Tom Hanks Movie: *****Forrest Gump

 The classic movie for which Tom Hanks won the best actor Oscar.  This was his second such win.  The movie also won best picture and Joe Zemeckis best director.  Gary Sinise was nominated for best supporting actor.  The story takes lace on the bus bench as Forrest tells his story.

Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) has some intellectual issues in that his IQ is below 80, the cut off for regular school.  However his mother (Sally Fields) advocates for him and he goes to school.  Forrest has issues with his legs, but he out grows this and is actually very good at running.  He has to run away from the boys who bully him, and with the encouragement of Jenny (Robin Wright).  His running ability gets him through high school and college playing football and an All American.  He meets President Kennedy with the other All Americans. 

  He joins the military after college and goes to Viet Nam were he mets Lieutenant dan (Gary Sinise) and his friend Bubba (Mykelti Williamson).  Their unit is attacked, and Forrest runs away.  However he comes back and one by one takes the other soldiers and runs out with them.  This includes Lieutenant dan who wants to die like his ancestors.  He survives but loses his legs.  He does also find Bubba but Bubba does not survive.  He agrees to do shrimp fishing for Bubba.  Forrest was hit in the buttocks and lands in the hospital.  There he learns ping pong.  He is awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts, which he receives from President Johnson.

He is so good at ping pong he is part of the tour to China.  Completing his tour playing ping pong he again sees the resident, this time Nixon.  However at the hotel he complains of lights in the room across the way--Watergate.  He is also finagled into talking at an anti-war rally, and there he runs into Jenny again.  She is hanging with the wrong crowd, and her boyfriend treats her poorly.  She is with the Black Panthers.  

Forrest Gump then tries shrimp fishing.  He had money from a ping pong endorsement.  Lieutenant Dan joins him, and some how they make out good.  They invest the money in a fruit business Apple, and are set for life.  They even share with Bubba's mother.

At some point Bubba's mother dies, and Jenny comes to him.  They make love, but she doesn't want to marry.  Forrest goes on a run, and keeps running.  He is inspiration for happy face and for "shit happens."  One day he is done running and goes home.  He cares for the lawn at the school.  He has been waiting at the bus stop for Jenny and realizes she is not far away so he runs to meet her, and his son (Haley Joe Osment).  Jenny is sick.  They marry and have almost a year before she passes away.  

There is a feather at the end, indicated the haphazard nature of life.  "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get."

Tom Hanks Movie: **** Cast Away (2000)

 Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) works for FedEx.  He has a girlfriend, Kelly Sears (Helen Hunt) and it appears it is serious.  When he leaves he says he will be back soon.  However the FedEx plane gets caught in a storm and crashes in the ocean.  Noland does get in a raft, and washes ashore on an island.  This begins a four year ordeal where his only companion is a volleyball with a blood stain that looks like a face.  Finally part of a 0orta potty washes ashore, and he turns it into a sail for a raft.  With that extra push he is able to g`et over the wake and get to sea, where he floats many days, but loses his volleyball.  Finally a boat discovers him and he is saved.  It has been four years.  His girlfriend has moved on, married and has a baby.  They still love each other but realize that opportunity has flown the coup.  So Noland goes to start a new life.  

This movie shows you do not need a large cast to make a movie.  It also shows the resilience of man, as Noland has to teach himself how to survive.  

In Theaters: ****^Toy Story 5 (2026)

 This is a very cute show with Bonnie having difficulty meeting new friends.  And the toys struggling with technology taking the place of toys; and as a result children making a different kind of friend.  Who you meet online is not always a good friend but could just be superficial, or even harmful.  Cyber bullying is a theme of this film, and how to deal with it.  And so the toy's mission is to help Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) make a friend.  There are some cute aspects.  We have a lot of Buzz Lightyear's who even upgrade so they actually can fly.  And Woody is back with a bald dome.  The imaginative weddings are fun.  

Jessie (Joan Cusack) has a much bigger roll in this movie.  It is she who takes the lead in finding a good friend for Jessie.  Lilypad (Greta Lee) represents technology, and what is wrong in the world.  But even she improves over time.  Of course Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and Woody (Tom Hanks) play their dependable selves.  It is difficult to find a good friend for Bonnie.  She is very shy.  She finally does meet Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris).  Turns out they have some common interests. 

This is a delightful movie.  Sheri and I have both seen it twice and it was fun each time.  Fun cameo by Conan O'Brien as Smarty Pants, tech to help with potty training.  

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ***^ Here (2024)

 This is a non linear presentation of several different generations, all from the dining, living room of a house across from the William Franklin (son of Benjamin Franklin) estate.  Richard and Margaret (Tom Hanks and Robin Wright) are living in his father's home, which father gave to them in which to raise their daughter, Vanessa (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis).  Father moved to Florida after his wife had a stroke.  When she dies he moves back in with them.  The move shows scenes of the same area from the dinosaur age, to the original owners of the home, John and Pauline Harter (Gwylim Lee and Michelle Dockery) never make it big.  Paul likes planes, but dies in a flu epidemic.  One resident (David Flynn) of the home makes the first LaZ Boy chair.  After WWII, Al and Rose Young (Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly) but the home.  They raise three children, Richard, Elizabeth (Lauren McQueen) and Jimmy (Harry Marcus).  As noted it is Richard who stays in the home, much to the chagrin of Margaret who always wants to move to her own home.  However Margaret becomes pregnant early and Richard, who aspires to be an artist, instead sell insurance to provide for his family.  This creates a wedge and they eventually divorce but remain friends.  At the end of the show, Richard brings his wife to the home which he had sold some years before, and there helps her to remember the good times they had there as she has dementia.  She remembers a special incident with their daughter when she lost a blue ribbon and she found it for her.  

So what starts as a convoluted jumble becomes a remember your past with dementia movie like Lake House.

Meg Ryan Movie Review: **^ Ithaca (2015)

 This movie is about a young man, Homer Macauley (Alex Neustaedter) who works as a delivery person with his bike.  Problems is he delivers telegraphs from the war department informing people of deaths in the war.  He works for Tom Spangler (Hamish Linklater) and with Willie Grogan (Sam Shepard).  His own father (Tom Hanks) has recently passed away but visits his mother (Meg Ryan) as a ghost.  His younger brother (Spencer Howell) is precocious and about town, his older sister (Christine Nelson) has a boyfriend, and his older brother (Jack Quaid) is off to war.  Everything falls apart when Grogan the telegraph operator get the message that Hoer's brother has been killed in the war.  The telegraph operator dies.  And Homer gets to deliver the message to his mother.  Fortunately a fellow soldier beats him to the home to tell his mother of the loss.  

I really didn't care for this movie.  I couldn't see what was the point.  Meg Ryan directed and it is baed on a book, The Human Comedy by William Saroyan.  

Tom Hanks Movie Review: **^ Asteroid City (2023)

 This movie is very confusing to me.  Mostly it is about a family driving home to the father-in-laws residence where they plan to live for a while after the mother has passed away. Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) has not yet told his children even though she died three weeks ago.  He is carrying her ashes in a Tupperware dish.  He is traveling with his son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and three daughters, Andromeda, Pandora and Cassiopeia (Ella, Gracie and Willan Ferris). Those three ad some good humor as they can be vicious.  When they get to Asteroid City the car blows out.  Steenbeck contacts his father-in-law (Tom Hanks) and he agrees to come and get them.  In the meantime Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) who is a movie star and her daughter, Dinah (Grace Harris) arrive in Asteroid City.  As does a bus load of people and many more coming for the annual Asteroid Day celebration.  The ceremony for Astroid Day is conducted by General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright).  And at the ceremonies they are visited by a space alien.  Consequently the town is put on quarantine, including the visitors.  The government tries to keep the story locked down,  The story deals with the father and kids struggling with losing their wife and mother.  The father too also struggles with losing his daughter.

The confusing part of this movie is the format, a movie about a television programs which is airing a dramatic play.  I can't keep track of what is what, because there is also real life going on.  The movie concludes with the line, "You can't wake up, if you do't fall asleep."  Apparently meaning you have to go on, and then you can deal with the grief or issue over time.  But again this movie is very weird.

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ****A Man Called Otto (2022)

 Otto (Tom Hanks) is the grouchiest man there is.  Not only that he has appointed himself keeper of the neighborhood rules.  He is forcibly retired from his job, but leaves the retirement party.  His wife, Sonya (Rachel Keller) passed away six months ago.  He took care of her since she was in a bus accident and sustained a spinal cord injury; and lost their baby.  (Young Otto is played by Truman Hanks.)  He wants nothing more than to join his wife.  He turns off the power and gas, having determined to take his life after buying five feet of rope at the hardware store.  But the neighbors keep getting in the way.  New neighbors, Marisol (Mariana Treviño) and Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) who don't know how to back up their trailer; so he does it for them.  They have two daughters, Luna (Christiana Montoya) and Abbie (Alessandra Perez.). They become friends, Otto in his grumpy way and Marisol making food and reaching out.  He actually calls Otto on his gumpiness, "Don't be rude Otto."  Otto continues with his idea of joining his wife, until he adopts a cat.  He must stay around for the at.  Otto teaches Marisol to drive, gives her rides, and they become friends.  He eventual tells her about his own life.  Otto forms a team to save their neighbors, Anita (Juanita Jennings) and Reuben (Peter Lawson Jones,) from being expelled from their house.  This includes standing up to the business managers.  

Very good movie about relationships and their importance.  My complaint is the many ways this movie shows how to kill yourself.  Might not be for someone looking for ideas.  Otto does finally get his way, but not by suicide.  He succumbs

to a genetic heart condition.  

Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep Movie Review: ****^ The Post (2017)

 This is a movie exploring the inner workings of the Washington Post and the decision to print the Pentagon Papers, secret documents that were stolen.  The documents disparaged the Viet Nam War pointing out that for some time the American government did not think the war winnable.  Howev er they kept on to avoid the embarrassment of losing the war.  Daniel Ellsburg (Matthew Rhys) stole the documents in an efort to end the war.  Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk) tracks down Ellsburg and gets the documents for the Post.  Bob Bradlee (Tom Hanks) directed the operation, including asking Bagdikian to pursue Ellsburg.  Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) is the publisher at the Post.  Her husband had the position before he passed away.  They take the documents to Bradlee's home rather than to the newspaper office for more security and a more peaceful place.  Bradlee's daughter sells lemonade and his wife (Sarah Paulson) becomes involved in the process.  

This movie is very intriguing as they are decided whether or not to publish or whether or not to wait on things.  Th government already has an injunction against the Nwq York Times about publishing.  Watching the struggle is very interesting.  In the end it is Graham who has to make the final decision.  She has to make the decision several times as more information comes to light.  

This movie was Oscar nominated for best picture and Meryl Streep for best actress.  Steven Spielberg directed.

Tom Hanks Movie: ****^ Apollo 13 (1995)

 The Apollo mission that did not make it to the moon, and almost got the three astronauts killed.  Directed by Ron Howard, based on the true story.  Three men are preparing to go to the moon, Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise).  A couple days before the journey, Mattingly was replaced by Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) for fear that Mattingly may have contracted the measles and would become ill in space.  All goes well, until there is an explosion on the ship.

This movie does a very good job of showing the reactions of the families when their spouses/ fathers are in danger.  These include wives Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) and Mary Haise (Tracy Reiner) It also does a good job of showing the many team members in Houston.  This includes the acting talents of Ed Harris, Clint Howard (Ron Howard's brother) and Marc McClure.  The cast also includes Ron's mother, Jean Speegle Howard as Lovell's mother.

The problem solving that went into getting these three home, including the scene of putting a round peg into a square hole was very good.  This was to filter the carbon dioxide and they came up with something that worked.

Very well done, and even with knowing the outcome you wanted to heer with the people of mision control agt the end.

Tom Hanks Movie: ***^ Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)

 Joe (Tom Hanks) is down and miserable.  He is in a rut job, he has no relationships, ha has a boss from hell and he is hypochondriac.  All his money goes to paying doctor bills.  Finally the doctor tells him he has six months to live due to brain fog.  

This sets him free.  He quits his job, and asks his coworker, DeDe (Meg Ryan) on a date.  They have a good time, but when he mentions he has terminal illness the date ends.  She can't go with him as she needs her job.

Then he meets Graynamore (Lloyd Bridges) who offers him a job to jump into a volcano.  For this his last six months will be great and no lack of money.  He accepts.  

He meets Angelica (Meg Ryan) who is Graynamore's daughter.  She is nice.  She gets him from the plane to the boat that will take him to the island.  On the boat he meets another daughter, Patricia (Meg Ryan).  The are off on a sail boat to the island with the volcano.  He has four larghe trunks.  The sail into a typhoon, and the ship is lost.  However Joe saves Patricia, and his luggage.  They float on top of the luggage.  They finally spark a romance and kiss.  Joe tells Patricia what he is doing, going to jump into a volcano.  They are finally rescued by the island natives.  Joe is still determined to jump into the volcano.  However they confess their love and the island ruler marries them.  Patricia decides to jump in with him, and the volcano spits them out.  Somehow the luggage is also spit out and they have a make shift boat in which to sail into the sunset.  They also discover the doctor that told hm of his dying was actually Graynamore's doctor and that Joe was being played.  

This is a movie with a ridiculous plot that somehow works.  Meg Ryan playing three roles also seems to work.  

Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio Movie: ****Catch Me if You Can (2002)

 Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Frank Abegnale Jr. who runs away from home when he has to decide with which parent he wants to live when they go through a divorce.  His father is Frank Abegnale (Christopher Walken) and his mother is Paula (Nathalie Bale).  He decides to go into passing false checks, and discovers the best way to do this is as a pilot.  Everyone trusts a pilot.  So he gets a uniform, and passes himself off as a pilot.  Banks and the airport cash payroll checks for the most, so he makes many counterfeit payroll checks, and cashes them wherever they go.  When the FBI, agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) gets too close he gives up the airport business for a while, and takes up being a doctor.  There he meets a nurse, Brenda Strong (Amy Adams) he he goes to meet her parents (Martin Sheen and Nancy Lenehan) eventually to propose marriage.  He has a very big fraudulent business going, mostly cashing checks--to the tune of over a million dollars.  Over time Hanratty gets closer and closer.  He ever captur4es him on a couple occassions, but he always seems to get away.  However eventually even this comes to an end and he is in a foreign prison and extradited back to the United States.  Even though he is only 17 he is tried as an adult because of the scope and his always getting away, and he goes to prison.  Hanratty then begins using him as a resource for information on checks and forgery.  

Very interesting movie.  It is based on a book Abegnale wrote of his life; however there is some doubt a bout the truthfulness of the book,  He has admitted some of it was exagerated.  Directed by Steven Spielberg.  

Halloween Movie :Toy Story of Terror, (2013)

 This is a made for TV short where our toys go to the hotel from hell, or from psycho.  Something is getting the toys at the hotel were the family has stopped for the night.  They discover it is a lizard, who captures toys for the manager of the hotel.  The hotel manager has a thriving E-bay business with the toys the lizards has caught and brought to him.  The toys have to keep Woody (Tom Hanks) from being sent away to a buyer.  Jessie (Joan Cusack) comes to the rescue but she has to face her fear of being in a box.  im Allen portrays Buzz Light Year and Don Rickles provides voice for Mr. Potato Head.  Stephen Tobolowsky portrays the hotel manager, who get his in the end.   

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ***Larry Crowne (2011)

Tom Hanks portrays Larry Crowne, a middle age man who has been let go from his job of over 20 years and is finding difficulty finding another job; so goes back to school.  Julia Robert portrays the speech professor, Cedric the Entertainer portrays his neighbor, Gorge Takei another professor and Gugu Mbatha-Raw a fellow student who eventually drops out of school to pursue her dream in clothing retail.  This is. aromantic comedy in which the professor falls for the student and vice versa.  For a great deal of the movie I wondered what's the point of this movie.  I found it mildly entertaining.

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ****^Inferno (2016)

 This is the third of the Da Vinci Code series.  This movie does not deal with the Catholic Church, but with a over population fanatic Zobrist (Ben Foster) who is intent on releasing a virus and thereby reducing the human population.  Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) feel he has been in an accident and consequently has lost his memory of the last few days.  He runs away with the doctor (Felicity Jones) when it appears someone is trying to kill him.  And they begin to re-piece his memories and are looking for the device to disarm it.  Langdon is involved because of his knowledge of Dante's Inferno.  Zobrist has killed himself and left clues for his love to find the device.  These he put into a drawing of hell according to Dantes, but with subtle changes.  His mind is muddled, but they keep making progress.  

The film keeps switching in trm of who do you trust?  This film points out that Langdon did have a love interest in the person of Elizabeth Sinsky (Sidse Babett Knudsen) but their carers took them separate ways and she works for the World Health Organization and he at a university.  They end up together at the end of the movie talking of the many people who thought they were saving the world by killing half the people. 

These movies keep getting better as they go.  Again directed by Ron Howard.

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ****Angels and Demons (2009)

 This is a sequel to The Davinci Code with Tom Hanks again as Robert Langdon.  In this movie you are unsure who are the good guys and who the bad until the very end.  It appears the Illuminati are seeking revenge on the Catholic church.  They have kidnapped four cardinals with the intent to murder them every hour until they do their ultimate deed of blowing up the Vatican.  They have stolen antimatter to make this possible.  This brings in the scientist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) who is trying to recover the lost antimatter and disarm it if possible.  It is a time of change as the Pope has died, and the cardinals are in conclave.  In the meantime Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) is in charge of the Vatican.  They follow the clues to each of the first three cardinal locations, but always a bit late.  The fourth they are able to save.  

The bomb is set to go off, but Camerlengo flies in in a helicopter up above the populace in St. Peters Square.  It explodes and he returns to earth in a parachute.  The Cardinals want to reward him for his heroism, and call him to the conclave, where everything turns on its head.

I enj9yed this movie more than Da Vinci Code.  It is again directed by Ron Howard. 

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ***^Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)

 This is a different kind of Tom Hanks movie.  Tom Hanks dies at 9-11, and the movie focuses on his son, Oskar (Thomas Horn) and wife (Sandra Bullock) dealing with the loss.  Oskar's grandmother (Zoe Caldwell) gives some support.  Oskar find a key, and consequently is on a mission to find where the key fits.  It says Black on the key, so he wants to see everybody with the last name of Black in New York.  This is a big chore for someone with post traumatic anxiety.  He is eventually joined by his grandmother's renter, who is likely his grandfather (Max von Sydow).  He tells his story of 9-11.  His father called, but he didn't pick up, and then the building fell.  

This movie explores 9-11 in the effect it had on family members of those who were murdered.  

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ***^ Burbs 1989

 Here Tom Hanks stars as Ray Peterson and Carrie Fisher portrays his wife.  They interact with neighbors Mark Rumsfeld (Bruce Dern and his wife Bonnie (Wendy Schaal) and Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun).  The whole neighborhood is in uproar over a new family that has moved into the neighborhood, and the don't care for their hard.  They rarely come out and suspicions are aroused.  And when another neighbor disappears without taking his dog, suspicions are even higher.  The three men, Art, Ray and Mark are on a mission to prove the neighbors are guilty of murder.  They dig in their basement, and hit a gas main which destroys the house.  They are in really big trouble, because the neighbor who disappeared comes back from having been in the hospital a few days; and the police are now involved.  Ray needs to go to the hospital after being in the explosion in the house, but the neighbor who is a doctor, Dr. Werner Klopek (Henry Gibson) plans to murder him.  In trying to get away they crash the car, and expose the skulls in the trunk.  

I liked this movie much more than The Money Pit, and Dragnet.

Tom Hanks Movie Review: **^Dragnet 1987

 This film is billed as a comedy, a parody of the old Dragnet tv series.  It misses on a couple of counts.  It is much more sexualized, as they enter a striptease bar which earns the movie a PG13 rating.  Definitely not for kids.  The plot is a bit complicated as well, with multiple crimes having been committed.  Dan Adkroyd and Tom Hanks star as Friday and Streebek.  Friday is the strait officer, and Streebek is more liberal in his demeanor.  However Friday falls for a woman, Connie Swail (Alexandra Paul) they rescue from a satanic ritual and an organization called PAGAN headed by Whirley (Christopher Plummer).  Whirley is a prominent preacher who hopes to con a rich businessman of $1,000,000.  He also kidnaps Swail and is headed away in an airplane with the money after having killed everyone with gas.  Friday and Streebek turn the tables.  Harry Morgan has a cameo as the Captain.  This movie does not seem up to the same quality as other Hanks movies.  

Tom Hanks Movie: **^The Money Pit (1986)

 This movie is a bit over the top.  The house falls apart, and after two or three episodes, it is no longer funny.  First the door falls off, then the stairs collapse, then the water doesn't work, then the electricity goe caput, then the tube falls through the floor, and so much more.  After a bit it is just old.  At the same time the relationship starts collapsing as well.  Walter Fielding (Tom Hanks) and Anna Crowley (Shelly Duvall) portray a couple living through the money pit.  They need a new place quickly when Crowley's ex (Alexander Godunov) returns and needs his house where they have been staying.  He is the fly in the ointment as he would like his old love back.  However the couple finally come out the other side in terms of their house, as does their relationship.  

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ****^Big

Tom Hanks plays Josh, who makes a wish on an old arcade machine to be big, and his wish is granted.  When he wakes up the next day he is still a child but in the body of a 30 YO man.  His mother Mercedes Ruehl) doesn't believe he is her son, and kicks him out of the house.  He becomes a lost child on the back of a milk carton.

The think that makes the movie work is that Josh is still an innocent 13 Year old young man.  He finds a job, and the owner of a toy store quickly makes him vice president of marketing as he talks about his love for toys and ideas for toys.

A co worker, Susan (Elizabeth Perkins), falls in love with his naiveté and innocence.  They date, and eventually have sex, which causes him to lose some of the naiveté.  

His friend Paul (John Heard) does believe that he has been changed.  He is helping to find a way to restore Josh to his own self.  

A scene that makes this movie special is the piano playing (on a large piano you play by foot) Josh does with his boss (Robert Loggia).  The boss realizes that putting some youth into his company is needed.