Tag Archives: Stand By Me

IT Conquered The World!

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As a part of my new personal initiative to stay active on my blog, I figure I’ll start posting reviews of movies, TV, and whatever else might strike my fancy.

We’ll kick things off with the biggest movie news of this past week: How Stephen King’s IT smashed all sorts of R-rated horror movie opening weekend records.

I’m a massive Stephen King fan. I’ve probably read more King than any other author combined, but I suppose that’s not saying much considering some of his page counts. But books like IT and The Stand prove themselves worth the time investment.

To go off on a slight tangent here, I’ll add The Shining and ‘Salem’s Lot as my other two favorite King books. I’d still love to see a good version of the former that’s truer to the source material than Kubrick’s film, while the latter has actually had two pretty damn good miniseries adaptations. Of course that doesn’t mean it couldn’t use another go-round now that Hollywood was finally able to produce a great adaptation of one of King’s horror novel

(Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption are great films, but neither was based on a horror story)

I’ll keep my review portion short and to the point: I thought IT was the best horror film I’ve seen in years. It accomplished that ever-difficult feat of making the viewer really care about the protagonists, and want to see them vanquish the terrifying-but-weirdly-charismatic villain.

 

IT works as a coming-of-age story, a story about the everyday terrors of living in a small (and seemingly cursed) town, and a tale of doing battle with an ancient monster.

Perhaps the most impressive thing was Andy Muschietti – and the team of screenwriters – creating the perfect sort of momentum. When the members of the Losers Club were terrified of Pennywise, then the clown was presented as the most intensely terrifying thing possible. And, towards the end, when the Losers began believing in their ability to defeat IT, the viewer was carried right along in that emotional wave as well.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how good all the kids and Bill Skarsgard were. I’ll always have a soft spot for Tim Curry’s Pennywise, if only because the 1990 miniseries hit me at a very impressionable time in my life, and I was the same age as the protagonists were at the time.

But Skarsgard’s Pennywise scared me when I’m 38 rather than 11, and that’s a bigger accomplishment (the R-rating and advances in visual effects sure didn’t hurt his efforts).

The subject of experiencing IT as a child and re-visiting it as an adult is the perfect segway to my last two cents. Everyone else is throwing their dream cast around for IT Chapter Two, so I’ll offer mine below.

I gave myself a few rules to follow:

  1. The actors need to be able to embody the attributes of the adult versions of their Losers Club child counterparts.
  2. The actors have to be people who might realistically be cast in the role. So we’re avoiding megastars, and actors who command mega-millions in salary.
  3. They need to be able to sell the audience on the idea of being grown-up versions of the Losers Club. Having a passing resemblance doesn’t hurt here.

Without further adieu:

Bill Denbrough – Jaedan Lieberher

Adult: Charlie Cox

 

 

We need someone who can display the scars from a traumatic childhood – Bill more than the others because of the way he lost his brother – but who can also snap into the leadership role when the time comes to confront Pennywise one last time. I feel like Cox brought both those sides to the table over the course of playing Matt Murdock/Daredevil for three seasons.

Richie Tozier – Finn Wolfhard

Adult: Paul Rudd

Rudd can sell Richie as a successful comedian, being one himself, who can simultaneously annoy his old friends and endear himself to them. His performance as Ant-Man also showed that he can shift into the hero mode needed to face down Pennywise.

Beverly Marsh – Sophia Lillis

 

Adult: Amy Adams

 

Jessica Chastain’s name has been bandied about for this part, and having worked with Muschietti in the director’s debut feature Mama might give her an edge. But I like the idea of Adams bringing the same emotional energy that she brought to Arrival to the role of Beverly Marsh. If you can deliver an honest emotional response to time bending back into itself once, I believe you can do it again.

Ben Hanscom – Jeremy Ray Taylor

Adult: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Several actors come to mind that could probably play the part of a formerly overweight punching bag who grew up to be a hunky architect. There were guys like Chris Pratt (too expensive) or Nathan Fillion (doesn’t quite have the gravity) so I went with Coster-Waldau, who’s been killing it in an ensemble over 6 seasons of Game Of Thrones, and who also worked with Muschietti in Mama.

Eddie Kaspbrak – Jack Dylan Grazer

Adult: Adam Scott

I’ll have to re-visit IT sometime to confirm this, but I felt that Eddie delivered just as many laughs as Richie. Therefore, we’re casting another comedian who has also shown some dramatic chops in things like Big Little Lies and Friends With Kids. Wouldn’t hurt to bring over some of that frazzled Ben Wyatt energy from Parks And Recreations either.

Mike Hanlon – Chosen Jacobs

Adult: Michael Kenneth Williams

Mike is the one who stayed behind to “keep the watchtower” so he’s spent the past 27 years serving as a librarian in Derry while his friends all dispersed to enjoy highly successful lives in blissful forgetfulness of their child-eating nemesis. Needless to say, Omar from The Wire has definitely seen some shit. Williams can bring both the shakiness that comes from realizing that the monster is feeding again, as well as the steely resolve needed to drag people he cares about back into the horror as the only ones who have a chance to stop IT.

Stanley Uris – Wyatt Oleff

Adult: Jason Segel

 

**SPOILER ALERT**

Stanley doesn’t last very long, opting to off himself rather than return to the place where he almost had his face eaten by the nightmare lady from his father’s creepy-ass office painting. Segel is a familiar face that the audience will be comfortable enough with to effectively feel the impact when he takes that fateful bath.

That’s what I’ve got for now. I’ll be back soon, so thanks for taking the time to humor me with a read.

Stranger, Better Things

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A lot has already been written about the new Netflix show Stranger Things, so I’m not really going to take too deep a general dive into it here. Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the overall strong writing, directing, musical score, set design and performances.

 

This show features a number of teen, and pre-teen, actors and not one of them annoyed me. In fact, I’d say each of their performances holds up nicely against some of the better actors of any age you’ll find out there. Millie Bobby Brown – who plays the enigmatically gifted Eleven – and Finn Wolfhard – playing classically geeky and goodhearted kid Mike – deserve special mention for carrying much of the burden for bringing the viewer back to that age where the world really started changing for them en route to young adulthood.

Stranger Things

Stranger Things

On the grown-up side of things, Winona Ryder gives a very nice performance as grieving mother Joyce, who spends much of the season bordering on insanity until she’s proven right. While David Harbour – who plays Chief Hopper – imbues the character with the sort of 1970’s-1980’s era of wry but steady masculinity defined by roles like Roy Scheider as Sheriff Martin Brody, or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

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What I’m more interested in here is taking a personalized look at the influences that inspired creators/show runners The Duffer Brothers, as they are many of the same things that influenced my tastes and own creative endeavors.

But let me first take a quick moment to applaud Netflix for taking a chance on show for such a specific audience, even though it has rather surprisingly found its way to much larger audience. But it reminds you of why Netflix exists, and was so successful, in the first place: taking chances on shows like this one.

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Here’s the basic plot, as told from a child of the 80’s like myself (be warned, there will be some spoilers below):

Imagine E.T. but, instead of an alien, the kids find and bond with the girl from Firestarter or Carrie. Together, they’re searching for their missing friend in a similar end-of-the-innocence quest to the one in Stand By Me (of course the kid they’re looking for in Stand By Me is already known to be dead, while the kid in Stranger Things may not be).  Either way, the boy’s been taken by a monster not unlike Pennywise The Demonic Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s IT.

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Honestly, there is a lot more Stephen King spin present in this show than has been explored in some other reviews. Hell, even the main titles font from the opening credits looks like the vintage cover to a Stephen King novel.

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Meanwhile, the teens are dealing with a sort of A Nightmare On Elm Street situation as this same monster presents itself as something that seems to be able to defy the laws of nature and bend reality to its will. This is not far from the truth, as there is some heavy extra-dimensional action happening a la H.P. Lovecraft stories like From Beyond or Dreams In The Witch House.

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Lastly, there’s the adult characters’ story arc. This one gets a bit of the short shrift, though that’s clearly by design as The Duffer Brothers know where their bread is buttered here. Still, Winona Ryder gets to lose her mind over a lost loved one like Karen Allen in John Carpenter’s uncharacteristically sensitive Starman. And the other primary adult character, David Harbour’s police chief, ends up having to deal with your classic secret government cover-up prior to he and Ryder confronting the facehuggers from Alien and the shark from Jaws.

 

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That all may make it sound very derivative but, seriously, everything is derivative. It’s just a matter of where you derive from, and how well you adapt it to your purposes. In the case of Stranger Things, they’re pulling from some of my old favorite things and shaping them into one of my new favorite things.

Now, my enjoyment of this show is actually due to more than just it hitting my nostalgic sweet spot. Stranger Things hits the emotional punching bag pretty hard too. It took me across the spectrum from the first tugging of love on my youthful heartstrings in the Mike & Eleven relationship, all the way to spending half of the season finale choked up for reasons I would not have understood until more recent years thanks to revelatory scenes from Chief Hopper’s past. And you better believe it takes a lot to get me choked up.

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I do want to make one last mention of the fantastically retro, atmospheric synth-heavy musical score comes right out of John Carpenter’s best work. This is not a surprise, as it was composed by the same people who did a similarly awesome score for The Guest. The songs they licensed and used at key points in the show are amazingly on-point as well.

Speaking of The Guest – that film, as well as films like It Follows, Super 8, and Midnight Special, are kindred spirits in tone and theme to Stranger Things even though none were actually set in the 1980’s. Regardless, I can only hope this means we’re on the cusp of a whole new cinematic movement, as long as it gives us more gems like the ones mentioned above.

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Oh and, by the way, in case I didn’t make it clear you should DEFINITELY watch Stranger Things. Believe me, you can burn through those 8 episodes this weekend. In fact, you’ll have a hard time not doing so once you start.

 

Crying Like A Man

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What sort of things make men cry?

I won’t pretend to speak for all men, but I’ll speak for myself and maybe that will shed some light on men at large.

Musical tends to be a major factor in firing up my tear ducts, in fact it is the most frequent culprit. A swelling string section can get to the soft, gooey center of just about any man who is not dead inside.

That’s true whether in an orchestra film score,  or incorporated into a ballad or lament. Give me the cellos stirring things up deep down inside, and then the higher pitched choir of the violins to grant the release of tears.

Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back album,  especially The Book Of Love, is a prime example of blending pop music with classical trimmings.

Same can be said about Damien Rice songs like Amie, Delicate or Colour Me In.  Something with a slow build and a big finish a la With Or Without You, Journey’s Faithfully or Bloc Party’s Sunday tend to get my emotions roiling as well. It’s that they’re working the body bag of my emotions before knocking my block off.

Thematically speaking, the idea of letting go of a dream, a belief, or especially a loved one, can often hit my soft spot. Of course, that’s usually accompanied by the aforementioned musical cues.

John Barry’s theme from Somewhere In Time calls to mind the great essence of an otherwise flawed story about love made possible by impossible circumstances and then torn asunder by the unstoppable force of time.

Meet Joe Black, is a bad three hour movie that might have made a pretty decent two hour movie buried in there somewhere. But the ending featuring Anthony Hopkins saying goodbye to his family and friends with the fireworks and the swelling Thomas Newman score building out of What A Wonderful World always gets me misty.

Stand By Me starts with a simple string rendition of the titular song and ends with the main characters having to leave the innocence of childhood behind. So it gets me every time.

James Horner’s score from Braveheart is fantastic. At one point it takes a fairly over the top torture and execution scene and turns it into the build up of a moment of pure catharsis. The musical score bangs home the idea that, while they may have killed William Wallace, they did not destroy his beliefs. It’s one of those all too rare swelling-tears-pumping-fist moments.

I can occasionally be caught off-guard by understated pieces of a story that are not punctuated by a 50 piece orchestra. Stallone’s locker room interaction with Michael B. Jordan in Creed where he briefly talks about what he’d give up for one more day with his late wife is a recent such emotional movie moment.

Another moment is in Of Mice And Men, when George kills Lenny to save him from a more painful death at the hands of the lynch mob, but also because he knows Lenny can’t help himself but be dangerous sometimes. Either way, he killed the only person who he really cared for, the only thing he really had to hold onto in the world, and that’s a button pusher for me.

As Flowers For Algernon winds down the formerly mentally handicapped narrator starts losing his super intelligence and falls back into his lesser intellectual state. You can tell that he can, and cannot, sense him losing himself again and it’s pretty heartbreaking.

And, good lord, do not even get me started on anything that involves someone’s pet or animal companion dying. That’s the one thing that breaks me down every single time, even if it’s hammy or kinda rudimentary.

At any rate, it’s healthy to have a good cry every once in a while – manly or otherwise. So I’m always happy to revisit the things that bring me the sweet release of sorrow, and you should be as well.