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".
Mike Mills的才能是他能把极度私人的记忆和体验转化成非常学术性的essay film，但与此同时不丧失其真挚的情感内核
繁冗的工作让我越来越没有多余的心力和脑力去感受 去思考 我并没有因此而收获快乐 相反 我因为日渐远离我自己而感到悲伤 当我无法再讲心声书写成一段影评的时候 或许也未必是一件坏事 这大概是一个去伪存真的过程 一个亦如星河一般周而复始 轮回不止的过程 我喜欢那句台词：多年来 你会努力去理解你所处的快乐 悲伤 充实 空虚 是的 我一直在努力着 努力的寻找自己 失而复得……
华金演得太好了…擅长地理切换和各种堆砌的儿童版Her，散文 独白 颂歌 马戏团游行 录像带 音画不同步和墨水屏构成了隔阂，让人感觉这从来不是孤独 秘密 痛苦和快乐的正发生，最好看的还是纪录片的部分
其中的采访让我想到了我和我老弟的对话。我当时问他他有什么幻想的英雄，他的回答和我在他那个年纪的回答极为相似。我们都渴望一颗星球，一个帅气高大的英雄形象，一个超速豪华小型飞船，还有无敌的设定。
好温柔的叙述 想念黑白的纽约 以及小人难养
学会表达、学会理解自己的情绪、学会与所有的不确定和解，应该是人这一生都要为之努力的事吧，不管是孩子还是成年人。电影中穿插了很多儿童访谈，以孩子的视角去理解未来、理解生命、理解生活中遇见的种种艰辛，也是给成年人的一剂治疗。以及，养育小孩很难，但小孩也能带来新的能量。以及在家里的投影上看这部黑白电影，质地真好啊，靠在c先生身边，他身上的味道总能给我安全感，像电影里给到的安全感。
就非常温柔，看似不经意插入的纪录片取材片段的「无剧本感」很巧妙，当孩子们谈论他们的感受，关于未来，孤独，愤怒，以及他们眼中的世界
不给细分。因为这部电影太“我”了。它适合一个小孩，一位家长，或者一个像我一样有很多疑问却得不到答案的青少年。
情绪的不断变化，脆弱敏感又如此吸引人，可以一直一直拍下去。
跟着导演的视角变化 对过去与未来不断问询 试图寻找答案 又在平静的接受着自己的生活 随着受访者和城市街道的变化 导演内心的平静从未改变 华金菲尼克斯对细腻名干的内心捕捉的到位深刻 但导演对现实和问题没有加入很多自己的思考 没有点题和深化主旨
又一部以城市为背景板的聊天电影，叔叔与外甥的对话很舒服，“你一直在录音，那些噪音一直在冲刷着你的心，即使你以后会忘记所有事情，我也会提醒你”两个人在聊天与交往中互相成长，真好啊
4.孩子的成长，也是父母的成长
安安静静的一直看到了最后的最后。静静地感受两个小时生命，和自己的焦虑与不安和解。
當cliche 拍得不落俗套，孩子想像的未來以及成年人不敢面對的將來，累極時為自己打打氣，c'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon。生命糟透了，但很正常。
整体情绪仍旧是平静温和
絮絮叨叨的心灵鸡汤，很容易看无聊...华金的演技自不必说。小演员演的也很好，两人的互动太可爱！
演的不错，故事平淡。当同一种东西变得司空见惯时，一般的石块无法激起更大的波澜。
不是我爱的拍法，过于片段化过于讲述甚至有丢煽，但形式和内容仍是合在一起的，而且两个人在丛林互相吼的时候莫名打动。yep, sometimes it just unfortunately touch me.
黑白，诗意。我们是否也应该被孩子们教育呢？不知道，因为我们从未倾听过。影片缺点就是太平淡，小孩任性引起不适了。总之谈不上喜欢。
生活就像小孩的絮语，没有什么意义也还要一直说下去。
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