Adventure

CASTAWAY (1999)

Starring: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy
The plot: Chuck Noland is a workaholic manager for the US international courier, FedEx. As he is having Christmas dinner with his family, his pager goes off and he is called to go and sort out some problems in Indonesia. Crossing the Pacific Ocean, there is an explosion in the plane just as it enters a nasty storm. After some frightening moments, Chuck finds himself adrift in a raft on a stormy ocean. Later, he is washed up on a small island in the ocean, along with several packages from the doomed plane and a dead pilot. This is the tale of Chuck struggling to survive - and find a reason to survive - on an island in the middle of nowhere...
Comment: A truly thought provoking movie which will probably make more than one person wish to rush out on a survival course... Although you would suspect a story about a lone man stranded on an island would have to be one of the dullest films ever made, William Broyles Jr has written a compelling script that never drags. Instead of assaulting the audience with neverending action sequences, this movie assault the audience with many issues most will never address, holding you enthralled in your seat as you wonder how Chuck will survive - and at the same time, wonder how you would feel if in his position... Tom Hanks is marvelous in this role - truly showing how far he has come since Splash and The Money Pit. It is hard to imagine a lot of actors being able to pull difficult role off. Some would say he didn't speak much - I would put it to you, could you entertain an audience for 90 minutes (the film is longer) without uttering more than about 30 sentences???? This is a must see movie - particularly for anyone who wishes to be really entertained - and leave still thinking about the issues raised afterwards.
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JURASSIC PARK III (2001)

Starring: Sam Neill, Tea Leoni, William H. Macy
The plot: Dr Grant, one of the palaeontologists bought to view the dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park movie, is dragged out to play tour guide to an aerial tour of Isla Sorna for adventure seeking couple, Paul and Amanda Kirby. However, once they are flying over the island, Grant finds that the Kirby's actually have a different agenda, and part of it seems to be landing on the island. However, Grant is not to comfortable about landing on an island filled with genetically engineered dinosaurs and so is understandably, knocked out. When he comes to, he finds the party are doing everything possible to attract a dinosaur or two to their presence...
Comment: Although this was nowhere near as bad as expected, it does suffer very badly from the original surprise element completely absent. This movie would have been just as perfect at home as a TV series as on the big screen - except it might have been better suited for the small screen... All the cast did their best to liven up a listless script and if they started to get bogged down in, then the special effects team came to the rescue. But at the end of the day, you can't help but hope that this will be the last of the series. Certainly, the extremely abrupt way in which the film was wrapped up might indicate even the script writers were suddenly exhausted of finding new ways to create nasty encounters between humans and dinosaurs. And of course, its only been 5 years, but the dinosaurs appear to have been through several generations of breeding as their markings have all changed - as have their behaviours (which reflects developments in real world understanding of dinosaurs) - which doesn't make for consistency between movies...
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	An absolute sizzler of a movie - A must see!
	A scorcher of a good movie; still capable of riveting you to your seat
	Low flame burner; a pleasant piece of mindless brain candy
	A fizzler of a movie which will have you counting zzzzzz's...