"Then I'm gonna knock your tonsils out your asshole! How do you like THEM apples, huh?"

Hooptober 5.0 #13 (fulfills female director requirement)

Filthy, grimy, rude vampire goodness. Thank you, Grand Illusion, for helping me inch toward my Hooptober goals. I'm way behind on my reviews, so I'm just gonna bullet out some of the things I liked best.

• Kathryn Bigelow is THE best American action director, 1987-present. @ me if you want, but you'll be wrong if you contradict me on this point. The motel shootout and the final confrontations are as badass as anything attempted by dude filmmakers anytime lately.

• Adam Greenberg shot the living shit out of this. I hope he's enjoying his retirement, but can we please have another cinematographer who can make things look half as awesome as any image in Near Dark or the first two Terminators?

• I spent the first stretch of the movie thinking Adrian Pasdar was kind of a boring lead, but he grow on me. The kid gets more vicious and reckless as the stakes get raised on him, and by the time he started laughing maliciously during the big truck scene, I was totally on board with him. It makes total sense that Pasdar has been making good money playing sort of upstanding, sort of dark-hearted authority figures in his middle age.

• Hey, remember all the totally normal people Lance Henriksen has ever played? No, neither do I, bless 'im.

• OMFG, a convincing characterization of a child vampire not played by Kirsten Dunst! Buy a lottery ticket and look out for a damn blue moon.

• This movie posits a cure for vampirism that is so implausibly prosaic it ends up being more charming than irritating—I think. I was stuck between being amused and annoyed by it during the film, and my opinion may vary widely from this viewing to the next.  

• Extra points for using the fangless vampire trope. Fangs are kind of a copout, you know? Vampirism is so much more visceral and scary when they have to tear into flesh with their natural-born human teeth.

• And now, saving the best for last, the primary reason you should absolutely see this movie no matter what: Mr. William Paxton, late and lamented, dearly departed, born to play a vampbilly who gives zero fucks or less. I don't know if I've ever enjoyed him so much, and I've seen Aliens five times. Behold the swaggering glory of a man who knows he's been given 99.9% of the movie's best one-liners. RIP, buddy.