Author: Don Malvasi

Stuck in a slump of late, the irrepressible Oliver Stone comes out guns-a-blazing in Savages. Based on a Don Winslow novel, the film conjures up the finger-in-your-eye, 80s version of Stone now pushed even further cutting edge with an up-to-date sensibility. Especially the violence, which while extreme, somehow never seems gratuitous. And especially the humor, which feeds nicely off the opposite natures of our two heroes.

One guy is an ex-Navy Seal and Iraq war veteran with a cold mien and nerves of steel, Chon (Taylor Kitsch, John Carter/Friday Night Lights.) The other, a dredlocked botanist who grows marijuana with a 33% THC content and moonlights doing charity work in Africa, Ben (Aaron Johnson, Kick-Ass, Nowhere Boy). Together they share a successful drug enterprise in Laguna Beach, and a girl, Ophelia (Blake Lively), who calls them “the Buddhist and the baddest.” An open menage a trois cements a bond between the three, who suddenly find themselves the target of a hostile takeover by a Mexican drug cartel, led by a classy Salma Hayek, and fronted by the cynical and loco Benicio del Toro, in a career performance.

Stone’s achievement breaks down into multiple successes. He manages to bring out front his arrested-adolescent penchant for rubbing his audience’s face in the most giddy and deranged circumstances. Then we laugh together at what would be prurient if it weren’t also so damn plausible. The situation surrounding Mexican drug cartels, no laughing matter, is so nuts that what might seem like a mock-hyper violence is only a put-on until the 10,000 deaths per year tally hits home (also see the excellent Mexican film, Miss Bala, from earlier this year.) Then we laugh not because it’s easier than crying, but because even a villain as completely batshit crazy as Del Toro comes off as ultimately a realistic character rather than a caricature. And what better contrast than to have a pansy-assed but totally lovable Ben swept up into all this? Or a flower child type like Ophelia, who in a pivotal scene with Hayek, in which “O,” as she calls herself, while free associating all philosophical namby-pamby, is asked by Hayek, “Do all American talk like this? Do you ever think about your future?” The drug lord chick never seemed so adult.

It’s no accident the word “savages” here refers both to the ruthless drug cartel guys, and Americans with no cultural values, depending on who’s doing the finger-pointing. Del Toro calls the the gringos “Cheech and Chon.” Stone both wallows in the muck and finds gallows humor in it. If the film weren’t as entertaining as anything I’ve seen this year, I might have been able to find fault. As is, it’s the third really good film this year dealing with various stages of innocents dragged into the drug wars (besides the aforementioned Miss Bala, see the forthcoming Swedish flick, Easy Money).

Stone’s getting the most out of the three young actors here is topped only by his throwing down veteran scene-stealers like Del Toro and John Travolta, whose scene together seethes with raw tension. Travolta, who coincidentally offscreen is in dire need of some positive PR, conveys a coolness and a subsequent desperation with equal skill as he plays a crooked cop. Emile Hirsch is around as a highly amusing financial whiz who launders Ben and Chon’s considerable cash. Damon Bichir, fresh off the excellent A Better Life, is one of Hayek’s guys. Savvy character actor Shea Whigham plays a lawyer who gets both his kneecaps shot by a sick son-of-a-bitch posing as a landscaper. It’s relatively one of the film’s tamer scenes.

It all feels like classic cinema, with a dash of guilty-pleasure, quasi-Scarface spice thrown in (Stone wrote the screenplay for Brian DePalma’s Scarface). As Tony Montana might say, “You wanna play rough?” In Savages, both sides play as rough as can be imagined. The difference here is since no one is shielded from vulnerability and the stakes and methods are light years beyond those simpler days, the 2012 version of the Oliver Stone cartoon just got chillingly real.

4.25 “You Wanna Play Rough?”‘s (out of 5)

Ted trades on the natural dissonance of juxtaposing a buddy flick/rom com with a misogynist, homophobic, narcissistic trash talking toy bear. The result is very often hilarious, occasionally flat. Ted, the bear voiced over by director Seth MacFarlane (The Family Guy) wins you over with high-cred believability, a spot-on don’t-give-a-shit Boston accent and irreverence galore. No comment’s too crass or raunchy for this dude, and even his having sex with a human (Jessica Barth) seems entirely in context.

It all makes sense once you get to know Ted. Bestowed as a gift to a very young, lonely John, Ted shocks John one day by speaking directly to him. The subsequent scene usually would have the talking teddy bear clam up once John’s parents are in the room, but here the brazen bears actually talks to them as well. Pretty soon he’s going on the Johnny Carson talk show and becomes a full-fledged celebrity…Cut to 25 or so years later and a grown-up John (Mark Wahlberg) and Ted hang out smoking bongs and discussing the early 1980s flick, Flash Gordon quite a bit. John works in a rental car agency but he’s done pretty well by himself in landing Lori (Mila Kunis) as a live-in girlfriend. Only she’d rather have the rascal bear take a hike. He gets his own place and a job in a supermarket. After which John still hangs out with Ted every day, often cutting out of work. Climax one happens when Sam Jones (NOT the ex-Boston Celtic) of Flash Gordon fame shows up at a party of Ted’s same night John is dutifully accompanying Kunis to her boss’s important gatherings. Climax two occurs at Fenway park of all places after a subplot involving a devious Giovanni Rabisi and his overweight and creepy son (Aedin Mincks) blows up unexpectedly into thriller territory.

Wahlberg hasn’t been this good since The Departed. Make no mistake acting opposite a, er, teddy bear, is no mean feat to begin with. Plus this all could have gone very wrong very fast. MacFarlane keeps Ted so provocatively smutty and could-care-less that any wince-inducing moments fade into the overall hilarity of this guy. The computer animation outdoes itself. There are endless cultural references and cheap shots at celebrities, and the cute and cuddly Wahlberg/Kunis stuff nicely offsets the unabashed obnoxiousness anytime Ted opens his mouth. Mostly wearing its outrageousness well, Ted’s waverings into inanity ought to be overlooked.

We moviegoers need deep laughs like this far too much to quibble. Given the state of most comedies these days, let’s take all we can get and not look a giftbear in the mouth.

8 Crude and Nasty Funnies (out of 10)

Safety Not Guaranteed arrives like a breath of fresh air. Wearing its low budget like a badge of honor, the directorial debut of former Saturday Night Live intern Colin Trevorrow has heart and wit aplenty. The rare science fiction film that places lavish attention not on special effects but on the special quirks of its characters, it’s gratifyingly amusing one minute, touchingly heartfelt the next.

The set up is a classified ad (based on a real one) inviting a respondent to “go back in time with me. This is not a joke…must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before….safety not guaranteed.” An unlikely trio of young Seattle Magazine writers set out to goof on the story by staking out the post office box of the ad’s author, grocery clerk, Kenneth (Mark Duplass). After the magazine’s staff writer in the group, Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) flubs a visit to Kenneth, intern Darius (Aubrey Plaza, Parks and Recreation) takes over. Instead of approaching Kenneth as if he has two heads, Darius, up to this point in the film a quivering mess of insecurities, puts on an hilarious sheen of tough resolve. Her hyper-aggressiveness is downright cooing to Kenneth. The two hit it off, Darius keeps her cover, and the shenanigans begin. A subplot of slacker Jeff looking up an old high school flame (his real reason for the trip) while goading the other nerdy intern Amau (Kagan Soni), into drinking and picking up girls, is equally engaging.

Winner of the Waldo Salt Sundance screenwriting award (and written by Derek Connolly, also a former SNL intern), Safety Not Guaranteed evolves largely into Plaza’s film. She’s delightful as a character presented with the dual pressures of Kenneth’s distrustful screening and consistent testing of her, and Jeff’s indifferent yet simultaneously bossy mentoring. Her back and forth from tough-girl-ready-to-time-travel, to her vulnerable normal self, is a joy to behold. Duplass (whose directing credits include Jeff, Who Lives at Home and the nifty Cyrus) enhances his character’s own contrast between ham-handed nutjob and earnest loner. Kenneth blows stale air about people following him, urgently sets up stealth hijacks of equipment for the “mission,” then picks up a guitar and reluctantly sings Darius an “unfinished” ditty that blows her away. If his approach as an actor seems almost sketchy, the scatterdness finally resonates as Kenneth’s true nature rather than any unrealized technique. (Indy filmgoers will soon be exposed to near simultaneous releases of Duplass as an actor in Your Sister’s Sister and People Like Us.)

By failing to succumb to normal cliches and by virtue of its genuine dialogue and nuanced acting, Safety Not Guaranteed achieves a simple, infectious elegance. It develops an interest in its characters from the first frame to the last that is all too rare these days.

8. 5 Paeans to Old Fashioned Storytelling With a Modern Edge (Out of 10)

Neither filmdom’s most vibrant actress over 70 nor one of its very brightest young screen presences comes close to saving the clueless and cliched ode to hippie culture, Peace, Love and Misunderstanding.

The ageless Jane Fonda, now 74, and the wondrous Elizabeth Olsen (Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene) burrow through a screenplay fraught with silliness. Fonda, still lovely and a smart comedienne, wisely seems bemused. Catherine Keener’s along for the ride as the conservative daughter of Fonda, a pot-smoking Woodstock resident and protest marcher.

While Keener’s duet with Jeffrey Dean Morgan of The Band’s The Weight may not exactly have recently departed Levon Helm rolling in his grave, it comes close. Also conjured up are Jimi Hendrix, whose live Star Spangled Banner at the original Woodstock Fonda claims was the “soundtrack” while her water broke giving birth to Keener. Olsen and brother Nat Wolff (The Naked Brothers Band) get involved with Woodstock kids after their mom drags them to grandmother’s for a visit. Hers is particularly vexing at first since Olsen’s a vegetarian, animal-rights gal and her new flames’s a stinking butcher.

Fonda not only smokes pot, she deals it, whereas the screenplay merely gradually grows mold. Fonda also sculpts and likes to paint nude men, who drop their drawers without regard for sagging flesh or grandkids in the room. It may be the peace protests that seem the most community-theater-in-the-slow-season, though. They’re both sub-TV movie and sub-TV commercial painful.

Wolff, constantly filming on a camcorder throughout, sums up the proceedings with a climactic public showing of his film (a much better one than throne he’s in) but not before Peace, Love and Misunderstanding meticulously manages to trash the legacy of a culture once known for its life-giving energy and artistic highs. Here the music even stinks, and if it’s supposed to be moving that grandmom has plenty of free-spirit to spread around to uptight children and grandchildren, at least give us something besides Fonda and Rosanna Arquette sitting around a campfire with a gang of women ostensibly doing some kind of female energy rite, while actually merely evoking the likes of Fonda’s, “I once had a threesome with Leonard Cohen.” Though it’s tempting to wonder how the still’alive Cohen feels about that, I merely cringed. First time screenwriters Christina Mengert and Joseph Muszynski at least have a semblance of an excuse. For veteran director Bruce Beresford, I can only say, watching this film (despite a glowing Fonda and Olsen) made me feel, to quote Helm, “about half past dead.”

4 Remembrances of Things Ghast(ly) (Out of 10)

Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding is open now at the Ritz Bourse in Philadelphia

Early in the brisk and endearing Moonrise Kingdom, when attempting to summon her four kids to dinner, Frances McDormand whips out a bullhorn. (No matter everyone’s inside the house.) Her husband (an aptly grumpy Bill Murray), gets the same treatment. They’re both lawyers, call each other nothing but “counselor” and sleep in separate beds. Their failure to communicate in any meaningful way contrasts sharply with their precocious and disturbed 12-year-old daughter Suzy (Kara Hayward), who decides to run away, pet cat in hand, with Sam (Jared Gilman), a young whippersnapper of equally unsteady emotional heft. The kind of outsiders instantly familiar to only another outsider, Suzy and Sam relate in eye-popping and exhilaratingly self-conscious fits and starts. Even his piercing her ear with a fishhook once they get to their runaway campsite seems sweetly appropriate.

The kids are alright, director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums) seems to be declaring. Even town cop Captain Sharp (a mellow Bruce Willis) admits Sam’s a lot smarter than he as Willis pours the kid a beer, obviously Dan’s first since he fails to rinse out a residue of milk still in his glass. The lone hot dog Willis serves Sam vies with the trailor park kitchen he serves it in as microcosms of Sharp’s solitary existence. Set in the fictitious town of New Penzance, Moonrise Kingdom is replete with director Wes Anderson’s penchant for period (1965) detail and craftsmanship galore. Whether you venerate Anderson’s distinct vision and trademark irony, or view his deliberate quirkiness as sometimes weary affectation, it’s impossible to consider him anything less than a magician of tone and color, a master of the moving camera, and most of all, a creator of a unique world with its own internal logic.

The shots and performances (also Tilda Swindon with a wild hairdo as “Social Services” and Edward Norton as Scout Master Ward) are so letter perfect you’re likely to put aside any concern that this can all be a somewhat airy plating for a meal of fairly ordinary ingredients. Deeper flavors come through given the just right accents and juxtapositions. Style this vivid and charming elevates Anderson’s world so well he dares the viewer not to be enmeshed in his characters. You not only care about Sam and Suzy, you can’t wait to see what they do next. He’s an orphan, she always wished she was one. After he’s “flown the coop” of his scouting group at Camp Ivanhoe, he brings flowers to meet a 45-rpm-record-player toting Suzy, who wears blue mascara. They go off to be by themselves, and utilizing all of Sam’s survival skills, they eventually dance and frolick to Francoise Hardy on a desolate beach. While the self-enclosed community awaits a landmark storm, the adults all chase after the stray, scrappy kids, and both sides learn a little from each other in the quaint old days of the 60’s.

8.5 Andersonvilles (out of 10)

Sure it’s corny but The Intouchables is more than saved by an outsize performance of a main character who oozes charisma. Omar Sy acts himself silly as Driss, a brazen, just-out-of-jail caregiver for a rich, fuddyduddy quadriplegic, Philippe (Francois Cluzet). The odd couple couldn’t be more different. Philppe is refined, cultured, cautious, while Driss is direct, streetwise, and ever ready to go into a tizzy. Philippe chooses the inexperienced black man over a roomful of more qualified, stuck-in-the-mud healthcare aides because he senses something in the wild man that he can’t quite pinpoint at first. He also challenges the startled Driss, who never expected to be hired and was merely fulfilling an unemployment insurance quota in seeking the job in the first place.

Sure it’s predictable and once or twice preposterous, but this Cesar award winning, French box office record setting film practically dares you to not to be swept away by the hilarious hijinks that ensue. So before you make a reference to the infamous French passion for the films of Jerry Lewis or are tempted to relegate this film to the sophomoric sphere, duly note Cluzet’s ability, acting from only the neck up, to counterpoint every wake-up verbal jab and hook Driss throws his way with the most elegant aplomb. Driss is the kind of character who comes along all too rarely. His joie de vivre rubs off on the grim Philippe and Philippe returns the favor by giving a poor tortured soul with a messed up family and no future a chance to get on a right track, however fleeting it may seem at first.

Sure it’s potentially dangerous turf if a film features a black man serving the needs of a white man, whether it’s a comedy or drama, real or imagined (The Intouchables is inspired by a true story). But jumping on The Intouchables as insensitive or exploitative seems tantamount to setting a flamethrower to low-hanging fruit. The screenplay may veer into expediency and silliness but it never crosses into serious areas with disregard for its subject. If its depiction of race seems painted in broad strokes, it’s done so in a carefree, politically incorrect vein reminiscent more of Fred Sanford than any blaxploitation revival. Ultimately, it’s all about craft, and how high this film’s highs get. The Intouchables doesn’t so much provide a false comfort as get you to a warm and fuzzy place despite yourself. To my way of thinking the humor and crowd-pleasing elements here don’t come around very often. Grinch them at your own risk.

8 Wildly Funny If Sentimental Poor-Guy-Gives-the-Rich-Guy-Life-Lessons (out of 10)

Set against a Victorian era backdrop where bleeding by leeches was still a medical orthodoxy and the bandaging of wounds considered experimental, the British film Hysteria explores the “disorder” of the same name. That is if looking in a funhouse mirror is somehow analogous to exploring. For Hysteria takes matters of scores of women with an “overactive uterus” and how they were impassively treated to “vulgar massage” until achieving a satisfactory “paroxysm” and manages to do so without a hint of sexuality while playing the cutie angle to the hilt. Any talk of sexuality was also politely left out of the doctor-patient discourse during these hush-hush times.

Earnestness here is saved for the two main characters. Dr. Mortimer Granville (Hugh Fancy) unsuccessfully tries to enlighten his resistant superiors on the newly scientific discovery of germs. Equally sincere is Maggie Gyllenhaal as Charlotte Dalrymple, incipient feminist and social rebel, who is the daughter of Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), who built up a handsome practice with this hysteria business. After Hugh takes up with Pryce and assists him in the massages, Hugh and Maggie fight a lot–a surefire sign they’ll probably be together by movie’s end even though Hugh is designated as a husband-to-be for Pryce’s other prim and proper daughter (Felicity Jones). Pryce tries to block every move Maggie makes toward helping the poor while Dancy and Jones stand around gazing at each other while uttering fluffery. Everyone except Maggie is overdressed.

Oh, there’s also the little matter of Granville “inventing” the vibrator to supplant all this silly massage stuff (both doctors suffer from carpal tunnel–seriously) although it’s actually his roommate (the always droll Rupert Everett) who gives him the idea, which started out as a feather-duster.

Gyllenhaal shines, Dancy and Jones do their dopey inhibited-as-churchmice thing, and Everett looks like he’s in disguise, sporting a very uncharacteristic beard. Director Tanya Wexler might have thought of hiding, too, for all the play-it-safe twaddling she puts the audience through on her way to abruptly jumping to a forced conclusion that strives to throw in the serious plight of the Victorian woman in a changing society like a dash of afterthought.

Finally, in the faltering hands of Doctors Pryce and Dancy, sex was never so mishandled–either their patient’s or the film’s. You know it to be so after one of Dancy’s patients screams “Tally-Ho” after an especially good paroxysm, and another, upon trying the newfangled vibrator, bellows into a full blown aria.

5.5 Tally-Ho’s (Out of 10)

Sacha Baron Cohen brazenly flaunts politically correct sacred cows en route to a stirring political statement of his own in the often hilarious The Dictator. Cohen’s third film is nominally about a racist, sexist and egomaniacal dictator from Wadiya (a fictional Northern African nation) who becomes a fish out of water after taking up with a New York City radical feminist health co-op manager, Zooey (Anna Faris). Cohen and director Larry Charles attempt to pack a serious punch in its conclusion when Admiral General Aladeen (Cohen) addresses a roomful of dignitaries and bemoans his country’s policies of “the one percent” controlling the wealth and starting wars “with the wrong country,” etc. America’s own hypocritical power structure is jarringly held up to a mirror and whether you agree with the polemic or not, Cohen’s boldness offers a fine exclamation point to a film that plunges into yet more rarefied rough-and-tumble, blunt offensiveness.

In no particular order there’s a side-splitting scene in a helicopter where a couple of tourists become terrified as they listen to what they believe is Almadeen and a pal talk about a terrorist plot, a scene where Almadeen delivers a baby that is meant to stretch your ability to be shocked, recurring slapstick involving a dismembered head, a scene on a high wire reminiscent of the silent film era, numerous Zooey hairy armpit references, and a few scenes where Cohen’s clueless body double (Cohen) is held up to high ridicule, including a preposterously amusing scene with Wadiyan female soldier prostitutes. Sir Ben Kingsley is aboard as Aladeen’s plotting brother, and the rightful heir to the throne, John C. Reilly as a unique bodyguard, and Megan Fox makes a cameo where she’s the target of a post-coital cuddling joke.

Cohen and Charles’ first scripted film abandons the faux documentary style of Borat and Bruno and thus sacrifices Cohen’s trademark technique of going after gullible innocent bystanders, or, in the case of his TV character Ali G, celebrities. The script has a few soft spots. When Almadeen goes to New York’s “Little Wadiya” he’s confronted by a roomful of expatriates he thought he’d already murdered in the old country (a running joke has Almadeen ordering executions at the drop of a hat, including his mom). The scene’s funny at first but goes on far too long. Editing is often choppy. Yet comparisons that Cohen has veered off into Adam Sandler territory with this film are far too myopic. Its highly commendable 83-minute length keeps its sizzle from going stolid.

If you’re unwilling to laugh at stuff we normally keep on an off-limits pedestal, Cohen’s probably not for you. Shame, you’d be missing a razor-sharp if imperfect satirist who recalls Lenny Bruce albeit through a Howard Stern prism. Cohen’s one sick dude, does uncanny voices, and now has nicely upped his political ante.

8 Appalling, Gross Brutes (Out of 10)

The true measure of a kids competition movie is how much do the little buggers stick to your craw? In the documentary First Position there are more than a couple standout aspiring ballet dancers, ages 10 – 17, as they prepare for the Youth American Grand Prix, a gala event that annually awards hundreds of thousand dollars in scholarships and contracts with dance companies.

Eleven-year-old Aran, blond and serious as a heart attack, possesses talent that needs to be seen to be believed. Living in Italy, where his father’s an American army doctor, is no handicap whatsoever to the kid, who commutes two hours for lessons from an instructor who dubs Aran a once-in-a-lifetime find.

Twelve-year-old Miko is as innocently compelling as her Japanese mother is obsessively focused on her success. Sixteen-year-old Joan Sebastian moves to America from Colombia without his parents. We follow his progress all the way to becoming the first Colombian accepted into the British Royal School of Ballet, including a side trip as he reunites with his parents back home before the Grand Prix finals. Fourteen-year-old Michaela is an adopted war orphan from Sierra Leone whose fearlessness and verve are matched by her her Jewish mom’s enthusiasm, which includes dyeing Michaela’s flesh-colored tutus brown to match her skin. Being both black and muscular seem to feed her desire to be a ballet dancer rather than dampen it.

As in the equally astute and entertaining spelling bee competition film, Spellbound, kids in First Position seem to have an other worldly knack for their artistic pursuit whatever the degree of parental pushiness.
Miko and Michaela’s moms are at opposite ends of the bossy scale yet both children seem to have an equal inner drive. Michaela’s African experience of surviving her parents’ murder and that of her teachers both reflects and reinforces a great core strength, and she seems to need less steering and guidance. Conversely, Miko’s mom’s almost wacked-out domineering holds its own ironic charm given Miko’s far more laid back personality. There’s even a Philly angle in the film. Michaela trains at the Rock School for Dance Education in the city, and lives in Cherry Hill.

The performances leave you wanting more. Lotsa Swan Lake and flying, spinning tulles. Nothing like a tight, solid documentary profiling irresistible future professionals to offset the amateur stews of reality TV competitions we’re bombarded with like insincere parlor trick pests. In First Position these are real kids doing extraordinary things. Where does it come from? As the mom of Israeli competitor Gaya, who’s nicely captured as a normal kid chumming around offstage with Aran, puts it, “when she goes on stage , her face and mannerisms totally change into that of an adult.” Genius at any age transforms not just the artist but the audience as well.

8 Enthralling, No-Nonsense Kids Stuff (Out Of 10)

In Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, newly awakened vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) pines not only for blood but for the good old days of the 1770s. The film’s finest moments cast the mod, earthy 1970s in stark relief against Collins’ steely aplomb as an 18th century gentleman who suddenly finds himself a stranger in a strange land.

Depp shines. His perverse, meticulous accent and brash, commanding presence are strangely intensified rather than offset by his preposterous long fingernails, lofty fangs, and waistcoat finery. Unalloyed Burtonesque art design and costuming prevail, a care-laden ode to an innocent yet befuddling era. When the film suddenly shifts from an opening 18th century scene depicting a curse put on Collins by a scorned maid (Eva Green), to the 1970s and his escape from his coffin, we’re abruptly treated to a tranquil Carpenters track as jarring as a dive into a cold ocean. A later scene of Collins’ hanging out with drugged-out hippies right before he matter-of-factly decides to murder the whole lot, contains just the right amount of lightness. As Collins tries to impress the girl he’s stuck on (a convenient reincarnation of an old girlfriend whose rescue cost him his mortality) by throwing a “ball” here comes the live entertainment, a real Alice Cooper (looking at least 80), lip-synching like there’s no tomorrow. Collins asserts Cooper’s “the ugliest woman I’ve sever seen.”

While I never caught the original, far more serious TV soap Burton based his film on (the Three Stooges were on simultaneously in the same time slot in the Philly market and VCRs were years away), I certainly felt at no disadvantage with this film. It’s a real kick to marvel at Depp’s ability to blend the cocky with the curious. He’s genuinely an outsider as he attempts to restore his family’s position as fishing industry titans while also foiling Green’s nastiness as a business rival who’s also a reincarnated version of the same witch who doomed him 200 years earlier. Their scenes together click. The supporting cast is sharp–Michelle Pfeiffer as the 1970s Collins matriarch, Helen Bonham Carter as a live-in shrink for Pfeiffer’s young nephew (Gully McGrath), and especially Chloe Grace Moretz as Carolyn, Pfeiffer’s disgruntled daughter. As in any Burton film the cast competes with the sets for star billing. Dark Shadows main star, the kind of creepy mansion familiar to even casual movie buffs, towers over Burton’s quirky send-up like a constant, creaky snarl.

Screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith is the author of Abraham Lincoln–Vampire Killer, which comes to the screen next month in a production produced by Burton. As for Depp, no slouch to challenging projects, he’s redoing The Thin Man, playing Tonto in The Lone Ranger, and planning a Dr. Seuss biopic. As far as Dark Shadows goes, don’t hurt yourself seeking out the 1200-plus episodes of its TV forerunner. Embrace this film’s escapism, ignore its stumbles, glom onto Burton’s endearing craftsmanship and Depp’s puffed-up antihero for a leadpipe cinch good time bound not to stretch your brain.

7 — 18th Century Know-It-All’s (Out of 10)