What we do when we're bored // wait for spring

Released in 1993, Groundhog Day is the perfect Bill Murray movie: perverse, meaningful, and hilarious. Given that yesterday was March 30th and the weather outside was 45 degrees and cloudy, it seems like an apt time to revisit The Winter That Never Ends (TM).

The premise of the film is that Murray is a weatherman who visits Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover Groundhog Day. He hates the place: it's provincial, boring, and he can't wait to get back home to Pittsburgh. That same day there's a blizzard, and when the next morning Murray wakes up still in Punxsutawney, it's Groundhog Day again. And again. And again. And again.

Danny Rubin, the screenwriter along with Harold Ramis, claims that the core of the script was the idea of immortality: "I was curious about whether one lifetime would be enough for somebody."

It turns out that he's right. Bill Murray as weatherman Phil doesn't need just one life -- he also needs all the help he can get. As he becomes accustomed to the state of affairs that is reliving one day in a small town, over and over, he goes through phases of despair and personal revelation.

Perhaps the most meaningful of these is the fact that he's in love with his producer, Rita, played by Andie MacDowell. Watching him both pine after and seduce Rita is simultaneously funny and tragic. Or, as some people would call it, tragic comedy.

Like a weatherman getting caught in a snowstorm.

There's something relaxing about watching Groundhog Day. It eventually hits a rhythm where you know almost as soon as Murray does that it's a new day in Punxsutawney. The editing in particular is superb. Like good sitcom editing, the cuts are almost unnoticeable, but still coherent enough to follow new threads and happenings within the timeline.

Because of the timeline strictures -- one day, in one place, where the same main events happen -- Murray's acting is what carries the movie. The weatherman's emotional growth is about the only thing separating him from a cartoon like Wile E. Coyote, re-emerging each time from the canyon unflattened. Instead through the course of the movie Phil softens, and the changes that happen in the film are brought about by him.

He learns, in other words, how to be a decent human being. He learns how to catch people when they fall, how to ask questions, how to play the piano.

Most of the time.

The truth is it's never clear how Phil Connors the weatherman from Pittsburgh got stuck in the timeloop in the first place, or how to break the spell, or how any of this is happening.

It doesn't really matter. What matters is not how Phil got there or who he is. We are all just the sum of our parts, taking gambles in our particular places in the universe, living out our lives. What matters is what Phil chooses to do with his life, and what, in turn, we choose to do with ours.

Vampires Vampires Vampires

What We Do in the Shadows is a terrible title for a good movie. Just try saying it five times fast: What we do in the shadows what we do in the shadows what we do in the shadows whatwedointheshadowswhatwedointheshadows.

Fortunately, the film manages to surpass this difficulty to become a very funny entry in the documentary/mockumentary category. It's also a time-warp episode back to when Twilight was hip.

It was a long time ago.

The film features Peter, Viago, Deacon, and Jermaine from Flight of the Concords as vampires who live in a house together in New Zealand, and have agreed to be followed around by documentarians. Refreshingly, their vampirism is the traditional, centuries-old, pale, burned by silver type. You know, the one where they can transform into bats.

Much of the humor revolves around their inability to pass as humans.

I don't know, they look fine here, very human

Confronted by demons they thought had long passed them by -- an ex-lover, an ex-lover who is literally old, and their memories -- they seem to be constantly meditating on everything and nothing at all, and occasionally getting into bat fights. It's half comic, half thoughtful, with a lot of blood.

As the foursome delve into the town's social scene and practice their many hobbies developed over centuries, it becomes clear that, actually, what they aren't trying to do is be human: what they're trying to do is be happy.

With the blood.

There's also a bit of a werewolf rivalry, but I won't give it all away. I'm just relieved that someone finally revived a genre that was, well, a bit dead.

What We Do In The Shadows: 3/4 stars. Mind the gore.