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".
bjiff 9.23 探索山洞的故事 风景很美 节奏很慢 穿插着小镇居民的日常昼夜 后半部分还是看睡着了
-“我只是担心将来谁给你剪脚趾甲”
开头老式电视机里对都市生活的侃侃而谈 尾端医生的手电筒和探索队头灯的相似剪辑 以及全篇大段的中远镜头和只有老者的特写镜头 导演意图很明显了 风景很好看 镜头很美
画面极美...嗯...其余的不太好评价了，摩天大楼与洞的对比，老人与洞的联系...总的来说就是，我看不懂但我大受震撼
PS：不是很懂那段在洞口旁踢足球，从洞口之下仰望足球从一边飞去另一边，最终不小心落入洞中的镜头
妈呀，前半程别人都在强撑睡意，只有我堵在北京三里屯20分钟并强忍40分钟的尿意。睡是没睡着，看也没看到，刀刀说我几乎啥也没拉下。看电影时有被肯尼迪时期的杂志有意思到，也被探到帐篷里的马儿可爱到，也被老爷爷的年轮脸仔细观摩到，也有被洞洞里的火光微光美到。但绝大多的时间都在走神我马上要写的稿子。所以，搞不懂，没法评，说明我参与了一个实验？我想也不可能是纪录片，用剧情片拍过去纪录片盛事的意义是？（为什么要展示人放🐑吖，他死了为啥吖，看了一堆问号❓人类生命的顺从和探险吗（妈呀好多打高分的，你们一定跟我一样不打及格以上对不起专门在北影节花时间看这个片的自己，但是没必要，我想换两星了于是，这放其他时段出现一定是不择不扣的6分不能往上加的电影
#2021BJIFF no.11#美嘉国际三里屯，太解压了这片
故事十分感人，但煽情切入显得有些早，对整个家庭的表现，爸爸几乎隐身，只在剧情需要转折的时候出现，弟弟的存在也被弱化，就会产生生活里他们是母子的工具人电影里他们还是工具人的感觉，总体来说不够细。
每一个镜头都是一幅画（当然这也导致镜头数量很少哈哈
剪辑很顺畅，感觉有吸取《夺冠》的东西。最大的问题还是剧本，整个就是鸡汤文化，把成长标签片段的展示出来，但和苏桦伟真实的有些东西有差距，努力在表达“同工同酬”，始终只是点到为止。苏桦伟现实中在刘德华公司工作，以及训练给到的待遇，电影里全无体现，非常可惜。
大自然和放牧人最原始的声音，是风，是云，是水滴，是口哨，是呼唤。科学和死亡，人一生可能都无法穷尽的伟大命题。
电影本身是讲的洞穴勘探的故事，声效还原真的配得上“声临其境”四个字，就是没看上杜比厅真的气😤
很纯粹的一部电影，几乎集中在视觉的平静和音效的震动上。慢慢的探索，一束一束的火光，像云一样移动的牧群，还有与洞穴一样满脸皱纹的老人在呼吸。最终当洞穴学家示意停止后，我一度以为还会有反转，但没有。老人被裹上毯子，绘图员在雾中给草稿画上最后几笔，电影结束。（ps 看完本人地质学家的梦又复燃了）
三星半，为银幕而作的影片，人类这该死的好奇心
【BJIFF】不可思议的杜比影院体验，一部“听觉”电影。在洞穴初现时，后方传来的讨论声让我误以为是影院观众的交谈，转头一看发现是临近“火车进站”般的体验。
众人知道苏炳添奥运会刷新成绩的光面，又或许，这次会让人记得苏桦伟的暗面。
基本上2000年悉尼那場戲，後面那些旗，對内容表達是相輔相成。加油，頂住啊！
想起了艾什诺兹的《跑》：艾米尔跑不过国家机器，苏桦伟跑不出生存困境（一如白银越野马拉松的遇难者）。着力点不在于体育励志，明线是母子情，暗线是运动员的赛后境遇——从“同工同酬”的呼吁到速递员的转型，是什么在阻挡神奇小子跑下去？创作者在发出质询，尽管还是太温柔了。用力过猛之处在于安放了太多戏剧冲突，例如弟弟那条线不了了之，没能处理好全片的情感密度。在这个市场低迷的年头，华语电影却悄然迎来了跑步题材的并喷，和《超越》《了不起的老爸》同一起跑线，《神奇小子》绝对是领跑者。尹志文在彭浩翔手下磨练出了扎实的编剧技艺：故事、人物、主题，而不是让虚张声势的视听喧宾夺主；也慢慢发觉自己对电影的评价体系回归了传统。但话又说回来，最喜欢的一场亚特兰大接力赛，又几乎是纯靠视听建构的，奔跑的姿态本就有摧枯拉朽的能量。
#BJIFF2021# 9.28 美嘉三里屯 杜比全景声，运用声景soundscape；三里屯看了这么多场中间位子，最该坐在前排的偏偏买了后排的票，离屏幕太远难以入戏，倒是不觉得慢，还觉得剩一半呢就结束了
-十几年来，你拿了好多好多的金牌，我跟我自己说，我儿子是个天才，我儿子是一个不普通的人，但是你跑完这一届，还能继续跑吗？很快就没有人记得谁是苏桦伟了。我跟你爸走以后，谁来照顾你？还不是要靠政府津贴？-我可以回去送快递。-那不是你朋友帮你吗？不然谁会请你啊？如果我是老板的话，我都愿意请个正常人。-就是你整天提醒我不是一个正常人，从小到大你做任何事都是因为我残废，你当初生小弟也是因为我残废，小时候你叫我跑步是因为残废，…… -阿伟你是个残废我知道很惨，但是我有个残废的儿子当妈的也很惨。从你出生的那天开始，所有的人都怪我，我带你去跑步，你老爸说为什么硬要带儿子去跑残障？你小时候走不了，我逼你走，街坊邻居指着我骂，“你儿子哭成那样了你还逼他，你还是不是人？” 阿伟，你残废是天生的，没有人会怪你，只会怪我。
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