Aladdin

After hearing all the fuss about "white-washing" the cast of The Last Airbender and Prince of Persia this summer, I have to look at Aladdin and chuckle.  I mean, is there a more Caucasian movie about Arabic characters?  It takes its story from a classic Middle Eastern folktale collection, One Thousand and One Nights, and the lead voice actor is...Steve from Full House?  I never realized how ethnic he was!

The movie begins with Jafar (Jonathan Freeman) and his wise-cracking parrot, Iago (Gilbert Gottfried), in the middle of the desert, persuading a thief to enter the Cave of Wonders.  The cave's entrance is shaped like a tiger's head, and it talks.  Would you willingly walk into a giant, talking stone tiger's mouth?  If so, you might be a dirty thief.  The cave eats the thief and tells Jafar that only a "diamond in the rough" can gain access to the cave's treasures.  That doesn't seem hard to find, does it?  And it's not.  With the help of a machine, Jafar is able to learn the identity of this "diamond:" Aladdin (Scott Weinger).  Jafar wants Aladdin because he wants more power and riches than his sorcerer/adviser-to-the-Sultan role can provide him; he wants the power of the magic lamp that lies inside the Cave of Wonders.

Aladdin is a "street rat" in the fictional Arabic city of Agrabah.  With his monkey, Abu, he steals what he needs to survive and spends the rest of his time running for his life while singing.  Here's a tip, folks: if you're trying to evade capture by the police, don't sing your plans to them.  I know, it's a very tempting and natural desire, but it's rarely the right move.  One day, Aladdin notices a pretty girl in the market and protects her from the police.  The two spend the rest of the day together, enjoying each others company and, in the Disney way, falling in love with a speed that would alarm any parent.  Alas, their time together is interrupted by palace guards, who Jafar has sent to capture Aladdin.  The guards and Aladdin are surprised when the girl reveals herself to be Princess Jasmine (Linda Larkin), but the guards still take Aladdin away.  Jasmine was slumming it in the city because she felt trapped by her palace life; at almost sixteen years old, Jasmine was practically an old maid by princess standards and her father was pressuring her to choose a husband.  Tired of being pressured, Jasmine snuck out of the castle and met her true love, Aladdin, only to have him taken to the very palace she had escaped from.  It's like ray-eee-ayne on your wedding day.  Seriously, it is.

Back in the desert, at the Cave of Wonders, Jafar tells Aladdin that he can have all the treasures of the cave if he gives Jafar a particular lamp first.  Aladdin is all about it, but his stupid monkey had to touch something that caused the cave to self destruct.  Luckily, a magic carpet helps Aladdin and Abu survive, but they're trapped.  But they have this lamp...and it looks so dirty...I wonder if anyone will want to clean it off, maybe by rubbing it...?  Well, look at that!  Rubbing the lamp gives you a genie that may or may not have the attention span of a coke-fueled squirrel.  So, now Aladdin has the lamp, he has a genie and three wishes.  His new buddy, Genie, would really like wish number three to be freedom from the lamp and his years of servitude, but the first priority is to win Jasmine's heart.  Unfortunately, in the palace, Jafar has found a new way to gain power.  He realizes that he would become Sultan if he married Jasmine.  Who will win her hand in marriage, the underhanded Jafar, or the stupid but earnest Aladdin?

This is, in my mind, the quintessential late-period Disney animated movie.  The animation is in the classic style, but with some digital coloring (mainly for the lava and the magic carpet) that really pops out of the screen.  The hero has a good heart, but is immature and a little stupid.  The heroine is strong-willed and feminist to a point, but really just wants to get married at a young age.  The villain is completely unsympathetic and ugly.  The supporting cast is lovable and goofy.  The songs became pop hits and the movie serves as their music videos.  While these broad storytelling devices make for a fairly predictable plot, it's still an animated Disney movie, which means it's pretty darn adorable.

Like most Disney movies of the time, the cast is primarily made of professional voice actors.  Scott Weiger does a good job as Aladdin, but he (and everyone else) is overshadowed by Robin Williams' manic performance as the Genie.  Williams is what makes this movie work; without him, it's a cute, but mediocre cartoon.  It shouldn't come as a surprise (if you're familiar with his work) that most of Williams' dialogue was ad-libbed; he apparently was given topics and suggestions and allowed to ramble on from there.  What is surprising is the fact that an animation studio would create more work for themselves by waiting on the voice actor before they drew the scenes.  I guess that's the sort of happy inconvenience you're willing to endure to work with a mad genius.  Or Mork.

While Williams raises this movie to great heights, the scenes without him should have been better.  I have no problem with Aladdin's early scenes; they establish his character and the "Street Rat" song was cute.  But what was with the Hammer pants?  I don't particularly like Jasmine at the beginning; she complains about not having choices, like she's being forced into an arranged marriage or something.  She's not.  She keeps having suitors introduced and scares them off.  That's her freedom of choice at work.  It's not that she doesn't want to get married at age sixteen, or that she wants to know her husband before they wed; she just doesn't like the guys she's met.  It's faux-feminism, and if a cartoon is going to feature strong-willed female leads, I would prefer if they grow a (proverbial) pair of balls and stand up for themselves instead of just being moderately picky over men.  By the way, the "pressure" to marry was completely null and void, since her dad can change the laws as it suits him (as the ending proves).  Way to negate her character development, dad.  I liked Jafar as the villain, but would have preferred if his character was more visually interesting, instead of a skinny bald dude with some ugly clothes.  His parrot, Iago, is something else entirely.  I will ignore any questions about Gilbert Gottfried's talent (nonexistent) or the origin of his voice (the seventh circle of Hell) and instead ask why it was necessary to add airplane noises to a scene where he pantomimed crashing and burning.  Aside from being kind of insulting (What?  I can't connect a bird falling, with his wings spread to a crash?), it just doesn't make sense for airplane noises to be in a movie set in the ninth century.  Who is to blame for all these oddities?  Co-directors and co-screenwriters John Muster and Ron Clements; of course, they're also responsible for convincing Williams to sign up and then giving him room to work, so they're not all bad.

And what was with the narrator at the beginning?  Yes, I realize it's Robin Williams, but why is he in the movie at all?  When you set up a narrative bookend, it means that the main story is being told to the audience by a character (like in the original One Thousand and One Nights).  But...we never see the narrator again.  That's just sloppy, Disney.  Walt, somebody should get fired for that.  Right after you defrost.

I don't mind that sloppiness, though.  This is still a fun movie to watch, regardless of age.  The songs are mostly fun and even the pop ballad "A Whole New World" can be goofy with some audience participation.  Go on, whisper "don't you dare close your eyes" to the person next to you when watching this movie.  Hilarity ensues, I guarantee it.  It's a fun movie with some reasonably likable characters finding their way to a happy ending while passing on a few trite lessons for the kids.

Casino Royale (1967)

Sometimes, when I watch movies, there will be a sequence that makes me stop the picture, rewind and play it again.  This is done out disbelief, which can be either good or bad.  A sweet line of dialogue or an absolutely ridiculous stunt gets good disbelief.  Absolutely random or stupid things get the bad disbelief.  The entire running time for Casino Royale gets the bad kind.

While Casino Royale is based on Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel of the same name, don't confuse it with the 2006 version.  This is not an official Bond movie, but a British spoof of Bond and a bunch of other spy movies.  The film has five (!) directors, with each making their own vignette that is tied together at the very end.  John Huston, Val Guest, Ken Hughes, Joseph McGrath, and Robert Parrish all acted as director.  Each vignette has its own style and feel, and spoofs different things.  Likewise, the story is very segmented and disjointed.  It should be no surprise that the story is not the main focus for the film.  Instead, the emphasis seems to be on several small moments that, when they work, are extremely funny.

The story begins with an attempt to coax Sir James Bond (David Niven) out of retirement by his old boss, M (John Huston), a CIA guy (William Holden), someone from the KGB, and a French guy.  Predicting Bond's refusal, M arranged for the British government to bomb Bond's home and have it blamed on the evil international organization SMERSH.  The house crumbles,convincing Bond to come out of retirement, but sadly, M dies in the bombing.  Way to plan ahead, genius.  Bond's first act is to return M's body to his family in Scotland.  Sir James is a very prim and proper man who despises the seductive film versions that have had success in recent years; SMERSH seeks to discredit him by ruining his chaste image.  To do so, they replaced all of M's family with sexy SMERSH female agents, all intent on seducing Sir James.  Despite their best efforts, he resists their charms and wins over the operations leader (Deborah Kerr).  From there, Bond returns to England as the head of MI6.  He has his secretary, Miss Moneypenny (Barbara Bouchet) assign the code name "James Bond 007" to all remaining secret agents, in an attempt to confuse both SMERSH and the audience. 

I could go on in detail, but that's as clear as the plot ever gets, so it's probably not worth it.  There are only two other important story lines, in my opinion.  The first involves the recruitment of Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) into a "James Bond 007" identity by fellow "James Bond," Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress).  Tremble-Bond's mission, like in the 2006 version, is to defeat the villainous Le Chiffe (Orson Welles) at cards.  The other story line involves Sir James Bond facing off against the head of SMERSH, who also happens to be his clumsy nephew, Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen).  Jimmy is very intimidated by his uncle, so he has trouble speaking in his presence, but if his evil plan succeeds, he won't have to.  All men over 4'6" will die, leaving Jimmy as the big man in the world for all women to adore.  The rest of the film has a smorgasbord of movie stars in bit parts and plot sequences that make little to no sense, leading up to a finale that involves cowboys, Indians, and Woody Allen hiccuping illustrated clouds of smoke and eventually exploding.

The supporting cast is very good, even if they only are given a few lines.  Aside from those already mentioned (who give the best performances), George Raft, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jacqueline Bisset, Anna Quale, Tracy Reed, Peter O'Toole, and Jack Gwillim all have bit parts.  The main acting, though, is not as good.  I realize that David Niven is as British as they come, so his humor is probably going to be very British (read: dry and peculiar, with a weakness for men wearing dresses).  This movie has a ton of slapstick in it, though, which doesn't match his style at all.  He seems uncomfortable throughout.  Peter Sellers is better, but at least half of his screen time is painfully awkward; the other half is pretty funny, though, which makes up for quite a bit.  It's Woody Allen that gets the most laughs with a great show of physical comedy near the end of the film.

The frustrating thing about this movie is that it should be far better than it is.  Seriously, who would have thought that a Peter Sellers/Woody Allen movie wouldn't be very funny?  The problems are myriad, but they boil down to a lack of vision.  Just because the movie is split into several sub-stories doesn't mean that the film as a whole has to suffer; Creepshow, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Grindhouse, and Kentucky Fried Movie are all choppy and mashed together, but their segments share a similar tone.  Casino Royale can't decide what type of comedy it is.  There's an entire sequence that appears to be a satire of contemporary German films, but then finishes with a Benny Hill-type ending.  Huh?  That's okay, Mr. Random Ending, Peter Sellers outdoes you by being physically missing from the final third of his scenes (he either quit or was fired, depending on who you ask).  David Niven's scenes work better as a whole, but they feel like they came out of a British sitcom.  They're cheap, cheeky, and pretty lame.  Basically, there are too many styles at work, and none compliment each other.  I will give director Val Guest credit for trying to tie these disparate strands of story together, but he never truly succeeds; he apparently realized this and turned down a "Supervising Director" credit after he saw the final cut of the film.  Disappointing movies don't come easily or quickly, it seems, and this mess takes over two hours to wind down.

Despite all the bad (two hours!), this movie is not without its charms.  As a James Bond aficionado, it's fun to see the series lampooned.  Personally, I thought David Niven's turn as a celibate Bond was clever, even if it wasn't very funny.  As I mentioned before, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen are entertaining, although Allen was criminally underused.  Many of the other scenes would have worked better if they were shorter, or if the vignettes were edited together as a united film.  But, for what it is, Casino Royale isn't terrible.  It's a product of its time, filled with clean-cut men, sexy women, surreal randomness, and painfully British humor.

Windtalkers

Loud explosions, pyrotechnics, and bodies flying through the air come naturally to the modern war movie, even to the point that sheer devastation is no longer an effective selling point.  These movies need their own angle in order to avoid being seen as lame Saving Private Ryan copycats.  The hook for Windtalkers is the relatively unknown tale of the Navajo tribesmen that joined the army to act as code talkers in the Pacific side of World War II.  That actually sounds like an interesting premise; so many war movies go boom, while very few spend the time to think.  Sending and breaking codes sounds fairly cerebral, right?

Ooh...but John Woo directed this movie.  And he teamed up with Nicolas Cage as the lead actor and Christian Slater as an important supporting character.  So...the main character isn't Navajo, despite the hook for this movie being about the Navajo code talkers.  Great.  I will give credit where it's due; at least they didn't pull a Touch of Evil and give the lead actor an unconvincing ethnic makeover.  Well, if the story is not centering on a Navajo character, what is the story?

Joe Enders (Cage) begins the movie by holding his platoon's position on Guadalcanal at all costs, which means everyone died except him; he was injured, losing hearing in one ear, which also occasionally hurts his balance.  He recovers in a hospital, thanks in part to a nurse (Frances O'Connor) that is clearly attracted to him, despite the fact that he is played by Nic Cage in his "brooding" mode.  Enders gets a promotion and a new assignment as soon as he is well; his new assignment is to protect Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), one of the new Navajo code talkers.  Ox Anderson (Slater) receives a similar assignment, protecting Charlie Whitehorse.  The Navajo language is an unwritten one and is almost incomprehensible, even within its own language family, which makes it especially hard for enemies to translate; these code talkers were bilingual Navajo that transmitted important messages without the risk of being understood by the enemy.  If the Japanese managed to ever understand the Navajo language, though, the American forces would be in trouble.  Therefore, both Enders and Anderson are told that they must protect the code at all costs; their code talkers must die before being taken captive by the enemy.

That's pretty much the story basics, but there's plenty of stock subplots.  You've got the predictable awkward assimilation into the unit by the Navajo.  They are seen as savages at first, but their impossibly calm demeanor and passivity earn the respect of their squadmates and their practices become more acceptable over time.  Of course, there's one guy (Noah Emmerich) in the squad that is racist; of course, his life is eventually saved by a Navajo.  There's the nervous soldier (Mark Ruffalo) and the guy with the cool weapon (Brian Van Holt).  There's the commanding officer (Peter Stormare) that needs things done, no matter the cost.  There's the inevitable split between the two parallel plot lines; you know either Anderson or Enders will eventually have to kill a Navajo to protect the code.  Who will it be, the nice Anderson, or the bad-ass Enders?

This movie should have been so much better.  Obviously, the big problem is the story.  Why make a movie about the Navajo code talkers, if they are not the main characters?  I'm not crazy about Adam Beach as an actor, but using him as the POV character would have been much better.  Instead, we have a tortured white soldier to identify with.  Even better, it's Nicolas Cage in full-on inappropriate overacting mode.  Ignoring the poor choice of main character, this movie still has major problems.  Are you telling me that the Marines put two extremely valuable code talkers in the same squad, facing immediate danger?  There were only about two hundred of these guys in the war.  I'm pretty sure they would have been better suited for sending messages from wherever the local base was.  This movie barely even uses them for sending or receiving codes; they spend most of their time giving uncoded coordinates for air support.  That's really stupid.  What, are the Japanese (who are shown listening to the radio transmissions) going to hear their own coordinates and assume that whatever is coming their way is good?  Maybe the Americans are bringing them ice cream!  Stupid.  And how many Japanese die in this movie?  This is the Pacific war, where they were dug in and well-protected.  The Americans just run up the side of mountains, and yet I'd estimate that the dead Japanese outnumbered the dead American soldiers by a 4:1 ratio.  That is so far beyond stupid, it's insulting to stupid.

The acting is what you would expect from a John Woo movie.  It's barely there.  Nicolas Cage gets to make funny faces when he's in battle and sulk when he's not.  I'm sorry to say that he actually showed the most range in this movie.  Christian Slater, Peter Stormare, Mark Ruffalo, and Brian Van Holt were all one-dimensional caricatures of 1940s soldiers.  Noah Emmerich got to be the racist jerk that sees the error in his ways (well, he learns to accept one Navajo, anyway), but the character is so boring and predictable that you still don't care.  Adam Beach was a little better, but his character had no emotional arc, so there was nothing for him to do in this role.  Whose fault is all this?  Well, you can blame the writers, John Rice and Joe Batteer, because this story sucks, but I'm going to blame John Woo.  As the director and a producer on the film, he had ample opportunity to realize how crappy this script was and have it fixed.  He didn't, so the responsibility for this wreck belongs to him.

This movie doesn't even have the normal perks of a John Woo movie.  The action isn't good.  Woo is best known for his slow-motion, stylized action sequences, where impossible things happen and then explode.  Here, he tries to channel the destructive spirit of the Pacific war and fails.  The big battle scenes try to have a documentary feel to them (a la Saving Private Ryan), but the special effects in these scenes are far worse than any war movie released in 2002 should be.  Some of the smaller-scale battle sequences are fine, but it's not enough to make this movie watchable.

Let's see...bad story, bad acting, and bad action.  Yep.  This is a bad movie.

Catch 22

Mike Nichols is a gifted director with a flare for filming great dialogue, as best seen in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Closer.  Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is a novel that is brimming with witty dialogue, absurd logic, and has a complex tangle of plot threads.  If anyone could do justice to it on the big screen, Mike Nichols was the man.  At least, that would make sense.  But, as the titular catch in the book indicates, following logic doesn't necessarily get the results you want.

Catch-22 is the story of Yossarian (Alan Arkin), a bombardier in the US Air Force during World War II.  Yossarian comes to the conclusion that he does not want to be in the Air Force any more.  Why?  Because, when he flies his missions over Italy, people keep trying to kill him and eventually will succeed.  His commanding officer, Col. Cathcart (Martin Balsam), keeps raising the required number of flight missions for his men, eventually more than tripling the average number of flights the Air Force requires before rotating experienced pilots out for rest.  The only way out of the Air Force, then, is to die or be declared insane.  Unfortunately, the unit doctor can't help because the Air Force has established rules for determining sanity.  Since only a crazy person would want to keep flying dangerous missions, wanting to get out of the Air Force is sane, but you can't leave the Air Force unless you're insane, but if you're insane you will want to stay in the Air Force and keep flying dangerous missions, etc.  The official description for that circular logic is Catch-22.  The unspoken question is how anyone can escape that logic.

There's more to the movie than that, of course.  Military leaders are shown to be inept, corrupt, and stupid.  Bob Newhart plays Major Major Major Major, who doesn't know what to do as a Major, so he hides and avoids his duties at all times; when he's in the office, no one can see him --- they can only see him when he has left the office.  That's his catch.  Col. Cathcart not only keeps his pilots in the flight rotation far too long, but he and Major Danby (Richard Benjamin) are involved in selling military goods for profit.  Orson Welles makes a brief appearance as General Dreedle, who doesn't understand why he cannot have a subordinate shot for annoying him.

Yossarian's fellow soldiers are similarly bizarre.  Charles Grodin plays a very mild man who eventually fails to see the difference between killing in combat and murder, and isn't distressed by either.  Art Garfunkel embodies the stereotypical movie image of an American soldier: brave, honest, faithful, and very naive.  Martin Sheen's character seems pretty realistic, but the irrationality of war begins to affect him.  Jon Voight plays Milo, who works in the mess hall.  From there, Milo builds up a trading empire, swapping equipment (like parachutes) for better food or for art or money or whatever.  Milo is so effective that he and his superiors, Danby and Cathcart, end up allowing the Italians to bomb their base to make a profit.  All the while, Yossarian becomes more and more neurotic.  He tries to crazy his way out of the Air Force by walking around nude.  He tries to do do it by insulting his officers.  Nothing ever works, though.  In fact, the only man crazier than Yossarian is his buddy, Captain Orr, who has such a talent for getting shot down and splash landing in the ocean, that he claims to just be practicing.

That kind of sums up my feelings for this movie.  There's a lot going on, but nothing really works.  I liked a lot of the performances, especially Charles Grodin and Anthony Perkins (who plays a chaplain), but the movie never really gels.  The glaring problem is with the story.  I haven't read Heller's novel in years, so I'm not upset that they chose to significantly change the story (entire plot threads were dropped, characters swapped speeches, etc.).  I am upset that they chose to change the story so poorly.  Buck Henry (who also plays Lt. Col. Korn) is a talented writer, the creator of Get Smart and the screenwriter for The Graduate.  On paper, he seems like a good choice to simplify Heller's complex story, but the result is a disjointed mess.  The movie ends up breaking into three distinct parts.  The first part is goofy and randomly funny.  I liked that part.  The second part is serious and overwrought.  The third part is an out of left field ending.  I guess that could also be the story arc for The Graduate, too, but it's more disturbing here.  My problem is with the second arc.  I get it.  War is hell.  What I don't get is why it became so hellish after being absurd for the first 45 minutes of the movie.  It would have been much more effective if the crazy decisions made by characters in the first third of the movie directly lead to the serious events; that would have allowed us to see the two parts as connected and contrasting.  Instead, it seems fairly abrupt and random.

Mike Nichols shoulders a lot of the blame for the feel of this movie.  The sound is intentionally obscured at times, with characters having witty conversations while a jet engine obscures what they are saying.  That's just annoying, unless there's a punchline or some symbolism that is being hammered home.  There doesn't seem to be.  I liked Alan Arkin's performance, but I disagreed with the direction; if the whole point of the movie is that Yossarian is the sane guy, he should not act increasingly neurotic.  That's a pretty basic failure on both Nichols' and Arkin's part.  Both the book and the movie jump around in time, but the book does so in a cyclical fashion, elaborating on scenes with different perspectives.  Here, only one particularly sad scene gets replayed, but it happens over and over again.  Nichols' golden touch for dialogue remains strong as ever, with every character having several funny lines with impeccable timing, but that's only important in the funny first third of the film.  After that, we are left with some pretty soul-sucking stuff, and it doesn't have the impact that I'm sure Nichols intended.

This should have been a great movie.  It has the director, the screenwriter, the source material, and the actors needed to make a classic.  What resulted was far less than the sum of its parts.  It's not terrible, but it should be great.  The repetitious scene is a great illustration for what is wrong with the movie.  Perspective is key to this story, right?  What is logical to one person is illogical to the next.  Therefore, it would be both interesting and potentially funny to see the same scene from different characters' viewpoints.  Instead of using this cinematic tool to enlighten and amuse, though, Nichols chooses to club the audience with the notion of war being bad.  This movie is witty and fast-paced, but it's not enough.  Maybe Nichols and Henry should have taken a more literal inspiration from the source material and had the script follow a circular path.  I absolutely believe that Catch-22 can be made into a great film, but this definitely isn't it.

30 Days of Night

I've never been  a huge fan of vampire movies; the Anne Rice vamps are too mopey, the Twilight ones are too teen-friendly.  Even when Hollywood went back to basics with Bram Stoker's Dracula and got the incredible Gary Oldman to play the title role, it was underwhelming and bizarrely oversexed.  Even the Blade movies, which succeed as action flicks, fail by making vampires stupid rave kids.  Don't even get me started on the Underworld trilogy.  The vampire, as a cinema monster, has lost its effect.  It is no longer the stuff of horror, but a metaphor for undying love.

And that's a steaming pile of crap.  Vampires should be scary.  They drink blood to live, ferchrissakes!  They are unnatural abominations that take joy in the pain they cause.  In 30 Days of Night, Hollywood finally got the vampire right.

Based on the comic book miniseries of the same name, this story takes place in Barrow, Alaska.  Barrow is so close to the Arctic Circle that the town has one month out of the year where the sun does not rise at all.  Hence the movie title.  Not surprisingly, many of the townsfolk leave for the month, because missing daylight can make people go a little crazy sometimes.  In fact, the town does not sell alcohol during that month to keep the troubles to a minimum.  A relative few remain behind, including the sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett), the surly town snowplow driver, Beau (Mark Boone Junior), and assorted townsfolk.  This year, Eben's estranged wife, Stella (Melissa George), also happens to get stuck in town after the annual exodus; a storm is heading toward Barrow, and she manages to wreck her car on the way to the last flight out of the area.  She's not the only visitor, either.  A strange, hoarse, dirty man (Ben Foster) appears on the first night, coincidentally the same night when all the town's cell phones have been stolen and burned,  and all the town's dogs have been killed.  This stranger is soon taken into custody by Eben and Stella for acting crazy in the town diner, but he just laughs at them, claiming that death is coming to Barrow.  The power goes out, so Eben and Stella investigate, only to find that the telecommunications/power center for the town has been sabotaged and the operator killed.

So far, the vampires haven't really been seen yet.  They are fast blurs in the shadows, and they are messy; you can tell where they have been because there's usually a headless corpse and a circle of blood-stained snow.  Then they attack, and you get your first look at them.  They speak a guttural foreign language, possibly an ancient one, so their dialogue has subtitles.  Their eyes are wide and entirely black.  They are pale, yes, but they are monstrous; their fingernails are claw-like, their noses elongated, and their teeth are all sharp.  These aren't the type of vampires that feed on you by leaving two fang marks behind, they tear out your whole throat.  There is no mistaking that these are vampires, and they have come to kill the residents of Barrow. 

Predictably, the human population in Barrow takes a swift nose dive after the vampires move in.  While there are two or three visually distinctive vamps, there is a clear leader, played by Danny Huston, that is commanding the rest.  Under his leadership, all communications have been lost, and all transportation has been disabled.  Still, a few survivors remain, including Eben and Stella.  They manage to sneak into a house that has a hidden attic, where they wait until they come up with a plan: the people of Barrow deliberately live there, so they know the cold like no others, and they can use that to their advantage and fight back.

As far as the acting goes, it's decent, with a couple of particularly awesome performances.  I found it noteworthy that I didn't dislike Josh Hartnett for a change.  Melissa George is okay, but not extraordinary.  This is probably the most heroic role I have seen Mark Boone Junior play; he usually is cast as a corrupt cop or a sleazeball.  Ben Foster once again takes a bit part and makes it memorable; you can argue that he overacts, but I love seeing him take boring roles and making them distinct characters.  Most of the vampires do little in the acting department, save tilt their heads and hiss.  Danny Huston, though, is terrifying.  He's basically the only vampire that speaks, and his makeup, combined with his inhuman mannerisms and his croaking voice, combine to make him the best vampire I can remember. 

I really liked the creative choices that director David Slade made with this film.  The first draft of the script was written by the comic's writer, Steve Niles; Slade made the choice to have his screenwriter from Hard Candy, Brian Nelson, do the rewrite.  Basically, they chose to make the script less over-the-top and more scary, and yet still remain basically true to the comic.  That is so smart, I wish they did this with all comic book movies: have a comic guy write the script that captures the feeling of the source comic books and have a screenwriter make changes so it works better on film.  It's a very simple concept that comic movies rarely follow.  And the vampire language?  That was totally a Slade/Nelson idea.  Visually, the film is surprisingly detail-oriented.  Beards grow with appropriate speed, chapped lips get worse over time, and the survivors look hungrier and dirtier as the film progresses.  The direction isn't flawless; the acting is only decent and the scenes where the survivors hide should have been claustrophobic.  Luckily, the sheer scariness of the vampires makes up for those not-quite-awesome attributes.

From a writing perspective, the story stays pretty true to the comic book.  There are some differences, but nothing major.  In fact, some of the changes are for the better, like the invention of the vampire language.  Still, the writing isn't great.  The plot is kind of predictable and there are some scenes that you just know will happen eventually, if you bother to think about it.  For instance, there has to be a scene where we get to see someone start to transform from human to vampire.  It's obvious, really, but the pace was brisk enough to keep me immersed in the moment, so I didn't think ahead.  That sort of pacing should be common in movies, but too often is overlooked, so I am grateful for its presence in this film.

The more I think about 30 Days of Night, the less impressed I am with it. I've seen it three or four times, and this happens every time I analyze it. It's not a bad movie, by any means. It just has a lot of things that aren't objectively great about it. But then I watch it again, and its awesomeness is renewed for me. There is something in this movie (probably scary vampires, if I had to guess) that satisfies me in a very basic way, and it is immune to any cliches or mediocre performances this film may contain. The important thing is that it has vampires, and they do not suck. And that makes me smile.