Scott Hicks
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In fact, the novelist's non-horror short stories - "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" ("The Shawshank Redemption") and "The Body" ("Stand By Me") - have usually fared better than adaptations of his long-form, horror-based works such as "Cujo" or "Pet Sematary."
Set in 1960 Connecticut, "Hearts in Atlantis" is just such a movie, lying somewhere between "Stand By Me" and "The Green Mile" in its heady atmosphere of wonder, mystery, and the rose-colored remembrances of childhood.
In fact, smack in it's middle, the film packs a hearty punch, bringing to mind the wonder and magic of childhood as so spiritedly stirred to life in one of King's earlier screen hits "Stand By Me."
Based on Stephen King stories from an anthology of the same name, Scott Hicks has cut and pasted them into a 60s rites of passage tale that means well, but cloying sentimentality and a slow pace keeps it in a different class to "Stand by Me", a similarly-themed King adaptation.
Hearts in Atlantis, an early bid in this year's Oscar race, tries vainly to capture the coming-of-age spirit that played so well with Liberty Heights and Stand By Me.
Until the somewhat deflated ending, the film bounces along wittily enough, with clever nods to Herbie the Love Bug, Jodie Foster, and Good Will Hunting, as well as what is doubtless the best punch line ever occasioned by Snow Falling on Cedars.
The use of 1999's " Snow Falling on Cedars " as the payoff to one ongoing story point is an unexpected comic high point."Horrible…
Even before the opening credits for Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind roll, the extensive previews for the movie have roused echoes of Scott Hicks’ barely five-year-old Shine, the equally fictionalized-but-based-on-truth story of pianist, David Helfgott.
Some actors get to do both: Geoffrey Rush in “Shine,” for one, and Russell Crowe here.
Or better yet, ask Geoffrey Rush, whose character in 1996’s “Shine” had to overcome years of physical and emotional abuse before he could be recognized as a master musician.
(Geoffrey Rush + Shine = Oscar; Angelina Jolie + Girl, Interrupted = Oscar.)
…better than Shine and among the most affecting ever made about co-existing with mental demons.
Add cheerfully inclined director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, responsible for mediocre Hollywood generica like “Batman and Robin” and “Practical Magic,” and you can almost be sure that the end product will be in the ghastly tradition of films like “Shine,” “Nell” and “Patch Adams,” with their bogus sympathy and showboating lead performances.
The words “Based on a novella by Stephen King” probably don’t inspire as much excitement as once they did, and with good reason: for every Misery, there’s a Dreamcatcher, a Hearts in Atlantis and a Tommyknockers.
The ordeal of the drummer Andrew (Miles Teller) is similar to the anguish of Geoffrey Rush's music student in Shine as he was tortured through Rachmaninoff.
Mr. Simmons hurls orders, insults and obscenities like a cross between Armin Mueller-Stahl ’s tyrannical father from “Shine,” R. Lee Ermey’s drill sergeant from “Full Metal Jacket” and his own Aryan leader from “Oz.”
He’s a gregarious grouch (Brendan Gleeson) but darned if that sweet-mannered bear and his recipe for marmalade don’t win him and the diverse and brutishly whimsical prison population (Noah Taylor of “Shine” among them) over.
It’s an extraordinarily subtle and poignant turn that enriches Cumberbatch’s own performance, the way Hugh O’Conor did for Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot, or Noah Taylor for Geoffrey Rush in Shine.
Other than Chris Barrie who makes his feature film debut and gets in a few amusing moments as the protective butler, Iain Glen ("Mountains of the Moon," "Gorillas in the Mist") and Daniel Craig ("Elizabeth," "I Dreamed of Africa") are completely flat as the one-dimensional villains and Noah Taylor ("Almost Famous," "Shine") can't do much with his limited techno guru part.
And there's no excusing the film's criminal underuse of Noah Taylor ("Shine," "Almost Famous") and Chris Barrie (the British TV comedies "Red Dwarf" and "The Brittas Empire"), wasted as Lara's tech-whiz sidekick and long-suffering butler, respectively.
Noah Taylor (the young David Helfgott in "Shine") is Lara's sidekick, Bryce, who is supposed to be some kind of techno-geek, but comes across as just a plain geek.
It’s an effective, get-out-your-Kleenex model, and the number of books it has powered has been nearly matched by the movie adaptations — “Message in a Bottle,” “Nights in Rodanthe” and “The Notebook” among them — it has inspired.
The Lucky One aspires to but never reaches the grandly melodramatic heights of the über-Sparks adaptation The Notebook, though a reconciliation embrace in an outdoor shower of some sort seems deliberately staged to evoke the earlier feature.
Sparks may have gotten lucky with “The Notebook,” but “The Lucky One” seems only to refer to his status as a successful writer of romantic pap.
Any filmmaker who takes on a “based on a story by Nicholas Sparks” project knows that comparisons to The Notebook will be swift and decisive.
A couple of months ago, I was writing up my review of the melodramatic gumdrop known as "The Vow" and found myself in the faintly ridiculous position of offering a public apology to none other than best-selling hack author Nicholas Sparks, the creator of such shameless soapers as "The Notebook," "Message in a Bottle," "A Walk to Remember," "The Last Song" and others.
Directed by Scott Hicks (“Shine”), with Will Fetters adapting the Nicholas Sparks novel, this is the latest and the best Sparks-inspired film to come along since “The Notebook” won over hearts, if not minds, in 2004.
Finally, Jay R. Ferguson (2000's " The In Crowd ") is loathsome as Beth's rat of an ex Keith, a couple half-hearted attempts at giving him a conscience coming too little too late for a character who enters the film with a flashing neon sign hung around his neck blinking "Bad Guy."
It’s an effective, get-out-your-Kleenex model, and the number of books it has powered has been nearly matched by the movie adaptations — “Message in a Bottle,” “Nights in Rodanthe” and “The Notebook” among them — it has inspired.
A couple of months ago, I was writing up my review of the melodramatic gumdrop known as "The Vow" and found myself in the faintly ridiculous position of offering a public apology to none other than best-selling hack author Nicholas Sparks, the creator of such shameless soapers as "The Notebook," "Message in a Bottle," "A Walk to Remember," "The Last Song" and others.
The New Orleans-shot romance " The Lucky One " is, above all, a Nicholas Sparks movie, which -- ever since 1999's "Message in a Bottle" -- has become a Kleenex-devouring genre all itself.
The Lucky One is the latest Nicholas Sparks novel to make it to the big screen, following such heart-tuggers like The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, and most recently, 2010’s Dear John with Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried.
The author of such swoon-inducing pop favorites as "Message in a Bottle," "The Notebook" and "Nights in Rodanthe," Sparks gives readers the same warm-fuzzy appeal as a Thomas Kinkade painting, and numerous shots in the film seem to bear the late artist's touch.
Those who can appreciate it on either or both levels will find plenty to adore in the movie, just as in the Sparks movies Message in a Bottle , A Walk to Remember , The Notebook , Nights in Rodanthe , Dear John and The Last Song .
The actor�s work contains none of the feel good mannerisms of such likeable mentally challenged heroes as Geoffrey Rush�s turn in Shine or Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind.
This is the film that "Shine" and A Beautiful Mind could not be, a story about schizophrenia that doesnât neatly resolve its complex subject matter.
It’s a bit of a shame because there’s actually a really good cast hidden within this epic mess, including Gerard Butler (“The Phantom of the Opera,” “300”), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”), and Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush (“Shine,” “The King’s Speech”).
You know, like combine his usual trappings with say, the black comedy, macabre premise of "Final Destination" especially since Death is always lurking around in his works anyway.
Hollywood is busy trying to turn Taylor Kitsch into an action star, but he would’ve been perfect here, especially considering all the different times on Friday Night Lights that he found himself playing the brooding lover of a single mom (and yes, there’s precedent for both actors in a movie romance being named “Taylor.”).
In fact, that is exactly what happens, and it is one-half of the reason that The Lucky One sucks as a romantic drama, assuming that we can accuse the actors of being cumulatively everything that is wrong with the movie, while ignoring the cliché-spouting screenplay adapted by Will Fetters - whose last job at trying to get a dubious teenybopper to grow up into leading manhood was the R-Patz 9/11 hatchet job Remember Me - or the stiff, pacey direction by Scott Hicks, the manhandler of such leaden dramas as Snow Falling on Cedars and Hearts in Atlantis , or the snoozy landscape cinematography of Ala Kivilo, who renders the Lousiana woods in the same training-wheels sun-kissed aesthetic he employed in The Blind Side .
The film is nicely shot by cinematographer Alar Kivilo ("The Blind Side"), taking advantage of typical Sparks' style locations (lawn parties, churches, sailboats, sun dappled rural roads).
Without much tension, the film becomes more of an extended music video of Logan and Beth’s rocky road to love, beautifully captured by director of photography Alar Kivilo (“The Blind Side”).
Charting a course of recovery that has implications politically and also domestically, the movie makes much the same direct, occasionally shameless appeal to its audience that one recalls from previous Oscar-winner Shine, the story of a prodigal talent facing his own hurdles whose star, Geoffrey Rush (pictured above right), proves invaluable to this latest film as well.
Firths monarch-to-be is a quietly fretful blueblood who, groomed to be a grand spokesman, literally cant get the royal words out -- that the Australian therapist hired to aid him is played by Geoffrey Rush (who in Shine had a speech disorder of his own to overcome) might be an in-joke, or maybe just another of the films friendly reminders to Academy Award voters.
Rush, who won the Best Actor Oscar for “Shine” (1997) is funny and inspiring as Lionel, a failed actor who has the temerity to tell the king: “My game, my turf, my rules” — and helps him force the words out by singing and swearing.
He conquers the big screen with this splendid movie based on the true story of King George VI (Colin Firth from “Love Actually” and “A Single Man”) and his unlikely friendship with maverick Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush from “Quills” and “Shine”).
Just ask Rush, an Oscar-winner for such a role in "Shine."
Rush (winner for Shine, 1996) can coach him in a great acceptance speech.
Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush ("Shine") plays a pelican, Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe ("Platoon") is an aquarium angelfish, and three-time Emmy winner Allison Janney ("The West Wing") sparkles as a starfish.
But unlike 2008's "The Lucky Ones," which realistically dealt with issues veterans face on the homefront, Hicks' pic seems to forget this incident as soon as it passes.
Keith looks and behaves like Biff from Back to the Future, so his threats are difficult to take seriously.
Or, if you will, imagine Biff from "Back to the Future" crashing a Pottery Barn catalog spread.