Pretty much. I turned out watching the original one because it was filmed at the high school I had to take some advanced classes at to graduate early. Same high school Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park was filmed at. I didn't know anything about the film except for it's Portland location, and spent the entire movie laughing. Vampires playing baseball at the park? Sign me up!

To be fair I haven't seen the sequels, which look horrible, but I will go on record and say that the original was better than Jim Jarmusch's vampire movie, Only Lovers Left Alive.

Jarmusch made a vampire movie? Wow. I am completely out of the loop. I think the last film I saw by him was Coffee And Cigarettes which seems like ages ago. I can see him doing well with the genre.

It's the same as Twilight. I love Jarmusch but it's just about hipster vampires living in Detroit. Honestly I don't know if it was supposed to be a comedy, because my date and I were laughing the whole time, while others were taking it completely seriously, because Jim Jarmusch. I'd still recommend checking it out if you like JJ tho, but it's no Ghost Dog, which successfully blended two (or three) genres.

I'm surprised it's Twilight-like and I'm not surprised at your reactions as just about all of the Jarmusch films I've seen have had me laughing because the guy does have a knack for dry humor and finding the ridiculous in serious subject matter. Dead Man and Mystery Train were two of my memorable favorites.

Yeah.. it's definitely worth checking out of you like JJ; what's funny is I went into Ghost Dog as a 17 year old who was really into Wu Tang Clan and martial arts movies, and was expecting a lot of badass fight scenes, which it didn't deliver. And somehow I wasn't disappointed. At the time, the director's name didn't mean anything from Adam to me, but I consider it sort of a pivotal moment where I started to appreciate film for more than acccidents and explosions. Another film to come out around the same time was a "disaster" movie called Last Night, which was a movie about the end of the world, with zero special effects. The world was just ending.

What's weird about Only Lovers Left Alive is that it tries to be a horror movie and lost a lot of the charm about an idea that vampires are just hipsters who play music and get "high" all the time, which I think real-life vampires would do, which is why I liked Twilight better. But then came the sequels, with werewolf vampire fights and Pitchfork-approved soundtracks. Barf.

A little off topic, but Last Night was one of the only movies I can think of where David Cronenberg had a pretty big acting role. Also, for funny vampire movies, do yourself a favor and watch What We Do In The Shadows. It's basically the Flight of the Conchords guys and they made Spinal Tap but for Vampires.

"Hey, wouldn't Tilda Swinton and Loki make awesome vampires? They'd be, like, such cool undead rockstars."
"Great idea. What sort of plot do you think would go with that?"
"Plot? I just told you the plot. Tilda Swinton and Loki are vampires and they're cool. Oh! And they live in Detroit."

"So, it's like blood is like heroin! Get it, they're vampire junkies! This is the best idea I've ever had!"

I saw the second to last one in the theater with my girlfriend at the time, because we figured since there were no good movies to see we'd see the worst one. It was about 75% boring conversations/staring, 24% bad CGI talking wolves and 1% that dude giving the woman a C section with his teeth. Way worse than I expected and I was expecting it to be really bad. Then when we were waiting outside for our cab afterward the mall cops made us leave because they thought we were a hooker and pimp. So it was a pretty fun evening over all.

It was actually worse than Bram Stoker's Dracula, and that's saying something because that movie is unwatchable.

Aren't almost all of Jim Jarusch's movies supposed to be comedies?

I liked Ghost Dog but it wasn't really that great of a movie. I still like Dead Man well enough, bu it's one of those movies like Akira that I found myself not ever feeling like watching once I got the soundtrack. I'm probably considered some kind of heretic for finding Coffee and Cigaretts annoying and not finishing it. But in general I find 90s coffehouse-mainstream-indie cinema kind of annoyingly twee more often than not. I can definitely get into Jim Jarmusch stuff if I'm in a certain mood but I'm usually not in that mood. Much like the music of Tom Waits. Both of whom I respect a lot more than I enjoy, most of the time.

I've know more than one person who was straight up offended by Ghost Dog's popularity when it came out, but I thought the good parts were mostly enough to offset the parts that didn't work at all.

Yeah the natural humor and weirdness (especially in Ghost Dog) is another reason why I liked it: The mob gangsters are like a parody of every Italian gangster film up to that point, and I doubt if Jarmusch would quote an entire Wu Tang album like most kids (like myself) could. It's badass but still has this weird charm and quirkiness. Would Ghost Dog have been better with ninja assassins and a big fight scene at the end? Probably not.

The weird thing about Only Lovers Left Alive is, like Tusk, it actually takes itself seriously with a comedic premise. There's nothing wrong with immortal hipsters fiending for the perfect strain of blood, but it does exactly what Sunshine did and ruins it all in the third act (no spoilers, but it's about on that level.) The rest of the movie's pretty much the humor of Twilight, like seemingly normal people who like to have BBQs and play baseball and such in an almost Meet The Parents (spoiler they're vampires) style. If it was directed by the guy who did something like Meet The Parents, it'd get a pass, but I dunno. Coffee and Cigarettes is pretty much literal: I know we disagree about Linklater but that was about as close to a movie like Slacker or Waking Life as Jarmusch could get, or Louis Malle's Dinner With Andre. It's awesome to listen to a conversation between Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, but I couldn't imagine actually watching it in the theatre, trying to find a deeper meaning by staring into a coffee cup. The only guy who could do that was Godard with 2 or 3 Thing I Know About Her.

I really wish women would stop emotionally objectifying men. We're not just sensitive, feeling animals for you to stare longingly at. We've got genitals too, you know!

Weird, it's not turning me on at all. I must need to smoke more estrogen.

Is it too much to ask that you women screenwriters put a little violence and tits in our vampire films?

@EvilHomer
That's how toxic and problematic the female gaze is. Films like this perpetuate negative stereotypes that have real world consequences.

magnesium: your ladybrain has probably been poisoned by feminism to the point that you don't even consider a controlling and abusive relationship to be the highest expression of your femininity. You should read some PUA blogs to learn what women are really like.

It comes in a pill form, Mags. Talk to your local trannie. It's been my experience they have remarkable insights into such matters as this, having tried both drugs as it were.

*ahem* I believe "transmission" is the preferred nomenclature, ser.

uh oh.. there's girls on this site? I better take a shower!

IZ - a couple of users have claimed to be, but I do not believe them.

Everyone here is a 36 year-old fat man with a fedora and wispy moustache.

I wouldn't put it past us....

I'm supposed to be emotionally turned on by this?

Same with the Sookie Stackhouse books. Without the Mormon filter to take out all the sex, it reads like straight up slash fiction.

I haven't read the Dexter books, but by all accounts they are also terrible. His "dark passenger" ends up being a literal dark god of antiquity or something.

This review almost makes me wanna read 'em.

And yet GRRM still won't finish ASoIAF.

Sounds about right.

My favorite Filthy Critic review was calling the Harry Potter movies a book report by an 8 year old.

"And then this happened and then this happened and then the feather blew up and it was funny."

Fuck Harry Potter. It says something about the state of our culture that out major cultural touchstones are shitty escapist books for children and shitty erotica-lite about poorly done BDSM and abusive relationships. Kids these days, I tell you.

My biggest problem with Harry Potter is that it is Wayside School is Falling Down without as much weirdness. It's just a story about, "Let's go to school, because school is fun, but oh no, this isn't your every day BORING school, it's a MAGIC school where you have to sit through a POTIONS class and learn about HERBS and shit! HOW FUN AND ORIGINAL!"

It's just about going to SCHOOL with a mild good vs. evil story on top about a chosen child who is so bland and vanilla and a generically satanic evil that they're trying to stop over and over again in a slightly different way. OH BUT PEOPLE DIE, EDGY!!

I'd bet that the person who is most surprised about its universal appeal is Rowling herself, who seems like an intelligent enough person. I bet she wishes she could get out of the shadow of those books now, even if they did buy her a mansion and diamond crystal speedboat (I assume!).