Religious fantasy (and horror story, barely) about not one, but two teenage virgins, both miraculously pregnant, one with the new Messiah, the other with the Antichrist. Written in bite-size chunks and peppered with melodramatic italics, this is a book of endless beginnings, as if Patterson is forever trying to entice the reader to pick up the book rather than to put it down -- permanently. Silly and superficial on every level, the story bounces between the girls themselves, an investigator of miracles for the Vatican, and Sister Anne and Father Justin (who can't decide whether or not the Second Coming is a good time to renounce their vows and hop into bed with each other). The anticlimactic ending leaves you questioning the superiority of supernatural intelligence. Reissued in 2000 as Cradle and All, but earlier (1991) adapted as a made-for-TV film called Child of Darkness, Child of Light.
+1/2
Religious fantasy (and horror story, barely) about not one, but two teenage virgins, both miraculously pregnant, one with the new Messiah, the other with the Antichrist. Written in bite-size chunks and peppered with melodramatic italics, this is a book of endless beginnings, as if Patterson is forever trying to entice the reader to pick up the book rather than to put it down -- permanently. Silly and superficial on every level, the story bounces between the girls themselves, an investigator of miracles for the Vatican, and Sister Anne and Father Justin (who can't decide whether or not the Second Coming is a good time to renounce their vows and hop into bed with each other). The anticlimactic ending leaves you questioning the superiority of supernatural intelligence. Reissued in 2000 as Cradle and All, but earlier (1991) adapted as a made-for-TV film called Child of Darkness, Child of Light.
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+1/2 Essentially a dramatic PSA, the "goal" of which, if you believe the opening title card, "is not to win commercial awards but to create an 'awareness of a present danger.'" That danger, of course, is the Zodiac killer (and, vaguely, others like him), who killed five people and wounded two others in late-sixties California. The killer himself, who taunted police with letters and cryptograms, claimed many times more victims, but without proof or official consensus. To this day, he has not been caught or conclusively identified. Bargain-basement effort (it's just as well that the filmmakers had no commercial aspirations) that casts the Zodiac (Hal Reed) as a bunny-loving mailman with afterlife issues and an institutionalized dad who wants nothing to do with him. The movie shows us his officially recognized crimes, then tacks on a few more, ostensibly to frighten the audience by suggestion -- since scaring them the old-fashioned way, with technical skill and a talent for cinema, was impossible. Of curiosity value only, and only to those interested in the Zodiac murders. +1/2 By the author of Dracula. Believe it or not. Insanely ridiculous tale of a snake-woman hell-bent on marrying a kite-flying cuckoo, and the band of God-fearing people plotting to kill her instead. Written as poorly as it is constructed. Mercifully short at less than 200 pages*, yet rushed in every respect, as though Stoker couldn't be bothered with trivialities like story and character development. The bizarre kite flyer stands at the intersection of both deficiencies: he is a major player, he is laughably weird, and he serves no purpose other than to muddy the waters; in terms of the plot, his kite is more important than he is. Complete nonsense, but harmless. Stoker's last novel. Adapted for the big screen (sort of) in 1988 by Ken Russell. * This, the most commonly available version of the book (the text, not the edition pictured), is actually an abridgment from 1925. Click here for the original. +1/2 The sister (Tammin Sursok) of a murdered girl travels to Bangkok to find her killer (or at least her missing head), rapidly uncovering a connection with an interactive porn site called Cam2Cam. The website, however, is little more than a red herring in a plot that changes direction every time the filmmakers run out of ideas, a not-infrequent occurrence. Emotionally shallow, psychologically absurd, and illogical. Also with Sarah Bonrepaux as the sister's sexy neighbor in Thailand. +1/2 What do you do when God speaks to you, but says He is a figment of your imagination? That's the question this film -- the revisionist story of Joan of Arc -- poses, even though the real Joan, so far as we know, never questioned her sanity and certainly not her faith. Here, the poor farm girl is clearly nuts. We know that because Milla Jovovich plays her as a twitchy shake-voice schizophrenic of whom it is hard to imagine anyone following her to the milking barn, let alone to war. (Critics complained of Jean Seberg's performance in Saint Joan; Jovovich's is infinitely worse.) Having dispensed with theology, Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin go about the task of motivating Joan with imaginary events from her life, like the one that starts it all: the murder followed by the rape of her sister by an invading Englishman, to which little Joan is a witness. Common vengeance is the best they could come up with for an uncommon woman who claimed to be directed by saints from Heaven. The real Joan, of course, heard voices; here, she has visions -- not of saints but of a single male, suggesting she believed she had a direct line to Christ himself. When does historical accuracy matter? When the alternative is the construction of one straw man after another so that you can fob off a lie as modern understanding. With, unlike the earlier Saint Joan, long battle sequences replete with beheadings and dismemberment, some misplaced and misguided humor, and Dustin Hoffman as Joan's vision of the god of self-help psychiatry. + Glorified fan fiction masquerading as a serious sequel to one of the greatest horror novels of all time. Only in this case, to borrow one of the few cliches left out of this book, the fan is demented and his object is to destroy that which he most loves. On its own, The Un-dead is a grotesquerie of roll-your-eyes writing, adolescent thinking, and the sort of vampire worship that would turn these undead denizens of Earth into tortured, godlike souls. Souls? Oh, yes. This "sequel" begins with the premise that Stoker got everything wrong. Rewriting his novel -- its plot, characters, and themes -- is the backdrop for a new alternative history story that features the likes of Elizabeth Bathory and Jack the Ripper, not to mention Stoker himself. Though Dracula lives (never mind how...and how...and how), Bathory is the lesbian badass here, an evil Supergirl with virtually unlimited powers and no kryptonite to keep her in check (because, of course, religion has no effect on her). Her confidence in her ultimate victory is understandable, given that the former vampire hunters now all have problems of their own: Dr. Seward is addicted to morphine, Arthur Holmwood is still pining for his lost Lucy, Jonathan Harker is an alcoholic, and Mina, his wife, can't stop thinking about that time "her dark prince" had his way with her. And Van Helsing is just awfully old. The wild card is Quincey -- not Quincey Morris (Stoker miraculously got that part of the story right), but Quincey Harker, Mina and Jonathan's son. But then he's a rebellious young man who has set his sights on a career in the theater, not in that stuffy old law office where his overbearing dad works. Where but the theater could he hobnob with a man like Basarab, a tall, mysterious European seemingly destined to be the world's greatest actor. "I have met someone," Quincey hilariously tells his mother. "Someone wonderful." (Mina naturally thinks he's speaking of a girl.) With lots of blood and gore, and modern special effects that tell a compelling tale of the source for much of the authors' inspiration for this unimaginative travesty. Not to be confused with Freda Warrington's novel Dracula the Undead, which sounds a whole lot more interesting. Dacre Stoker, by the way, is Bram Stoker's great grand-nephew. + Morally bankrupt "sequel" to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in fact rewrites Tobe Hooper's film then introduces a baby, related to the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface, who, twenty-some-odd years later, grows into buxom Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario). When her grandmother dies and leaves her her house, Heather and her friends head to Texas where, over the course of 90 minutes, Leatherface is taken from psychotic killer to sympathetic victim. Humorless and greasily pointless. * A British woman historian, an American architect, the Russian curator of the Hermitage art museum, and a female Israeli Mossad agent discover that their independent inquiries into the Third Reich are related by an incredible possibility: that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun survived World War II and might still be alive "today," in 1985. In spite of the possibilities -- history and politics, art and architecture -- Wallace produces a trivial novel with very little information and no atmosphere whatsoever, and a plot that hinges on excavating the bulldozed Führerbunker (where Hitler and Braun committed suicide) in order -- get this -- not to find something. With one-dimensional characters (two of whom fall instantly in love), a tit-for-tat view of mass murder, and an absurd resolution that is hardly worth the 400-page wait. "One of Wallace's characters asks the heroine, 'Another book on Hitler? There have been so many.' Too true, too true." - People, January 06, 1986 "[Wallace] hooks you on the first page and holds you until the last--not an inconsiderable achievement. But it's not enough, alas--not nearly enough." - David Shaw, Los Angeles Times, March 02, 1986 * Fashion model Allison stumbles onto the gates of Hell when she moves into New York brownstone where her most appealing neighbor is an ancient priest who never leaves his apartment and seemingly spends all day every day spying on the neighborhood through his window. Konvitz's first novel is a painfully awkward book-length short story, filled with characters who are not only disconnected from each other but from themselves, as well as from any semblance of reality. Includes a "charming" eccentric (who is anything but), a completely incompatible boyfriend (who at first doesn't believe any of Allison's stranger stories, then for no discernible reason suddenly does), and a bitter, cigar-chomping cop (who carries a mousetrap in his pocket while engaging in witless banter with the other characters). Absolutely nothing rings true (except perhaps the author's own distaste for lesbianism). Made into a movie, co-written by Konvitz, in 1977. * Poor adaptation of A. J. Quinnell's novel -- made infinitely worse by Scott's psychotic direction -- is almost criminal waste of Denzel Washington's talent and the audience's time. John Creasy, a burnt-out counter-terrorist operative, takes a job as the bodyguard for a nine-year-old girl in Mexico City; when she is kidnapped, he vows violent revenge on everyone involved. Quinnell himself liked the picture, which in itself should be enough to give the rest of us pause. For all its blood and pyrotechnics, this is decidedly a more soft-boiled version of the story, as it turns Creasy from a man repaying a debt into a pathetic loser who claims to be fighting for a child but who in reality is merely using her as an excuse in his quest for personal redemption. It's also softer in the head: the way the movie ends, unlike the book, makes a mockery of Creasy's entire mission. After a terrible opening -- featuring Scott's heavily tricked up photography and editing -- the film settles down for awhile as little Pita (Dakota Fanning) teaches Creasy how to be human. In spite of the miscasting -- not that Fanning isn't good (she is), but she (and her mother) should have been Hispanic -- this part of the film is actually good. Beginning with the kidnapping, however, Scott's worst instincts take over and the rest is a jumbled, pretentious mess that makes momentous occasions out of "events" like opening a car door. Eight years later, director Scott committed suicide. |
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