Starman (1984) (1 Viewer)

[TravisR]

Nope. There are a few I've not seen, but I think only the 2 I mentioned are actually great.

Some others are good, some others are okay, some others are bad. Not only 2 great...

Personally, I'd put The Fog on the same level as Halloween and The Thing. I also think it's worth pointing out that not many directors have 2 or 3 great movies so Carpenter did pretty good.

 

[Tino]

I’d rank these Carpenter films as Great

Halloween
The Fog
Starman
The Thing

The Very Good;
Big Trouble In Little China
Escape From New York
Christine

Good
Escape from LA
Assault on Precinct 13
Dark Star
Elvis

The rest....meh.

 

[TravisR]

Perfect flawless gems:
Halloween
The Fog
The Thing

Near perfect flawless gems:
all the rest (except Memoirs Of An Invisible Man)

OK, not really but I'm a big fan of nearly all of his movies and I think a lot of his work after the early 80's is really underrated and his work from the 90's is unfairly ignored.

 

[dpippel]

I’d rank these Carpenter films as Great

Halloween
The Fog
Starman
The Thing

The Very Good;
Big Trouble In Little China
Escape From New York
Christine

Good
Escape from LA
Assault on Precinct 13
Dark Star
Elvis

The rest....meh.

I don't see how you could possibly leave They Live out of your "Good" list.

 

[Tino]

I don't see how you could possibly leave They Live out of your "Good" list.

I thought it was just OK.

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

I thought it was just OK.

 

[dpippel]

I thought it was just OK.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I think this is a wonderfully entertaining picture and sort of stands out in the Carpenter catalog because it is different from the rest of his resume in many ways. I can't really compare it to ET as I have never made it all the way through a screening of ET, it just does not appeal to me, but in many ways I prefer Carpenter as a filmmaker to Spielberg. So, I've never thought of this as a "remake of ET" because it really touches on different themes and textures than what I have seen of ET. I think they are different stories attempting to do different things.

 

[Bartman]

I have the DVD and just watched this in HD on Prime free. How great was Karen Allen in this role!

 

[Steve Y]

Carpenter is a brilliant B-movie director who got some A-movie budgets in the 80s. The Thing and Starman are astounding genre films and nearly flawless by any standard of filmmaking.

Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, In the Mouth of Madness, They Live... all b-movie classics.

Maybe he had visions that were not supported by the budgets and talent he was able to attract after the 80s. Maybe he collected lightning in a bottle. Nevertheless, he directed more than one masterpiece and composed more than one memorable film score.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Yep, totally agree, and would add Big Trouble in that first list of yours as well ...

 

[dpippel]

My wife and I watched the Shout Blu-ray night before last. I hadn't seen this film in probably 10 years and man, I'd forgotten how good it is! Both Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen just nail it, and the tone that Carpenter set is, as others have mentioned, so very, very different from anything else he's done. I'd put Starman right up there with The Thing and Halloween. So shoot me.

 

[TravisR]

...and composed more than one memorable film score.

Him, his son and godson are in a band and they make some real cool new music (and in concert, they play a mix of new stuff and his best film themes). Their score to the most recent Halloween was proof positive that he still can craft a great score.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Yeah, it's all in the reflexes, right?
Need to do a bit of Carpenteer, it's been too long.

 

[questrider]

Him, his son and godson are in a band and they make some real cool new music (and in concert, they play a mix of new stuff and his best film themes). Their score to the most recent Halloween was proof positive that he still can craft a great score.

Carpenter, his son Cody, and godson Daniel Davies (the son of guitarist Dave Davies of The Kinks) have made three studio albums of original compositions—Lost Themes (2015), Lost Themes II (2016), and Lost Themes III (2021)—with the most recent one just released a couple of weeks ago on February 2.

Lost Themes III: Alive After Death

John Carpenter returns with his first album of non-soundtrack music in nearly five years, Lost Themes III: Alive After Death. Underpinning Carpenter’s renaissance as a musician has been his collaboration with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. Here, the trio reaches a new level of creative mind meld.

www.sacredbonesrecords.com

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

All three great albums. Makes you wish the non-existent movies for which they were created will someday actually materialize.

 

[SamT]

I had forgotten about the transformation at the beginning and it was a shock and interesting to see it done at the age of no CG.