Poor Renfield. Always a blood sipper, never a blood sucker.
Dracula’s familiar has always settled for hand-me-downs, usually in the forms of insects he eats that keep him immortal, if unsatisfied.
Here, though, he gets his just desserts in the form of a full-fledged feature. Renfield crackles with dry wit, Tarantino-esque violence and a theme that borders on the tender. And Nicolas Cage was born to play the prince of the red tide.
Nicholas Hoult (Warm Bodies) plays the accursed second banana, and he’s top notch here as a realtor who makes the mistake of inviting Dracula into his life. When he finds a support group for toxic relationships, Renfield sees a lifeline for his bloodline. Never mind that Dracula sees the exact opposite.
While technically a franchise film, Renfield feels fresh in a sea of studio sequels and spinoffs, and its plot doesn’t sound like it was written by baby Yoda. Credit director Chris McKay with a From Dusk to Dawn aesthetic, particularly as it draws to the bloodbath showdown. And Awkwafina makes a fine cop/love interest as Rebecca, whose “you are enough” dinner scene almost makes you forget who she’s talking to.
But the movie flatlines without over-the-top supporting performances by Cage and, notably, Ben Schwartz, who plays Tedward Lobo, a crime boss competing with the Count for the souls of the city’s hapless. He’s superb with a semi-automatic. Cage literally chews scenery as only he can.
Renfield telegraphs its fanged punches a bit with its empowerment messaging. But the film focuses just enough on the loneliness of over-committing — to a person, a job, even the charismatic undead — to right itself just fine.
While Renfield has always been the engine that drives Dracula (he even inspired a medical term, “clinical vampirism“), he was perennially a thankless henchman — until now. He may not take cinema off life support, but Renfield is worth a taste.
By almost any metric, John Wick is standard Hollywood fare.
A devoted husband loses his wife. A reluctant assassin is drawn back into the killing business. Car chases. Explosions. Gun fu. Pitch that as a film premise to a Hollywood executive and you’ll be expected to pay for lunch.
But John Wick became America’s James Bond by breaking the industry’s only near-inviolable commandment: Never kill the dog.
This rule has been true for decades, and applies to animals in general. Name a movie where a cat was murdered. Or bird, for that matter (birds can die, but only in canary-in-coal mine settings, to warn of larger threats). Even livestock are typically off limits. Scads of cows and horses appeared to be murdered in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but the film made it clear they were knocked out with sleeping gas.
The rule is understandable, in part because Hollywood typically includes the caveat in final credit scrolls that “No animals were harmed in the filming of this production.” No need to inspire animal-rights groups to contact their attorneys. Plus, it’s harder to watch that compound leg breaks.
John Wick, however, broke this rule within the opening 10 minutes of the first film. And it’s been making money ever since.
More than $826 million, to be (somewhat) precise. And if John Wick 4 continues its steamroll — or if John Wick 5 hits screens — that figure will cruise past $1 billion.
All for killing a beagle puppy off-screen.
If not for that brutally effective scene, Wick could have been quickly and understandably dismissed. Lead Keanu Reeve has about as much dialogue as Clint Eastwood after a root canal. He’s shot, hit by busses, dropped off buildings and put through more pain than a garage sale Stretch Armstrong.
But it is all acceptable for that original sin. And credit Lionsgate Studios for keeping pups in mind. Wick rescues another dog (spoiler alert), lets it share his bed, even arranges for posh boarding at The Continental when he’s busy getting stabby with pencils and other pointy objects. Halle Berry kept German Shepherds that were shot in the third installment, but they, like the humans worth saving, wore bulletproof cardigans.
John Wick may have committed the unspeakable once, but the series has become as pooch positive as the ASPCA on meth.
So rage on and ring up, John Wick. Your story is as absurd as they come in Tinseltown. But you’ve got great taste in best friends.
I knew I was done as a newspaperman when my editor left me a voicemail that we needed to have a phone meeting at 8:20 a.m. the next day.
I knew it was my layoff notice; why else does a boss want to talk twenty minutes past any hour if not to let you go?
I freaked out, of course, and sleep did not come easy that night. But I had been expecting that call for years. The time of newspapers — and newspaper journalists — had ended, at least for me. Given the layoffs in media recently, perhaps the time of news is waning.
It’s time for Hollywood to have an 8:20 a.m. phone call.
Everyday around this time of year, my mailbox and front patio brim with paper: Boxes, posters, screenplays, paperbacks, sheet music, stationery, pamphlets, fliers, hardbound coffee table books and confetti carved as delicately as artisanal string cheese.
All for an awards vote in an industry struggling to remain socially relevant and fiscally solvent.
This is hardly new ground for studios. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association took so much junket and awards swag that it had all the credibility of a Tom Selleck reverse-mortgage ad, and The Golden Globes’ clout spiraled into oblivion.
Now, the Critics Choice Awards, of which I’m a member, is second to Oscar in industry back-pattery. If Academy members get as much studio spam as CCA members — and I’d guess they receive two-to-three times as much — they’re drowning in dead trees as well.
There’s no kind way to say it: Studios try to buy awards. And some critics may be swayed by the ad campaign. Last year, studios sent piano sheet music to the 600 CCA members for the James Bond song and movie No Time To Die. Eilish autographed the sheets. The song won at the CCAs and the Oscars.
After the Oscar win, I went on eBay to see if any sheets were for sale. There were two: one with a Buy It Now price of $350 and one with an open auction that began at $250. I’ll admit: I probably would have sold mine too if I could work the ebays and Charlie did not have an Eat It Now policy on all paperwork left unattended.
Maybe the movie business doesn’t see many parallels with the newspaper business, but I can’t see anything else: A storied American tradition that is an exercise in craftsmanship and cost and existentially at risk in a rising technological tide.
Like newspapers, film feels bulky and slow — at least compared to its digital counterparts. Like newspapers, film faces a daunting stream, chock full of young fish willing to swim on the cheap. Like newspapers, film takes time, the most fleeting quality in a click-bait ecosystem.
Most puzzling, perhaps, is Hollywood’s egregious hypocrisy. I’ve been off the daily beat for eight years now, but I can remember a time when studios boasted how green their productions were. Some movies, studios beamed, left virtually no carbon footprint. Now, with the movies industry gasping for air, studios are clearclutting acreage for a tin trophy.
I get the swagger. When USA Today hired me away from the Post, the editor touted a “near-limitless” travel budget. But swagger fades fast; now journos are lucky to get mileage reimbursed.
Some studios and publicity firms do this right. Apple and Universal, for instance, send e-versions of their movies along with its mountainous paperwork. Bardo and Pinnochio were delights delivered digitally.
And honestly, I can’t say the ads and swag do a goddamn thing. I love the candy and wine and long-play albums (yup) you send. But I ain’t changing my vote. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once was my favorite movie this summer, and it remains my favorite movie of this year. I didn’t need the EEAAO Christmas wrapping paper to remind me.
Beware low-hanging fruit that hangs from withering vines, Hollywood. Roads filled with pulp go up awfully quick. If…hang on, I’ve got someone on the other line.
