★ FILM LOG ★

At the hospital, Dr. Karen Jenson and her ex Curtis examine Quinn's charred corpse. Turns out, Quinn isn't actually dead, and attacks the doctors, killing Curtis and biting Karen. Blade is back and rescues Karen because she reminds him of his mother. He takes her to his hideout, where Whistler, Blade's mentor, attempts to treat Karen.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the House of Erebus, Frost is reprimanded for his reckless behaviour threatening vampire existence. Frost believes humanity should be enslaved like cattle, whereas the vampire elders prefer more implicit methods of control. Furthermore, they look down on Frost as socially inferior because he is not a born vampire.

At the hideout, Blade finds that the serum he takes to inhibit his thirst for blood is losing efficacy. He and Whistler explain to Karen that they are vampire hunters, and Blade drops her off at her apartment. There, Karen is attacked by a policeman, Krieger. Krieger is not a vampire, but a familiar. Blade returns, revealing he was using Karen as bait, and subdues Krieger, who manages to get away. Karen and Blade track him down and force him to reveal the location of the vampire archives, which are located through the freezer of the nightclub kitchen.

Krieger rushes to Frost's party to tell him what happened. Frost kills Krieger and informs the rejuvenated Quinn that he wants Blade taken alive.

In the archives, Karen and Blade torture the morbidly obese record-keeper Pearl into revealing that Frost intends to perform a ritual to awaken the Blood God La Magra, who would grant him ultimate power. They are ambushed by Frost's men and almost captured, but Whistler saves them. A chase scene in the subway ensues, and when they return to the hideout, Whistler reveals Blade's true nature to Karen.

Meanwhile, Frost executes Dragonetti, head of the House of Erebus, by exposing him to sunlight, and takes over the council.

While trying to develop a cure for Blade's vampirism, Karen discovers that the anti-coagulant EDTA reacts explosively upon contact with vampire blood. Outside, Frost offers Blade a truce, asking him to join his side. Blade refuses. In his absence, vampires infiltrate the hideout, kidnapping Karen and turning Whistler. Whistler tells Blade that the vampires need his blood to complete the ritual before killing himself.

Blade goes after the vampires, and is shocked to find his presumed-dead mother at Frost's lair, now a vampire. Frost's crew takes advantage of Blade being caught off guard, and capture him. He is taken to the Temple of Eternal Night, and Karen is thrown into a pit with a zombified Curtis, though she manages to escape. The vampires drain Blade's blood, leaving him for dead. Frost's ritual is complete, killing he vampire elders and giving him La Magra's powers.

Karen finds Blade, and allows him to feed on her so he can regain his strength. He kills his mother and the other vampires before facing Frost. Blade's weapons are no longer effective against Frost, so he instead injects him with several vials of EDTA. Frost explodes.

Outside, Karen assures Blade she will continue working on a cure for him. He tells her he no longer wishes to be cured, wanting to use his powers to eradicate all vampires. Instead, he asks her to develop a stronger serum.

The epilogue finds Blade continuing his crusade in Russia.

I wanted so badly to enjoy this film.

Blade's impact is undeniable, and it offers great representation in its depiction of a black vampire and black companion without falling back on any negative stereotypes. There is inherently also a fair amount of racial subtext at play, not just because the protagonists happen to be black, but because it is an inherent feature in vampire narratives.

"Spare me the Uncle Tom routine." Frost tells Blade, entreating him to accept his vampiric nature and help him realise a world where vampires are treated equally regardless of his perceived pure-bloodedness. Ironically, he invokes the supremacy of their shared vampire ancestors, despite himself being turned. And of course, on several occasions, fleets of all-white police officers attack Blade, completely ignoring the white vampires freely terrorising the city right in front of them.

Unfortunately, this analysis is clunky at best. The film is far more concerned with being cool. That, they succeed at, to some degree. Dated CGI aside, techno music scoring massacres, blood sprinklers, the entirety of the subway scene, and Frost making out with his girlfriend immediately after ripping out Krieger's throat, face covered in viscera, are the DEFINITION of cool. But it isn't enough to render the film interesting.

For all his Sportacus moves, deadpan one-liners and incredible wardrobe, Blade is a flat character. His companion, Dr. Karen Jenson — in her equally badass leather jacket — also suffers from a lack of personality. She barely reacts to the events of the plot, and feels more like an automaton than actual person. The two thus have zero chemistry with each other, platonic or otherwise, though the scene in which Blade drinks from her is played as an orgasmic experience. This is never expanded on. Nor are the several Oedipal resonances present within the film. This makes it difficult to care about the characters, killing any would-be emotional stakes. Even Whistler's death has no impact. It's no Batman and Alfred.

Constantly, the audience is expected to believe things the film never bothers to justify, much like these highly artificial relationships. Most glaringly, this is the case with its vampires. I'm willing to look past the awful logic of vampires being both born and made, but though posed as a grave threat to humanity, they don't feel all that distinct from their prey. Familiars (wannabe vampires) just don't make sense in this world. All they gain are aversions to garlic, silver, and the sun, and a bloodlust which is a hassle to fulfil. Granted, Quinn is seen to regenerate several times, but the claim of superhuman strength feels overstated. The only reference the audience is given is when the vampires fight Blade, who cuts them down with ease anyway, so there really is no heightened sense of danger. This really does dampen the weight of Blade's final decision to forgo a cure because it would take his superhuman strength.

I suppose when you open a film with a blood rave, it is pretty hard to live up to the cosmic expectations you set up for yourself. Probably all this could have worked a lot better as a video game.

Her room is exactly how she left it, painted black with alternative music posters on the walls. There’s also an upside down crucifix hanging above her bed, which she quickly straightens. In her drawer, she finds a picture of her brother, Jacob, before a bomb disfigured his face. Her parents return home in the evening with Jacob’s girlfriend Tricia, but Jacob won’t leave his room.

On her second day home, Colleen watches some old home videos of herself and Jacob as children, and is interrupted by a knock on her door. Jacob’s old friends call on him though he isn’t taking visitors, and tell Colleen they don’t recognise her without all the “Marilyn Manson” shit on her face. Colleen attempts to connect with her brother, and though he greets her and hugs her, he doesn’t want to hang out. At the grocery store, Colleen meets her high school best friend Emily, who invites her home. Emily is still goth-adjacent, and some sort of animal rights activist now. When Colleen returns home, Joani is snippy about her being late without calling.

Her tense relationship with her mother carries on to the next day, where she complains about Colleen locking her bedroom door and dismisses Colleen’s vegetarianism when she is disgusted by her father putting meat on her plate at breakfast. After breakfast, the three visit Tricia’s parents’ farm. Later, Colleen tries to hang out with Jacob again, but is rejected once more. She watches more home movies, in which she and Jacob play until Joani scolds Jacob for having a toy gun. That night Tricia attempts to seduce Jacob, but he shrugs her off.

On the fourth day, Colleen dyes her hair pink with the old tub of Manic Panic in her drawer. While searching for a hair dryer in her parents’ bathroom, she finds a box of their weed. She visits Jacob again, wearing goth makeup and a nun’s habit, and performs a lipsync dance number to GWAR’s Have You Seen Me? This finally cheers Jacob up. They go out on a walk together in the woods, and for the first time, Colleen is talkative and laughing. A child comes across them and asks if they are monsters. Later, Colleen joins Joani and Tricia in shopping for a wedding dress. Tricia breaks down while Colleen is helping her with her dress, asking her if she believes in God, and confessing that she feels trapped.

On the fifth day, Colleen calls the Reverend Mother, telling her she needs more time. She goes to the pharmacy with Jacob, picking up a box of brown hair dye. A woman recognises Jacob from the papers, telling him she thinks the war was a waste of young men’s lives, and betting he’s grateful for Obama. At home, Colleen has dyed her hair, and asks Jacob about his accident. Joani arrives, and asks if they will watch the presidential debate in the evening. The siblings say no, and Jacob leaves, offending their mother. She accuses Colleen of not caring about anything outside of herself and stealing her weed. Colleen tells her she flushed the weed down the toilet, infuriating Joani, who calls Colleen a disappointment. Colleen returns to Emily’s house along with Jacob, and they play Truth or Dare together. Meanwhile, their parents are at Tricia’s parent’s house for their anniversary party, where they watch the debate. Obama talks about preventing Iran from procuring nuclear weapons in order to protect Israel. Back at Emily’s, Colleen drinks too much (2.5 beers) and runs to the bathroom to throw up. Outside, Emily tells Jacob she used to have a crush on him in high school. They start making out, and the film cuts to Tricia also engaging in infidelity on internet chatrooms. At the anniversary party, the adults are leaving, and Joani scores more drugs, weed and chocolate covered shrooms, from Tricia’s father. Colleen searches for Emily and Jacob, and in the process discovers Emily is making a pipe grenade as part of her activism. She then looks outside and catches Emily and Jacob in the throws of passion.

On the sixth day, Joani bakes cupcakes (spiked with marijuana) while Colleen is packing. Joani asks Colleen if she can stay one more night so they can celebrate Halloween together. Jacob is a lot more sociable now, and celebrates with his family and Tricia in a Halloween montage. Colleen starts feeling a little strange and realises Joani spiked the cupcakes. She storms off in anger, and Joani follows. They have a heart-to-heart wherein Joani opens up about her depression and the two make up. Later that evening, the parents have gone to bed, and Colleen, Jacob and Tricia watch a film together. Colleen unknowingly eats a spiked chocolate left in the fridge. There’s a knock on the door. Jacob goes to answer and is kidnapped. Panicked, Tricia and Colleen chase his kidnappers in the car, but the shrooms have kicked in and Colleen starts hallucinating, culminating in her crashing into a tree. The girls are fine, and they find where Jacob has been taken. His “kidnappers” are not the animal liberation group like Colleen assumed, but his old friends, who wanted to get him to their party. Jacob can’t breathe and has to be taken to the hospital. The doctor tells his family he is stable.

Cut to a year later, Obama has won and Colleen has taken her vows. She is in regular contact with her family now and takes the bus back to Asheville, where Tricia and Jacob are getting married.

Little Sister is seemingly the perfect title for this film, a double entendre referencing Colleen’s role as both the little sister in her family, as well as being a “little” Sister in the Church, on the cusp of becoming an actual nun. The film itself unfortunately does not follow through with this dichotomy with very little examination into Colleen’s ecclesiastical motivations. You never really get the sense she’s religious, let alone wants to be a nun. There is zero discussion around her faith, save for a few visual signifiers. She fixes the upside-down crucifix on her wall, and says grace at the dinner table once, but when Tricia asks Colleen if she believes in God, her response is a non-committal “mhm.” This too could have been an interesting thread, a woman cloistering herself to escape from the chaos of her home life, but is never developed. Neither is there any engagement with how the war and her brother’s disfigurement might impact Colleen’s faith. At the beginning of the film, the Reverend Mother doesn’t think Colleen is truly devoted to becoming a nun, and at the end she takes her vows. The audience is not given any reason to dispute the Reverend Mother’s doubts in between these events.

Colleen is conceptually such a fascinating character, but nothing is ever done with her. Her ex-goth identity feels like more of a quirky gimmick, because no insight is given about what it actually means to her, and she easily slides between her meek nun and manic pixie appearances. Even if it was “just a phase” and something she no longer identifies with (which you cannot tell either way because it is so surface level), there should at least be some depiction of how it influenced her current identity. Despite all her potential, Colleen is painfully dull, saved only by Addison Timlin’s sweet performance. The most interesting thing about her is the gorgeous deep wine lipstick she wears at Emily’s house (colour-matches would be welcome). She is so passive, accepting whatever the plot throws at her with no real reaction, that it is difficult to buy her as a person at all.

It isn’t just a Colleen thing, which could be chalked up to a traumatised personality, and again would have been incredibly interesting had it been developed. All the characters lack fleshing out and interiority. Jacob himself seems barely affected by the war, despite that being the driving force of the film. He’s a shut-in for two days until Colleen dances for him and suddenly he is cured of any PTSD we’re told he has but never shown. Their father’s character is basically non-existent and the film would be no different without his inclusion. Another thing that could have been fascinating if done deliberately (mentally ill mother, absent father) but alas. One of the most interesting moments of the film to me was when Colleen caught Emily (an eco-terrorist who had been building a pipe-grenade) making out with her veteran brother who had been disfigured by a landmine explosion. And of course, it is never mentioned again. In fact, Emily just disappears after this scene. The ending feels like it is supposed to be quietly hopeful, suggesting that love and understanding are enough to get through life together, but reads bleakly: Colleen forgives all her mother’s abuse and becomes a nun despite ever expressing a calling, and Jacob and Tricia are married despite clearly both being dissatisfied in their relationship.

The film’s attempts to engage with politics are equally disappointing. In fact, engage is the wrong word. There are constant references to the 2008 elections and Obama, but that is all they are. It is as if it believes mentioning it enough times, no matter how surface level, counts as social commentary. Considering the film was released after both of Obama’s terms, you’d think there would at least be elements of hindsight present.

Clark introduces so many interesting themes, but never develops or takes them anywhere, which is a shame because there is just so much wasted potential. There is also a constant chicken motif present throughout, but I haven’t been able to figure out what that’s about.

All in all, Little Sister is let down by the weight of what it could have been. Not only in terms of its unrealised potential, either. I won’t mention how badly beginning your film with a Marilyn Manson quote has aged (whoops, I just did) because that is to no fault of the film-makers, but I do take issue with how completely incongruous its implications are with the film itself. The quote paired with the movie poster, portraying Colleen as more heavily “goth” than she ever appears, is completely misleading as to the type of film this will be. As I mentioned before, the “ex-goth” aspect of her character is hardly made relevant, and to market the entire film around it is disingenuous. In all honesty, I did only pick this film up because I assumed it would be a bigger feature of the story, and it would have been so much more rewarding if it was.

The other two climb the tender of the train. One fights the fireman and pushes him off the moving car. They then order the engineer to stop the train, and proceed to rob the passengers at gunpoint. One of the passengers attempts to escape, and is shot. The bandits disconnect the locomotive and ride it down the railway track before fleeing on horseback.

Meanwhile, the telegraph operator is found by his young daughter, who wakes him up. He goes to the saloon to inform the locals of the robbery, and they form a posse to hunt down the criminals. The posse chases them on horseback and guns them down.

The Great Train Robbery is significant for threading together the techniques experimented with during the birth of cinema, to create a cohesive narrative, as well as revolutionising film by introducing techniques such as cross-cutting and continuity of action, and dynamic camera movement.

There is, either at the beginning or end of the film depending on the projectionist's preference, a standalone scene of Barnes, leader of the bandits, shooting at the camera and into the audience. Frames like a wanted poster, this scene, if viewed at the beginning as I did, emphasises the danger and stakes of the proceeding film, with the breaking of the fourth wall posing a direct threat to the audience. Of course, they did not actually think they were going to be shot, but to quote an earlier review of mine (bigheaded, I know): " I suppose the closest comparative experience for a 21st century audience might be horror video games on a VR headset. A novelty to most, one cannot help but jump at the monster that approaches, despite being fully aware it cannot harm you."

The acting in the film is somewhat exaggerated to make up for lack of narration, but is far less theatrical than previous films such as 'A Trip to the Moon.' This paired with a somewhat-contemporary subject matter and variety of camera angles makes for a far more realistic film, combining the familiarity of actuality footage with the excitement of the Cinema of Attractions.

In the version I watched, the music further contributed to this excitement and amplified the tension present throughout, though I am unsure whether this was the originally intended score.

All in all, not too shabby for my first Western film.

The film follows a group of astronomers, who look more like wizards (specifically wizards from a holographic foiled picture-book I owned as a child and can find no evidence of on the internet), as they decide to take a trip to the moon. They commission a capsule in the shape of a bullet, which is shot towards the moon. The moon watches the capsule approach with its human face. I am fascinated by the face of the moon, as it looks near-identical to the malevolent being I often envisioned on the full moon's surface as a child. I wonder if Méliès tapped into a universal vision born from the human tendency of pattern-recognition, or whether I unconsciously absorbed his enduring iconography. The capsule hits the moon in the eye, which though played for laughs, is incredibly violent, and the now-famous frame would not be out of place among anti-imperialist political cartoons.

These bumbling wizard-scientists with names like Omega, Micromegas, Nostradamus and Paragaragaramus, and the act of shooting a capsule into space are supposed to be ridiculous, but is not far off from actual space travel, this imagery conceived even before the invention of the airplane. It is the greatest tragedy that those who worked on the film likely did not live to see the moon landing.

Regardless, the astronomers disembark, having swapped their wizard hats and robes for a more archetypal colonial "explorer" outfit, watch the earth rise, and proceed to fall asleep. This displeases the beautiful Phoebe, perched upon a crescent, and her celestial companions, so she awakens them with a burst of snowfall. The astronomers seek shelter in a cave, which happens to be full of mushrooms. The hand-painted and textured sets depicting the moon are beautiful, not only creating a fantastical feel to the film, but also emphasising the unfamiliarity of the moon. The theatrical staging and camera position, as well as exaggerated movements of the actors add to this effect.

An insect-like native Selenite emerges, approaching the astronomers with curiosity. They kill it easily by hitting it with an umbrella, and it disintegrates into a puff of smoke — just one example of the marvellous practical effects pioneered by Méliès. More Selenites appear, and this time, they capture the astronomers and march them to their king. Notably, the Selenites have not been depicted as engaging in a single act of violence. The astronomers easily overpower the Selenites, genociding them with umbrellas before rushing back to their capsule.

One of the Selenites manages to cling onto the vessel (the birth of a trope superhero films will overuse forevermore) as it hurtles back to earth, landing in the sea. This is shot in a glass aquarium full of tadpoles and other multimedia elements, something so beautiful in contrast to contemporary film's obsession with verisimilitude. The astronomers are pulled ashore by a ship, where they are met with celebration. A statue is erected in their honour, depicting a wizard stepping on the face of the moon, and the Selenite is paraded around like a freakshow.

Art has always been political, and this remains true of film.