Dracula Untold

Dracula Untold - Dir. Gary Shore (2014)

"Sometimes the world no longer needs a hero, it needs a monster."

Origin stories and reboots are all the rage in Hollywood. A shared cinematic universe has become the latest trend ever since Marvel Studios shattered box office records with the creation of their one that mimics the comic book source material. It's not surprising that movie producers would want to jump on the Marvel bandwagon. They essentially combined multiple franchises into one uber-franchise. This leads us into Universal's latest attempt to revive their classic monsters, which were hugely successful back in the 30's and 40's. The idea of bringing Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Invisible Man, the Mummy, and all the others together in a clash of the macabre certainly sounds amazing on paper. However, Universal hasn't exactly had the best of luck in bringing these characters to the modern era. The last time Universal teamed their monsters together was Van Helsing, which doesn't inspire a tremendous amount of confidence.

Dracula Untold mixes history with fiction in a story set long before the events of Bram Stoker's famed novel. Vlad Tepes (Luke Evans) is the prince of Wallachia in the region of what is now known as Romania. As a boy, Vlad was conscripted into the Ottoman Empire and trained as a ruthless soldier under the Turkish sultan. He slaughtered thousands, including women and children, to earn the nickname Vlad the Impaler due to his brutal method of dispatching victims.

Vlad has since left that life behind him to rule his land in peace with his wife, Mirena, and son, Ingeras (Art Parkinson). However, tranquility is not in the cards when the Turks and the sultan Mehmed II (Dominic Cooper), once Vlad's adopted brother, come stomping into Wallachia. The Sultan demands 1000 boys to be handed over to the Ottoman Empire along with Ingeras. Left with an impossible choice, sacrifice their sons or refuse and be slaughtered by a vastly superior army, Vlad seeks desperate help from a Master Vampire (Charles Dance) who dwells in a cave atop Broken Tooth Mountain.

Dracula Untold has an uphill battle remaking Dracula into a tragic hero. Let's face it, if a guy impales so many people that he becomes known as the Impaler, he might not be sympathetic. Screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (the upcoming Gods of Egypt) conveniently gloss over this minor detail to craft Vlad into a brooding avenger in the mold of Batman. The bat analogy is apropos Vlad is able to transform into a flock of the nocturnal creatures as he tears through dozens of his enemies. Unfortunately, most of the film's action sequences occur at night and most of the set pieces are lost in the darkness. Not that we're missing much, a bloodless, PG-13 vampire flick isn't much fun and first-time director Gary Shore doesn't bring a lot of style to the proceedings.

Luke Evans has tremendous shoes to fill when it comes to inheriting the role of Count Dracula. There's Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Gary Oldman, and even Frank Langella. Evans is certainly suited for this version of Dracula the tortured, action hero though he never quite goes for the jugular. Current Cronenberg muse Sarah Gadon takes on the thankless role of Dracula's wife, whose transparent role is to spur her husband onto his path of vengeance with her death. Dominic Cooper doesn't convince as the power-hungry Mehmed. On the other hand, producers shamelessly cater to the Game of Thrones crowd with the additions of Art Parkinson, Paul Kaye, and a scene-chewing Charles Dance.

Drinking the creature's blood, Vlad will be given the powers of a vampire for three days. Should he stave off his thirst for human blood, his humanity will be restored. However, if he were to give in, then he would be cursed to live forever as a vampire.

Dracula Untold is a muddled mixture of horror, fantasy, and action while trying to take a Christopher Nolan approach to revamp (no pun intended) an iconic character. The film's final coda is a clumsy effort to set the stage for further franchises ala The Avengers. In the end, "Dracula Untold" was a tale not worth telling in the first place.

Rating: ** (*****)

The Boxtrolls

The Boxtrolls – Dirs. Graham Annable & Anthony Stacchi (2014)

Nothing against computer animation, but it is a shame that it has supplanted hand-drawn and stop-motion as the predominant art form. What a strange sight it is to see CGI versions of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Charlie Brown. Thank goodness there are still hard working animators dedicated to keeping traditional methods alive.

The Portland-based Laika continues to make strides in stop-motion animation with films like Coraline and ParaNorman, both of which were nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. The Boxtrolls continues that streak, but it's the slightest entry in their oeuvre and if I had my druthers I would have slotted The LEGO Movie in its stead.

The Boxtrolls is set in the Victorian-era village of Cheesebridge, a charming little burg built on top of a mountain. Cheesebridge does have one major drawback. They are plagued by subterranean creatures known as Boxtrolls, who earned their name for their penchant of wearing cardboard boxes like turtle shells. When parents want to scare their kids straight, they tell them the Boxtrolls will snatch them out of their beds and gobble them up.

However, none of those tales are true. Just ask Eggs (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), an orphaned boy who has been raised by the little critters and actually believes himself to be a Boxtroll. It seems these lies have been spread by one Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), who has fashioned himself a premiere pest exterminator. Make no mistake, he has no altruistic bent. Snatcher wishes to use the Boxtrolls in a scheme to climb the social ladder and join the exclusive White Hats. Led by the Mayor of Cheesebridge, Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris), the White Hats gather together to taste some of the world's finest gourmet cheeses.

If I've discussed Snatcher more than I have the protagonists, it's because the villains are the most interesting characters in the film. With his stringy hair and hook nose, Snatcher takes obvious inspiration from the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He goes to such great lengths in demonizing the Boxtrolls that he dresses in drag and performs a stage show as Madame Frou-Frou. Snatcher has three henchmen under his employ, the first being Mr. Gristle (Tracy Morgan), a diminutive lunatic who simply repeats the last word he heard. There's also Mr. Trout (Nick Frost) and Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade), who try very hard to convince themselves that they are the good guys of the story.

The Boxtrolls themselves don't play much of a factor. The Boxtrolls opens with a terrific introduction to their underground lair filled with knick knacks that have been transformed into Rube Goldberg-ian gadgets. After that, they're simply creatures who must be rescued by their human friends. Eggs is a surprisingly bland hero while his companion Winnie (Elle Fanning), the daughter of Lord Portley-Rind, is defined only by her morbid fascination with assorted grotesqueries ("I was promised rivers of blood!").

That's not to say that The Boxtrolls isn't without its charms. The details in the production design are exquisite with elements of Gothic horror, German expressionism, and Roald Dahl. The animators' passion can be seen in Snatcher's ragged, red jacket and every cobblestone that paves the street of Cheesebridge.

Laika's track record proves they make pictures that appeal to audiences of all ages while never condescending to their youngest viewers. The studio hasn't shied away from giving the kids a good scare, from an otherworldly creature sewing buttons into your eyes or a town plagued by puritan zombies. It's all in good fun and never in a manner that would rack up therapist bills. The Boxtrolls follows suit with a plot drawing parallels to Nazi Germany with the title characters serving as scapegoats for a power hungry madman. The city's leaders are portrayed as ineffectual twits and the townspeople are a few pitchforks shy of becoming a rabid mob. Although Snatcher wants nothing more than a seat at the White Hat table, he is violently allergic to cheese and his face swells to gruesome extremes.

There's a mid-credits scene in which Trout and Pickles ponder the notion that an invisible puppetmaster is behind their every move. This shifts into a time-lapsed video of Laika CEO Travis Knight animating the henchmen's movements. It's a clever button to a movie that could have used that same inventiveness in the screenplay loosely based on the novel, Here Be Mosnters! by Alan Snow. The Boxtrolls doesn't measure up to Coraline or ParaNorman, but the animation and off-kilter sensibilities can still be admired.

Rating: ** (*****)

Lucy

Lucy - Dir. Luc Besson (2014)

Say what you will about Luc Besson, but he's one of the few filmmakers who has regularly showcased strong female protagonists. From a waifish Natalie Portman in The Professional to Anne Paurillaud's street urchin turned assassin in La Femme Nikita to the genetically superior Leeloo in The Fifth Element, Besson has a strong track record even if he's become a one man factory churning out cinematic junk food. His latest work stars Scarlett Johansson, who has become a bankable action heroine thanks to her portrayal of Marvel's Black Widow. Interestingly enough, Marvel has yet to capitalize on her popularity by giving the Widow her own solo picture. Other studios aren't as hesitant, DreamWorks has snatched ScarJo up to headline their live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell while the box office success of Lucy further cemented her star status.

Besson has so much fun with the concept of Lucy that it doesn't matter to him in the slightest that it's built on a complete fallacy. His screenplay hinges entirely on the myth that human beings only use ten percent of their brain. Ten percent is about all you need to enjoy this one.

Johansson is the eponymous Lucy, a gorgeous American studying abroad in Taipei, Taiwan. Her sleazy boyfriend ropes her into delivering a suitcase to a Korean gangster by the name of Mr. Jang (Choi Min-sik). Next thing you know, the boyfriend is dead and Lucy is forced to become a drug mule. The suitcase contained pouches of an experimental drug called CPH4, one of which is sewn into her stomach. If that weren't enough, a particularly volatile henchman repeatedly kicks Lucy in the gut causing the drugs to leak into her body.

Rather than overdose, Lucy gains increased intelligence and enhanced reflexes, which allow her to quickly dispatch her captors. As she accesses more of her higher brain functions, Lucy gains further abilities including telekinesis, telepathy, and the power to travel through time and space. She has no qualms in shooting a surgery patient because he wouldn't have survived anyway. Lucy also needs to inject the rest of the CPH4 as her body begins to lose molecular cohesion.

Considering how ludicrous Lucy gets, it makes absolute sense for Besson to cast Morgan Freeman as Professor Exposition. Okay, his character's actual name is Samuel Norman, but his sole purpose of being is to explain Besson's shaky science with some semblance of credibility. Sometimes that means positing the theory that dolphins access more of their brains to gain the ability of sonar. Also along for the ride is Amr Waked as a French police officer assisting Lucy in rounding up the drug dealers. There's not much to his character though it's cool to note Waked got the call from Besson while he was hip deep in the Egyptian protests of 2013. The ethnically diverse ensemble is complete by the always entertaining Choi Min-sik, best known for his intense performance in Park Chan-wook's Oldboy.

The role of Lucy suits Johansson well and it's one that is a wild departure from her more critically acclaimed turn in Under the Skin. Although both are steeped in science fiction, Under the Skin is about an alien trying to understand humanity while Lucy is about a woman slowly losing her humanity as she evolves. Besson helpfully keeps track of Lucy's power with intermittent percentages. Perhaps, an energy meter out of a Nintendo game would have been more visually interesting. Either way, the film drops any dramatic tension as Lucy edges closer to omnipotence. When she can render a roomful of men unconscious with a wave of her hand, what danger do a bunch of mobsters with machine guns pose?

Bonkers is the best way to describe Lucy, a movie that goes from shootouts and car chases to a wacky amalgamation of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Akira. Throw in a healthy dose of Luc Besson's pseudo-philosophy an hour and a half of dumb, Euro-trash fun.

Rating: ** ½ (*****)