Psychological horror novel in which a young mother is forced to confront a shattering reality: that her 8-year-old daughter is a murderous sociopath. That this is the mother's story and not the child's demonstrates March's understanding of the little girl's condition: she herself is quite uncomplicated, having no conscience or sense of morality to shade her personality. It is the mother -- who gradually learns more than she could ever have wanted to know about the girl's condition -- who faces the hard, frightening decisions about what to do with her. It's a dark premise, but one that March executes faithfully and, for the most part, with psychological insight. It is, however, all a bit detached, even dry at times, which might save it from the excesses another author might have imposed upon it, but which also keeps it from burrowing as deeply into the limbic system of our brains, where reside our emotions and our memory, as it might have with a somewhat more emotive approach. (Not that the book is without humor: one character -- a rough, uneducated caretaker -- unconsciously develops the hots for this little girl who is every bit as anti-social as he is, yet discovers, in the end, that she is far more practical about it than he could ever be.) Adapted three times, first as a Broadway play the same year as publication, then as a film in 1956 -- based on the play and the book -- and finally as a TV movie in 1985.
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Psychological horror novel in which a young mother is forced to confront a shattering reality: that her 8-year-old daughter is a murderous sociopath. That this is the mother's story and not the child's demonstrates March's understanding of the little girl's condition: she herself is quite uncomplicated, having no conscience or sense of morality to shade her personality. It is the mother -- who gradually learns more than she could ever have wanted to know about the girl's condition -- who faces the hard, frightening decisions about what to do with her. It's a dark premise, but one that March executes faithfully and, for the most part, with psychological insight. It is, however, all a bit detached, even dry at times, which might save it from the excesses another author might have imposed upon it, but which also keeps it from burrowing as deeply into the limbic system of our brains, where reside our emotions and our memory, as it might have with a somewhat more emotive approach. (Not that the book is without humor: one character -- a rough, uneducated caretaker -- unconsciously develops the hots for this little girl who is every bit as anti-social as he is, yet discovers, in the end, that she is far more practical about it than he could ever be.) Adapted three times, first as a Broadway play the same year as publication, then as a film in 1956 -- based on the play and the book -- and finally as a TV movie in 1985.
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+++1/2 Alternate history (and I Ching symposium) about several people whose lives intersect in a post-World War II world dominated by the Germans and the Japanese. Sweeping the globe, however, even though banned by the Nazis, is a novel (written by the mostly unseen titular character) that posits a different ending to the war, one in which the United States and her allies won. In spite of the inclusion of action elements like spies, political intrigue, and mortal threats to civilians, Dick's book isn't really about any of that: it's an examination of culture and ethnicity -- Japanese, German, and American, roughly in that order -- each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and all of them subject to the forces of fate and chance, represented by the I Ching (which, being Chinese, stands apart). On that level, this is a fascinating book with a fully-realized setting and interesting and introspective characters. The plot, on the other hand...well, you may find yourself halfway through the book and still wondering where, exactly, it is all heading -- even if, by then, you will have gained some insight into why it has never been turned into a movie. (A TV series began last year, in 2015.) Winner of the Hugo award for Best Novel for 1963. +++ It is significant that this film credits screenwriters Hugh Gray, N. Richard Nash, and John Twist with the "adaptation" of Helen's story without mentioning any single source for their interpretation. As told by numerous authors throughout the years, Helen's story is a mythic mess, one that is so unclear that, for all we know, Helen may have been a fully-grown woman who was complicit in her own "abduction," or a 10-year-old child, the victim of kidnapping and rape. Robert Wise and his screenwriters, however, pull from a variety of sources (including their own imaginations) to give us a coherent version of Helen's story that hits a number of familiar passages and lines with pleasing regularity. The crux of it all is the abduction of Helen (Rossana Podestà), a Greek princess, by Paris (Jacques Sernas), a prince of Troy, an act that unites the rulers of the Greek city-states, who set sail (in a thousand ships) to lay seige to Troy. In this version, Paris is sailing on a mission of peace to Sparta when he is tossed overboard in a storm. He is found washed ashore by Helen, who, along with her slaves (including a young, suggestively randy Brigitte Bardot), nurse him back to health. In less time than that, Paris and Helen have fallen in love. When Helen's husband, the king Menelaus (Niall MacGinnis), imprisons Paris, Helen helps him escape, and it is ostensibly to protect her from advancing soldiers that Paris takes her with him back to Troy, and inadvertently starts the Trojan War. (One major departure here from earlier stories of the war is the idea that Helen's abduction simply provides a convenient pretext for the Greeks to attack, they being more interested in Troy's gold than Helen's honor.) As historical epics go, this is not an exceptional film, but it is a solid piece of work, with good (if uninspired) acting and direction, and a well-paced story that covers a lot of ground in two hours. If some of the sets and props fail to capture the poetry of romantic myth, this is off-set by one that does: the famous Trojan horse. Perhaps the best shots in the film occur just after the departure of the Greeks, as the bacchanalian celebration of the citizens of Troy gives way to a slowly emptying courtyard where stands the giant wooden horse that will be their destruction. "Sir Cedric Hardwicke as King Priam, Torin Thatcher as Ulysses, Niall MacGinnis as Menelaus, Stanley Baker as Achilles and many more make broad sweeps and eloquent gestures. But they are strictly two-dimensional -- like the film." - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, January 27, 1956 +++ Well-directed thriller starring Harrison Ford as a doctor, in Paris for a medical conference, whose wife (Betty Buckley) mysteriously disappears. Local authorities think she is having an affair, but her husband knows she has been kidnapped. His only clue to getting her back: a suitcase belonging to a young Frenchwoman (Emmanuelle Seigner) that his wife mistakenly picked up at the airport. Ford is good as the meek Dr. Walker, whose frustration and desperation eventually get the better of him, while Seigner is bright and pretty enough, but forced to play an under-written role thanks to a script that takes its MacGuffin much too seriously. "[E]very scene, on its own, seems to work. It is only the total of the scenes that is wrong." - Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times, February 26, 1988 "Miss Seigner does what she's supposed to do, which is stop traffic." - Janet Maslin, The New York Times, February 26, 1988 *** A psychiatrist is drawn into mystery and murder after meeting a new patient, a young man who claims to be working for leprechauns. Mildly successful when first published, and rediscovered by the Brits in the 70s, who admired (then overstated) its psychological components, it's really all about the mystery, which is unusual and intriguing, and features along the way such things as Percheron horses being left at murder scenes, amnesia, and torture. "Spotty -- but hard to put down." - The Saturday Review, June 1, 1946 *** Jilted paleontologist joins team hunting overgrown crocodile at a remote lake in Maine. Borrows freely (albeit knowingly) from other films (Jaws, particularly, of course) and might have been just another ripoff, but this surprisingly entertaining monster movie gets major boost from game cast and fun script (by David E. Kelley) that keeps its eye on audiences rather than critics. Bridget Fonda is joined by Bill Pullman as a soft-spoken fish and game warden, Brendan Gleeson as a small-town sheriff, and Oliver Platt as an eccentric millionaire who believes crocs are divine. Followed by three sequels, all of which were made for TV. "Instead of rooting for Pullman and Fonda, we end up praying that the crocodile is hungry enough to put them out of their misery." - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly, July 16, 1999 "[A]t 83 minutes, this short-attention-span cinema seems more geared to the braces and training bra set than to those who actually pay for tickets with their own money and have driver's licenses." - Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post, July 16, 1999 *** Starts out rather like a British version of The Thing (From Another World) -- mysterious alien ship discovered buried not in ice, but deep in the earth causes friction between military and scientific investigators, while a living remnant of its crew wreaks havoc -- but unlike Hawks' film, the threat here is never very clearly defined and its haziness and inconsistency saps the suspense. Nice-try special effects don't greatly harm the movie, but don't help a lot, either. Still, a film with ideas (many psi-related) and a few nice scenes and touches, as, for instance, when a scholar, translating Latin on the fly, has to turn the page to find his verb. The third and last in Hammer's Quatermass films, preceded by The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. This standalone feature was titled Five Million Years to Earth for U.S. release in 1968. Starring Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, James Donald, and Julian Glover. *** Slick, cowardly Public Relations officer Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is sent to the front lines in a war with alien invaders; when he kills a rare species, its blood initiates a temporal loop that causes Cage to repeat the day endlessly, each time he is killed. He learns more with each repetition, soon meeting a woman (Emily Blunt) who once had the same ability, and who helps guide and train him to use it as a means of combating the enemy. Ridiculous premise, but well-executed and exciting, leavened frequently with genuine humor. Excellent teaming of an irreverent Cruise with a hard-nosed Blunt. Looking rather like spinning mechanical octopi, the aliens aren’t really a highlight, but then the story isn’t about them anyway. Based on the novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. *** After one spy novel and another about alcoholism, Jaws author Benchley returns to the sea with a straight up thriller about a seasoned fisherman coerced into helping a couple of crazies (one a scientist, the other a grieving and obsessive dad) bent on killing the giant squid that has taken up residence in the fished-out waters off Bermuda, where people are rapidly slipping down the food chain. No romantic subplots of note, no children either, just old-fashioned adventure, comfortably set in Benchley's wheelhouse, and anchored by his knowledge of boating, the sea, and ocean life. Solid escapist fare. Adapted for TV in 1996 as The Beast, starring William Petersen. *** One hundred years in the future, a star with its own planetary system passes near Earth. Four of its five planets are gas giants, but the fifth, dubbed Achilles, is Earth-sized and evidently Earth-like. Two expeditions, one Russian, one American, set out for Achilles, where they discover endless swards of grass and long, shallow lakes. Then things get weird. In fact, it's all a little weird from the beginning. Written by astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and his novelist son Geoffrey, this book doesn't read like any ordinary science fiction novel. This is a good thing: it's different and it suits the subject matter. It has the deliberateness of the scientific mind and also its leaps forward, as well as its odd digressions. In a way, its characters are digressions. They aren't quite colorless, yet they aren't quite what one would expect in a science fiction novel, either. The astronauts, for example, are strangely laid-back, largely unmoved by the momentousness of exploring a new, living world. And then there's the hero of the story. He isn't one of the astronauts; he isn't even on the trip. And he's happy about it. This is because his wife's lover is on the trip, and he's looking forward to having her all to himself for awhile. Find another science fiction book with a cuckold as the hero. There aren't many. Though its doubtful that any of this was intentionally designed this way, it all dovetails to give this book a slightly off-kilter feel that keeps it surprising -- and eerie, once the explorers begin to realize there's more to Achilles than grass and water. |
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