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Sony
Animation’s CGI farce “Hotel Transylvania” is light on plot and heavily features
crap Auto-Tune music at the end that ought to make any sane person’s soul
flinch, but its love for all tall tales of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy,
and Wolfman are infectious. It also helps that the film is marvelous looking,
with every corner of the screen filled with fantastical, horrifying, and
hilarious pop-art bright creatures.
The story: Count Dracula (Adam Sandler)
tries all in his power to keep his 118-year-old (teen years for a vampire) daughter
safe in his castle, away from harm. The castle doubles as a hotel, a monster’s reprieve
from the outside world of scary humans. Shocker, then, when a college-aged kid on
a backpack adventure stumbles into the place and catches the daughter’s (Selena
Gomez) eye. What’s a count to do? This is PG, so killing is moot.
The
alternatives fill up the story, which runs dry. But I was busy eyeing how characters move, bounce off each other, and fall apart in
the case of Frankenstein. B
I
welcomed the Tim Burton-directed stop-motion “Frankenweenie” with a wide smile
of spooked childlike wonder. For years now, Burton has been missing as a
filmmaker. He has made many movies -– “Planet of the Apes” and “Dark Shadows” --
but none steeped in the dark satire and deep loneliness he displayed in “Edward
Scissorhands.” This harkens back to early Burton, and is a remake of his infamous
1984 live-action short, ingenuously reimagined. Young Victor Frankenstein is a
loner whose best friend is Sparky, his pet dog. Victor pops a homerun during a
parent-forced youth baseball outing. Sparky runs for the ball, and is fatally hit
by a car. Victor is devastated, and soon goes the way of his namesake by bringing
Sparky back to life via an electric storm and a lab that is every bit a grade-school
salute to James Whale. What comes next is where Burton flies high: Victor’s spooky
classmates each has a dead pet they want to see given new life, and
this freak show takes off as hilarious and sly introduction of monster mash-ups
for the quirky young. Shot in black-and-white, this is the Burton I love. A
“Sleepy Hollow” is perfect Tim Burton id: Gloriously dark atmosphere spiked with a wicked sense of
humor, misfit characters that can only be saved by love, surreal violence, and
a god-awful story with stabs of brilliance, but mostly ugly exposition. Burton
and screenwriters Andrew Kevin Walker and (un-credited) Tom Stoppard take
the Irving story and dump the school teacher for a NYC police constable (Johnny
Depp, brilliantly good) advocating science forensics to his detriment in an age
-– 1799 -– drunk on religion. Crane is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a
series of lobbed-off heads by a demonic man on a horse, minus his own head, and
the latter is no joke, because this is Burton, and magic, evil, and trees of
death puking blood abound. Crane’s arrival –- filmed by Emmanuel Lubezki, scored
by Danny Elfman, with a set from purgatory –- is marvelous, fused with old Hammer Films and 1931’s classic “Frankenstein.” Brilliant: Depp plays Crane as a
heinous wus, using a teenage boy as a human shield. Weak: Huge story
errors and a conspiracy-heavy reveal that defies reason. Christopher Walken plays the horseman, growling with devotion to Burton’s majestic dark yearnings. I
miss this Burton. B
