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What have you watched recently?
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'Salem's Lot'
After 'The Mist', 'The Shawshank Redemption' and 'Stand By Me', The 1979 TV movie 'Salem's Lot' is probably the best Stephen King story ever adapted for the screen.
Fondly remembered by a whole generation of kids for scaring the crap out of them, 'Salem's Lot' tends to hold a special place in many of today's adults. After all, it had spooky old houses, vampires and the blond guy out of 'Starsky and Hutch'...what was not to like?
The essential meat of the story concerns the return of a successful author, Ben Mears (David Soul) to his titular home town based in the usual King location of Maine. But his visit coincides with a Richard Straker (a brilliant James Mason), who is setting up an antiques shop in the centre of town with his business partner, Kurt Barlow (Reggie Nalder). Straker has also bought the Marsten House, which interests Mears, as he's had some childhood experiences with it before. Before long, all hell breaks loose as vampires start to prey on the townsfolk and it comes down to Mears to put a stop to it.
'Salem's Lot' had a difficult birth. As a feature film project, it went through numerous scripts and directors and King himself said the whole process was "a mess". It was eventually decided to film it as a miniseries for Warner Bros. largely because condensing King's 400+ page novel into a feature length film was proving impossible. The director brought onboard to helm the whole thing was Tobe Hooper, who was still dining out on the success of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' from 5 years earlier.
'Salem's Lot' isn't entirely faithful to Kings book, but it does retain the same basic story and in the end King was said to have been generally happy with the adaptations in the script and although it's tame by today's standards and is probably best viewed with the air of nostalgia by people who saw it 30 years ago, it still does hold something entertaining for those who enjoy such things.
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'The Last Man on Earth'
Surprisingly good adaptation of Richard Matheson's novella 'I am Legend', which has been remade at least twice with the pretty poor 70's-tastic 'The Omega Man' with Charlton Heston and 2007's extremely mediocre 'I am Legend' with Will Smith.
The central character in this 1964 American/Italian production is Vincent Price, who seems at first to be woefully mis-cast. However, Price puts in a very good shift here. In fact, I'd say it's probably the best Vincent Price movie ever made!
A worldwide viral epidemic has wiped out humanity and replaced some humans with vampire-like creatures who now roam the streets feeding on whatever warm-blooded creature they can find. The central figure of the story is a scientist (who is immune) and he has tasked himself with trawling New York City (actually Rome!) and killing every vampire he can find. In flashback, we find out some of the history of the epidemic and how it's affected people.
It follows Matheson's general story quite closely and sticks to all the major plotlines, but there are some changes. The "vampires" of the original story aren't as nimble as Matheson has them, in fact, they're extremely zombie-like and very weak. They pose a threat to Price's character (changed from Robert Neville to Robert Morgan), but their main threat comes in the guise of their nightly torment carried out each evening outside Morgan's boarded up house. As in the book, they wail at him to "come out" and Morgan does all he can to block out their thwarting voices.
Since becoming "the last man on earth" and taking upon himself the task of wiping out the vampires of NYC, Morgan's life has become one of dull routine. He uses a lathe to sharpen stakes for his mission, seeks out fuel and food, and kills every vampire he sees. Price does a very good job of portraying a man slowly going mad in a world where his single murderous purpose just isn't enough to fill his existence.
'The Last Man on Earth' is a laudable attempt to film a story that has never really been given a good treatment. Surprising as it is, because the source material is one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever written. Matheson was also responsible for a few episodes of 'The Twilight Zone' and the excellent 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' from 1957. Matheson's book is also the major influence on another of cinema's greatest films, George Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead'. Romero freely admits to "ripping it off", but I also think that he took many influence from 'The Last Man on Earth' for his own 1968 movie too. The siege on Morgan's house in 'The Last Man on Earth' and the one at the farmhouse in 'The Night of the Living Dead' look remarkably similar and the uncoordinated movement from the creatures in both films are strikingly familiar.
This film is now in the "Public Domain" and viewable on Youtube etc and it's well worth checking out.
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'The Happening'
M. Night Shyamalan has been one of those directors that has seemed to have the ability to produce interesting work, while not being terribly good films. Besides 'The Sixth Sense', none of his films have grabbed me on the whole, but have always interested me, except for 'The Lady in the Water' which was just awful. 'Signs', 'The Village' and 'Unbreakable' for instance were all interesting films, but in the end I felt let down as the promise they held never really fulfilled itself.
'The Happening' unfortunately falls into this category. It's an interesting premise, but the story that's woven just doesn't hold up in the end and there are parts in it that are just laughable. The story is one of a seemingly natural disaster whereby an unknown neuro-toxin has been released into the atmosphere along the Eastern United States and is causing people to kill themselves on a massive scale. A school science teacher (Mark Wahlberg) and his wife (Zooey Deschanel) decide to "head for the hills" and escape whatever it is that's causing the problem. Without going into too much, that's it really.
The story itself probably would have been ok, if it was handled by another director, or if the studio had cast better actors. Really, the only decent actor here is John Leguizamo, but not by much and he does his best with what he has to work with. He's not around for long though and he's really only there to dump his daughter on Wahlberg and Deschanel. The worst offender is "Marky Mark", who remarkably has managed somehow cut out a career for himself in acting while being almost totally devoid of acting skills. It truly is a testament to modern Hollywood. Ok, I may be being a little hard on Wahlberg here, but he has to be seen to be believed. He's terrible. Perhaps, it's Shyamalan's fault though? The deadpan (and incredibly named) Zooey Deschanel has little to do, so it's hard to assess her with this. She's sort of just there.
In fairness, the opening is quite creepy and promises a much better film than is delivered and there are a couple of areas that are very well staged, such as the gun toting farmer scene. However, the explanation for what's supposed to be happening comes across as simply ridiculous and it never seems to gel with any kind of realism, although if handled differently could have been well done. In addition, the whole thing just very quickly runs out of steam.
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With the plodding, expository voice-over and retarded happy clappy ending?Even with all the super-duper Hi Def **** all yall director's final cut versions of 'Blade runner' floating about, I STILL prefer the original cut by far."No termination date."Or do you mean the international theatrical cut, which at least removes that ending?
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'The Mist'
Frank Darabont's excellent take on a Stephen King short story originally published in 1980 is one of the best genre films produced in the last decade. Tightly wrapped in a "situation horror", it deals with a disaster of seemingly epic proportions where a strange mist has enveloped an unknown area and with it, has brought a whole host of terrifying and voracious creatures.
Darabont (or King) has his characters holed up in the local convenience store and hoping to wait out the terror that has covered their small, previously quiet, town. But the danger from the outside is compounded by the danger presented on the inside from the human characters. Most of all in the guise of Mrs Carmody, a neo-zealot who is convinced that it's the end of days.
It's a simple siege premise and one that's been done a million times before from 'Rio Bravo' to 'Night of the Living Dead' to 'Assault on Precinct 13' and it's handled superbly by Darabont, who had been trying to make a film of King's story since he read it first in the 80's.
The acting is very good, by and large and there are some genuinely shocking scenes with quite horrible monsters which are rendered here with great success, despite the use of CGI. The lead character (Thomas Jane) is rather good and understated. He's an everyman. An ordinary guy thrust into an extraordinary situation and he's supported by decent folk played by Jeffery DeMunn and Toby Jones. Everybody is believable enough, except Mrs Carmody of course who is a bit of a scenery chewer, but done well enough by Marcia Gay Harden. Carmody suits the film in the end though. On a side note, a lot of the cast has turned up in Darabont's generally good TV series 'The Walking Dead'.
Darabont's 'The Mist' is close to the King source, but he has chosen to change the ending, which I'm in two minds about. King's original is good and Darabont's is good too and I don't know which is better. But, either way it's a great film and very refreshing in world of dull nonsense.
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'Mad Max'
I got the box set last xmas and I decided to watch the first film again during the recent snow. It builds a good tense atmosphere from the start and this is noticable especially during the tense forest scene. I found the ending a bit abrupt and flat but hey it was George Miller's first feature film as director and the budget was only 350,000 aus dollars.
The bikes are mostly classic kawasakis and suzukis and all of the stuntwork is amazing, especially the bridge crash scene, you'll know what I mean if you've seen it.(And no the stuntman didn't die although he must have had some headache afterwards...)
The film sets up nicely the character of Mad Max Rockatansky and his crumbling world for the tour de force that is the sequel, Mad Max 2: The Roadwarrior...
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Lamper.sffc wrote: »London Boulevard.
Stay away from this movie. You have been warned :mad:
Thinking that but still drawn to the film.
Tell me in one sentence, without spoiler, why i shouldnt see it
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIbJ2rQ59ZE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4mYireNvcg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIQ21m1Ks08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbKSr3vb32U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhCKXJNGzN8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkriid1YxHY
This discussion has been closed.
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