shampyon

Too often characters will be entirely one thing or another to ensure you feel one way about them. Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend lets it's two leads be a bit more complex than that. They're not perfect, they're people - albeit ageless people that hide from the sun and crave the blood of the living. Sometimes they're more sympathetic, sometimes they're not, but they're always engaging. The whole film manages that balance wonderfully. It's funny, it's dramatic, it's suspenseful, it's horrifying. Sometimes it's one of these things, other times it's all of them at once. But it still feels cohesive, and the story is driven by the characters and not just the needs of the plot. At a little under 32 minutes it's the perfect length for it's story, with enough time to allow the occasional quiet moment but not so much that you notice the time.

Thor: Ragnarok revitalised the character after a lacklustre second instalment thanks to it's humour and willingness to embrace the absurdity found in the comics - grand space opera, weird creatures from the stars, and a sense of humour throughout. Thor: Love and Thunder pushes that just a little too far. The movie is essentially Thor's story filtered through the perspective of beloved supporting character Korg, but this is the movie's flaw. No sincere moment is allowed to stand without being undercut by a quip, a sight gag, a silly interruption. There's no emotional solid ground, so you can never become fully invested in the story. The cast is great, the characters are interesting, the setting is compelling, the concepts are intriguing, but the story's unwillingness to allow a moment of seriousness makes even the funny parts less enjoyable. It's not a bad movie, I had fun while I was watching, but you can tell that it could have been much better.

Neil Gaiman has been fielding and rejecting offers to adapt his wonderful comic series "The Sandman" for three decades. This series exists solely because he found a creative team and cast that he felt could do it justice. As a fan of that comic since day one, I must say - I'm glad he did. I won't pretend it's some unparalleled masterpiece, but it is a worthy adaption of the source material and a well above average show on it's own merits.

The series follows Morpheus, a.k.a. Dream of the Endless, the anthropomorphic personification of the very concept of dreams. He is captured and imprisoned by humans for 100 years, during which nightmares and dreams escape his realm and wreak havoc on the waking world. Once free, he must find his stolen tools of power and bring his errant subjects home.

Along the way he deals with the impact he has had on human lives, encounters his past sins, ends old conflicts and sows the seeds of new ones.

Tom Sturridge is wonderful as Dream, in all his gothic melancholy. Gwendoline Christie is gorgeously sinister as Lucifer, a being of seductive danger and thirst for power. Kirby Howell-Baptiste embodies the paradoxical humanity of Dream's oldest sister Death, and Mason Alexander Park is about as perfect an adaption of the gender-defying menace Desire as I could have imagined. Donna Preston makes for a different Despair than the source material, but I expect they tested and realised the nudity and tusk teeth would get in the way of properly conveying the essence of the scenes. That kind of choice is found in other parts of the series, where changes have been made to excise many DC superheroes and villains in order to ground the series a little more while preserving the heart of the story and it's characters.

I devoured the entire series in two days, as if Desire Themself had got their claws into me. I can't wait for the next season.