The second adaptation of Stephen King’s notorious novel takes It to the big screen with a big budget.
It is actually the first of two parts, yet can also function as a self-contained film, and It‘s1 makers clearly hope It will become the movie of Halloween ’17.
Sure, September is here, but summer doesn’t end until the 22. So we continue with our late-season Summer Movie Reviews of older films. This one came out in 2011 and its following has only increased since. It features the timely account of people coming together under crisis: not a natural disaster, in this case, but an alien invasion.
It also stars the incoming Doctor.
“The stubborn beast-flesh creeps back!”
–Dr. Moreau
Our Summer-End Weekend Reviews of older films continue with this 1932 adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, which significantly influenced later SF– and the recently-concluded Orphan Black. Less well-known that Universal’s horror movies of the period, it actually holds up better.1
Indeed, its horrific content earned it a ban in some countries, while other audiences watched a censored version for many decades.
With the summer SF blockbuster season coming to an end, we’re going to deliver some of our Summer Weekend Reviews of older flicks during the final weeks of beaches, sunglasses, and solar eclipse.1. This one isn’t even that old; it hit theaters– fleetingly– in March.
Wilson, based on the Daniel Clowes graphic novel (reviewed here), received a mediocre response from critics and did not find a large audience. It’s not the film of the year, but it’s far better than the popular response suggests.
The latest subject of Make Me Watch It is Sin City (2005), directed by Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, and Quentin Tarantino. The series can also be found on Stitcher, on iTunes, or in a direct RSS feed.
Sandman: 24 Hour Diner from Morpheus on Vimeo.
This independently-made, unlicensed adaptation of one issue of The Sandman has attracted a good deal of attention, and received praise from Neil Gaiman. Released earlier this summer, it gets a review here. WARNING: the film is NSFW, unsuitable for children, and not for all tastes.
The superspy stylishly turns in the fight, shoots, splatters red blood onto the glossed lips of a face on a poster.
I’m sitting in a car with friends I’ve known since the 80s, at the Docks Drive-In, a relic of the Cold War era nestled in the Port Lands, the last seedy waterfront section of Toronto, between the gentrified Harbourfront and the Beaches, and I’m watching a film shaped by the Cold War, 1980s videos, noir cinema, and Hollywood’s desire to set up bigger, sexier, more violent thrills.
As Debbie Harry sang with studied vacuousness, “Your hair is beautiful. Atomic.”
Some version of King’s complicated genre-and-canon-spanning series makes it to the big screen.
Whether it’s worth making it to the theatre to watch is another matter.
The visuals look spectacular, but it takes more than that to win an audience in 2017, and the most expensive indie film in history, based on the French-language comic, has underperformed at the box office.
Has anyone here watched it?
San Diego Comic Con, one of the biggest gatherings of geekdom every year, always gets us good previews of coming attractions. Check out our round-up: