twilight zone: the movie review
Common Sense and other associated names and logos are trademarks of Common Sense Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (FEIN: 41-2024986). Twilight Zone: The Movie was four segments in a feature length film which I have a hard time considering a "movie." I saw it at a sneak preview. Landis directed the first episode, which stars Vic Morrow in the story of a bigot who is transported back in time to Nazi Germany and Vietnam and forced to swallow his own racist medicine. But then comes Joe Dante's weird, offbeat segment about a traveler (Kathleen Quinlan) who strays off the beaten path and accepts an offer of hospitality from a fresh-faced young kid who looks healthy and harmless. I would have much preferred one Twilight Zone story using the run time of one hour and forty minutes. Joe Dante's quirky take on the poor-little-all-powerful-boy Anthony (actually a re-filming of a famed short story, "It's a Good Life") is clever, if a little fixated on f/x. See our. Prologue: a driver has a big surprise with his passenger. The beauty of "Twilight Zone -- The Movie" is the same as the secret of the TV series: It takes ordinary people in ordinary situations and then (can you hear Rod Serling?) There is some light swearing, smoking and drinking, and taking of sedative pills. The superstars are John Landis ("The Blues Brothers") and Steven Spielberg ("E.T. Instead of making the voters choose among five widely different performances, they say, they ought to have five actors playing the same scene. It's an impractical idea, but "Twilight Zone -- The Movie" does almost the same thing. The star rating reflects overall quality. A character wished into "cartoon land" is devoured, apparently fatally, by an animated monster. No, it isn't amazing, but it does do things well. It takes four stories that are typical of the basic approach of the great "Twilight Zone" TV series, and it has four different directors try their hand at recapturing Rod Serling's "wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination." The second segment teaches that age (or youth) is really a state a mind. There is an obnoxious racist-loudmouth white protagonist in the first segment, straightaway and brutally punished for his outlook. A vintage Polaroid instant camera figures in the plot. None of that appears in the disappointing segment itself, a one-note bashing of a nasty guy. One day he will live in the World War II, hunted down by KKK and attacked in Vietnam War and feel the effects of his hatred. It isn’t the best movie, but it is a fun collection of directors and actors bringing a classic TV show to the screen in a much more convincing way than many current TV to film adaptations. Spielberg, who produced the whole project, perhaps sensed that he and Landis had the weakest results, since he assembles the stories in an ascending order of excitement. Don't waste any time on this, just go watch the old TV show a bit for a Twilight Zone fix. It was pretty good I have never seen the show but it's still pretty good. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2017. Ebert noted that "the surprising thing is, the two superstar directors are thoroughly routed by two less-known directors whose previous credits have been horror and action pictures... Spiel… In the first narrative in particular, racially-tinged acts of brutality and intimidation (and verbal racist slurs) get to be practically nonstop. The kid loves video games and TV cartoons, and he's trapped a whole group of adults in his private fantasies. The highlight of both is the same- the remake of the airplane bit, but really only because of Matheson's screenplay for the original show, which was brilliant. 5.0 out of 5 starsClassic Anthology Horror Fantasy. A trivia game involves various old TV shows, and there are glimpses of the quiz show Jeopardy! I loved the premise, the cast, and the direction of each segment. Twilight Zone: The Movie was quite fun. In the third tale a stranger stumbles into the captive household of Anthony (Jeremy Licht), a cartoon-crazed kid with awesome psychic powers to make his every whim come true, but who isn't truly happy. Twilight Zone: The Movie is more known for the horrific deaths that plagued the production of the movie rather than the film itself so I never felt reviewers of the time really gave it a real shot. It starts out quite slow but ends with a bang. If you chose to provide an email address, it will only be used to contact you about your comment. The art direction in this segment is especially good at giving the house interior a wonderland quality. The second story has a magical visitor (Scatman Crothers) to an old-folks home, giving the seniors a chance to start life over as six-year-olds -- if they want to. and classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Online reviewers have written 524 reviews, giving Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) an average rating of 60%. Because we know that Morrow was killed in a helicopter accident during the filming of the segment, an additional pall hangs over the whole story. Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) Review. All rights reserved. Suggest a diversity update. Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners. Despite Hollywood's biggest directors involved, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE mainly is sad trivia: the feature in which Vic Morrow (and two child actors) died in a freak accident, perishing beneath a crashing helicopter while filming the Vietnam section. A black man in the second segment symbolizes wisdom and kindness, especially in matters of old age. The revered TV half-hour The Twilight Zone, which originally aired 1959-65 and told different sci-fi and fantasy-tinged morality plays each week, inspired this big-budget movie anthology. The exception being segment one, which truly manages to capture that old familiar atmosphere. Steven Spielberg's gentle but so-so episode of golden-agers turning young is unusually modest for the spectacle-inclined filmmaker, but this would be done so much better in Cocoon. Others might be bored. (Written in 2007 for the “Retro Cinema” feature at Cinematical.) 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