Word: lennon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...good man to know. The lieutenant (whose injury remains a focus of fascination, if only because Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas' special-effects house, did such a great job "erasing" his legs in subsequent scenes) actually gets off easy. Gump walks between the bombs: everyone else, whether famous (John Lennon, George Wallace) or intimate (Jenny), gets hit. Assassination, cancer, AIDS: surely Forrest would not have wanted it scripted that way. But he's not the screenwriter. As it is, after each death Tom Hanks stares petulantly into the distance: "And that's all I'm gonna say about that...
...Wright). He goes to war with one friend, a young black man (Mykelti Williamson) dreaming of shrimp boats, and comes home with another, career soldier Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise). And wherever he is, he bumps into famous people: George Wallace and Richard Nixon, J.F.K. and L.B.J., Elvis and John Lennon (all integrated onscreen with Hanks through ingenious special effects). Almost everyone Forrest knows dies. He survives, through his goodness and the miracle of idiot grace...
...conservatism: not only Reaganomics but what Republicans might call Reaganethics. He's E.T. with a little Gandhi thrown in. He's Candide making the best of the worst of all possible worlds. And in his influence on events, from the capture of the Watergate burglars to John Lennon's composition of the song Imagine, he seems almost omnipotent. All-innocent and all-powerful, the ideal guru for the nervous '90s: Forrest...
Forrest Gump is nobody special, but he meets special people. In his 30-year odyssey through recent American history, this crippled Alabama lad with a 75 IQ bumps into Elvis and John Lennon, J.F.K. and L.B.J., Nixon and Mao. Forrest is an innocent on loan to a cynical world, and in the movie bearing his name he would make little sense if he were played by anyone but Tom Hanks...
Backbeat has an attractive cast and a passionate rock-'n'-roll score (played by some top young musicians). But with its attention to the posturings of Lennon and the untalented Stu, the movie succumbs to the post-Madonna notion that pop success is all a matter of attitude. That's so misguided. If you have any doubt, listen to the songs...