FILM

Dull boy

Stephen King fans know he hated Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining for trivializing Jack Torrance’s alcoholism and redirecting the evil powers of the Overlook Hotel. In essence, Doctor Sleep, his sequel to The Shining, almost seems to exist partly to right some of the wrongs that King perceived in Kubrick’s movie.

Alas, Mike Flanagan, the man behind the excellent and creepy The Haunting of Hill House, makes the decision to incorporate Kubrick’s film into his own adaptation of Doctor Sleep. The results are a mixed bag of genuinely scary moments and passages that make the film too dependent on the glory of Kubrick. Trying to recreate a Kubrick moment without Kubrick? Not advised.

The film starts with Danny Torrance riding around the Overlook on his Big Wheels, and making that dreaded stop in room 237 where the old lady has stayed in the bath tub way too long. The film then jumps ahead to Dan as an adult, played by Ewan McGregor. Dan, like his daddy before him, drinks a lot. He also still has discussions with the now dead Dick Halloran (played by Carl Lumbry here, and Scatman Crothers in The Shining). So Dan not only still “shines”—communicates telepathically—but he talks to dead people.

The monsters of this movie are the True Knot, a band of gypsies who look like they’re killing time between Burning Mans. Their thing is to hunt down children who shine. When they find them, they murder them and eat their essence, which leaves the body as steam. So they’re basically vaping vampires who, while not immortal, have prolonged their lives.

The Knots are led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), so named because, well, she wears a hat. Rose is the one who rations out the steam for her Knot crew, which they keep in thermoses that have sucked in the essences of the dead. This element of the film, along with Ferguson’s disturbing performance, gives Doctor Sleep some memorably scary moments. A sequence where a young baseball player (Jacob Trembley) encounters the Knots is as harrowing as anything you’ll see in a movie this year.

In some ways, which I won’t give away, King gets a chance for some do-overs, as some of the scenes and themes in Doctor Sleep reference parts of King’s original novel, as well as the sequel book. King has long bemoaned the ending of the Kubrick’s film, but I can see why he might like the Doctor Sleep conclusion.

As for me, I thought the movie was better when it wasn’t hanging around the Overlook Hotel. The moments in the Overlook, although visually impressive for sure, felt like little more than a stunt, with no real, viable reason for the protagonists to be running around in Kubrick’s nightmare. Doctor Sleep works fine when it’s about a nasty band of soul suckers messing with kids who have special powers. It’s a confused muddle when it tries to do Kubrick.

It’s as if this film is trying to provide further relevance and depth to the ghosts and deranged characters that haunted Kubrick’s Overlook. That’s something that can be deemed absolutely unnecessary. What Kubrick accomplished doesn’t need to be monkeyed with, and that’s exactly what Doctor Sleep does, especially in its finale. There’s a sequence near the end that’s supposed to be the scary payoff, but it provided me with unintentional laughs.

McGregor is good in the central role, and Ferguson is fine as the villain. At over two-and-ahalf hours, Flanagan could’ve cut out his expensive Overlook finale, and probably would’ve had a better, more cohesive film. Instead, Doctor Sleep winds up being an elaborate imitation, and strange sort of King apology, for a classic Kubrick film. Ω

“They still haven’t fixed this door, huh?

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2Joker This new take on DC’s Clown Prince of Crime will go down as one of the year’s big missed opportunities. Director Todd Phillips, mostly known for his Hangover movies, apparently got the green light to do whatever he wanted with the Joker mythos. Phillips blows this chance. Phoenix is otherworldly good as Arthur Fleck, a severely troubled clown and standup comedy wannabe—and mama’s boy—with a condition that causes him to laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate moments. He physically and mentally disappears into the part, to the point where you may become concerned for the actor’s well-being. When we first see Fleck, he’s dressed as a clown, spinning a sign and generally having a good time. He promptly gets his ass kicked, and not for the last time. We then see him in therapy and living in poverty with his quirky mother (Frances Conroy). Fleck slowly but surely starts to lose all sense of his humanity as he grows into a criminal monster. Phillips even casts a game Robert De Niro to play a talk show host that winds up being a nod to Miller’s David Letterman riff (David Endocrine) in The Dark Knight Returns. At its most derivative, the screenplay echoes A Beautiful Mind, filmed in a way that feels like a hackneyed Shyamalan twist. In the end, it’s an unoriginal film only partially buoyed by an incredible performance.

4The King Partly inspired by real events and partly by the plays of William Shakespeare, Timothee Chalamet plays Hal, King Henry V of England, and it’s a barnburner of an acting turn. Chalamet has made a name for himself playing complicated, quiet characters before, but this one gives him a chance to rage on occasion, and he’s more than up to the task. Joel Edgerton, who co-wrote the screenplay, is on hand as Falstaff, Hal’s complicated right hand man, and Robert Pattinson, once again, shows that he just might be the finest actor of his generation with a brave and crazy performance as the Dauphin of France. Simply put, Pattinson’s accent in this movie is one of the greatest things I’ve witnessed in a movie this year, as is his final stunt in full armor. Director David Michod stages some fine action scenes, and Lily-Rose Depp makes a nice late film appearance as Catherine, Hal’s bride to be who will not stand for any of his toxic masculinity bullshit. Chalamet and Pattinson impress the most in a period piece film that works, a grand experiment that pays off. I want a sequel. (Streaming on Netflix.)

3Lady and the Tramp Disney+, the new Disney streaming service, has this available on day one, a sweet little live-action redo of the classic 1955 animated feature. This works primarily due to the casting of both the actual dogs and their voices. Justin Theroux, a notorious dog lover, is perfect for Tramp, a Schnauzer hybrid living the street life. The dog he provides the voice for is the spitting image of his animated counterpart. Tessa Thompson provides vocals for Lady, a cute-as-allheck Cocker Spaniel. The live-action animal talking is well done, and more engaging than that recent remake of The Lion King. The plot remains simple: rich dog meets stray dog, rich dog becomes stray dog, dogs fall in love. There are some major changes—no “Siamese Cat Song”—but fans will find a lot to remind them of the original (spaghetti scene!). Your kids will love it, and if it’s any indicator of the upcoming quality of the new Disney+ streaming content, things are off to a decent enough start. (Streaming on Disney+.)

5The Lighthouse Robert Eggers, the man who gave us The Witch, a gesture for which I’m eternally grateful, returns with this trippy, gothic sailor’s yarn about two very strange men (Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe) working a difficult shift in a lighthouse in the late 19th century. It’s close quarters for the two, with every fart heard loud and clear, and every glitch in each other’s personalities grating on the sensibilities. As the trippy drama plays out, paranoia degrades into delusional mania, then straight on into psychopathic actions (or not, depending upon whether or not you view the whole thing as a fucked-up dream). Shot in black-and-white with a scope that reminds of old silent movies, the two actors start in a truly intense place, and they ratchet it up from there. Dafoe is all strains of incredible as the weathered sailor restricted to land duty, and possibly in the game of driving his employees crazy, one right after the other. Pattinson matches him every step of the way, with a performance reminiscent of early Marlon Brando. That’s right, I just compared him to Brando. Eggers is two films in, and this guy can direct with the best of them. Both of his films are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The man is a true original, and these actors take the chance to work with him to the hallucinatory stars. I’m still not entirely sure what happened, but I know it disturbed the living piss out of me, and it contains two of the year’s best performances.

2Terminator: Dark Fate So, the big thing about Terminator: Dark Fate is that James Cameron has returned to the franchise as a producer and story credit guy, so that means we’ll return to the sort of powerful franchise chapters he directed back in the day, right? Well, actually, no. Tim Miller, the guy who directed Deadpool, is in charge of this mostly bland and banal chapter, with Cameron essentially whispering in his ear from afar. Cameron, apparently, never even visited the set; not surprising, considering ex-wife Linda Hamilton is back and, given her physical superiority, could easily kick the living shit out of him. Cameron’s real attention is on the Avatar sequels, which have mercifully been postponed so many times that I’m currently conditioned to think I will never have to sit through them. One can dream. For the umpteenth time, the future is all screwy because rogue A.I. has essentially taken over the planet and ruled humans unnecessary. This chapter picks up where Cameron’s second chapter left off, with the future changed thanks to the work of Sarah Connor (Hamilton), her boy, John, and a cuddly Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Had things turned out all peachy after Sarah’s handiwork, we wouldn’t have this movie. Some major happenings transpire in the opening minutes here, featuring a CGI de-aged Hamilton that I must say is remarkable. It totally looks like 1991 Hamilton on the screen, and some other characters from Judgment Day show up as well. Things are off to a good start. Then things get, well, routine at best.

3Zombieland: Double Tap Since the release of the first Zombieland back in 2009, much has happened in the entertainment land of the undead. A decade later, Emma Stone has an Oscar for La La Land, Woody Harrelson got his third nomination in that stretch, and Jesse Eisenberg was nominated for The Social Network. Abigail Breslin also had an Oscar nom before the first film for Little Miss Sunshine. With all of this Oscar business, might this crew of performers opt for more snobby fare rather than blowing up ghoul skulls for laughs? Nope, director Ruben Fleischer returns with the whole crew—shockingly—intact for Zombieland: Double Tap, a film that does little to reinvigorate the genre, but still delivers plenty of laughs. It’s basically the same as the first movie, but with some more laughs thanks to a new costar. The zombie killers have taken up residence in the White House, with Wichita (Stone) and Columbus (Eisenberg) in a relationship that requires them to cover up the eyes on the Lincoln portrait when they bed down at night. Tallahassee (Harrelson) is still searching for Twinkies with a new goal to visit Graceland while leaving shredded zombies in his wake, while Little Rock (Breslin) wouldn’t mind having her first boyfriend ever at the age of 22. it all becomes a road trip again, one that eventually leads to Graceland—sort of—and a commune called Babylon. It’s a basic sequel with enough laughs and genre fun to earn a look.