Friday, August 21, 2015

Nadja

Nadja is a 1994 modern re-telling of the Bram Stoker Dracula novel. Peter Fonda is Van Helsing. It takes place in modern-day NYC during the Christmas season. I like it. More artsy and less gory than vampire movies have become.

trailer:



Lucy: "All of this family stuff feels so far removed from me now. It's almost abstract.
Nadja: No. See how you bury the primary pain? It goes underground. It seeps into the water supply. You're poisoned. All your relationships are poisoned. You must dare to dredge up the primary pain.
Lucy: What good would it do?
Nadja: It frees you.
Moria gives it 3 out of 5 stars. Spirituality and Practice says it "presents a clever, engaging, and innovative take on vampire mythology in a well-wrought contemporary tale set in New York City." Weird Wild Realm says, "Of course, if cheezy B vampire films were its competition, Nadja is superb; it is only in comparison to what it strives to be (something as admirable in its perfection as Bergman's Hour of the Wolf) that it suffers." Roger Ebert labels it "Deadpan Noir" and says, "It all sort of works, although probably not for general audiences. ... The film's like a jazz improvisation that wouldn't mean much if you didn't know the original song." It has a 57% critics score and a 69% audience rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

5 comments:

  1. Well, isn´t that David Lynch at 0:30! The trailer feels a bit 70´s, I think. 1994? Wasn´t that just yesterday? If I had any extra time on my hands right now I would go look for this, but I think the husband would put on his earphones and watch some Gordon Ramsey cooking/swearing or Road Wars instead, lol.

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    1. It's still available online at that link, and it's just 90 minutes long ;) Maybe you can save it for Christmas viewing lol.

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    2. Oh, and yes! I didn't even catch that, but David Lynch produced it and has a cameo. Thx!

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  2. I like the analogy Ebert wrote. If I hadn't already known the story . . . . Not as gory as I expected, but a bit of a surprise at the end.

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    1. Vampire movies seem to have become all about the gore. Sometimes all that gore detracts from the really scary parts.

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