patriciaaniston
Barry Levinson's Rainman is a good but not great film and I feel its kinda overrated. It is a good, solid feature film but certainly not worthy of best picture. Furthermore with the passage of time we have seen that the autistic portrayal here is kinda skewed to put it mildly. However, having said this it is a good film featuring a great performance by Dustin Hoffman who won an Oscar for his portrayal of an autistic brother to Tom Cruise's straight man. Regardless, this is a good watch, if for nothing else then for the fact that it won many awards.
rabbitmoon
After all these years, Rain Man is compellingly watchable, and refreshingly well acted and written. The character of Charlie Babbitt is complex and deeply fascinating - a generally decent, loving guy buried with anger, a need to prove himself, and a reservoir of resentment from feeling unloved. He's an archetype for the Fight Club generation, and played to absolute perfection by Tom Cruise in what is surely his best role. I can't think of a modern young actor who could play this role as well as he does - Cumberbatch, Matthew Goode, Gosling, Reynolds - they just don't have that same fiery intensity and nuance. You can see Cruise thinking while someone else is talking. I actually didn't care too much for Hoffman's performance, its a tough one but more of a caricature once he's in that zone (a bit like Franco impersonating Tommy Wiseau). Anyway, back to the film. Generally brilliant, some excellent scenes, and a really classy opening. I feel it becomes a bit incongruent towards the end though. First Charlie exploits Raymond's skill at the casino, making back the money he needs (this is supposed to be a happy solution for Charlie, despite being against the film's supposed moral backbone). Valerie Golino then basically goes completely against her strong morals by somehow making her way to Vegas and finding Charlie again, just because she's out of a job. What was she hoping for? The one guy who's selfishness and neglect just lost her a job.. and she goes right back to him. Then, she sexually assaults ol' Raymond in an elevator. Then they let him DRIVE A CAR out in public, lolling as he crashes over curbs. This is all just before Charlie has his little discussion with the care home manager, where he doesn't listen AT ALL to what the guy is saying and is being more flippant and obtuse than he has been throughout the whole film. Its a strange unravelling of what the set up had promised, and I felt it could have been written so much better. It just felt rushed (and directed without any finesse).
classicsoncall
This picture cracks me up every time I watch it. The toothpick scene in the diner is simply classic to me, topped off by that 'four left in the box' admission by the waitress."I've got Jeopardy at five o'clock" would have been my summary line under normal circumstances for this film, but this wasn't an ordinary movie. When Charlie Babbit (Tom Cruise) proclaims that he likes having Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) as his big brother, it was the completion of a transformation that gradually occurred over the course of the story. Cruise's character starts out in the story as a scheming, money worshiping egomaniac, and is subtly moved to accept and love an autistic brother he never knew he had. One probably has to suspend some disbelief over that circumstance, but the way it's explained in the story makes the idea at least somewhat plausible. The revelation of Raymond as the 'Rain Man' is one of the movie's great creative touches.I know this, I would love to have been on the set while this picture was filming, just to see what outtakes never made it into the picture because of Hoffman's unique ability to portray the type of character Raymond was. But even better, I would have enjoyed seeing Hoffman stay in character off set to bedevil his co-star with repeated clueless observations that would have driven Tom Cruise crazy for real. Can you just picture it? "I've got Jeopardy at five o'clock".
skyfall-33402
Trailer: Terrible Movie: AmazingThe trailer is so bad, that I almost didn't want to watch it. I am 12, so I recently just watched it about a month or two ago. It is one of Tom Cruise's best films. It also won the Oscar for best picture. And it deserved it. It's about a man named Charlie Babbit, who goes on a road trip across America, with his brother he never knew he had. Although, his brother has autism.
AD
