CrossedPete wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 3:46 am
The most recent book I’ve read must of been Doctor Sleep which I thought was ok. Still haven’t watched the movie though. I’m still not sure how that’s going to work? Is it a sequel to Kubrick’s Shinning?
Hey Pete - I reckon your mileage on Dr Sleep will vary depending on how much sleep you've been losing over King's beef with Kubrick - the film is one long third-party forced handshake between the two artists. I never needed it, personally, having no problem with there being two distinctly separate masterpieces that I enjoy with the same name, from two very different artists that I love.
I'm also not a big fan of Flanagan, so while there are a lot of fun or well designed individual parts to this long shaggy dog re-quel, there is too much of the writer/director's trademark slick, 2nd hand, sappy heart-on-sleeve stuff for me to ignore. In some ways, I found the appropriation and deference payed to SK (the filmmaker)'s iconic imagery as cloying and superficial as that hateful sequence in Ready Player One.
I recall enjoying it enough in the cinema with my mum, but I've tried to rewatch a couple of times at home and switched off pretty quickly in irritation. It's just not for me. The last act especially was unsatisfying, though having not read the novel it's possible the screenwriter is doing their best with one of SK's classic 'lame endings' ;)
(Of Flanagan's work fwiw, I only really liked parts of Oculus and Haunting of Hill House - the latter of which really suffers the most from his 'Wonder Years' schmaltzy tendencies in the final eps. I much preferred S2 in general, which nails it's ending).