Fright Night (2011)

Fright Night is actually good.

Sure, it's just another vampire movie with a menacing villain, plucky hero, and distressed damsel.  But Colin Farrell is an inspired choice for the vampire next door, Anton Yelchin is a likable and sufficiently plucky presence, and Imogen Poots makes for a particularly fetching damsel.  Add the beautifully aging Toni Collette (CDNW) and Balcony favorite David Tennant in important supporting roles, and Fright Night punches well above its weight.

Let's begin with Farrell.  Known for his good looks, there's something about him that has always struck me as menacing and untrustworthy.  While he can minimize that angle in films like the wonderful In Bruges, he plays it up here.  His vampire is the kind of guy women want and men fear, and he knows it.  He's been around for 400 years, he knows all the angles, and he enjoys playing with his food.  Described (by the typecast Christopher Mintz-Plasse) as "the shark from Jaws," he's set up a perfect hunting ground in a Las Vegas suburb where it's normal to sleep all day and work all night and where, in community dotted with foreclosure signs, no one can hear you scream.  He's wonderful, in the classic vampire tradition, and Fright Night's special effects team complements his performance with monster prosthetics and CGI that take him from menacing to terrifying in the blink of an eye.

Moving on, Yelchin and Poots perform capably in the hero and damsel roles, respectively.  Yelchin, winning as Checkov in the new Star Trek, does what he can with a part that hamfists the film's thematic elements, and, most challengly, requires him to dominate screen space shared with experienced, excellent actors like Farrell, Collette, and Tennant.  Poots is pretty and screams when appropriate, and she did nothing to break my disbelief.  Unfortunately, her part is rather thinly written, which is  normal for the genre.

Collette, well, she Can Do No Wrong.  As a capable single mother who is not immune to the charms of the hunky, though rather pale, new neighbor, she sells the flustered demeanor of someone who's not quite herself when a certain other someone is around.  When it's time for her to scream she screams with gusto.  When it's time for her to fight, we cheer her on.

Finally, we have David Tennant in the role of a Chriss Angel manque whose schtick is vampire hunting.  It's a fun update on Roddy McDowall's "Creature Feature" host of the 1985 Fright Night, with a vulgar and alcoholic Tennant blowing through all of Yelchin's illusions about heroism and the supernatural right up until it's time for him to man up and join the fight.  One feels that Tennant is deliberately distancing himself from his "Doctor Who" persona with a performance that's definitely not fit for television, and I must admit that I found it jarring at first.  Once I settled into it, however, and met the character on his own terms, I bought it and enjoyed the ride.  Fright Night didn't do particularly well at the box office, as I recall, and I don't know how many opportunities Tennant will get to make his splash in American films.  Nevertheless, he acquitted himself well here.  I hope it works out for him.

So the performances work, the effects are fantastic, and the movie rocks along in the finest action-horror tradition (it isn't really scary, not like The Shining, but it is fun in a scary way).  I liked everything about Fright Night.  If you missed it when it hit theaters last year, it's worth queueing up in anticipation of Halloween.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is professionally made, well acted, and like being dragged through broken glass.

Andy and Hank are brothers.  One's a striver and one's a loser, and they both need money.  When the striver pitches the loser on the perfect robbery, the loser buys in.  When things go south, they go south hard and fast.  The result is a symphony of selfishness and remorse.
Don't get me wrong: if symphonies of selfishnessand remorse are your bag, you'll find plenty to like about Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.  Director Sydney Lumet is a towering figure among practitioners of his craft, with credits such as 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Verdict to his name.  He has assembled a cast including luminaries such as Marisa Tomei, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney, Amy Ryan, and Ethan Hawke.  He's working from a tight, well-written script.  In other words, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is precisely the movie it wants to be.  Unfortunately, what it wants to be was, for me, agonizing.  This is a dark, despairing film, one in which the good suffer and the evil nurse no hopes of redemption.

No, thank you.  I don't need that kind of depression in my life, not even for a couple of hours.  This movie was a nightmare.