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Reviews
Doctor Sleep (2019)
A great story well told. And a little bit of pandering to sit through.
When I first read that Stephen King was writing a sequel to The Shining, my instincts said it was probably a bad idea. Happily, sometimes my instincts suck. I thoroughly enjoyed Doctor Sleep. The book had me hooked with excellent characters and a small-scale narrative that actually had little to do with the events in The Shining, and certainly didn't pander to the reader in the way Hollywood loves to do (see South Park's "Memberberries" for more on that). I admire the way in which King handled this difficult sequel.
I'm happy to say that I really enjoyed this movie as well, and highly recommend it. It is mostly true to the book, the acting is great, and the pandering is confined to the ending (the least impressive part, more on that later).
The characters seemed as true to the book as should be expected. In particular, I thought Rose, Abra, Crow Daddy, and Danny Torrance were all bloody fantastic. Rose is an interesting character, presented in great yet mysterious detail in the book, and not easy to bring to life. But for me Rebecca Ferguson was flawless. Ewan McGregor makes for an excellent, likable-but-flawed Danny Torrance, and in one particular shot, I thought he channeled Jack Nicholson's acting very effectively, a startling moment.
The movie contains some beautiful and haunting shots. Two highlights for me were Rose flying through the sky, looking for steam, and a certain shot of Grandpa Flick savoring the steam he's just consumed, looking like something out of Bloodborne. (The only thing I really missed was Rose's one-toothed face! Wish they had included that.) The Baseball Boy's torture scene was incredibly gruesome and hard to watch - but that, of course, is precisely its intended effect.
The score is effective, frequently using the 'heartbeat' effect from Kubrick's The Shining, which produces an instant atmosphere of tension.
Now, in my opinion, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a masterpiece of art, and in my experience, no modern film comes close to the quality of its shots, audio, or filmcraft, including this one. But that doesn't mean that Doctor Sleep's cinematography and soundtrack aren't excellent in their own right.
There are some interesting differences and similarities among the two books and films. Doctor Sleep (the movie) omits some interesting aspects of the book, such as Danny's sponsor and the love affair between Rose and Snakebite Andy. But that probably makes sense in terms of the screenplay.
More crucially, in the films' universe, The Overlook was never destroyed, thus giving the movie adaptation of Doctor Sleep the opportunity to.... Go back to the hotel.
This takes us to the ending, which is the film's weakest part (the same is probably also true for the book). Going back to the Overlook and touring its key locations did nothing for me, and at that point I began to feel the movie's considerable length.
But at that point I was already a satisfied customer. I got to see an excellent novel brought to life in an excellent way. Go check it out.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Fine visuals and direction. But let's talk about the Alien series...
The film is forced, by its weighty legacy, to be about monsters terrorizing a spaceship crew that includes an android and a strong female lead. The monsters' larval stage, as we know all too well, impregnates unwitting humans, producing terrifying offspring that burst forth through the victims' chests. Given those ground rules, plus the fact that five films covering the scant subject matter have now been made, how can one possibly hope to innovate?
Well
What if the creature bursts forth from the victim's *back* this time?
The original 'Alien' was a great sci-fi movie in an era of great sci-fi. It had superb direction and excellent acting; the names of Ridley Scott and Sigourney Weaver come to mind instantly. It also had tremendous artistry behind it, both visual (H.R. Giger's awe-inspiring designs) and auditory (Jerry Goldsmith's fantastic soundtrack). I would also argue that the film was based on a very strong story, written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. These are names we don't hear often; in Hollywood, writers seem to be regarded about as highly as the pencils they write with.
In any case, the movie was a delightful coming together of artistic talent that worked on every level.
What does this movie, which is from a very different age in Hollywood, bring to the table? Ridley Scott is back (again), and indeed, the direction is fine. The strong female lead is good. The soundtrack is acceptable; it contains some great atmospheric, moody pieces, but disappointingly reuses music from the original Alien as well as the main theme of Prometheus. In a jarring breaking of the fourth wall, David plays that theme on a flute in this movie; a beautiful and adventurous piece is clumsily retconned into being a requiem for Dr. Shaw composed by an evil android.
The visuals, specifically the look of the aliens and the few glimpses of genuinely new vistas we get in this movie, were quite good - but when are they not? And the best parts are still H.R. Giger's.
So all these elements are perfectly fine. The story is where it all falls apart. You and I both knew that before going to see this film. After all, how could it not?
Alien's story was simple but intelligent. It was also small in scale. We weren't told much about the world it takes place in, because that didn't matter. We only needed to know about one scrappy crew, one android, one evil corporation, and one terrifying monster. Alien's story also contained a great mystery in the form of the Space Jockey; the fossilized alien, found sitting in his command chair with a big hole in his chest. In space, chance encounters are surely unbelievably rare, and ages must have passed between his death and the moment our crew found this ghastly relic. Much was left unexplained; the voids in the story helped make it good, by having certain things exist in negative space.
Alas. We were forced to revisit this universe of mystery so many times that it has no mystery left. We explore one scrappy crew after another, as they are harassed by the same terrifying monsters, the same evil corporation, the same androids.
I found Covenant's first act to be particularly tedious, as we go through the motions of having our spacecraft destroyed by a freak space weather event, watching characters in whom we're not the least bit invested die and freak out. I was simply waiting for us to get to the planet, already. We soon do, at which point our characters promptly take off their helmets, ingest alien goo, and start dying. The audience has come to expect this, and is by now fully familiar with the sequence of events when an Alien impregnates an unlucky character. And so, the movie fast-forwards through the process, taking us from landing to infestation to the good stuff - bloody convulsions, cracking bones, and the emergence a fully grown, bullet-proof Xenomorph - with record speed.
There were some fun and thrilling scenes involving the creatures, and thankfully there weren't any zombies this time around.
Because this is meant to be a film series, the movies are obliged to contribute to a greater, overarching story. To this end, they have provided unsatisfying answers to some mysteries, and replaced others with plot holes; for one, I sure as hell don't know how the Space Jockey could have ended up in its fossilized state in 'Alien' if the Xenomorphs had been created by David a few decades before. (The rarity of encounters in the vastness of space, personified by the fossil, was jettisoned out of an airlock early in the series.)
The original story never lent itself to a movie series, which require a much bigger scope (like Star Wars or Star Trek). In later films, the producers try to pad the proceedings with half-baked philosophical notions about the origin and meaning of life. It's done clumsily though, with bumbling scientists in Prometheus who go on a mission because they "choose to believe" that they will meet their maker; it is done perhaps a little bit better in this film, which centers around David, an android who finds a gruesome purpose in his existence. But it's just not done nearly well enough compared to a good Star Trek: TNG episode or a film like the Matrix. These aspects are not what made 'Alien' good, so why should they work in its universe's limited context?
When the Covenant's crew finds a derelict alien spacecraft, filled not only with indescribable alien wonders, but with human dog tags, they don't seem all that surprised, or excited. I suppose, since this movie takes place in the future, they will have seen yet more recycled sci-fi films than the audience has, to the point where even the real thing has become somewhat mundane.
Spectre (2015)
Let down by poor script, confused tone
By the third time a helicopter flew into view, I was exhausted, and dreaded the prospect of yet another interminable and unconvincingly rendered crash scene.
The plot was an unappealing mess of recycled ideas. This film brings us yet another revenge story about someone who shares history with Bond but has since turned evil. That was precisely the plot of the last movie - and rather like the last three Star Trek films, most Batman films, the Superman reboot, this year's Avengers, etc.
Like last time, the stakes are raised by nebulous and non- frightening, yet world threatening (so we are told, but never shown) computer network technology.
The film once again focuses on the question: "are spies still relevant?" I don't find that to be an interesting premise for a Bond film. Why not just assume that the answer is 'yes' and make a fun and smart action movie with a heart? Casino Royale nailed this. If you really must cover the question of whether your main character is relevant, then at least deal with it once and accept the answer! In Skyfall we learned that you still want a man in the field. In this movie, we learn that you still want a man in the field (and, in case anyone was still not getting it, poor Ralph Fiennes in his role as a flaccid M spells it out literally).
While I liked both actors involved, I didn't care for the romance - the movie desperately wants to build it up to be something more than an just another Bond girl. That is an admirable idea, but since the result pales in comparison to the stellar romance in Casino Royale, it seems totally unconvincing when Bond sacrifices his entire career for her at the end. Holy moly - Bond settles down? For THIS girl? What an ending to Craig's character arc that started with Vesper's death (so much more meaningful than anything in any of the other Craig Bond films). Bam, all his emotional problems are solved, because he met a hot blonde. "I've got something better to do than all this!" (throws gun away, gets into car with whatshername). Gee, great ending.
All the interesting plot developments from Casino Royale and (and even Quantum of Solace to some extent), such as Bond's emotional state after losing Vesper and the Quantum organization, are chucked out the window. Skyfall discarded Quantum in favor of a good idea (Bond/M son/mother relationship) and a bad one ("is MI6 still relevant?"). Now, Quantum is back... Kinda. This time, it forms no threat at all - you see, it turns out this OTHER organization that THIS movie is about is even moar powerfuller. And it was really this other, super duper evil organization all along. Muahaha!
That is a tiresome plot twist if ever I've seen one. It completely missed the mark for me; it's weak to try and make your own plot look better by retroactively stating that all villains of the previous movies were really just pawns in this guy's game of chess.
And that's not the only aspect of Bond history that is severely diminished by this film. In Skyfall, we learned about Bond's youth, spent with an old Scottish dude named McAngus. I think. And, of course, his relationship with M.
This time, however, it turns out that Bond actually grew up in the Bavarian Alps with a couple of yodeling Germans named Oberhausen. Errr? Am I the only one confused here? (Possibly.)
Bond turns out to have a sort of surrogate brother, who is very blond, very German, and very jealous. Oh and he also happens to be a supervillain, with an enormous army, who somehow managed to stay absolutely hidden for all these years. There is a powerful and compelling reason for his having all these skills and resources: it's convenient for the plot.
And so, all previous Bond movies are reduced to one large scam operation, a plan by an Alpine superhero that makes absolutely no sense, in a failed attempt to give this movie a great villain. Christoph Waltz is a joy to watch, but he is never allowed to be a real threat. The man gets little to work with, as did Javier Bardem in the last one - criminally underused, awesome actors.
The film's tone was confusing. There is one gruesomely violent scene involving eyeballs - I don't enjoy seeing such aggressive violence, although here I seem to be in a vanishingly small minority. Call me old fashioned, but I was always happy that Bond films used polite violence: gentle fist fights until one guy faints, or perhaps someone shoots a gun and somewhere else, far away, someone falls to the floor.
Putting my personal feelings aside, it was jarring to have this scene be followed up by a cartoonish fist fight on a train, after which the eye-ripping guy is yanked out of a train by a rope, but not before realizing his predicament like Wile E. Coyote hanging over the ravine and saying "shit!". Is this a corny spy movie with train fights a la Bond vs Jaws? Where Bond leisurely glides a crashing airplane around for a few minutes and then humorously lands precisely on top of the bad guy's car? Or is it a somber drama about an aging man's career in a time when nobody knows whether spies are still relevant? Or does it want to be a raw, violent gangster film like Goodfellas, reveling in the sight of bad guys proving their credentials by maiming others?
Finally, I found the camera work jarring in many action scenes - shaky cam, etc. This may have been (partly) due to my sitting in the fourth row, though.