Oh Vampires and Cowboys...

The Addiction(dir. Abel Ferrara)
It's hard to resist a film that compares vampiric blood lust to heroine addiction and to sin. We're human so obviously we sin, but what do we do about it? Like the responses Kathleen's victims give when she threatens to harm them if they don't say some variation of "go away," we're usually passive and evasive. We try to brush it off. The film suggests that forgetting about your sins is about as bad as letting an addiction go uncheck even when the addiction involves other people's blood. The film is basically Ms .45 minus the .45 and feminist undertones. In their place are vampire fangs and Catholic and existential undertones. The similarities in story and structure between the two are uncanny especially since they're both written by the same guy. This film, however, ends on a much better note than that film and doesn't contain any extremely annoying neighbors for the protagonist and the audience to be pestered by. Unlike Ms .45, this film has a somewhat pretentious vibe given all it's philosophical banter, but that might mainly be because I didn't understand most of it. It also felt like it wasn't going anywhere until it's redemptive conclusion that made all the ennui one might experience worthwhile. I highly recommend.
***1/2 out of ****

The Tin Star(dir. Anthony Mann)
An average western with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins. While I'm not that big of a fan of Mann's westerns(the ones I have seen) outside of The Man From Laramie, they at least had a sense of immediacy to them to make them entertaining. This just slowly inches it's way to a predictable happy ending. There are some scenes that you could picture being memorable if Mann added an extra oomph to them, but he doesn't and they end up being fairly generic. The appeal of the film(for me at least) comes mainly from the two leads. The relationship between their characters is quite clichéd, resembling something along the lines of "The Sheriff Kid," and they both end up giving clichéd performances because of it. Overall, it's bland and uninteresting.
** out of ****