video review : Contact

video review : Contact

Like observing deep space via satellite, waiting for some sign of intelligent life, this movie is boring for a long time. About a third of its two-and-a-half hours goes by before the catch of the plot finally beams in and things start to get interesting.

Based on a Carl Sagan sci-fi novel, Contact propels itself with a wonderous concept, brilliant visual effects and mind-bending philosophical undertones, but the story, bogged down by extraneous love themes, doesn’t reach good fast enough.

my rating : 3 of 5

1997

One For The Road ( story ) … Stephen King

The title refers to the flask of brandy a man named Booth brings along as he, his friend Tookey and a stranger named Lumley venture out into a winter blizzard to rescue Lumley’s wife and daughter. They’re stranded in his car, stuck in the snow, “six miles south” of Tookey’s Bar.

This is a tale, straight-forward but for a funny flashback about a drunken pulp truck driver, that might’ve been even more engrossing than it is if it’s concept weren’t buried in vampiric folklore. The plot rolls along a path of realism until the end, where it starts to get silly.

my rating : 4 of 5

1977

review : Night Shift ( book ) ... Stephen King