The Rape of the Vampire: Not as pleasant as it sounds

I saw The Rape of the Vampire.

Usually pretentious vampire movies are right up my alley.

This time? Not so much.


That's how the movie made me feel.

Blood Diamond: These guys go through a lot of trouble for a rock

Blood Diamond is a solid film with a bit of an identity crisis. It's not sure if it wants to be a sincere message movie about the perils of conflict diamonds or an action movie about a man fighting for his family. To it's credit, the film delivers competently on both fronts but I felt like it could have been more successful if it choose one aspect and stuck to it. However, I am torn on this issue.

In principal, I really like the idea of using the standard action-movie format to create a blockbuster that deals with relevant sociopolitical issues. I guess there's a fine line between brilliantly subverting a genre by challenging the viewers to examining global injustice and making an action movie that's a little preachy. This film almost makes it into the first category.


Nothing good ever happens in the third world.

The Little Shop of Horrors: Without the singing

Roger Corman famously filmed The Little Shop of Horrors in only two days. At least, he completed principal photography in two days (there were some reshoots) but why quibble about details?

It's amazing that a feature film could be completed in that amount of time and nothing short of a miracle that the finished product is such a delightful little gem. Don't get me wrong, it's still a cheaply made B picture but it's surprisingly charming. It has so much character, so many inventive ideas and so much quirk that it practically begs to be turned into a musical with a proper budget.

Aside from the obvious man-eating plant, there's plenty of other weirdness going on here. All of the characters are so over the top that they shoot straight past "broadly drawn" on their way to some form of Kabuki-comedy. Mr. Mushnik is Jewier than fucking Tevye, Audrey speaks with an inhumanly high voice, and Dr. Phoebus Farb and Wilbur Force are a match made in somewhere I never want to visit. Basically, it's an insane little film with a shoestring budget.

And that's how I like my movies.


Why yes, that is an impossibly young Jack Nicholson.

Capturing the Friedmans: Ambiguity unbound

I think that great documentarians pick challenging subjects and aren't afraid of exploring the uncomfortable territory they lead to. And Capturing the Friedmans is filled to the brim with uncomfortable territory. It tells the story of Arnold Friedman who pleaded guilty to sexually
abusing and sodomizing the children that took his computer classes.

This case is especially complicated because the police failed to uncover any physical evidence and used questionable methods while interrogating the children. On the other hand, Arnold had a decent sized stack of kiddie porn hidden behind his piano and he admitted to molesting a minor on a previous occasion. It's quite possible that he is a pedophile who was wrongly convicted of child molestation.

The film consists almost entirely of gray areas and neither the Friedman family nor the police/prosecutors come off as very credible. The director, Andrew Jarecki, gives both sides enough rope to hang themselves. That the facts of what actually occurred remain so illusive is especially surprising considering that Arnold's son (and professional clown), David, made extensive recordings of the family as it went through this crisis. These home movies contain footage of incredibly personal moments of the family discussing the case, their legal options, the turmoil they're all going through and, most disturbingly, them just goofing around and having a good time.

It would have been easy for Jarecki to pick a side and make a film about how Arnold sexually abused entire classes of children or how a community fell victim to paranoia and began a witch-hunt that resulted with an innocent man in prison. But the director chose a more difficult path by presenting all of the confusing and contradictory evidence, trusting the audience to find their own answers to this mystery . . . or not, in my case.


So, who's the black sheep of the family? The admitted child molester or the professional clown?