Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in 60 seconds: my “Reel Faith” review.
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Dark Shadows in 60 seconds: my “Reel Faith” review.
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D+ |
** |
-2|
Adults
If you are in love with the 1970s and Johnny Depp, perhaps you will enjoy this. Andrew O’Hehir says he knew he would love the film when he spotted a banana-seat Schwinn bicycle leaning against the front porch of Collinwood in an early scene. All right. But then comes a “happening” featuring Alice Cooper as himself (!), with a disco ball and cage dancers. At Collinwood. Is this really anyone’s idea of a good time?
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Here’s my 30-second take on
Twilight – Breaking Dawn: Part 1.
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F |
*½ |
-4|
Director Scott Charles Stewart seems to be making a career out of erasing Jesus from history, and celebrating supernatural heroes who rebel against God for the greater good … in apocalyptic action/horror movies starring Paul Bettany.
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It’s hard to imagine
any filmmaker making the final, and probably the most perverse, of Stephenie Meyer’s
Twilight books into a good movie—let alone
two movies, which is the plan. But Summit Entertainment is giving it their best shot: After discussions with a list of respected directors including Sofia Coppola, Steven Daldry and Gus Van Sant, Bill Condon (
Gods and Monsters,
Kinsey) has reportedly emerged as the front-runner,
according to Deadline.com.
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C- |
** |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Twilight and
New Moon are essentially uncritical celebrations of that overwrought, obsessive passion that is the hallmark of immaturity — passion that wholly subordinates all sense of one’s own identity and elevates the beloved to
summum bonum, or even the
sole good; passion that leaps as readily to suicidal impulses and fantasies as to longing for union.
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There is even a
Twilight tourism industry, centered on Washington State, where much of the story is set. While Robert Langdon fans get to go to Rome and Paris for the Dan Brown experience, Stephenie Meyer aficionados converge on rainy Forks, Washington to take “Twilighter tours” of locations more or less corresponding to settings in the books, from a Craftman-style house similar to the Swans’ to a locker at Forks High School designated Bella’s locker.
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Chastity is a precious thing, and the struggle to be chaste is both an inevitable part of a moral life and a legitimate subject for narrative art. In part, this quest for chastity may legitimately form some part of
Twilight’s appeal. At the same time, a narrative that wallows in the intoxicating power of temptation and desire, that returns again and again to rhapsodizing about the beauty of forbidden fruit, may reasonably be felt to be a hindrance rather than an affirmation of self-mastery.
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B |
*** |
-1|
Teens & Up*
Bigger effects and badder creatures make Del Toro’s second take on Hellboy more entertaining than the original, but something’s still missing in the story of the super hero from hell.
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A- |
***½ |
+0|
Teens & Up
Though diminished by decades of pop-horror incarnations, the vampire remains uniquely evocative of both dread and fascination, horror and seductiveness. Monsters from werewolves to Freddy Krueger may frighten, but neither victims nor audience are drawn to them. By contrast, the vampire suggests the horror of evil working on our disordered passions.
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C+ |
*** |
-2|
Adults*
The making of Nosferatu — the first (if unauthorized)
film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and one of the 45
films on the Vatican
film list — has passed into legend. Denied rights to
Dracula by Stoker’s widow, German director F. W. Murnau
simply had an adapted screenplay written with alternate character
names: Count Dracula became "Count Orlock," Jonathan Harker
became "Thomas Hutter," and so on. (Substantial changes were so
minimal that at least one English-language edition actually
restores Stoker’s original names in the title cards.)
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