Forrest Gump

It's quickly becoming apparent to me that all my movie reviews can begin to sound the same. I usually say this is a great film, otherwise I would not be reviewing it.

So from now on, I am going to try to hone in on just one or two aspects of the movie that struck me, to try and make this blog a little more interesting.

Forrest Gump is a story of American History in the mid to late 20th Century, as told through the life experiences of a mentally challenged young man from Alabama.

One of the many things that made this a great movie was Tom Hanks's voice and delivery as the title character.

Hanks had a certain way of adding a syllable at the end of a lot of his sentences and turning the tone upward, almost as if he was asking a question.

For example, when introducing himself, he often says, "My name is Forrest, Forrest Gu-ump."

The rest of his lines are delivered with a flatness that creates an overall impression of naivete, and of a challenged young man just trying to do the best he can and get along in the world.

Almost from the very beginning, Gump captures the interest and affection of the audience as he begins to tell the story of his life to random strangers who sit down beside him at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia.

Hanks says that he got the idea for the voice of his character by basically mimicking the actor chosen to play Forrest Gump as a young boy (Michael Conner Humphreys). Humphreys is from Mississippi, and the way he spoke in the film is the way he talked in real life.

Hanks's facial expressions as Forrest Gump fit the voice, too. Very often he just has a plain, blank stare. At other times, as when he is running from bullies across a football field or when he is in a fire fight in Vietnam, the only thing betraying his emotions are eyes open wide in fear.

One of my favorite moments in the movie is his look of determination as he runs down a stadium tunnel at an Alabama football game. He was supposed to stop after he scored the touchdown, but he keeps on going. The camera shows him in slow motion in his football uniform, a look of stress on his face as he narrates, "Now, maybe it's just me, but college was very confusing times."

Forrest Gump is a story of my parents' generation. Chronologically, the movie ends in the early 1980s.

There is a young woman who listens to Forrest talk about his life for a while on the bus stop bench. She has a child with her.

Referring to the assassination attempt on Governor Wallace, she says, "I remember that, when Wallace got shot. I was in college."

My own mother was in college when Wallace was shot, and I would have been about the same age as the woman's child in that scene, at that time. One of the last historical events depicted in the movie is when President Reagan was shot, and that is my first public memory.

My parents both enjoy the movie except for when it switches to Vietnam, which does not bring back pleasant thoughts for them.

Forrest Gump is a great story for many other reasons. I would put it in my list of top ten best films ever made.

The Fugitive

Harrison Ford, when asked in an interview with Larry King what movie over the course of his career was actually better than he had hoped, he named The Fugitive.

For an idea of how The Fugitive could have turned out, one should watch the movie, The Package. It has the same director (Andrew Davis) and a large number of the same actors that appeared in The Fugitive.

The Package is not a bad movie. The Fugitive, however, is one of the better movies ever made.

Based on a TV series from the 1960s, it is the story of how a Chicago doctor, Richard Kimball (Harrison Ford) is wrongly accused and convicted of murdering his wife. He manages to escape from custody, and tries to find the real murderer of his wife, a one-armed man. Throughout his efforts, Kimball is relentlessly pursued by U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones). Jones won an academy award for his portrayal of this character.

While the makers of the movie had the basic idea for the story, Ford said that a lot of the script was improvised as they went along.

There is a scene toward the beginning of the movie where Dr. Kimball has gotten the drop on Deputy Gerard and is holding Gerard at gun point. In the original script, there was quite a bit of dialogue between the two men. Once they actually were shooting the scene, though, they gradually cut the dialogue down to Kimball yelling, "I didn't kill my wife!"

Gerard answers, "I don't care!"

In two sentences, this summed up the essence and the driving force of the tension in the movie.

The writing is concise, and almost every scene pushes the story forward and keeps the pace and suspense of the movie rolling. One really identifies with Kimball and all of the obstacles he has to overcome.

One also is fascinated by the (at times humorous) tenacity of Deputy Gerard and his unwillingness to let up one bit until he has his man, regardless of whether that man is guilty of the crime or not.

The film was released in 1993. The setting for most of the story is Chicago. The first part of the movie, however, was filmed in the mountains of North Carolina near my alma mater, Western Carolina University. The film department from the school helped out quite a bit with the movie, and one of my old professors, Al Wiggins, can be seen briefly in a role as a reporter.

In talking with Mr. Wiggins, who has acted in numerous films and TV shows, he originally had a speaking part. When asked by the film producers how much money he would like for this role, his response was "Talk to my agent."

He never heard back from them, and his lines were cut from the final version of the movie.

The filmmakers staged a massive train wreck in the town of Dillsboro, NC. At the time, it was one of the more elaborate stunts in film history. They had a real train collide at high speed with a bus and then de-rail.

When filming was done, they left some of the wreckage where it was.

I started school at Western in 1995, and one night I went with a group of college friends to check it out. As much as I remember the smashed up bus, I also remember a girl named Dorothy who went with us. She was cute and had just broken up with her boyfriend. She seemed sort of interested in me, but unfortunately, I really did not know how to handle that situation and she was soon gone.

The Fugitive was nominated for movie of the year. As I said, Tommy Lee Jones did a wonderful job as the unwaivering, dogged Deputy Gerard, and I believe this role opened many more doors for him even up to the present. His performance alone makes the movie worth watching.

The Fugitive is well directed, with solid dialogue and characters. It is a great drama/adventure story.

Nathan Marshburn

Top Gun

Rock 'n' Roll in the skies. That is what the film Top Gun is.

Top Gun is my favorite high energy, feel good movie.

From the opening, which captures in slow motion and stark silhouettes the deck of an aircraft carrier in the early dawn mist, set to Kenny Loggins's "Danger Zone", to the final scene where two F-14 Tomcat fighter jets perform a barrel roll against a vivid orange sunset sky, set to the music of the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost that Loving Feeling," Top Gun is about an aesthetically pleasing film that you will find for any young red blooded American male.

This is the movie that made Tom Cruise a star, and he in turn is a main reason for the success of the movie. With the call sign of "Maverick," Cruise's character is a brash, cocky but fun loving and likeable fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy. His navigator, "Goose," played by Anthony Edwards, is an excellent foil to Maverick. The movie is the story of their adventures at a flight school designed to teach the best fighter pilots in the Navy how to become even better. The pilots call the school "Top Gun."

If there must be an antagonist in this movie, it is "Ice Man," played nicely by Val Kilmer. Ice Man and Maverick compete against each other for the Top Gun trophy, or best fighter pilot in the Navy.

The movie is the finest one that I have seen from director Tony Scott. Scott was selected to be the director of the movie because he was the only person the producers could find who had filmed jets (He had previously filmed a car commercial where a Saab automobile races a jet).

Scott does a magnificent job of setting the jets against beautiful colors- the brilliant blue skies and white clouds, the brown desert mountains, the dark ocean, and of course incredible shots that come with the planes flying at sunrise or sunset.

The way that he captures the flight of the planes in the film is a wonderful thing to watch as well. These are real jets, and obviously not computer generated maneuvers using computer graphic planes. This element is another reason for the movie's success. Though computer graphics were not really around in 1986 when this movie came out, if one tried to make Top Gun with simulated F-14s, it just would not work.

Tony Scott fills the film with beautiful people as well. Kelly McGillis glows on the screen as Top Gun civilian instructor, "Charlie," and Maverick's love interest.

The supporting cast do a great job, with Tom Skerritt effectively playing the head of the Top Gun school who teaches Maverick a few lessons about flying and about life. James Tolkan is entertaining as captain of the aircraft carrier that takes Maverick into combat.

Top Gun is one of the few films about which I really have nothing negative to say. It goes beyond what Scott and the writers set out to do- give the audience a tremendous thrill ride with enough realism to make the movie seem true to what being a pilot in the Navy must actually be like. It is no wonder that enlistments in the Navy skyrocketed after this movie came out, and recruiters begin setting up stands outside theaters where the film was playing. Tony Scott joked about how many poor guys ended up mopping the decks deep inside a ship because they signed up for the Navy, thinking they would live the Top Gun adventure.

To change the subject to something quite sad, it hit me hard earlier this year when I learned that Tony Scott had committed suicide. I would very much like to know why he did it. There is no judgment from me, as I've seen enough now of this world to understand that life can bring so much pain as to make death appear as a sweet release. But I would like to have a conversation with Scott, just to understand why he chose to jump off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in California back in August. It would help me to understand the human condition better to know why he did it, as he was a tremendous artist who had a good understanding of the human condition himself. No reason for his suicide is given from everything that I've been able to read.

I own the special edition DVD of Top Gun, and the commentary track is excellent. The actual pilots who flew the planes in the movie tell interesting stories, as does Tony Scott. I almost feel like I get to know the man as he relates various anecdotal tales about filming Top Gun- such as how he was fired and rehired three times during the filming of the movie (once for making Kelly McGillis look too "whorish" with high heeled shoes, dark panty hose and bright red lipstick).

At the end of his commentary track, he talks about how much Top Gun changed his life. Previously, he had made a film called The Hunger, which was a commercial failure and, in his own words, nearly got him blacklisted in Hollywood. After The Hunger, he said, the phone never rang for four years until he got Top Gun. After Top Gun, though, the phone never stopped ringing. He moved to L.A. permanently after Top Gun, he said, bought a Ferrari and a motorcycle, and lost his second marriage. "Anyhow," he closes, "I hope you guys enjoyed the movie, and thank you."

We'll Start with The Empire Strikes Back

The first movie that I ever saw in a theater was The Empire Strikes Back.

I was three years old. Though it may surprise some, I used to be able to remember quite a few things from the time that I was three. As I've gotten older, it's been disappointing and a bit disorienting to realize that memories from previous times in my life are beginning to fade.

About all that I can remember now from the theater experience in Wilmington, North Carolina is the light saber battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. As I was also a small child, I remember being carried into the theater by my dad.

The film itself is the best of the six that have been made in the Star Wars saga.

I try to talk about positive things in my blog entries. But Episodes One through Three, made during the late 1990s and early 2000s, are a step down from The Empire Strikes Back, which is Episode Five. George Lucas in Episodes One through Three for some reason tries to shrink the galaxy and form ridiculous connections with everything (Boba Fett, a minor character, is the mold for the creation of Storm Troopers, the dignified Yoda has cause to meet Chewbacca before the Wookie hooked up as a space pirate with Han Solo, C-3PO was built by hand by a young Darth Vader on the barren, desert planet of Tatooine- Lucas wrote himself into such a jam with that last one that the solution is to have C-3PO's memory wiped at the end of Episode III- an undeserved cheap cop-out in story telling for such an iconic character.)

The Empire Strikes Back, on the other hand, expands the story and characters into a more epic struggle between good and evil, and we get a real feeling of how grand and encompassing this adventure is.

The late Irvin Kershner was magnificent as the director. The scene where Imperial Walkers approach the Rebel Base on the ice planet of Hoth still gives me goosebumps sometimes, as a rebel soldier looks through his computerized binoculars and spots the gigantic walkers far out on the horizon, slowly moving toward them. Small bits of ice begin to fall on R2-D2 in the underground caves due to the Walkers steady, pounding march. R2-D2 gives an impressed and funny whistle.

The character development is outstanding. The banter between Han Solo and Princess Leia never ceases to amuse me, and fits true to the beginning of a romance. Perhaps the most delightfully funny scene in all of the Star Wars movies involves Han, Princess Leia, Luke, C-3PO and Chewbacca, when Leia kisses Luke to try and make Han jealous. The reactions of all in this scene, from C-3PO's stiff, robotic walk to get closer and study the kiss, to Chewbacca's muffled groan, to Han's nonchalant attempt to hide his jealousy with C-3PO making a polite excuse to follow him out of the room all fit with what we come to expect from these characters.

As I write this blog entry, it surprises me just how much I have to say about this movie. I think I really could continue a blog just on the Star Wars story. My goal is to write about other films as well, though. Blog entries should not be too long, either.

Before I close this entry, though, I will say that I am glad Disney has purchased all the rights to the Star Wars saga.

The story has been a part of my life. When I was child, I have fond memories of playing with Star Wars action figures. My cousin Duane, who is a little older than me, had the coolest Star Wars toys. He had an X-wing fighter that he ended up giving to me, and if I remember correctly, he also had a big Imperial Walker model. In true Star Wars buff form, Duane also corrected me that the proper pronunciation of Han Solo's first name is with a short "a" sound, the way George Lucas pronounces it, as opposed to the "Hahn" pronunciation used by Leia and Luke in the movie.

The original Star Wars movie came out the year I was born.

In the late 1990s when I was in college at Western Carolina University, the original three movies, Episodes Four through Six, were re-released in theater with Lucas's additions and updates to them. I enjoyed going to see them with my best friends from college, Scott and Heather, and my brother, Adam, who was in college with me.

Scott and Heather got married and have a child, now, and I still keep in touch with them in North Carolina.

The Disney purchase means that the stories will go on long after I am gone. While I am grateful for George Lucas, the creator of this, the best science fiction adventure story ever, I am also glad that creative control is now passing to other hands. The best writers, directors and actors in the world should be attracted to work with this material.

Different actors will now try their hand at playing in new stories as Han Solo in the decades to come, the same way that different actors have portrayed Bruce Wayne/Batman and Clark Kent/Superman.

I hope that Disney brings back the original three Star Wars movies the way they were before Lucas altered them in the 1990s.

Digital remastering is fine, but Lucas changed some fundamental things about the films that just don't fit with the feel of the original story- even though they were his creation. It is almost like there are two different George Lucases.

In The Empire Strikes Back (the original release), for example, Lando Calrissian is the leader of Cloud City. When I first began watching the Star Wars movies in the 80s, I took Cloud City to be a rogue outpost in hiding from the watchful eye of the Empire. It was a small space mining operation. And Lando himself, though now its responsible administrator, was not far removed from his roots as an outlaw smuggler with Han. Cloud City would have tough people in it like a frontier town in the old west.

Lucas completely changed the feel of Cloud City, though, by just adding too much stuff through computer graphics and extra scenes. In the remade version, Cloud City is big and bustling, with lots of buildings and traffic, and looks to be a place in some scenes designed for families and schools. It just does not work as well- at least not for me.

But let me stop. Again, I did not realize that I can go on and on writing about Star Wars.

If you have never seen the movies, I recommend watching the original Star Wars (1977) first. If this movie does not move and impress you, then the rest of the saga will not, either. Like I have said, though, I hold up Star Wars as the best science fiction adventure ever created, and The Empire Strikes Back as the best chapter in that adventure to date. I look forward to what Disney will do.

Nathan Marshburn