The second Crichton film I saw recently was the movie Coma (1978) it was not written by Crichton but was directed by him and based on the best selling novel of the same name. When patients go in for routine surgeries but come out in Comas, a doctor grows suspicious and does some investigating of her own. The cast was great featuring Richard Widmark and a young Michael Douglas, Ed Harris, and Tom Sellick. This one is a little slow and boring at times (the majority of the film has no musical score), and the plot can be fairly predictable at times as well (it's really similar to a film called Green for Danger [1946]) but production value is top notch (cinematography, editing, acting, what music there actually is, etc.). The film wasn't as futuristic as Looker, but it was interesting and believable in the sense that corrupt crooked things happen by those you should trust quite often (i.e.rarely trust the government, stuff like that ). I give this a 3.75/5. Also in case you can't tell what's in the background of the image up top, there's another view of it above to the left. Though a lot can be predicted about this movie, it does have a surprise or two so I will not explain the image or any more about the film. View trailer below:
I always enjoy Michael Crichton's films, he's one of my favorite sci-fi writers, and this film is written and directed by him. This movie stars Albert Finney (Big Fish, Murder on the Orient Express) and academy award winner James Coburn (The Great Escape, Monsters Inc.). The film is a futuristic dystopian thriller (like a lot of Crichton's work), where a plastic surgeon (Finney) learns that the last four patients he operated on have all died mysteriously, so tries to find a connection btween the deaths, and it leads him to a shady corporation. This film deals with such
themes as the media's concept of what the perfect woman looks like, and some women's obsession with wanting to look perfect. The film also deals with the concept of computers eventually replacing people (in this film they do so just in TV commercials), hypnotism through electronic signals sent out through commercials, and a gun that causes "invisibility" with a seemingly plausible explanation (something to do with the gun shooting beams of light that are part of the light/color spectrum that we humans can't see, that block certain
receptors in your eyes for a short period of time). There is a great scene where Finney gets beat up by an invisible assailant. The film is a really great thriller with great acting, music, special effects and is marvelously well written and so believable (like all of Crichtons work) that part of it has become actuality today.The only thing that might bother people is that the aspect of the story where a computer can make a replica of a person, or measure one's exact eye movements has already come true, so that may make the film seem dated to some, but to me it's a reminder of how crazy the technology we have nowadays, and that maybe the invisibility and hypnosis aspects of the story aren't too far away from becoming reality. I give the film a 5/5 and highly recommend it. You can find the full movie on youtube here, and the trailer is below:
The second Crichton film I saw recently was the movie Coma (1978) it was not written by Crichton but was directed by him and based on the best selling novel of the same name. When patients go in for routine surgeries but come out in Comas, a doctor grows suspicious and does some investigating of her own. The cast was great featuring Richard Widmark and a young Michael Douglas, Ed Harris, and Tom Sellick. This one is a little slow and boring at times (the majority of the film has no musical score), and the plot can be fairly predictable at times as well (it's really similar to a film called Green for Danger [1946]) but production value is top notch (cinematography, editing, acting, what music there actually is, etc.). The film wasn't as futuristic as Looker, but it was interesting and believable in the sense that corrupt crooked things happen by those you should trust quite often (i.e.rarely trust the government, stuff like that ). I give this a 3.75/5. Also in case you can't tell what's in the background of the image up top, there's another view of it above to the left. Though a lot can be predicted about this movie, it does have a surprise or two so I will not explain the image or any more about the film. View trailer below:
