In 1998, A Bug’s Life was Disney’s November answer to the September release of Dreamworks Pictures, Antz. When Disney was still a separate entity from Pixar Animation Studios, the former contracted the latter to come up with another interesting CGI film, as follow up for Toy Story. Yes, Pixar was also the force behind Toy Story phenomenon, which practically started the whole CGI trend.

A Bug’s Life is a funny movie with interesting characters and heartwarming story, typical of a Disney movie. Watching this film will also make you appreciate the musical scoring and the amazing computer animation work of course.

It’s a movie for all ages. Kids will surely love to watch it many times over. By the way, Hayden Panettiere (Claire Bennet of Heroes) did the voice of DOT. Her voice must be something that grown-ups can look forward to hearing.

Toy Story was the revolutionary 1995 computer-animated hit that started it all. It was Pixar’s first feature film, and it’s said to be the first computer-animated film to be completed. This was surely a new adventure for Tom Hanks, who did the voice of “Woody” the lead character. He was on top of his career (he did the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 prior to this.), and doing something new, like voicing a CGI character was a fresh break from his serious acting jobs.

Just thinking of the action sequences in this computer-generated movie brings much grin, and I’m sure that a lot of people who have seen this movie can relate with me. John Lasseter, the director, truly presented cleverness.

This movie goes down in history as one of the best CGI films ever produced. The fusion of Pixar Animation and Disney proved to be a good move. Worldwide, this movie earned $358,100,000 worldwide. It’s time for you to get a taste of CGI greatness. Watch Toy Story, and see what goes on in the toy kingdom when the humans are not looking.

This movie was based from the 1982 novel by Stephen King, entitled “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”. But take note, the late great sex symbol Rita Hayworth was never on the film, but her pin-up served more than just an inspiration (or male energy & imagination inducer) for a guy who’s imprisoned.

It has a very interesting story that all started with a crime of passion. Andy Dufresne, the calm soft-spoken banker (played by Tim Robbins) was convicted of killing his wife and her extra-marital lover. His life in prison was far from good. It’s a good thing that I’ve seen this movie when I was a little older. Had I seen this movie when I was still a little younger, I could’ve been one jaded cynical person. Life in prison was no joke, and this movie clearly depicts the scenario (solitary confinement/ violence/sex), although the sex wasn’t capitalized in this movie.

I don’t watch prison movies, but I don’t know why I was led to watch this movie (including THE GREEN MILE…but that’s a different story). I did not regret watching this film at all. In fact, I have watched this movie over 10 times (several times on VHS, on cable, on DVD) at different stages of my life. I’ve watched it as a budding adult and I’ve seen it as an adult. It just gets better each time. The older I get, the more I appreciate it. It is one great piece of Stephen King work. Inspite the prison scenario, it’s a story of hope, patience, endurance, and friendship. Perhaps what Stephen King wanted to convey is the message that, in every trial and suffering in life, the Heavens will never abandon as long as we hold on to our hope. As the movie’s tagline suggests, hope can set you free.

This story resembles Stephen King’s other work, The Shawshank Redemption, on two points: first, the movie is about a person suffering from a lingering bad situation i.e. she is incarcerated; and second, despite that odd, the person finds a way to squirm herself out of the situation. Well, not literally, because Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates’s character) in this movie was not exonerated of her crime. We tend to believe that she really killed the maid in the movie. But the positivity that came from that situation was it cemented Dolores Claiborne’s relationship with her daughter, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, another beautiful actress who can do strong straight drama. After all, this is one of Kathy’s finest performances in her sterling career.

Trivia:

Stephen King earned US$ 1.5 million when CASTLE ROCK bought the rights to this novel.

Stephen King

Watching James Caan in a seemingly invincible role in Las Vegas transforming into an invalid in this movie seems so breathtaking and pitiful to watch. Here, we see James Caan at the mercy of a woman (played by Kathy Bates who will later win an Oscar for her role here). Misery is actually used as a metaphor here – misery representing James Caan’s character Paul Sheldon’s disbelief in his situation; and Misery being the name of a character that Paul Sheldon has written off. Kathy is a psychotic fan of Misery and to watch her being killed by Paul Sheldon seems unbearable for her. Thus, she desperately forces Paul Sheldon to resurrect her character and Paul Sheldon’s misery begins.

TRIVIA:

Jack Nicholson was offered the role of Paul Sheldon but passed because he wasn’t sure he wanted to do another movie based on one of Stephen King’s novels after what he had experienced with Stanley Kubrick on The Shining (1980)

The Green Mile is excruciatingly more than three hours long. It is intentionally made that way by the director not to bore us but so we can relate how excruciatingly long the characters are in walking through the green mile. The Green Mile mentioned in the movie is actually the path where a death row inmate must walk from his cell to the execution chamber (which is colored green.) It also represents “the long green mile of life” that Tom Hanks’s character must undergo as a punishment for executing a wrongly convicted man. (Tom Hanks’s character is already 104 years old in the last scenes of the movie; he has witnessed the deaths of so many loved ones and has longed wishing for his own to come.)

The Langoliers follows the story of passengers who succumb to nothingness in mid-flight. Sure, we literally see nothing when you’re 37,000 feet up in the air but in this made-for-TV movie, passengers of the plane discovered that they’re actually traveling in oblivion. In this Stephen King thriller starring a very capable David Morse, the passengers on the plane discovered that they were left behind by time. They landed at an airport (in this case, Bangor International in Maine , in ode to Stephen King’s hometown) to discuss among themselves on how to address their situation. While discussing, time-driven creatures called the langoliers literally ate everything in their path, including the airport pavement. In the nick of time, the plane crew and passengers discovered a way to squirm themselves out of the time black hole.

The Wedding Singer is one memorable movie by Adam Sandler because of that immortal acapella song I Wanna Grow Old With You which has since become the anthem of lovers all around the world. The irony is that the song is not a cut from any album intended to be incorporated in a movie; it is one of those songs culled from a movie which becomes cult hits. Adam is so sweet in the scene where he sings the song, he asks the stewardess in a plane to lend her the PA system so he can sing the song to his girlfriend passenger (who is played by romance veteran Drew Barrymore.) Just a note though, I think Sandler sounded too good in this movie that this singing voice may not be purely his. But who cares?

Of all the cheesy movies Adam Sandler has done, this probably tops the list of “most memorable”. oohhhh Words are not enough Here, have a glimpse of the romantic (tear-jerker for hopeless romantics) airplane scene:

Adam Sandler here takes care of a kid to impress his girlfriend. This would have been one ideal movie for people to view and learn some lessons except it is not. Invectives hurled in this movie border an PG 13 rating and Adam Sandler teaches his adopted kid lots of mischievousness that I pity the kid because I’m pretty sure he will really wind up incarcerated someday. For example, Adam Sandler shows to his adopted kid angrily throwing fries of a customer at a McDonald’s when the joint didn’t serve them breakfast. He also urges his adopted kid to pee at the restaurant’s side door. That certainly is not comedy to me, not even a slapstick one. Regardless of how this movie is, there were still a few touching scenes between Sonny Koufax (Sandler) and the kid. It was still funny sometimes, and proved to be entertaining.

*Big Daddy grossed $163.4 million in the United States and $234.8 million total worldwide