Amazon.com Essentials:
The Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Best Director
Robert Zemeckis, and Best Actor Tom Hanks, this unlikely story of a
slow-witted but good-hearted man somehow at the center of the pivotal
events of the 20th century is a funny and heartwarming epic. Hanks
plays the title character, a shy Southern boy in love with his
childhood best friend (Robin Wright) who finds that his ability to run
fast takes him places. As an All-Star football player he meets John
F. Kennedy; as a soldier in Vietnam he's a war hero; and as a world champion Ping-Pong
player he's hailed by Richard Nixon. Becoming a successful shrimp-boat
captain, he still yearns for the love of his life, who takes a quite
different and much sadder path in life. The visual effects
incorporating Hanks into existing newsreel footage is both funny and
impressive, but the heart of the film lies in its sweet love story and
in the triumphant performance of Hanks as an unassuming soul who
savors the most from his life and times. --Robert Lane
Amazon.com video review:
Jumping on to the end-of-the-century bandwagon a little early,
Paramount Pictures released 10 of their top films in one 10-pack, the
Millennium Collection, in 1998. All the films are presented in their
widescreen editions; one, Breakfast at
Tiffany's, is offered in this format for the first time. The
set includes 5 Best Picture Oscar winners and films that took home an
additional 33 Academy Awards. All the tapes are available to buy
individually. The pack, with a handsome mosaic of faces from the
movies, also features collector gift cards (a movie version of
baseball cards) and a commemorative booklet detailing the productions
of all 10 films. The collection is oddly weighted toward the last 25
years, offering only one film from the 1950s and one from the
1960s. Your taste in current cinema will define the value of the
set. Besides Tiffany's, one of Audrey Hepburn's finest films,
the collection contains: The Ten Commandments
with Charlton Heston, Grease with John
Travolta, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and
The Godfather,
the funny, whale-saving Star Trek IV--The Voyage
Home, Tom Cruise's hit Top Gun, the smash
hit Ghost with
Demi Moore, Mel Gibson's Celt fest Braveheart, and Forrest Gump with
Tom Hanks. --Doug Thomas
