Critical Film Condition

To understand this review you must first understand my personal history with Meryl Streep.

I think that among the biggest film freaks in the world (a group I consider myself to be an honorary member of), I am one of the very few whom Meryl Streep had to impress, even though I was born after she got her first Academy Award. Streep was an actress that didn’t impress me, didn’t interest me, and who seemed really unsympathetic as a person. I realize now that this is just because she is such a great actress and, on more than ten occasional films I watched with her in either starring or supporting roles, she played a real bitch. Be it in “Kramer vs. Kramer” or “The Devil Wears Prada”, she seems just so unlikeable that it reflected on my thoughts of her real life. It don’t think I didn’t like her, I was just not mature enough to appreciate her skills.

And “Julie & Julia” is all Streep. The plot is neat, as you’d expect from Nora Ephron, and the rest of the leading cast is OK, with a special nod to Stanley Tucci, that has the most likable character to work with. But all stay in the shadow of Meryl Streep, who incorporates Julia Child to an extent that it becomes scary. Seriously, take a look at some YouTube videos after watching this movie!

Not to distance herself all too much of the genre that made her, Nora Ephron spends most of her efforts in telling the story of Julie Powell, a New York nobody who decided to spend one year cooking the shit out of Julia Child’s book on french-cuisine and talk about the experience in a Web Log (or Blog, for those reading this Blog). This story is told in parallel to the real Julia Child story, as told in her book… So, in essence, it’s a movie with two main characters based on two books (Powell got a book-deal after the Blog’s success) and one Web Log, and as confusing as it may seem, it’s told in typical Nora Ephron style, with many giggles and tear-jerking moments along the way, being an ultimately enjoyable experience that will make you hungry as hell after watching.

While it is Ephron’s most “mature” effort so far, it is impossible not to notice the linearity and clichéd development of the plot. I’m not a hater of linearity and clichés… Not all movies can be written by Quentin Tarantino or Oliver Stone. I’m just saying that, even with two parallel storylines, it still has the feeling of been there, seen that, and its OK… As in all of Nora Ephron’s stuff, when the credits roll, you are intensely filled with joy.

Popularity: 1%

I’m not the vampire flick kinda guy. I mean, I like it, but I didn’t rush to the movies to see “30 Days of Night” even though my friends said it kicked ass. But with “Daybreakers”, ever since the first teaser, I was definitely excited because it finally gave us the promise of something new in the genre. Sure, there’ve been other movies with different points of view on the “myth” behind vampirism, but this is one that really goes all the way into asking: “what if it really happened”?

Now, if you remember, there has been a series of movies about vampires that thought the best approach to the subject was to sacrifice some mythical vampire rules in order to achieve proximity to the audience. Heck, even “True Blood”, the hugely successful series, takes a lot of liberties, like different rules as to how a human is turned, blablabla… And I am all for it, but “Daybreakers” sticks to the classic rules and, from one storyteller to another (or not) it seemed to me that classic is the new fresh. Vampires came from Bats, hate sunlight, LOVE human blood and, one of the coolest gimmicks in the film, they don’t have a reflection. And instead of ignoring this to bring the subject closer to our reality, it uses these “silly” elements to intensify a frightening reality where vampires have taken over our world. Cars don’t have personal mirrors, but instead have micro-cameras with small LCD screens so that vamps can fix their make-up, cars have a day-driving mode where all the windows are blackened down, etc. It’s really cool.

Were it only for the successful creation of a believable world for the movie, I’d already have liked it. But “Daybreakers” offers a convincing cast of characters and an entertaining story, that while being sort of a let-down for those expecting a highly moralistic plot, it still stands above most of what horror-movies can offer today mainly because, while offering a concise plot and believable characters, it’s remains fun, bloody, gory and everything else you could wish for as a horror fan.

The movie does feature a great cast, with Ethan Hawke as the reluctant vampire hemo-whatever (scientist working on a blood-substitute, since most humans are already dead/dry) being the least inspired of the main-characters. Sam Neil scares the crap out of everyone as the CEO of the company that supplies blood to the vampire-population, but it’s Willem Dafoe who steals the show as an ex-vamp who was “miraculously” brought back. And that’s where my biggest grudge with “Daybreakers” comes from:

The trailer promised a frightening vision of a future ruled by vampires who need humans to live, and treat us like a sub-species, not much unlike the Nazis. The vamps were both portrayed as the evil-doers, but more importantly, it showed that most of them didn’t have a choice (like Ethan Hawke’s character)… That, the actors involved, and the beautiful rendition of “Running Up That Hill” by Placebo made me believer, or at least want to believe real hard, that this would do for vampire and horror-flicks what “The Dark Knight” did for comic-book adaptations. It really looked like a slick, noir-ish vision of the genre with solid performances and a deep, convincing, moralistic plot… What it delivered was one of the coolest horror-flicks in recent memory, but still not achieving that next step.

Popularity: 1%