Same here. I would add in guilt. Even in the awful original movie, they retained the part where the wife tells the story of Zelda’s death and says she “didn’t know if she was crying or laughing” when it happened. That was enough for people to get why she was tormented by the memory of her. It’s also why she’s affected by death itself, not just Zelda’s death. They had to make her almost directly responsible for her death because she used the dumb waiter in this movie.
This movie is just worse in so many ways. The original fucking cat was a British Shorthair. That’s why it was named after Winston Churchill.
They changed the breed to a Maine Coon and still called it “Church”. What the fuck? Because the movie was set in Maine? But the family only moved there after getting the cat. That’s fucking lame.
Regarding the original ending, the whole idea was escalation of the central theme leading up to complete disaster through events that build on one another. Which is, as you said, grief. It didn’t work well in the original movie because the director was incompetent and did not know how to depict King’s morbid sense of humor on screen. The dude brought the cat back. Then he brought his son back. After losing his wife because of this, he still tries to bring his wife back while justifying to himself that it will work this time because his son was “dead for too long” while the dead guy is trying to stop him. People end up doing dumb, illogical shit because of their emotions and ruin themselves through their individual choices. It’s called being human and if you’re human, you identify with that. It doesn’t have to explained.
You don’t have to turn the dude into a victim in the end because you’re afraid the audience will lose sympathy for him like the new movie does. Fuck, they made the cat responsible for the kid’s death. In the original(and I keep bringing up the original movie because the screenplay was written by Stephen King himself) it was a tragedy that happened because the family turned their backs on the kid for a moment while he was playing and the dude couldn’t grab the kid in time before he was hit by the truck. This shit happens in real life. It’s not something that requires supernatural intervention. Although it was hinted that the “place” caused it by setting the events in motion, the dude still believed it was his fault.
Changing the kid that died was ok but they really shouldn’t have changed the ending. It’s just very bad writing.
Yesterday I had a conversation with someone who went to the University of Maine. She said Stephen wonders the campus on a regular basis and all incoming freshmen are given strict instructions not to bother him. She described him as creepy. I was surprised to hear that because I would guess he’s really cool.
You Were Never Really Here - 7.5/10 good movie that was really a character study rather than a story. Did a very good job of portraying the depression the main character had and why he made the choices he did. Very strong cinematography and musical score.
Gringo - 7/10 very entertaining, some dark humorous bits about an evil US corporation, Mexican drug cartel, and the mid-level manager who gets caught in the middle. The story has been done before but Charlize Theron excels in her role as a calculating vamp and David Oyelowo strikes the perfect balance between unwitting dupe and calculating protagonist.
I’ve heard he’s an egotistical crackpot…which is hilarious bc his ‘good’ books were written in the 80s-90s while he was on massive amounts of Valium, Xanax, cocaine, opiates galore. Now he’s sober, he’s got nothing left upstairs.
What made him interesting to some(like me) and infuriating to others was not his writing, but rather the amount of self-indulgence there was in his books(The Stand, It) while he was on.
Watched Snatch (and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels not too far back) - I’m a fan of Guy Ritchie, frickin’ love these movies, and Brad Pitt just delivers a great performance as Mickey. I’m a terrible movie reviewer, ha, but I had all but forgotten about these two movies until they popped up on Netflix.
. Make it a Netflix series than I might be interested.