For someone who understands the punk rock world so well, Alex Cox is very quick to tear the nostalgia shades off of the viewers to depict a meeting of two lovers that was so intense it resulted in an unfortunate murder. “Sid and Nancy” are often romanticized by music lovers even to this day, but Alex Cox who brought us the masterpiece “Repo Man,” looks behind the gloss, picturing two unbearable, but real individuals. Director Cox paints a brilliant picture of two people spiraling in to oblivion, with a remarkable drama that’s less a biopic and more a chronicle of two doomed lovers. Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen are a lot to drink in. From the moment we meet them, they’re loud, they’re parasitic and disgusting, but they form a relationship where they understand each other. In many ways they decided that they need each other to survive.
Tag Archives: Adaptation
The Disaster Artist (2017)
“The Room” has been celebrated a hundred times over, ad nauseaum, since it became a small midnight movie hit years after its initial release. Since then every critic and columnist far and wide has had their chance with it, and every respective movie buff has seen it, combed over it, and even read the book “The Disaster Artist.” Based on the film’s co-star Greg Sestero’s experiences with its eccentric director and working on the inexplicably demanding film, “The Disaster Artist” by director James Franco and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Webe, is a love letter to Wiseau’s ambition that asks why.
Kong: Skull Island (2017)
What I love about “Kong: Skull Island” is that while it’s essentially a good old fashioned matinee monster movie at heart, it’s also a pretty clever take on the Vietnam war. “Kong: Skull Island” implements the classic trope from the classic giant monster movies taking a group of armed men and women in to the wilderness, and uses that as an allegory for the Vietnam war. Like the aforementioned war, US soldiers storm in to a wilderness they were unprepared to do battle with, except they face an unparalleled force of nature. Also very effectively setting up a cinematic universe, Jordan Vogt-Roberts aspires for a lot, and succeeds as a simple and harrowing adventure with big monsters, and menacing creatures far and wide.
Misery (1990): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]
It’s been a banner year for Stephen King fans everywhere, and Shout Factory sweetens the pot by giving Rob Reiner’s horror masterpiece “Misery” a collector’s edition. Based on the classic Stephen King novel, Rob Reiner who is no stranger to adapting King’s work, brings to screen a work of terror, dark comedy, and a demented commentary about the fans behind our work that also control our work. It’s a very volatile and sharp edged polemic about fandom when you get right down to it, and it’s never been more relevant than in the day and age where fandoms from all corners of the world have the loudest voices and sometimes can break the very thing they love.
Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie (2017)
Nickelodeon’s “Hey Arnold!” was one of the banner animated series from the heyday of the 1990’s. It was a subtle, sweet, and often funny coming of age show with a lot of heart and some brilliantly memorable moments that evoked pure emotion from its audience. Despite ending in 2004, Nickelodeon gave the series a final send off in 2002 with a flimsy and absolutely wretched big screen film that did nothing to close the world we’d come to love. Most of all, it did nothing for the story arc of main character Arnold, who spent a majority of the series under the care of his elderly eccentric grandparents.
Mid-way through the series, we learned that Arnold’s parents were explorers who spent their days traveling, and the last they ever saw of him was before they left for one last adventure to help a village suffering from a mysterious illness.
The Child Remains (2017) [Blood In The Snow 2017]
Inspired by the Butterbox Babies case, The Child Remains follows a couple as they stay in an inn with a dark past and an uncertain future.
From writer/director Michael Melski, The Child Remains is a haunting story of sorts that crosses with investigative story and a few other things. This leads to a film that is a slow burn but an interesting one. Those who are familiar with the Butterbox Babies case will see connections which are of course a bit stretched here but still make some sense. The characters built for the modern day people who stumble into this dark past are well developed. They are a basically just one couple who get haunted in one way or another and slowly work towards making sense of things for themselves with a few side moments into level of insanity or madness or something that actually makes sense in the film. These characters are very human, even frustrating like real people are at times.
TV on DVD: Supergirl: The Complete Second Season [Blu-Ray/Digital], The Flash: The Complete Third Season [Blu-Ray/Digital]
“Supergirl” never really fit in on CBS, since the channel has almost always avoided genre fare since its renaissance in the early aughts. “Supergirl” finally found a great home at the CW network, avoiding being cancelled, and gets a chance to bloom and fit in with her fellow superheroes at the channel. For the second outing of the “Supergirl” series, the writers and producers are so much more devoted to bringing in new viewers. Not only did the network give a whole season marathon over the course of the summer before its debut, but season two finally introduces this iteration of Superman.