Sphere

Rating:
Summary: 129 minutes of fidgeting on the sofa from sheer boredom
Review: An extremely long drawn out story with everything happening in the last few chapters. I bought this DVD expecting something close to 'Alien'. Sadly to say, it was a waste of cash. Anybody wanna swop out there !?

Rating:
Summary: Levinson's somewhat flawed book-to-movie conversion
Review: Michael Chrichton's novel, SPHERE, sent the reader on a psychologically terrifying trip to the dark side of the human imagination. Barry Levinson tries to capture the incredible mystery of the book in a two-hour movie... that means more than half the scenes had to be cut out or modified or rushed through. Instead of being as emotionally powerful as the book, the movie just turns out to be a series of mindless, claustrophobic action sequences, with no charactor development or, well, plot development at all. The film is about a group of scientists sent down to the bottom of the ocean to live in a small, underwater base called the "Habitat". They are to investigate a strange spacecraft that crashed into the ocean 300 years ago. The crew of the habitat begins to mysteriously die from violent sea animals, until the three main actors are left in the devistated habitat, and become paranoid of eachother. All the other aspects of the movie are great... set design, orchestral score, lighting, camera cuts, and actors. It's just the idiotic chain-of-events that bring down the movie. Action sequences are very frequent in this movie, but despite being very good action sequences, it seems to take over the movie like the plot & charactor development are in the way of the action. The set design is very good. It's dark blue, claustrophobic, and very "curvy". Elliot Goldenthal's music adds to the psychological terror and moodiness of the film. Eventually, the movie replaces the incredible finale of the book with a predictable, unexciting psychological action sequence... and later, the movie ends and everybody exits the theatre somewhat disappointed. The movie had huge potential to be the best film of the year, but it was just so stripped down, it became a series of pointless (but undeniably entertaining) action scenes. If you want to be entertained, or test out that new subwoofer you just got for your TV, rent this one. I'd give it two-and-a-half stars if I could.

Rating:
Summary: Reservations turned against me
Review: I thought I would never see this movie because of the reviews when it was out but I recently saw it on DVD and I have to say that I was surprised. The story was quite good, though I can't compare it to the book since it's one of the few of his I haven't read, and the effects were incredible. Heck I was generally jumping in a few spots. What I initially thought to be another Event Horizon (which is a horrible movie) was actually thought provoking about what man would do if he were given the power to anything. I keep hearing that the movie is a waste of talent and I have to totally disagree. The movie left me thinking and the ending of the movie is the perfect way to end. It stays faithful to the book, a friend says, and though a lot of the book had to be cut it still makes a good movie.

Now, the movie has flaws - characters who aren't even one dimensional and few confusing points - but it makes a great saturday night movie. The three principals are very good and production values were very high. I recommend this movie.

Plus if you have the nice set up, the DVD sounds amazing and looks fantastic.

I say hunker down on a saturday night and grab some friends and some popcorn and enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: complex but well done
Review: I am surprised by the low avg score of this well made movie. It may be too complex for some to follow. I had to watch it a second time before comprehending what's going on. This is indeed a mindboggling sci-fi thriller that deserves better rating...

Rating:
Summary: How to make the bad worse. A bad film from a mediocre book.
Review: Begin guilty of the occasional brush with bad literature, I once read Chrichton's novel and recently, with almost criminal reiteration, I rented the tape and watched the movie. Mind you, Michael Chrichton is no Borges or Kundera, but he has a certain craftsmanship in sustaining a dramatic tension through a story and, although Sphere is not one of his most felicitous attempts, the guy knows at least the obvious tricks of storytelling. He is a master of the most obvious of them: dropping a hint, and resolving it only 100 pages later.

I had to make this premise in order to be able to say that the filmmakers didn't even elevate to this elementary level. All the thrills are solved in a matter of minutes (e.g. in the book it takes quite a while to understand that the starship is terrestrial, Harry knows that something is missing and that because of that they are all gonna die, but we don't know what it is until the end of the book, and so on). It looks like the director didn't trust the viewers even with the considerably reduced attention span necessary to read a Chrichton novel, and, possibly, rightly so.

All the film is concentrated in strong and rigorously self-contained cheap thrills, in the mandatory multimullion dollar budget for visuals (how I long for a sci-fi film without a *single* special effect, but just a rock solid story), and the mandatory I-escape-the-final-explosion-by-three-seconds final scene which is stretched to the limits by a uncalled for oneiric sequence of the three inside the spaceship (oh, and by the way... what's with the unruly proliferation of Harry's book--not present in the original novel)?

All in all, I wasted my money. A film to forget.

Rating:
Summary: What was going on here?
Review: Many of my friends went through a Michael Crichton kick a few years ago, and so most of them have read the novel "Sphere". Because of this, the movie was vaguely disappointing to them but not too hard to follow. I, on the other hand, had no idea what the story was about and still had no idea when I finished watching this movie. Apparently, LOTS of material from the book was left out, and we are left with a frustrating (and at times hilariously bad) sci-fi/drama or something. Like the marginally more interesting "Event Horizon", "Sphere" beared a resemblance to 1972's (?) "Solaris", and in fact, I had more fun noting the similar sequence of events (deserted ship, one body found, one crew member becoming catatonic) between "EH" and this than I did trying to figure out what the plot of "Sphere" really was. Any movie where the top half of Peter Coyote washes over a screaming Sharon Stone while Queen Latifah gets attacked by killer jellyfish should probably be forgotten. As for the DVD, I haven't seen it, but suspect that it's up to Warner's usual standards; it seems to have enough goodies to go along with it as well. I give the movie 2 stars for the good cast who should have been doing something better.

Rating:
Summary: This movie kicked tail
Review: I think this was one of the best movies I have seen in my life. Okay, maybe it wasn't as good as the book but it still kicked tail!

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite books gone bad.
Review: When I first heard that a film based on Michael Crichton's novel Sphere (for those of you who haven't read Crichton, this appears to be his most acclaimed book), I was very enthusiactic for I had read this book and loved it. When I heard that it would star Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, and (one of my favorite actors) Samuel L. Jackson and directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Disclosure), I was even more excited. Then when I saw the movie, I was a little disappointed, but not much. However, the more and more I thought about it, I realized that they had completely screwed up what could have been one of the best sci-fi films in years. What I think really ruined it was that it seemed the screenwriter(s) wanted to make a horror movie instead of the suspense/thriller it should have been. Also, quite frankly, little of the story made sense even to me as someone who has read the book repeatedly. My final thoughts: (1) you might enjoy this movie if you haven't read the book and (2) I believe the fault of this disaster falls on the screenwriter(s) for the poor script, not the outstanding cast and their director.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, but a bizzarre ending
Review: This movie had many reviews but overall I thought it was very enjoyable. I purchased it on DVD which gives you the ability to listen to Dustin Hoffman and the Director speak about each scene and since that time I have watched it 3-4 times more. The special effects are spectacular and the plot is unique. The movie has to be viewed more than once to get its full effect and make you think about all the lines that the actors said and what they meant, by the time you reach the end of the movie. The second viewing was more enjoyable than the first.

Rating:
Summary: I saw this movie twice and I'd love to see it again!!!!!!!!!
Review: "I saw this movie twice already and it makes me jump right out of my underwear every time, I'd love to see it again." If you agree E-Mail me at, [e-mail]