Finally More Reviews
A Bugs Life – Was an excellent cartoon by Pixar where an unwitting Ant on his Anthill ends up saving his Queen Ant through a series of slapstick events that involve his going out into the larger world to enlist the help of other bugs in a rebellion against the vicious grasshoppers who try to destroy their hill.
Four Stars out of Five!
Close Encounters of the Third Kind – This movie is everything Aliens. It stirred up audiences in 1977 when Richard Dreyfus began building his Mashed Potato sculptures of Devil's Tower at the dinner table and people began hearing the infamous 5 tone communication from the outerworldly beings in an incredible John Williams Score. This was Spielberg at his absolute finest hour, telling a story that is shocking and awe inspiring at all at once.
Five Stars out of Five!
The Color of Money – Tom Cruise, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Paul Newman put together an all star cast for this tale of an aging hustler being hustled by his younger Protoge'. It is has some of the most incredible pool footage ever taken with cameras, and to this day, when you watch it, you truly feel like you are behind the 8 ball. The hustle takes them all the way to Vegas, the hard way, where the ultimate showdown between Master and Apprentice makes audiences chill with excitement.
Four Stars out of Five.
Contact – Based on the book Contact by Carl Sagan, this film deals with a signal from another world discovered by Jodie Foster's character who is working for SETI. As a young girl she lost her father, her only remaining parent to a heart attack and through her work is looking to find the “great beyond” and “other worldly intelligence.” There are jokes among the SETI people that she is searching for “Little Green Men.” While there is a grain of cynicism in it, it couldn't be farther from the truth.
Five Stars out of Five.
Crimes and Misdemeanors – This was a Woody Allen piece where Woody's character finds himself confronted with the confessions of a powerful older man who has murdered his lover for the sake of holding together his marriage, because she would not give up on his affections. It is a sobering view of what mankind is cabable and the inscrupulousness of power.
Four Stars out of Five.
The Crow – Brandon Lee stars in this Gothic Action thriller, where he is murdered along with his girlfriend on Hell night in Detroit. Brandon's character comes back to life as a ghostly indestructible clown who avenges his lover's death in an unparalleled vigilante spree of violence and decimation. The Crow is Brandon's power animal, showing up just before and just after he exits the scene, and is inextricably bound to him.
Brandon Lee died during this film in the famed gun battle sharing a fate of film death with his father Bruce Lee, who died during the production of the film Game of Death. Their fates, apparently, were also interwoven. People speculate that there was conspiracy to murder, but to my knowledge, this is a crime that has long gone unsolved.
Five Stars out of Five.
Dead Poets Society – Robin Williams leads a cast of infamous teen actors into their late adolescence and into adulthood in this monument to the poetry of the ages. He brings to light as their english instructor at a private university, that life, in all of its beauty and disgust, must be lived to its fullest. The re-popularization of Carpe' Diem or Seize the Day, is lectured, and brought into American Pop against the backdrop of the successes and failures of the students who revive, The Dead Poets Society, and make it their own.
Five Stars out of Five.
The Doors – Val Kilmer plays a stunning Jim Morrison against the backdrop of the late 60's and early 70's as Ray Manzarek and Andy Warhol find their ways into his life as a young film student turned Rock Legend. The entire story of the rise and fall of the Doors, is chronicled in this 3 hour escapade and romp into this Break into the other Side. Director Oliver Stone, took this film exactly where it needed to go, and re-initiated an entire generation that may have lost this treasure trove of Popular Art otherwise.
Five Stars out of Five.
E.T the Extra Terrestrial – E.T., Steven Spielberg's intergalactic masterwork, is about a boy from California who discovered an alien in his back yard. Eliot, and his Brother and sister (Drew Barrymore), hide the alien in the closet, and when his mother checks, she assumes he is a stuffed animal. The Alien is capable of healing powers, and in many ways parallels the story of Christ. He comes to earth, dies to save Eliot and his family from the SETI people who appear very interested in Eliots connection to the alien, and then rises again, and brings a flower back to life to signify this, along with his red brightly beating heart. Eliot and his friends help him to escape with E.T. They take him back into the forest where he leaves Eliot and family with the ultimate message, “Be Good!” and takes his plant samples back into space.
Six stars out of Five!
Four Stars out of Five!
Close Encounters of the Third Kind – This movie is everything Aliens. It stirred up audiences in 1977 when Richard Dreyfus began building his Mashed Potato sculptures of Devil's Tower at the dinner table and people began hearing the infamous 5 tone communication from the outerworldly beings in an incredible John Williams Score. This was Spielberg at his absolute finest hour, telling a story that is shocking and awe inspiring at all at once.
Five Stars out of Five!
The Color of Money – Tom Cruise, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Paul Newman put together an all star cast for this tale of an aging hustler being hustled by his younger Protoge'. It is has some of the most incredible pool footage ever taken with cameras, and to this day, when you watch it, you truly feel like you are behind the 8 ball. The hustle takes them all the way to Vegas, the hard way, where the ultimate showdown between Master and Apprentice makes audiences chill with excitement.
Four Stars out of Five.
Contact – Based on the book Contact by Carl Sagan, this film deals with a signal from another world discovered by Jodie Foster's character who is working for SETI. As a young girl she lost her father, her only remaining parent to a heart attack and through her work is looking to find the “great beyond” and “other worldly intelligence.” There are jokes among the SETI people that she is searching for “Little Green Men.” While there is a grain of cynicism in it, it couldn't be farther from the truth.
Five Stars out of Five.
Crimes and Misdemeanors – This was a Woody Allen piece where Woody's character finds himself confronted with the confessions of a powerful older man who has murdered his lover for the sake of holding together his marriage, because she would not give up on his affections. It is a sobering view of what mankind is cabable and the inscrupulousness of power.
Four Stars out of Five.
The Crow – Brandon Lee stars in this Gothic Action thriller, where he is murdered along with his girlfriend on Hell night in Detroit. Brandon's character comes back to life as a ghostly indestructible clown who avenges his lover's death in an unparalleled vigilante spree of violence and decimation. The Crow is Brandon's power animal, showing up just before and just after he exits the scene, and is inextricably bound to him.
Brandon Lee died during this film in the famed gun battle sharing a fate of film death with his father Bruce Lee, who died during the production of the film Game of Death. Their fates, apparently, were also interwoven. People speculate that there was conspiracy to murder, but to my knowledge, this is a crime that has long gone unsolved.
Five Stars out of Five.
Dead Poets Society – Robin Williams leads a cast of infamous teen actors into their late adolescence and into adulthood in this monument to the poetry of the ages. He brings to light as their english instructor at a private university, that life, in all of its beauty and disgust, must be lived to its fullest. The re-popularization of Carpe' Diem or Seize the Day, is lectured, and brought into American Pop against the backdrop of the successes and failures of the students who revive, The Dead Poets Society, and make it their own.
Five Stars out of Five.
The Doors – Val Kilmer plays a stunning Jim Morrison against the backdrop of the late 60's and early 70's as Ray Manzarek and Andy Warhol find their ways into his life as a young film student turned Rock Legend. The entire story of the rise and fall of the Doors, is chronicled in this 3 hour escapade and romp into this Break into the other Side. Director Oliver Stone, took this film exactly where it needed to go, and re-initiated an entire generation that may have lost this treasure trove of Popular Art otherwise.
Five Stars out of Five.
E.T the Extra Terrestrial – E.T., Steven Spielberg's intergalactic masterwork, is about a boy from California who discovered an alien in his back yard. Eliot, and his Brother and sister (Drew Barrymore), hide the alien in the closet, and when his mother checks, she assumes he is a stuffed animal. The Alien is capable of healing powers, and in many ways parallels the story of Christ. He comes to earth, dies to save Eliot and his family from the SETI people who appear very interested in Eliots connection to the alien, and then rises again, and brings a flower back to life to signify this, along with his red brightly beating heart. Eliot and his friends help him to escape with E.T. They take him back into the forest where he leaves Eliot and family with the ultimate message, “Be Good!” and takes his plant samples back into space.
Six stars out of Five!
