B’twixt Now and Sunrise (2011)

 

Man, oh man does this film split the commenters right down the middle.  Some of it may depend on which version you see though.  I’m not sure what the official version was that I saw but it was listed as The Authentic Cut; whatever that means.  Also depends on what the movie was titled as well because I didn’t see a movie simply named Twixt. I saw a film titled B’twixt Now and Sunrise.  Anyway, let’s talk about things that are facts regardless of what version you saw beginning with it was written and directed by the legendary Francis Ford Coppola.  Starring as Hall Baltimore is Val Kilmer (Top Gun, Heat, and True Romance), Baltimore is a writer.  While at a book signing Hall meets the local sheriff Bobby LaGrange portrayed by Bruce Dern (Coming Home, The Hateful 8, and Nebraska) who wants Hall to come to the morgue and see a dead body.  Yeah, as usual Dern does weird well here.  Let me tell you just about everyone in this film is weird.  There’s Elle Fanning who plays a young girl nicknamed “V” because she looks like a vampire.  Hall wants her to come back to where he is staying to have a soda, but she tells him she cannot go into the hotel. 

 

The hotel owners are played by Lisa Biales and Don Novello (New York Stories and Head Office), some might also remember him as Father Guido Sarducci from the early years of Saturday Night Live.  The two of them are nuttier than squirrel poop!  Then there’s Ben Chapman (The Thin Red Line and The Remains of the Day) playing Edgar Allan Poe who Hall meets in the dream version of the town he is in.  He met V there too.  Meanwhile, Hall decides he wants to write a book about the town and about the dead girl Sheriff Bobby took him to see.  He tells Bobby the book will be about vampires.  As he tries to work through writers block, he stays in contact with his wife Denise, who is played by Kilmer’s real life ex-wife Joanne Walley (Willow and The Man Who Knew Too Little), through video chat.  The best part about this casting is she is riding his ass saying she needs money, and it feels like we are seeing into the Kilmer’s former marriage.  Soon, Hall’s dream world and the real world begin to collide and run together all the while he is trying to solve a town mystery and there’s still the source of his writers block to deal with.  There seems to be two different films all depending on which version of the edit you see.  From what I can gather I think I saw the better version but what do I know.  I guess I'd have to watch the other version to decide but I don't know if that will ever happen.

 

  

Either way it’s confusing and if you wanted to skip over this one, I would understand but if you can get your hands on the re-edited 2023 version, I recommend that version.  When you dig into the basis of the story for the film you can find out the original idea came from a nightmare Coppola had.  The finished product ends up being a personal journey Coppola made is an attempt to deal with the death of his son Gian in 1986.  Now I’ve seen trippier films, but I haven’t seen one this trippy in a while.  Kilmer, who I have never been a big fan of is nothing short of wonderful here running the gambit of emotions through the film.  Perhaps the most surprising part is his ability to make me laugh while he is trying to work through his writers block.  Don’t worry, the scene is supposed to be funny.  Elle Fanning was charming and more than a little unnerving in her first attempt at horror.  The film while being shot in both color and black and white is gorgeous (the black and white dream sequences might be better than the scenes shot in color) and has a great spooky feel to it.  Coppola thought of it as a gothic horror story and with Poe’s ghost I have to say, “Well, yeah.”.  Now there’s tons of subplots in here from a cult leader to a priest who might be a serial killer to dead people communicating through Ouija boards to a boatload of other stuff.  This one is definitely nuanced, and it isn’t for everyone.  As it is I sort of dug it and I’ll go three and a half Snakes on a Lake out of five for whatever movie title they are going with for this version these days.