Rage is a slimy little book that comes to us from the bottom of some dank pond in fairyland. It's about a maladjusted high school kid who takes his Algebra class hostage in order to give his classmates a crash course in puerile psychology. Written by a future best-selling novelist, the kids all talk not like high school seniors but like future Stephen Kings. If this is an honest book, as King claims, it's a little scary how divorced from reality the man was even before he'd gone whole hog on drugs. Honest or not, the book is so light on truth that it practically floats. It belongs in the sewers with Pennywise. (Which, more or less, is evidently where it is these days. King and his publishers allowed it go out of print after several disturbed kids attempted to recreate the plot in real life.) After Charlie Decker takes over, his classmates become willing participants in his ridiculously unbelievable psychotherapy group, chipping in with their own horror stories. Fat guy with overprotective mom, fat girl who gets no dates, and so on. (There's little danger of the reader imploding under the weight of such psychological depth.) It's all ostensibly leading to one guy, the jock who isn't the All-American he appears to be. But his story is no less superficial than all the others so King goes all Lord of the Flies on him to try to generate some excitement. He fails. A truly miserable book, one that purports to reveal the humanity of its characters, but which instead celebrates only hate and violence. King's first "Richard Bachman" book.
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Rage is a slimy little book that comes to us from the bottom of some dank pond in fairyland. It's about a maladjusted high school kid who takes his Algebra class hostage in order to give his classmates a crash course in puerile psychology. Written by a future best-selling novelist, the kids all talk not like high school seniors but like future Stephen Kings. If this is an honest book, as King claims, it's a little scary how divorced from reality the man was even before he'd gone whole hog on drugs. Honest or not, the book is so light on truth that it practically floats. It belongs in the sewers with Pennywise. (Which, more or less, is evidently where it is these days. King and his publishers allowed it go out of print after several disturbed kids attempted to recreate the plot in real life.) After Charlie Decker takes over, his classmates become willing participants in his ridiculously unbelievable psychotherapy group, chipping in with their own horror stories. Fat guy with overprotective mom, fat girl who gets no dates, and so on. (There's little danger of the reader imploding under the weight of such psychological depth.) It's all ostensibly leading to one guy, the jock who isn't the All-American he appears to be. But his story is no less superficial than all the others so King goes all Lord of the Flies on him to try to generate some excitement. He fails. A truly miserable book, one that purports to reveal the humanity of its characters, but which instead celebrates only hate and violence. King's first "Richard Bachman" book.
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+++ Michael Crichton published ten books -- five before The Andromeda Strain and five after -- under pseudonyms, eight of them as John Lange. This one is the one that is most like his more famous works. It begins and ends with excerpts from government documents, it plays as a race against time (the hero has 12 hours to solve the case and save the day), and the case itself begins with a techno-scientific premise: a radical who aims to kill the President (and countless innocent bystanders) through the combination of two chemicals to produce a deadly nerve gas. Why, then, didn't he publish it under his own name? Despite the similarities, Binary is Crichton lite. In his case, that has nothing to do with his characters or the complexity of his plots; it's simply a matter of research: how much he did and how much of it ended up on the page. For this reason, this stripped-down thriller might actually be preferable to some of his readers. In fact, if you think Crichton is a quick read, you'll be amazed at how blazingly fast Lange is. Binary is nothing deep, nothing even very memorable, but it's exciting, and Crichton makes it all seem absolutely effortless, like eating cotton candy. +++++ A movie that isn't so much an adaptation of a book as a rewrite of it. Distilling the salient portions of a novel and filtering out its irrelevant subplots, it turns out, can produce a whale of a movie. That is, if you also humanize its characters, hire terrific actors, and direct the whole thing with imagination, skill, and incredible energy. This is a movie that is, unlike Benchley's novel, completely riveting. It is, of course, about three men who, each for his own reasons, set to sea to catch or kill the huge shark that has been eating people off the beaches of a small island resort town. It's got humor, suspense, excitement, and an evocative and apropos soundtrack. It also has one of the most memorable monologues in the history of movies, as Quint, the crude but colorful fisherman hired to lead the shark hunt, recounts one of his experiences from World War II. With Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss, and novel author Peter Benchley in a cameo as a reporter on the beach. Followed by three sequels, ranging from bad to deplorable. +++ This is an odd book, and that goes whether you've seen the movie or not. If you have seen the movie, be prepared for one surprise after another. Oh, it's still about a Chief of Police unwillingly forced into battle with a mammoth great white shark that is eating people off the beaches of his small resort town. It's peopled with the same characters: Chief Brody himself; his wife; the cynical mayor; Matt Hooper the ichthyologist; and Quint, the colorful fisherman Brody eventually hires to kill the shark. Beyond that, however, it's a different story, for though their names and occupations are the same, these aren't the same people, and their unique motivations and personalities lead them (and the story) into waters uncharted by the film. If you haven't seen Steven Spielberg's blockbuster, its weirdness lies in what Benchley has done to fashion his fish tale into a bestseller. To draw in a female audience, he's added an intimate subplot involving Brody and his wife. But he's done it so ham-handedly that if it isn't hijacking the book, it's lurking in the background with empty threats of making a meaningful difference. Strangest of all is that this subplot doesn't kill the book: it may be extraneous, but at least it's suspenseful. (One of the best scenes in the book -- albeit a book about a killer shark -- has Brody hosting a very tense dinner party.) The mashup doesn't work, narratively speaking, but the various pieces are compelling enough in their own right to make the book a reasonably enjoyable one. +++1/2 Stark, faithful adaptation of the book by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler about an American nuclear bomber group that, due to a mechanical malfunction, flies into Russia on a mission to bomb Moscow, while the officers of the Strategic Air Command, the President, and of course the Russians attempt to stop it. Walter Matthau plays a civilian Pentagon advisor who sees the accident as a golden opportunity for a first strike. Henry Fonda lends weight and credibility as the President. Just as unflinching as the novel, with some nice directorial touches by Lumet to heighten the impact of this horrifying tale. +++ 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 ** Boston cop uncovers corporate and government corruption in his vengeful search for the man who gunned down his daughter. What he fails to find, however, is a reason for us to believe a single thing that happens in this movie. From the moment Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is allowed to work the case, we know we’re headed into fairyland. And it just gets progressively more implausible as it goes along, until Craven is pointing guns at corporate bigwigs and threatening high government officials as if they had no more protection than local pimps and drug dealers. Gibson does well as a dad on a mission of justice, but the story’s too convoluted and the conspiracy goes too high to be supported by emotionalism alone. And all Craven’s got to fall back on is his aging tough-guy cop status, which, at one point, even he admits wouldn’t be enough to keep him alive ten minutes if he were up against real professionals, instead of the collection of facile dunderheads in this movie. "[The movie] lurches forward like a battered old Chevy being started in third gear." - Tim Robey, The Telegraph, 28 Jan 2010 * 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 ** Director Yates and writer Steve Tesich's follow-up to Breaking Away might have been an intriguing romantic drama, but is instead a contrived thriller with unbelievable romantic overtones. It's about a janitor (William Hurt) who intimates he knows more about a murder than he actually does in order to get close to a woman reporter (Sigourney Weaver) on whom he has had a crush for years. This, of course, makes him a target himself. With overdramatized characters (absolutely everyone has issues), lots of red herrings, a political tie-in to Jewish refugees, and a couple of cops who seem to believe the stakeout is a police officer's raison d'etre. Star-studded, however: in addition to Hurt and Weaver, the cast includes Christopher Plummer, James Woods, Steven Hill, and Morgan Freeman. *** 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. |
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