Decided to take another look at John Carpenter's Starman (1984) last night. Never one of my favourite Carpenter films but not having seen it for many years I have to say I really enjoyed it. A movie that had been in development for some years, apparently John Badham was originally slated to direct but left the project after he saw E.T. and decided the stories were too similar, leaving the door open for Carpenter to come in and direct a somewhat different film than he was known for at the time (after helming the likes of Halloween, The Fog, Christine and The Thing). It's certainly a simplistic story, but works wonderfully due to its lead performances. Jeff Bridges earned a deserved Oscar nomination for his role as an alien visitor who comes to Earth and assumes the form of a deceased person and slowly discovers what it is like to be human, but he is matched by Karen Allen, who is also terrific as the young widow coming to grips with seeing the form of her recently-killed husband suddenly walking around and talking again, and learning how to fall in love once more. Great performance also by Charles Martin Smith as a government scientist trying to help the Starman avoid capture and probable vivisection. One of Carpenter's last really great films before things started to slowly go south for him.
