DIDA will be posted EVERY OTHER Saturday. Yes, I realize today is Monday. However, for some reason, the last two nights when I went to post this, blogger would not let me log into my account. I contacted them last night via email, and everything has been fixed (I needed to reset my password). But from now on, you can look forward to DIDA every other Saturday. That means the next edition will be posted Saturday May 3rd. As for theatrical releases, my schedule is clear until May, in which I have Indiana Jones to review right here on FilmArcade. I will also be doing some others for my blog, however, none of that is important now.
Just as a heads up, I will not be writing a little end-of-the-month update for April. There hasn’t been that much going on in the last month (or, at least not enough to make an article out of it), so we’ll see what May will bring. As always, we have had absolute excellence from our FilmArcade reviewers. And as it gets closer and closer to summer, and as the summer blockbusters begin to come out, I can only expect better and better.
Ok, so let’s get back to this edition of DIDA. I got two emails with suggestions for this week’s issue: One was from an old friend from a previous website I had written for, and the other, surprisingly was from a FilmArcade reader, who wanted me to review his favorite movie: “Forrest Gump”. In my friend’s email, he actually suggested about twenty movies, but one especially caught my eye: “Apollo 13”. It was really the only one that appealed to me (sorry, Ron!), and I knew that Tom Hanks played a role in it. So, I suddenly got an idea: to do a special, Tom Hanks edition. So, I put the two movies together for this special edition of DIDA: All About Tom Hanks.
So there you have it! This week, you get a special themed edition of DIDA. So enjoy, leave your comments if you so choose, and check back on May 3rd for the very next edition.
“Forrest Gump”
1994
**** out of ****
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn, Gary Sinise
Forrest Gump… an old one. However, my favorite movie of all time. And what’s more, one of the very few movies that can brag to its fellow movies that it is a part of my four stars club. For those of you that don’t know me, I am very critical with movies, and you will hardly ever see me give a film four stars. However, there are a select few that have made it into the four stars club, and this is one of them.
Tom Hanks takes on the tough role of playing a mentally challenged man in this clever parody of historical events, and Tom Hanks does an excellent job. Forrest Gump is a mentally challenged man whose character is cleverly written into major historical events throughout the 60s and 70s. Gump finds himself fighting in the Vietnam War, going to a Black Panther party, and investing in Apple computers to make millions. He creates the slogan, “**it happens”, and was responsible for the first yellow shirt with a smiley face on it. He also became a world-famous table tennis player, and founded his own shrimping company, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. All the while he is wishing that he could be with the woman he loves, ah, sweet Jenny. All throughout the movie as we hear of Forrest’s adventures, we also hear of how he constantly thinks of Jenny.
This is an amazing movie. I recommend it to all. This film is serious, funny, and touching all at the same time. As Forrest goes on telling us his life story, we cannot help but to laugh, or to feel sorry from him. And the way they put his character into actual historical events was probably the cleverest thing I have seen in a film (other than the ending to “The Sixth Sense”). Tom Hanks does an excellent job portraying the role of the mentally challenged man trying to carry out a normal life. However, Forrest Gump is far from normal. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way.
Superb. 4 out of 4.
Apollo 13”
1995
** and ½ out of ****
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon
“Apollo 13” is not a fictional film. It is based on a true story. On April 11th, 1970, the space shuttle Apollo 13 left Earth on a mission to land on the moon. With three men, James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise on board, there was an explosion that damaged their craft badly. Their oxygen tanks were the primary source of their trouble that April’s day: They had been damaged during the explosion, and now the three astronauts were running low on air. With their heat shield also banged up during the explosion, it would be difficult to reenter the atmosphere without incinerating in the fire.
Tom Hanks (Lovell) and his co-stars Paxton and Bacon (Haise and Swigert) do an excellent job of portraying the fear and emotion of what was actually going on in that shuttle that day. We get a great look at what the conditions were like in the shuttle, and how the astronauts were affected by the explosion. We feel emotion from the movie: As you watch, you are hoping along with everyone else that they can get this ship to work. This was the 1970s… The Russians were all over space by then, but the Americans were new to this stuff. This was a new thing to them, and they were all trying to figure out how to get those three men home.
A very suspenseful film. Excellent acting by all three of the stars along with great special effects and visual and you have a good movie. I did enjoy this. There were some things that didn’t appeal to me as much, such as the NASA crew. To me, (and I don’t know if this is bad acting or inaccurate portrayal) they seemed like a bunch of blubbering idiots! I find it very hard to believe that the same people that could get a 10,000 pound spacecraft into the air, out of Earth, and into space would be such morons when it came to this. Like I said before, NASA was new to this space stuff at the time; however, you would think they would be prepared for things to go wrong.
I liked this. This is also an emotional film, especially if you lived while this was happening for real… you look back and remember the news and the radio broadcasts. All in all, I think it’s a good film. Better than I a lot I have seen. 2 ½ out of 4.
Looks like that does it for this edition of Diggin’ Into the DVD Archive. I still am looking for films to do for the next edition. If you would like to suggest a movie for me to review here for DIDA, leave your comment on this post, or send me a quick email here at pittsburghboy36@hotmail.com and I would be glad to review it for you.
Well, that’s all folks. Check back on May 3rd for the next edition. I hope everyone has a wonderful next couple of weeks. Until next time, you know what I say: Happy reviewing!
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