Firestarter
I’m not gonna try to convince anyone this is a great movie or anything … but I’ve gotta say it definitely falls into the mondo repeat viewings category for me. And it’s even more fascinating to watch now that I’m reading, almost done with, the Drew Barrymore book “Little Girl Lost” (sorry, I’m probably going to be mentioning this book far too much for the foreseeable future, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read) – I never really thought of Drew Barrymore’s roles being so tied into her real life, like the way say Jodie Foster’s are. But it’s hard not to see the parallels here, setting her mother on fire, all the officious old men stood around watching her talent, promising her something they can’t give her in return for the show, and her screaming, “I wanna see my daddy!” after … obviously I’m reading far too much into it … but I can’t help it. Anyway, the movie is a lot of fun, and it’s way up there with the De Palma and Cronenberg Stephen King adaptations of the time, right down to the Tangerine Dream score. George C. Scott and Martin Sheen in the supporting cast only serve to complete the treat. Edit: Oh yeh, can’t write a review of this without the unforgettable line, “Back off – just … back off!”
May 29th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
[...] Finally at the one hour mark, you get a good 30 minutes of Drew, and fortunately she’s much, much cuter on her reappearance. Unfortunately, it’s also the most ridiculous tale of the collection – it features a troll, nuff said. That said, again the ending is fairly outstanding, not only cementing the amazing use of The Police’s song “Every Breath You Take” (well, a cover thereof, at least: the line, “I’ll be watching you,” leaps out when when you hear it earlier in the James Woods story; here it’s the title itself as the troll attempts to steal little Drew’s very breath in her sleep, and she even uses the vinyl record to kill the little critter, which seriously made me laugh too much), but also finishing the movie with a couple of extraordinarily cute shots of Drew, the cat of the title crawling up to her chin, safe at last in bed, and licking her bottom lip. It ultimately rids itself of all its wtf-ness with moments like this, and I’ll happily double bill it with Firestarter, or just about any old horror anthology movie, any number of times in the future. [...]