Mike Goes To Movies

Doctor Sleep (2019) Oddly enough, the latest of Stephen King's book adaptations is one of the toughest reviews I've had to write. I have a lot of conflicted thoughts and emotions about this film, and, largely, this is because it is a sequel to a very classic film - one of my favourites in fact - and, in my opinion, the best horror film of all time. Unlike many sequels, however, Doctor Sleep is a legitimate continuation of the story as it was penned by King himself in 2013 (whether he should have done so is an entirely separate discussion). Now, writer/director, Mike Flanagan, had a uniquely difficult task as he decided to make this film a sequel to both The Shining the book and the film - and for those King diehards, you know that there are significant differences between the two. Lastly, is the fact that The Shining was made by one of the all-time greats, Stanley Kubrick, and no matter how much you want to, or try to, you cannot help but compare Doctor Sleep to The Shining ...

5. The Shining (1980) My first introduction to the The Shining wasn't through the film or the original novel, but in fact through the standout segment of  The Simpson's  season six Treehouse of Horror, The Shinning - a true testament to the hand that the Simpsons had in raising my generation. From then it would still be another number of years before I finally saw Stanley Kubrick's coveted film that the show based their segment upon (and it was only recently that I finally got around to reading King's original novel). It is now quite notoriously known that Stephen King did not particularly like Kubrick's film, as it changed a number of significant aspects and plot-points of the novel - the novel is more supernatural, as well, Jack's descent/motivations differ greatly between film and novel. Many fans took issue with King's position, arguing that the film was only an adaptation and not a literal translation; it was its own standalone entity, and a phen...