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Flatliners
This is
Joel Schumacher
's tale about medical students who experiment with Near-Death Phenomenon.
Julia Roberts
and her then RL BF Kiefer Sutherland lead up the group.
Kevin Bacon should have learned his lesson as a mad scientist here before he did
Hollow Man
! :)
However, the journey into the unknown releases the dark side of the consciousness. Those who journey to the land of the dead are haunted by halucinations caused by their own guilt, forced to relive the moral crimes they have committed.
Timescape
Jeff Daniels plays a widower haunted by the death of his young daughter.
He meets some strangers and discovers they are time-travelling tourists.
This gives him an opportunity to do the obvious ...
Phenomenon
John Travolta plays a working-class/blue-collar worker in a small town.
He has a quiet life, hanging out with best buddy Forrest Whittaker
and chasing after the local unmarried female (Kevin Bacon's RL wife
Kyra Sedgewick
). However, one day he is struck by lightning.
His IQ is inexplicably boosted through the roof,
he learns to speak Portugese after 20 minutes of reading a how-to book,
and he has a kind of empathic link with a young boy who goes missing.
His educated friend Robert Duvall (
THX 1138
) tries to help.
One of the high points of the film is the scene with a cameo by Brent Spiner ( Star Trek: TNG ) as a psychologist who interviews Travolta.
All in all, this is a well-made drama but it doesn't really go anywhere.
Tom Thumb
This is a Hollywood technicolour effort from 1950.
The title character is played by Russ Tamblyn (
Twin Peaks
). Thanks to blue-screen SPFX he appears to be only six inches tall.
Wee Tom falls foul of a pair of rogues played by Terry Thomas and Peter Sellars.
Luckily he has a couple of super-powers (despite being tiny, that is). Firstly, if he speaks in his normal voice he can be heard by full-size humans anywhere in the room. In other words his lungs must be like the TARDIS, bigger on the inside. His other apparent power is that by whispering into a horse's ear he can tell it what to do. The amazing thing is that the horse understands and obeys!
Mary Reilly
This is adapted from a novel written by a modern female novelist,
based on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by
Robert Louis Stephenson
.
Julia Roberts
plays the title character, a plain-looking housemaid to Dr Jekyll [John Malkovich -
Being John Malkovich
]. As the story unfolds she realises that things are
not quite right, and that something is rotten in the house of Jekyll.
George Cole (Minder) is the butler, while Glenn Close plays a brothel-keeper of Mr Hyde's acquaintance.
Lovestruck
Cupid (in the form of Costas Mandylor, the tall white guy from the TV show Players)
accidentally shoots himself with his own arrow and falls in love with his
prospective victim,
Cynthia Gibb
(Youngblood).
Soppy romance ensues.
This is a melodrama made for US television, with little to recommend it. However, if you like this kind of thing ...
A Thousand And One Nights
This is a Hollywood technicolour effort from 1945.
It is not a retelling of all the tales, merely that of
The story follows the adventures of Aladdin
(the incredibly wooden Cornel Wilde) and his sidekick Abdullah (Phil Silvers!).
Aladdin wants to marry the (blonde, blue-eyed) Princess,
but can't because he is a vagabond.
The SPFX consist mainly of blue-screen effects to make characters seem very large or very small. However, the scene where Silvers walks through the invisible genie is quite impressive. The genie (played by Scarlett O'Hara's younger sister) is a babelicious redhead who is jealous of Aladdin's desire for blondie. Aladdin also has to overcome the stereotypical villains, the evil sorceror and the evil grand vizier.
Along with the other cliches, there's a Musical scene where Aladdin and Abdullah perform a song and dance routine!
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
This is
Robert Zemeckis
' parody of the film noir genre [especially Chinatown,
with a groundbreaking mix of live-action and animation.
Bob Hoskins plays a down-at-heel Private Investigator in 1947 Los Angeles.
Cartoon characters are real, and live in a cartoon ghetto known as Toon Town.
Hoskins is hired by top 'toon star Roger Rabbit to spy on his wife Jessica (voiced by the ultra-sexy
Kathleen Turner
). However, as always in this kind of film there's a murder -
and as the title indicates, Roger Rabbit is in the frame for it.
The case is in the jurisdiction of the evil Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd -
Back To The Future
), so Hopkins has to protect Roger while uncovering the real killer.
As in Chinatown the heart of the matter is a real-estate scam. Here it involves replacing the LA tram system (the best public transport system in the world) with something ludicrous called a Freeway.
Hoskins does a great job of acting to empty space - and some of the world's favourite cartoon characters were filled in later. Joanna Cassidy plays Hopkins' waitress GF.
Neverending Story, The
The movie is about a young boy called Sebastian.
He discovers a book called The Neverending Story,
and reads it.
This is the main story, a story within a story, which concerns the
mystical land of Fantasia.
A strange emptiness is destroying the world.
Fantasia's only hope is a warrior named Atreyu [a young Noah Hathaway].
This is an offering from Wolfgang Peterson , best known for Das Boot. The SPFX are quite impressive, and since the film was intended for younger viewers there are no stars and no blatant plot cliches.
Darkman
This is one of
Sam Raimi
's finest films, written by Chuck Pfarrer [Hard Target] among others.
Frances McDormand
works for dodgy millionaire Colin Friels.
Her boyfriend Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson -
Excalibur, Krull, Phantom Menace
) is the victim of a brutal attack by the villainous gangster Eddie Durant (Larry Drake -
Prey
). He survives, but with hideous scarring, an inability to feel pain and
also incredible strength.
Westlake is a scientist who has developed a synthetic skin substance. The synthis-skin allows him to disguise himself as anyone he wants, but will disentigrate totally within 99 minutes. He uses this to great effect in his new career as a masked vigilante in the manner of The Shadow and Rorschach.
The movie also has homages to Hunchback of Notre Dame, in scenes where Westlake has to come to terms with his new, deformed status. However, this leads to a strange hypocrisy in the film's morality. Westlake is every bit as psychotic and sociopathic as Durant - more so, in fact, because Durant only kills for money.
Jenny Agutter has an anonymous cameo as the doctor who saved Westlake's life.