Product Description

AN ALIEN AND A YOUNG WOMAN FALL IN LOVE ON THEIR WAY TO MEET HIS SPACESHIP.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6066 in DVD
• Brand: SONY PICTURES HOME ENT
• Released on: 1998-08-25
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 115 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
While most movie buffs are likely to call Halloween the best movie from John Carpenter, others--die-hard romantics and anyone who cried while watching E.T.--might vote in favor of the director's 1984 hit Starman. It's easily Carpenter's warmest and most beguiling film, and the only one that ever earned an Oscar nomination. That honor went specifically to Best Actor nominee Jeff Bridges for his performance as an alien visitor to Earth who is knocked off course and must take an interstate road trip to rendezvous with a mothership from his home planet. To complete this journey he assumes the physical form of the dead husband of a Wisconsin widow (Karen Allen) who responds first with fear, then sympathy, and finally love. Carpenter's graceful strategy is to switch the focus of this E.T.-like film from science fiction to a gentle road-movie love story, made believable by the memorable performances of Bridges and Allen. It's a bit heavy-handed with tenacious government agents who view the Starman as an alien threat (don't they always?), but Carpenter handles the action with intelligent flair, sensitivity, and lighthearted humor. If you're not choked up during the final scene, well, you just might not be human. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Great movie--revised review for Blu-ray. Looks great but lazy effort from Sony in every other area
Movie-5 stars, extras 0 stars, tranfer for Blu-ray (anamorphic widescreen I might add) 4 stars


Really what is Columbia thinking? "Starman" is one of John Carpenter's finest films with an Oscar nominated performance by Jeff Bridges, a moving score by Jack Nitsche and a clever, thoughtful script that takes the same themes as Spielberg's "E.T." and develops them better. We get no extras. Nada. Nothing. We also get to pay a fairly hefty amount for the Blu-ray (it's retailed at $29.00). Warner does a better copy of releasing their Blu-rays. Heck, even Fox and Universal have been making an effort to do a decent job with their films and TV shows on Blu-ray of late. "Starman" on Blu-ray is at least in widescreen and has a nice presentation with nice detail.

Sony didn't really have to do much. England got a DVD edition of this with a commentary by John Carpenter. All they had to do was port that version over for this edition and throw on the original promotional featurette made back in the day. It wouldn't have been hard. Don't get me wrong, this is a terrific movie and it looks great but it's a LOUSY effort on behalf of Sony. That's surprising given that they won the format war. You'd expect a better effort than this truly lazy package.


What can you do? I suppose write Sony or wait to see if the UK version has the commentary track and other extras ported over to the Blu-ray. Since it'll be region free buy that. If you must buy this cheap edition of the film try and pay as little as possible as this nearly bare bones (it has BD Live capacity and-whoopee!--trailers) editon of an exceptional film SHOULD retail at about $15.99 for what we get.

Impossible not to like--a love story with a twist.
This film is simply impossible not to like. Jeff Bridges is unforgettable as an alien from an incomparably advanced race who is stranded on Earth (after taking human form) and seeking to return to his own civilization, and his excellent performance as such earned him an Oscar nomination. He really gets into the role, and plays it to perfection. His gestures and mannerisms as the alien trying to understand human beings are uncannily plausible. Karen Allen is also superb in her role as an ordinary human being caught up in the struggle between Bridges, seeking to escape the Earth, and those darned nasty Big Government agents who fear the alien and seek to capture and destroy him. Darned gummint, isn't that just like them?

There are few special effects in the movie, and none are needed--this is a movie that gets through by sheer excellent storytelling and wonderful acting by Bridges and Allen. It manages to be touching without being sappy, and although our human government is viewed as being narrow-minded and overly paranoid, the alien in the end forms a high and joyous opinion of mankind, which I found uplifting and optimistic.

Well worth watching and owning.

Fantastic, Funny and Very Touching
I first saw this movie way back in 1985 and at that time I thought it was fantastic, better than ET (hugely overrated).

Well, time has not diminshed this feeling and after recently purchasing the DVD I can only say that it's still just as good.

Jeff Bridges gives us a truly believable and touching performance, he was deservedly Oscar nominated and Karen Allen is simply gorgeous as the wide eyed widower who cannot quite believe what is happening to her. The two carry the film very well and the supporting cast especially Charles Martin Smith are also excellent.

The movie succeeds on just about every level, emotionally it's truly touching and scenes such as the deer outside the diner and when Karen Allen describes the definition of love are real chokers.

The gorgeous Arizona landscape looks sumptous and the filming overall is first rate, John Carpenter clearly demonstrates his mastery of filmmaking throughout every scene. Forget the fact that the special effects could have been better, hey this was 1984 and way before CGI overpowered us with overblown special effects. By contrast some movies made today are so full of totally unnecessary special effects that it's no longer clear whether what you are seeing is real or animated.

This movie doesn't need to rely on this level of interference, it works on an emotional and human level.

As a side note - some years ago my wife and I visited Meteor Crater near Winslow and we looked for the cafe where Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen and Charles Martin Smith played out the final scene but we couldn't find it, must have been created for the movie.

Anyway, all in all simply fantastic and easily one of my personal favourites.