| Front Cover |
Actor |
Back Cover |
|
| Dustin Hoffman |
Dr. Norman Goodman
|
| Sharon Stone |
Dr. Beth Halperin
|
| Samuel L. Jackson |
Dr. Harry Adams
|
| Peter Coyote |
Captain Harold C. Barnes
|
| Queen Latifah |
Alice Fletcher
|
| Huey Lewis |
Helicopter Pilot
|
| Bernard Hocke |
Seaman
|
| Liev Schreiber |
Dr. Ted Fielding
|
| Michael Keys Hall |
O.S.S.A. Official
|
| Marga Gómez |
Jane Edmunds
|
| James Pickens Jr. |
O.S.S.A. Instructor
|
|
|
|
| Movie Details |
| Genre |
Science Fiction; Thriller |
| Director |
Barry Levinson |
| Producer |
Michael Crichton; Barry Levinson; Patricia Churchill |
| Writer |
Michael Crichton; Kurt Wimmer |
| Photography |
Adam Greenberg |
| Musician |
Elliot Goldenthal; Duke Ellington; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
| Studio |
Warner Bros. |
|
| Language |
English |
| Audience Rating |
PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) |
| Running Time |
134 mins |
| Country |
USA |
| Color |
Color |
| IMDb Rating |
5.4 |
|
| Plot |
| From yet another derivative science fiction novel by Michael Crichton comes this equally derivative and flaccid movie, in which three top Hollywood stars struggle to squeeze tension and excitement out of material that doesn't match their talents. You're supposed to find awe and mystery in Crichton's story about a team of scientists and scholars who discover a 300-year-old alien spacecraft deep on the ocean floor, but mostly you feel that this is all much ado about nothing. The exploration team consists of a psychologist (Dustin Hoffman), mathematician (Samuel L. Jackson), biochemist (Sharon Stone), and an astrophysicist (Liev Schreiber), and when they enter the alien ship they discover a mysterious sphere inside. What they don't know is that the sphere has the power to manipulate their thoughts and perceptions, and before long the scientists' undersea habitat is a veritable haunted house of frightening visions and creeping paranoia. Who can be trusted? What is the sphere's purpose, and why is it on the ocean floor? Sphere makes some attempt to answer these questions, but the film is a mess, and it leads to one of the most anticlimactic endings of any science fiction film ever made. There are moments of high intensity and psychological suspense, and the stellar cast works hard to boost the talky screenplay. But it's clear that this was a hurried production (Hoffman and director Barry Levinson made Wag the Dog during an extended production delay), and as a result Sphere looks and feels like a film that wasn't quite ready for the cameras. Though it's by no means a waste of time, it's undeniably disappointing. The special edition DVD includes audio commentary by Hoffman and Jackson and a behind-the-scenes featurette, Shaping the Sphere: The Art of the Special Effects Supervisor, exploring the alien ship's design and creation by special effects technicians. --Jeff Shannon |
|
|
| Product Details |
| Edition |
Special Edition |
| Format |
DVD |
| Region |
Region 1 |
| Screen Ratio |
Theatrical Widescreen (2.35:1) |
| Layers |
Single Side, Dual Layer |
| UPC (Barcode) |
085391533122 |
| Release Date |
2/8/2005 |
| Subtitles |
English; French; Spanish; Danish; English (Closed Captioned) |
| Packaging |
Snap Case |
| Audio Tracks |
Dolby Digital 5.1 [English]
Dolby Digital Surround [French] |
| Nr of Disks/Tapes |
1 |
|
|
Extra Features
|
| Color Closed-captioned Widescreen |
|