Can You Tell Me How to Vanish On Boring Street?

You know when you REALLY want a movie to be great? The director excites you, the premise is up your alley, and the fact that it’s streaming on Netflix just seems like kismet. At a certain point, it’s like the film has to work to NOT be exactly what you want.

Vanishing on 7th Street works awfully hard.

Awfully.

Quick Plot: It’s a typical day in Detroit when the city pulls a Left Behind style blackout that leaves nothing but a lot of clothing and a few stray survivors hanging out in darkness, where only the beam of flashlights will stave off a herd of shadowy figures. Among the living are Paul (John Lequizamo), a film projectionist with a history hobby, Rosemary (Thandie Newton), a physical therapist looking for her baby (and probably named Rosemary for the sole reason of letting reviewers write “Rosemary’s baby”), James (Jacob Latimore), a 12-year-old waiting for his bartender mom, and the offensively named Luke (Hayden “I Hate Sand” Christensen), a field reporter.

The motley crew holds up in a local tavern called Sonny’s (ha ha) fully lit by a backup generator. As the lights begin to dim and their power supply starts to die, Luke convinces the rest to make a break for it by jump starting a nearby truck. 

Jump starting nearby trucks is so very easy on camera.

To go further into the plot might lead to spoilage, except--

SPOILER ALERT--

There’s nothing to spoil because we never ACTUALLY find out anything about anything...anything...about...anything.

Why did most humans vanish? Why weren’t French poodles and squirrels taken? Is there somewhere these things GO? Why DID that Chevy still run, and was it JUST because it was a Chevy? Why was Paul taken into the ether and spit back a few days later? How in The Happening does THAT make sense? Is it aliens? God? Demons? Pulse-ish shadows from another dimension? Hot dogs? Betty Buckley?

GIVE ME SOMETHING!

Sigh. Not every film needs to give us every answer. Is The Shining about ghosts, alcoholism, or Native American genocide? It doesn’t matter if the film is good enough to justify the lack of answers.

Vanishing on 7th Street, however, is not. Anderson creates some excellent spookiness right from the outset, including one of the most effective jump scares I’ve seen in some time within its first ten minutes. The mystery is haunting enough to keep us on edge, but when NOTHING stands behind it, how can an audience possibly be expected to stay on board? Anthony Jaswinski’s script gives us dull squabbling and zero answers, and even though some of the performances do what they can to sell it--okay, really just Lequizamo and the young Latimore, as Newton comes off shrill and Anakin is still Anakin--the movie ultimately feels like a stretched out short story that never had a good ending to begin with.

High Points

It’s probably impossible for a lifelong Star Wars fan to ever get behind Hayden Christensen again, but young actor Jacob Latimore brings a fantastic presence to his role as James. If only he had played Anakin Skywalker...

Fellow history nerds rejoice! Anybody else always intrigued by the mystery of the Roanoke settlement’s disappearance? Let’s see a better film about that

Low Points

Considering Brad Anderson’s past work, I was weirdly disappointed with some of the overbearing soundtrack work in Vanishing on 7th Street. While the jukebox choices had a hauntingly retro feel, some of the scoring was just too much and broke the eerie subtlety of the film’s major mysteries

We learn quite early on that once you’re covered in darkness, you’ll be swooped away (even though WE NEVER KNOW WHERE TO). So how frustrating is it that at a key moment, two of our main characters are being closed in upon by the shadows only to...um, escape and keep freaking out. Way to break the rules and therefore lessen the tension of anything that comes after

Lessons Learned

Never underestimate the importance of glow sticks. Never.

Jukeboxes use an awful lot of power

Try to avoid going to the theaters to see Adam Sandler movies because really, is THAT where you want to be during the rapture?

Rent/Bury/Buy

I’m trying to avoid using the word ‘frustrating’ anymore in this review. It’s not particularly a google keyword I’m looking to catch, but holy Kirk Cameron can I not think of a better adjective to describe Vanishing on 7th Street. The potential is there, and yet the insane coyness of the script seems to dare its audience to give up. At the same time, Brad Anderson continues to show plenty of strength when it comes to building tension, and hey, some of us just love a good rapture. I’m being quite negative on the film because GRRRRR does it make me say GRRRRR, but the premise itself might still be enough to at least give it an Instant Watch try if you like these kinds of things. Just prepare to be ...

(Pause to check thesaurus)

Stymied! Yeah, that’s it...

Why I Love: Last Night

If you’re reading this today, then I regret to inform you that according to some babbling calendar obsessed idiots, you were probably not chosen to ascend into heaven and avoid the upcoming rapture scheduled to run until October. Clearly, you were Left Behind, but so was Kirk Cameron so who are you to feel insecure?

I love me a good rapture, just as much as I love the underrated Mimi Rogers film, The Rapture. But that’s a story for another day, and since we’ve apparently got another 5 months of movie watching left before Paul Bettany fights a bunch of angel zombie things (or something), let’s shift to a more cheerful 100 minutes of apocalyptic warmth, recommended successfully some months ago from my blogging pal Shiftless (blog here), of whom I shall be eternally grateful to.


Don McKellar’s 1998 black comedy(ish) Last Night is one of those extraordinarily unique little films that sits with you like a fine glass of red wine (the good kind, not the crappy one gargled down by the main characters). It’s funny but not in a quote-it way, touching but not sentimental, and ultimately, incredibly special in a manner entirely its own.

The story takes place in an unnamed Toronto on the last day of the universe. For reasons never explained, the world will end at the stroke of midnight, a fact that the general populace has known for the last few months. This being Canada, the civilians seem to take it in stride.

Director McKellar plays Patrick, a sad and closed-off widower trying to go out with the world in peace and solitude. That doesn’t happen. Instead, Patrick is forced into human interaction at every turn, from an awkward ‘Christmas’ dinner with his parents and sis (my girl crush Sarah Polley), chance meetings with old pals (strategically horny Callum Keith Rennie, an old high school French teacher, a nerdy pianist school chum) and most importantly, the tense soul that is Sandra Oh. 

Sigh, you’re thinking, apocalyptic meet-cutes that might call to mind Grey’s Anatomy? Settle down, left behinders. Last Night is quirky but not in the annoying indie way, even if it is indeed a quirky indie. It’s easily the most cheerful end-of-the-world story I’ve seen, but that doesn’t mean the film is all sweet maple syrup and red vines. 

Take some of the supporting characters, all of whom are and have been very aware that the clock is ticking. Some have planned each final minute, like Rennie's scheduled nearly nonstop sexcapades to act out every fantasy he's ever had. One such bang involves the aforementioned French teacher, who follows an afternoon of passion with an awkward conversation with another former student Patrick and spends her last moments entranced by a piano player's scarcely attended concert. There's something sad or beautiful, or maybe not at all sad and beautiful about this minor character's trajectory. 

Then there's the demigod of Canadian film, David Cronenberg putting in a subtle, sympathetic performance as a single middle-aged man who chooses his final day to go to work, make his calls to answering machine after answering machine assuring the city that the gas company is still working, then head home for a tub of ice cream. As a lifelong fan of Cronenberg's sadistic gynocologists, belly VCRs, nude Russian bathhouse brawls and armpit vaginas, it's eerily refreshing to watch the man exist in such an ethereal scope on film.

Last Night is sort of an ensemble film, though only in the sense that virtually every speaking character comes off as an actual person. We don't get more than five minutes of dialogue from Sarah Polley, but within her brief scenes, we believe her and Patrick to be siblings, not overly close but connected nonetheless. We know from one line that she's spending the end with her boyfriend, probably a former ex who maybe went a little crazy once the world's stopwatch was activated. It's enough.

Patrick is ultimately our lead, although McKellar is wisely subdued. He's a sad man, one greeting the apocalypse without much of a reaction until he meets Sandra (Oh), the kind of flaky but earnest woman whose life would probably have had far less meaning were it lived to its entirety. Oh is absolutely wonderful as a tense wandering wife searching for her new husband (one clearly married in the throws of the apocalyptic fever). Her goal? To shoot him in the head at the stroke of midnight as he does the same for her. The apocalypse, you see, stirred something different up in Sandra: defiance. She got pregnant soon after the announcement, simply to see if she could. She ties the knot and buys a gun just so that it's her decision to die and not the world's.

The first time I watched Last Night, I was touched and amused. Upon second viewing, there's something about Sandra that I find fascinating. None of us can say with any certainty what we'd do with our final months on this planet, and perhaps what I love about Sandra's choices is that I get the sense she never expected THESE would be her decisions. Something about the ticking clock activated this sense of anger and need inside of her.

"Tell me something to make me love you," she pleads (rushed, not romantically) to Patrick as the clock hits 11:58. It's a wonderfully quotable line, funny in its absurdity, tragic in its impossibility, and utterly believable in the rather unbelievable situation of Last Night. 

I haven't even gotten to McKellar's fantastic use of music or the fact that the sun hauntingly shines throughout the entire evening. Or the gleeful plethora of unusual cars (Callem's mint-green classic and my father's personal favorite, an AMC Pacer). The funny, if slightly unsettling female jogger who runs through town and announces the time left with more cheer than the Battle Royale television star. 

Last Night might not be a masterpiece of filmmaking, but it simply hits me in a way few films can. This may very well be a case of personal taste, though even that leaves me mystified. There's nothing in my life that I particularly connect to the characters of this film, and yet when I watch or think about it, I find myself breaking into warmly comforting smiles and tears. We're used to end-of-the-world tales following messianic survivors, leather-clad bandits or go get 'em heroes. In Last Night, there are no superstars or villains. There are no miracles. There's just us, men and women choosing their lives as they want to live them, even if it's a matter of minutes before eternal death. I don't know why I find that so powerful, but it's films like these that make me happy to be here.

Horrible Non-Horror! Left Behind: The Movie

There are some types of people I find endlessly frustrating and equally amusing. We’ll call them psycho doomsday religious folk.

Sometimes they stand next to me on the subway, ranting and raving about how children are turning to iPods and homosexuality because they’ve forgotten the word of Jesus. Shame on all of us for not remembering how that nice young crucified man so detested iPods and homosexuals.

I have no problem with faith. We’re all entitled to believe or not believe whatever we wish, however silly it may seem to others (like me). But there are some aspects of religious zealots (namely the mass unwarranted judgment imposed on others) that truly irks me, including the concept of today’s gloriously awful feature, Left Behind: The Movie.

To begin, you have to adore any film that adds “The Movie” after its title. Because it’s already assuming a certain level of stupidity from its audience. Honestly, I find it adorable.

Quick Plot: Our story opens at 6PM in Jersalame. Then the credits roll and the new time card reads ‘6:03PM.’ 

Am I crazy, or is that hilarious?

Anyway, Kirk Cameron plays Buck Williams, a reporter, despite all associations with his name reminding us of cowboys or porn stars. On his returning flight, something wacky--or Langolier-ish--occurs when a bunch of passengers simply vanish, leaving their clothing and relatives behind. This appears to be a global phenomenon, one so dramatic that martial law is immediately declared.

So who disappeared, and who...dramatic piano tones...was LEFT BEHIND (the movie)? Hint hint: all empty clothing may have included a crucifix.

See, the Christians were rescued before the upcoming (7 years, according to some characters) rapture, leaving their loved ones alone and doomed. Unless they start reading the Bible, like goofily named pilot Rayford Steele. Meanwhile, a slick Russian politician slithers his way into world power minutes after Kirk Cameron has a religious epiphany in the UN bathrooms. 

Oh, and a bunch of stuff explodes along the way.

Here’s the thing about Left Behind: The Movie: the extras are way more entertaining than the film itself. Take, for example, a featurette wherein actress Janaya Stephens enthusiastically  announces how this is “the biggest and most ambitious Christian movie ever made.” Then just imagine her sadness at the $200 million plus gross of The Passion of the Christ (a real horror movie if there ever was one).

We also get to hear red carpet interviews with a few Hollywood stars (including the guy from The Michael Landon Story!) which is mostly useful for learning what actors are also scary and religious (Lacey Chabert, Hunter Tylo, Demonic Toys’ Tracy Scoggins). By far my favorite part though is Stephens' stiff reading of “The producers knew they would have to go big.”

Cut to a bunch of things blowing up.

Yes, dear Hollywood, that is how you reel in the rowdy teens and convert them via Kirk Cameron. Poor Kirk. I’ve never seen an actor in more pain than watching the former Mike Seaver pretend (I won’t call it acting) to be a non-believer. It's a relief when his character (Buck Williams, say it without laughing please) finds God because finally, Kirk can at least play his type and draw out some form of believability.

Lessons Learned

The UN’s no picnic

When you meet Kirk Cameron, the best thing to always say is ‘Nice hair!’

Beta fish will be left behind

One sign of showing your Christian solidarity is to remove your scandalous nose ring. Jesus hates those

The best place to have a religious conversation is a very clean public restroom

Rent/Bury/Buy

My biggest beef with Left Behind (it’s a movie) is its painstaking dullness (despite “big” explosions). The antichrist gets nothing special other than awkward slo-motion (but not really slo-motion, it’s fast slo-motion which somehow seems sacriligious). The rapture is saved, presumably for parts 2 and 3. The fact that they’re streaming on Instant Watch is even more frustrating. Now I HAVE to watch them, and not in order to save my soul.

So do I, from a bad film perspective, recommend Left Behind: The Movie? If you’re the type of person who finds yourself chuckling at Sunday mass, then perhaps. More importantly, I can’t urge you enough to watch the featurettes on the “Special Edition” DVD. Hey, they even toss in a scene from a Gary Busey Christploitation! That alone might make you a believer.