NEAR DARK

 

Bill Paxton in one of his most iconic roles, as the psychotic, leather biker-clad vampire Severen from the cult vampire/Western crossover movie Near Dark (© Kathryn Bigelow/F-M Entertainment/De Laurentiis Entertainment Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 9 April 2021, I watched for the first time in many years the cult Western-themed vampire movie Near Dark, after purchasing its 2-disc special edition DVD featuring an entire disc-worth of extras as well as the movie disc itself, and I'm glad to say that it lived up to my memories of it as being an excellent addition to the cinematic vampire genre.

Near Dark centres upon a midwestern small-town farming youth named Caleb (played by Adrian Pasdar) who meets up with a seemingly young female drifter called Mae (Jenny Wright) one evening and swiftly gets bitten, literally, by the love bug. However, Mae's neck bite causes much more than a hickey – for it turns him into a vampire, just like she is. And when the first rays of the dawning sun appear, Caleb's skin begins to smoke and burn (just like Mae's does, as he later discovers).

Just in time, however, along comes an unexpected rescue, or, to be more precise, an uninvited abduction, in the forbidding form of a sun-shielded travelling van containing Mae and her fanged compatriots. These consist of a small but highly aggressive and wholly lawless travelling vampire clan headed by their powerful amoral leader Jesse (Lance Henriksen), whom Mae succeeds in convincing not to kill Caleb but instead to give him a week in which prove his worth to them and thence become a member of their immortal, itinerant union of the undead.

Needless to say, however, the vampire clan's savage, bloodthirsty behaviour and their aimless, nomadic lifestyle do not accord well with Caleb. This soon results in friction arising (especially between Caleb and psychotic biker-clad vampire Severen – Bill Paxton in a tour-de-force performance), and ultimately worse, much worse, for all of them.

 

The official soundtrack album from Near Dark, featuring music by Tangerine Dream (© Kathryn Bigelow/F-M Entertainment/De Laurentiis Entertainment Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Originally planned as a typical Western movie but with the vampire contingent added when financial backing was not forthcoming for a conventional treatment (although, curiously, they are never actually referred to as vampires anywhere in it), Near Dark was Kathryn 'The Hurt Locker' Bigelow's solo directorial debut (she also co-wrote it, with Eric Red). It was released by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group on 2 October 1987, just a few weeks after The Lost Boys, in fact, which is my all-time favourite serious (i.e. non-c0medy) vampire movie.

Speaking of which: a few days earlier I'd had a chat on Facebook about who was the cooler movie vampire - David (played by Kiefer Sutherland) from The Lost Boys or Jesse from Near Dark. I chose David over Jesse, and rewatching Near Dark has only reinforced my view, as in my eyes Jesse comes across as too old and world-weary to be cool.

In fact, imho the coolest vampire by far in Near Dark is Severen, but he loses out to David by being too much of a psycho and gore-fest relisher. Even so, his portrayal by Paxton is a truly rivetting one, with Severen effortlessly stealing every scene that he appears in. I'm not sure about his dancing skills though...

Be sure to check out the official Near Dark trailer accessible here on YouTube for some of this very original, distinctive vampire movie's many highlights.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Severen shows off his terpsichorean talents – or lack of them! – in Near Dark (click image if GIF file does not run automatically) (© Kathryn Bigelow/F-M Entertainment/De Laurentiis Entertainment Group – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

MICMACS

 

Publicity poster for Micmacs (© Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Epithéte Films/Tapioca Films/France 3 Cinéma/Warner Bros/Sony Pictures Classics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 16 July 2021, after having previously viewed The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (click here to read my Shuker In MovieLand review of it), I watched on DVD another very unusual but equally delightful English-subtitled French fantasy film. This one was entitled Micmacs (or Micmacs à Tire-Larigot, to give it its full French title).

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who also directed The City of Lost Children reviewed by me here), and released by Warner Bros and Sony Pictures Classics in 2009, Micmacs concerns itself with a group of outcasts and social misfits who had bonded together against the world, living as a family inside a somewhat steampunk-designed den deep within a huge Parisian rubbish tip, and gifted with all manner of highly unexpected abilities and/or medical idiosyncrasies. They include a mathematical genius, an immensely-skilled automaton creator, an incredibly supple contortionist, and a record-breaking human cannonball.

Their newest member is a shy man in his early 30s named Bazil (played by Dany Boon), who has recently been rendered homeless after a live bullet became lodged in his forehead just millimetres from his brain and could blow up at any moment. Moreover, Bazil had lost his military father to an exploding landmine when only a young child.

Consequently, after he decides to seek revenge upon the two shady arms-dealers/weapon-manufacturers and their respective companies that he holds responsible for these twin life-changing disasters in his life, his new family all readily agree to help him. There then follows a truly surreal series of intricately-exacted sabotages and subterfuges conducted by Bazil and company to wreak havoc upon their adversaries, culminating in his desired destruction of the dealers' entire lives and businesses.

What makes Micmacs such a quirky movie is that it plays out very much like a screwball live-action version of Wallace and Gromit, with kooky larger-than-life characters possessing bizarre skills beyond anything that one would expect to see in real life, yet without extending into the realms of either the supernatural or super-heroes.

Incidentally: if you're wondering what this movie's unusual title actually means, Micmacs approximates in English to 'Shenanigans', with Micmacs à Tire-Larigot loosely translating as 'Non-Stop Shenanigans' or 'Shenanigans To Your Heart's Content'. Both are certainly very apt descriptions of the film's madcap pace and slapstick antics. So now you know!

Moreover, according to its director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, his cinematic influences when making Micmacs included Toy Story, the Mission Impossible movies, and Disney's classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. An eclectic ensemble indeed – as eclectic as Micmacs itself, in fact.

A comedy/heist film quite unlike anything that I've seen before, with Boon playing the unequivocally oddball central character Bazil with delightful daffiness (as indeed do all of the other actors and actresses in their respective, equally off-centre roles), Micmacs definitely comes highly recommended for movie aficionados of the weird but also the wonderful.

If you'd like to see for yourself, be sure to click here to view an official Micmacs trailer on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADÈLE BLANC-SEC

 

Publicity poster for The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (© Luc Besson/EuropaCorp – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Given the choice of viewing a foreign-language movie that has been dubbed into English or has been supplied with English subtitles, I would always choose the former option, as I hate having to take my eyes off the movie almost continuously in order to read the subtitles. Not so long ago, however, I watched a couple of French movies of the latter type that were so riveting I scarcely even noticed myself glancing down at the subtitles. The films in question were The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (reviewed by me below) and Micmacs (reviewed by me here).

As I was soon to find out, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is nothing if not aptly entitled, including as it does the unlikely likes of a giant revitalized pterodactyl and an entire court of revived Egyptian mummies!

Directed by celebrated French director/producer/screenwriter Luc Besson, who also wrote its screenplay, and released by EuropaCorp in 2010, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec combines the plots of two separate comics produced by comic-book graphic artist Jacques Tardi, respectively entitled Adèle and the Beast (1976) and Mummies on Parade (1978), both featuring Tardi's fearless heroine Adèle Blanc-Ser as their lead character, and incorporates them within a basic plot devised by Besson. This means that the movie, mostly set in the early second decade of 20^th-Century Paris, contains two initially quite separate storylines that subsequently converge to amusing but also sometimes confusing effect.

One of these sees the movie's eponymous adventuress (played with spirited, glamorous éclat by Louise Bourgoin), who is a well known journalist and travel writer, seeking amid Egypt in best intrepid Indiana Jonesian fashion the mummy of Patmosis, apparently the personal medical doctor to the great pharaoh Rameses II. Despite some hairy encounters with her deadly, goblinesque rival Prof. Dieuleveult (Mathieu Amairic) during this search, Adèle ultimately succeeds in uncovering Patmosis's mummy and returning safely with it to Paris, where she hopes that the brilliant but eccentric and decidedly etiolated scientist Prof. Espérandieu (Jacky Nercessian) can revive it.

The reason why Adèle wishes this to happen is that when much younger, she accidentally incapacitated her sister Agatha during a game of tennis. So she now hopes that Patmosis possesses superior medical knowledge from the ancient Egyptian civilization that he can employ to free Agatha from her ongoing comatose state and restore her to her former fully-active, cognisant self.

Unknown to Adèle, however, is that while she had been seeking Patmosis's mummy in Egypt, Espérandieu's arcane experiments in telepathy and telekinesis had somehow resulted in his successful hatching of a fossil pterodactyl egg in Paris's Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy – in turn engendering all manner of chaos and carnage across the city after this predatory prehistoric beast had rapidly grown to full size and escaped. Accordingly, Espérandieu had been arrested and was now facing imminent execution. So if Patmosis is to be revived, Espérandieu needs to be rescued, while a motley assortment of oddballs and incompetents is adding even further to the melée of mayhem as they seek to slay the increasingly irate pterodactyl. Never a dull moment in Paris, that's for sure!

But to cut a lengthy and exceedingly involved story short (I've only touched upon a few of its multitudinous threads here!), Patmosis is finally revived, only for him to inform a horrified Adèle that he is not a medical doctor, but rather a doctor of nuclear physics – a physicist as opposed to a physician! (Seemingly, Ancient Egypt was indeed a lot more advanced in scientific matters than we'd expected!) However, he does possess the skills to revive the mummy of Rameses's real doctor, not to mention those of Rameses himself and his entire court, all of whom just so happen to be currently on display at the Louvre.

Patmosis duly achieves this, which leads to my favourite non-pterodactylian scene of the entire movie, in which the revived (CGI-animated) mummies decide to step outside of the Louvre and discover for themselves what a Paris evening in the 20^th Century AD is like. Their stately, elegantly-mannered demeanour, behaving with immense courtesy and charm like a parody of some genteel English tea party, is quite delightful and hilarious to behold, especially when various unsuspecting Parisians going about their innocent way encounter this resurrected retinue and flee in hysterical terror.

But you'll never guess what happens to the pterodactyl, whether Adèle's sister is indeed healed, and how the doomed RMS Titanic enters this tortuous tale! Which means that you'll have to watch The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec yourself to find out!

For a tantalizing trailer (with English subtitles) to give you a glimpse of the spectacle to expect from this ever-so-slightly manic but marvelous movie, however, be sure to click here and watch one on YouTube!

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

PAUL

 

Publicity poster for Paul (© Greg J. Mottola/Relativity Media/Working Title Films/Big Talk Pictures/StudioCanal/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 13 July 2021, I watched the sci-fi/comedy movie Paul, which is undoubtedly one of the most hilarious films that I've seen in many a long while.

Directed by Greg J. Mottola, and released by Universal Pictures in 2011, Paul stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (who also wrote this movie together) as best friends Graeme and Clive, a pair of nerdy alien/UFO fans from England who attend a sci-fi/comic convention in the USA and then set off on a road trip across America (much of this being filmed in the New Mexico desert) to visit as many of the most famous alien/UFO-associated sites as possible (Area 51, Roswell, etc). However, they encounter more than they bargained for when they discover a crashed car with a Grey Alien named Paul (long story!) inside, stunned but unharmed.

Paul informs them that his spacecraft crashed on Earth several decades ago, and until recently he had been held at a secret government facility, sharing his advanced technological knowledge with our planet's scientists (and movie makers!). But when the scientists progressed to desiring the secrets of his advanced physical abilities too (such as healing, and rendering himself invisible when he holds his breath), and deciding that the best way of discovering them was to remove his brain and dissect it, Paul understandably decided that it was time to part company with them, and lost no time in escaping. Unfortunately, however, he now has some very determined MIBs on his metaphorical tail (one especially nasty example being played by Jason Bateman), who are intent on recapturing him – alive or otherwise.

Consequently, albeit against their better judgment, Graeme and Clive, aided and abetted by a kooky, initially alien-disbelieving, subsequently Christian Fundamentalist-lapsing young woman named Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), decide to help Paul find his way to the special site where his mother ship can land and rescue him. But in so doing they experience all manner of hysterical mishaps and mayhem en route. Not least of these are the afore-mentioned posse of tenacious MIBs (led by 'The Big Guy', played by none other than Sigourney Weaver) and Ruth's rifle-toting, most definitely non-lapsed CF father, Moses Buggs (John Carroll Lynch).

Voiced hilariously by Seth Rogen, Paul the alien is a triumph of CGI motion-capture animation, Pegg & Frost are delightful as oddball but loyal pals who always have each other's back, Wiig's transformation from ultra-conservative to uber-liberal in outlook as she experiences life outside her hitherto-cloistered existence for the very first time provides long laughs and touching moments aplenty, and the entire movie is a joyous celebration of friendship, quirkiness, and nerd power – plus a sprinkling of twisted humour from the cutting, broken-glass department (one word – 'starling'…). Great fun (unless you're a starling!).

Incidentally, because Pegg & Frost planned Paul as a homage to the classic Steven Spielberg movies Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, it contains a number of subtle references to various of his movies (see how many you can spot) as well as a voice cameo from the great man himself (ditto).

If you'd like to experience a taster of the feel-good, zany experience that Paul provides in ample quantity throughout, be sure to click here to watch an official trailer on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.