Rating: Summary: Oh, my gosh! It actually had a story line! Review: I really didn't expect much from this movie. I had seen the previews and thought,"Oh great, another disaster film." However, after watching it, I totally changed my views on it. It wasn't all last second like Armageddon; they knew about it for a year. And their first plan didn't work; instead they had to try many plans. Even if your not big on disaster films (like me) you'll want to see this movie.
Rating: Summary: Bad movie, good actors. Review: Morgan Freeman and Robert Duvall come out ok in this movie, but they can not make an overall bad movie much better. The only people that can really enjoy this movie are from the US, it's far too patriotic.
Rating: Summary: Of all the disaster movies this one tops them all! Review: What I liked best about this movie was that it was more realistic than many others. Most disaster movies come up with a grand, far-fetched scheme to solve the problem but Deep Impact has several ideas that fail and finally a partial solution that works. I think this movie empahsizes that the human spirit is always fighting against the odds and will always find a way to survive. The special effects are outstanding and the characters well developed.
Rating: Summary: This one made me, a Man's Man, a little shaky Review: Although, it can be called a Sci-Fi movie, this one made me think, "This could really happen" making choices between life and death. The president, (Morgan Freeman) was forced to make choices that affected the life of every American--Who would live and who would die. RENT THIS MOVIE!! Guaranteed to make you think and possibly wipe your eye.
Rating: Summary: Better than "Armageddon"! Review: This version of the future is much more realistic and accurate than in the movie Armageddon. Really gets you to thinking..
Rating: Summary: Emotionally gripping and intelligent thriller Review: In 1998's infamous race for the ultimate outer space disaster flick, "Deep Impact" should be bestowed with the gold medal a thousandfold! Anyone who claims that this magnificent film as sentimental, nerd-ridden drivel when compared to appallingly lackluster job of "Armegeddon" must have seriously OD'ed on testosterone or is a complete mindless pion! If you fit this description, I truly pity you! It is also a sheer travesty that "Armegeddon" received all the Oscar nominations while "Deep Impact" was left out in the cold! As big of a movie buff that I am, I will forever revile the AMPAS and all of its red-tape politics (the 1999 awards crossed the line for the last time with me!) "Deep Impact" puts on the table a first-rate all-star cast, a superbly written script by Bruce Joel Rubin ("Ghost"), another terrific score from composer James Horner, and of course fanatstic CGI effects from Oscar-winning FX grandmaster ILM. Even without ILM's handiwork, the performances of Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood, Tea Leoni, and especially Morgan Freeman are all believably stirring with lucid emotion and authority. Freeman as the President would make me pass Clinton up with his wisdom and empathy for the American people as they face the threat of international annihilation from the heavens. His overlooked Oscar-worthy performance is another reason for me to despise the Academy (who the heck remembers Ed Harris or Geoffrey Rush's performances in "Truman Show" and the overpraised "Shakespeare in Love" respectively). Finally, one more reason why "Deep Impact" made its mark forever in heart: EXECUTIVE PRODUCER STEVEN SPIELBERG! Whether he's directing or producing, Spielberg never wavers as the all-time cinematic genius of magical fantasy and of the human spirit. "Deep Impact", coupled with "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Mask of Zorro", made 1998 a very great year for him. Well, if you want to squander your brains on a ludicrous 2 1/2 hour, loud-mouthed, mindless-explosions-every-2-seconds, he-man flick, don't let me stop you from gourging yourselves on "Armegeddon"! I tell you, if you've seen one Bruckheimer/Simpson film, you've basically seem 'em all ("Crimson Tide", "The Rock", "Con Air", "Beverly Hills Cop", and "Top Gun" (the only good one))! But if you're a sophisticated person who'd like to curl up with an equally-urbane significant other on a rainy weekend eve, "Deep Impact" is a masterpiece treat for you! It will give you hope that in this blase day & age, Hollywood can still (albeit rarely) create a film that touches your heart, mind, and soul while simultaneously keeping you on the edge of your seat.
Rating: Summary: i prefer armageddon because... Review: ...if you are gonna have a film about an ELE, with the slightly more serious approach that covers the sort of lottery in this one (which all seems perfectly believable), you ought to have some emotional impact to the story maybe it's been been too long since i saw it, but it just seemed like no one in the film really cared about what was going to happen. seemed a little odd to me...
Rating: Summary: Trading Star Power For Crappy Effects Review: If you like the premise of Armageddon but can't stand Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck, then Deep Impact is for you! Full of twists, like when the asteroid breaks into two seperate parts and the smaller one crashes into the Earth and destroys the entire east coast of the United States and they successfully destroy the other one buy having the astronauts drive a space shuttle bomb into it. Wait, did I just ruin the movie? The only bright spots are when Morgan Freeman are on camera.
Rating: Summary: This was a STUPID movie. Review: Whenever a movie takes itself seriously, and acts as though it is going to deal seriously with a scientific subject, then I expect them to have the basic science down. This movie was profoundly dissappointing. I would give them a F minus for the extreme blunders in the science.
The movie begins with a high school boy with unaided eye in Virgina Beach, VA noticing a strange star that is actually the comet and asking his teacher about it. What????? Where are the world's professionals? There are thousands of people world wide who search the skies with good telescopes for comets, hoping to find one so they can get it named after them. And a boy at sea-level, looking up through the entire atmosphere, in a light polluted area, is the first to see it?
The astronomer freaks out when his computer shows a projected impact with earth, his ISp is down, so he and races in his vehicle down the mountain so fast that he has an accident? What's the big rush? It won't hit for over a year and a half. He can simply telephone, or wait a bit for the ISP to come back up.
The USA gov't keeps it secret for over a year??? No leaks?? No one else in the world ever looks up???
A manned spacecraft with only a few nukes to destroy the comet? Cheaper and better chance of success to send several smaller automated ships with lots of nukes.
There is a scene where an astronaut is on the comet's head and is jumping up and down on a stuck probe to free it. But he should be in microgravity and will only weight as much as a feather.
And the stupidity continued in scene after scene.
Armeggedon was stupid too, but it didn't pretend to take itself seriously. I viewed it as a kind of comedy so I don't come down so hard on it.
Rating: Summary: HERE WE GO AGAIN - HOW MANY TIMES CAN YOU DESTROY NEW YORK? Review: Yet another variation on the "we're all doomed" philosophy that Hollywood en masse loves to embrace "Deep Impact" is the story of how various people (all from the United States) cope with the imminent disaster of being wiped off the face of the planet. It stars Tea Leoni as Jenny Lerner; a precocious White House reporter who accidentally stumbles across secret information about a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions. It seems that earth is in direct line with a giant asteroid. If the asteroid strikes earth, it will bring about the next ice age. Maximilian Schell (Jason) and Vanessa Redgrave (Robin) costar as Jenny's divorced feuding parents. Because no one over the age of forty is being considered for the massive rescue and life preservation effort that is sweeping the country (presumably because future society won't require any intelligence, just a host of sexy youth to help in the procreation phase of mankind volume 2) Robin decides to take her own life. This makes the riff between Jenny and her father almost unbearable. Meanwhile, on another part of the continent young astronomer, Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) is preparing to take refuge in the woods of California to save himself and his girlfriend, Sarah (Leelee Sobieski) from certain death. Finally, there's Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall), a NASA man and widower who's been pulled out of retirement to front a space mission which will attempt to blow up the asteroid in outer space before it reaches the earth.
Director, Mimi Ledger is unequal to the task of formulating a cohesive narrative from these bits of life in peril. Instead we're treated to incredibly sappy moments of melodrama which, rather than tugging at our heart strings, serve as glaring reminders of just how awful this sort of disaster epic can be in less skilled hands. There's no consistency to the plot, just bits of chaos buttressed by a lot of tears and some really poor acting. Only Morgan Freeman escapes the deluge of B-movie oblivion, as the very Presidential voice of reason. As though a happy ending confirms some vain attempt at the life affirming message that "we shall overcome", Ledger's flick ends on a high note that reads more like a tack on than an exaltation of the human spirit.
Paramount's previous DVD was not anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions and I imagine if you're a fan of the film, this is the primary selling feature of this Special Edition reissue. There's also an audio commentary on this edition in which director Leder sounds rather bored by the experience. Three all too brief featurettes that superficially cover the production of the film round out the extras. As for the overall picture quality of the film on this disc - it appears to be the idental image quality as the previous transfer. Colors are vibrant and rich. Black and contrast levels are quite deep and solid. There's a considerable amount of film grain during some sequences while the space segments betray their blue screen and computer compositing by being overly smooth and perfect. The final sequence of this film must have been the inspiration for Roland Emmerich's misguided weather channel disaster epic, "The Day After Tomorrow." The audio on "Deep Impact" is 5.1 Dolby Digital and delivers an aggressive sound field that will surely give your speakers a work out.
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