Monday, February 20, 2012

The Stephen King Project: Quicksilver Highway

I had never heard of the movie Quicksilver Highway before beginning this project and I wish that were still the case. I'm not sure which channel this was originally on, it feels Showtime-y, but that channel probably should be boycotted. Also, full disclosure, I only watched about twenty minutes of this movie before I threw up and switched over to actually "talking" to my friends.
The story begins with a soon to be married couple stranded on the side of a little used back country highway. The groom has stripped to his pants and wife beater while the bride is still in full regalia. This short segment is so riddled with plot holes (it's only an introduction to the story for christ's sake) that I felt like rewinding it to get every quip in that I felt it deserved. But for as much trouble the opening caused me I was not prepared for Christopher Lloyd's appearance as Aaron Quicksilver.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Stephen King Project: Pet Sematary


Pet Sematary (or Stephen King's Pet Sematary) was released in April of 1989. I don't think I saw it in the theater as I was only eleven but that really wouldn't have stopped my dad at that point. Shockingly it made 57 million dollars at the box office. Not bad on a budget of 11 million. That's not to say it's good (or even watchable). Directed by Mary Lambert from a script by Stephen King, Pet Sematary is slow, boring, and pretty much devoid of frights.
The story begins with a family of bad actors moving into a rural Maine house on an insanely dangerous highway. This is instantly preposterous as any family with two small children would cross this house off their list almost immediately. The father, played with the acting chops of a wet newspaper by Dale Midkiff, is a doctor who treats a jogger named Pascow who has been run over by a car. When he appears later he has a flap of skin hanging off his head like an emo haircut and no one seems to be able to say his name the same way twice. What I liked most about him was his zip up hoodie.

Monday, January 23, 2012

The Stephen King Project

The Movie Goer is in the beginning stages of a long, intense project that could potentially drive all three of us to the brink of total calamity. The Stephen King Project will force us to view each and every Stephen King adaptation that ever disgraced your local cineplex or shamed your television screen. We'll watch the good (The Shining, Stand By Me), the truly awful (The Lawnmower Man, Dreamcatcher), and the ones we've never even heard of (Riding the Bullet?). We will handle them out of order because that's how we do things and, to be honest, it's going to be hard to force any of us to watch the Nightmares and Dreamscapes miniseries or Secret Window.