Wolf Awareness Week - Day 6

 

The Company of Wolves

1984

D: Neil Jordan

**********

Pros: Some interesting scenery, Interesting symbolism, Great werewolf transformations

Cons: Dull Story, Soapy atmosphere, Bland dialogue and characters, Pacing

     What attracted me to watching this movie was seeing some really inventive and memorable werewolf transformations from it.  As a whole, it turned out to be surprisingly dull and soapy.  Although I found the movie mostly unwatchable and hard to follow, I’ll try to interpret it to the best of my abilities since I don’t think “confusing” is a legitimate criticism for a film.

      In this movie, a modern day girl named Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is dreaming about a fairy tale universe that’s a twist on “Little Red Ring Hood.”  Her sister is sent to wake up, but to no avail.  It would probably help if she did more than just sneak up to her door and whisper, “Wake up, pest.”  I don’t know anyone who calls their sibling “pest.”  My brother called me “white trash” and “Ugmo,” but never “pest.”  In the dream, this sister is promptly killed by wolves.  How come my dreams never involve wish fulfillment?  I’ve never gotten to be a dragon in them, and yet my family has disowned me multiple times.  My subconscious really sucks at its job.

     As the dream continues, Rosaleen goes to the house of her grandmother (Angela Lansbury), who tells her some tales.  Her first story involves a woman whose husband (Stephen Rea) leaves without explanation.  She remarries and has children, but the first husband returns and, jealous about her new marriage, turns into a werewolf.  The transformation is inventive and quite gory.  Her new husband saves her and the children but hates her for having been married before.  I suppose the meaning of the story is that men can take advantage of women sexually and the women get blamed.     Another tale she tells is that of a young man walking through the forest when he meets the Devil (Terence Stamp) who rides in a Rolls Royce.  I’m going to give this anachronism a pass because it makes perfect sense.  It is the dream of a modern day girl, so of course a vehicle can show up in an odd setting.  Although I would contend that the girl must be a car enthusiast of some kind in order to visualize a vintage model car in her subconscious.  There are other stories within the story, such as a sorceress turning a groom and an entire wedding party into wolves.  I have some trouble interpreting them though. 

     When Rosaleen makes another trip to Granny’s, she meets a handsome huntsman (Micha Bergese) who is heavily suggested to be a werewolf.  They have an extremely long and dull conversation that ends with their betting over who would reach Granny’s house first.  The huntsman does and, when he sees her, he transforms into a wolf in one of the more clever transformations I’ve seen. 

He smacks her head off, which reveals that her insides seem to be a white, chalky substance.

      When Rosaleen arrives, she wounds him with his gun, but he turns into a wolf again, which makes her feel sorry for him.  When Rosaleen’s father (David Warner) and the other villagers come to save the day, they watch the two join the pack as wolves.  The movie ends with the real life Rosaleen waking up and being attacked by a wolf, which breaks through her window like a lupine bed intruder.  The closing quote makes the message clear: the dangerous man of your dreams may seem appealing, but in real life he’ll destroy you.

       The visuals of this movie are a mixed bag.  On one hand, the movie has some interesting scenery for the village and the woods which enhances the movie’s atmosphere.  Lighting is great, too.  On the other hand, the cinematography and camerawork seem clumsy and make the movie feel like a cheap soap opera.  The highlight of the movie is its werewolf transformations, among the most original I’ve seen.  Although the transformations scenes are great, I wish they turned into half-men/half-wolves, and not just wolves.  An odd flaw is that the movie sometimes attempts to pass off Belgian Tervurens as wolves.  I know that wolves can be difficult to work with, though.  I just thought that they would have used breeds that more closely resemble them, but then again the Great Husky Drought of ’83 was before my time. 

       The Company of Wolves has some interesting and sometimes challenging symbolism.  It deals with adult fear that one's daughter might be taken by a man, even if the relationship is consensual.  It also explores the predator-prey relationship between man and woman.  The use of the dream setting is inventive.  Unfortunately, I did not find it very watchable.  I would have preferred the movie have less dialogue in order to create a sense of ambiguity or, failing at that, dialogue that was more engaging.  Instead, the movie compromises its atmosphere with excessive and dry exposition.  The characters are flat, and their conversations drag on tediously.  This, of course, is my subjective opinion.  I'm sure some people may like it, and that's fine.  My distaste for it was somewhat subjective.  I admit this wasn't an ideal movie for me to critique, but I felt I wanted to do it for this Wolf Week gimmick.    

Wolf Awareness Week - Day 5

 

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

2009

D: Patrick Tatopoulos

**********

Pros: Some Good Lines, Bill Nighy

Cons: Bland Characters, Lack of Suspense from Foregone Conclusion

     Cracked.com has a good article about why most prequels don’t work.  One of the main points is that prequels usually don’t have much suspense because we know the conclusion.  Well, one could argue that learning how something happened is still interesting.  Say what you will about the Star Wars prequels, but the Original Trilogy did leave a lot to the imagination.  Underworld, however, didn’t just show us a story of its own, it also showed us flashbacks which had the essentials of what would eventually become this movie.  Not only do we know that its female lead, Sonja (Rhona Mitra), dies, we know exactly how and and why she died.  That’s not exactly a good case for spending $35,000,000 to make a movie.

     The story revolves around a typical forbidden love story between Sonja, a vampire princess, and Lucian (Michael Sheen).  Lucian is born to a werewolf mother and was the first “Lycan,” a descendent of the werewolves that could maintain his human mind and turn into something that doesn’t look like a wolf at all.  At first I hoped that this movie might be more effective than the previous ones because the protagonist would be more moral.  While Lucian did lose points in Underworld by experimenting on humans to find the Heir of Corvinus, this movie takes place 600 years before pulled that stunt.  While his motivation is understandable, he invokes one of the prequel flaws described in the aforementioned Cracked article.  Lucian had a sardonic charm in the first movie which was bolstered by Sheen’s performance.  This makes sense after 600 years of fighting a war, but here he is a young, hot-headed idealist.  The movie had to make him bland to make sense.   

     Meanwhile, Sonja is a typical fairy tale heroine.  She’d rather go out hunting real werewolves (which look like William in the previous movie), than tend to her responsibilities as a member of the high council.  She makes a vague claim at some point in the movie that she “saved the Cullen” numerous times over, but she needs to get saved by Lucian almost every time she fights.  She and Lucian meet in secret to make love, and when her father Viktor (Bill Nighy) finds out that they’ve conceived an unborn child, he doesn’t hesitate to have her executed in front of Lucian, who escapes with her amulet.  I must say that Sonja’s death is not as effectively sad as I expected.  I was fully expecting her to be painfully burned by the sunlight for a good minute, but she just goes up in CGI burns in a second.  I know I already saw random vampires going out that fast, but I thought they’d ignore that to draw out a sad death scene. 

     The movie makes some small attempts to make Viktor seem like he loves his daughter and is sad for the events, but he’s simply to crazy and evil to be believable in that respect.  As the ruler of the vampires, he simply does what’s evil, not what actually makes sense.  He brushes off the concerns of the humans with which his coven is in a symbiotic relationship.  When they confront him over failing to defend them from werewolves as per their agreement, he straight up murders them.  Nothing he does is remotely intelligent and pragmatic.  He’s just nuts.  He even has Lucian tortured when the latter rescues his daughter, just because he broke some minor rule in doing so.  When the devious Andreas Tanis (Steven Mackintosh) finds out about the relationship between Lucian and Sonja, he avoids telling Viktor because he knows he’s the shoot-the-messenger type.  One thing I can say for Viktor is that Bill Nighy gives a very funny performance.  We’re not talking effective scenery-chewing ham, we’re talking hilariously over-the-top ham.  There are people who actually think that his performance as this character is genuinely good, and that astounds me.  It also helps that he has a couple good, snarky lines when he’s talking to vampire advisor Coloman (David Aston).

        Another effect of Viktor’s evil-over-logic approach is the vampires’ treatment of the “Lycans” (I’ll just call them Diamond Dogs from now on).  Rise of the Lycans seems to contradict some exposition in Underworld by showing the vampires treating the Diamond Dogs worse than pack animals.  And then they chain them up at the castle walls during the day time and expect them to defend it from no-doubt pissed humans who can attack during the day.  Lucian is often chained and treated with scorn.  He clearly does not like his plight and feels bad for the Diamond Dogs who get it worse than he does.  Yet in the first movie, he exposits that he always felt loyal to the vampires and served them happily until he fell in love with one.  That line suggested to me that the vampires treated the Diamond Dogs with dignity and respect.  They recognized their dependence on a loyal group who could defend them during the day.  This is something I failed to mention in the first review: why are the Diamond Dogs, who can walk freely during the daytime, losing a battle against the vampires in the first place?  Once they learned to control their transformation, they can blend in with the humans, whereas the vampires are helpless during the day.  That’s a huge tactical advantage!

          This plot hole is even more apparent at the end of this movie, when Lucian leads an army of Diamond Dogs and werewolves to successfully take out the vampires’ stronghold.  They kill almost everyone (while also murdering a great deal of noncombatants), leaving a few survivors slink off on a ship.  So how, after such a decisive victory, did the Diamond Dogs start losing the war afterwards, and what happened to those werewolves who were helping them?  This movie raises more questions than it answers, and it didn’t even answer anything because everything was already answered in the first movie.  At the end of the battle Lucian “kills” Viktor by ramming a sword up his mouth and leaving him for dead.  It would be a very well executed and satisfying takedown, except we know that he survives it because we’ve seen him in Underworld.   And to make matters worse, his real death in that movie was pretty damn goofy. 

          And that’s what defines this movie: utter lack of suspense.  Virtually every character that matters has a fate that we already know before we start watching.  We know Sonja dies.  We know Lucian lives.  We know Viktor, Tanis and Raze (Kevin Grevioux) live.  We know that Sonja’s amulet will end up in Lucian’s possession and be used as a MacGuffin in the series.  The movie adds nothing to the story of this series.  This all makes Underworld: Rise of the Lycans one of the most pointless prequels that come to mind.  I do, however, like the effective use of dialogue by Kraven (Shane Brolly) and Selene (Kate Beckinsale) from the first movie used as a closing voiceover.                   

          

    

    

MEMORABLE QUOTES

COLOMAN: The nobles are upset, My Lord.  William’s pestilence has not been checked.  Werewolves have killed their slaves.

VIKTOR: Humans upset.  Tanis, please.  Take a note of what pain that brings me. 

COLOMAN: He is much of a disease as William’s pestilence.  You need to bring your pet back.

VIKTOR: Thank you, Coloman!  The obvious escaped me!

VIKTOR: I should have crushed you under my heel the day you were born.

LUCIAN: Yes, you should have.  [rams a sword into his mouth] But you didn’t.

[final lines, used from Underworld]

KRAVEN: I kept the secrets, and cleaned up the mess. But he's the one who crept room to room that night, dispatching everyone close to your heart. But when he got to you, he just couldn't bear the thought of draining you dry. You, who reminded him so much of his precious Sonja, the daughter he condemned to death.

SELENE: Lies.

Wolf Awareness Week - Day 4

 

Underworld: Evolution

2006

D: Len Wiseman

**********

Pros: Art Direction, Practical Effects, Interesting Plot

Cons: Characters, Some Poorly-Integrated CGI

      I don’t regret not having done a review of Underworld for Wolf Week.  Despite ostensibly having werewolves in it, I didn’t see anything that remotely resembled anything lupine.  This movie, however, does have one actual werewolf in it, so I guess it’s fair game.  We first see this lycanthrope in a flashback that takes place in 1202.  A group of vampires including the original, Marcus Corvinus (Tony Curran), hunt Diamond Dogs in a town that was just massacred by the latter.  They capture Marcus’ brother William, a savage werewolf who has spawned the whole race.  Marcus watches sadly as the vampires torture the nearly uncontrollable monster to restrain it.  The movie can’t decide if it wants us to be frightened of William or feel sorry for him.  The camera avoids a clear shot of him, which is effective in a monster movie, but diminishes the attempted pathos.  Marcus attempts to put a stop to this, but he is rebuffed by Viktor (Bill Nighy).  Nighy’s appearance in the movie is fleeting, but he provides enough ham to feed a third-world country for a month.           

   

     Fast forward to present day Budapest, very shortly after the events of the first film.  Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and Michael (Scott Speedman) hide in a safe house while the former plans to return to the vampires’ mansion to confront Kraven (Shane Brolly).  She gives Michael a packet of blood to eat, but he seems reluctant to do so.  Of course, I would at least ask where the blood came from, but I don’t understand why these new vampires don’t just accept the fact that they need to drink blood.  She explains that if he doesn’t, he’ll be likely to feed on a human and says, “Believe me, you don’t want that on your head.”  I think this is the one instance where she seems capable of remorse.  She also warns him that normal food can be fatal, so what does he do when she leaves?

He attempts to go to a restaurant and eats, which causes him to become sick and attract the attention of some cops who have just seen a news report about him.  Then they chase him awhile until he’s reunited with Selene.

     Meanwhile, Marcus reawakens and kills Kraven.  He then begins a quest to find William, who has been locked away by Viktor in a prison so that he could never find and free him.  While he loves his brother, he doesn’t care that William will only kill more people if he is freed.  This is an interesting twist to have a villain whose motivation is actually very human and somewhat sympathetic.  However, when he confronts his father, Alexander Corvinus (Derek Jacobi), he goes on this megalomaniacal rant about he wants to become a god.  It seems rather odd considering that a flashback explained that Marcus’ original motivation to procure an army of vampires all those centuries ago was to fight William.  It just seems shoehorned into a character that is otherwise understandable.

     Early on in the film, Selene and Michael are confronted by Marcus, but they escape.  After a sex scene, they find the exiled Andreas Tanis (Steven Mackintosh) who fills them in on the history of Marcus and William.  He tells them that they were the sons of the first immortal Alexander Corvinus.  William was bitten by a wolf and Marcus by a bat.  If this is adding some sort of logic to the two races, then why is William a more savage beast than Marcus?  Aren’t wolves more advanced than bats?  They eventually meet with Alexander, who has been trying to clean up evidence of the war between the Diamond Dogs and the Vampires.  He has acquired a pendant from inside Viktor’s body which can be combined with the pendant obtained by Selene from Lucian (Michael Sheen) to open William’s prison.  The movie has a golden opportunity here to finally have Selene showing the remorse for killing Diamond Dogs for years, something I complained about in my review of Underworld.  Alexander calls her out on it to her face, and she just brushes him off, claiming it’s all his fault.  I was hoping this movie could salvage her character, but no.  Marcus arrives, takes the pendants, mortally wounds Alexander, and fights Michael to his apparent death (with provokes some real emoting from Beckinsale).  Before she goes with Alexander’s remaining cleaners to pursue Marcus, Alexander tells her to feed off his blood for enhanced powers before the “legacy” is gone from it.  Selene better watch her cholesterol intake, because there’s apparently a lot of cheese in it, too. 

     The movie’s plot has some interesting and clever twists.  Selene sometimes has flashbacks to her youth in this movie.  It turns out that her father was contracted by Viktor to build the secret prison which William was placed.  Of course, the secrecy gave him reason to murder his family outside bloodlust, as well.  With Viktor killed off in the first movie, Selene actually ends up being the only person alive who knows the location of the prison, even if she didn’t know the significance of her memories.  When she realizes this, she is unfortunately bitten by Marcus, who uses her blood-memory to find the place.  I must admit that the movie has one very effective emotional moment.  In the flashbacks a young Selene (or one of her sisters) draws a sun on one of the walls of the prison while it’s under construction.  When she and Alexander’s men come to the location for the final battle, she touches the drawing.  When one of them asks about it, she says, “It’s nothing.”

      Just in time for the finale, Marcus frees William and we finally get a good look at a real werewolf.

Now that is one of the best looking werewolves I’ve seen.  That is what the Lycans should’ve fucking looked like the whole damn time.  It almost seems like an apology for the previous movie’s terrible character design.  It’s too little, too late, though.  It’s only reserved for one creature, and he’s not even a character that we care about.  It would have been an interesting twist if the centuries of seclusion had allowed William to calm down and regain his mind.  That would have even justified giving Marcus a god complex, since William’s being a voice of reason would have been an ironic and surprising contrast to this. 

     In the ensuing battle, the Alexander’s henchman are all killed (they apparently forgot their silver bullets).  Michael comes back to life (because he is a magic black-face monster), fights and kills William.  Selene kills Marcus in a death scene that has way too many composite effects to be effectively visceral, despite how hard it tries.  After the battle the sun shines in, and Selene realizes she is immune to it now.  The movie ends with a closing narration that seems suspiciously similar to the one in T2.     

     Underworld: Evolution has a lot of strengths and it’s an improvement over the first movie.  The visual style is atmospheric.  The use of practical effects is very good.  Alexander’s helicopter and ship where all done with miniatures, and the effect is very convincing.  William Corvinus looks great, but there are some conspicuous CGI shots of him inserted into the shots of great puppet work.  Much like the previous movie, the CGI isn’t too well integrated.  The design and world-building are great.  I like the stylized old-style architecture, and the autopsy on Viktor’s body shows a clever design.  One problem is that the prison doesn’t look so secret, as it’s a big castle, and William’s casket is has an iris on the ceiling that any fool can climb into from the surface, so it doesn’t look so secure.  The plot is actually rather interesting and has some very clever twists.  Action is competent, but nothing to write home about.  Actors are well cast, even if their characters aren’t that nuanced. 

     That’s what really brings the movie down: the lack of good characters.  Selene is still too cold and remorseless to root for, and Michael’s just there being her love interest.  Marcus had some potential as a complex villain, but it was messed up with an uncharacteristic megalomania.  This really overshadows the other strengths of the movie, although I would consider this movie a guilty pleasure if it had much better action scenes.  Conversely, I thought Avengers had a lackluster plot and bland visuals, but I still enjoyed it for its memorable characters and their interactions with each other.  This just goes to show how important characters are to a story.                     

MEMORABLE QUOTES

VIKTOR: Your sympathy for this beast is FOOLISH.  You should have done things…myway.

[picking up a bra in Tanis’ “prison”]

SELENE: Your exile seems to be a bit more comfortable than I remember.

MARCUS: Please, sit.  There’s no need for this to be unpleasant.  I’ve always rather enjoyed your company.  [Tanis nervously glances toward his armory]  Now you’re being rude.

[Selene touches a picture of the sun in the catacombs she drew as a child]
DEATH DEALER: What's that?
SELENE: It's nothing. 

Wolf Awareness Week - Day 3

 

Van Helsing

2004

D: Stephen Sommers

**********

Pros: Art Direction, Design

Cons: Story, Bland Characters, Action, Running Time, Poorly-Researched Religion

     I wasn’t expecting much out of Van Helsing, but it looked like it would be decent diversion while I watched it in preparation for Wolf Week.  The visual style and the design looked good; I loved the color saturation used in it.  I was expecting to be passably amused until I pressed the select button on my Sixaxis controller and found out that the running time was a completely uncalled for 2 hours and 10 minutes.  A movie this unsubstantial should be over in 80-90 minutes, but I was apparently in for a long watch.

     The movie begins with a flashback in 1887, where Dr. Frankenstein (Samuel West) is confronted by Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), who wants to use Frankenstein’s monster (Shuler Hensley) for his evil plans.  Frankenstein refuses, and Dracula kills him.  Coincidentally, the angry villagers come to burn down Frankenstein’s castle, forcing the monster to flee with his creator’s body to a windmill, which is burned down with him inside.  The sequence is beautifully shot in black and white, and I love the monster’s design.  Less impressive is Dracula, who not only is played by a painfully hammy actor, but is also humiliated with a poor character design.  Guys, a ponytail is never the answer.  Never.

     A year later, we’re introduced to color and our hero.  Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) is in Paris looking to apprehend Mr. Hyde (v. Robbie Coltrane), but instead has to kill him with some silly stylized weaponry.  At one point we’re treated to a shot of Mr. Hyde’s ass as his trousers slip down, so thanks for that, movie.  The action is terrible.  It’s the kind where CGI rag dolls are thrown around quickly in the sky while a virtual camera follows them through nondescript digital debris.  That’s most of what passes for action in this movie.  After this, Van Helsing travels to the Vatican, where he is chided for his failure to bring in Mr. Hyde.  He is led down to war room of the secret organization he works for.  People of all faiths are shown working in cooperation in this scene, but this doesn’t go anywhere since the movie’s dominant religion is poorly-researched Catholicism.  Here he picks up quirky inventor friar Carl (David Wenham) as a sidekick and receives his new mission: go to Transylvania and protect the last of the Valerious family, a clan which swore to be doomed to Purgatory until Dracula is killed.  This seems like a bit of a dick move for the family’s forefather to make such a pledge to the Vatican, which I highly doubt can make that call anyway.

     Unfortunately, while the two remaining Valerious children Anna (Kate Beckinsale) and Velkan (Will Kemp) are fighting a werewolf, Velkan is lost over a cliff and leaves Anna the sole survivor.  Say what you will about the CGI used to bring it to life, that is a legit werewolf design.  This is a basic example of werewolves should look like in my book. 

When Van Helsing arrives in town, he discusses the clichéd nature of his amnesia with Carl in way I’m sure will not have significance later.  After meeting Anna, he saves her from Dracula’s brides (Silvia Colloca, Alena Anaya, Josie Maran), killing one of them.  He tries to convince her to lay low while he tries to kill Dracula. This is actually a reasonable suggestion, considering that the souls of Anna’s family are dependent on her life, but of course she refuses.  However, it is revealed that Velkan still lives as a werewolf under the control of Dracula.  With the help of the treacherous Igor (Kevin J. O’Connor), Dracula uses Velkan as a substitute for Dracula’s monster to channel lightning in order to bring life to his undead children.  These monsters are stillborn and stored in nasty alien-like pouches in Frankenstein’s castle.  I must say, judging by the sheer number of egg sacs, Dracula had a LOT of sex with his brides.

The experiment works temporarily, unleashing a swarm of blood-sucking monsters to feed on the local villagers until the heroes thwart Dracula’s efforts.  Because Velkan was insufficient for the experiment, the infant vampires die.  Carl heroically saves a woman from being killed by one, and he seems perfectly willing to sleep with the damsel.  When she points out that he’s a monk, he comes up with the excuse that he’s a friar, ignoring the fact that most friars have a vow of celibacy and that’s moot since extramarital sex isn’t really allowed in most Christian sects anyway.  When Van Helsing confronts Dracula he predictably gets a déjà vu moment, and after the battle, he is walking with Anna when they fall through the ground.  The movie then cuts to another scene where Carl finds a clue that suggests that Dracula needs to be killed by a werewolf.

     That would have been a funny moment if it hadn’t been acknowledged later.  However, they just fell into the wreckage of the windmill, where the Frankenstein monster has been hiding for the last year.  The monster doesn’t say much interesting, but he may be the most sympathetic character in the movie.  Knowing how dangerous his role in Dracula’s plans is, he asks Van Helsing to kill him, but the latter has him put in a carriage to Rome for protection.  Unfortunately, the carriage is attacked by Velkan and the two remaining brides.  The second bride is killed with an adimittedly cool trick involving a decoy carriage filled with stakes and explosives.  Velkan is also killed after he bites Van Helsing, and the third bride Aleera (Anaya) takes Anna captive.

     Dracula tries to make a deal with Van Helsing: come to Budapest and trade the monster for Anna.  Van Helsing tries to take Anna without giving up the monster, but encounters an army of vampires with Dracula.  Though Anna is rescued and the army of vampires is easily dispatched by one of Carl’s inventions, Dracula succeeds in capturing the monster.  In other words, this subplot was totally pointless.  They could have just had the monster get captured in the carriage scene and saved audience a lot of time.  Stuff like this, in addition to time-consuming action sequences that aren’t even good, is the reason why this movie has pacing issues. 

     After this, Van Helsing, Ann and Carl look through some clues and discover that only a werewolf can kill Dracula (which makes you wonder why Dracula kept Velkan around).  Van Helsing has to wait until midnight strikes on the Full Moon and then kill Dracula before the final chime of the bell.  Just don’t ask why an ancient magic is dependent on such a recent and artificial construct as the chimes of a clockwork bell.  They find a magic door to the ice zone where Dracula’s castle is.  When confronted, Dracula reveals the ridiculous explanation for Van Helsing’s amnesia: he is actually the angel Gabriel and he killed Dracula, leading the latter to make a deal with the devil.  He offers Van Helsing the chance to get his memories back, but is refused.  Van Helsing turns into an awesome black werewolf and kills Dracula.

Igor, Aleera and the vampire brood are also killed, the monster is saved, and there’s a lot of long, boring stuff that happens on a bridge.  Unfortunately, werewolf Van Helsing kills Anna when she administers the lycanthropy antidote to him.  Of course, we can’t have the hero remain a werewolf; that would be too awesome.  The movie ends with the Frankenstein monster rowing to parts unknown while Van Helsing and Carl cremate Anna’s body, even though the Catholic Church strongly discouraged the practice at the time.

       Van Helsing is supposed to be a fun action interpretation of a classic horror story, but it’s too tedious to work.  The action scenes aren’t very good, and the characters are bland.  Van Helsing’s amnesia is a clichéd trope, and not even the charismatic Hugh Jackman can save the role, even if he does wear cool black clothes and turns into a werewolf.  Kat Beckinsale’s character is a generic action girl.  Carl is a typical sidekick.  Dracula is particularly underwhelming due to his bad design and hamtastic performance.  He only really gets one good line, too.  The movie is also far longer than it has a right to be.  As dull as the movie is, it is pretty nice to look at when the camera isn’t too spastic.  I love the coloration and design, and even the end credits sequence looks pretty good.  I still don’t recommend sitting through it.         

    

           

ANNA: A silver stake?  A crucifix?  What, do you think we haven’t tried everything before?  We’ve shot him, stabbed him, clubbed him, sprayed him with holy water, staked him through the heart and still he lives!  Do you understand?  No one knows how to kill Dracula!

VAN HELSING: Well, I could’ve used that information a little earlier.

DRACULA: I can tell the character of a man by the sound of his heartbeat. [claps to the rhythm of a heartbeat]  Usually when I approach [claps faster] I can almost dance to the beat. [claps slower]  Strange that yours is so steady. 

CARL: If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to never stick your hand into a viscous material.

ALEERA: Anna, my love, it is your blood that shall keep me beautiful.  What do you think of that?

[Anna kills her]

ANNA: I think if you’re going to kill someone, kill them.  Don’t stand around talking about it.