Always

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

For all its state-of-the-art special effects, Always is essentially a remake of the 1943 Spencer Tracy-Irene Dunne fantasy vehicle A Guy Named Joe--minus the wartime context. Richard Dreyfuss stars as a reckless fire-fighting pilot who is killed in what was to have been his final mission. Ascending to Heaven, Dreyfuss is introduced to businesslike angel Audrey Hepburn (playing the equivalent of the Lionel Barrymore role in A Guy Named Joe). Hepburn instructs the spectral Dreyfuss to pass on his aviation knowhow to his young successor, Brad Johnson. Our ghostly hero also smoothes the course of romance for his earthly girl friend Holly Hunter, who after several months' worth of grieving has fallen in love with Johnson. John Goodman injects a dose of comedy relief as Dreyfuss' faithful buddy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Audio: 4.1
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Features:
  • • Production notes
    • Cast & filmmakers' bios
    • Film highlights
    • Theatrical trailer
    • Web links

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Steven Spielberg

• Producer:

  Richard Vane

• Screenwriter:

  Ronald Bass, Jerry Belson, Melissa Mathison

• Screen Story:

  Chandler Sprague, David Boehm

• Cinematographer:

  Mikael Salomon

• Composer (Music Score):

  John Williams

• Editor:

  Michael Kahn

• Production Designer:

  James D. Bissell, P. Michael Johnston

• Art Director:

  Christopher Burian-Mohr

• Co-producer:

  Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall

• Executive Producer:

  Steven Spielberg

• Set Designer:

  Jackie Carr, Carl Stensel

• Costume Designer:

  Ellen Mirojnick

• Makeup:

  James McCoy, Don L. Cash

• Special Effects:

  Michael Wood, Industrial Light & Magic

• Stunts:

  Steve Lambert

• Choreography:

  Bob Banas

• Casting:

  Lora Kennedy

• Short Story Author:

  Frederick Hazlitt Brennan

REVIEW:

• One of the smaller films of Steven Spielberg's oeuvre, Always still bears many of the filmmaker's trademark elements: otherworldly magic, gorgeous cinematography, and a childlike fascination with the skies. There are plenty of loving shots of aircraft arcing across brilliant blue horizons, but the rest of the film serves more as a support structure on which to hang these images, too neat and predictable to stick in the memory. The result is that Always feels prepackaged, a sentimental exercise with little daring beyond the swooping maneuvers of Richard Dreyfuss' fun-loving pilot. It becomes accidentally noteworthy for having been the last film appearance of Audrey Hepburn, who died four years later; that she plays an angel walking through the cornfields gives viewers a serene last image of her. Always may also serve as a balm for those grieving over the loss of a loved one, unsure how to move on with their lives. But with Dreyfuss so much easier to root for as the object of Holly Hunter's affections than the bland Brad Johnson, this becomes something of a mixed message. Spielberg fans may want to check it out for another chapter in the director's ongoing preoccupation with flying machines, which has marked his career from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) to the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi