BEFORE: Almost done with the Anthony Hopkins chain, as he carries over from "The Remains of the Day". It won't be long now...
This one came in to the collection much too late to be a proper part of the Stephen King chain.
THE PLOT: A widowed mother and her son change when a mysterious stranger enters their lives.
AFTER: This is an adaptation of a nearly unfilmable book of Stephen King - a collection of five loosely interconnected stories, with references to King's "Dark Tower" series that would make no sense without an understanding of that 10+ (?) book series. Wisely, the filmmakers chose to drop these references, and trim the storyline down to adapt only 2 of the 5 stories. Unfortunately it seems like the original meaning of the title got lost along the way, so they had to jerry-rig another one.
I kind of screwed up in anticipation of this one, I knew that the boarder played by Anthony Hopkins had some kind of secret, and I went out of my way to NOT read too much about the plot, because I didn't want to spoil the surprise. But in doing so, I was placing too much emphasis on his secret, and so it built up in my mind to be much more important than it was supposed to be. Plus, I spent most of the movie waiting for the secret to be revealed, rather than allowing things to play out in the relaxed manner intended. Was this person the devil? God? Santa Claus? Tell me his secret!
I got so worked up about it, and spent so much time avoiding learning about it, that when it finally arrived, it was such a letdown from what I imagined - nothing could possibly live up to my imagining of how important this secret could be.
So I think I sort of couldn't see the forest for the trees, and didn't allow myself to relax and enjoy this little film for what it is, which is a quiet little coming-of-age film, with an anti-bullying and anti-rape message, all good things, and throw in a little conspiracy theory/shadowy secret agent types for good measure. I was expecting "Needful Things", and I should have been looking for "Stand By Me".
Also starring Anton Yelchin (last heard in "The Pirates: Band of Misfits"), Hope Davis (last seen in "Real Steel"), David Morse (last seen in "Drive Angry"), Mika Boorem, Alan Tudyk (last heard in "Ice Age: Continental Drift"), Celia Weston (last seen in "Knight and Day"), Adam LeFevre, Timothy Reifsnyder.
RATING: 4 out of 10 stolen bases
If I recall correctly the larger stories, which I think there were 2 of all had the same central character at different ages. The stupid thing for me was this movie covered the section of the book titled "Low Men in Yellow Coats", where as I felt a much great personal connection (which made it more interesting) with the story actually named "Hearts in Atlantis", where the main character (and his friends) got addicted to the game of Hearts, and almost flunked out of college because of it. The game TIE Fighter did adversely affect my studies in much the same way.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there were 7 books in the Dark Tower series. I know, I had to wait 20 years for the last one to be released (sound familiar?) After the first few books, Stephen King started making references to his other works in the Dark Tower series, and then adding references to the Dark Tower in his other book.