Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Rating: ***

Reading some of the reviews of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, you get the sneaking suspicion that a lot of my fellow critics believed they were walking into some camp ground of historical meta-fiction where the 16th President of the United States would dispatch bloodsuckers with some Schwarzeneggerian one-liners. But that’s not the case, and this is where being of the nerdy persuasion has advantages over other critics.

I’m only about 100 pages into Seth Grahame-Smith’s original novel and can say easily that there isn’t an ounce of camp between the pages. It’s no sketch either, as it’s also been compared to a Saturday Night Live skit. The book is a surprisingly thoughtful, well-researched alterna-biography of Lincoln. As if there really was a vampire named Henry carrying around “Honest” Abe’s secret diaries all this time and showed them to Grahame-Smith.

As for the movie, it carries none of the book’s subtlety, but being from the director of Wanted, Timur Bekmambetov, I didn’t expect there to be much. Although clearly more horror flavoured than recent vampire films like Twilight or Priest, the potential for straight-up horror is replaced with absurdist, nearly over the top action sequences complete with CG blood spurts. I think we wanted something closer to Bram Stoker’s Dracula rather than something that feels cut from the cloth of Van Helsing.

The plot follows Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) from witnessing the death of his mother by a vampire as a boy to his days in Springfield, Illinois as a lawyer and burgeoning politician to his years in the White House as Commander-in-Chief during the Civil War. In between, he trains under conscientious vampire Henry (Dominic Cooper), courts and marries the lovely Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and learns the dark underbelly of American History: vampires using slavery as an easy food source to build their own dominion in the American South.

Sounds serious, but it’s hard to deny the fun. Although some may scoff that a movie called “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” takes itself too seriously, I found it a rousing summer popcorn thriller. Those action sequences may strain the laws of physics, but they are executed very, very well, and all the while I was sitting in my theatre seat thinking, “If Lincoln doesn’t get all the silver to the front lines, the Union will lose the war and vampires will enslave America!” Stupid, I know. I have a history degree. But the movie’s actually pretty good about making you buy its reality.

Lead Benjamin Walker not only has the looks of a youthful Liam Neeson, but he kind of has the magnetism of one too. The movie skips along from drama to drama much too fast to build any meaningful character development, but fortunately, Walker does well both with Lincoln’s vampire hunter physical prowess, and the historical Lincoln’s gravitas as he delivers several signature speeches. If a star is born from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, it will be Benjamin Walker.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead also gets to have some fun with history when Mary Todd gets a bad ass moment of her own in the film’s climax. But more interesting, Winstead gets to play Mary Todd’s more gregarious and flirty youth, which is a side of the woman we don’t normally get to see, as they say.

Dominic Cooper, who was so compelling in the small supporting role of Howard Stark in last summer’s Captain America: The First Avenger, once again lends ample and able support to our hero in Lincoln. His Henry captures both the good humour and easy cynicism of Lincoln’s vampire fighting vampire mentor from the book.

The film also introduces us to a few new characters too. Anthony Mackie plays Lincoln’s obligatory black friend Will Johnson, and although Mackie was perfectly fine in the part, I feel like I would have rather have seen other real life characters from the book like Edgar Allan Poe, and Lincoln’s fellow vampire slayer (and later Secretary of State) William Seward. Rufus Sewell plays the vampire leader Adam, and is perfectly serviceable in the part, but it would have been nice if Lincoln had a match in the main villain, someone who was played as a visionary vampire leader equivalent to The Great Emancipator.

Technically though, the film is solid. There’s some impressive stunt work, and the climactic train chase is mind-blowing, plus the film’s a genuine R-rated vampire movie, so you have to admire the filmmakers’ dedication to giving the fans what they want. Bekmambetov definitely has a visual flare, but what he lacks is patience. Anytime Lincoln isn’t killing something, or racing off to kill something – in other words the quiet, dramatic moments – it feels like Bekmambetov is a 10-year-old with A.D.D., sitting on the couch with his knees knocking waiting for the power to his video game to come back on.

But honestly, if there’s one thing to recommend Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter it’s that it’s fun, and that’s despite the fact, as the critics say, it takes itself seriously. I have a feeling that if this was camped up, the spirit of it would have been lost and the critics would still be complaining.

And for my final thought, if you can see this movie without paying extra for 3-D, do so. It adds nothing to the film, least of all spectacle. Making films that were shot dark and turning them into 3-D in post just doesn’t work no matter how many times they keep trying it, and for the first time watching a 3-D film I could swear I was getting a headache. The format can be fun, but only when it’s done right.

So I guess now the ball is Steven Spielberg’s court. His straight-up bio-pic starring Daniel Day Lewis and titled simply Lincoln comes out this Christmas, and I guess at that point we’ll decide what Lincoln we like best. Either way, in Abe we trust.

Alice in Wonderland

Rating: ***

I knew we were in uncharted territory when Alice in Wonderland didn’t open with one of those great title sequences to Danny Elfman’s theme music that typically kick off a Tim Burton movie. Burton is perhaps my greatest filmmaking inspiration, which is why it pains me so to say that his Alice comes out into a mere ho-hum. Granted, it’s visually amazing, but I can’t say that I was whole-heartedly engaged with this take on Lewis Carroll’s classic. It seems as if Burton has spliced together the original animated Disney Alice with a tame version concocted by American McGee, all in what seems like an effort to bolster Johnny Depp’s ongoing campaign to make himself as ugly looking as possible on film.

Yes, the Bozo the Clown meets Lloyd Christmas mug of what’s supposed to be the Mad Hatter on the movie posters is indeed Johnny Depp. I can’t knock the guy’s enthusiasm, but now having completed their eighth collaboration, I think it’s time for Burton and Depp to see other filmmakers. Nothing against either of them, but Depp’s become a crutch for Burton because Depp’s an actor that Burton knows will go out on a limb. But Depp is “big box” now. His boutique days when he could get away with playing a guy with scissor hands or a cross-dressing schlock-maker while burying his movie star presence aren’t what they used to be. Sadly, Depp doing kabuki Mad Hatter doesn’t work as well as it should. For the most part.

But The Hatter isn’t the main character of this story. In this Wonderland Alice, played by newcomer Mia Wasikowska, is a young woman who’s taken to party where it’s expected she’ll be proposed to. Like Robin Williams’ Peter in Hook, she’s grown up thinking that her childhood sojourn into another world was nothing more than childish fantasy. So it’s an awful surprise to her when she sees a familiar white rabbit in a waist coat and fob watch hopping through the garden. It takes Alice a while to catch on that her Wonderland excursion was real, not that this is the Wonderland she once knew thanks to the machinations of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter).

Of course this isn’t an adaptation, which is probably why the film feels like it has no cohesion beyond the stylistic. There’s a blatant kind of Lord of the Rings feeling where there’s an elaborate quest for a magical device and a final, titanic battle on a chessboard shaped field. Frankly, in this instance, the whole thing seemed rather dull and if there’s one thing that Wonderland shouldn’t be, it’s dull. Sadly, it might be the fate of these 3-D efforts, Avatar included, to suffer in the narrative while being visually very pleasing. In this case though, I can’t completely get behind the look of the film since all the digital tricks work against that Burton vibe. He’s not a boy with his toys like James Cameron, Burton’s the kid that wears 40s fashions because of his distaste for all things modern.

There is an ambition to the film that’s admirable, but Tim Burton has never been an epic kind of filmmaker. Even the little superhero movie he did (Batman) looks like a low budget indie as compared to the way summer tentpoles are made now in days. What does this matter? Because Burton’s about quirk, and quirk doesn’t cost. He’s also about character, and you don’t need motion-capture technology to make a character interesting. The difference between Alice and Burton’s past triumphs is the difference between someone singing a song and really being a performer. I can enjoy it, it can engage me, but it doesn’t really fill me up spiritually. Alice in Wonderland, as the collective name of Lewis Carroll’s literary work, is insanely adaptable with enough vibrantly weirdo characters for two Tim Burton movies. But this could have been better. And while 3-D may save the movie industry, some of us still want a good story with compelling characters. And if possible, a less scary looking Johnny Depp.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Rating: ****

Musicals are usually such bright and shiny things. They’re romantic affairs of hyperrealism, a reality where people express themselves in song and dance routine as easily as people in the real world will yell and cuss at each other over the slightest infraction. Wouldn’t a pleasant song about being overcharged at the grocery store sound so much better than yelling about the fact that plantains were marked cheaper in the produce aisle then they were charged as at the cashier? Well, forget about the romance of the musical when it comes to Sweeney Todd, it’s a bloody horror show about vengeance and… well, vengeance. Combining music and macabre, Sweeney Todd is the perfect Tim Burton movie.

Based on the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical that debuted in the 70s, which itself was based on an English urban legend from the 19th century, Sweeney Todd is about a man named Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp). Framed for a crime he didn’t commit, Barker returns to London years later as Sweeney Todd, a man changed by his injustice and imprisonment abroad. Todd returns home to find that his wife is gone and that his daughter is the ward of the malevolent Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), the man who, out of jealousy, framed Todd and convicted him.

Here’s where things get dicey. Todd decides that all of London must pay for the crimes against him and so he returns to his old barber shop only to find Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) in residence. Mrs. Lovett is a maker of horrible pies, but she’s admittedly smitten with Todd. The two come up with a plan: Sweeney will do the killing and Mrs. Lovett will grind up the remains and bake them into pies and sell them to hungry Londoners. A plan elegant for its simplicity, but it gets Todd no closer to the man he really wants in his barber’s chair: Turpin. Fortune smiles though when one of Todd’s shipmates, the naïve Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), falls for Todd’s daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener).

Yes sir, this is vintage Burton, as in: if there were at least one Broadway musical that Burton was born to turn into a big screen bloodbath, it’s this one. It’s dark, it’s perverse, it’s funny, it’s all the things that are synonymous with the best works of Burton from Edward Scissorhands to Ed Wood. It’s also bold. An R-rated horror/musical is far from average and far from the PG-13 realm of play of Dreamgirls and Hairspray, so definitely not for the kids. It also differentiates itself by being more operatic with nearly continuous singing rather than songs that break up the dialogue. It’s not a new concept of course, but given the current slate of musical cinema, it’s refreshing.

Johnny Depp in his sixth collaboration with Burton gives a great performance while trying out his singing voice for only the second time (he sang in John Waters’ Cry Baby too). Depp spits nails with every note, his voice not only carries the tune but it also carries the character’s dementia and hatred. By comparison, Bonham Carter isn’t as good I found, but she does manage to hold her own against Depp’s towering presence.

Rickman is perfectly villainous as always, but I wish he had more screen time; the screen time he does get though, especially the scenes with Depp, are electric. Turpin just oozes perversion and evil as he leers (or rather, ganders) at the girl who for all intents and purposes is his daughter. The best surprise though is Sasha Baron Cohen, who ably proves he’s so much more than a one hit wonder as Todd’s barber competitor Signor Adolfo Pirelli. Like Rickman, Cohen makes a lasting impression with his limited time in character.

The actors are great, but all the usual Burton trademarks are also in place despite the absence of some of Burton’s major behind the scenes contributors. This London, as the song says, “There's a hole in the world/Like a great black pit/And the vermin of the world/Inhabit it/And its morals aren't worth/What a pig could spit/And it goes by the name of London.”

Yes Sweeney’s London is a great, big pit thanks to the renowned Italian production designer Dante Ferretti who makes the City on the Thames look like a cancerous version of the Mary Poppins one. Dariusz Wolski creates a colourless pallet as cinematographer, making every spurt of blood red blood stand out all the more against the blacks, whites, greys and browns.

Sweeney Todd is not going to be to everyone’s taste, but I have little doubt that it will stand proud over the years to stand next to other Burton classics that, while not huge in the beginning, have aged well over the years to become regarded as masterpieces. It also serves well to demonstrate the unending diversity and range of Johnny Depp – any acting accolades collected will be well due.