Ultimate Decades Blogathon 2022 Finale: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) by Drew’s Movie Reviews

Welcome back to Ultimate Decades Blogathon 2022. After almost 2 weeks, we are winding down with our finale posts over today and tomorrow. The first of the two posts is from my awesome co-host Drew with his pick of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Drew is diving into Steven Spielberg’s films over the course of 2022 so you should definitely make sure to keep checking his blog out to make sure you don’t miss any of those reviews (and all his other reviews and weekly trailer round-ups).

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Synopsis 
When E.T., an alien visiting Earth, gets left behind when his ship quickly leaves, Elliott (Henry Thomas) helps him contact his home world.

Review 
When E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial released 40 years ago in 1982, no one, not even Steven Spielberg, predicted that it would be the phenomenon that it has become. After finally viewing it myself, I can see why this film has become a beloved classic. The movie tells a story about a boy befriending an alien while also examining the affect of divorce on children. It’s a very unique story combination that few filmmakers without Spielberg’s expertise could pull off. All of the relationships, Elliot’s relationship with E.T., Elliott’s relationship with his siblings, and Elliott’s and his siblings’ relationship with their mother, are all thoroughly developed and fleshed out. The score, created by Spielberg’s regular composer John Williams, excels at elevating the emotional undertones of every scene. One particular moment that stands out is the iconic moment when Elliott, with assistance from E.T., flies his bike in the air with the moon behind them. It’s already a fantastic scene but Williams’ score makes it even better. Even without the score, the script does a wonderful job of building emotion. By the end, you’ll no doubt have become attached to the characters, particularly the lovable E.T. himself, culminating in an emotional ending.

I thought E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was GOOD 🙂 Filled with heart and relatable characters, Steven Spielberg crafts an epic tale that everyone can enjoy and hold dear.

Trivia
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial holds the record for the longest ever theatrical run, staying in theaters for over one year after it’s release on June 11, 1982. (via IMDb)

Trailer 

Cast & Crew 
Steven Spielberg – Director
Melissa Mathison – Writer
John Williams – Composer

Henry Thomas – Elliott
Robert MacNaughton – Michael
Drew Barrymore – Gertie
Dee Wallace – Mary
Peter Coyote – Keys
KC Martel – Greg
Sean Frye – Steve
Tom Howell – Tyler
Pat Welsh – E.T. (voice)

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Check out the full list of blogathon entries for this year’s Ultimate Decades Blogathon HERE!

Remember to head over to Drew’s Movie Reviews tomorrow to check out my blogathon final pick!

Podcast: The Random Chat Show is Split on Bridge of Spies & Lots More Random Stuff!

This week’s The Random Chat Show, we’re talking about Bridge of Spies. With Academy Awards just a few weeks away, we decided to talk about an Oscars nominated film. Basically, we’re all have a different feeling about this one. Before that, we get into a little Tom Hanks movie trivia. We have some fun random news to share and Melissa has a DIY. Lots of awesomeness to share with everyone.

Hope you enjoy! 🙂

Happy Saturday! 🙂

Bridge of Spies (2015)

After a slight break with a whole backlog of posts needing to go up, I’m back on the 2015 reviews catch-up.  My new goal is to work on Oscars nominees that I can get to.  If I don’t get to everything, the Best Picture nominees have the first priority as long as I can get my hands on it. Its a bit limited but I’m trying.  I have two more lined up in the next two weeks before Oscars swings around!  First up is Bridge of Spies!

Let’s check it out! 🙂

Bridge of Spies (2015)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda, Joshua Harto, Amy Ryan, Austin Stowell, Will Rogers

During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers.-IMDB

I love a great thriller now and again. I’m even okay with espionage sort of films because they can be really intriguing.  The deal with Bridge of Spies which made me hesitant to start it was the fact that its about war and hints of politics. Call me ignorant but I’m not one to love the reality of it all and it hits me really hard.  Going into Bridge of Spies, the possibility of me liking is not quite as high as the general public.  For starters, my husband loved this movie. I’m more of a meh.  There is no doubt that Steven Spielberg does a good job with the directing and Tom Hanks pulls a great performance.  Those are expected factors.  The breakthrough role here is Mark Rylance who is on trial as a Russian spy and yet he is such a cool cat. If you watched it, whenever he says “Would it help?”, it just changed the whole dynamic of the scene.  He turns into a character that seems to have such depth without even saying a whole lot.

I took a few days to ponder over Bridge of Spies.  As you can see, I do praise this movie for being good.  The directing, the acting and even the story is good.  The script was well-written.  Except I can’t help but to hesitate in saying that I fully appreciated it, because I didn’t.  I know what is good but maybe its the length or the pacing or just the war and politics that didn’t grab me because I tried to watch this two times and I had to force myself to stay awake.  When I woke up, I was into the story right away but then I felt it a little tiring all over again.  The best part of the movie was the beginning and the ending.  Everything in the middle was good but maybe just not tight-knit and thrilling enough.  With a long movie, this one had to stuff in scenes that jumped from different places and honestly, I felt it was hard to follow since they never dwell long enough in one place to make it something I cared about.

 The best aspect for Bridge of Spies was that it did capture the devastation of the East and West Germany/Berlin Wall and the touchy time that everyone dwell in.  Even the urgency and danger of the situation was highly evident when Tom Hanks’ character was in negotiations.  Other than that, it did well to highlight the selfish political choices and the contrast of what using an untrained citizen would make in the broader spectrum.  Tom Hanks character Donovan was a good man and really was simple.  He didn’t want to be in this but he made choices he thought was right and he was a very perspective man who stepped out of his comfort zone literally to do just that. Tom Hanks embodied that character really well.

Overall, Bridge of Spies is a good movie.  The directing and the cast was great, especially when we talk about Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance.  The devastation and the desperation of the place and the situation was both captured really well also.  However, I can’t help but feel that something didn’t pull me in completely.  Maybe its the length being tiresome or simply the pacing was a flawed.  The better way to word it would be that at its high points, it was tense but at its low points, it was lacking the thrills. However, I do blame it a little on my lack of interest in war/political based espionage thrillers. I do think that Bridge of Spies is worth a watch!

Have you seen Bridge of Spies? What did you think of it?

Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

A week or so ago, I went to see TinTin after a long-awaited desire to see it.  I believe to many people in my age range, Tintin was part of our childhood.  We grew up reading Tintin’s comics and his adventures (whether in English or French).  Tintin was possibly my favorite comic character ever.  I still remember the first comic I read spontaneously was when I borrowed Tintin and the Seven Crystal Balls from the library.  I fell in love with it and started trying to read the whole series.  Flip back to the present, a few months ago, I got the whole series and I’m working hard on reading it in entirety.  Seeing this movie meant a lot to me and I believe its an understatement when I say that I had expectations. Whether these expectations were met or not, I’ll break down in the rest of my blog.

First of all, my expectations were quite high.  For one, it was based on one of my favorite comics with a whole bunch of characters that I love.  Second, the movie itself is directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and the voice talents are all very good.  Third, before I went to see the movie, I don’t remember where exactly but I remembered someone telling me it was compared to the success of Jurassic Park.  With all that in this movie’s advantage, how could anything go wrong? Of course, there were some elements that did go wrong.  The movie was good but not exactly what I had expected.  Some parts (mostly in the beginning) were lengthy where I felt like the movie was dragging longer than it should and I looked at my watch to see how long the movie had lapsed.  When I check the time at the theatres, thats never a good sign (unless of course, I have plans afterwards) especially when it wasn’t a very long movie (compared to the norm of movies averaging about 2 hours nowadays).

One of the things I did thoroughly enjoy about the movie was the computer graphics.  It was state-of-art and beautiful.  I remembered seeing the trailer and thinking that it was with actual people.  When it zoomed in and I saw that it was animated, I was taken by surprise.  It was a wonderful surprise because especially in the scene where they are at sea, the water around them is so detailed and very realistic.  The visuals of this film was absolutely amazing.  Thank goodness they had that because the characters brought to life was really lacking a bit of that something.  Tintin was really missing a bit of excitement and adventure for one.  I felt that as I had become very much attached to Snowy by the end of the movie.  Snowy still remained the silly but smart dog who pulled Tintin out of trouble by chance as in the books.  I really hate doing the debate of how books put into movies are different and seldomly portray in full the original piece of literature.  Usually you would hear me criticizing the actual storyline, in this case, my problem was really with the character portrayal.  There was a lack of fun and wittiness in the characters.  Snowy shined as I mentioned before, and I’d have to say that I was also happy with  Captain Haddock.

There is another thing I really enjoyed about the movie.  I like movie adaptations for the fact that when it is adapted, they take the essence and bring it to the screen and make modifications.  It was inspired from the original but there are little changes that have to be made in order to intrigue movie goers.  I strongly believe that whatever attracts you to not be able to put down a book is probably not the same aspect that captivates you in a movie.  Of course different genres will have different potential so this will be a never ending analysis and debate for another post. So my point is, before I went in to see Tintin, I had wondered how they would do it because it was in the middle of the series, so they had to find a way to not only introduce all the characters but not destroy the flow of the adventure/story itself.  I was extremely impressed with how they had integrated parts from several of the books before and after.  Using Captain Haddock’s introduction in the original book and mixing it with Secret Unicorn’s storyline and a part of Red Rackham’s search was fantastic and I found added a wonderful twist but didn’t lose the essence of the character, especially with Captain Haddock and added a bit of humor into the whole idea.

This “review” took me so long to finish as its my first one but I felt my project needed to get a move on to other aspects (not just photography).  Hopefully you enjoyed it. If there’s anything else you suggest in future reviews (if any, because they are time consuming) please share some experiences and opinions, comments, with me.