Book Review: Holly

 

Holly is a 2023 thriller by Stephen King. It is centered around the character of Holly Gibney, introduced in the novel Mr. Mercedes. The bulk of the story is set in 2021, during the COVID pandemic. Holly, who is running the Finders Keepers detective agency, is contacted by a woman named Penny Dahl, whose daughter Bonnie has mysteriously disappeared. The investigation reveals multiple disappearances that seem to point to a serial killer and the involvement of a pair of retired professors. While you do not need to have read the earlier books in which Holly Gibney appeared to follow what is going on in this book, you will get more of the character's evolution as King lets those earlier works serve as the character development for Holly.

The hardcover version of the book is just under 450 pages. King writes it so that the readers know more than the characters in the book. He uses flashbacks to tell part of the story so the readers know who is responsible for the disappearances but do not know the motive until the last act. Even though the readers know more than the character of Holly does early in the book, King still manages to make the story very suspenseful. King does, as he has in his more recent books, include some social commentary (this time, the reaction to COVID and the vaccines) into the story and takes some shots at the orange genital wart (which will, of course, freak out the lickspittle MAGATs). Still, neither of those things dominates the story. Ultimately, it is a very well-written thriller. If you are a fan of King's novels, especially his recent ones, this one is worth reading. 

4k-UHD/Movie Review: IT: Chapter Two

 

IT: Chapter Two is the 2019 sequel to 2017's IT. It is the second part of the adaptation of Stephen King's novel IT. In this movie, the adult versions of the children who vanquished IT/Pennywise in the first movie are introduced into the story. The film stars Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, Andy Bean, and Bill Skarsgard, reprising his role as Pennywise from the first movie. 

This movie is a double-edged sword because it allows for using well-known actors (Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, etc.) and more violent and gory imagery than in the first movie. Still, it is (in my opinion) the weaker part of the story. This is partly because they have to reintroduce and develop the characters as adults and essentially have them go through the same horrors with Pennywise until they do (mostly) the same thing in the final confrontation with him as they did as kids. That said, the movie does add new elements, so it is not just a total carbon copy of the first movie. It is also great to see the young actors alongside their older counterparts in different scenes. Bill Skarsgaard delivers another wonderful performance as Pennywise, this time with part of it being done via motion capture, as used in movies like Lord of the Rings, Avatar, the new Star Wars movies, etc. Steven King also has a cameo as the mean shopowner Bill repurchases his bike from.

The 4K set is a three-disc set with a UHD disc and two regular Blu-Ray discs. The movie looks and sounds excellent in UHD. The UHD disc just has the film and the commentary track if you want to listen to it. Then, there are two regular blu-ray discs, one with just the movie and one with all the extras (over an hour's worth). Those include chapters 1 and 2 of making-of and behind-the-scenes material, the first either taking a lot from or reusing the same feature that was an extra on the release for the first movie and the second new for the second movie. They are the longest of the bonus material. Then, there are a few shorter features. A very good amount for those who still like getting the physical disc releases.

While I cannot say everyone will love the movie, it did a good job of wrapping up the story. Of course, it is much different than the TV miniseries done in the 1990s, and even with a nearly three-hour running time, it still could not incorporate everything from the book. It is worth checking out if you can accept those things about it.

4k-UHD/Movie Review: Doctor Sleep

 

Doctor Sleep is a 2019 sequel to The Shining, starring Rebecca Ferguson, Ewan McGregor, Kyliegh Curran, Jacob Tremblay, Emily Alyn Lind,  Zahn McClarnon, Bruce Greenwood, Carl Lumbly, and Alex Essoe. It tells the story of the now-adult Danny Torrance, played by Ewan McGregor, who is still dealing with the aftermath of what happened at The Overlook Hotel. Rebecca Ferguson plays Rose Hat, the leader of a group called the True Knot, who are comprised of people with The Shine, who "eat" the shine of those they kill (primarily kids). Kyliegh Curran plays Abra, a young girl with a powerful "shine" whom the True Knot crew wants to find and Danny is trying to protect.

The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc. The 4k disc has the theatrical version of the movie and all of the extras. The regular Blu-Ray includes the director's cut of the movie. It looks and sounds great in the UHD format. The movie stays faithful to Kubrick's version of The Shining, which Stephen King really disliked, but also incorporates the ending of the book version of The Shining (having Danny take over Jack's role at the end of the book) while fighting Rose Hat. There is about 45 minutes worth of behind-the-scenes and making-of material included as extras. It's not a ton of bonus content, but what was included was good. Overall, the movie is excellent. It is very violent, and there is some nudity, so it earns the R-rating. Ferguson dominates nearly every scene she is in, and McGregor does a great job playing the adult version of Danny. Kyliegh Curran does a wonderful job as the child lead in this movie, and if there are more stories to be told of her character, she would do a great job. It is definitely worth checking out.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: The Shawshank Redemption

 

The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 thriller/crime drama starring Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Clancy Brown, Bob Gunton, and William Sadler. It was adapted from a story by Stephen King and directed by Frank Darabont. The film did not get much acclaim during its initial run in the theater but took off on home video after being nominated for several Academy Awards. It is a fairly basic story. A man named Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) is convicted of murders he did not commit and sent to prison for life. He ends up at Shawshank prison, run by a corrupt warden and thuggish guards, befriending a fellow inmate named Red (played by Morgan Freeman), who also narrates the movie. Andy hatches an elaborate escape plan that no one, including the viewers, is aware of until the end of the movie.

The Blu-Ray's A/V transfer is good, but the movie did not get an extensive HD restoration. The Blu-Ray features several extras, including a director's commentary track on the movie, a few different behind-the-scenes and making-of features, a roundtable discussion with Robbins, Freeman, and the director of the movie on The Charlie Rose Show, and more. There is a ton of great material for those who like going through the bonus features.

Overall, the movie is well-written and acted. It was cast perfectly, from the leads to many character actors filling out the supporting roles. It is a combination of a prison movie, a period piece, and a buddy movie. There is not a ton of action, but some moments of action are mixed within the drama. It is a movie where the "good" guys are bad and the "bad" guys are good, at least partly. It is definitely worth the 2+ hours of time to watch it.

DVD/TV Mini-Series Review: Stephen King's The Shining (1997)

 

This is the version of The Shining that Stephen King really wanted to be made, so much so that he wrote the screenplay and was an executive producer on the miniseries. Depending on what you read, he either was highly disappointed by or outright hated the Kubrick movie, mostly because he felt that it did not interpret the story correctly, and he thought Jack Nicholson was too crazy to play Jack Torrance the way he envisioned the character. And, he felt that Kubrick wrote the character of Wendy (and had Shelly Duvall play her) as too much of a pushover.

This version, which aired on ABC in 1997 stars Steven Weber (who is best known for the series Wings), Rebecca De Mornay, Courtland Mead (who did a great job as Danny), and Melvin Van Peebles. It is a more faithful adaptation of the book than the movie was, in large part because it was 4.5 hours long versus the two hours, so it could show Jack going crazy over a longer period of time than the movie could. I think that alone helps tell the story better because about 40 minutes into the movie Nicholson was already morphing into the "nuts" version of Jack. And, the series can flesh out the family relationship more than the movie ever did. The tradeoff, of course, is that the series had to tone down the blood and gore that the movie was famous for, so it is much more of a thriller than it is a horror movie.

The DVD set comes on two discs, with parts 1 and 2 on the first disc, and part three on the second. There are commentary tracks (including the director, Stephen King, Steven Webber, and a couple of other cast and crew members) on each part. The commentary tracks are selectable from the disc menu, although, for the commentary track for the second part,  I could not get it to play from the DVD menu. I had to start part two, then switch the audio track to Track 2 to hear it. The commentary tracks for parts 1 and 3 played just fine from the menu. It is a bit of an odd commentary track in that not all the participants were in the same room discussing it. The tracks were recorded separately, and then they cycle through who is talking. King was pretty diplomatic regarding the Kubrick movie and mainly focused on this version. The commentary tracks are the main bonus features but, on the second disc, there are some deleted scenes.

The A/V quality of the DVD is bad. In some spots, it looks the same as a VHS-quality video. The special effects were not the greatest, given that it was made in 1997, but there was no big effort to enhance them for the DVD release. Overall, I would not call this a must-see, unless you are a huge fan of the book and want to see it adapted the way King wanted it to be. It is different from the movie, and it was meant to be so. Thankfully, none of the actors try to recreate the performances of the actors in the movie. They made it their own, and that made it work.

Book Review: It: A Novel

 

It is a novel written by Stephen King that has been around for 30+ years (the book was first published in 1986) and has had two live-action adaptations made. First, a mini-series back in the 1990s, and more recently, a pair of movies in 2017 and 2019. The book tells the story of a small town in Maine called Derry, which suffers from a series of child murders every 27 years. The adults are aware but mostly oblivious to what is going on, and it is left to a group of kids (who call themselves the Losers Club) to try and stop the monster, which at times takes the form of a clown named Pennywise (but also takes other forms), first as kids and then again as adults.

I will not go into too much of the story because chances are anyone looking to get the book by now is at least aware of the basic idea. But, I will say that the novel is very different from the live-action adaptations, which makes it challenging to even hard read at times, even for people who have good reading comprehension skills and are fast readers. There are a ton of characters in the book that get major ink devoted to them, that are minor characters in the movies or left out altogether. And, instead of telling the stories of the group of protagonists as children and then as adults separately, the book jumps back and forth between 1958 and 1985 (which was the present day when the novel was written), many times even in the same chapter, so it made following the story difficult, especially when reading at night getting tired (i.e., if you are one who reads before bed to help yourself wind down and fall asleep). And the story shifts, being told from different points of view, again sometimes within the same chapter. Those things, along with the book's length (1153 pages) and the fact that the lengths of the chapter breaks are inconsistent, make it harder to read than some of King's other novels. There were definitely things from the book that could never have been done in live-action and/or were just unnecessary to add to the movies. One of the biggest was the very controversial act of having all the boys have sex with Beverly when they were kids. That got turned into their blood pact at the end of the first movie because it would have been illegal to film and at least skeevy to even infer in a movie version.

It is hard to say how anyone will feel about the novel as compared to either the mini-series or the movies. That, of course, is totally subjective. I am generally a person who enjoys novels more than I do the live-action adaptations of novels because invariably, things have to get cut out, especially for movie adaptations, and especially when the novels are done first. However, I liked both the mini-series and the movie versions of It more than the book (possibly because I saw both long before ever reading the book) and totally understand why the things that were cut out in live-action were removed. That said, if you are a fan of King and/or a fan of the story because of either the mini-series or the movies, this is definitely worth at least trying to read to see how it compares.

Book Review: You Like it Darker: Stories

 

You Like It Darker is a collection of short stories written by Stephen King and published in 2024. The book includes 12 stories, which vary in length. A couple of the longer stories, including one that is a sequel to the movie Cujo, could definitely be adapted into a feature-length movie. The best story in the book (which is another one that could be adapted into a movie) is the final story entitled The Answer Man, which is one of the more metaphysical stories in the book. As is the case in much of King's work, he blends real-world elements (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) with his fictional world. Some of the stories are set in Maine (as many of King's stories are), but not all are. Rattlesnakes, for example, is set mostly in Florida. 

The hardcover version of the book is just over 500 pages long.  The stories are easy to get through and if you are a fast reader, you will likely be able to finish it in a few days (or less). Overall, the book is good. Some of the stories are better than others, but generally, if you are a fan of King's work, especially his more recent work, you will probably like the book. While I would not classify this as one of King's must-read books, it is worth reading.

DVD/Movie Review: Secret Window

 

Secret Window is a 2004 mystery/thriller starring Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello, Charles S. Dutton, and Timothy Hutton. The movie is an adaptation of a short story by Stephen King called Secret Window, Secret Garden. It is about a novelist named Mort Rainey, played by Depp, who is accused by a man named Shooter, played by John Turturro, of stealing one of his stories. It turns into a fairly twisted (for a PG-13 movie) thriller as Mort's life spirals more and more out of control at the hands of Shooter.  Bello plays Mort's estranged wife, Timothy Hutton plays her new boyfriend, and Charles S. Dutton plays the private investigator Mort hires to help him with the shooter situation.

The DVD extras include a commentary track on the movie by the director, David Koepp, deleted and extended scenes, and a short making-of featurette. The story, as you would expect for a movie adapted from a King novel, is very strong with some twists and turns. The acting was very good from top to bottom. Given this movie was made (2004) while Depp was in the mists of filming the various Pirates movies, it is a good break from his Captain Jack Sparrow character and lets him flex more of his dramatic acting muscles with a little bit of humor mixed in. It is definitely a good way to spend an hour and a half watching a movie that is entertaining but you do not have to think about too much when it is over.

Book Review: Fairy Tale

 

Fairy Tale is a novel published in 2022 and written by the prolific horror author, Stephen King.  I would not say that this is a horror story per-se, but there are certainly some scary elements to the story. The book starts out as a story about a high-school kid who befriends the local grumpy old guy who lives up the street from him, then it becomes a story to save a dog, and then the story ends with a battle to save a strange fairy-tale-like land from an evil that threatens to destroy it. As disparate as those plot points sound, Kimg ties it all together into a story that, while strange at times, makes sense.

The book is relatively long, at just under 600 pages (for the hardcover version), but it is a pretty fast read and it is hard to put down once you get started. I read very fast and was able to get through it in a couple of days. And, it really only took me that long because I read at night before bed. There were no obvious easter eggs to King's other work that I noticed. Although, I will be the first to admit, I am not a King aficionado, so there may be something I missed. He does manage to get a dig in at the orange genital wart even though the book is set before agent orange's presidency. I'd honestly give the book 10 stars if I could. It is absolutely worth reading if you are even a casual fan of King and/or are into the Fantasy genre.

4k-UHD/Movie Review: It - Chapter 1

 

This is the updated 2017 live-action adaptation of Stephen King's novel, It, directed by Andy Muschietti. The movie is subtitled Chapter 1, as it is the first of two movies one which will focus on the members of the "Loser's Club" as kids, and the second one which focuses on them as adults (much like what was done in the 1990s miniseries. This, as you would expect, is the movie that tells the story of the heroes as kids. 

The movie stars Jaeden Lieberher as the main protagonist Bill Denbrough, whose brother Georgie is killed by a monster at the beginning of the movie, setting Bill on a quest for revenge, and Bill Skarsgard as It/Pennywise, the ancient evil that terrorizes the town of Derry Maine every 27 years. The rest of the main cast includes Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Nicholas Hamilton. 

There are several differences between the movie and the book, one of the main differences being that the Children's part of the story is set in the late 1980s as opposed to the 1950s. Also, the book jumps back and forth between the story with the group as kids and as adults, which makes it very hard to follow, so the movie is much more streamlined in the storytelling. And, even by splitting the story into two movies, they could not include every element that was included in the book, so there are parts of the story that the movie takes out. The book has a lot of exposition and backstory that is honestly not needed in the movie, so I do not think anything that is left out of the movie is really missed. And, the movie does change the most controversial part of the book from something that could never be filmed to something that could.

For those who get the 4K set, there are two discs, the UHD disc with just the movie itself, and the regular blu-ray which has the movie and the extra. The A/V quality of the UHD disc is fine, but not great. The movie was shot in 2k, so it is upscaled to 4k, and honestly does not look much different than the video quality of the regular blu-ray. The extras include trailers, about 15 minutes of deleted scenes, and three different behind-the-scenes featurettes, one on Pennywise, one on the cast of kids, and then one in which Stephen King is interviewed about this latest adaptation of the book.

Overall, the movie is very good. It is scarier than I remember the mini-series being, but that makes sense given that this is a movie and the mini-series aired on broadcast television. It is still not overly gory, but it does get a bit gory toward the end. Still, it is more of a psychological thriller than a blood-and-guts horror movie. The acting is very good, which given the cast was made up of young, mostly unknown actors (Finn Wolfhard was probably the most well-known of the child actors), is kind of surprising. Bill Skarsgard is great as Pennywise, who is definitely the main attraction. He can switch from innocent, to creepy, to scary at the drop of a hat. Even if you are not a huge fan of the book, this is still worth watching, as it is one of the few times where I have found a movie to be better and more entertaining than the book. It is definitely a must-watch if you like horror movies.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Firestarter

 

Firestarter was the other movie made in 1984 starring a young Drew Barrymore (Irreconcilable Differences, being the other one) who was two-years removed from her breakout role in E.T. and just being her third movie as a child star. This movie was adapted from one of Stephen King's novels. While King is known for the Horror genre, I would classify this movie more as a thriller than a horror movie. The basic plot involves a young girl named Charlie (played by Barrymore) whose parents participated in what they thought was a drug trial when they were in college. The drug they were given gave Charlie's mother, Vicky (played by Heather Locklear) the ability to read minds, and her father, Andy (played by David Keith) the ability to control people's actions. And Charlie developed the ability to start fires with her mind. They are pursued by a shadowy government agency called the Department of Scientific Intelligence (or "The Shop"), led by Martin Sheen's character Captain Hollister. The department wants to capture Charlie so that they can study and weaponize her power. The other central character in the movie is John Rainbird, played by George C. Scott, who is a member of The Shop that pretends to befriend Charlie and encourages her to use her powers. 

For those who get the blu-ray, the A/V quality is okay, but it is not an extremely high-quality transfer. Given the age of the movie, I think that the transfer looks good and it is probably better that the look of the movie was not messed with too much. For extras, there is a commentary track on the movie by the director, Mark Lester, a 52-minute making-of documentary that includes new interviews with some of the minor cast members and members of the crew, along with some archival footage. Then there is a 17-minute featurette on the music of the movie, and a stills gallery. It would have been nice if they could have got Barrymore and Sheen to participate in the new interviews or be included on the commentary track (George C. Scott had already passed away by the time the new material was shot), but the material is still good if you like watching the extras.

Overall, the movie is good, but I don't think it is the best movie adaptation of King's work. Barrymore definitely carries the movie, which is something given that she was just 8 or 9 when it was filmed. Certainly, in the action scenes, she just has to stare intensely and cry, but in the scenes that required her to act, she does a really good job and had great chemistry with George C. Scott. They did make a curious choice of having Scott portray a Native American character as opposed to rewriting the part, but that is really just a minor point. So, while it is not as good as movies like The Shining, Christine, or It that were adapted from King's novels, it is still worth watching and holds up well even after almost 40 years.

Book Review: Billy Summers

 

This is a crime/thriller novel by Stephen King about a hitman named Billy Summers, who only kills "bad" people and takes one last job (which he is apprehensive about) to get a final payday and live out his life with a good nest egg. Believing that something is wrong, he deviates from the plan, at which point things go sideways. I will not spoil the plot of the book, but it is basically three parts, the leadup to the hit, where Billy dons a fake identity as a writer to set himself up in a position to make the hit, the aftermath in which he is waiting for things to cool down, and then a revenge story. There are some twists along the way that take the story in a couple of different directions, but that is the crux of it.

Unlike some of his other novels, this one does not have any supernatural elements in it, save one possible sighting of the Overlook Hotel, the haunted hotel from "The Shining" and "Doctor Sleep" (which by this point had burned down) when Billy is in Colorado. I would say that the story is more like the 11/22/63 novel (without the time travel, of course) than it is to books like The Shining, The Stand, etc. The story is set in 2019 and 2020, and yes, King does mention the former guy (and, if you follow King on social media, you know he is clearly not a fan). However, unlike what the bitchy, whiny little MAGAts on Amazon would have you believe, King does not trash him on every other page. In reality, King only mentions his name a handful of times. When he does so, it is mainly in reference to characters in the book being supporters of the former guy or characters whom Billy guesses (because of how they look and act) would be one of his supporters (usually because they are stupid and/or racist). But, if that is enough to trigger you (and probably says a lot about you), then you definitely want to steer clear of this.

I am not a hardcore devotee of King. I have read a few of his novels, some of which I really like (e.g., 11/22/63) and some I am lukewarm about (e.g., It). This is definitely in the category of one that I like. It has very good pacing and is a fairly easy read. It is just over 500 pages long but if you are a fairly quick reader, depending on how much time you can devote to reading) you can get through it fairly quickly. I was able to get through it in less than a week reading between a half hour and an hour before bed each night. While the action in the book is pretty spread out, King does a great job of character development and setting up the action scenes so that the story does not lag too much or get too boring. I definitely recommend it.

Book Review: 11/22/63

 

11/22/63 is a book that is about trying to stop the assassination of JFK. In it, the main character, Jake Epping is told of a portal that can transport the traveler to the past. He learns of the portal from the owner of a diner he frequents who seems to mysteriously age every time Jake sees him. Al, the owner of the diner tells Jake the rules for traveling through the portal, namely that the portal sends the person back to September 9th, 1958 and if the person returns from the past through the portal they come back two minutes in time after they left, with whatever changes made in the past taking hold. Going back through the portal again wipes out anything that was previously changed and returns the person back to September 9th, 1958. Al tells Jake that he was trying to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy, and tries to get Jake to take up the mission. The "main" aspect of the novel is that the past can be changed, but the larger the event someone tries to change, the more the "past" pushes back and tries to prevent the change from happening. As you can expect, Jake does go into the past and tries to figure out how to stop the assassination while also having to live his life in the late 1950s in the south coming from living in Maine in 2011, and dealing with the fact that nearly everything he does, large or small, potentially changes something in the past.

While I would not say I am an aficionado of King's works (I have read a couple of his books and seen some of the movie adaptations of his works) I really liked this book. Even though it is pretty long (over 800 pages) it is a fairly easy read with a reasonable amount of characters in it and good character development. So, I was able to get through it fairly quickly (in about a week and a half) despite the size. The book was based on the premise that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK and did not get into the various conspiracy hypotheses, although in the afterward, King did say that while he does not believe in a massive conspiracy, he does concede the possibility that more people than just Oswald were involved, but he chose to approach the story on the belief that there was none and that Oswald was a lone wolf. I cannot say that everyone who is a fan of King's other works will like this book, and cannot say how similar or different it is from his other novels, but I found the book to be a great read with an engaging story and definitely recommend it.