Review of Brainstorm (1983) by Robert B — 17 Aug 2015

I'm on the fence about this one. It suffers from most Trumbull pictures, which is that it's beautiful looking but the plot is hokey and full of holes. The sound mixing was awful, totally up and down.

The change of aspect ratio is jarring and probably only looks decent in the theater (though I can't imagine it's not distracting there too).This was a good concept that sort of dissolved by bad writing and some bad directing- you have a cast of real talent but nobody's fulfilling their potential.

I loved Louise Fletcher's character (and acting), and I love the concept of seeing and feeling somebody's thoughts as they die. If they had trimmed the fat, thrown out the marriage/love stuff, thrown out the hokey friends-band-together ending and just went for the deep and disturbing aspects hard, this could have easily been 5 stars.

I'm not one to suggest remakes but I would definitely love to see a trimmed remake of this movie- though it would have to be real sets Trumbull style and minimal CGI.