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".
故作姿态，在大人世界的强势引导下建构出虚拟的孩童视角。
7/10。 本该是一部感情张力还不错的片子。但问题在于叔侄的相互救赎感确实不足。男主和侄子的“缺陷”在一般人看来恐怕不是什么大问题（不够惨，还不如孩子他妈累）。因此，两人一路上的沟通与磨合显得也没那么动人。 贯穿始终的不同孩子们的采访，话题虽然丰富，但也总有一种“未完成”的感觉。 整部片也就显得平淡，但凤凰和小男孩的演技确实加分。尤其是这个boy咋这么小就有这么迷人的“忧郁”气质呢？！
Miles总是给每个角色最大的尊重，在他的电影里每个人都值得被爱被倾听。这部新作剧作层面明显不如前两作，但依然保持着细腻敏感。孤儿扮演这个设定很绝，侄子和叔叔互相拯救，依然保留学习成长的主题，温柔真的可以拯救一切。
PS:华金在小丑爆红后，接的竟是这样一部温柔的作品，他真是个有想法的演员，或者因为有了孩子才选择的这个题材？
美版《菊次郎的夏天》
看之前我觉得会是通过照顾孩子，两个人都打开了心结，完成了自我救赎的那种电影，看完后发现并不是，无论是大人还是孩子都应该像被采访的孩子一样，把想表达的说出来，怀有一个美好的希望，并正视困难的存在。电影的基调你说平淡吧也有爆发点，你说浓烈吧在黑白配色下很难感受到，至于华金菲尼克斯演技根本不用质疑，极其松弛的就完成了这个角色，A24的片子太挑观众了
我们说的话大部分都是Blah, blah, blah
中规中矩的话唠性成长类家庭和解类电影。不太懂为什么要搞黑白，油腻的华金加油嘴滑舌早熟boy的组合也挺好玩的。但没有什么特别的地方，just funny
松散、舒缓、清淡。全片的表达的是情绪性、私人的。“当生活给你许多挑战，你只有cmon，cmon，cmon”。叔侄两人在公园中的发泄令人动容，影院一片抽泣声。声音是绝对的主角：音乐、采访、叔侄的连接。观看当天的版本画面发紫，我觉得不如更纯粹一些的黑白。
虽然没有旁白，但片中读的那些书、做的那些访谈、录的那些环境音（所谓“使不朽”）、日记性质的自述、平添忧郁的黑白画面，都让人想起泰伦斯·马利克式的（故作）深沉。片中所有受访者都是真实出镜即兴发挥（包括一个后来被枪杀的叫布莱恩特的黑人小男孩），这倒挺适合方法派的华金·菲尼克斯。不知道这种亦幻亦真的骚操作是不是受了去年《无依之地》的启发。
问题家庭的聪明孩子，跟录音师叔叔一起生活工作的记录。穿插了很多青少年的采访，似乎多是移民，了解大家对新生活的感受
电影的趣味点在于 一边采访不同的孩子 一边和一个真实的孩子相处 采访是碎片化的 旁观者式的 因此可以保持一种轻松 毕竟只是工作 但和真实的孩子相处 需要全情投入 片刻不离 了解他的行为以及心理状态 这是无可避免的压力 男主角似乎是一直在逃避亲密关系的人 但这一次无法逃避自己侄子 两人常常处于一种“交锋” 但交锋也有治愈部分 全程黑白摄影+伪纪录片使电影有着很好的人文氛围和影调 但人物关系处理偶尔有些刻意成分 whatever 本片观感还是很好
我甚至不知道自己为什么要坚持看完这个电影……明明看完之后一定什么也记不住，观影过程也未必感受美好
断断续续看了很多天
小孩是小大人，大人是老小孩。还是会羡慕这种关系
好好看的“对话式”电影。黑白的纽约，好美好美。戏中那些反反复复的采访，同样的问题，那么多的回答，我看到了“希望”。这些孩子，他们想的好深刻。小男孩虽然不幸，但他好幸福，他的情感，小情绪，都有人重视。
#2021 chicago international film festival。当初在选片的时候，因为一条“美国版菊次郎的夏天”的短评，让我决定不能错过。事实证明确实拍的很棒。我只恨自己英语还不够好，这种纯靠台词推动，对白很精妙的电影，有些地方还是不能完全听懂get。生活中大家都不会用播音腔字正腔圆的说话，都是带有各种语气语音语调的吞音连音变音气声，还有很多俚语和生活化的口语，听起来就难了很多。笑点也不能每一个都踩到，经常大家笑的时候我一脸懵逼。但是不影响整体的观感，泪点的地方我还是热泪盈眶了，只是缺了很多有血有肉的细节。小男孩演的真的太好了，凤凰也确实配得上影帝级的表演。真的是很温暖治愈美好的一部电影。
太细腻了. 太喜欢了. 拿捏的真好. Felix和小男孩演的真好. 女主演的也挺好的.
#SthlmFF21 都舍不得标看过的喜欢。看的时候脑中一直反复闪回《弗朗西斯哈》，那种被击中的愉悦的感觉回来了。很私人（相对来说）甚至丢人，因为深知就是个bubble，但还是噙着眼泪说，我懂。
你的孩子，Ta是属于你的，又是不属于你的，Ta爱着你，也恨着你，Ta既乖巧、懂事、体贴、幽默、天真，也敏感、叛逆、刻薄、顽固，Ta对这个世界有一套自己的看法，Ta也关心环境社会和城市的发展。黑白影像下的城市很美，让人想到了《爱丽丝城市漫游记》，小男孩的表演很灵动也很成熟，缓慢的节奏和叔侄俩平静的对白有种奇特的催眠效果。
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