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Absolutely Fantastic

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I expected a lot more out of this movie. For one thing it's John Carpenter. He obviously didn't write the script for this film but even though it was weak and trite I still felt that he could have done something more with it. For one thing the special effects are almost all CGI and bad CGI at that. Lovers of The Thing will be highly disappointed. The story is a simple romantic one at it's core and while I'm not completely adverse to that I can't say that this one ever really drew me in enough to care for what happened between the characters. The beginning especially felt really cobbled together, the story really lacks cohesiveness and it goes beyond believability. Not because it features aliens but that the things that happen don't even make sense within the sphere of plausible credibility within the story. The atmosphere is non-existent, the dialogue is weak and boring. It has some nice cinematography, as always with Carpenter, but it's not enough to save the movie.

A morality tale with a definite Spielbergian touch. Jeff Bridges is an alien who assume the form of Karen Allen's late husband. Bridges has been brought down by accident from his UFO and must be picked up by the mother ship at Crater National Monument in Arizona. The problem is that he's crash landed somewhere in Wisconsin, so he must more or less kidnap Allen and have her accompany him to the rendezvous site, with the police and the U. S. Army hot on their trail.As a kind of extraterrestrial anthropologist, Bridges must learn the speech and customs of his host country little by little. This leads to the expected but amusing sequences of his learning how to eat in a diner, how to give someone the finger, how to punch back when he's hit, and so forth.Of course Bridges comes to acquire all "the feelings" of her late husband's body, the one he's appropriated, and -- well, I guess I don't have to draw you a picture of what happens after that.It's a feel-good movie with lots of smiles and warmth. The holes in the plot may be the size of the crater in Crater National Monument but who cares? Majestic organ chords strike resonant notes in the viewers' cockles. The clutter of junk at the bottom of the crater -- left a hundred years ago by diggers who thought the meteor might be made of precious metal -- is carefully avoided in all the shots so as to promote the feeling of a pristine natural feature. He's as innocent as a new-born babe which, in a cultural sense, he is. But for no particular reason, the agents of social control are in hot pursuit. They seem to hate him. They're led by a major suit, the reliable and familiar Richard Jaekel, whose character's name is George Fox. I don't know if it was intentional -- probably not -- but in the old military phonetic alphabet "George" stood for the letter "G", and "Fox" stood for "F". "George Fox" was an offhand and polite way of telling someone to get lost.

When you hear "John Carpenter's 'Starman'." it would be natural to assume that said Starman is an alien from outer space who comes to Earth and eventually eats Wilford Brimley, but in fact this is Carpenter showing us a much different side of himself. His Spielberg side. 'Starman' is certainly Spielbergian, feeling equal parts 'E.T.' and 'Close Encounters', but Carpenter never lets it stray into mimicry. The script isn't quite as sentimental as early Spielberg, but it also lacks Carpenter's trademark cynicism. Instead it feels like a more mature, adult take on the themes explored in 'E.T.'.While skillfully directed and featuring a (mostly) solid script, the bulk of the credit for the movie's success goes to Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen. Bridges' performance at first seems too affected, but as the movie progresses you understand what he was doing and you can clearly see the arc for his character's growth as he becomes more comfortable with his body and begins to learn about being human. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, and it's easy to see why. But the real star here is Allen. Perhaps best known as Marion from 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', she's the heart and soul of the story, grounding all of the fantastical elements and keeping the focus on the humanity of it.I'd never seen 'Starman', and truthfully had little interest until my friend and I chose the short-lived 'Starman' TV series as the next subject for our blog. And that's what I love so much about going back and watching films like this. You think you know them, but you don't, and that discovery can be incredibly rewarding, as it was here.

An alien comes to Earth (Wisconsin, specifically) and takes the form of a widow's late husband. The "starman" enlists her help getting him to Arizona to rendezvous with an alien spacecraft. Along the way she begins to develop feelings for him. Meanwhile the government, aware that an alien has arrived on Earth, is anxious to find and capture it.One of director John Carpenter's most mainstream efforts but that doesn't mean it's a bad one. It's a movie that obviously owes a lot to E.T. The basic formula of the two films is very similar. Jeff Bridges is great in the lead role. He was nominated for an Oscar for this. The only time a Carpenter movie got an Oscar nod. Karen Allen is also quite good. She and Bridges have a nice chemistry together. The often underrated Charles Martin Smith is another plus. It's an enjoyable film but probably more so for your average moviegoer than critical sci-fi buffs. I like it a lot and don't feel like it gets enough love from other Carpenter fans. Maybe it's lacking many of those Carpenter touches we love but it's still a good movie. This later inspired a short-lived TV series but the less said about that, the better.