FILM

Aubrey Plaza snarls her way into your heart in “Emily The Criminal.” (Photo: Provided)

Nothing But The Tooth

By Bryan VanCampen

The money people always worry whether characters are “likeable.” Most script re-writes come from an executive memo to “make the lead character more likeable.” I love the actor Aubrey Plaza because she doesn’t give a tin weasel whether her characters are likeable. Plaza knows Hitchcock’s Dictum: you’ll love a person if they’re good at their job.

In writer- director John Patton Ford’s “Emily the Criminal” (Roadhouse Attractions-Vertical Entertainment-Low Spark Films-Fear Not Productions-Evil Hag Productions, 2022, 94 mins.), Emily (Plaza) is barely making a dent in her student loan debt, working as a delivery driver for a catering company. All she wants is a job doing graphic design—Emily is a talented artist— but she got a DUI and did some prison time, and because of background checks and humiliating, demoralizing, soul-sucking job interviews, Emily can’t catch a break.

Emily is extremely angry.

She gets a tip on a gig from a co-worker, and she nds herself using stolen credit cards to buy electronics that are sold under the table and bam! $200. As her boss ( eo Rossi from Net ix’s “Luke Cage”) tells her, there’s more money to made, but the jobs are de nitely high-risk. Much like Ben Younger’s “Boiler Room” (2000), “Emily the Criminal” feels realistic and well-researched, and the whole thing is driven by Aubrey Plaza’s fearless work in the title role, bloodied but unbowed and—a rarity in American crime lms—utterly unrepentant.

It was slow going at the day job, so I spent most of my time re-reading Stephen King’s 1975 vampire novel “Salem’s Lot,” a fusion of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and ornton Wilder’s “Our Town” (with a splash of “Peyton Place”). So maybe it wasn’t an accident that I came home that night and watched Jamie Foxx as a blue-collar vampire hunter in director J.J. Perry’s “Day Shi ” (Net ix-87Eleven Entertainment-Impossible Dream Entertainment, 2022, 114 min.).

King’s novel hews to vampire tradition, but “Day Shi ” changes things up, to the point where sometimes the bloodsuckers can be seen in mirrors, and sometimes not; the title tells us that Foxx stalks his prey in broad Los Angeles daylight. (Foxx has one week to come up with ten grand to pay for his daughter’s tuition and a set of braces, or his ex-wife plans to take the kid and move away.) Turns out that vampire hunters are a union gig, where the agents collect vampire teeth in exchange for money. Foxx’s character got drummed out of the union, and to get back in, he has to take a by-the-book cubicle accountant (Dave Franco) into the eld to make sure Foxx follows proper procedure.

I had fun watching “Day Shi ”, even though I knew exactly where it was going— the maverick paired with the rookie—so when it veered le , as it were, I was right there veering le . en again, this ain’t my rst rodeo. “Day Shi ” won’t win any prizes, but it’s more fun to watch than “Morbius”, a vampire movie that sucks on every level.

RIP Anne Heche (“ e Adventures of Huck Finn”, “I’ll Do Anything”, “Walking and Talking”, “Donnie Brasco”, “Volcano”, “Wag the Dog”, “Six Days, Seven Nights”, “Psycho”)

“Emily the Criminal” is playing at Cinemapolis, 120 East Green Street, (607) 2776115; for showtimes go to https://cinemapolis.org/#/page/now-showing. “Day Shi ” is streaming on Net ix, www.net ix.com.