Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

According to Rotten Tomatoes this is a better Stephen King adaptation than ‘The Shining’. Really?! It’s a relatively simple episodic story which I had assumed was a straightforward adaptation of the novel, but the Wikipedia entry makes it clear that the final screenplay was the result of a prolonged and convoluted creative process.  David Cronenberg and Christopher Walken seem perfect and obvious choices as director and lead actor respectively so I was amused to learn that one director in the frame was of all people Stanley Donen (director of ‘Singin’ in The Rain’) and the lead actor could have been  Bill Murray (King’s first choice). Christopher Walker is Johnny, to whom weird things happen after a car crash leaves him in a coma for five years.  The car crash occurs as he is driving home after he has turned down the opportunity to sleep with his fiancée, Sarah (Brooke Adams) for the first time, so perhaps the story is a kind of inverted morality tale? Anyway when he wake...

Whilst the original 1956 film will always have pride of place in my heart, there is no denying that this remake is a damned fine film, benefitting from suspenseful, and at times surreal, direction from Philip Kaufman. The location for this remake h as been moved to San Francisco, allowing the film to tap into the theme of big city alienation and paranoia, where everyone can seem like a threatening or uncaring stranger.   The main protagonist is now a Dept of Health official, Matthew (rather than a doctor) who is well played by peak Donald Sutherland. He is ably supported by a very young looking Jeff Goldblum, as an argumentative poet, and Leonard Nimoy as a celebrity psychiatrist, both well cast.  Brooke Adams plays Elizabeth, a colleague of Matthew's.   I liked that she has a science-based job and that, to start with at least, her relationship with Matthew is not romantic, but I was disappointed that she ends up having little more agency here than does Becky in...