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FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR - VIDEO REVIEW

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Here's the video version of my Flight Of The Navigator review.

EXPLORERS - REVIEW

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Directed by Joe Dante, Explorers is a very Spielbergian sci-fi 80's film starring a young Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix as two of three kids who, following some rather abstract Tron -like recurring dreams, discover a way to potentially travel inside some kind of glass bubble they manage to control. The film was rushed into theatres back in 1985, much to Dante's distaste, and it was a flop at the box-office but it's since enjoyed a cult following and, with the popularity of the nostalgia-celebrating series Stranger Things , it's likely even more people will discover or re-discover this little film. The kids, who often communicate with walkie-talkies, are exactly the types you'd expect: Wolfgang is the nerdy one (Phoenix), Darren is the tough one (played by Jason Presson) and Ben is the imaginative one (Hawke). They are bullied at school, of course, and their home lives aren't exactly a joy so when they find this mysterious bubble, they soon decide to build

SPHERE - REVIEW

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Based on a Michael Crichton novel, Sphere was a 1998 sci-fi film about a team of experts in various fields exploring some crashed underwater spaceship. Directed by Barry Levinson, the film boasts an all-star cast with Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Peter Coyote and Liev Schreiber all being part of the main team. Sphere is a psychological thriller that's a bit like a cross between The Abyss , Event Horizon , The Thing and Alien as the more the selected experts investigate the spaceship, the creepier the tone of the film becomes. Eventually, characters start dropping like flies as various unexpected threats start popping up randomly from killer jellyfish to giant squids. The discovery of a gold alien sphere in the middle of the spaceship leads to growing paranoia among the crew and various twists and turns. There are references here and there to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and, indeed, the film attempts to capture the book's sense of adventure and cla

FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR - REVIEW

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Back when E.T. was all the rage and a few copycat movies quickly followed from *batteries not included to Mac And Me , Flight Of The Navigator came out and it was obviously seen as not much more than yet another E.T. rip-off. Luckily, the film was also all kinds of great and arguably even better than Spielberg's movie in some ways. The film opens with a montage showing dogs catching, or rather attempting to catch, frisbees in what is both a completely irrelevant and completely wonderful opening title sequence. Initially set in the 70's, the plot sees a kid, David (Joey Cramer), wander into the woods at night only to slip and fall before waking up 8 years later in the same spot. Meanwhile, NASA come face to face with a silver, very light walnut-shaped UFO and try to keep the discovery under wraps. That is, until David's mysterious disappearance turns out to be related to that UFO somehow by which point NASA promptly "invites" the boy over for a couple of d