It is a performances centric movie

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Nightmares & Dreamscapes is a collection of 8 made for TV episodes based on a collection of short stories by Stephen King. The title is slightly misleading since not all of the episodes are based on the stories from the book of the same name. Overall the episodes vary from very good to just plain bad. As always there are problems with adapting King's work for the TV screen. Even if we allow for the changes that have to be made, some of the stories lack all the components that made them a good story whilst others have added padding in order to get them to the 45 minute mark or so. The best segment is Battleground. It is the opening episode and is the best of the lot due partly to the acting ability of William Hurt who plays an assassin being pursued by a group of miniature toy soldier as he killed their creator. Given that this is a TV episode the effects of the soldiers and their weapons are actually very well done. Another great thing about this episode is that William Hurt does not have any dialogue, so everything is expressed through physical acting. Alas this is not true of the next episode. The second episode is Crouch End is on the opposite side of the spectrum and is probably the worst of the lot. The acting is average at best and the effects are way below par. It's in tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, and is about a couple who gets lost in a London suburb and enters into a parallel dimension where strange things lurk. Quite a forgettable telling of the story. The third story is Umney's Last Case and it is about a fictional private detective from the 1930's and the author who created him (both played by William H. Macy). The author decided to switch places with the character he created as he is sick of his real life since he lost his son in a tragic accident whilst the detective has numerous affairs and never experiences any loss, grief or unhappiness. An OK story but slightly extended for the TV so it looses momentum and feels forced at times. Still worth watching. The fourth story is The End Of The Whole Mess and it's about a documentary film maker telling a story about how his brother and him managed to kill all of humanity by using a drug that they introduced into the atmosphere in order to try and bring an end to war and conflict. The super genius brother discovered a chemical compound that has a calming effect on anyone who is exposed to it. The enhanced compound however also has a horrible side effect of giving everyone fast acting Alzheimer's. Overall an average story. I preferred reading it. The fifth story is The Road Virus Heads North, and is about a writer (Tom Berenger) who buys a painting at a yard sale and ends up being pursued by the figure in the painting. Whilst the story itself is good, the TV adaptation is not great at all. When I was reading it, the story was engrossing, when I was watching it I couldn't wait for it to be over. The next story is called The Fifth Quarter and it's about a criminal who vows to go straight upon being released from prison but a dying friend gives him a quarter of a map that leads to 3 and a half million dollars. He wants to provide for his family and goes on to try and get the other pieces of the map from three other criminals. They are obviously not just going to hand over their map segments. Overall a good story with decent acting.The seventh story is Autopsy Room Four and is about a man who finds himself on the autopsy table whilst he is still alive but completely paralyzed due to a snake bite. And no one seems to notice. Most of the story is about him trying to alert the morgue staff before they start cutting into him. The morgue staff is paying more attention to flirting and arguing amongst themselves. Some suspense so overall an O.K story. The final story is called You know they've got a hell of a band and it's about a couple who gets lost taking back roads and ends up in an idyllic looking town called Rock N Roll Heaven. Some of the inhabitants are not that friendly and soon the two protagonists are being chased by dead rock stars including Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, Roy Orbison and others. They want them to stay for the concert...and never ever leave. An enjoyable story for rock and roll fans. Overall the collection is worth watching if you are a fan of Stephen King's work and want to check it out, just don't expect anything too spectacular, although there are stories which are good and keep more or less true to the story on which they are based. I would rate it between 5-6.

A miniseries of eight short TV films adapted from Stephen King's rather recent short stories. They are all in the style of the famous Twilight Zone serial but never as dark as the old model. In fact Stephen King in these short stories was trying to use different styles from what he is most known for, horror and terror. So most of the time he did not try to terrify his audience, at most horrify them, but often gross them out, and barely more. So hardly any real violence and extreme fantastic violence. Rather soft estrangement from standard life and the ordinary world of ours. We are thus surprised, disquieted, worried, but never anguished nor frightened. This softening goes along with a theme that is quite common: death and good old time nostalgia. The mind behind these stories has put quite a few years behind his forehead and his probably pot-bellied stomach. The vision is no longer that of a young child, a teenager or a young man who discard and rejects the wisdom coming from older people and for whom older people are danger, the devil, evil, something to get rid of before it dies in their hands. Here we have the vision of an older man, or woman, looking back at the world the way it was when they were young and they compensate the fact it is gone by making it evil. That old time and its characters do not come back into the present to haunt it. Rather the older people of today are transported into that old time of their youth. So it is not Sometimes They Come Back, but Sometimes They Drift Backwards. At time the danger comes from toys, hence children, the next generation, but the danger is seen from the point of view of the older man. The short stories and these short TV films are from an older author who is following the call that comes up from his muscular fiber. He has aged but without really deepening his vision. He has shifted points of view and the present vision is that of an older man probably produced and directed for television in the line of the baby boomers who are starting to get off the labor market and have a lot of time to spend and the desire never to let themselves die into and from inactivity, idleness. So let them have the good old stories about the good old time when they feared nothing but in which they would be absolutely frightened ****less if they had to go there again. Well done but rather too mild to be considered as horror or even fantastic stuff.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

The first week was fabulous: Battleground had absolutely no dialogue which was a risky proposition, and I'm glad TNT took a chance on it. William Hurt was very good as the rock hard killer who completely breaks down when confronted by a box of toy soldiers. The direction is very slick for a television show, the music was a bit on the nose but overall this was a great show to start the series off with.Crouch End is so far the creepiest of the episodes, it has the most horror elements in it so far and contains a lot of themes that Stephen King writes about a lot: the girl with the claw hand, Lovecraftian imagery and of course a messed up cat! The look of this film was amazing. It will tick a lot of people off though because there really is no story other than two people lost and seeing weird stuff, but the director did a great job of making it look and feel spooky.Umney's is a hard story to follow, and like Crouch End, is open to interpretation, which also will tick a lot of people off. There was quite a deviation from the original story that King fans will not like, but William H. Macy does a very nice job playing dual roles.End of the Whole Mess left me feeling empty: I feel like my emotions were manipulated all over the place to feel sorry for these characters when they brought it all upon themselves.I look forward to week 3!

Man, I really wanted to like these shows. I am starving for some good television and I applaud TNT for providing these "opportunites". But, sadly, I am in the minority I guess when it comes to the Cinematic Stephen King. As brilliant as King's writing is, the irony is that it simply doesn't translate well to the screen, big or small. With few exceptions (very few), the King experience cannot be filmed with the same impact that the stories have when read. Many people would disagree with this, but I'm sure that in their heart of hearts they have to admit that the best filmed King story is but a pale memory of the one they read. The reason is simple. The average King story takes place in the mind-scape of the characters in the story. He gives us glimpses of their inner thoughts, their emotions and their sometimes fractured or unreal points of view. In short, King takes the reader places where you can't put a Panavision camera. As an audience watching the filmed King, we're left with less than half the information than the reader has access to. It's not too far a stretch to claim that One becomes a character in a King story they read, whereas One is limited to petty voyeurism of that same character when filmed. For as long as King writes, Hollywood will try shooting everything that comes out of his word processor, without any regard to whether or not they should. I don't blame the filmmakers for trying, but it takes an incredible amount of talent and circumspection to pull off the elusive Stephen King adaptation that works. The task is akin to turning lead into gold, or some arcane Zen mastery. Oh well, better luck next time.