Movie Recommendation of the Week: Starman
If there’s one 80s sci-fi movie that you guys have to see it’s Starman. This movie was out well before any of the recent sci-fi shows we see today and I definitely hold it in high regard with the ET’s and Close Encounter’s of the world as far as really exploring what’s out there beyond our planet.
Not to mention the movie explores human cloning before most movies took it seriously. Granted it’s only brief but it’s still cool. In short, an alien takes the form of a young widow’s husband and asks her to drive him from Wisconsin to Arizona. The government tries to stop them on their journey.
The alien is played by Jeff Bridges who does a fantastic job. The woman is Karen Allen. Also, this is a John Carpenter film which means he did the directing as well as score for the movie. It’s a can’t miss. Trust me. Trailer is after the jump….
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNnH1j5HNow
Movie still holds up today. Great flick.
Great movie!
It’s fun to look at the 80s TV series “Out of this World” as essentially a sequel to this movie.
Does anyone remember the TV show based off this movie that had the guy from Airplane in it?
I hated E.T. growing up. The scene where the boy kisses a girl was going to be pretty unappealing at that age anyway. As such, the additional confusion as to why the boy was re-enacting an advert E.T. was watching was particularly annoying. Then there was the comical depiction of drunkenness. I’d seen my parents drink and I’d never seen it cause anyone to hiccup or slump into their seat, so the depiction of that behaviour after one bottle of beer was extremely confusing.
But perhaps the weirdest thing was the “men from the government”. They seem to be depicted as evil and then seem pretty rational and reasonable with Eliot and E.T. are both dying.
In “Close Encounters”, which I saw more recently, there’s a similar problem with the “men from the government”. They are horrible conspirators, hiding the truth. Yet they are good people who just want to do what’s best. What’s more the aliens never seem to get depicted as anything but lovely, even though they’ve essentially inflicted mental illness on a whole bunch of people causing one guy to destroy his kitchen.
“Starman” is at least consistent with a totally evil military, yet with a good honest scientist. But I think they made the military guy a little too evil, seemingly deciding that the alien must die without an awful lot of rational thought involved. More annoying in this film, however, is the way the alien speaks nearly perfect English and yet seems to feel the need to ask about random terms like “beauty”, “love” etc. only to be fed some of the most wishy washy and poorly thought out explanations of these ideas. (I mean seriously, if I didn’t know what beauty was before, his companion’s explanation wasn’t going to help me.)
Of all the alien encounters movies, there’s only one that really impressed me: “Flight Of The Navigator”. The central character has a connection with the alien, but there’s a reason for that connection that is genuinely interesting. Also, the little kid at the centre of the story has a genuine personality, which is nice.
I hated ET growing up cuz it scared me, lol. Also, FOTn is still one of my favorite movies ever. Oh, and I recently re-watched Starman for the first time since I was probably 6-7 years old. Rewatched it again with the commentary as well.
I LOVED this movie growing up! The scene where he drives and guns through the yellow light goes through my head EVERY time I speed through to make a light.
Green light means go. Red light means stop. Yellow light means go very fast!