom Cruise; the man just turned sixty years old and still does most of his own stunts. He deserves a lot of credit for that. You can see in his smile that he loves what he is doing; it shines through. He is a true entertainer, one of the old school, and is probably one of the last top Hollywood actors. 

Of course it takes a village to make a movie; in this case the large numbers of people involved in the collaboration between the movie makers and the US Navy. The flight sequences that Cruise and some of the other actors are involved in are incredible, and that's putting it mildly. They of course did not pilot the F/A-18 Super Hornet planes themselves (non-military personnel are not allowed to do so); that was done by Navy pilots who are experts at piloting these planes. I read online that Cruise wanted the actors to experience firsthand the stress of the immense gravitational forces that the pilots of these fighter jets experience when they fly them, so he and the other actors sat behind them in the planes for some of the flight sequences. That's what makes the experience of the movie even more authentic. The story itself is touching and nostalgic at times, especially when it refers to the original film and the death of Maverick's wingman Goose. The relationships between Maverick (Cruise) and Goose's son Rooster (Miles Teller) and between Maverick and Iceman (Val Kilmer) tug at the heartstrings and actually makes you care about the characters. And the romantic relationship between Maverick and Penny (Jennifer Connelly) is respectful and humorous. 

So thank you to the movie makers, Tom Cruise, the US Navy and everyone else involved in making a memorable and thoroughly entertaining film. Quite an enjoyable way to spend a Wednesday afternoon....

The disappearance of Amy

I saw Gone Girl on Monday evening, and found it to be an absorbing thriller, one that is fast-paced and doesn't waste any time. The movie is much better than the book in my opinion. David Fincher, who directed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, did a great job of directing Gone Girl—it’s a taut thriller with a lot of unsettling things to say about personal relationships and about society’s addictive and obsessive relationship with television and the media. Ben Affleck finally found a role that suits him in Nick Dunne. His Nick is an interesting combination of clueless, indifferent, superficial, and opportunistic. He doesn’t invest more of himself than is absolutely necessary in any aspect of his life. In other words, Nick is no real prize—when he’s unemployed, he’s perfectly content to let his wife’s money pay for the bar he owns in Missouri after they’ve moved back there from New York, in order to be near his mother who has terminal cancer. He teaches part-time at a local college and ends up having an affair with one of his students, but even that seems half-hearted. He has promised his lover that he is going to divorce his wife, but seems to be immobilized by inertia or fear of telling her. Perhaps deep down, he knows that his wife is bonkers and he knows too that he doesn’t have the energy to fight her. But as the story progresses and he wakes up to the nightmare that his life has become, his anger starts to come out, and in the scenes where he is angry, he is truly believable. Stupid, unsuspecting Nick, who finally wakes up to the reality that he’s married to a psychopath, but by then it’s too late, she’s pregnant with his child and there’s no way he’s going to let her raise that child alone. So he ends up stuck in a loveless marriage, but he’s found himself and his purpose, so to speak. Up until that point, it seems as though he has mostly just drifted through his life.

Rosamund Pike did an impressive job as Amy Dunne. She’s a scary woman—Amy, not one you’d want to turn your back on for too long. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. And it would be nearly impossible not to scorn Amy. All men pay dearly for perceived slights and indiscretions in Amy’s world. Nick pays dearly for his infidelity, for his stupidity and insensitive treatment of Amy. She’s Amazing Amy for sure, but not in the way that her writer parents could ever have imagined. Amy is a monster--a beautiful one, but a monster nonetheless. One of the most manipulative women portrayed onscreen in a long time; I found myself thinking of Sharon Stone’s character Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct from 1992. If you wonder about what kind of marriage Catherine and Nick Curran (played by Michael Douglas) in Basic Instinct might have had, perhaps Amy and Nick’s marriage might be one version of such a marriage, at least at the point when it started to crumble.

Neil Patrick Harris did a great job as Desi Collings, Amy’s presumed stalker from her college years, manipulative in his own way, but no real match for Amy. He can’t see through her, or see that he’s being manipulated, and he pays with his life for his stupidity. Kim Dickens character, Detective Rhonda Boney, the cop assigned to the case of the missing Amy, is smart, tough, and demanding. It was a real pleasure to watch her in action, to watch her deal with her colleagues; she could definitely hold her own. The same was true for Nick's sister Margo, played by Carrie Coon--another good performance. 

The part of the story that dragged in the book, Amy’s experiences toward the end with Desi Collings, has been shortened and makes for a much more intense ending. The music score is appropriately jarring and creepy exactly at the times when it should be.

The film reminded me in parts of the film Presumed Innocent from 1990, with Harrison Ford and Bonnie Bedelia as husband and wife. He has an affair with a colleague who ends up raped and murdered, and he is accused of the crime. In reality, it is his wife who has murdered her to make her husband pay for his infidelity; the explanation for how it all happened was way out there, just like the ending in Gone Girl, and quite unusual for its time.

Gone Girl is an unsettling film in yet another way—one that’s often discussed these days. It depicts clearly the power of TV/media to make or break a person, a case, a cause, and the power that talk show hosts wield over the American public. It struck me that Gone Girl is a peculiarly American film; nowhere else in the world do talk show hosts have the type of power they have in America, at least as far as I know. They are the judge and jury, and if they like you, you’re saved, if not, you’re sunk. Innocent people, who don’t know how to play the manipulation game, will have their jugulars ripped out by these packs of dogs. This world is peopled with psychopaths, who manipulate the people and situations around them to serve themselves and their ratings. 

Cleansing and rebirth--Darren Aronofsky's Noah

It’s hard to have a clear opinion about Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s new film about the ark-builder, family man and reluctant servant of God given the task of saving the animals in order that the old corrupt world can be destroyed and a new purified one can take its place. That's because it raises so many unanswerable questions, using the biblical story of Noah. The Earth must suffer fire to cleanse what little remains in the way of civilization and flood waters that will wipe out mankind and allow for the birth of a new world. Noah is aided in his task of building the ark by the Watchers, creatures that are essentially beings of light (angels) that disobeyed the will of God by helping mankind, and who ended up punished by God--trapped by the elements of Earth—mud and rock. They are also called the 'giants in the earth'. When Noah (played by Russell Crowe), his wife Naameh (played by Jennifer Connelly) and his family meet them, they are giant stone creatures resembling small mountains when stationary, who destroy any person who dares to cross into their territory; they no longer trust humans. But they come to understand that Noah, who visits his grandfather Methuselah (played by Anthony Hopkins) in order to discuss with him the dreams he’s been having, is a good man, descended from the line of Seth, and not of Cain (who murdered his brother). The latter line has succeeded in the space of five generations in ravaging and plundering the Earth and destroying the creatures—animals and birds—who live on it. The Earth is a devastated place, lacking food and water. Noah and his family are nomads and vegetarians, who at times run into large groups of marauders who think nothing of murdering innocent people and taking what they want from them. As you watch the film, you know that the end of the world is coming; it cannot continue this way forever; the film is pervaded by this apocalyptic vision. It’s hard not to make the jump to the present day, where mankind’s brutality, violence, and continual devastation of the environment have marked our own world for extinction—in our case perhaps via global warming and/or natural catastrophes caused by our destruction of the planet we live on. The symbolism is not subtle.

The group of marauders descended from the line of Cain is led by a man named Tubal-Cain (played by Ray Winstone), who is ruthless, dangerous and proud. He believes man was made in the image and likeness of God, using that as an excuse to behave badly; he is not God-fearing, preferring to believe that man can behave like God and decide who lives and who dies. Noah is presumably the hero and Tubal-Cain is the anti-hero. Except that it never is that black-and-white, because as the film nears its end, it’s clear to all that Noah is not without sin. In fact, he is a guilt-ridden, deluded, plagued man, angry with the world and with God for assigning him this mission, merciless and ruthless in his own way. The tasks of building the ark, saving the animals, and saving his family prove to be too much for one man’s sanity, especially when he is challenged by his son Ham (played by Logan Lerman), whose pleas to save the young woman he has met and wishes to take with him onboard the ark are ignored, resulting in her death. Ham and Noah become estranged, and Ham is tempted to betray his father by Tubal-Cain, who has managed to come aboard the ark, threatening the survival of all those on board.

The film’s imagery is impressive. It’s hard not to be moved by the scenes of earthly devastation, the eventual flood (rising waters and death by drowning), the battle scenes between the marauders and the Watchers (and their eventual deaths and release from this world), the scenes of birds and animals making their way to the ark, as well as the segment on the creation of the world in seven days. The latter is especially impressive. But it’s also a provocative film as well as at times an over-the-top and illogical one. The numbers of innocent women and children who perished in the flood is hardly justifiable, if God is a righteous God. But we know that the God of the Old Testament was hardly a merciful God, in contrast to Jesus in the New Testament. In fact, the lives of women and children in this patriarchal age were worth very little. Why did God allow that? Why did God spare Noah and his family alone? Surely there were other good families that could also have been saved? Why did Noah first listen to Ham’s wish to find a woman to take aboard so that he would not be alone in the new world, only to vehemently repudiate that idea (he concludes that his only task was to save the animals, not that humans should repopulate the Earth. The scene where he tells his infertile adopted daughter Ila (played by Emma Watson) who is together with his son Shem (played by Douglas Booth) that she is a gift no matter that she cannot reproduce perhaps portends this)? Was that the correct conclusion? Who can know? Why did he consider murdering Ila’s twin daughters, only then to change his mind (he presumably goes against the will of God as he had divined it)? Did God really want him to kill his own grandchildren (one is reminded of the story of Abraham being asked to kill his son Isaac)? These questions are not answered in the Old Testament, and Aronofsky does not answer them either. I left the theater knowing that I had seen a film that would make me think about the things that Aronofsky is clearly preoccupied with—what are we doing to our planet, are we incurring the wrath of its Creator, is the Apocalypse coming, why are we so preoccupied with the end of the world and can we stop it, can we cleanse our world of sin, how can we be reborn and what will it take, is there a merciful Creator, is love the answer to all things (do women intuit and understand that message better than men), and are both men and women necessary to keep the balance between the cerebral and the emotional worlds we inhabit? We cannot have too much of the one or the other as mortal human beings. Or can we? What is Paradise, and why were its original inhabitants so willing to risk their happiness for something they (perceived that they) did not have? Why were they so gullible to temptation? And if they did not have happiness, then how could where they lived be called Paradise? Is it man’s curse to be forever dissatisfied with what he has? Or is this perhaps the greatest temptation of all—to trust others (sometimes in the guise of well-meaning, wise, 'religious' seekers and worldly leaders) to define happiness for us, when we know deep within ourselves what it really is? We must constantly be on the lookout for, and be able to identify, those who would deceive and mislead us, and we must not deceive ourselves. Not easy tasks, much like building an ark and rebuilding a broken world. 

Watching the zombie world war unfold

World War Z. I saw this film the night it had its premiere in Oslo (July 11^th) at the Colosseum in Oslo. Packed theater. Lights go down. The film starts. Normal family life for the first ten minutes, with Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane, who used to work as an investigator for the United Nations, and who now seems to be a stay-at-home dad, making his kids pancakes for breakfast. And then they’re in their car, he and his wife and two children, stuck in traffic on a Philadelphia city street. Normal life ends right here. All hell breaks loose in Philadelphia in a scene that is guaranteed to make you feel like you’re climbing endlessly to the top of a roller coaster hill followed by an unpleasant ride down, only to start on the next climb. That’s how the film continues for almost two hours. An intense, relentless, horrific ride to the finish. The final five minutes of the film resemble the first ten minutes—family togetherness, in this case, a reunion. In between, you’ve got to be made of stone not to be affected by some of the scenes that pop out at you (literally, thanks to the 3-D): the stewardess-turned-zombie moving on from economy class to the front of the plane on the plane ride from and to hell after having been bitten by a stowaway zombie, as well as the scene in the WHO facility in Cardiff Wales, where the former head of the lab, now a zombie, tries to ‘understand’ what happened to his prey (Gerry) who has injected himself with a deadly pathogen in order to camouflage himself from the zombies. This zombie won’t attack Gerry because the pathogen makes the prey sick and the zombies can smell sickness which they avoid.

The film has some similarities to other films/TV series in this genre: 28 Days Later (the fast-moving zombies, how quickly people ‘turn’ after having been bitten, and the apartment hallway scene where they climb the stairs to flee the zombies), Resident Evil (the suspenseful lab/facility scenes), The Walking Dead (the dimly-lit corridor scenes with zombies waiting to attack just around the corner), and a few others. But it’s on its own when it comes to some specific scenes: zombies swarming and piling up on each other like insects in order to scale the huge wall in Israel erected to keep them out, and the unbelievable plane scene come to mind. I think what sets this film apart is the relentlessness of the zombie hordes and the sheer numbers of zombies. Cities are overrun in minutes. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There is no time to hatch a plot, to follow it through. Panic ensues immediately among the crowds of people trying to flee. You’ve got to think on your feet, and if you don’t keep moving, as Gerry points out, you’re dead. Meaning you’re a zombie.

There are some implausible scenarios. One of them is when the plane crashes in the mountains of Wales and Gerry awakens and finds himself wounded and dripping blood. The female Israeli soldier he’s traveling with, Segen (played by Daniella Kertesz), who has had her arm hacked off by Gerry after having been bit by a zombie, has also survived. For a brief second, it looks as though she may transform. But she doesn’t. They both walk the distance it takes for them to reach the WHO research facility in Cardiff that is their intended destination. But my question is--why wasn’t there a horde of zombies attracted to the site of the plane crash? The zombies are apparently attracted by noise, and wouldn’t a crashing plane make a lot of noise? The other is when Gerry and Segen are walking very slowly through town on their way to the WHO facility, her supporting him since he is having problems walking. Where are the zombies? Or is Cardiff a zombie-free zone? It’s not made clear, or if it was, I missed it. They had ample time to reach the facility, something that seems rather out of tune with the rest of the film. Additionally, Gerry is losing blood fast, something the zombies would definitely register.

Once inside the facility though, they meet a team of scientists who are very skeptical to their presence; they want to know why they’ve come. Gerry explains his theory about using pathogens to camouflage the living from the ‘undead’, and they agree that his theory is worth testing. However, there are zombies wandering the halls of the wing of the lab building where the pathogens are stored; they are rather sluggish due to the lack of prey. They became zombies because the lead researcher accidentally infected himself with the blood of a zombie. And that led to his attacking other staff members; the uninfected managed to seal off this wing to keep the undead out.  

I’m halfway through the book of the same name by Max Brooks. I’d have to describe the tone of the book in much the same way—relentless and creepy, but the relentlessness and creepiness are spread out over many pages and the story unfolds gradually through the voices of the different people interviewed, who inform about what they have witnessed in a matter-of-fact tone. The book and the film are very different in this respect, as there is no ‘main’ character like Gerry in the book. But the ever-increasing paranoia and the shocking events are similar; the paranoia is perhaps more pronounced in the book than in the film. And at least with the book, I can put it down when I’ve had enough for an evening. Unless you close your eyes in the theater, it’s hard to escape what’s going on. At certain points, I had to remind myself that it was a film, to breathe normally. It occurred to me that World War Z is not a film for the kiddies or the weak of heart (just like roller coaster rides generally). I know I needed a few days to calm down after having seen it. I wonder if Brad Pitt let his kids watch this one?

Stoker and the secrets families keep

The best thing about the recently-released film Stoker is Mia Wasikowska as India Stoker. A glitteringly wild-eyed and intense Matthew Goode as her uncle Charlie Stoker and a befuddled and repressed Nicole Kidman as her mother Evelyn Stoker are very good, but Mia owns the role of India Stoker. I’ve seen her in Alice in Wonderland and in Jane Eyre. I loved the latter film; she was a perfect Jane Eyre in my book. Stoker is about the coming of age of India Stoker, a peculiar teenage girl and only child whose eighteenth birthday celebration is marred by the tragic death of her father Richard Stoker (played by Dermot Mulroney) in a car accident. India as deftly played by Mia Wasikowska is a non-emotional, brooding teenage girl who does not like to be touched and who cannot seem to find her exact place in the world until she meets her uncle Charlie, whose existence she was unaware of until he shows up at her father’s funeral. And then all hell breaks loose. I didn’t find Stoker as shocking as many reviewers have described it, although its cruelty is provocative. It’s not a film for everyone, not a crowd pleaser, and that was clear to me last night when I was at the cinema. It was screened for viewing in one of the smaller auditoriums that ended up half-empty on a Saturday night. Its narrative form reminded me of psychological horror films from the 1970s, where you knew something bad was coming already from the first few minutes of the films and you dreaded it, dreaded watching what gradually unfolded onscreen. I found Stoker rather restrained, detached, and slow-moving but deliberately-paced, almost as though it was an investigation into how murderers are born. On looking back at it, I would guess that this has to do with that most of the story takes place from the perspective of India, whose coming of age and emergence from her cocoon of teenage moodiness as a full-blooded killer are gradual. She responds slowly to the evil and madness in her uncle Charlie, whose attempts to seduce her are not just sexually-motivated; her uncle is turned on by the evil he somehow sees or senses inside of her, and he wants to be the one to bring it out. He is what she needs to turn the screw inside of her, to force her to ‘become herself’, to acknowledge who and what she really is. It’s as though India knew he existed all along, and was just waiting for him to come and release her; this is never more clear than when she reads the letters her uncle has sent to her during her growing-up, which have been hidden from her by her father in a locked box. It is the first time you see her excited and happy, because she understands that someone really understands how she feels, a scenario not unlike what could happen to most normal teenagers. The deliberate pace reflects her own confusion—it’s as though she cannot believe that she really is a killer, and spends most of the film coming to terms with that unpleasant fact. The film is about the making of a killer and the acknowledgment that one is a killer, how to internalize that knowledge and move on with life. India does show some remorse, when she cries in the shower remembering the boy Whip who tried to rape her and who was killed by her uncle. It’s unclear if she’s crying for him or for herself. But once stoked and excited by her newfound feelings, she is a quick learner. In truth, she has already been well taught (stoked) by her father, who took her hunting from a very young age. The movie presents her father as a hero type, one who took care of his brothers and who protected Evelyn and India from uncle Charlie, who ended up in a mental institution after the cold-blooded murder of his little brother when they were children. And you find out along the way who really was responsible for India’s father’s death and why. But you have to wonder why a father would take his daughter hunting for hours at a time, teaching her to be silent, to wait, and then to go in for the kill when the prey makes itself visible. It’s a brutal way to spend hours of time with a child; I could think of so many other pastimes that would have been more appropriate for a father and daughter. It made me wonder if her father had sensed or seen in her some of the traits he had seen in his brother Charlie, and hoped that by teaching her to hunt that he would ward off coming misery. If so, his plan backfired, since he sets his daughter up for the life she eventually chooses. And did her mother sense something odd about India as well, and tried to repress the knowledge? It’s unclear. That is perhaps one weakness in the plot; Evelyn Stoker’s character could have been developed more fully, in order to give us some insight into how the relationship between mother and daughter became so dysfunctional. It is intimated that perhaps Richard loved his daughter more than he loved his wife; it is also fairly clear that Evelyn did not really look forward to having children. The film becomes more imbued with real emotion, becomes less detached and more real, when Evelyn finally begins to wake up and to say how she feels, but by then it is too late for her relationship with India.

Perhaps the most shocking thing in the film is that the emerging killer is a young woman. But the ultimate shocker by the end of the film is that no one is safe, not even uncle Charlie. By then, India has been witness to, and a silent partner in, one murder, and privy to the knowledge of three others committed by her uncle (her father, the housekeeper, and her aunt). Uncle Charlie is merely a liability at this point and she no longer needs him. The film ends with her leaving home; she has come into her own and embraced her own cold-blooded insanity, as exemplified by her deliberately-staged confrontation with the sheriff who suspects she has had something to do with Whip’s disappearance. She has learned to lie and how to throw people off her scent, or how to deal with those who track her. She is her uncle’s protégé, and she has learned her lessons well. 

Oblivion and other sci fi films this year

2013 promises to be an interesting year for sci-fi films; Oblivion with Tom Cruise has already opened, and Star Trek Into Darkness and After Earth are opening in May and June respectively (in Norway). I’ll be seeing the latter two when they open. I remember looking forward to the premiere of Prometheus last year around this time. I went to see Oblivion tonight and loved it, in contrast to several of the online reviews that I’ve come across that were mostly negative. The focus of the reviews always seems to end up on Tom Cruise the person, not Tom Cruise the actor. That of course is partially his own fault since he draws attention to himself with his vocal religious beliefs and viewpoints, but as an actor he delivers in this film, and that’s all that matters to me. Did he make the part of Jack Harper--drone repairman, believable, did I root for him, was I stepping onto a post-apocalyptic planet earth along with him, was I accompanying him on his daily visits to the planet to repair the drones, did I feel his confusion and determination, and was I rooting for him to be reunited with his wife Julia? I can answer yes to all these questions. And besides Tom Cruise, there are other good actors and actresses that do their part to make this a memorable film, e.g. Morgan Freeman as Beech, Olga Kurylenko as Julia, and Andrea Riseborough as Victoria. Oblivion is an epic sci-fi film, beautifully photographed with a number of impressive bleak shots of a barren planet earth in rubble, some great action sequences (especially the flying), some evil-looking machines/weapons called drones whose potential for nastiness reminded me of the spider bots in Minority Report from 2002 (another Tom Cruise film) and an ‘alien’ we never really see except as a computer screen image of a human woman named Sally. As the story unfolds, we come to understand that Jack's world is not really what he thinks it is; he is willing to follow his curiosity and to find out what is really going on, whereas his partner Julia, who monitors his daily activity as a drone repairman on the earth's surface, is not.

Oblivion is really about one man’s quest to find himself (after his dreams and memory flashbacks have prompted him to become curious about his past life) and his home in a world destroyed by war and treachery. Oblivion is a great title for this movie--what is it Jack has forgotten, and has Jack been forgotten? I was moved by the portrayal of the importance of the instinctual (primeval) desires we have as humans--to know where we come from, to have a home we call our own, and to have someone to love, or perhaps more importantly, to have someone who knows us, thus saving us from oblivion (being forgotten). Watching the scenes of Jack with his wife Julia (one scene especially where she talks about growing old together, dying and being forgotten by the world) brings us to a wistful place where the belief in the power of love is all-consuming. Real life doesn't always play out this way, but we want it to, no matter how many times it does not. The character of Julia as played by Olga Kurylenko has a non-aggressive quiet way about her that is quite endearing; her sweetness makes a nice contrast to Andrea Riseborough’s Victoria, who is calculating, direct and effective (almost robotic-like) as Jack’s former co-pilot and current team partner who is in love with him. I won’t give away the story or the ending, but I can definitely recommend Oblivion. I also enjoyed the film music; Jack Harper is a Led Zeppelin fan (Ramble On--an appropriate song for parts of this film) and a Procol Harem fan (Whiter Shade of Pale). The film title track is also quite a good song—Oblivion—performed by a group called M.8.3 with Susanna Sundfør. 

Dark Shadows and 'marginal weirdness'

I have been eagerly awaiting the opening of Tim Burton’s new film, Dark Shadows; it opened here in Norway this past Friday, May 11th. So I was online a few days before and ordered a ticket so that I was assured a seat in the theater. I needn’t have worried; the theater was not full, and I doubt it will be for any of the showings. Not because the film isn’t worth seeing, it is, but mostly because it will have limited appeal given its subject matter in a cinema world where vampires have been done to death. I need think only of the Twilight films and of True Blood, both of which I don’t really watch, although I have seen one of the Twilight films and a few of the True Blood episodes. They don’t appeal to me as much as the original Dark Shadows TV series or the two Dark Shadows films from the 1970s (House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows) based on the TV series. The original Dark Shadows series and even the subsequent films managed something none of the other vampire films or series has managed as well, with the possible exception of Francis Ford Coppola’s incredible wonderful film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And that is to take themselves seriously, despite that the subject matter was nothing more than pure fantasy. They wove the supernatural fantasies of vampires, ghosts, witches, werewolves and other creatures into a soap opera storyline filled with romance, love, sex, deceit, treachery, normal life, family life and honor, wealthy families, and tragic lives. They managed to be serious and campy simultaneously. The Dark Shadows TV series was talky, like a good soap opera should be. It kept its viewers hanging literally onto each word a character uttered. Those words were important to the storyline, driving it forward, and since the series ran from Monday to Friday, viewers were guaranteed a treasure trove of conversations, arguments, conflicts, ultimatums, discussions and more conversations. In between all of these, something supernatural could occur—there might be vampire or witch activity, or ghosts that wandered about the Collinwood mansion or estate, which was often shrouded in darkness or fog. It seemed to be always evening on Dark Shadows; and like the individual characters, I was always relieved when they got indoors, into the foyer and then into the main drawing room—a safe haven for the most part, because that was where normal family life happened, where ghosts and vampires and witches were kept at bay at least when the individual family members met there. Of course the other parts of the house were not as ‘safe’; I need only think of the different rooms inhabited by ghosts, or rooms that were portals into parallel times. I think those are the parts of Tim Burton’s film that I liked the most—when the Collins family sat down to dinner, with the matriarch of the family, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michele Pfeiffer) sitting at the head of the table, in complete control of her family. All she had to do was open her mouth and tell someone to be quiet, and he or she toed the line. At these times during the film, there was conversation, a sense of family, a sense of why these people stayed together and lived together in the house. Viewers learned about the history of the Collins family and how they made their living. There was character development and storyline progression. Much of this took place during the first half of the film. And then came the second half of the film, which took off into another realm completely—the absurd really, with Alice Cooper visiting the mansion as entertainment for one of the family’s famous ‘happenings’, or Angelique (played by Eva Green) ranting and raving about being scorned and how she would make Barnabas (Johnny Depp) and the family pay. She did a good job, but I would have preferred less emphasis on her and more on Barnabas and Victoria/Josette (played by Bella Heathcote), on Carolyn (played by Chloë Grace Moretz), or even on David (played by Gulliver McGrath). The film ends up being rather schizophrenic; I preferred the first half—the return of Barnabas, his entrance into and confrontation with the 20^th century, his meeting with his old family, his having to live and act as a vampire—all those things. The second half of the movie toyed with the first half. I would have preferred otherwise. But I am not sorry I saw the film. Why? Because after I got home, I went online and found some of the old Dark Shadows TV episodes on YouTube, and watched a few. And then I went onto Amazon and ordered the entire DVD collection of the original TV series (131 DVDs spanning 470 hours). I’ve decided that I will come home from work each day and watch one episode, just as I ran home from school in the 1970s to watch an episode on TV. I am looking forward to the experience of reliving the original series.

I’ve been following the reviews of Burton’s film to this point. The New York Times gave it a good review and even put it on its Critics’ Pick list: http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/movies/johnny-depp-stars-in-tim-burtons-dark-shadows.html. IMDB has a list of the different reviews so far: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1077368/externalreviews

But the review that resonated most with me was the one on Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/. Why? The following excerpt from this review will explain it well: 

“Barnabas Collins predates not just “Twilight” and “True Blood,” but also Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire” and the entire rise of the Goth sensibility. In the 1970s, vampires were something that only marginal weirdos who went to science-fiction bookstores and watched Hammer films like “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” knew about. People like the teenage Tim Burton, in other words”.

Well, marginal weirdo could describe me too. I may not have gone to sci-fi bookstores when I was a teenager (I’ve done so in my twenties and loved all the ones I’ve been in), but I did watch the many Christopher Lee vampire films and I even dragged my poor sister to them to keep me company. Heck, I dragged her to a lot of different horror films from that time. Needless to say, she does not have the same fond memories I have of time well-spent in dark movie theaters watching horror films. Of course, now that I think of it, she did accompany me, when she could have said no. Sometimes we were accompanied by a friend of hers, who was a marginal weirdo like myself. He liked those kinds of films, and was even the type to build models of Frankenstein and Dracula that glowed in the dark. I don’t know what happened to him after high school; I can only wonder if he too has seen Burton’s film. I would love to hear his take on the film.