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.

Hamlet

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love Shakespeare, and those have not been properly introduced.

If you fall into the latter category, you may not enjoy the 2009 RSC Hamlet, starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.  As a TV film of a stage production, it’s well, stagey.  The 1990 Zeffirelli Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, is much more cinematic and, in my opinion, a better introduction to the play for non-aficionados  (I love Kenneth Branagh.  I really do.  But his 1996 film struck me as bloated and flat.).

If you’re a member of the former category, however, you’ll love this Hamlet.  The staginess won’t put you off, and you’ll home in on the quality of the direction and performances.  You’ll find that David Tennant, who found fame playing the eponymous Doctor for four seasons of the BBC’s hit show ‘Doctor Who,’ is an actor gifted with range as well as charisma.  He goes big with his Hamlet, and that “bigness” sets off the intimacy of the soliloquies.  Patrick Stewart, as Claudius, demonstrates how even the subtlest of gestures or tics can illuminate a character and generate sympathy in unexpected ways.  With the same motion, he can show us why Gertrude loves him and Hamlet hates him, and he can make us do a little of both.

This production’s biggest surprise, however, is Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius.  Davies, who earned the undying enmity of all people everywhere by appearing in not one, but all three, of the Star Wars prequels (Sio Bibble, governor of Naboo.  Hey, everyone has bills to pay.), steals every scene he’s in.  His Polonius is smart, funny, wily, and beginning to succumb to senility.  His dialogue drips off his tongue just so, and we in the audience light up every time he enters the frame.  In fact, I’d say his is a definitive Polonius: someone worth trusting, worth obeying, worth avenging.

So, there you have it.  Outstanding performances, reasonably well shot in an RSC-for-tv kind of way, and as good as any Hamlet you’re likely to see.  This Hamlet is a winner.