1984 Directed by John Carpenter
When an alien takes the form of a young widow's husband and asks her to drive him from Wisconsin to Arizona, the government tries to stop them.
Jeff Bridges Karen Allen Charles Martin Smith Richard Jaeckel Robert Phalen Tony Edwards John Walter Davis Ted White Dirk Blocker M.C. Gainey Sean Stanek George Buck Flower Russ Benning Ralph Cosham David Wells Anthony Grumbach James Deeth Alex Daniels Carol Rosenthal Mickey Jones Lu Leonard Charlie Hughes Byron Walls Betty Bunch Victor McLemore Steven Brennan Pat Lee Judith Kim Ronald Colby Show All…
John Carpenter's Starman, Starman. El hombre de las estrellas, Csillagember
Starman means a lot to me, so I’ll get this out of the way first. I love Starman so much—the story, the cast, the pacing, the score, and Carpenter’s direction... especially since (at least on paper) he’s the last person I would ever suspect or choose to make this kind of picture. I don’t revisit this often and there’s a reason for that, which I’ll go into because I think it’s time to change that...
Jenny Hayden: Love is, um, it's when you care more for someone else than you do yourself.
In my late 20’s I lost someone. We were together for years until that fateful day, which happened to be my birthday. Just like that, she was gone. When…
Hollywood in the 80s really fucked up by not putting Karen Allen in every movie
So I’m here with mom, helping her out after the loss of her partner, going through photos and documents and organizing the memorial, and she tells me a friend of hers has recommended a movie that might help her process her grief. Something called Starman.
I go apeshit with excitement. What magical friend told my seventy year old mother to watch Starman? I tell mom how much I loved that movie when I was a kid. How it played on HBO over and over again in the era when HBO meant “Hey, Beastmaster’s on!” (My Golden Age of HBO)
I explained how the movie was important to me because it was a very personal, early example, possibly my earliest, of…
A gentle film about grief, loss, decency and human (or not-so-human) kindness. Something I kind of needed, to be honest. Jeff Bridges is terrific as a physical actor, and Karen Allen absolutely kills it in a wonderful, nuanced performance.
"Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you?"
i wasn't entirely kidding when i called this Carpenter's BALL OF FIRE.
it's also THE TERMINATOR but nice. (released two months apart)
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'Starman' is a revenant story, a ghost story, a story born out of grief and loss, and the reintegration of what was lost back into a life made new and strange. It is a story about Stockholm Syndrome pre-loaded. 'Starman' is a noir posing as a romance posing as a sci-fi film. It is the story of the outlaw on the lam from the authorities who hides in the home of the grieving widow and takes her on the road with him in her car to safety (across the county/state/country/planetary line). In this story, the grieving widow tends to (righfully) fear the (misunderstood) outlaw who generally points a gun at her after she points a gun at him until they…
Jeff Bridges doing this and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is range. Also, Karen Allen rips.
john carpenter's romantic version of E.T.: The Extraterrestrial is weird, eerie yet very touching. it blows my fucking mind that karen allen never pursued leading actress/movie star status because she's absolutely magnetic in this. she's IN-CRED-I-BLE! bridges is operating on all cylinders here as well, with his bird-like mannerisms and otherworldly behaviour. i absolutely love that he was oscar nominated for this and i find it incredibly sad that performances like this don't really get nominated anymore. like mcavoy in Split, gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler and franco in Spring Breakers, there's not enough recognition from the academy for these dedicated and gonzo performances these days. Starman is a great movie but major warning for that "baby ---> man" transformation sequence, it's fucking nightmare fuel.
👧👶➡️👦👽🔫👨🔬🚗🚓🛸
possibly my favourite carpenter to date, exceptionally profound and heartbreaking, it's the type of film that understands what it means to be human, the beauty in the strength, the variety, the connections and passions, the idiosyncrasies that make each of us unique. but mostly it understands the power of love, how seeing the face of the man you loved in person again, not just in a clip or in a photo can make the pain of the loss fade just a little bit. how as he develops as a person, he gains not just disconnected and apathetic knowledge about our species but the passion and warmth and humanity that is present throughout the best of us. but it's about how…
i was a total mess from the moment this started. if i so much as see a picture of that voyager record i start to cry, and this whole movie is so emotional that i never got a chance to stop. it surprised me at first that Carpenter made such a touching movie, but then i thought of THE THING and remembered what a master emotional manipulator he is. ending on a shot of Karen Allen's face instead of the sky was an incredible choice. Karen Allen was an incredible choice. i took off half a star because this is so good but i don't know if or when i could handle going through watching it again. this lil review sucks but i don't know what else to write because you can't type out the sound of weeping, and analyzing how or why it works would be silly for me to do.
related: www.radiolab.org/story/91520-space/
Near perfect, it's messed up that something this distinctive would inexplicably end up as second tier JC, maybe I'll do my small part and start citing it as my favorite.
Carpenter is biting Spielberg really hard here, and it's the damndest thing that it still feels so sincere. Was this a weird Salieri and Mozart rivalry playing out after Spielberg's friendly E.T. became an international sensation and Carpenter's The Thing tanked? Whatever his intentions, when Carpenter has Karen Allen give "the Spielberg face" while watching alien Jeff Bridges resurrect a deer, I melt and evaporate away. Carpenter is so different than the rest of his generation in how he assimilates existing works. It's not tribute or pastiche, nor an attempt to deconstruct or recontextualize or play any post-modern games with classic Hollywood material. He just remakes it as his own. Sincerely, without a hint of irony, and in Allen and…
