Contact (1997)

If It Is Just Us, Seems Like an Awful Waste of Space.

When I was looking through my DVD collection to pick out my favorite science fiction movie, I found it fairly difficult.  I had already done a lot of the bigger and more popular movies in the science fiction genre, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and Back to the Future.  But then I saw this movie and decided, “Okay, so people are probably going to piss all over this being my favorite science fiction movie, but I’m gonna do it anyway.”  But look here, people.  This movie has space travel and aliens in it.  That definitely makes it a science fiction movie.  And it’s based on a book written by Carl Sagan.  So fuck your faces.  This movie is Contact, based on a novel by Carl Sagan, written by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg, directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, James Woods, William Fichtner, David Morse, Jena Malone, Angela Bassett, Jake Busey, and Rob Lowe.

Dr. Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway (Jodie Foster as older Ellie, Jena Malone as younger Ellie) is a promising scientist that spends all of her time working on the SETI project (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence); having been inspired to do so by her late father (David Morse).  She works for a while at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico until Government scientist David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) pulls the funding because he believes she’s wasting her talents.  Ellie is undeterred and takes her team, including her blind friend Kent Clark (William Fichtner), to find other funding, leaving behind the guy she met that she was getting too involved with, Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey).  After months of searching, she finally finds funding in the eccentric billionaire S. R. Hadden (John Hurt), giving her the ability to use the Very Large Array in Socorro County, New Mexico.  Years later, Drumlin pokes his head in again to screw things up for her.  On their last day with the array, Ellie finds a signal coming from the star Vega of repeating prime numbers.  The government gets involved, bringing Drumlin and National Security Advisor Michael Kitz (James Woods) into the picture.  On further analysis, they find that there are plans in the signal to build a transport device, but who will be the one to go?

I really like this movie.  Yes, it’s arguably not the most sci-fi movie ever, but it still definitely counts in my opinion.  It’s got a whole bunch of science in the movie, and it never happened so it’s also fiction.  Add in the travel through space and time and a brief appearance by aliens and I say it totally counts.  Deep down, I feel that I like this movie so much because of its religious undertones.  Or overtones, in some parts.  Personally, I believe in God, but I’m also big into science.  I’d equate myself with the Palmer Joss character.  I have my religious beliefs, but I don’t usually argue with people about theirs and I consider myself more fond of the search for truth.  This movie doesn’t take a strong stance in either the direction of belief or science, it more takes a stance that the over the top crazies in both directions are the jerk faces.  Jake Busey’s character, for instance, is a big jerkface.  But, on the other side, Ellie could kind of be a jerkface as well.  It’s a fairly accurate characterization from many atheists I’ve met that they seem to think they’re so superior to those stupid people that believe in a big man in the sky.  When Ellie and Palmer were in bed talking about it and she started saying things like, “Did you ever think that might not have been God,” he tolerated it.  I would’ve said, “Look, I didn’t criticize you for all your ‘I love stars and little green men’ bullshit!”  I liked it when later in the movie she says that she’d need proof to believe in God and he comes back with, “Did you love your father?  Prove it.”  Booyah, bitch!  I did feel bad for Ellie when she didn’t get taken on the transport at first because she doesn’t believe in God, but it also made sense.  If they’re supposed to be sending someone to represent Earth and 95% of Earth believes in a god of some sort, then they probably shouldn’t send someone that thinks the other 95% is stupid.  At the end of the movie, it all gets thrown back in her face in a really cool way, when no one believes what she’s saying about the transport because she has no proof and all her Occam’s Razor stuff is thrown back in her face, it’s very satisfying.  And just as satisfying that all the people who don’t believe her are basically criticizing something she believes, even though that’s what got her kept off the transport in the first place.  They don’t point it out, but the audience is well aware of what’s going on.  The movie doesn’t answer any questions when it comes to religion, but it doesn’t really try to.  It just poses a lot of questions that I found really thought-provoking and made me appreciate the movie.  The rest of the story was also very good to me.  I liked the science in the movie and it all seemed very sound as far as I could tell.  The drama aspects of the movie also succeeded with me.  The part of young Ellie calling into the Ham radio to try to talk to her recently deceased father broke my heart.  And you feel pretty shitty for Ellie in the other parts of the movie, especially when Drumlin keeps getting control and credit for her historic find.

The look of the movie holds up pretty damned well.  It’s not that old of a movie, but the graphics are mostly sound in the movie.  The opening of the movie was both a cool idea and a really good look.  They started out looking at Earth, listening to radio transmissions.  Then they backed up through the galaxy, playing older and older transmissions until silence.  They also put Bill Clinton into a bunch of scenes.  Adding his face to the scenes was convincing, but it obviously dates the movie a little bit.  The older and older this movie gets, the more likely it will be that people wouldn’t know who that was supposed to be.  Also, the graphics of travelling through the wormhole were really cool looking.

I really liked all of the performances in this movie.  For the most part, they stuck to some really good actors, so it wasn’t really a shock.  I think the world knows that Jodie Foster is a good actress, or at least was twice when she got her two Academy Awards.  But she was very good in this movie as well.  Foster is really believable and cute in her role, being able to convey her character’s excitement when she talks about the stars and the planets, and it’s very endearing.  This movie is probably the only occasion that I can think of that I was not annoyed by Matthew McConaughey.  His character in this movie was the one I identified with the most, and he did a good job doing the acting that was required.  The best example for me was the part where he had to ask the question that he knew would get Ellie disqualified.  The conflict is very evident on his face.  John Hurt was another character I liked.  He was definitely eccentric, and I liked the fact that he always seemed to know more than he was letting on.  Tom Skerritt was a very unlikeable character throughout the movie, but he did a good job at it.  He was always trying to steal Ellie’s thunder, but he did get me to start warming up to him near the end, which made what happen slightly after more effective.

All things being equal, the simplest answer is that this movie is really good.  The slightly more complicated answer is that I really liked the story, the look, and the bulk of the performances in the movie and it made for an interesting and thought-provoking movie.  I really recommend the movie, even though the inevitable outcome is the bulk of you saying that I can’t consider it a science fiction movie, let alone my favorite one.  Well to hell with you too.  Contact gets “I think it’s worth a human life” out of “You could call me a man of the cloth, without the cloth.”

Congratulations goes to Loni, who won the long battle to try and figure out this controversial choice for my favorite non-reviewed science fiction movie.  And more congratulations goes to her for being wise enough to say it was a good movie.  To hell with the rest of you!

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Back to the Future Part III (1990)

100 Year Ago?!  That’s THIS Year!!

I’m so depressed now.  I have finished watching my favorite trilogy and there are no more to watch.  The reviews for the finale have gone up a little bit from the 64% that Rotten Tomatoes gave Part 2 into 71% for Part 3.  But that’s not what I say because Rotten Tomatoes just doesn’t take me seriously for some reason, so fuck those guys.  You guys came to hear what I think about this movie.  Let’s find out now in my review of Back to the Future Part 3, again written by Bob Gale, again directed by Robert Zemeckis, and again starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson, Mary Steenburgen, Lea Thompson, Elisabeth Shue, Matt Clark, Pat Buttram, Harry Carey Jr., Dub Taylor, Richard Dysart, James Tolkan, Donovan Scott, Burton Gilliam, Bill McKinney, Flea, Jeffrey Weissman, Marc McClure, Wendie Jo Sperber, and ZZ Top.

At the end of the last movie, Doctor Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) disappeared, having been inside the time-travelling DeLorean while it was struck by lightning, leaving nothing but a flaming 99 in the sky and a stunned Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) watching from the street.  But his spirits are lifted when a mailman (Joe Flaherty) shows up to give him a letter from September 5th, 1885.  In the letter, Doc explains that the time circuits sent him back to the old west, but he doesn’t want Marty to come save him.  Marty returns to the Doc Brown of 1955 and enlists him to help get the DeLorean (which was left in a cemetery-adjacent cave) and repair it so he can return to 1985.  But, as they load up the DeLorean, Doc’s dog finds a grave with Doc’s name on it, saying he was shot in the back over a matter of 80 dollars by Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) and left his beloved Clara.  Marty determines that he must go back to 1885 to save the Doc from his fate.  Upon returning, the DeLorean’s fuel line is struck by an arrow and Marty is chased out of a cave by a bear, falling down a hill and knocking himself unconscious on a wooden fence.  He wakes up in the house of his ancestor, Seamus (Michael J. Fox again) and Maggie McFly (Lea Thompson).  Marty goes into Hill Valley and runs afoul of Tannen, but is rescued by the Doc.  They resolve to return to 1985, but without gasoline, they must find another way to get the DeLorean up to 88mph.

It’s probably going to shock you all to hear that I loved this movie as well.  The story did not falter all the way through, the movie is supported by the same quality of music, it’s still fun, has lots of comedy, lots of action, they bring back the romantic angle, and there’s some minor darkness to the movie, though not as much as Part 2.  Plus, they made it mostly a western, so I’m totally on board.  Perhaps the darkness of Part 2 drove people away because they just wanted these movies to be fun, but who knows?  The only negative I had was that the ending was slightly disappointing, but we’ll get to that a little later.  I thought for this movie that it would have been a bit annoying to see these movies in theaters as there’s a big cliffhanger at the end of Part 1 and 2 and then having to wait 4 years after the first and one year after the second to get satisfaction would be difficult.  I never had to deal with that though, as I started watching them when my mother already owned all three on VHS.  They do the history repeating itself thing again in this movie, which they would kind of have to as it was in all of them.  Thomas F. Wilson’s character again walks into a bar/diner type of place and harasses Michael J. Fox, having to quickly cover the DeLorean because the love interest in the movie is about to walk in, the Doc apologizing because the diorama he made is not to scale, the Doc has made another Rube Goldberg machine in the old west that makes his breakfast, and Wilson’s character again falls into manure.  Marty even makes reference to it when he says “Why do we always have to cut these things so close?”  Also, Marty’s “Hey, look!  A distraction!” thing continues to get him out of sticky situations.  The “Eastwood Ravine” thing was also very similar to the Twin/Lone Pine(s) Mall thing.  They bring the romance back into the movie that was kind of missing in Part 2.  Part 1 had Lorraine and George, Part 2 kind of has a vague romance to Jennifer and Marty, but not a strong one, and Part 3 brings in Clara Clayton for the Doc to fall in love with.  I liked her character and I liked that the Doc would get some.  It seemed a bit out of character for him to fall so deeply in love so quickly, but that’s how love do sometimes.  I also liked that he saved her from death, and the whole discussion about the name of the ravine.  It makes sense because taking Clara out of 1885 would not change history because she was supposed to have died, so she wouldn’t be missed.  The whole “chicken” thing for Marty that started in Part 2 got tied up in this movie, leaving us with a nice message about not letting people’s opinions of you do something stupid.  They also kind of set up this entire movie (and at least one big pay off) from when Biff was watching A Fistful of Dollars in Part 2.  The climactic scene at the end on the train was also pretty spectacular.  The ending of the movie itself disappointed me a little bit.  ::SPOILER ALERT::  I feel like it kind of strains credulity that the Doc could invent another time machine using a train from 1885, one that could not only travel through time, but also could fly (which either meant he was able to do it 130 years earlier than the rest of humanity, or he was able to travel to 2015 before visiting Marty in 1985).  But, honestly, this isn’t what disappointed me.  I would’ve been bummed if the Doc was stuck back in 1885, even if he did have Clara.  I liked that he was able to continue time traveling, plus had his wife and 2 kids.  What really disappointed me was that there was only three of these movies.  I want more, damnit!  ::END SPOILER::

What a surprise!  The cast didn’t really change and they all still rule.  Michael J. Fox displayed more range in Part 2, but was still fantastic in this movie.  I liked him as a old west gunfighter too.  But why the hell would he give up that sweet pistol?  I understand he had no use for it, but it was an awesome gun.  Fox also got to be Seamus McFly, and I loved the accent that he put on for it.  Christopher Lloyd gets to display more range in this movie, mostly being the wacky Doc that we love, but once he’s around Clara, he’s all gushy-eyed and in love.  After they have a fight, he pulls off super depressed about it very well.  I also found it really amusing when Marty says “Great Scott” and Doc says “I know, it’s heavy.”  The best thing Doc ever did in the series was in this movie, when he tripped one of Buford’s gang members as they ran away.  Get ‘im, Doc!  I liked Mary Steenburgen as an addition to the cast.  She seems exactly like the kind of person that Doc would fall for.  She’s a teacher, she’s smart, strong, a little bit clumsy and goofy, pretty, and she digs on Jules Verne.  Thomas F. Wilson played the same kind of character, but he really worked as an old west bad guy.  That guy could play a bad guy in any era.  I actually got really angry at him when he was getting all frisky on Mary Steenburgen.  That’s Doc’s girl!  Lea Thompson isn’t in the movie as much, but I also liked the accent she puts on as Maggie McFly.  That may have been where my crush on her was cemented.  It was her regular hotness, but with an adorable accent.  Another great part about this movie is that it got to bring back many forgotten old west character actors such as Pat Buttram, Harry Carey Jr., Dub Taylor, and (my personal favorite) Burton Gilliam from Blazing Saddles!

I doubt these reviews were very surprising to you, and for that I … well I really don’t feel anything about it.  These aren’t supposed to be surprising, they’re supposed to be entertaining, just like the Back to the Future series.  …Yeah, good segway, Robert!  I love this movie because it takes everything we loved about both of the previous movies, added a western, and lost nothing in the process.  This is a great movie.  I would have to say that I kind of agree with Rotten Tomatoes in my ratings of the series, but not to the degree they go to.  I would say that the first movie is the best, Part 3 is the second best, and Part 2 is the third best.  I would say my reviews of them would be closer to Part 1 = 100%, Part 2 = 95%, and Part 3 = 98%.  I love these movies, what can I say?  As with both other movies, every person in the world should see these movies.  Even if you didn’t like one of them that much, you have to enjoy all three back to back.  Some of my favorite movies ever, and quite possibly my favorite trilogy ever (because Star Wars and Lord of the Rings aren’t really trilogies anymore, are they?).  Back to the Future Part 3 gets “See you in the future” out of “Your future is whatever you make it.  So make it a good one.”

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Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Better to Devote Myself to Study the Other Great Mystery of the Universe: Women!

Because I cannot simply watch one, I follow my previous review with it’s sequel.  I compulsively feel the need to watch Back to the Future at least once per year and, once I have watched the first movie, I cannot keep myself from watching the entire series.  This movie took a pretty big hit critically, jumping down on Rotten Tomatoes from the 97% of Back to the Future to 64% for Part 2.  Have the mighty fallen?  We shall see in my review of Back to the Future Part 2, again written by Bob Gale, again directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring mostly the same cast of Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson, Lea Thompson, Elisabeth Shue, Joe Flaherty, Jeffrey Weissman, James Tolkan, Flea, Billy Zane, Jason Scott Lee, Darlene Vogel, Elijah Wood, and footage of Crispin Glover.

At the end of the first movie, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is reunited with his girlfriend, Jennifer (Elisabeth Shue), just in time to have their party crashed by Doctor Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), having just returned from the future.  The Doc throws Marty and Jennifer into the time-travelling DeLorean, telling them that they have to go Back to the Future to do something about their kids.  The worry, of course, is that Marty and Jennifer’s kids have turned into assholes, but it’s much worse than that.  They travel from October 26th, 1985 to October 21st, 2015.  Jennifer starts asking too many questions, forcing the Doc to knock her out, but he’s nicer than me so he uses a sleep-inducing device instead of the brick I would’ve chosen.  Doc explains to Marty that the grandson of Marty’s nemesis, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), a cybernetically-enhanced bully named Griff, gets Marty’s son involved in something that gets Marty Jr. imprisoned for 15 years, which leads to Marlene, Marty’s daughter, trying to break Marty Jr. out of jail, getting her incarcerated.  Marty must pose as his son and say no to Griff, but Marty gets goaded into a fight because Griff calls him a chicken.  Thankfully, Marty uses a hovering skateboard to run away from Griff, causing them to smash into City Hall, getting them arrested and saving Marty Jr.  Marty finds a book called Gray’s Sports Almanac in an antique store and decides he should buy it and use it to make a few bucks.  Doc is not pleased about this, but gets distracted when they see that Jennifer, who they left in an alley, has been found by the police and is getting transported back to the house where she and Marty live in 2015.  Doc and Marty need to go save her because she might see her future self and there’s no telling what that could cause.  They head off to save her, throwing away the almanac as they leave, but it’s picked up by the much older Biff.  As Doc goes to save Jennifer and Marty wanders off, Biff gets into the DeLorean and drives off, reappearing shortly after in a great deal of pain.  Doc gets Jennifer and the three head back to 1985, but things are different now.  Somehow, Biff is now rich and powerful and has turned Hill Valley to haven for gambling and other bad behaviors.  Even worse than that, George McFly (sometimes Jeffrey Weissman and sometimes footage of Crispin Glover) was murdered, Lorraine McFly (Lea Thompson) is now married to Biff, and the Doc Brown of this time was committed to a mental institute.  Marty and the Doc desperately need to figure out what’s gone wrong and fix it, or be doomed to this version of 1985.

I cannot figure out how this movie gets rated lower than the first one.  At least not drastically lower as it has been rated.  I love this movie almost as much as I love the original.  It’s still a fantastic story, it still has lots of action and comedy, but not as much focus on romance for this one, and I could think of a couple of minor logic loopholes.  I also like that this movie gets a lot darker than the previous movie, mainly when we get back to 1985, find out that not only is Lorraine married to the McFly family nemesis, but that George was murdered by Biff.  I liked this dark turn for the series.  It gets us more involved in the story.  I also like how their return to 1955 lets them use the same footage from the first movie, but also shows us different angles of those scenes (like when Marty was playing guitar on stage) and scenes that we never saw in the first movie (like Biff harassing Lorraine after she picked up her dress from the store).  Of course, I thought about a logic loophole that was originally pointed out in the movie itself.  When they go back to 1985, Doc explains that they can’t go into the future to stop Biff from taking the DeLorean because they would be going into the future of this version of 1985.  But if that was the case, once Biff had given the almanac to the younger version of himself then it would have altered the timeline and he’d have been unable to go back to the version of 2015 that Doc and Marty were in.  In the movie’s defense, I have seen the movie many many times and didn’t think about that until this very viewing, so apparently who cares?  Plus, the concept of not being able to go the the proper 2015 from that timeline makes sense and the movie would’ve stopped right there with my idea included.  Another thing I thought about for this one was that they could’ve completely dodged the bullet of having to save Jennifer if Marty had just gone up to the police, let them identify him as her husband, had them make a comment about how young he looks for his age too, and they would’ve left Jennifer with him.  They seemed to forget to explain why Biff was in such pain when he got back from 1955.  He basically died by a dumpster and never really told us why.  I think I remember seeing something about it from deleted scenes, but it was a pretty big oversight on their part.  They do the thing about history repeating itself a couple more times here.  The biggest one was the skateboard chase from the first movie turning into a spectacular hoverboard chase.  The makeup effects are still very good at aging their cast in this movie, except for the ones on Elisabeth Shue for some reason.  I didn’t find her makeup convincing.

Because this movie goes into the future, it creates a danger that I’ve discussed in other movies set in the future.  You sometimes set loftier goals for the future than we can accomplish.  We still have three years from the time of writing this review, but there’s a lot to do in that time.  Power laces is something we can put on our Nike’s right now, but I don’t know who would want to spend the money it would probably cost to purchase those shoes.  Flying cars and hoverboards is a bit loftier in the goal department, and I’m not sure we’ll be ready as a culture technologically or as drivers.  Most people are bad enough drivers on the ground, I can’t imagine putting them in the sky.  I’m sure we can get rid of doorknobs right now, but I don’t know if I feel like it’s necessary to push my thumb to doors to save myself the trouble of turning a knob.  The biggest and most impossible thing is up to Steven Spielberg.  He’s got 15 more Jaws movies to make in only three years!  And you know if he rushes them out that quickly, they will mostly be much worse than even Jaws 4 was.

The performances don’t really change in quality here.  They’re still amazing.  Michael J. Fox is still fantastic, still does comedy and action superbly, but also has a little more emotional scenes to work with, but he still pulls it off fantastically.  Christopher Lloyd is still fantastic, and still does a mostly comedic performance in this movie.  Claudia Wells looked a lot different in this movie for some reason.  Oh wait, she was replaced.  Wells couldn’t do the sequels because her mother was diagnosed with cancer, so she was replaced with Elisabeth Shue.  Shue did a great job as Jennifer, but I still missed Wells.  Fox had a certain chemistry with Wells that he didn’t really have as much of with Shue, and I missed it.  But Shue still did great.  Speaking of replacements, Crispin Glover apparently asked for too much money (more, I heard, than Fox and Lloyd got paid) and was not in these movies.  I liked Glover in the first movie, but it’d be ridiculous to assume he’d get THAT much money.  And it actually worked out to be a better story that George McFly was murdered.  Also, he didn’t have anything resembling a big part in the movie, but most people don’t know that Elijah Wood pops up in this movie.  He’s one of the little kids playing the video game in the diner in 2015.  I just like to point that out, especially with how big he is today.  Jason Scott Lee (from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story), Billy Zane, and Flea also have small parts in this movie.

I don’t know the reasons that some people bag on this movie as being so drastically worse than the original.  The original movie was amazing, and this one was too.  It’s not so bad to be slightly less amazing than something that’s so great.  I love the story and especially how it got dark in the middle, there’s still a great deal of comedy and action, and the performances have remained fantastic.  There were a couple of minor logic problems, but nothing that kept me from enjoying it.  This movie also gave me a quote that I still like using today, though it’s not an easy one to find an appropriate place for.  But I like to yell “MACFRY!!” like Marty’s boss, Fujitsu-san, did, usually out of nowhere and for no reason whatsoever.  But I like saying it.  Either way, you have to watch the entire series.  Maybe slightly worse than the original, but still amazing.  Back to the Future Part 2 gets “He’s got a few short circuits in his bionic implants” out of “Shark still looks fake.”

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Back to the Future (1985)

You Tryin’ to Tell Me that You Built a Time Machine … Out of a DeLorean?

I cannot go very long in my life without watching today’s movie, and subsequently it’s two sequels. Though the first one came out in 1985, they still hold up as some of my favorite movies – and possibly my favorite trilogy – of all time. I know that sort of spoils the review, but I don’t care. I cannot even act like it’s a possibility that I don’t like these movies. And so, without further ado, let’s get into my review of Back to the Future, written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson, Claudia Wells, Wendie Jo Sperber, Marc McClure, James Tolkan, and Billy Zane.

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a regular high school slacker. Before school one day, he goes to the house of his friend, scientist Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), to blow up his giant speaker. He gets a call from the Doc as he’s leaving, asking him to come to the Twin Pines Mall the next morning. He meets up with his girlfriend, Jennifer (Claudia Wells), with whom he talks about their plans for the weekend, but upon returning home, Marty’s plans are dashed by the fact that the car he was to pick up Jennifer in has been totaled. He goes inside to find the culprit, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), bullying Marty’s father, George (Crispin Glover), into taking responsibility for the accident. Marty’s mother, Lorraine (Lea Thompson), comes home later and bores the family with the story of how she met their father when her father hit him with a car, and how later they fell in love when they kissed at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. Marty goes to see Doc at the intended time and finds out that the Doc has created a time machine out of a DeLorean, one that is powered by Plutonium that the Doc stole from Libyan terrorists. Their meeting is interrupted by the Libyans, who shoot down the Doc. Marty panics and jumps into the DeLorean. In the ensuing chase, Marty speeds up to 88 mph and is transported back in time from October 26th, 1985 to November 5th, 1955. While here, he runs into a younger version of his father trying to spy on an undressing girl, when George falls into the street and into the path of a car. Marty shoves George out of danger, but gets hit by the car himself. He wakes up in the room of Lorraine Baines, later Lorraine Baines McFly and Marty’s mother. Marty leaves and finds the Doc from 1955 and convinces him to help get him back to 1985, but there’s a problem: Marty inadvertently kept his parents from meeting, which would put a damper on his plans of being born one day. Marty has to set things straight while still figuring out how he can get himself back to the future.

This is a fantastic movie as well as being the fantastic beginning to a fantastic trilogy. I think I love everything about this movie. The story is great and well thought out, jumping back and forth in time with scarcely a logic loophole to be found. It pulls off some great, suspenseful action scenes, it lands a great love story, and throws in a great deal of comedy as well. There are a good amount of action scenes in the movie, from the chase with the Libyan terrorists to the race against the clock to get George and Lorraine together and get Marty back in time to catch a lightning bolt, but to me, the best action scene is when George wins Lorraine on his own. Marty was trying to engineer a fight between himself and George to get George to impress Lorraine, but when Biff intervened, George had to decide between fight or flight to basically keep Lorraine from being raped by Biff, and he made the right choice on his own, ending with him knocking Biff out with one punch and getting the girl. That scene still gives me goosebumps, even though I know the movie so well at this point I could practically recite it. I think what keeps me interested in this movie is looking for the hidden things that they throw into the movie to show the results of time travel. The biggest and most obvious one was that the name of the Twin Pines Mall was changed to Lone Pine Mall, because Marty drove over one of the pines when escaping from the farmer’s house in 1955. In the part with the Libyans, the Doc uses a six-shooter because, as he says in Part 2, he’s “always wanted to visit the old west.” Granted, they didn’t know there would be a sequel or a part three when making this movie, but they used it. The same could be said for when the Doc says that he can go forward in time and find out who wins the next couple of World Series games, which leads to the Sports Almanac in Part 2. There’s also a little Harold Lloyd figure hanging from a clock in the beginning of the movie, foreshadowing the Doc hanging from the clock in the end of the movie. I love finding these things in movies, and a movie with time travel in it opens it up for this stuff. Another thing they do a lot in these movies is showing how history repeats itself. The conversation between grown up Biff and George is exactly like the conversation between younger Biff and George, exchanging reports for work with homework. Marty and George even sit with their hand on their head in the same way when in the diner, helping us jump on board to them being related. You see a lot more of this stuff in Part 2 though. If I was going to point out something I thought was off about the story of this movie, it would be that it’s never explained how a high school kid is such good friends with a 60 something year old scientist. I thought of an explanation though: that the Doc became friends with the McFly family because he knew Marty would be around one day, and he had already been introduced to Lorraine so he had an in.

Graphically, the movie holds up almost entirely. There was one part in the movie where the DeLorean disappears, leaving those awesome fire trails going beneath Marty and the Doc, where you can see that the lighting on Lloyd and Fox doesn’t really match up and they were probably green-screened in, but who gives a shit? This movie is amazing. And the DeLorean itself is awesome. I know for a fact that if I was of driving age when this movie came out, I would definitely have tried to get a DeLorean. I don’t know how sales in DeLorean’s didn’t jump up drastically because of this movie, which I assume they didn’t because that company isn’t still around. I also read online that the creator of the DeLorean, John DeLorean (which is his real name even though it sounds like I made it up and didn’t try very hard to do so), sent Zemeckis a fan letter because of this movie. And why wouldn’t he? They made this car one of the most famous vehicles in history! All of the other graphics hold up nicely too. The recreation of Hill Valley in both 1985 and 1955 was fantastic. Everything looked similar and seemed to have a story to tell about how it had changed over the years. 1955 really captured what I think 1955 would be like. In fact, this movie probably stands as the example in my brain of what 1955 was like since I have no other information about it. I also think the music still holds up from this movie. Yeah, the Huey Lewis music is basically two songs used in different ways throughout the movie, and they’re clearly 80’s music, but I still like ’em. They use Mr. Sandman and Earth Angel once they get to 1955, which set the mood for the 50’s well. Then you throw in some awesome Johnny B. Goode at the end, but kind of make me like the song less because I had no idea that Chuck Berry just stole that song from Marty. Bad form, Chuck! The best stuff in the movie is the orchestral themes used. A lot of the orchestral stuff is two or three songs reused, but they change them up to fit the emotion of the scene. Plus, they’re amazing.

The performances in this movie are sublime. I will pretty much love every single person associated with this movie forever. Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd especially. Michael J. Fox was so good in this movie. He played it for comedy most of the time and pulled it off fantastically. He had just as many action scenes, which he pulled off equally as well. He didn’t have too many emotional things to pull of here, though. He did a fantastic job of being very uncomfortable with what was going on when his mom was coming on to him. This performance makes it acceptable that a mother is coming on to her son because she’s not aware of it and he’s very uncomfortable with it. Christopher Lloyd was also fantastic as the eccentric Doc Brown. He was mostly played for comedy and exposition, but he was a super interesting character with fantastic personality. My favorite part about him was all the funny entrances he got to do, like when we first see him in 1955 with that giant device on his head. His wide-eyed expression was amazing. I’m pretty sure I fell in love with Lea Thompson because of this movie, and that still goes on today. She was so hot in 1955. I’d take a crack at that, even today and even though she’s 20 years my senior. Crispin Glover was as strange a character as he usually does, but still oddly appealing somehow. The best part about Thompson and Glover was how drastically their performances changed for the same character in different eras. Original 1985 versions of them are much older and downtrodden, somewhat beaten up by life but still sticking together, back in the past they were youthful, and Thompson was very cute and awkward, though not nearly as much as Glover, and in new 1985 at the end, they were older, but much more happy with each other and life. Thomas F. Wilson plays such a good antagonist in these movies that I would have a nagging hatred of him in the back of my mind, no matter how nice he might be in real life. He towers over almost everyone in the movie, has a semi-constant sneer on his face, but is also really stupid and cannot deliver cliche’s correctly. All of these people are amazing.

The reviews for the next few days were not intended to surprise anybody. I just need to watch these movies at least once per year, but I have never gotten bored of them, and I cannot foresee that ever happening. These movies are amazing. Great story, fantastic performances, comedy, action and romance all rolled into one story, and the graphics and music to make them work even better. I don’t know how you could have gone through your life without having seen these movies yet, but if you somehow have, you need to watch them right now. If you’ve already seen them, you should watch them again and remember how awesome they are. Back to the Future gets “My density has brought me to you” out of “History is gonna change.”

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What Lies Beneath (2000)

You Stole the Dead Woman’s Shoe?

With October Horror-thon coming to a close, I picked an odd movie that I now feel barely qualifies as a horror movie.  It has a ghost thing going on, but not a super strong one.  But it was on the top of the pile I pulled of horror movies and so it’s happening.  The movie is called What Lies Beneath, directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Harrison Ford, Amber Valletta, Miranda Otto, James Remar, Diana Scarwid, and Joe Morton.

Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her husband Dr. Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford) send their daughter off to college, leaving Claire all mopey about it.  One night, the Spencers hear their new neighbors, Mary (Miranda Otto) and Warren (James Remar) Feur, have a big argument.  Claire decides to get all Rear Window about it and spies on them through binoculars.  One night, she sees Warren dragging a big bag into the trunk of his car.  Being that there is no other, logical explanation, Claire decides Warren killed Mary.  Claire starts having some strange occurrences that lead her to believe that Mary is haunting her.  Claire has a seance to contact Mary and the Ouija board starts to move from M to F.  Obviously, this means it’s Mary.  She goes to her husband at work and gets all worked up when he tries to tell her that she’s overreacting.  To show just how much she’s not overreacting, she accuses Warren to his face until Mary joins in on the conversation.  Claire temporarily lets the situation go until she finds a newspaper clipping about a missing girl named Madison Elizabeth Frank.  She performs a ritual with a braid of Madison’s hair she steals from Madison’s mother that causes Claire to be temporarily possessed by Madison.  Claire must find out what the connection is between Madison and her family and why she’s been haunting them.

As I said in the prologue, I wasn’t really feeling like this movie would qualify as a horror movie through the first part of it, but it kind of brought it home in the end.  It did pull off some good startles and some suspense as well, but without any gore or confirmed supernatural occurrences, I became worried that I would have to watch ANOTHER movie before going to bed because this one wouldn’t count towards the arbitrary rule I set on myself for doing all horror movies.  I thought that Pfeiffer was only imagining ghosts because she had been in a car accident that caused her to forget certain things she saw before the accident and the “ghost” thing was just the way her memories were returning, but thankfully, near the end of the movie, things were revealed that actually had ghosts so it justified it.

I do actually kind of dig this movie.  It pulls off the suspense it goes after for the most part.  I feel like part of my enjoyment might have been because it was Robert Zemeckis, who I will eternally love for Back to the Future, but I didn’t know it was him until I started writing the review.  The movie is a little slow to start and it does feel like the whole misdirection thing involving their neighbors was a waste of time, but it was still pretty entertaining, and that’s all I really require out of a movie when push comes to shove.  I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but since the ghost had nothing to do with the neighbors, that was probably 45 minutes of unnecessary stuff in the movie.  But it turns out in the end that the ghost’s problem isn’t even with Pfeiffer, so what the hell?  Why’re you haunting her when one could assume you have the power to go after the person you actually have the problem with just as easily?

The acting is pretty good.  Pfeiffer had to pull off two distinct performances at times in this movie.  When she was Claire her stress levels were slowly climbing to a boiling point as the movie progressed, took a bit of a lull in the lower half of the movie, and then popped right back up to where they were pretty quickly.  Then she also played the much more confident, pushy, and seductive ghost-possessed Claire and the performance really showed a range for Pfeiffer.  Not a range that I didn’t already know she had though.  She did the same kind of thing in Batman Returns, technically.  Selina Kyle starts off nerdy and timid until she gets thrown out of a window by Christopher Walken.  Then Catwoman comes in all sexy and sassy.  Same principle, less leather.  Harrison Ford had an interesting performance as well.  For the first 2/3 of the movie, he really doesn’t make much of an impression, but shows up in the last third.  He’s technically present for it, but it’s more about Pfeiffer at that point.  When it’s his turn and the back story is being revealed, you kind of feel bad for him for a while.  He messed up, but he seems to deeply regret it.  And by the very end of the movie, you don’t feel as bad for him anymore.  There were very few other people in this movie so I don’t really know what else to say about their performances.  It was mainly Catwoman and Han Solo.

The movie only barely manages to qualify as a horror movie, so I would avoid going into it expecting one.  Instead, go in expecting a suspense movie with a bit of a slow start but some solid performances and you should say this movie is thoroughly okay.  And that’s what I have done.  I have decided it is okay, but thoroughly so!  And I will give this movie “Claire’s hearing things” out of “Forbidden fruit.”

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