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Trust Weighted
Perfect
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77Trust Points
Wick's Review
Summary - Perfect 5.0
Gripping from start to finish, though the end is never in doubt.
Stands as a testament to American heroism, ingenuity and bravura movie-making.
Tom Hanks – in one of his iconic performances – heads a stellar cast atop their games.
The screenplay introduced not one, but two catchphrases into the popular lexicon.
Acting - Perfect 5.0
Where to start? Oh, yeah, with Tom Hanks, whose Jim Lovell is one of his great American everymen, by turns charming, brave and idealistic.
Kathleen Quinlan, as his better half, delivers a breakthrough performance for herself and for the gender balancing of heroic movies of this ilk.
The All-Star cast includes the estimable Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon and Gary Sinese, as Hanks’ three fellow astronauts, and the great Ed Harris as mission director Gene Kranz. It is a measure of the heft of their performances and the import of this movie that Apollo 13 looms large in the filmographies of these A List actors.
Male Stars - Perfect 5.0
Female Stars - Perfect 5.0
Female Costars - Perfect 5.0
Male Costars - Perfect 5.0
Film - Perfect 5.0
A well balanced story, iconic dialogue, evocative music, and benchmark visuals make this a perfect film. Story balance? The family dynamics are nearly as interesting as the main storyline.
Direction - Perfect 5.0
Ron Howard hit the critical and commercial jackpot with *Apollo 13*, perhaps his best movie as a director. He makes short work of the underlying story's technical complexity, nerdish teamwork, and lack of a true villain, delivering an easy-to-follow picture that succeeds as family drama, technical whodunit, and inspiring organizational case study.Dialogue - Perfect 5.0
"Houston, we have a problem" and "Failure is not an option" have become two of the most iconic catchphrases in our culture. Few screenplays are as fecund - Casablanca comes to mind. Even more, the dialogue creates a steady stream of heart-in-your-throat moments, such as when the Lovell's littlest boy - upon being informed that something went wrong with Daddy's spacecraft - plaintively asks Mom: "Was it the door?"Music - Perfect 5.0
_Spirit in the Sky_ indeed!Visuals - Perfect 5.0
From the huge scale of the Saturn V to the intimate spaces of the Command Module and LEM, the movie doesn't flaunt its FX, just delivers an amazing verisimilitude.Edge - Tame 1.4
Sex Titillating 1.7
Violence Gentle 1.0
Rudeness Salty 1.6
Reality - Natural 1.0
That this movie appears to be completely natural is a testament to its greatness and to the inherent drama of the true story it relates.
Circumstantial - Glib 1.1
I believe some of the intra-crew conflict was punched up for dramatic purposes.Biological - Natural 1.0
Physical - Natural 1.0
1 Comment
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Wick Dec 28, 2011 8:40AM
Regarding Randy’s Review
Excellent appreciation of an all-time great movie Randy. If I was a science teacher, I’d have kids do reports on it.