FILM REVIEW: Only Lovers Left Alive

Director Jim Jarmusch remains too cool for school. "Only Lovers Left Alive" is a vampire movie, but only incidentally so. Yes, there's a dash of vampire porn. But the movie primarily deals in ruin porn, English major porn, musician porn, and Tesla porn. Jarmusch's tech-savvy 21st century vampires traffic in blood bought under the table at hospitals; they steal electricity from the sky with suppressed Tesla tech. One vamp is Kit Marlowe, fobbing off his words with illiterate "zombie" fronts like Shakespeare; another vamp uses Schubert and others to get his tunes out there. Jarmusch isn't interested in the blood angle so much as the eternity angle. Vampires take the long view. Living for centuries as they do gives them a unique perspective. They mourn the destruction of the ecosystem and impending water wars engendered by "zombie" human stupidity. Save the planet; save the vampires. It's as good a reason as any.