Dream Contained

I've discovered another Stephen King movie is vastly underrated. 2003's Dreamcatcher may not be the best Stephen King movie ever made but I think it deserves better than its 28% Rotten Tomatoes score.

I really like the cast, for one thing. Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, and Damian Lewis play a group of old friends who also all have psychic abilities owing to an encounter in their childhood. In this, the story resembles numerous other Stephen King stories, such as It and Stand by Me. The twist here turns out to be an invasion of toothy alien eels that burst out of peoples' colons.

But not before giving them lots of gas, something Jason Lee's character laughs at as merrily as his breakout character, Brody, in Mallrats. If you're amused by fart jokes, you'll probably find this movie a lot of laughs. I tend to see farts as a mundane human function so I get bored of them quickly. That doesn't matter, though, because I don't think they're played wholly for laughs here. The reflex to see them as comedic helps put the viewer off-balance as they start to work more as a sign of these victims losing control to their bodies. It becomes a malevolent sign of the parasite asserting physical dominance.

I really like the interplay between the characters' abilities and the alien menace they fight. It almost feels like an X-Men movie except, since it's Stephen King, anyone can die at any time. Any resemblance the characters have to superheroes only adds to the horror when their fingers are getting chewed off or their guts exploded.

The dialogue isn't always great. William Goldman and director Lawrence Kasdan's screenplay is absorbing enough when plot stuff is happening but their attempts to make the four friends sound like regular guys fall flat. Lee tells a joke about a Meg Ryan movie that seems like maybe they were trying to tap into the sort of nerdiness Lee exhibited in Mallrats. But it comes off more like an insider reference from a screenwriter who's worked in the industry for a long time and has no clue how regular people process his work. The movie also never really justifies its title.

But I liked the alien design and Kasdan capably threads all the scenes together. Thomas Jane and Jason Lee are two actors very good at playing one, specific kind of guy, and they're not quite playing to their specialties here. Still, it was nice to see them, especially knowing how underutilised both have been throughout their careers. Morgan Freeman and the recently deceased Tom Sizemore also have nice supporting roles.

Twitter Sonnet #1697

A foolish phantom crossed the edge of dreams.
His paper boat absorbed the ink of night.
A darling face was nothing like it seems.
And so the Eyes of Green put out the light.
The pirate building sailed to take a yam.
A ruddy whale was miffed at spinning ships.
The gummy candy crossed the mental dam.
The ducal fleet is little glowing blips.
With shrinking foam, potato heads depart.
Decisive glass divides the tile space.
What fog condemns the shower crushed a heart.
For running deer we hid the monster face.
A Janus language clogged the mirror spark.
A pixel storm has turned the glasses dark.

Counterfeit Heat

I wonder if Kathleen Turner in 1981's Body Heat is the original '80s femme fatale. Watching it last night, I thought of my recent viewing of Black Widow and how cold Theresa Russell is in that movie. These femmes fatale are reptilian in a way they never were in the golden era of noir. Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan obviously drew primarily from Double Indemnity but while Barbara Stanwyck is certainly murderous, manipulative, and avaricious, you don't come away with the impression you never saw for sure her true feelings. Turner's character, Matty, is such a complete enigma by the end of the film it's almost a horror movie. I would say she's closer to Bram Stoker's conception of Dracula than a '40s style femme fatale. The main reason for this is how successful Kasdan, Turner, and William Hurt are at conveying a sense of irresistible sexual passion in the first part of the film.

The dialogue is an emulation of the classic noir, highly stylised back and forth. Chandlerian but not quite "How fast was I driving" Chandlerian. But it still gives a real sense of two people navigating their sexual needs in dialogue. Hurt is insistent yet playful, Turner is cool but fervent. The idea that she felt absolutely nothing for him, enough to casually betray him, almost seems like a paranoid conspiracy theory. Or, indeed, like misogyny. An impression given credence by another odd difference between this and old noir--Hurt's character is surrounded by a really caring network of guys. Even his rival attorney played by Ted Danson cares enough about him to give him thinly veiled warnings about an investigation being conducted on him. Mickey Rourke, in his breakout role, is a criminal, a demolitions guy, whom Hurt had helped stay out of prison. Even that doesn't quite explain the deep concern Rourke evidently feels for him, enough that he goes out of his way to warn Hurt about danger.

Kasdan's dialogue really is clever, though, and the performances are great. The movie's good enough I watched it in dribs and drabs last night, struggling to get HBOMax to stream. It took about three hours to watch the two hour movie. I got screenshots from YouTube trailers and clips to-day. I'm so done trying to use HBOMax.