jla@usl.UUCP (Joseph L Arceneaux) (12/27/84)
Since I have not noticed any comments on it, let me put in my vote for John Carpenter's 'Starman,' which has been showing for a week or two now. Actu- ally I'm quite suprised that no one has yet mentioned this film... Although I grant that he has his detractors, Carpenter continues to impress me with his films. My feeling is that he takes plots which may be rather ludicrous and does simply wonderful things with them. (E.g., 'Christine') If I had to summarize the film in one sentence, I would call 'Starman' a romance a la Carl Sagan. As the basic plot is given in the previews, I will make only the following comments. I saw the film with a friend who is heavily into Sci-Fi and he thought it was overdramatic, believing that our government would never go gunning after an extra-terrestrial (sp.?) visitor. Now, I agree that after the Korean airline incident it seems highly unlikely that we would so quickly shoot down a UFO. Other than that however, I think it completely plausible that the 'authorities' would try to 'capture' such a visitor. There may have been a couple of other questionable things, but basically this film just swept me away. I thought that Jeff Bridges did a wonderful job as the visitor, and Karen Allen's performance was very strong too. Un- fortunately I missed Roger (Ebert) and Gene's review; could someone please mention their comment? Other comments are invited. -- Joseph Arceneaux (ut-sally!usl!jla)