English writer-director Emerald Fennell puts the “more” in Yorkshire Moors with “Wuthering Heights”, her torrid but tawdry take on the oft-adapted Emily Brontë novel. Based on Fennell’s two previous efforts, Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, one may go into this movie expecting something similarly sinful and transgressive as her other features. But the filmmaker’s penchant for empty provocation is largely eschewed for a period piece that looks every bit the classic Hollywood romance, with only flashes of racier on-screen explications of licentious longing. Even though Romeo And Juliet is discussed at length during one scene in Fennell’s film, her version of an ostensibly similar romantic tragedy isn’t a radical reinterpretation à la Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and, given how many times Brontë’s classic has already been seen on screen, is worse off for it.

In late 18th-century England, Cathy Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington) and her father (played by Martin Clunes) take in a destitute young boy (played by Owen Cooper) without a name, whom Cathy dubs “Heathcliff”. Through the years, the two become close as Cathy teaches Heathcliff how to read and Heathcliff handles chores around the estate. As adults, Cathy (played by Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (played by Jacob Elordi) share an inseparable bond but looking to improve her situation, Cathy sets her sights on their wealthy new neighbor Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). Soon after an arranged run-in, Cathy accepts Edgar’s proposal for marriage and a heartbroken Heathcliff flees after what he sees as a betrayal of their inextricable bond. A year later, he returns to find Cathy is with child and well cared for at Linton’s manor, but she’s still secretly yearning to make an impossible affair with Heathcliff work.

Though “Wuthering Heights” isn’t the most revelatory telling of this tale, make no mistake that this is a first-rate production, where every dollar of its $80 million budget is well-represented on-screen. The production design is consistently stunning, harkening back to Golden Age theatrical opulence when the costumes and sets worked in concert to become characters in the story. One piece of gothic set design that’s particularly striking is a fireplace surrounded by melted plaster handprints, a haunting homage to the theme of reaching out for something incendiary and ill-advised. Linus Sandgren, whose cinematography in Saltburn was one of that film’s highlights, makes an absolute meal out of lavish nature settings where every moor is perpetually fog-enveloped and every sunset is blood red.

There aren’t any performances in “Wuthering Heights” that stand out as subpar but with the exception of Alison Oliver in an eccentric supporting role, not much of the acting here feels especially adventurous either. Much has been made about how star and co-producer Margot Robbie has promoted the film by waxing poetic about her off-screen “codependent” connection with Jacob Elordi. While I don’t doubt there were some sparks, I’d mostly chalk all the talk up to a marketing stunt so auditoriums could fill up for Valentine’s Day weekend. Regardless, the pair sell the love like the pros they are and indulge the darker sides of lust and obsession as well. But in a movie rife with BDSM undertones, it’s most disappointing that Cathy and Heathcliff’s mutual kink is treating everyone outside of their relationship horribly.

“Wuthering Heights” is hardly the first romantic drama to underscore an “us vs. the world” mentality but in Fennell’s cynical translation of this material, love means never having to say you’re sorry to bystanders you’ve treated with derision and contempt. There’s a mean streak in this movie’s Cathy and Heathcliff — primarily in how they manipulate others and dispose of them afterwards — that tracks with the callousness present in Fennell’s cinematic output thus far. A negative worldview comports better if you’re making a vigilante thriller or a dark comedy but when you’re tackling classical romance, it just feels like the wrong attitude to bring. Climbing these Heights wouldn’t feel as daunting if we had better footholds for character motivation beyond the doomed lovers imposing their will, no matter who they burn along the way.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
How To Make A Killing, starring Glen Powell and Margaret Qualley, is a black comedy thriller involving a young man disowned at birth by his ultra-wealthy family who will stop at nothing to reclaim his $28 billion inheritance.
I Can Only Imagine 2, starring John Michael Finley and Milo Ventimiglia, is a faith-based sequel following the lead singer of Christian band MercyMe as he struggles with his beliefs and inner demons while seeking a path through adversity.
Playing at Cinema Center is The Voice Of Hind Rajab, a docudrama nominated for the Best International Feature Film at next month’s Academy Awards about Red Crescent volunteers responding to an emergency call from a 6-year-old girl trapped in a car.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

At this point, there have been so many cinematic attempts at adapting Bram Stoker’s immortal vampiric tale that filmmakers shouldn’t bother cracking that coffin open unless they have something new to say. Romanian rabblerouser Radu Jude certainly had an original and outrageous take on the mythos with last year’s Dracula and now French director Luc Besson’s vision of the archetypal vampire arrives in US theaters. Developed with the working title Dracula: A Love Tale, this version focuses on the romantic angle between the titular Transylvanian and who he believes to be the reincarnation of his long lost love. Despite the added amorous angle and a dash of theater and whimsy to the typical Dracula proceedings, this newest telling is basically the same undead Count in a slightly different cloak.

We begin in 15th century Wallachia, where Prince Vladimir (Caleb Landry Jones) is away in battle when his wife Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) is ambushed and killed by Ottoman troops. As punishment for renouncing God, whom Vlad blames for Elisabeta’s death, he becomes the undead Count Dracula and is made to languish for centuries without his eternal bride. Flash forward to the late 1800s and real estate solicitor Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid) travels from Paris to the Count’s creepy castle in Transylvania. After keeping Harker there longer than he’d prefer, Dracula finds that his fiancée Mina (also played by Zoë Bleu) is the spitting image of his beloved Elisabeta. He sets out on a quest to find Mina with designs to turn her into a fellow vampire, so the pair can live eternally, as Vlad and Elisabeta never could.

Though it’s not quite as erotically charged and poorly acted as Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 iteration of Bram Stoker’s book, Besson’s Dracula nevertheless feels indebted to it stylistically and tonally. Melodramatic dialogue, as when Dracula relays to Harker that “life without love is the worst disease of all,” would not feel at all out of place in Coppola’s winner of 3 Academy Awards. Besson employs moody overlays and evocative montages that also recall the mise en scène of the Coppola effort, as when a dolorous Dracula hurls himself out of a castle window repeatedly, with death never coming. Sadly, Tom Waits must not have been available to reprise his role as the deranged Dracula familiar Renfield, a secondary character omitted from this new film altogether.

A considerable presence who’s more than welcome here is Christoph Waltz, who plays a priest hot on Dracula’s cape with a closely-clutched cross and wooden stake. He’s having a great time here, bringing his studious diction — hearing him pronounce “hematophagous” is a joy its own — and signature wit to the role; when a guard intimates, “A coffin, that’s the last place I’d want to sleep!” to the priest, he smirks back, “We all will one day.” Newcomer Zoë Bleu, the daughter of actress Rosanna Arquette, does well for her first time out in a dual role where her work is the lynchpin for the film’s emotional thrust. She has an off-kilter chemistry with Caleb Landry Jones, who isn’t a traditional leading man by any means but turns on the seductive charm where it counts. He’s also in the unenviable position of stacking up to Bill Skarsgård and his towering performance as the Dracula-adjacent Count Orlok in Nosferatu a little over a year ago.

For every inspired narrative choice Besson makes to differentiate his revamp from the coven of fellow Dracula renditions, there’s another that’s equally as ponderous. The most glaring example is the decision to include poorly-rendered CGI gargoyles that serve as underlings within Dracula’s fortress. A sequence where they chase an imprisoned Harker as he attempts to escape on the ice below the castle looks laughably bad, and lands on such a bathetic beat that I’m shocked it didn’t end up on the cutting room floor. There’s also a ridiculous montage where the stony henchmen zoom around Dracula and pile riches up high while the Count sits stone-faced at the end of an elongated dining room table. Those who prefer their vampire tales to have more romance than scares may fall for this Dracula but most will want to sink their fangs into a more balanced take on Stoker’s story.

Score – 2.5/5

More new movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Strangers: Chapter 3, starring Madelaine Petsch and Gabriel Basso, is a horror sequel concluding the slasher trilogy wherein the final girl squares off against the titular masked killers one last time.
Solo Mio, starring Kevin James and Alyson Hannigan, is a romantic dramedy in which a groom stranded at the altar for his destination wedding embarks on his planned honeymoon across Italy by himself.
Whistle, starring Dafne Keen and Sophie Nélisse, is a supernatural horror movie where a misfit group of unwitting high school students stumble upon an ancient Aztec Death Whistle that summons their future deaths to hunt them down.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup