Movie Review: Dark Shadows

The credits rolled and the lights came on.  I began to exit the theatre alongside my faithful friend Willem Joseph Montejamo and the two lasses we’d met at the deli section of WinCo earlier in the day.  Our cravings for meat can rarely be satiated.  As we began descending the stairs like Gods riding down on their hallowed chariots from the heavens Willem Joseph turned to me and with his chin jutting out at a grotesque angle he dared to ask me the question which had sat unspoken between the two of us for the duration of this latest Timothy Burton adventure:

“Branden,” he said, his voice like wet gravel, “would you have rather watched this movie or a video of famed Telemundo journalist Maria Celeste – host of Al Rojo Vivo con Maria Celeste – while she is wearing nylons for the equivalent amount of time?”

We continued to descend and his words echoed in my ears like a haunting refrain that damned me with its uncompromising insistence.  In that instant I wanted to grab him by his layered collars – one navy blue and one yellow sherbet – and hurl him down the stairs in a brazen act of random, unprovoked and unqualified violence.  The only thing that stayed my trembling hands was the sweaty, naked truth that beckoned to me from his coldly cavalier question. 

There was no contest, no need for thought or consideration, the answer was as painfully obvious as the cheap cologne I’d selected for the evening’s festivities: Of course I would have rather watched the lovely Maria Celeste in nylons for the equivalent amount of time.  How was any other option even worth a passing though?  Oh Senora Celeste, you only grow more voluptuous and beautiful with each passing year, you report the news directly to my dark heart, you leave me quaking in a mass of journalistic jelly.  I wanted to scream these proclamations from the steps for the fleeing audience to hear.  Maria, you are pure class, pure full figured glory.  Murders, scandals and life-claiming natural disasters never sound as seductive and alluring as they do coming from your honeyed lips.  And the sight of you in nylons is one of the increasingly few reasons I have to go on living.  Oh I imagine…on a warm day…after you have been on your feet the whole time in those heels, running from one breaking story to the next…and then you finally stop for a break…demanding I act as your foot rest…and then that sweet sound – like the gates of heaven opening – as the nylon parts ways with the leather and the air is perfumed with divinity…

Yes, I would much rather watch two hours of this than 2 hours of this new Dark Shadows movie.  

The past few weeks have been a real doozy, hum-dinger, ball-breaker, butt-shaker and elbow raker for your faithful writer.  I am listening to the 1993 album Lastima Que Seas Ajena by Vicente Fernandez as I write this.  El Chente is in fine form on this release but when isn’t The King always putting his best foot forward?  That’s a question I would only dare ask myself while lurking at the very edges of the night itself, seeing strange faces behind doors that have been left ajar and hearing conspiratorial whispers coming from my balcony.  I personally had a chance to see El Chente back in 1984 (a real dystopian year for me unfortunately) at a concert in Mexico’s Plaza de Toros and I can attest that his voice is even more powerful live that what a mere disc is able to capture.  The man has a presence few others can even approach and it is truly a blessing that he is still recording music.  While working for the Monterrey based periodical Voz de la Gente I was even able to interview The King by telephone as part of the press junket for his 1990 album Palabra de Rey.  He is a generous, unstoppable musical force and that interview – brief though it was – remains one of my favorites from all my years of beat-walking and lead-chasing.  Incidentally, the aforementioned concert was recently released on CD and DVD entitled Un Mexicano en la Mexico and is well worth checking out. 

The evening I was discussing before this tangent started out as any other but would sadly culminate in viewing perhaps the most irrelevant film of Tim Burton’s career.  As such, I am not sure whether to consider the night a success or failure. Before I continue please allow me time to indulge in the requisite praise of this man’s work before detailing my feelings on his latest release. 

I remember vividly watching the movie Beetlejuice during its initial release at an old one-dollar theatre on the east side of San Francisco.  I was dating a woman named Amalia at the time (this was during a great era where the border patrol was just as misguided but far more underutilized).  As this was the roaring 80’s – a time where the industrialization of America was just reaching a fever pitch – Amalia had a rather distinct and stunning style.  Her hair was a lush mountain of black curls that she teased to impossible heights.  Her makeup was bold purples, blues and greens and it’s application was almost as generous as her hips and thighs which constantly threatened to tears the seems of her impossibly tight black spandex pants.  Those pants lived a very noble life and I often associate their place in the universe with my more personal thoughts and wishes on reincarnation.  Amalia enjoyed the film but the language barrier prevented her from fully appreciating many of the subtle nuances (she and I remain good friends to this day and when the DVD came out I mailed her copy for her birthday, she loved it and said she was going to watch it with her children).  Burton was able to illicit manic, unhinged performances from all his leads; Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder were impeccable (this would become a pattern for both these fine performers, damn fine actors the both of them!) and Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis were super fine as well (both in acting and appearance.  Brother Baldwin may have let himself slip in recent years but when has Ms. Davis not been bizarrely attractive?).  But it was the sheer creativity on display that blew my mind as though someone had stuck a shotgun in mouth and finally did what my parents desired but never had the courage to see through.  Burton had birthed a wholly unique creation, something audiences can still view today and truthfully say that there is nothing similar.  I immediately hunted down a copy of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and was delighted to find the same level of artistic insanity.  A year later when the young director brought the Dark Knight himself to the big screen in a way more grand and sense shattering than anyone could have imagined I knew this man – nay, this artist – was someone to be reckoned with.  Follow up films like Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and personal favorite Batman Returns only solidified my love. 

Batman Returns is such a beautiful movie, such a gorgeous piece of art.  I will put it up there any day with the new Christopher Nolan movies and I will brutally murder anyone who dares challenge my assertion.  I could probably write at least 547 pages in brail on my love and interpretation of that film but I will save that for another blog post.  But damnit!  The chemistry between Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfieffer!  I have rarely seen it paralleled in any other movie, which shows the almighty importance of proper casting (ditto for Shaq in the classic Kazaam).  Burton, you made a movie that will stay with me for all my miserable, worthless life and for that I am forever in your debt…

Flash forward the to booming 00’s in which we now live and this once dark creative force has been reduced to a glossy parlor trick that impresses less with each subsequent turn.  Big Fish was beautiful but those moments of beauty have sadly reversed and become the exception of this man’s work rather than the rule.  We can add Dark Shadows to the ever growing list of disappointments, the same list that includes Alice in Wonderland and Willa Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Planet of the Apes (the one with Marky Mark, not the one with James Dean).  I brought up those bat-films earlier since Batman is well known to comics aficionados as being the world’s greatest detective.  However we don’t need the Dark Knight to deduce the common factor in the stinkers of recent years (except for Planet of the Apes!  God, all my arguments are flimsy at best): Johnny Depp. 

If I accuse Burton of resting on his laurels where would I even begin with Johnny Depp?  I know this man is a great actor.  I know he has been in great movies.  And I believe that at any time he has the potential to unleash another stellar performance.  Heck, he could be doing it right now in a hotel room somewhere or at dinner with a girlfriend or just on the streets of L.A. to some lucky sightseeing tourists.   But he tries that faith with every movie he is in these days.  Honestly, when was the last time he gave an honest to Gosh dramatic performance and didn’t just play an over the top cartoon?  It has to be that movie Blow from like 27 years ago!  That was a good flick and Depp gave a good performance.  The man has so much talent and I am not saying these characters are without merit but is this all he has left?  Pirates and vampires and mad hattering chocolate factory owners, all the same with each successive one more boring and predictable than the last.  Damn you Depp!  You used to be one of my favorites and now you break my heart almost as much as Burton.  What the hell is the matter with the two of you?  And what does he have coming up?  Hmmm, let’s just peruse the internet movie base of Data (such an asskicking character!  Brent Spiner is truly underrated as an actor): The Lone Ranger, that is next in store for Depp, a movie where he plays the Indian sidekick in a costume that looks exactly the Mad Captain Wonka from his last few movies.  Fuck!  It’s that sort of thing that makes me hate the DJ’s of today; you’re just using a laptop motherfuckers!  Where are the actual records?  The vinyl, the bacon grease?  I can string together beats in 5 fucking seconds using any number of basic programs (I just can’t think of any of the names right now).  When did it become the norm to go on autopilot?  Damn everything! Depp’s charisma is so raw – like a hunky slab of uncooked beef that I want to sink my teeth into and let the juices roll down my stubbly chin – that he has a lot more leeway on these things than almost anyone else but I still hope the next forty years of his career will be more than simply variations on this tired theme. 

There are some positives to be found.  The movie looks spectacular; with a rich color scheme and a slickness that would be more easily appreciated if it didn’t look exactly like every movie Burton’s made in the past 7 years or so.  Odd that this paragraph started out as a list of positives only to devolve so quickly into a negative.  It’s in these moments of blinding negativity that I try and think of The Neill.  He always makes me feel better about myself and better about life in general.  He fills my spirit with positive energy and lets me know that it will all be okay.  Those who know me best know how much I love this man.  The Neill walks among us mere mortals and we are helpless to do anything but look on in slack jawed awe.  What are my favorite films of The Neill you may be wondering?  My Brilliant Career?  Jurassic Park?  The Piano?  The Vow?  Possession?  Merlin?  I can’t get into something like that now for the amount of pages I could write on Batman Returns is dwarfed dramatically by the literary tomes I could fill analyzing the works of this man.  I just love him so much; I can’t even express it poetically because the love pours out of me before I have a chance.  Thank you sir, for everything.  

But I think I know the answer to the aforementioned enigma on why a list of positives turned so quickly into negatives.  As hard as some try to forget I think we all remember the Star Wars prequels of recent years.  Personally, I found those movies to be a good shot better than many gave them credit for but who really give a flying fuck, am I right?  However, something that did always grind my gears were the visuals.  It took me years and endless nights spent at the seediest of taverns, grinding my teeth and getting rear ended in filthy bathroom stalls to figure out why the visuals bothered me so: there was nothing grimy in this new display of the old Star Wars universe, nothing had a speck of dirt or left a trail of slime.  All the environments, a hero’s home, a villain’s lair, a restaurant, every muthafuckin’ ship in the universe was completely sterile and clean.  As a result nothing quite looked real.  It’s like the uncanny valley everyone and their dog Shiloh keeps talking about these days (actually, even the slightest bit of research shows that my comparison to the Uncanny Valley is deeply flawed).  I think I once read a digital recording of Tom Waits where he wrote that one of his problems with Sci-Fi movies these days is everything looks too darn clean and he wondered why there is nothing dirty in these hypothetical futures and alternate universes.  Tom Waits has an amazing voice just like the previously mentioned Vicente Fernandez but I find their musical stylings strangely difficult to compare.  If I were a big shot record producer I would organize a duet between these two men and subsequently have a massive crossover hit that would momentarily cross borders and unite us all in musical jubilation.  We would all join hands and merrily skip naked through the streets, finally realizing once and for all that size and skin color does not matter.  Speaking of musical jubilation I hope everyone has heard the song “Walk Away Renee” at least once in their lives.  That is such an amazing song.  A lot of dope fiends and martial artists mistakenly think it is by The Four Tops and though they did a slamming, soulful version it is originally by The Left Banke and this remains the definitive one, the one to seek out and listen on repeat for 29 hours straight.  Truly, it is such a good song that almost every version sounds great.  I bet Jack White couldn’t even make this song sound like garbage (though I’ve lost many a bet on that man). 

Aside from Johnny D. there is a lot of other great talent in this movie.  Jackie Earle Haley plays some kind of servant to the main family who then becomes a slave to Depp’s character.  Fans will likely remember Haley as the tortured, incredibly creepy pedophile from Little Children.  They may also remember him as Rorschach from Watchmen or Freddy Krueger from the God-awful Nightmare on Elm Street remake.  In many ways Freddy Krueger was like a father to me whilst I was growing up and Platinum Dune’s travesty broke my heart worse than the first 20 girls I ever asked out who all said I was too ugly to date.  But he does good reliable work here.  Three super attractive dames figure heavily in the story: Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter and Eva Green.  They all look weird and Burtonized but this oddly makes them more appealing.  This is especially true of Green who oozes evil in most of her scenes.  I have always found evil to be devastatingly attractive and have longed to meet a woman who would viciously torture me while cruelly laughing and mocking my many deficiencies.  Beginners in the arts of sadomasochism always go for the physical stuff right away but that is a mistake.  It is the verbal jabs and the emotional abuse that really make degradation and humiliation an irresistible cocktail that I come back to again and again. 

Untold days after watching Dark Shadows I was sitting alone in my living room and drinking copious amounts of alcohol.  I drink quite often, always in an increasingly futile effort to block out the shame of my worthless life and as such I have a great deal of trouble in acquiring even the slightest buzz but my passion for the task remains undaunted.  On this particular night in question I was watching the movie Godzilla 2000.  Those unfamiliar with the rich mythology of the original G-ster may confuse this feature film with the late nineties Hollywood movie Godzilla directed by Roland Emmerich (he of such classics as 2012, Independence Day, and the 10,000 B.C. remake) but they would be as equivalently wrong as I was right when I famously slammed Emmerich’s film in my old column at The New York Times (“Emmerich’s Godzilla Has No Bite”, NYT volume 218, issue 167, June 1998).  Godzilla 2000 is actually the first film in the third incarnation of the screen icon and it truly is a GREAT movie.  The storyline is clear and moves at a good, smooth pace.  The characters are all fleshed out and have clear motivations.  The dialogue avoids unnecessary exposition and serves the story.  Organic events lead to logical outcomes and the whole thing moves to a stirring climax.  These are all qualities that cannot be found in Dark Shadows.  If someone is threatening to slit your throat unless you watch one of these movies you would do well to pick Godzilla 2000.

I actually ventured into the wide world of web in the middle of writing this latest masterwork and saw that I was a bit hard on Burton earlier.  Sweeney Todd and Corpse Bride were both groovy and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t pissing my pants at this very moment in excitement for Frankenweenie!  Forgive me Burton!  I was a bastard for being critical.  Maybe my tastes have just changed over the years.  He is still doing good work, I’m the fool!  I’m the son of a bitch who doesn’t deserve to live!  I was wrong about Depp too.  Every few years there’s a Public Enemies or a Rum Diary or a Rango.  Good Lord, you would think I could take 2 minutes to do a little fucking research before crapping out these reviews but I guess that would be giving yours truly a little too much credit, huh?  I guess I just wish the ratios were reversed for both these gentlemen.  Depp, you are far too good looking for me to ever chastise.  I feel no shame in admitting this, facts are facts after all.  But damn if you are not a fine actor as well, I will never stop hoping good sir.  Nevah. 

By now all my loyal fan (the plurality was left off as a clever joke to indicate that no one actually reads my blog) will have noticed this review to be unusually rambling and seemingly a pastiche of only peripherally related paragraphs.  This was actually an intentional act done to mimic and illuminate the structure of Dark Shadows.  There is no real story to this movie, only peripherally related scenes stitched together.  A love story is introduced early on and then forgotten until the last ten minutes.  Dead-beat fathers walk in and out, something about a fish business seems important, a werewolf pops up out of nowhere and even Alice Cooper stops by to liven things up a little (by the way, The Coop is a kickass rocker who shows no signs of slowing down.  Seriously, check out his newest albums like Along Came a Spider or last years Welcome 2 My Nightmare.  I’ll be damned if they aren’t as killer as his older stuff and I’ll damned if I see another chick on your arm!) 

I am now listening to the new Santana album which came out a couple weeks ago entitled Shape Shifter.  It is a surprisingly great album.  I say surprisingly not because Carlos isn’t talented.  He and his band have always been super talented and albums like Abraxas, Caravanserai and III are legendary for a reason.  But for over a decade prior to this most recent release he’d been churning out nothing but insipid collaborations with everyone from Bobby Thomas to Michelle Branch to the Insane Klown Posse (man those Juggalos are like just the coolest, sure wouldn’t want to mess with them, come at me bros!  I’m calling all you sleaze bags out right now!) to Engelbert Humperdinck.  I had desperately been hoping for the return of the classic Santana sound and this new record delivers in a huge way.  Great summer record, so says I.  Savvy readers will no doubt pick up that I’m trying to relate this return to form to my hope that perhaps one day Burton and Depp will have a similar creative revival.  But that in turn leads to an odd bit of harsh self-reflection.  What makes my opinion better than anyone else’s, what gives me the right? 

“I’m not wearing hockey pads,” I say to myself in a gravelly voice. 

Cut.  End scene and a crisp brand new fifty-seven dollar bill to the first full figured, dark haired woman in cheetah print pants that can corner me in a dangerous alley and tell me what I was just referencing in that last paragraph.