TheRetroCritic

The only film to date to have been both written and directed by Larry David, Sour Grapes is a comedy from 1998 starring Steven Weber and Craig Bierko as two cousins whose relationship quickly goes down the drain when one of them hits the jackpot in a casino using the other's quarters. Despite the film's fun premise and the decent cast involved, Sour Grapes failed at the box-office, was hated by critics (including Roger Ebert) and even Larry David himself isn't too fond of it these days. The negative reaction after its release combined with the mean-spirited nature of the film itself is probably why Sour Grapes is as forgotten as it is. The comedy does admittedly have its share of problems. One highly unlikely plot thread, for example, sees Bierko's character scheming to scare his own mother to death by giving her home keys to a homeless man when he finds out that he might be dying because... that would save her the pain of seeing him get increasingly worse health-

It's well known that Stephen King wasn't too keen on Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of his classic novel The Shining back in the day. So much so that, in 1997, a "mere" 17 years after Kubrick's film was released, he even wrote and produced his own mini-series retelling the story but delivering much more backstory and character development. Well, that was the intention, anyway. The result was basically an entertaining enough yet completely inferior 3-part TV movie which did bring back some key elements from the book but failed to match the intensity, creepiness and stylistic class of Kubrick's film. The first part of this Shining mini-series sees the Torrance family move in to The Overlook Hotel after a long exposition-heavy tour and several flashbacks showing us Jack Torrance's (a sadly miscast Steven Weber) struggles with alcohol and son Danny's run-ins with imaginary pal Tony, who isn't Danny's finger in this movie, but instead a te