Post by Bartwald on Dec 4, 2005 8:32:55 GMT -5
DREAMCATCHER (2003)
DIRECTOR: Lawrence Kasdan
CAST: Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Thomas Jane, Morgan Freeman, Tom Sizemore, Donnie Wahlberg
GRADE: 6/10
A perfect Christmas movie, this: snowbound places, friends relishing their reunion, the shit-weasels... Yeah, I have read the book and I have read the reviews of the movie – but I was still really interested in watching Kasdan’s effort. The book starts in a perfect way: snowy silence at first and then blood bursting nightmare all around, aliens coming out of human arses and main characters falling like flies. A King we love. But then, after some time – a King we hate: overlong, sentimental and boring us with the overused and utterly vague military-talk. I think everyone who managed to get to the end of the book was wondering how the hell it can all be translated into a good movie. I was. The early reviews told me the movie’s no good, though. Now I know it is - soo-oo-prize! - quite good.
The start’s almost as good as King’s – wonderful winter scenery reveals its dark side with the first stranger found in the woods by one of the characters (Damian Lewis); arse-bursting and deaths follow. The f/x used for the alien attacks are, well, very good. It’s ILM, mind you, but today you can never trust even the best of professionals. So it was rather comforting for me to see that those weasels are truly disgusting, slimy and threatening. But after the good Act I comes the hard part: the military dudes appear on the horizon and we know that they’ve already spoilt the original magic in the book. Let me tell you, though: it’s not that bad in the movie! Thanks to Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore their characters are much more alive than their always-talking book counterparts, and the whole Act II – some 300 pages as Stephen wrote it – is here so nicely trimmed that you don’t feel bored at all. What you may feel, however, is a bit of confusion if you DIDN’T read the book, as the part which should explain something more about whether the aliens are peaceful or not and whether it’s their first visit to Earth or not, is nicely trimmed as well and just leaves you with one "humans vs aliens" scene. As for the very end, the Act III: in my opinion it’s better than the King ending, as well. Less sentimental, more strange. I know that it’s too over-the-top for some and in that case DVD has a toned down ending in the bonus section – you decide for yourselves which one’s better. I still vote for the ending that’s IN the movie.
Still... I could like this movie more. I have this weakness, you see, that I hate bright-coloured, teary flashbacks from the childhood of the characters, especially if we talk about Stephen King’s characters. It may work OK in the book but it almost always looks lame on the screen. It does in Dreamcatcher, too, I hate to say – especially the song-singing for Duddits, that’s the essence of annoying sentimentality for me. But, thankfully, in this movie we’ve got enough good scares to let us soon forget about the flashbacks while in, say, Hearts In Atlantis, we had nothing but the flashbacks, right?
Anyway, what’s nice to hear – King himself liked the movie, he tells us so in the DVD featurette. Finally something not being ‘Stephen King’s’ mini-series he liked, I mean. And finally something King-based that I liked, too.
DIRECTOR: Lawrence Kasdan
CAST: Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Thomas Jane, Morgan Freeman, Tom Sizemore, Donnie Wahlberg
GRADE: 6/10
A perfect Christmas movie, this: snowbound places, friends relishing their reunion, the shit-weasels... Yeah, I have read the book and I have read the reviews of the movie – but I was still really interested in watching Kasdan’s effort. The book starts in a perfect way: snowy silence at first and then blood bursting nightmare all around, aliens coming out of human arses and main characters falling like flies. A King we love. But then, after some time – a King we hate: overlong, sentimental and boring us with the overused and utterly vague military-talk. I think everyone who managed to get to the end of the book was wondering how the hell it can all be translated into a good movie. I was. The early reviews told me the movie’s no good, though. Now I know it is - soo-oo-prize! - quite good.
The start’s almost as good as King’s – wonderful winter scenery reveals its dark side with the first stranger found in the woods by one of the characters (Damian Lewis); arse-bursting and deaths follow. The f/x used for the alien attacks are, well, very good. It’s ILM, mind you, but today you can never trust even the best of professionals. So it was rather comforting for me to see that those weasels are truly disgusting, slimy and threatening. But after the good Act I comes the hard part: the military dudes appear on the horizon and we know that they’ve already spoilt the original magic in the book. Let me tell you, though: it’s not that bad in the movie! Thanks to Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore their characters are much more alive than their always-talking book counterparts, and the whole Act II – some 300 pages as Stephen wrote it – is here so nicely trimmed that you don’t feel bored at all. What you may feel, however, is a bit of confusion if you DIDN’T read the book, as the part which should explain something more about whether the aliens are peaceful or not and whether it’s their first visit to Earth or not, is nicely trimmed as well and just leaves you with one "humans vs aliens" scene. As for the very end, the Act III: in my opinion it’s better than the King ending, as well. Less sentimental, more strange. I know that it’s too over-the-top for some and in that case DVD has a toned down ending in the bonus section – you decide for yourselves which one’s better. I still vote for the ending that’s IN the movie.
Still... I could like this movie more. I have this weakness, you see, that I hate bright-coloured, teary flashbacks from the childhood of the characters, especially if we talk about Stephen King’s characters. It may work OK in the book but it almost always looks lame on the screen. It does in Dreamcatcher, too, I hate to say – especially the song-singing for Duddits, that’s the essence of annoying sentimentality for me. But, thankfully, in this movie we’ve got enough good scares to let us soon forget about the flashbacks while in, say, Hearts In Atlantis, we had nothing but the flashbacks, right?
Anyway, what’s nice to hear – King himself liked the movie, he tells us so in the DVD featurette. Finally something not being ‘Stephen King’s’ mini-series he liked, I mean. And finally something King-based that I liked, too.
