What Dreams May Come

Rating:
Summary: Stellar film and visual effects!
Review: There is such a profound sense of drama, magic and emotion behind the story in "What Dreams May Come," a film based on the novel by Richard Matheson. There is a strong story with which anyone who loves someone else can identify, as well as an austentatious and elegant scope of visual and auditory imagery that jumps right for your eyes onscreen. Matheson's visions of heaven and hell are magnificently realized here, as well as the love between two people that is unbreakable, even after death.

The movie begins with the chance meeting of two American tourists traveling in Switzerland. Soon after, Chris and Annie become inseperable, and after their wedding, they bear two children. Many years later, Ian and Marie are killed in a car collision, leaving their parents distraught yet overcoming. Another couple of years later, Chris dies in a car accident as well, on his way to celebrate the "Double D" anniversary of his wife's emotional recovery from their childrens' deaths. This begins his trip into heaven, which is rocky at first during his attempts to console his living wife, then graduating into his acceptance of his immortality and ascemding into heaven, which turns out to be the creation of his own thoughts and settings. When he realizes that he is not completely happy without Annie, he becomes depressed, so it is no surprise that when Annie commits suicide and is sent to hell, he readies himself to rescue his wife from her emotional confines that keep her in her prison of eternal darkness.

The story for this movie is very ambitious, as are the filmmakers who bring it to life. There is an abundance of vivid memories in the form of flashbacks, many of which are precisely used to move the plot along and keep the story moving. Instead of becoming bored with the ongoing story of Annie and Chris's married and parental life, I found myself becoming more and more entranced as their lives unfolded, and say what you will, but the only way to tell a story like this is through flashbacks. If you were to take all of the memories and place them in order at the beginning of the movie, the audience would forget about the important moments that have an effects on the actions and events that take place in later instances of the film. Each one is a separate piece of the puzzle, and they all fit together quite well.

This film is one of those movies that showcases the possibilities for filmmaking in the future. Really, when you think about it, there is no way that the movie could have been made thirty years ago and still have the same impact as it does now. The settings and scenery play the most important role of the movie, for they provide the reason for the emotion and action that affects our characters. The beginning shots in Switzerland show us beautiful vistas of mountains and lakes, which will later become the inspiration for Chris's heaven, as well as many of the paintings Annie creates. Their home bursts forth with color and brightness, proving that color plays a big role in the film. When everyone is alive, everything seems light and airy. After Chris's death, all is dark, and the walls of the home seem dismal and gray. One scene in particular is a scene in which Chris watches his children being driven away in their van down a long line of lilac trees, a slight fog covering the scene. Their is that brilliance of color, yet the dark fog makes us uneasy, hence the accident that kills their children.

Heaven is elegantly portrayed in this film, and is done so with a new twist: that each person has their own private heaven created in the image of their own personal desires and thoughts. Chris's heaven is based on the paintings of his wife, from the mountains of Switzerland to a small island in the middle of a mountain lake with an opulent, airy house. The filmmakers give each scene the precise look of a painting, even after the special effects fade, using vivid colors, lots of flowers and mountainous backdrops, to transport us into Chris's new world. This is one of the most incredible film achievements ever, taking us to a special place that is warm, inviting, and personifies every thought we, as an audience, have ever had for beauty and vision.

Hell is given a truly horrifying and intense treatment, displaying visions of suffering as well as the personal and emotional pain of life that haunts us all. Somewhat like the way in which Heaven is created, Hell is seen as a persons's "life gone wrong," which allows for the creation of their pain-driven eternity. The gateway to hell is a stunning visual image, a vast, smoky graveyard of smoldering shipwrecks that creak and groan. There is also a dismal, endless sea of decrepit faces of hell's inhabitants, that groan and scream at one another. The most striking of all the settings is the overturned cathedral, where Annie resides. The columns rise from the ceiling and go on forever into the darkness, which gives the whole place a sense of the neverending.

There is a unique chemistry between the two leads that carries on the film's emotion and power. Robin Williams is charming, humorous and bold as Chris Nielsen, and through his acting and talent, he is able to make us believe in the love that Chris holds for Annie. Annabella Sciorra is moving as Annie, embodying all of the emotions and grief that set the stage for the second half of the story. When the two are together onscreen, they are happy and in love, and we buy it because they make it appear very authentic. Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays the angel that brings Chris to heaven, doing well in his performance of helping Chris through his struggle to realize his death. Max von Sydow, whose part is not as big as others he has had, is the tracker who takes them all to hell, and his words of wisdom keep the film's informative angle moving.

"What Dreams May Come" will go down in history as one of the most innovative and spectacular films ever made, full of ambition and inspiration. In its story, we are taken on a journey of the human heart, as well as a striking vision of what may lie in store for everyone under God's eye.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Premise, Great Special Effects & Bonuses (DVD)
Review: The strength of "What Dreams May Come" is the fascinating vision of the afterlife and Robin Williams' Homeric odyssey to the underworld to rescue his wife, plus the wonderful visual effects/cinematography [the scene where Robin Williams' character finds himself in a painted world (literally) come to life (or afterlife, technically) is amazing].

The DVD hilights these strengths with extras that include cool menus, a making of featurette, a not-so-happy alternate ending and various production and special effects notes.

As a purely dramatic film, "What Dreams" falls a little short (being at times overly sappy and melodramatic), but with an original story, some good acting (Williams and Cuba Gooding, Jr. aer a good amtch, and the actress who plays Williams' adult daughter is also very good) and strong visuals and some good extras and you have a keeper.
Also recommended: 'City of Angels' (an angel gives up its wings for love); 'Michael' (angel of the afterlife visits Earth) and 'Princess Bride' (a fairy tale quest for true love).

Rating:
Summary: LOVE IT!
Review: This is my all time, ultimate, bar none favorite movie. This timeless film marries artistic genious with an excemplary story line. The special effects are unbeleivably beleavable and so original it will amaze you.
During the course of this film I cry, every time, at at least 4 spots. Parts are funny and lighthearted. Other spots are dismal and serious. A love story to rival all love stories. This is an emotional ride that you won't forget.
I've just finally gotten a legal copy because this film can be hard to find for a reasonable price, but whatever you pay it will be worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Awful Garbage...
Review: I never thought I'd see a worse film than "AI: Artificial Intelligence" until I saw "What Dreams May Come". If there were any justice, Robin Williams would be banned from making films in America, and whoever came up with the idea for this masterpeice would be sent to East Harlem where he could live out the rest of his life in a garbage can.

As usual, Robin Williams is about as entertaining as a crutch. The other actors in this film are equally as forgetable.

Forget about renting this dvd. You'd be better off watching the television with both the picture and sound turned off. That way, any program you could imagine would be better than this...

Rating:
Summary: I wish my dreams were this cool.
Review: What Dreams May Come is a very powerful movie. Simply put, it can make you think some very deep thoughts.

The story is very moving and brilliantly crafted. The main character is a doctor named Chris (Robin Williams). He has a wife (Annabella Sciorra) and two kids. His family is great and he seems to be living the American dream. Then his children are killed in a car accident and his life is shattered. He spends the next four years trying to recover from the tragedy. Then he is killed in another traffic accident and the story takes off as he goes to the beautiful afterlife.

The movie seamlessly transitions from present to flashback to give a sense that time is irrelevant in the afterlife and to fill in the rest of the story. The first person he sees is a young version of the doctor he apprenticed under (Cuba Gooding Jr.) who later turns out to be someone else, but I won't tell you because I don't want to ruin any parts of the movie. He is then taken to a beautiful heaven, which is actually his mental re-creation of one of his wife's paintings. He later learns that his wife has committed suicide and in doing so has trapped herself in a never-ending spiral of guilt (a.k.a. Hell). Chris then has to travel to the depths of Hell to find and attempt to bring back his wife.

This movie is loaded with abstract thoughts and themes. For example: Your obsessions in life will become your afterlife; Thought is real, physical is the illusion; God lets bad things happen to good people; and far too many others for me to list here.

The movie is visually breathtaking and the computer-generated graphics add greatly to the realness of the movie. The acting is good and director obviously knew what he was doing. I will recommend this movie to anyone who has ever contemplated his or her existence.

Rating:
Summary: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
Review: While a world without tragedy may be desirable for us mortals, it is unfortunately not in our fate. Sometimes everyday people with normal lives are thrust into calamity. And sometimes that calamity is so devastating, our faith and happiness are quickly smeared into mud. If anyone can imagine their child dying in a gory accident, they still cannot imagine the internal agony that would follow. Now double that tragedy. Triple that tragedy, and you have the basis for a heart-gripping and believable tale. The character, Annie, understandably, cannot easily recover from her loss and withdraws psychologically. Her pain envelops her, and she commits suicide. As an artist, she was more prone to an emotional perception of her environment. While in good times her painting expressed her joy, it also controls the strokes of her brushes in bad times.

The movie follows this dark course, but delivers a twist. It offers hope. While delivering the audience through a powerful action-filled experience into the afterlife, it is laced with an encryption of spiritual enlightenment. Tuning into Annie's mind, the liquid texture of an artist's palette becomes an underpainting to the visual renderings of the film. Chris's journey to rescue his soulmate Annie is a moving decline through graphic levels of hell that rival the images of the painter Bosch. As he struggles through fallen souls and wrecked landscapes, his appreciation of the gift of inner life becomes more apparent. He is finding himself, as he is searching for Annie.

Although most traditional religious thought is unclear in their written doctrines on suicide, leaving the outcome of suicide victims open to mortal pessimists, this story offers a brighter take. In this new view, the audience is able to transcend the judgements of theorists, and discover an afterlife that is as mutable as oil colors on a plate of glass. A beautiful rendition. Only in discovering who we are, and why we are where we are, are we finally able to attain the heavenlike destiny that God has set aside for us.

Perhaps in the real afterlife we are not saturated with doctrination and separated by denomination. Hopefully we humans are finally able to set aside our prejudices of religious zealism and ignorance that so seperates us here. Wishfully, we will discover a world that is how God intented, a world like we can imagine in this visual movie. Without revealing too much of the ending, believe that this story will lift you in the end, and give you dreams as vivid as rainbows. Enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Love and Death
Review: This is a story about death. Chris and Anne meet and get children. The children die in a car crash, and their mom never forgives herself for not bringing them to school themselves. Chris (played by Robin Williams) dies himself in a freak accident when he wants to help someone. She herself kills herself later.

Chris ends up in heaven, which looks like the paintings his wife makes. Their he meets a sort of guardian angel played by Cuba Gooding. But he is still not happy, he loves his wife and wants her back but unfortunately: suicides go to hell. But through undying love he gets her back to heaven.

The colors and the settings are beautiful, the artwork is amazing and therefore alone worth watching. The ending is however a little too cheasy. The DVD has a different and sadder ending, it would have made the movie better but Hollywood probably thought it a bad idea.

If you like dreamy movies about what is and what is not real: this movie is for you.

Rating:
Summary: Stellar film and visual effects!
Review: There is such a profound sense of drama, magic and emotion behind the story in "What Dreams May Come," a film based on the novel by Richard Matheson. There is a strong story with which anyone who loves someone else can identify, as well as an austentatious and elegant scope of visual and auditory imagery that jumps right for your eyes onscreen. Matheson's visions of heaven and hell are magnificently realized here, as well as the love between two people that is unbreakable, even after death.

The movie begins with the chance meeting of two American tourists traveling in Switzerland. Soon after, Chris and Annie become inseperable, and after their wedding, they bear two children. Many years later, Ian and Marie are killed in a car collision, leaving their parents distraught yet overcoming. Another couple of years later, Chris dies in a car accident as well, on his way to celebrate the "Double D" anniversary of his wife's emotional recovery from their childrens' deaths. This begins his trip into heaven, which is rocky at first during his attempts to console his living wife, then graduating into his acceptance of his immortality and ascemding into heaven, which turns out to be the creation of his own thoughts and settings. When he realizes that he is not completely happy without Annie, he becomes depressed, so it is no surprise that when Annie commits suicide and is sent to hell, he readies himself to rescue his wife from her emotional confines that keep her in her prison of eternal darkness.

The story for this movie is very ambitious, as are the filmmakers who bring it to life. There is an abundance of vivid memories in the form of flashbacks, many of which are precisely used to move the plot along and keep the story moving. Instead of becoming bored with the ongoing story of Annie and Chris's married and parental life, I found myself becoming more and more entranced as their lives unfolded, and say what you will, but the only way to tell a story like this is through flashbacks. If you were to take all of the memories and place them in order at the beginning of the movie, the audience would forget about the important moments that have an effects on the actions and events that take place in later instances of the film. Each one is a separate piece of the puzzle, and they all fit together quite well.

This film is one of those movies that showcases the possibilities for filmmaking in the future. Really, when you think about it, there is no way that the movie could have been made thirty years ago and still have the same impact as it does now. The settings and scenery play the most important role of the movie, for they provide the reason for the emotion and action that affects our characters. The beginning shots in Switzerland show us beautiful vistas of mountains and lakes, which will later become the inspiration for Chris's heaven, as well as many of the paintings Annie creates. Their home bursts forth with color and brightness, proving that color plays a big role in the film. When everyone is alive, everything seems light and airy. After Chris's death, all is dark, and the walls of the home seem dismal and gray. One scene in particular is a scene in which Chris watches his children being driven away in their van down a long line of lilac trees, a slight fog covering the scene. Their is that brilliance of color, yet the dark fog makes us uneasy, hence the accident that kills their children.

Heaven is elegantly portrayed in this film, and is done so with a new twist: that each person has their own private heaven created in the image of their own personal desires and thoughts. Chris's heaven is based on the paintings of his wife, from the mountains of Switzerland to a small island in the middle of a mountain lake with an opulent, airy house. The filmmakers give each scene the precise look of a painting, even after the special effects fade, using vivid colors, lots of flowers and mountainous backdrops, to transport us into Chris's new world. This is one of the most incredible film achievements ever, taking us to a special place that is warm, inviting, and personifies every thought we, as an audience, have ever had for beauty and vision.

Hell is given a truly horrifying and intense treatment, displaying visions of suffering as well as the personal and emotional pain of life that haunts us all. Somewhat like the way in which Heaven is created, Hell is seen as a persons's "life gone wrong," which allows for the creation of their pain-driven eternity. The gateway to hell is a stunning visual image, a vast, smoky graveyard of smoldering shipwrecks that creak and groan. There is also a dismal, endless sea of decrepit faces of hell's inhabitants, that groan and scream at one another. The most striking of all the settings is the overturned cathedral, where Annie resides. The columns rise from the ceiling and go on forever into the darkness, which gives the whole place a sense of the neverending.

There is a unique chemistry between the two leads that carries on the film's emotion and power. Robin Williams is charming, humorous and bold as Chris Nielsen, and through his acting and talent, he is able to make us believe in the love that Chris holds for Annie. Annabella Sciorra is moving as Annie, embodying all of the emotions and grief that set the stage for the second half of the story. When the two are together onscreen, they are happy and in love, and we buy it because they make it appear very authentic. Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays the angel that brings Chris to heaven, doing well in his performance of helping Chris through his struggle to realize his death. Max von Sydow, whose part is not as big as others he has had, is the tracker who takes them all to hell, and his words of wisdom keep the film's informative angle moving.

"What Dreams May Come" will go down in history as one of the most innovative and spectacular films ever made, full of ambition and inspiration. In its story, we are taken on a journey of the human heart, as well as a striking vision of what may lie in store for everyone under God's eye.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent movie
Review: This was a movie I saw for the first time in high school. I think it is an excellenct movie, especially for the creative arts type of person. It was created with a wonderful imagination and is a one of a kind type of movie. Highly recommended for anyone open to interpretation or interested in art of all kinds.

Rating:
Summary: Awful Garbage...
Review: I never thought I'd see a worse film than "AI: Artificial Intelligence" until I saw "What Dreams May Come". If there were any justice, Robin Williams would be banned from making films in America, and whoever came up with the idea for this masterpeice would be sent to East Harlem where he could live out the rest of his life in a garbage can.

As usual, Robin Williams is about as entertaining as a crutch. The other actors in this film are equally as forgetable.

Forget about renting this dvd. You'd be better off watching the television with both the picture and sound turned off. That way, any program you could imagine would be better than this...