Forrest Gump

Starring:Tom Hanks, Sally Field
Studio: Paramount
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential video

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

Customer Reviews:

Heartwarming, deep and very, very funny. Forrest Gump is the Ultimate Movie........2007-07-04

The sweetest of love stories, philosophically profound, deep as the ocean and light as a feather... and very funny. Forrest Gump is the ultimate movie in so many ways, there are so many sides to it. It's predominantly a `serious' film about a dim headed, yet good hearted southern boy and how the absence of a dysfunctional ego and a simple sense of honor and integrity enables him to flow through life effortlessly, like the metaphor of the white feather we see at the beginning and the end of the film.

Forrest Gump is a masterfully written and directed tale that punctuates deep philosophical substance with a good deal of humor -the scene of Forrest and Bubba scrubbing the floor with toothbrushes while Bubba enlightens Forrest on the details of `shrimping' is just too funny for words. There's never been a film like it before or since. It ingeniously weaves the history of a generation into the script, taking scenes from the Vietnam war, JFK, the 60's protest movement and flower power, and onward into the age of AIDS. Actual film clippings from various historical events are cleverly edited to enable Forrest to step into them and interact. Wonderful Stuff... it's kind of a nod to the `Wonder Years'.

As richly entertaining as Forrest's life is, and as very funny as many of the scenes are, it's still the character of Forrest that carries the move. He's impossible not to like. You become significantly invested in his life. You share his heartbreak as Jenny repeated shuns the open heart he offers her. And you admire his quiet acceptance of 'what is'. His lack of self consciousness - devoid of the myriad games and manipulations that most people of `greater intelligence' display -his simple open heartedness and sense of personal integrity which he carries through life are inspirational. This clearly is a story that shows the ultimate triumph of virtue over the complex dysfunctions of the mind. Jenny plays out a sad character... always looking somewhere else for love, although she finds it on her death bed And Lt. Dan is just an awesome character. His 360 degree turn through what life deals him is as inspirational as Forrest's.

The closing scene is the most memorable for me... the feather floats in the random breeze, as Forrest muses about predestination vs random existence: " I think it's both... both happening at the same time." - which leads me to believe our beloved Forrest isn't as dumb as he's portrayed.

Forrest Gump a hero for our times.......2007-06-28

Forrest Gump is a greatlook at the 60s and 70s. Tom Hanks is the most likable actor from his generation. Forrest Gump may seem dumb but he mostly makes sense. Forrest Gump has a good heart and guts, his life is a good full life. Forrest Gump is one of the best characters in movie history. This movie is everything its supposed to be.

Forrest Gump.......2007-06-27

It is one of the greatest movies than I've ever seen BUT it doesn't have spanish subtitles.

a spiritually and intellectually bankrupt enterprise.......2007-06-15

This movie celebrates one of the worst possible perspectives on life and does it by exploiting all of the good will and energy of music of the Woodstock generation. Think about it: Tom Hanks portrays a pure innocent who presumably is to be seen as an American Buddha -- detached from everything except pure love. Meanwhile, Robin Wright Penn is portrayed as an idiot because she invests herself in silly causes such as opposing the Vietnam War. We are manipulated into sympathizing with the figure who remains utterly detached from life instead of the figure who cares about the world around her.

Meanwhile, we are further manipulated by a soundtrack carefully assembled so as to have us associate all the good feelings and hopes connected to the songs with what we are watching: a phenomenal bit of film making that successfully transposes the audiences associations with the highest ideals of the sixties and seventies on a film that belittles commitments to those beliefs.

This is a truly insidious, reactionary piece of work. At the end of the movie, "Nashville," Robert Altman cleverly decries the ease by which an audience can be seduced into acquiescing to feel-good nihilism by having everyone leave the theater singing "You may say that I ain't free, it don't worry me." with gospel abandon. The raves that the movie Forest Gump got proves Altman's point.

No one can deny that this movie is a well made film with some sweet and wonderful performances. But, at its core, it is spiritually bankrupt. While it is not as powerful a film as "Triumph of the Will" and the "philosophy" it attempts to manipulate the audience into buying isn't as remotely evil as that of Leni R's patrons, it is nonetheless of that ilk -- a successful attempt to bypass the audience's frontal lobe.

Forrest Gumpism.......2007-05-13

My boys asked me for this. They loved it. It is on TV all of the time but they still wanted the video.

Best Picture Collection (American Beauty / Braveheart / Forrest Gump / Gladiator / The Godfather / Titanic / Terms of Endearment)

Average customer rating:

Outstanding
Buy it Used, if possible.
Collection of modern best picture winners that actually made money

Best Picture Collection (American Beauty / Braveheart / Forrest Gump / Gladiator / The Godfather / Titanic / Terms of Endearment)
Starring: Best Picture Collection
Manufacturer: Paramount
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Action & Adventure | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( B ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Action & Adventure | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video

Drama | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video

Best Picture Oscar Collection (18-Pack)
Studio Classics - Best Picture Collection (Sunrise / How Green Was My Valley / Gentleman's Agreement / All About Eve)
The Godfather, Part II (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition)
The Godfather, Part III (Widescreen Edition)
The Green Mile

ASIN: B000L43PLQ
Release Date: 2007-02-06

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Braveheart
Mel Gibson's Oscar-winning 1995 Braveheart is an impassioned epic about William Wallace, the 13th-century Scottish leader of a popular revolt against England's tyrannical Edward I (Patrick McGoohan). Gibson cannily plays Wallace as a man trying to stay out of history's way until events force his hand, an attribute that instantly resonates with several of the actor's best-known roles, especially Mad Max. The subsequent camaraderie and courage Wallace shares in the field with fellow warriors is pure enough and inspiring enough to bring envy to a viewer, and even as things go wrong for Wallace in the second half, the film does not easily cave in to a somber tone. One of the most impressive elements is the originality with which Gibson films battle scenes, featuring hundreds of extras wielding medieval weapons. After Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight, and even Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, you might think there is little new that could be done ! in creating scenes of ancient combat; yet Gibson does it. --Tom Keogh

American Beauty
From its first gliding aerial shot of a generic suburban street, American Beauty moves with a mesmerizing confidence and acuity epitomized by Kevin Spacey's calm narration. Spacey is Lester Burnham, a harried Everyman whose midlife awakening is the spine of the story, and his very first lines hook us with their teasing fatalism--like Sunset Boulevard's Joe Gillis, Burnham tells us his story from beyond the grave. It's an audacious start for a film that justifies that audacity. Weaving social satire, domestic tragedy, and whodunit into a single package, Alan Ball's first theatrical script dares to blur generic lines and keep us off balance, winking seamlessly from dark, scabrous comedy to deeply moving drama. The Burnham family joins the cinematic short list of great dysfunctional American families, as Lester is pitted against his manic, materialistic realtor wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening, making the most of a mostly unsympathetic role) and his sullen, contemptuous tee! naged daughter, Jane (Thora Birch, utterly convincing in her edgy balance of self-absorption and wistful longing). Into their lives come two catalytic outsiders. A young cheerleader (Mena Suvari) jolts Lester into a sexual epiphany that blooms into a second adolescence. And an eerily calm young neighbor (Wes Bentley) transforms both Lester and Jane with his canny influence. Credit another big-screen newcomer, English theatrical director Sam Mendes, with expertly juggling these potentially disjunctive elements into a superb ensemble piece that achieves a stylized pace without lapsing into transparent self-indulgence. Mendes has shrewdly insured his success with a solid crew of stage veterans, yet he's also made an inspired discovery in Bentley, whose Ricky Fitts becomes a fulcrum for both plot and theme. Cinematographer Conrad Hall's sumptuous visual design further elevates the film, infusing the beige interiors of the Burnhams' lives with vivid bursts of deep crimson, the c! olor of roses--and of blood. --Sam Sutherland

Gladiator
A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes moviemaking back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marveling at the glory that was Rome, when you're not marveling at the glory that is Russell Crowe. Starring as the heroic general Maximus, Crowe firmly cements his star status both in terms of screen presence and acting chops, carrying the film on his decidedly non-computer-generated shoulders as he goes from brave general to wounded fugitive to stoic slave to gladiator hero. Gladiator's plot is a whirlwind of faux-Shakespearean machinations of death, betrayal, power plays, and secret identities (with lots of faux-Shakespearean dialogue ladled on to keep the proceedings appropriately "classical"), ! but it's all briskly shot, edited, and paced with a contemporary sensibility. Even the action scenes, somewhat muted but graphic in terms of implied violence and liberal bloodletting, are shot with a veracity that brings to mind--believe it or not--Saving Private Ryan, even if everyone is wearing a toga. As Crowe's nemesis, the evil emperor Commodus, Joaquin Phoenix chews scenery with authority, whether he's damning Maximus's popularity with the Roman mobs or lusting after his sister Lucilla (beautiful but distant Connie Nielsen); Oliver Reed, in his last role, hits the perfect notes of camp and gravitas as the slave owner who rescues Maximus from death and turns him into a coliseum star. Director Scott's visual flair is abundantly in evidence, with breathtaking shots and beautiful (albeit digital) landscapes, but it's Crowe's star power that will keep you in thrall--he's a true gladiator, worthy of his legendary status. Hail the conquering hero! --Mark Englehart

Terms of Endearment
Larry McMurtry's novel becomes a somewhat lumpy film as directed by James L. Brooks (As Good As It Gets). Nevertheless, it is entirely winning, with Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger playing a combative mother and daughter who see each other through various ups and downs in love and loss, and most especially through a terminal illness endured by Winger's character. Jack Nicholson deservedly won an Oscar for his supporting role as a free-spirited astronaut who backs away from a romance with MacLaine and then returns in the clutch. As he always does, Brooks keeps things from getting too soapy with his intense concentration on the soulful evolution of his characters. --Tom Keogh

The Godfather
Generally acknowledged as a bona fide classic, this Francis Ford Coppola film is one of those rare experiences that feels perfectly right from beginning to end--almost as if everyone involved had been born to participate in it. Based on Mario Puzo's bestselling novel about a Mafia dynasty, Coppola's Godfather extracted and enhanced the most universal themes of immigrant experience in America: the plotting-out of hopes and dreams for one's successors, the raising of children to carry on the good work, etc. In the midst of generational strife during the Vietnam years, the film somehow struck a chord with a nation fascinated by the metamorphosis of a rebellious son (Al Pacino) into the keeper of his father's dream. Marlon Brando played against Puzo's own conception of patriarch Vito Corleone, and time has certainly proven the actor correct. The rest of the cast, particularly James Caan, John Cazale, and Robert Duvall as the rest of Vito's male brood--all coping with how ! to take the mantle of responsibility from their father--is seamless and wonderful. --Tom Keogh

Titanic
When the theatrical release of James Cameron's Titanic was delayed from July to December of 1997, media pundits speculated that Cameron's $200-million disaster epic would cause the director's downfall, signal the end of the blockbuster era, and sink Paramount Pictures as quickly as the ill-fated luxury liner had sunk on that fateful night of April 14, 1912. Titanic would surpass the $1-billion mark in global box-office receipts, win 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Director, launch the best-selling movie soundtrack of all time, and make a global superstar of Leonardo DiCaprio. A bona fide pop-cultural phenomenon, the film has all the ingredients of a blockbuster (romance, passion, luxury, grand scale, a snidely villain, and an epic, life-threatening crisis), but Cameron's alchemy of these ingredients proved more popular than anyone could have predicted. His stroke of genius was to combine absolute authenticity with a pair of fictional lovers whose tragic f! ate would draw viewers into the heart-wrenching reality of the Titanic disaster. As starving artist Jack Dawson and soon-to-be-married socialite Rose DeWitt Bukater, DiCaprio and Kate Winslet won the hearts of viewers around the world, and their brief, but never forgotten, love affair provides the humanity that Cameron needed to turn Titanic into a moving emotional experience. Although some of the computer-generated visual effects look artificial, others--such as the climactic splitting of the ship's sinking hull--are state-of-the-art marvels of cinematic ingenuity. It's an event film and a monument to Cameron's risk-taking audacity, blending the tragic irony of the Titanic disaster with just enough narrative invention to give the historical event its fullest and most timeless dramatic impact. --Jeff Shannon

Forrest Gump
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

Description

This giftset includes 7 movies that have all won an oscar for Best Picture. The boxset includes American Beauty, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Gladiator, The Godfather, Titanic, and Terms of Endearment.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding.......2007-06-16

This package of Best Pictures is definitely a great buy. You can not beat the price for this package of first rate movies that any two would easily cost. Not to be missed.

Buy it Used, if possible........2007-03-07

A great buy for 20 bucks used! Bare boned releases with few extras except Forrest Gump, which is the 2 disc version. All of the films are 16 X 9 enhanced for widescreen EXCEPT Titanic! Very annoying!!

Collection of modern best picture winners that actually made money.......2007-02-01

It's rare these days for the Oscar winner for Best Picture to be something that actually drew a sizable audience. This is a pretty good collection of seven more modern movies that did just that.

"The Godfather", the oldest of the bunch (1972), holds up the best over time. In cinematography, casting, acting, and plot it is simply perfect. "Terms of Endearment" (1983) is a different kind of mother/daughter story than you usually see on screen - the kind where the mother holds the daughter in only "medium esteem". "Forrest Gump" (1994) just defies categorization. Forrest is a zen-like character with limited intelligence who manages to stumble into every major world event of his lifetime and come out on top. Even though it was adapted from a popular novel, on film it could have as easily bombed as it could have been the blockbuster it became. "Braveheart" (1995) is a great film about man's desire for freedom trumping everything else, even his desire to live.

1997's "Titanic" made the most money and won many Academy awards that year, but personally, I feel as time passes, it will probably be considered one of the cheesier films to win the Academy's highest honor. Director James Cameron's message of rich equals shallow and bored, poor equals fulfilled and happy just seems more and more simplistic and, quite frankly, sappy as I grow more accustomed to the film's tremendous special effects. 1999's "American Beauty", about the last year of life of a man in a dysfunctional family seemed OK when I first saw it, but you really have to have seen Alan Ball's series "Six Feet Under" to really get it. Ball writes the best dysfunctional characters since David Lynch. I thought "Gladiator" (2000) was indeed a great picture, and although Russell Crowe's Maximus comes to life to the point where some people actually believe he is a historical figure from the Roman Empire, I still think Tom Hanks was unfairly passed over for Best Actor in his tremendous performance in "Castaway".

These films don't really have any one theme in common, other than being a collection of seven of the better modern films to win the Academy's highest honors that also achieved blockbuster status. It really is a good value and I highly recommend it. All films included are the widescreen editions, but there are no extras worth mentioning except for the two-disc edition of Forrest Gump.

Charlie Rose with Tom Hanks (December 23, 2002)

Average customer rating:

Charlie Rose with Tom Hanks (December 23, 2002)

Manufacturer: Charlie Rose, Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

General | Educational | Genres | DVD | Video

Description

Actor and producer Tom Hanks discusses his career and his most recent role in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, which also stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Walken.

Average customer rating:

Charlie Rose (July 22, 1998)

Manufacturer: Charlie Rose Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Description

First, Frank Deford of HBO Sports and Sports Illustrated, Roger Angell of The New Yorker, and George Will, author of "Bunts", discuss the renaissance of American baseball and the excitement of the home-run record race.||Then, Tom Hanks continues his two-part discussion of his recent successes, Forrest Gump and Philadelphia, and the new Spielberg movie Saving Private Ryan.||Finally, a rebroadcast of a tribute to Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut launched into space and one of the only men to step foot on the moon (from July 20, 1994).

Charlie Rose with Dan Rather; Robert Zemeckis (October 13, 1994)

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Charlie Rose with Dan Rather; Robert Zemeckis (October 13, 1994)

Manufacturer: Charlie Rose
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Description

First, CBS News anchor Dan Rather discusses his experiences in Haiti and Iraq, and his new book The Camera Never Blinks Twice, part two of a trilogy about his life in broadcasting. Then, director Robert Zemeckis talks about forming a new studio with Steven Spielberg, his career and the success of Forrest Gump.

Charlie Rose with Tom Hanks (December 22, 2000)

Average customer rating:

Charlie Rose with Tom Hanks (December 22, 2000)

Manufacturer: Charlie Rose, Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

General | Educational | Genres | DVD | Video

Description

Actor Tom Hanks discusses his latest movie, Cast Away, directed by Robert Zemeckis and about a man marooned on an island for four years, his prolific film career and what's in store for the future.

Average customer rating:

Heartwarming, deep and very, very funny. Forrest Gump is the Ultimate Movie.
Forrest Gump a hero for our times
Forrest Gump
a spiritually and intellectually bankrupt enterprise
Forrest Gumpism

Forrest Gump [Region 2]
Starring: Tom Hanks , Robin Wright Penn , Gary Sinise , Mykelti Williamson , and Sally Field
Director: Robert Zemeckis
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

( F ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Braveheart
Saving Private Ryan (Special Limited Edition)
Rain Man (Special Edition)
The Shawshank Redemption (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Schindler's List (Widescreen Edition)

ASIN: B00005NFXI

Amazon.com essential video

Customer Reviews:

Heartwarming, deep and very, very funny. Forrest Gump is the Ultimate Movie........2007-07-04

Forrest Gump a hero for our times.......2007-06-28

Forrest Gump.......2007-06-27

It is one of the greatest movies than I've ever seen BUT it doesn't have spanish subtitles.

a spiritually and intellectually bankrupt enterprise.......2007-06-15

Forrest Gumpism.......2007-05-13

My boys asked me for this. They loved it. It is on TV all of the time but they still wanted the video.

Average customer rating:

Charlie Rose

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Description

First, Janet Maslin, chief film critic for The New York Times; Susan Lyne, editor of Premiere magazine; David Denby of New York magazine; and Stephen Schiff of National Public Radio and The New Yorker discuss the Academy Awards. Films discussed include Forrest Gump and Quiz Show. Then, a conversation with Bill Walsh, former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. Finally, a conversation about philanthropy in America.

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Forrest Gump [HD DVD]

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: HD DVD

General | HD DVD | Formats | DVD | Video
ASIN: B000NU2GU4

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Charlie Rose (January 12, 2001)

Manufacturer: Charlie Rose Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Description

In this rebroadcasted conversation from December 22, 2000, actor Tom Hanks discusses his latest movie, "Cast Away", his prolific film career, and what's in store for the future. In "Cast Away", Hanks plays a man marooned on an island for four years. The film is directed by Robert Zemeckis.

DVD:

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