Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
看到有些朋友因为某些缘故都会拿它与另一部音乐片做对比，但很遗憾，各方面，各方面它都无法比拟LaLaLand. 包括感情线
当然，关于这种有所执着，有所梦想的坚持，如若能代入于观众的语境，那必然是很好的，只可惜主角身边一群艾滋患者，也让我试图代入主角时心有戚戚。
9/10 倒数时刻可以说是我年度最佳之一了，作为一部人物传记片，导演并没有选取拉森人生最高光的时刻，而选择了他人生最难熬，困窘的时刻，它包含人生的喜怒哀乐与潮起潮落。为什么他可以一直坚持音乐剧创作，他本可以选择一项工作安稳生活，但他没有放弃，他是最后坚持下来的人。影片音乐剧和现实来回穿插，每一首歌都是拉森生活的点滴。这不仅仅是一部传记，是一部励志音乐电影，这就是为什么它会比《梅艳芳》好。
最好玩的是那段去广告公司做研究小组赚外快。-I don’t understand how u can take any of this seriously. -because they pay me. -money isn’t everything. -Well it doesn’t hurt. -are u sure about that?
太感动了，歌好听，情绪也很饱满，加菲尔德值得一个奥斯卡影帝提名！另外，他永远是最好的蜘蛛侠。
冲奥题材和表演都比较刻意的一部。导演是音乐剧界著名人物，这部片里舞台与现实的实时切换，片里音乐剧的流畅表现可以看出对此方面实有见解。加菲尔德饰演的拉森直面惨淡，坚持创作的故事却无法直抵观众内心，一方面是此类潦倒又崛起的故事千篇一律没出心意，另一方面就是对拉森生活表现不够，无论是爱情、友情、生活和工作中的辛酸喜悦，都是循规蹈矩地拍，可能唯一令人惊艳的地方就是泳池中浮动的音符。说回表演，能看得出加菲演的很卖力，但片尾真实拉森的片段一出还是觉得没抓到神韵，相比近年大火的传记片拉米·马雷克扮演的牙叔还是逊色很多。
艺术源于生活，又高于生活，普通人最怕那些让人看不懂的高于生活。导演把电影分成三个维度表达，生活表达灵感来源，舞台剧表达高于生活的展示，坐在台上的娓娓道来恰如其分的把两部分缝到一起，即超越了舞台剧的限制，又增加了电影的表达边界。咖啡馆一幕把电影布景推开变成舞台剧，处处皆有此种别样风情。最喜欢的一幕是no more，配合现代舞编排，那真的是我们第一次拥有独立生活空间的欢欣雀跃。很多生活灵感的记录，让我想起冬天我的厨房，阳光撒下，我特别想这样歌舞起来，它接近人的本能。最可贵的是它又兼有讽刺跟幽默，panel一幕那位口吐芬芳半句不离音乐理论跟分类的乐评人，几乎是豆瓣评论家们了，即幽默风趣又让人感慨，为什么乐评人就要理论向呢。整部电影着重表达生活灵感，就是告诉大家艺术之美，处处皆是生活的点滴。
加菲总是让我想到Angels in America 虽然musical可能真的不是我的genre 但还是很感人很燃
看过rent，见到其中一版mimi的扮演者也有参演这部电影。端了五年盘子，写了最重要的那首歌，花了八年时间准备的presentation获得巨大好评，依然无法出道，所有追梦人的一个缩影。好在伯乐和朋友的鼓励让他继续坚持下去。rent的故事原来是来自他的朋友们，可惜生命停在了剧上映前一夜，好像唐涤生，天妒英才。似乎都是这样敏感、脆弱和感性。
根本看不下去，太流水账了，剧情非常俗套，歌舞完全嗨不起来。
影片选择结束于主角30岁生日晚会上蛋糕蜡烛前的一个笑脸，而随后的五年至逝于成名作登台前夕的信息留给了旁白。而这五年，必有他心路的转变、心理的冲突，这些恰恰才是我最想看的啊。无奈影片为了塞进更多的歌舞堆料，将看似充满巧思的叙事主线敲得稀碎，而最终未能讲好一个完整的故事。
#Netflix# 3.5分。小三十焦虑，那种穷困又自恋的不会再出现一次的危机；这种感觉和表演、节奏是匹配的，但一切也就太“音乐剧”了（就目前没有音乐剧真正走进心里，一直不知道哪里出问题）。不过一大收获是对《吉屋出租》（一直冥冥很喜欢，当然中文版真的非常难看）从语气到内容似乎更明白了一点。
剧情也是够俗的，没想到歌舞部分更是灾难，难看又难听（歌词倒是挺有特色）。不如多拍拍加菲游泳。
最后有点感人，加菲老了但露出脆弱一面的时候还是像小朋友
片中有很多眼熟的音乐剧演员献唱，但轮到加菲就断崖式下跌。
可能是这类故事我真的看太多了，不管有多喜欢seasons of love，对这部的感受也只是一般【当然有的歌还是不错的】
滴答，滴答……这是时间的声音，生命的声音，死亡的声音。在最后的那声响起之前，你会作何选择？
故事有够碎碎念的，加菲演得也好卖力，最后资料视频加1星
动画之于电影，电影之于音乐剧——绝对是利大于弊。另外很喜欢他朋友的段落，激发灵感、激发情感、激发问题，而问题恰是死亡无法掩盖之物的答案。不过影片的音乐（尤其前半部分）不是我菜。P.S. 加菲从头含泪至尾，心疼了心疼了。
I may never find a musical that speaks to me like La La Land, or maybe it’s not a musical I should be looking for. And stories like these, they make you wander why, and how could I.
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
