screenotes
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Director and Screenwriter Mike Flanagan's film Doctor Sleep, an adaptation of Stephen King's bestselling 2013 novel of the same name sees a middle-aged Danny (son of Jack) Torrance seeking to start a new life in a new town yet being drawn into battling a troupe of steam-addicted, child-killing near immortals by a young girl rich with magic (which is possibly the same thing as The Shining power that Danny possesses and both may be the same thing as the aforementioned 'Steam'). Yes, it's The Shining Part II and apart from Danny (now Dan) we're introduced to a whole new cast of characters.
Adapting a novel to screen is challenging at the best times, yet when the source material is a sequel to a much-loved original novel, which in turn was adapted into an undeniable classic of cinema, the challenge rises. But here's the real rub, many fans of the original The Shining actively loathe Kubrick's adaptation for being too far removed from its source material, including Mr King himself.
I can empathise with Mike Flanagan. As a Critic striving for perfection at all times, satisfying disparate groups of avid and let's face it, 'rabid' fans across the world can be a challenge. Particularly when the art of Criticism is one which is so dependent on its source material - the films which one is charged with reviewing - as Critics don't have the luxury afforded to novelists of plucking any old idea from the ether and putting it to the page.
The dearth of successful book to screen adaptations, let alone adaptations of King's own work is evidence enough of the proportional relationship between degrees of removal from the source material and the increase in difficulty. That is, the job of the Screenwriter who must deconstruct a novel before reconstructing its remaining parts for the visual medium is more difficult than that of the novelist and the job of the Director who must deconstruct the screenplay and then effectively communicate a vision to a cast and crew is harder still. Readers should then therefore draw their own conclusion as to whether the job of the Critic - or to spell it out, the job of deconstructing a visual work which has itself been deconstructed from an original written work, in order to effectively communicate the key question of how viewers should spend their valuable time- is vastly underappreciated.
I'm not saying Stephen King couldn't do what I do (that's for the reader to decide), I'm merely pointing out the enormity of the task befalling Mike Flanagan as Director and Screenwriter of a work which is an adapted sequel to not one but two, disparate, iconic works.
So how well did Mr Flanagan do? Perhaps damningly, Mr King himself is on record as being a fan of the adaptation. Though let's not hold Mr King's hereto-proven lack of judgement against Mr Flanagan, for even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day. In defence of both parties, The Author has also been effusive in his praise of Flanagan's previous adaptation of His work, Gerald's Game, and I agree with King that Flanagan did as good a job as anyone could have hoped to, considering the source novel is widely regarded as one of King's worst and had previously been considered 'unfilmable'.
Despite what Mr King would say, when it comes to film adaptations of his work, less has always proven to be more. Films such as IT: Chapter Two and The Dark Tower failed to resonate with filmgoers due largely to the fact that they tried to pack in so much story as to leave little room for the creation of suspense. This was not true of Kubrick's The Shining, which eschewed exposition for iconic moments and created suspense through lack of action.
Doctor Sleep is a more enjoyable ride than either the aforementioned flops. The acting is strong with the ever-watchable Ewan McGregor believable as an adult Danny and Rebecca Ferguson brings a charm and charisma to the murderous big bad, Rose the Hat. The plot has some interesting turns but there is just too much going on, leading to a total lack of suspense.
In the end, in trying to please everyone, the film ends up falling short on too many fronts. While two thirds of the film seem to slavishly hew to King's source material, struggling to balance exposition and plot propulsion, the final third feels like fan service for Kubrick's film. This has the effect of feeling like two different movies mashed together. Speaking as a fan of Kubrick's film, the final third is especially underwhelming as watching a re-creation of iconic scenes by different actors served less as the intended nostalgia trip than a reminder that I was not watching the work of Kubrick.
As sure as Stephen King will not accept that the Review is the highest form of Art - nor reply to my numerous emails on the matter - Mike Flanagan will lose no fans for Doctor Sleep. Yet for fans of Kubrick's The Shining, his legacy is more prevalent in Flanagan's Oculus (2013).
Adapting a novel to screen is challenging at the best times, yet when the source material is a sequel to a much-loved original novel, which in turn was adapted into an undeniable classic of cinema, the challenge rises. But here's the real rub, many fans of the original The Shining actively loathe Kubrick's adaptation for being too far removed from its source material, including Mr King himself.
I can empathise with Mike Flanagan. As a Critic striving for perfection at all times, satisfying disparate groups of avid and let's face it, 'rabid' fans across the world can be a challenge. Particularly when the art of Criticism is one which is so dependent on its source material - the films which one is charged with reviewing - as Critics don't have the luxury afforded to novelists of plucking any old idea from the ether and putting it to the page.
The dearth of successful book to screen adaptations, let alone adaptations of King's own work is evidence enough of the proportional relationship between degrees of removal from the source material and the increase in difficulty. That is, the job of the Screenwriter who must deconstruct a novel before reconstructing its remaining parts for the visual medium is more difficult than that of the novelist and the job of the Director who must deconstruct the screenplay and then effectively communicate a vision to a cast and crew is harder still. Readers should then therefore draw their own conclusion as to whether the job of the Critic - or to spell it out, the job of deconstructing a visual work which has itself been deconstructed from an original written work, in order to effectively communicate the key question of how viewers should spend their valuable time- is vastly underappreciated.
I'm not saying Stephen King couldn't do what I do (that's for the reader to decide), I'm merely pointing out the enormity of the task befalling Mike Flanagan as Director and Screenwriter of a work which is an adapted sequel to not one but two, disparate, iconic works.
So how well did Mr Flanagan do? Perhaps damningly, Mr King himself is on record as being a fan of the adaptation. Though let's not hold Mr King's hereto-proven lack of judgement against Mr Flanagan, for even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day. In defence of both parties, The Author has also been effusive in his praise of Flanagan's previous adaptation of His work, Gerald's Game, and I agree with King that Flanagan did as good a job as anyone could have hoped to, considering the source novel is widely regarded as one of King's worst and had previously been considered 'unfilmable'.
Despite what Mr King would say, when it comes to film adaptations of his work, less has always proven to be more. Films such as IT: Chapter Two and The Dark Tower failed to resonate with filmgoers due largely to the fact that they tried to pack in so much story as to leave little room for the creation of suspense. This was not true of Kubrick's The Shining, which eschewed exposition for iconic moments and created suspense through lack of action.
Doctor Sleep is a more enjoyable ride than either the aforementioned flops. The acting is strong with the ever-watchable Ewan McGregor believable as an adult Danny and Rebecca Ferguson brings a charm and charisma to the murderous big bad, Rose the Hat. The plot has some interesting turns but there is just too much going on, leading to a total lack of suspense.
In the end, in trying to please everyone, the film ends up falling short on too many fronts. While two thirds of the film seem to slavishly hew to King's source material, struggling to balance exposition and plot propulsion, the final third feels like fan service for Kubrick's film. This has the effect of feeling like two different movies mashed together. Speaking as a fan of Kubrick's film, the final third is especially underwhelming as watching a re-creation of iconic scenes by different actors served less as the intended nostalgia trip than a reminder that I was not watching the work of Kubrick.
As sure as Stephen King will not accept that the Review is the highest form of Art - nor reply to my numerous emails on the matter - Mike Flanagan will lose no fans for Doctor Sleep. Yet for fans of Kubrick's The Shining, his legacy is more prevalent in Flanagan's Oculus (2013).
While the phrase "based on a true story" is usually code for "Hollywood has run out of original ideas so we hired a cheap screenwriter to adapt a biography in order to save money and still have a shot at an Oscar because...wow...isn't life sometimes stranger than fiction", Molly's Game is different.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's feature Directorial debut kept me pretty well engrossed for its 2 hour and 20 minute runtime, largely because the Director employed a Screenwriter whose grasp of the craft of storytelling is evidenced in such works as the laugh-track-era-ending- Sports Night (1998 - 2000) as well as lesser known works such as The West Wing and The Social Network 2010).
Molly's Game cracks along at a fair old clip, distilling the decade long story of a one-time would-be Olympian-turned high-stakes underground celebrity poker Host facing criminal charges into a slick and pacey picture.
Yet with Sorkin's trademark fast-paced dialogue comes Sorkin's inevitable trademark schmaltz and hence the film's only real let down is a scene toward the end which amazingly is still not earned after approximately 2 hours of dense activity. This contrivance is perhaps a necessary evil of Sorkin's work given his enduringly refreshing interest in portraying professional and capable characters striving for greatness. More specifically, the titular protagonist of Molly's Game is a would-be gold medallist skier who, forced into a change of career due to a serious injury, cannily works her way up from glorified waitress to master manipulator through her intelligence, integrity and tenacity. The obligatory adversity Molly faces comes primarily in the form of her run in with the law, cue her adept yet initially sceptical advocate Idris Elba.
Necessary contrivances and aforementioned schmaltz aside, Molly's Game is a prime example of Writer / Director Aaron Sorkin's penchant for snappy dialogue and for exploring the mechanics of spheres most of us will never otherwise understand.
Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's feature Directorial debut kept me pretty well engrossed for its 2 hour and 20 minute runtime, largely because the Director employed a Screenwriter whose grasp of the craft of storytelling is evidenced in such works as the laugh-track-era-ending- Sports Night (1998 - 2000) as well as lesser known works such as The West Wing and The Social Network 2010).
Molly's Game cracks along at a fair old clip, distilling the decade long story of a one-time would-be Olympian-turned high-stakes underground celebrity poker Host facing criminal charges into a slick and pacey picture.
Yet with Sorkin's trademark fast-paced dialogue comes Sorkin's inevitable trademark schmaltz and hence the film's only real let down is a scene toward the end which amazingly is still not earned after approximately 2 hours of dense activity. This contrivance is perhaps a necessary evil of Sorkin's work given his enduringly refreshing interest in portraying professional and capable characters striving for greatness. More specifically, the titular protagonist of Molly's Game is a would-be gold medallist skier who, forced into a change of career due to a serious injury, cannily works her way up from glorified waitress to master manipulator through her intelligence, integrity and tenacity. The obligatory adversity Molly faces comes primarily in the form of her run in with the law, cue her adept yet initially sceptical advocate Idris Elba.
Necessary contrivances and aforementioned schmaltz aside, Molly's Game is a prime example of Writer / Director Aaron Sorkin's penchant for snappy dialogue and for exploring the mechanics of spheres most of us will never otherwise understand.
After three feature films we can now safely say that S. Craig Zahler's 'Zahlerness' is not a fluke. An uncompromising and unapologetic vision reveals the stamp of an auteur throughout Bone Tomahawk (2015), Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017) and Dragged Across Concrete (2018). Zahler himself is a multidisciplinarian who has written, directed and scored all three of his features.
The 'Zahlerverse' is a violent one to say the least. A mix of genres is everpresent yet a descent into horror is inescapable. Zahler's characters are dragged to metaphorical and literal depths and their redemption is invariably bloody. Concrete itself begins as a gritty crime drama. It follows two Cops, suspended for excessive use of force (or more to the point, for being caught on camera using excessive force) who decide to operate outside the law in order to make ends meet. The first and perhaps most important thing to say is that the descent of this crime drama into horror is one of the most engaging and entertaining experiences I've had in film in a long time.
Zahler cites, among other, Michael Mann as an influence and the plot and characterisations here are not a world away from those found in Mann's epic Heat (1995). Yet while both Heat and Concrete offer insight into characters doing bad things for good reasons, the latter is unflinching in taking a warts-and-all look at its characters and their setting.
Perhaps though, Zahler's own comparisons to the work of Michael Mann are a decoy for a deeper agenda. That is, while much of Zahler's work to date echoes a Grindhouse aesthetic of the 70s, his characters also echo 70s sensibilities in their views on race and gender. While these views are present in his first two films, they are far more prevalent in Concrete to the point that we cannot not discuss Zahler without discussing his character's archaic views.
In Concrete more than in Zahler's previous films, the racist aspects of the dialogue feel largely forced, stilted and expositional. This is interesting because the characters' racist views are in no way crucial to the plot. Suffice to say that while this problematic dialogue at times was so jarring as to take me out of my suspension of disbelief, it did provide for added character depth. It's also interesting because Zahler's ability to write great, snappy dialogue is evidenced here, as in his previous work, reaching Tarantino-esque heights at times.
Taking as given that we should separate the art from the artist, many critics and journalists have described the insertion of Zahler's 'problematic' protagonists into his work as needlessly provocational. The casting of Mel Gibson, who himself was recorded giving a racist rant in 2010 has been described as 'trolling' in some quarters. Yet as meta as it may be, Gibson's performance, as indeed that of the rest of the cast is pitch perfect.
Zahler remains reticent to discuss his own political leanings and advocates opining about his films and by association the characters within his films from all sides. Compare this with Todd Phillips' incendiary quote about why he left comedy to make Joker - "Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture", or Joaquin Phoenix's walkout of a BBC interview when asked whether the same film may inspire a youth to commit violence and Zahler seems thoroughly reasonable and thick-skinned.
Perhaps what makes the Zahlerverse challenging is also what makes it utterly unique in 'woke' culture. I for one am eager for more offerings and, perhaps in justification of my indulgence to fellow leftist liberals, my preferred reading of the Zahlerverse is wokesploitation black comedy.
The 'Zahlerverse' is a violent one to say the least. A mix of genres is everpresent yet a descent into horror is inescapable. Zahler's characters are dragged to metaphorical and literal depths and their redemption is invariably bloody. Concrete itself begins as a gritty crime drama. It follows two Cops, suspended for excessive use of force (or more to the point, for being caught on camera using excessive force) who decide to operate outside the law in order to make ends meet. The first and perhaps most important thing to say is that the descent of this crime drama into horror is one of the most engaging and entertaining experiences I've had in film in a long time.
Zahler cites, among other, Michael Mann as an influence and the plot and characterisations here are not a world away from those found in Mann's epic Heat (1995). Yet while both Heat and Concrete offer insight into characters doing bad things for good reasons, the latter is unflinching in taking a warts-and-all look at its characters and their setting.
Perhaps though, Zahler's own comparisons to the work of Michael Mann are a decoy for a deeper agenda. That is, while much of Zahler's work to date echoes a Grindhouse aesthetic of the 70s, his characters also echo 70s sensibilities in their views on race and gender. While these views are present in his first two films, they are far more prevalent in Concrete to the point that we cannot not discuss Zahler without discussing his character's archaic views.
In Concrete more than in Zahler's previous films, the racist aspects of the dialogue feel largely forced, stilted and expositional. This is interesting because the characters' racist views are in no way crucial to the plot. Suffice to say that while this problematic dialogue at times was so jarring as to take me out of my suspension of disbelief, it did provide for added character depth. It's also interesting because Zahler's ability to write great, snappy dialogue is evidenced here, as in his previous work, reaching Tarantino-esque heights at times.
Taking as given that we should separate the art from the artist, many critics and journalists have described the insertion of Zahler's 'problematic' protagonists into his work as needlessly provocational. The casting of Mel Gibson, who himself was recorded giving a racist rant in 2010 has been described as 'trolling' in some quarters. Yet as meta as it may be, Gibson's performance, as indeed that of the rest of the cast is pitch perfect.
Zahler remains reticent to discuss his own political leanings and advocates opining about his films and by association the characters within his films from all sides. Compare this with Todd Phillips' incendiary quote about why he left comedy to make Joker - "Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture", or Joaquin Phoenix's walkout of a BBC interview when asked whether the same film may inspire a youth to commit violence and Zahler seems thoroughly reasonable and thick-skinned.
Perhaps what makes the Zahlerverse challenging is also what makes it utterly unique in 'woke' culture. I for one am eager for more offerings and, perhaps in justification of my indulgence to fellow leftist liberals, my preferred reading of the Zahlerverse is wokesploitation black comedy.