adaptation – Page 27 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Luce

Luce (2019)
Written by J.C. Lee and Julius Onah
Directed by Julius Onah

Luce is a difficult movie to wrap my head around. In some moments, it reminds me of the tense ping-pong of dialogue in David Mamet’s work. In others, it is very close to being a cheesy Netflix original. The film brings up troublesome topics that are worth examination, like how black young people navigate the constant sea of labels being tossed their way. But then it will go down a dark road, implying that young women who say they were sexually assaulted might be lying and have a duplicitous agenda. Helping to elevate Luce even in the worst moments is an S-tier cast: Octavia Spencer, Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Kelvin Harrison, Jr.

Movie Review – The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower (2017)
Written by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, and Nikolaj Arcel
Directed by Nikolaj Arcel

The Dark Tower is based on a series of novels by Stephen King and existed in development hell for a decade before finally being made. The three phases of development are the JJ Abrams phase, the Ron Howard phase, and the “we give up, just make the damn movie” phase. Because the script went through so many rewrites, it has ended up a continuation of the books instead of an adaptation. Thus the story is incomprehensible to someone who hasn’t read the books. This is one of the strangest decisions I’ve ever seen a studio make when adapting a book.

Movie Review – She-Devil

She-Devil (1989)
Written by Barry Strugatz & Mark R. Burns
Directed by Susan Seidelman

In watching films in this series, my hope is always to come across a maligned picture that’s actually better than people make it out to be. I’d love to be surprised and discover some lost gem that was misunderstood in its time. The movies are chosen based on either the status of the performers or the franchise being adapted. I picked She-Devil because the names on the marquee are Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr. Barr was particularly huge at the time with a hit tv series, and this film was seen as a stepping stone into big-screen work. What happened was that the film flopped, and Barr stuck with her television gig. But is the movie as bad as audiences and critics believed at the time?

Movie Review – 12 Monkeys

12 Monkeys (1995)
Written by David and Janet Peoples
Directed by Terry Gilliam

Having recently re-watched Chris Marker’s short film La Jetee I decided it was time to watch the feature adaptation, 12 Monkeys again. I had only seen 12 Monkeys once before in college and enjoyed it a lot. It is what led me to Marker’s short, which has gone on to become one of my favorite pieces of film. I also developed a love for Terry Gilliam during my college years, with Brazil becoming one of my favorite pictures, even reading up on the complicated history of how it came to the screen. 12 Monkeys is expectedly a strange film, merging the underlying narrative of La Jetee with Gilliam’s own aesthetic sensibilities.

Movie Review – The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch (2019)
Written by Peter Straughan
Directed by John Crowley

I often use sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic to get a sense of how people perceive a movie. I might use this when I’m interested in comparing my favorites with critics and audiences, or in the case of my We Wish You’d Forget film series find movies that universally panned. This year a strange anomaly came across those sites, The Goldfinch. From the trailers, I’d say I was mildly interested in this picture, and I enjoyed Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I had even planned to see The Goldfinch opening week to review it, but life circumstances got in the way. However, I did read some of the reviews and was astonished that it wasn’t just panned a mediocre film but that critics seemed to revile it. Even more surprising was how audiences had the opposite reaction, and as a majority said they enjoyed the picture.

Movie Review – Dragonball Evolution

Dragonball Evolution (2009)
Written by Ben Ramsey
Directed by James Wong

There are some signs a movie is going to be bad. When it comes to properties being adapted to the screen, one of the biggest red flags is when the picture opens with long-winded narration explaining something that happened two thousand years prior. Dragonball Evolution spends its opening moments moving us through a digital mural of images of our villains and explaining what happened back then. The narration only serves to create more confusion and talks about characters in a way that assumes the whole audience is familiar.

Movie Review – The Nightingale

The Nightingale (2018)
Written & Directed by Jennifer Kent

There are moments so harrowing and emotional that occur in The Nightingale that I felt like I might break down in tears. This is a rarity for me to find in a film, having watched so many and become aware of so many tropes and plot formulas. This isn’t to say that the inciting premise of The Nightingale will seem novel to other viewers, it isn’t. This is a revenge film centered around a female protagonist, the type of story told many times before and one that is particularly popular in our time. This isn’t a film about the catharsis of revenge; the final shot makes it clear that our main character is not redeemed in any manner. Instead, this is a story about the seemingly innate drive to seek bloody justice and the tremendous toll that takes on a human being.

Movie Review – Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
Written by Dan & Kevin Hagerman
Directed by André Øvredal

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a book published in 1981, compiled and rewritten by Alvin Schwartz. Schwartz was a writer who was primarily interested in folklore and wordplay, writing more than fifty books on and about these topics. His most famous, of course, is Scary Stories and the two follow up texts. The books contributed to many nightmares for children growing up in the 1980s and 90s, most notably because of the grotesque illustrations of Stephen Gammell. Gammell was also not primarily a horror creator, having illustrated over sixty children’s books, including one of my favorite picture books. When the Relatives Came. This book, like so many texts and pieces of nostalgic media, has been snatched up by their publisher’s parent media corporation to be turned into a movie.

Movie Review – Wounds

Wounds (2019)
Written & Directed by Babak Anvari

Wounds is the film adaptation of Nathan Ballingrud’s fantastic 2015 novella “The Visible Filth.” The story centers on Will, a bartender at a scummy dive in New Orleans. One night, while tending bar, a fight breaks out between his friend Eric and another patron that ends with Eric slashed across the cheek. A group of teens using fake IDs scatter when they hear about the cops. As Will cleans up, he discovers a cell phone he thinks belongs to these young people. It’s only when he gets home that he opens the phone and finds disturbing pictures that hint at some sort of ritual performed to connect with another realm. Will’s life slowly becomes infested with a darkness at the edges, creeping closer, threatening to devour him.

Movie Review – The Thin Red Line

The Thin Red Line (1998)
Written & Directed by Terence Malick

War movies should always be horror movies. Terence Malick seems to have had this in mind when he shot The Thin Red Line, a film made after a twenty-year absence. Malick’s journey adapting the novel by James Jones began in 1988, his producers agreed to help him bring the book to the screen. What followed was a decade of some of the most in-depth research a filmmaker could embark on. Malick consumed everything directly and tangentially related to the story. He read books on the reptiles and amphibians of the Pacific region, the Navajo code talkers, and immersed himself in traditional Japanese drum music. Malick’s ultimate vision of the Pacific theater of World War II was to portray the island of Guadacanal as “raped by the green poison,” a term he used to refer to war.