Movie Review - Vanishing on 7th Street

Vanishing on 7th Street (2011)

Starring Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton, Jacob Latimore, and John Leguizamo

Directed by Brad Anderson

***An early review -- This film will be released in local theaters on February 25***

One evening during a quick electrical power outage, nearly everyone in Detroit vanishes into thin air, leaving their piles of clothing strewn about the city.  Four people have seemingly survived the mass disappearance and they soon realize it's because they were around a non-electical light source at the time -- a candle, flashlight, etc.  Can this quartet survive the ghostly shadows that appear all across the city or will their metaphorical light be snuffed out?

The whole premise of Vanishing on 7th Street sounds silly, I realize, but I've got to say that the story was moderately entertaining.  There is an eerie quality present that derives its spookiness from sheer simplicity.  It's obvious that the budget on this flick wasn't large, but director Brad Anderson makes the most of things, creating a tense atmosphere with very little with which to work.  Anderson keeps the film moving at a brisk pace and the under-90 minute running time was a welcome surprise.

However, the film falters a bit when it comes to surviving quartet of characters themselves.  Everything that we learn about the group seems completely irrelevant.  Hayden Christensen's young news reporter was cheating on his wife with a married woman and Thandie Newton (who overacts out the wazoo at the beginning of this flick) is a new mother who recently separated from her baby's daddy.  I guess these plot revelations were supposed to make me "feel" for these characters or, at the very least, make them seem more relatable to me...needless to say, that didn't happen.  John Leguizamo's character doesn't have any secrets revealed, but he plays a film projectionist and we all know what secrets those recluses hold.  The fourth character is a kid because every movie like this has to have a kid in it because apparently kids in peril make audiences nervous or something.  Unfortunately, the film really fails these four actors by not developing their characters in the slightest.  I didn't give a damn about any one of these people and couldn't care less if they were taken by the shadows.

Despite my dislike for the character development, it wouldn't have been enough for me to disregard the flick.  However, it's also a shame that the film ends on a disappointing note.  The ending is slightly cop-outtish and I wish the movie would've had the nerve to conclude on a slightly different note.  Still, despite the qualms (and the not-so-great rating below), I didn't despise the movie.  Not that I ever need to watch it again, but you can certainly fare worse when it comes to eerie ghost movies.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - New York, I Love You (2009)

Starring Jacinda Barrett, Rachel Bilson, Orlando Bloom, Hayden Christensen, Julie Christie, Bradley Cooper, Chris Cooper, Drea de Matteo, Andy Garcia, Ethan Hawke, Shia LaBeouf, Cloris Leachman, Robin Wright Penn, Natalie Portman, Christina Ricci, Qi Shu, Eli Wallach, and Anton Yelchin
Directed by 11 Directors of Varying Talent

I certainly haven't seen many short film collections, but it seems a difficult, unenviable task to assemble an anthology such as this. There's bound to be some works that are better than others and, when placed next to these intriguing shorts, all the other shorts pale in comparison. That's the case in New York, I Love You where you'll find three really good short films, but the other seven or so fall flat (or, at the very best, are simply adequate) and bog the film down.

Let's start with the good:

• My favorite segment was by director Allen Hughes starring Bradley Cooper and Drea de Matteo as two lovers who are contemplating the ramifications of their one-night stand. The short jumps back and forth between the two actors as the story is told through a voiceover depicting their thoughts and flashbacks to their sensual night before.
• Another winner was a segment starring Ethan Hawke and Qi Shu, directed by Yvan Attel. Hawke spends five minutes trying to bed married gal Shu whom he meets smoking on an NYC sidewalk. Little does he know that she's able to one-up him in the end. Later in the film, there's a segment starring Robin Wright Penn and Chris Cooper that appears to be very much the same story with the woman, Wright Penn, taking over Hawke's role. As I was watching it, I couldn't help but notice the similarity and I wondered to myself, why would they allow two shorts in this film to have such a similar storyline? Little did I know that they were directed by the same guy.
• The only other segment that I really enjoyed was directed by Joshua Marston and stars Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach as an elderly couple celebrating their anniversary by returning to a memorable NYC landmark for them. Quite funny and beautifully acted by the two folks.

Unfortunately, after that, everything starts to go downhill. The segment Natalie Portman directed about a young girl and her father was alright (and starred one of my first crushes, Jacinda Barrett -- "Real World"er turned actress), but it wasn't anything special. And the segment that Portman starred in about some odd relationship between a Yiddish woman and an Indian man was awful.

In fact, the first three segments of this movie (of which Portman's starring role occurred in the middle) were awful. Starting the movie with the reteaming of Jumper stars Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson was a huge mistake. Bilson's a beauty to look at, but she can't act and Christensen was horrendous. And short #3 about Orlando Bloom as a composer was not good, either.

I haven't even discussed the obnoxiously pretentious segment about remembering one's youth starring Julie Christie and Shia LaBouef. The way it was filmed, it felt like I was watching some really expensive perfume commercial. Ugh.

The acting was all over the place -- some good performances (both Coopers, Hawke, Leachman, and Wallach) and some awful ones (Christensen, Bilson, Andy Garcia, Anton Yelchin) -- as was the direction.

Despite the fact that there were some good segments here, it just didn't work for me. And it certainly didn't seem to showcase New York City to me at all. In fact, the city came off as kind of drab.

The RyMickey Rating: D+