Nosferatu: It sucks

Nosferatu (2024) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, graphic nudity and sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Watching paint dry would be preferable to enduring this turgid, overcooked slog.

 

In fairness, writer/director Robert Eggers gets points for atmosphere. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke definitely maximizes the eerie settings concocted by production designer Craig Lathrop. (That said, much of the film is too damn dark.)

 

Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) and Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) eventually
realize that particularly drastic measures will be required, if they're to have any chance
of defeating the vampire in their midst.

Alas, these opulently sinister backdrops are ill-served by a somnambulant cast that appears to wade through thick glue at all times, delivering lines with breathy pauses in between each word ... particularly true in the case of the title monster, who wheezes through every labored syllable, like he’s battling the world’s worst chest cold.

That affectation undoubtedly was intended to sound scary, but Eggers misses “scary” by a Carpathian mile.

 

His film has an intriguing legacy. 1922’s Nosferatu was plagiarized from Bram Stoker’s Dracula; director F.W. Murnau and scripter Henrik Galeen stole the plot and characters, changing names and relocating the story to their native Germany, in order to evade copyright issues. The ploy didn’t work; Stoker’s heirs sued, and the court ruled that all copies of the film be destroyed.

 

They missed a few, and Murnau’s film now is deservedly hailed as an early silent masterpiece that birthed the horror genre; the appearance of star Max Schreck’s Count Orlok also established a template for vampire makeup. 

 

Aside from the numerous legitimate adaptations of Stoker’s novel during the subsequent century, Nosferatu was remade by director Werner Herzog in 1979, with Klaus Kinski as the title vampire. Francis Ford Coppola’s handling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in 1992, also tipped a fang to Murnau.

 

Eggers’ new film borrows from all of the above, while focusing mostly on Murnau’s setting and characters. Eggers also employs shadows, often of a menacing hand, just as Murnau did. And, as befits our modern era, this film more explicitly emphasizes the lurid sexual eroticism that fuels much of the vampire mythos.

Deadpool & Wolverine: Death of a thousand cuts

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for constant strong bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity, and crude sexual references

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.4.24

This isn’t a movie; it’s a string of crude and violent blackout sketches laced with relentless profanity and vulgar one-liners, loosely stitched to a so-called plot that’s dog-nuts even by superhero movie standards.

 

Having penetrated the Big Bad's weird lair in this aggressively deranged flick,
Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, left) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) realize that they
may be in over their heads...

The result is aimed squarely at arrested adolescent males and the geekiest comic book nerds ... and, judging by the opening weekend’s box office results — $438 million worldwide, shattering the previous record for an R-rated film — the folks at Marvel Studios apparently knew what they were doing.

Let’s call it a triumph of crass commercialism, while acknowledging that mainstream viewers — and even fans of the “conventional” Marvel superhero films — are advised to steer very, very clear. 

 

This gleefully atrocious burlesque wears “Tasteless” like a badge of honor. But if the wretched excess is removed — to quote Gertrude Stein — there is no there there. After the introductory title credits orgy of slashed throats, impalements, severed limbs, decapitations, gouts of blood, and relentless F-bombs, the realization that the entire film will continue in this manner, isn’t merely disheartening.

 

It’s boring. Truly.

 

The primary running joke concerns the constant squabbling and fighting between Deadpool and Wolverine, because — since both have regenerative powers — neither can be killed. Cue all manner of shooting, stabbing and bone-breaking mayhem.

 

Mildly funny the first time. Not on constant repeat.

 

Director Shawn Levy and his four co-scripters deserve mild credit for archly breaking the fourth wall and elevating meta to new heights, with foul-mouthed Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) taking cheeky real-world jabs at Disney, 20th Century Fox and all manner of pop-culture entities. It’s like a Simpsons episode on speed, and when the snarky asides and Easter Eggs arrive with such rat-a-tat intensity, some of them are bound to land. And yes, a few do.

 

But that’s pretty thin gruel, given the vehicle driving this nonsense.

 

So: The “plot,” such as it is. Fasten your seatbelts; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

 

Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, has been trying to go straight — as a car salesman — since his previous adventures in 2018’s Deadpool 2. This effort goes awry when he’s snatched from his life on Earth 10005 by Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), a bureaucratic agent of the Time Variance Authority (TVA), responsible for monitoring all temporal law in the Marvel Comics Universe.

 

(Yes, this is a multiverse mash-up.)

My Policeman: Quietly arresting

My Policeman (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor and nudity

Available via: Movie theaters and (starting November 4) Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Celebrated British theatrical director Michael Grandage’s roots show in this adaptation of Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel, which frequently feels more like an intimate stage production than a film.

 

And two become three: Museum curator Patrick (David Dawson, left) is delighted to
discover that visiting couple Marion (Emma Corrin) and Tom (Harry Styles) have a
genuine interest in art.

The melancholy, regret-laden character study centers on three people who — out of desire, desperation and love — have caused each other a great deal of pain.

The kicker, in Ron Nyswaner’s script, is the jolt upon realizing that what seemed like happenstance actually was premeditation.

 

The story opens in the 1990s, in the East Sussex seaside resort of Brighton. Tom (Linus Roache) and his wife Marion (Gina McKee) argue over her decision to allow Patrick (Rupert Everett), an ailing, long-estranged friend, to live with them while he recuperates from a stroke.

 

We’ve no clue what prompts the hostility, which Tom refuses to discuss, preferring to retreat to long walks along the massive sea walls that protect the cliffs above (an impressively dramatic image given imposing ferocity by the way cinematographer Ben Davis frames the crashing waves).

 

Grandage and Nyswaner then slide back to the 1950s. Newly minted schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin), enjoying a day at the beach with friends, is taken with Tom (Harry Styles), a handsome young policeman. Sympathetic to her fear of the water, he offers to teach her to swim in the local lido (public outdoor pool), if she’ll broaden his horizons by recommending some good books and classic artists.

 

She’s charmed by this. A copper, wanting to better himself?

 

The days pass idly and happily. They visit a gallery, where Tom is drawn to a painting of storm-tossed seas. Patrick (David Dawson), the curator, offers some learned observations; then, sensing kindred spirits, he impulsively offers them tickets to a classical music concert. Tom falls asleep. (So would I.)

 

They become inseparable, a larkish three musketeers enjoying life to the fullest whenever possible. Patrick’s cultured sensibilities are more perfectly aligned with Marion’s, and his solicitous attention to her begins to feel like something more than friendship, which Tom can’t help noticing (prompting Constant Companion to mutter, “Threesomes never work out”).

 

But is Patrick actually interested in Marion? Or is she merely an excuse for his close proximity to Tom?