Not the 'Lincoln' You Remember From History Class

by Brett Parker

I’ve heard all the snickers, groans, and bickering over the prospect of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, for the general consensus over the past few weeks appears to be that the film simultaneously represents creative bankruptcy in Hollywood, an abomination of our national history, and cinematic cheese jumping the shark.  To be honest, I’m more irked by the people who complain about the film’s premise than the actual film’s existence itself.  Where’s our sense of humor?  Anyone bringing an ounce of seriousness to this enterprise is forgetting that most Hollywood thrill-rides are built on magnificent ridiculousness, and they should at least admire the cheerful way this historical mash-up is reveling in its own insanity.  As far as the Steampunk genre goes, the film finds a very entertaining vibe from its historical resources.  If Sherlock Holmes can dish out Kung-Fu and Edgar Allen Poe can get his Silence of the Lambs on, then I’m all for our Honest Abe chopping off vampire heads with an axe.  

We first witness the young Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) as a man haunted by the death of his mother, Nancy (Robin McLeavy).  Years earlier as a child, Lincoln witnessed an evil vampire named Jack Barts (Marton Csokas) sucking her blood dry to repay a debt owed by his father, Thomas (Joseph Mawie).  As an adult, Lincoln wants to seek revenge, but has no idea what he’s up against.  By chance, he meets a mysterious gentleman named Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper) who is quite the expert on hunting and killing vampires.  He agrees to train Lincoln in the art of vampire combat if he vows to destroy more vampires beyond the one that killed his mother.  Lincoln agrees, and after bouts of training, he becomes an axe-twirling warrior who expertly disposes of an alarming number of evil bloodsuckers.  

All of this hunting leads Lincoln to discover than an ancient vampire named Adam (Rufus Sewell) is plotting to take over America through his forces in the southern U.S.  Vampires favor slavery, for it provides them with countless warm bodies to feed on without anyone really noticing, and they hope to expand that enterprise all over the country.  Lincoln realizes he must take his anti-vampire stance to a whole new level.  He rises up through the ranks of government to become President of the United States, taking a firm anti-slavery stance to fend off his ghoulish foes.  Realizing their opposing strength, he oversees the Civil War to make sure the south is defeated and slavery is abolished.  With the assistance of his childhood friend and right-hand-man, Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie), Lincoln carries out his epic war against the vampire nation, all while keeping it a secret from his beloved wife, Mary (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

Producer Tim Burton had the right idea when he compared this flick to the blaxploitation mashup Blacula, for the basic idea is to marry together two incongruent but very entertaining genres of cinema and see what bizarro fun can be generated from the result.  As a fusion of historical epics and action horror, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter isn’t half-bad.  It doesn’t feel like the easiest marriage of opposite ideals, but its never boring and it presents the logic of its atmosphere with a surprisingly clarity.  Part of me wonders if this film would’ve been better had it been built on broad humor in the style of Mel Brooks or The Naked Gun films.  It takes itself pretty seriously in a hyperbolic action-thriller way, and perhaps we missed out on a great deal of laughs in the process.  Yet the more I think about it, a silly comedy version probably wouldn’t have been all too funny, and the hard-boiled tough guy treats we’re actually given does a good job at making this deranged cartoon premise exciting.  

Perhaps its an advantage that foreigner Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) is in the director’s chair here.  An American director probably would’ve been slightly more timid about tinkering with his own heritage, putting a leash on action indulgences and being more meticulous about historical accuracy syncing up with supernatural ideas.  Yet the Kazakhstan-born Bekmambetov clearly has no qualms about pushing one of our greatest national heroes into feverish lunacy, and he cheerfully places our 16th president in his comfort zone of grandiose action overkill.  Bekmambetov’s Wanted was one of the most over-the-top action movies I’ve ever seen: a sleek, kinetic ballet of slam-bang scenes that could never, ever occur in a realistic universe (hell, it strained plausibility in a movie universe, if you know what I mean).  Oddly, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is also founded on such impossible action.  While the sequences here are clunkier than Wanted, they’re still a hell of a sight to see in a historical fantasy.  A vampire chase across a stampede of horses and Lincoln dishing out beheadings in a southern mansion pumps up our adrenaline until the film’s climax sneaks over into Lethal Weapon territory with a flame-inducing brawl on a fateful train ride.  

With this film and Wanted, Bekmambetov is clearly in love with the idea of a sincere young simpleton finding liberation and purpose after morphing into a gritty tough guy.  Since that represents the basic fantasy of male moviegoers who turn up religiously to action pictures, having it literalized on the screen can add excitement to any frivolous thrill ride.  What’s surprising here is not only how it fits and enhances the crazy concept so well, but how it also deepens our appreciation of Lincoln’s legacy, as opposed to the opposite effect.  Credit for that must largely be given to the superb Benjamin Walker, who pulls off the main schizophrenic balancing act with a heroically straight-face.  It’s a testament to his skill that we can see him playing either a true-blue sincere version of Lincoln (especially if Daniel Day-Lewis had to back out of Spielberg’s upcoming biopic about the president) or a sketch-comedy concoction of the man.  That he can reconcile both of those aspects into a a package of open-faced alertness and remarkable leading man poise is nothing to sneeze at.  Ironically, this isn’t even the first time he’s played a deliriously-skewered portrayal of an American President, for he starred in the Broadway hit, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.  Bringing level-headed magnetism to demented pop manifestations is the mark of a good actor, and I’m excited to see what Walker brings to us in the future.

I like to think that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter isn’t complete nonsense, but actually has thoughts to spare about our current business of American myth-making.  Whats telling about our current times is that people seem to care more about superhero mythologies than they do about American history.  Most schoolchildren probably couldn’t name all the U.S. Presidents, but they could recite the names of The Avengers--along with their secret identities--almost as a reflex action.  It makes sense, then, that this modern-day movie about Abraham Lincoln is essentially a superhero film, in which a damaged soul turns to a life of righteous ass-kicking to squash evil and protect all that is good in this world.  The tipoff comes when we realize that the scene first showing Lincoln with his iconic dark suit, beard, and stovetop hat holds the same cinematic allure of seeing Batman in his costume for the first time.  Re-imagining Lincoln’s legacy in the mold of a superhero tale shrewdly allows lesser minds to reflect on his heroic deeds and his importance as a man in American history.  

Another effect this strange premise achieves is that it plays out good old-fashioned American conspiracy theorizing to its absolute breaking point.  Entire books and television specials have been devoted to secret conspiracies hidden throughout history that make The Da Vinci Code look like a John Hughes movie.  Most people find it ridiculous to imagine Lincoln as a vampire slayer, yet an alarming number of right-wingers have no trouble buying that President Obama is a secret Communist overlord plotting to destroy democracy.  By taking the ultimate absurd conspiracy theory and mapping it out with halfway-seriousness, we are able to hint at the mountains of implausibility and murkiness that arises when an actual conspiracy is visualized.  I’m not saying all conspiracies are mirthless, but I imagine most paranoid grumblings would look as silly as the vampire plot expanded out here.

To the people that think this film will skewer Lincoln’s legacy and make people more stupid about history, I must clarify that this movie fueled a curiosity in me to do extensive research about the real-life Lincoln and seek out the actual facts about one of our finest leaders.  So don’t let anyone ever tell you that trash serves no purpose.  Either way, you have to realize that this is all in good summer movie fun.  As Inglorious Basterds cheerfully pointed out, if we go to the movies for a history lesson, we’re usually getting a skewered version of actual events.  Hell, I bet even Spielberg’s upcoming “serious” biopic about Lincoln will probably sentimentalize the actual truth.  As with most Hollywood pop, the important thing is to understand the whole-hearted difference between real life and make-believe, and here its wise to know what this great man actually achieved as this flick wickedly suggests otherwise.  Once you’ve done that, feel free to put your brain on autopilot and enjoy some sweet vampire beheadings!

The 'Boy' Who Won't Grow Up

by Brett Parker

That’s My Boy is the latest low-brow and cheerfully delirious Adam Sandler yuk fest that comes to us packed with a hard-R rating, a rare occurrence in the junior-high-school-class-clown universe Sandler himself has institutionalized into our culture.  Since Sandler’s exuberantly callow comedies speak directly to the slobbish 12-year-olds in all of us, they never truly needed raw adult content to garner appeal (after all, he’d be preventing a great deal of his teenage audience from buying tickets).  Yet after the weakness of his most recent comedies, particularly the undeniable stink of Jack and Jill, Sandler probably felt an urgent need to return to the gut-busting irreverence of his earlier pictures with hedge-betting assistance from anything-goes raunchiness.  Whether you see this move as calculation or desperation, the film itself is actually pretty damn funny.  It’s rude, crude, foul-mouthed, immature, trashy, sloppy, boneheaded, and offends all kinds of tastes...and I loved every minute of it!

The film opens in 1984, where we see a 12-year-old trouble maker named Donny (Justin Weaver) serving detention for his older hottie teacher, Miss McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino).  Donny lets it known to her that he has a crush on her and is shocked to discover that she wants him just as bad.  Pretty soon, to his utter surprise, Donny is having sex with his dream teacher on the regular.  Its not soon before their secret relationship is discovered though, along with the revelation that Miss McGarricle is pregnant with Donny’s child.  McGarricle is sent off to women’s prison while Donny is ordered to take custody of his child when he himself turns 18.  Yet Donny’s trysts with a much older teacher turns him into a national sensation and he becomes the unlikeliest celebrity this side of Kim Kardashian.  Needless to say, Donny’s strange celebrity status prevents him from maturity and being a proper father.

Cut to 2012.  The older Donny (Adam Sandler) is revealed to be a slobbish 80s relic whose been coasting on his celebrity name to put off getting an actual job for years.  His  laziness proves to do him in, however, when its revealed that he owes the IRS over $40, 000.  It’s also discovered around this time that Donny’s long estranged son, Todd (Andy Samberg), is now a successful businessman whose about to marry a woman from a rich family (Leighton Meester).

Donny secretly hatches a sneaky plan to use his successful son to help him obtain the money.  This plan involved Donny crashing his son’s wedding preparation week on Cape Cod.  When he shows up, Todd is furious to see him, but is forced to introduce him to the in-laws as his “best friend.”  Donny tries to reconcile with his boy, but the uptight Todd is still resentful of his lowlife father, one who allowed obesity and a New Kids on the Block tattoo to plague him in his youth.  Running low on options, Donny figures the best thing to do is to liven up Todd’s richie surroundings.  What ensues is a week filled with drinking, brawling, strippers, wild sex, shootings, and a whole lot of bodily fluids.  Amidst this chaos, it appears there might be a chance that Todd can loosen up after all and perhaps, miraculously, get along with his father.

Sandler’s buffoonish universe is a world of comedy I’ve always bought into.  The hidden complication within every Sandler comedy is how an outcast goofball can stay true to his ideals in a confusing, contradictive grown-up world.  Of course the grown-up worlds depicted in his films are usually hostile and demented environments which make him look more sane by contrast.  Yet audiences don’t seem to mind these hyperrealities, for our everyday plights can seem just as magnificently ridiculous in our own eyes.  Plus, the hilarious and sentimental ways Sandler’s heroes usually deal with an uncertain world help provide us with a certain amount of inspiration.  In a way, perhaps the idea of a Sandler hero, along with the growing trends of romantic leading everymen and deeply humanized superheroes, have contributed to this current generation’s favoring of unapologetic, scruffy individuality over rigorously traditional societal archetypes.  

Lately, his films have lost a certain comic zest and have settled into an uninspired laxness.  These comedies were never meant to be taken seriously, but their growing complacency with their own frivolousness have allowed a mind-numbing lameness to infect the material.  As some of my friends have pointed out, its as if all the cheesy films his movie star character made in Funny People were now being produced for real.  Thankfully, an R-rating has brought some of that old juice back into Sandler’s world, as That’s My Boy delivers the jolly chaos that made us treasure his films in the first place.

On the surface, That’s My Boy plays like a dirtier version of Mr. Deeds, with Sandler once again demonstrating that old comic ideal that uninhibited everyman hedonism is the perfect antidote to stuffy upper-class emptiness.  Perhaps on a deeper level, however, Sandler is putting his old-school self out there to show the next generation how scrappy hilarity should be done.  Maybe its no coincidence that his character is a fading jokester determined to show his apparent heir how to loosen the hell up and enjoy the perks of running wild.  This theory is helped by the fact that his son is played by Andy Samberg, a comic talent bred by the current incarnation of Saturday Night Live.  Samberg is a likeable comic talent, but I have my reservations about what SNL thinks its good for these days.  The current crop of comedians on the legendary NBC show are good with ideas, but have little clue how to bring big laughs to life.  Perhaps a lesson in Sandler’s gleeful lunacy would benefit that whole crew as well as most comedians of today.  

Since most of the supporting characters in Sandler’s nuthouse universe are seen as outsized weirdos, it beautifully allows talented actors a chance to cut loose and get down with the weirdness.  The snarling fink role thats a staple in these comedies is this time filled by Milo Ventimiglia as Todd’s future brother-in-law.  Ventimiglia audaciously pokes fun at modern day soldiers all while concealing hilariously outrageous secrets.  James Caan brings a stunningly quiet conviction to the role of a brawling priest and the result is even more hilarious than if the role were played more over-the-top.  Vanilla Ice turns up as himself, and while his real life washed-up-ness can get tiresome at times, he’s thankfully just here to party and he certainly livens things up.  Rex Ryan’s hilarious cameo as Donny’s lawyer shows that he can nail the film’s biggest acting challenge, for the real life coach of the New York Jets is convincing as a New England Patriots fan.  And if the gorgeous Eva Amurri Martino has even half the acting chops of her mother, Susan Surandon (who turns up here in a logical appearance), then she’ll be a real pleasure to behold in future movies.

With a wild bachelor party that involves excessive urination and gunfire and one of the funniest masturbation scenes I’ve ever seen, Sandler has jumped back into the thick of his guy’s-guy humor, and I consider that a comic blessing.  At a time when snarky randomness and toothless improv is running wild, perhaps Sandler’s messy manchild rambunctiousness is just what the comic doctor ordered.  I recall that Happy Gilmore is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen.  It’s one of the few films that I could watch at random over the past decade and lose-my-breath from laughing every single time.  It had a furious silliness and mad-dog preposterousness that didn’t let up for one single second.  R-rated Sandler ventures may alienate some of his core audience, but if they can conjure up even half the laughs of that earlier powerhouse comedy, then I say more power to the dude.

The Vapid Awe of 'Prometheus'

by Brett Parker

You really have to hand it to Ridley Scott here, for the old pro figured out how to sell a pointless Hollywood remake to an audience usually weary of such an enterprise.  With Prometheus, he has basically rehashed his old Alien premise into a sleek new exterior using old science and space philosophies to distract us from the basic genre servings at hand.  Gussying up an old car and turning it into a shiny new Rolls Royce is a tricky thing to pull off in Hollywood, usually because we tend to notice that the engine under the hood has some rust and wear.  A lot of secrecy surrounded the production of this film, and Scott was clearly hoping that all the talk of whether or not Prometheus was or wasn’t a direct prequel to Alien would distract from the fact that the real surprise with this new film is that it can’t come close to being as pulse-pounding or as horrifying as Alien to save its life.  

The film follows the crew of an epic spaceship named Prometheus as it journeys far into space towards the moon of an alien planet.  A duo of scientists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), have discovered a star map found in the drawings of ancient and unconnected civilizations that may or may not be an invitation from humankind’s “makers” or “engineers” to find out the truth about their beginnings.  Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce), the wealthy tycoon of a vast corporation, is also interested in finding out the answers to such mysteries and funds an elaborate space expedition to follow this map and see if anything is at the other end.  With a team full of scientists under the command of Captain Janek (Idris Elba) and the watchful eye of Weyland’s representative, Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), the crew heads to a rocky and desert-like alien land to see if anything profound is lurking beneath the surface.

What they stumble across is a seemingly-ancient pyramid hidden below the moon’s surface which suggests traces of an alien civilization.  What is especially curious about the pyramid is how one of its monuments resembles a giant humanoid head and how gooey liquids found within hold traces of human DNA.  But as the scientists go about their research, it becomes quickly clear that hostile forces begin stalking them in this strange new world.  Alien lifeforms begin infecting certain crew members and viciously attacking others.  Chaos quickly erupts aboard the ship and the scientists frantically realize that in order to survive, they must hurry to find answers from the alien civilization they’ve been studying.  But as they get closer to discovering the truth, things turn out to be bleaker than they expected.

What’s most frustrating about Prometheus is that it presents us with deep questions about creation and existence but has no idea what they’re good for.  The script isn’t terribly provocative with its ideas and doesn’t challenge traditional boundaries of science fiction.  Scott was perhaps relying on ambiguity, and maybe perhaps his trademark cynicism, to hide the fact that he doesn’t really hold any interesting answers to these big questions.  The film sustains suspense with the prospect of the characters “meeting their Makers,” but once we finally get up close and personal with our Makers, they have nothing to say and possess the deranged hostility of a werewolf.  Their grand scheme for mankind is only hinted at by the characters, and it not only seems ridiculously excessive but owes more to sci-fi dopiness then to deep philosophical musings.  The deep revelation here, so far as I can tell, is that Prometheus himself would’ve bitterly regretted his decision to give mankind fire and would’ve passionately kicked our asses out of spite.

What’s befuddling to me is that a film that proclaims to be a new-age Alien, made by the very filmmaker who made Alien in the first place, is absolutely nowhere near as scary as the earlier film.  What’s stranger is that it doesn’t even appear to try.  Alien is routinely featured on lists of the Scariest Movies Ever Made and is indeed a master-class in nail-biting suspense, jolting scares, and ominous dread.  Even if Scott copped to copying the beats and rhythms of Alien’s horror bit by bit, it would still hold a lot more entertainment value than what we’re given, especially for unsuspecting audiences that haven’t seen the original.  But Scott is clearly kidding himself that the script’s vapid philosophical musings are too important to succumb to the genre’s thrills.  The moments that are considered “scares” by default are clumsy, simple-minded, and surprisingly flatfooted.  

Even the lesser Alien sequels were keenly aware that creature-feature ickiness was half this enterprise’s meal ticket.  If nothing else, ticket buyers could expect some delicious alien gross-outs to deliver some grins.  Prometheus is considerably light in that area as well.  Considering how the original film’s moneyshot scene of a baby alien bursting through a guys’ stomach was just the tip of the iceberg, you do feel considerably short-changed here.  While the Makers themselves have an alluringly-pale humanoid look, the hostile aliens look like creature-design hand-me-downs that support Tim Burton’s theory of how movie monsters today are too complicated-looking.  These alien baddies come in small spurts and aren’t nearly as viciously terrifying as the treasured space jockeys from the original Alien.  

If there’s one supreme moment that does rekindle some of that old Alien magic, its one in which Elizabeth must race against the clock to remove an alien fetus trapped inside her body.  The graphically-surgical way in which Elizabeth cuts into herself and the gooey monstrosity she yanks out from her insides in the only moment that is able to combine the original film’s blend of intensified suspense and stomach-turning nausea.  The scene also highlights Rapace’s expert combination of vulnerability and resilience she displayed so wonderfully in Sweden’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.  If she is indeed representing a new-age Sigourney Weaver, then she makes for a damn fine candidate.

Of course Rapace’s magnetism is the tip-off to the true interest with Prometheus: the endlessly-fascinating inner-motives of the layered characters and the expert way their handled by the marvelous cast.  The best character, and the best reason to see this film, is David, a cold and calculating human-like android played with creative precision by the dynamite Michael Fassbender.  An expertly-advanced robot with undercurrents of shady motives, Fassbender delivers this soulfully-challenged mannequin as a mix of both Hal 9000 and Lawrence of Arabia.  It says something that his daily routine of maintaining the spaceship while his human counterparts sleep in hibernation is more interesting than any alien attack in this movie.  Guy Pearce effectively brings a level-headed clarity to the magnificent egotism of the trillionare who funded this epic space mission, although part of you wonders why Scott didn’t find an older actor to play the part, considering his eventual nature.  Charlize Theron holds a sinister beauty as the corporate overseer of the mission, although its worth noting that her recent efforts to portray cold-hearted nasties (with this film and Snow White and The Huntsman) holds nothing on the one she dished out in Young Adult.  And Idris Elba, that great masculine smoothie, is allowed some irreverent fun as the ship’s captain.  Whether he’s trading sexual quips with Theron or showing concealed concern around Rapace, Elba shows us he could play Han Solo in his sleep.

Whatever success Prometheus does, in fact, achieve is due mostly to Ridley Scott’s expert evocation of grand, detailed environments.  As with Gladiator and Blade Runner, Prometheus is an epic world of grand sights, but with a lived-in quality that brings a startling realism to an excessive world.  The vastly minute details of the spaceship wonderfully convinces you that its a fully-functional ship while the pyramid ship from the Makers evokes a convincing ancient quality about it.  The film’s various hologram displays have a graphic beauty about them, none more powerful than in the scene where David is able to visualize the Makers’ mapping systems in the hull of their ship.  Yet Scott isn’t just a remarkable window decorator but is unique in the way he conveys how human values buried in worlds of dread, cynical motives, and imminent hostility have ways of jolting to the surface.  He tries to bring sincerity to those themes here, but the film’s lack of strong ideological footing undermines his trademark ideals.

Scott doesn’t falter when it comes to alluring character bits and the grand beauty of vast  atmospheres, and those features here feel damn well strong enough to give Prometheus a recommendation.  It’s just a shame that the film has very little to say about its bigger ideas, although you certainly admire that such big ideas were even evoked in the first place.  So whether or not this film is indeed a prequel or reworking or whatever of Alien, it doesn’t come close to touching that far superior film (even the ending’s gratuitous and obvious link between the two films makes you groan more than smile).  But it does have its visual beauty, and its perhaps the kind of sci-fi eye candy you could enjoy more if you were to watch it on mute.