30 Days of Night

Creeps come out on Halloween, particularly the bloodsucking, flesh-tearing, human-killing kind.

Vampires are the scariest of them all. But you're safe as long as the sun is out. Unless you live in Barrow, Alaska, where the sun goes down for a month, hence the title of the new movie, 30 Days of Night, the latest contribution to the vampire genre.

No, the movie doens't always make sense, and you scream at the screen a character makes the wrong move and gets his or her neck chomped on as a result.

But you don't go to horror movies for logic; you go for a jump-out-of-your-seat good time. And this movie succeeds darn well on that criteria.

Josh Hartnett plays Eben, the local sheriff who still pines for his estranged wife, played by Melissa George. They and others find themselves stranded as a band of vampires led by Marlow descend for a month of good old blood sucking.

The killings are fast and furious with lots of gore splashing everywhere. The acting is decent, and the vampires are scary.

David Slade, who directed the masterful Hard Candy, ratchets up the suspense nicely but he does start to run out of steam a bit as Day 1 stretches into Day 17.

But the movie never really drags, and the performances are enough to keep audiences engaged.

Danny Huston convinces as the lead vampire, even if he doesn't say hardly a word of English through the whole movie.

The friend I saw this movie with didn't quite like the ending. I won't give it away, but it is a bit darker than usual. But I didn't mind. It was something different, just like the entire movie.

No great meanings were gleaned from the movie, but this wasn't a deep movie anyway --- just mindless entertainment, which, by the way, is the point.

Gone Baby Gone

Ben Affleck is the slacker actor, the one who showed promise at one point long time ago but keeps making crap like Gigli while his partner Matt Damon has since gone on to box-office glory as superspy Jason Bourne.

But he may have finally, finally redeemed himself --- behind the camera instead of in front of it.

His directoral debut, Gone Baby Gone, is a near masterpiece, a brooding police procedral of surprising depth.

Based on Dennis Lehane's novel of the same name, the movie centers around 31-year-old Patrick Kenzie, a Boston native who specializes in finding people. He's effective because he knows the gritty landscape of his city. He and his girlfriend, Angie (Michelle Monaghan), are hired by a couple who want the two detectives to "augment" the investigation into their nieces' disappearance.

Their investigation is complicated in many ways, the first of which involves a drug-addicted mother whose parenting skills are lacking, to say the least.

Nothing is as simple as it seems, and the lines between right and wrong blur real quick.

Ben Affleck makes the city as much of a character as the actors. The Boston accents are thick, and he beautifully captures the rhythm of Boston slang.

We feel as if we walk the same seedy streets as Patrick, played here by Affleck's younger brother, Casey.

And that sense of place only helps the performances, especially Casey's, pop off the screen. You see everyone's flaws, but you don't necessarily hate them for it. They are fully-drawn human beings grappling with life's shades of gray where the right thing may seem like the wrong thing and the wrong thing may seem like the right thing.

Affleck reminds us in suble and not so subtle ways that the life of a little girl is at stake at every turn, and at times, the suspence is heart-stopping. But it's not just the bullets that fly that make you gulp; the decisions these characters have to make, ones morally complex with no easy answers, leave you thinking long after the final credits roll.

That Ben Affleck makes those choices palpable and believable is a testament to this beginning director's skill. The script, written by Affleck and Aaron Stockard, is a sparkling blend of rip-crackling humor and potent pathos.

Like Mystic River, also based on a Lehane novel, Gone Baby Gone haunts you with the decisions we make in life and their consequences. It haunts you because you realize that doing the right thing doesn't guarantee that everything will work out in the end. Such is life.

But Ben Affleck getting behind the camera is probably one of the best decisions he's made in quite a long time.

Why Did I Get Married

Tyler Perry has perfected what KRS-One once called edutainment. Perry knows how to sneak a message in between uproarious laughs and soap-opera drama.

Perry confounded critics when his first movie, The Diary of a Mad Black Woman, adapted from one of his many gospel plays, packed movie houses across the country.

His movies, just as his plays, combined broad, over-the-top comedy with tear-jerker drama and come-to-Jesus moments. And in the center of at least two of his movies and many of his plays was Madea, a pistol-packing grandmamma who mangled Bible verses and whipped plenty of behind.

But in his last two movies, Perry sidelined Madea, whom he played, and has managed to make more mainstream movies that still stick to his major themes about faith and giving everything to God.

His latest one centers around four couples, all college friends, who gather in Colorado to talk about their marriages. You have Patricia, a best-selling author and successful psychiatrist who seems to have a perfect marriage with her husband, Gavin, an architect.

Angela and Marcus argue all the time, mostly about Marcus' ex-girlfriend and mother of his children. Then there's Terry and Diane, who is much too busy as a high-powered attorney to spend time with her husband or her daughter.

And finally, we have Mike and Sheila, whose confidence is crushed both by her husband's adultery and his cruel words about her weight.

Over the course of the weekend, secrets are revealed, some obvious and some not so obvious. The highlight of the film is Angela, played by Tasha Smith. She is a firecracker, not afraid to say what she thinks, even if it might be the wrong time to say it. Some of the biggest laughs come from words out of her mouth.

But the real revelation is singer Jill Scott. The poetess/songstress started her career on the stage, so it shouldn't be a surprise that she can act. The pain Sheila feels is etched indelibly in Scott's face. She is the moral and emotional center of the movie, and her transformation from victim to victor is one of the most powerful story arcs in the film.

Perry has never been a subtle storyteller, aiming to tell more instead of show more. But he has become better, and the performances he gets out of his talented cast are worth the price of admission alone.

What he can't do is end this movie very well. Wounds that were opened during that Colorado weekend are too easily patched by the end of the movie. Apparently, a good cry and hug is all you need to get a marriage back on the right track. In real life, issues like adultery require a little more than that to overcome. Life ain't a sitcom.

Yet, give Perry some credit. In a world where we see people get married and divorced in a matter of months, it is refreshing to see a director like Perry point out that marriage is serious business and not something to enter into lightly.

And it's much more entertaining to sitting through an episode of Dr. Phill.