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DVD Apt Pupil
At the top of his game, Stephen King has a real gift for mining monsters--zero-at-the-bone horror--out of everyday faces and places. Adapted from a novella in the 1982 collection that also spawned Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil looks at first as if it might draw authentically enlightening terror from the soul-cancer that makes blood relations of a Southern California golden boy (Brad Renfro) and an aging Nazi war criminal (Sir Ian McKellen). Turned on by a high-school course about the Holocaust, Todd Bowden (such a bland handle for this top-of-his-class sociopath!) tracks down Kurt Dussander, a former Gestapo killer hiding in the shadows of sunny SoCal. Blackmailing the old man into sharing his firsthand stories of genocide, the teenager trips out on the virtual reality of the monster's memories. There's perverse play here on the way a kid hungry for knowledge can bring a long-retired teacher or grandparent back to life. Truly superb as James Whale in Gods and Monsters, McKellen brings subtlety to this Stephen King creepshow: his dessicated Dussander is like a mummy or vampire revivified by Todd's appetite for atrocity.
Considerable talent intersects in Apt Pupil: It's director Bryan Singer's first film since The Usual Suspects, that enormously popular, rather heartless thriller-machine. The outstanding cast also includes David Schwimmer as a Jewish guidance counselor pathetically impotent in the face of Todd's talent for evil, and Bruce Davison as Todd's All-American Dad, lacking the capacity to even imagine evil. And the story itself has the potential for gazing into the heart of darkness right here in Hometown, U.S.A. But Apt Pupil just turns ugly and unclean when it trivializes its subject, equating Holocaust horrors with slamming a cat into an oven or offing a nosy vagrant (Elias Koteas). Reducing the great spiritual abyss that lies at the center of the 20th century to cheap slasher-movie thrills and chills is reprehensible. Both Todd and the writers of Apt Pupil should have heeded the old saw: When supping with the devil, best use a long spoon. --Kathleen Murphy
Once upon a time many years ago, a fictional French baroness smirked as her paramour pronounced his undying devotion to his Lady Fair: his dedication to her, his wonderment in the face of her not inconsiderable charms. His---Love.
To which she replied, tartly: "Love---I don't like the word 'Love'. I prefer the word 'Cruelty'.
So do I. And so does the world, if the genocide raging through Africa is any kind of case in point. We live in a world where terrorists ram planes into skyscrapers because of grievances, and the question raised by our 'elites' is not "how do we destroy these barbarians", but rather a whining, sniveling "why do hey hate us?"?
Is not Cruelty, then, our due?
The real question is not why the Holocaust happened, but, in the words of Max von Sydow's artist in "Hannah and her Sisters", why it doesn't happen more often. "Apt Pupil" is one of the most harrowing, horrifying, repulsive films I have ever watched.
The blood doesn't flow like claret and the gore doesn't cake the walls, but a warning: "Apt Pupil" is not for the faint of heart.
That said, Singer has an exceedingly subtle touch with distills one of Stephen King's best short stories into an engaging and particularly nasty piece of cinema that bores deep into the fundamental cruelty that feeds and nourishes human evil.
Tod Bowden (played with understatement and sublime nastiness by Brad Renfro) is a high school student who discovers that an elderly German man---who might just be an infamous Nazi war criminal---is living in his quiet Southern California neighborhood. Bowden confronts his reclusive neighbor, presents evidence of his past as the notorious Gestapo officer Kurt Dussander (impeccably played by Sir Ian McKellen, in a kind of decrepit stepladder of Evil), and by degrees blackmails, coerces, and ultimately flatters the old man into telling him about his atrocities during the war.
The movie that follows is a superbly paced and increasingly psycho-sexual ballet between the boy and the old Nazi, who is at once Bowden's mentor, idol, victim, and catalyst. Both Renfro and McKellen are so perfectly cast and so competent in their roles that the viewer is made uneasy by the way the two seem to feed off each other, glutting themselves with stories of past horrors---and growing stronger with the telling.
Particularly awful is the scene where Bowden buys Dussander an SS costume as a 'present', and then cajoles him into dressing in it and marching. What initially begins as an embarrassed reluctance to even don the uniform turns into a manic peformance, and as Bowden demands that Dussander stop, the old man whispers "be careful boy---you're playing with fire." Indeed.
Isn't it amazing how the grey terrible ringlets of age, the coils of venerability, fall off, boiled down to the core of a psychotic creature willing, able, and gleeful---to maim, torture, and destroy?
The brilliance of "Apt Pupil" is in the way the film distills the essence of cruelty, particularly in two scenes. While I will not spoil the film by talking about either scene, both involve McKellen and Renfro in acts of shocking, amoral, sociopathic savagery to a wounded bird and a cat.
When I watched the scenes, I had an epiphany---the source of depravities like the Holocaust, or the Stalinist purges, or the genocide in Rwanda has never been about race, or religion, or politics, or tribe---all of it stems from a dark desire by some men to inflict brutality on the weak, for no better reason than they derive pleasure from doing it.
Because they can get away with it. Because they take all they can grab.
This philosophy underscores "Apt Pupil", and is, in my opinion, the reason the film succeeds so well at painting a realistic picture of human horror. Renfro's Tod Bowden is not a young Nazi; like the killers at Columbine High School, he is a bored coward with too much time on his hands and a decidedly cruel streak.
The acting is excellent throughout, with David Schwimmer (of Friends) perfectly cast as hapless Jewish high school guidance counselor, and Elias Koteas taking on yet another repulsive role as one of McKellen's vagrant victims. Like "American Psycho", "Apt Pupil" is not an exit, and the film offers no easy answers, leaving the uneasy viewer with a disturbing coda which prompts a question: is cruelty a force that can be harnessed for power?
And ultimately, in an empty universe, where the voice of God is silent, why not?
JSG
Movie v. short story
I have read the short story by Stephen King so when I realized there was a movie made based on it, I had to see it. I was disappointed that the movie people took so many lberties with the story as written by Mr. King. They changed the ending of it, eliminated characters, changed events in the story and never developed the two main characters. My recommendation is to stick with the written story and forgo the movie.
Apt Pupil
A promising young student encounters a wanted nazi war criminal. Immediately begins a chess match where the power keeps switching sides. The result is a disturbing tale adapted from Stephen King's novella. A great performance by Ian McKellen and a surpsingly good supporting role by David Schwimmer allow for the young lead (Brad Renfro) to appear more than 1 dimensional. Well directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) but sometimes self-absorbed. The DVD has great picture and sound and a brief, useless mini-documentary.
Although it lacks the creepy subtleties of Stephen King's celebrated novel, George Romero's underrated adaptation of The Dark Half ranks among the best films based on King's fiction, with Romero taking care to honor King's central theme while serving up some gruesome gore in the film's much-criticized finale. Inspired by King's own admission that he wrote several novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, The Dark Half explores the duality of a writer's impulse, ranging from literary respectability to the viscerally cathartic thrills of exploitative pulp fiction.
Author and teacher Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton) finds himself torn between those extremes when he "kills" his profitable, pseudonymous alter ego George Stark (the bestselling "dark half" to Thad's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Timothy Hutton Director(s): George A. Romero DVD Release Date: Released the 17 July 2001 Usually ships within 24 hours
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"The Night Flier" is a good low budget horror flick which has only one minus already mentioned in other reviews - its box cover. Imagine some detective film which would have the killer's portrait with a knife on the cover. I still can't come up with a reason why the studio did it. I try but I can't. And now a little about the movie itself. It's rather creepy and mysterious (forget now about the cover), it sticks close to Stephen Kings' work spirit. Besides to my opinion it's the best performance to date of Miguel Ferrer. I haven't seen him like that before although he's always good. But here his ruthless and unscrupulous reporter really looks different and just awesome. His methods and black humor will make you grin and shudder.
"The Night Flier" is not a milestone horror picture... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Miguel Ferrer - Julie Entwisle Director(s): Mark Pavia DVD Release Date: Released the 21 August 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A cat on the run provides the focus for a trio of tales from Stephen King. The cat finds itself in the city where it sees a vision of a girl asking it for help. Shortly after the cat is grabbed and put in the first story.
The cat finds itself as a test animal at a stop-smoking clinic run by Alan King. The success of the clinic is not based on psychology or diet, but on extortion and torture. The cat manages to get away.
As the cat tries to cross a busy Vegas street, he becomes the subject of a bet and winds up in a penthouse suite were a deadly game is to be played out. James Woods has been having an affair with the penthouse owner's wife. To protect his life he must follow a ledge all the way around the building.
And sometimes they come back... for the franchise! Aaaaaaaaargh! Though a TV movie franchise is a somewhat subliminal thing. This double-feature DVD contains one movie based on a story by Stephen King, and another movie based loosely on the first movie. More of a variations on a theme than a continuance. In Sometimes They Come Back, Tim Matheson is made to relive a boyhood tragedy that claimed the life of his brother when the group of bullies who waylaid him in a train tunnel way back when come back from the dead to settle an old score. Convincingly scary as this is, side B is even better, having upped the ante from the demonic bullies of the first movie to the satanic worshippers of the second. This time it's Michael Gross who needs to learn that you can't escape your past,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tim Matheson - Brooke Adams Director(s): Tom McLoughlin DVD Release Date: Released the 07 July 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Dark secrets, family torments, and two murders swirl around the stoic, hardened figure of Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates), a housekeeper accused of murdering her employer of 22 years. Then there was that timely accident that took Dolores's husband (David Strathairn) during the solar eclipse of 1975. Yet with all the somber suffering that follows Dolores like a miasma of pain, none of it compares with the heartache of a relationship she has with her grown daughter (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Although this flick is rife with horror, it is not of the supernatural kind, but rather of the torment only real people can impose on one another. The script is full of colorful language, and director Taylor Hackford successfully weaves several plot threads and psychological dilemmas throughout this... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Kathy Bates - Jennifer Jason Leigh - Christopher Plummer Director(s): Taylor Hackford DVD Release Date: Released the 06 November 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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