GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Executscan Expected more

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

wferri6 The basic premise of this movie, the technology, is in sync with that of a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1954. Clarke's story, first published as "Patent Pending," and also published as "The Invention," appeared in his collection, Tales from the White Hart. The story within a story tells of a French scientist who successfully finds a way to record and play back brain waves, allowing experiences to be replayed by other people.

mike48128 Natale Wood's last film and released 2 years after her untimely death with a few scenes shot (perhaps) using a stand-in (no film credit). Also staring Christopher Walken and Cliff Robertson. They are part of a team of research scientists that create a remarkable tool that records virtually all of a real-life experience through brainwaves. That includes every nuance of vision, touch, smell, emotion, and (as we learn later) pain and suffering. It's remarkable that it was even finished, and producer-directer Douglas Trumble spent almost 5 million dollars to finish the film after a production "grant" from Lloyd's of London, who insured it's completion. Almost not released by MGM at all. It's unsettling and the "recorded" brainwaves are quite intense and may be disturbing to some. Minor nudity, sexual content, torture, and a vivid "Heart Attack" death experience are all part of the brainstorms! The equipment looks quite real with the record and playback mechanisms using golden "foil" tape. The government intends to produce it on a mass-production scale. The ending is an amazing testament to the genius and artistry of Douglas Trumbull. Both Hell and Heaven are "realistically" portrayed. The devise is corrupted into a diabolical mind control, torture-brainwashing tool, the research scientists attempt to sabotage and destroy it. A 2001 "psychedelic" ending with visions of the afterlife? This haunting film was not a moneymaker for MGM and "feels" unfinished. The music starts and stops in fits although the storyline remains remarkably understandable, with a few minor exceptions. A bit slow at the beginning.The idea of "mind control thru a headset devise" is not original and was used in the original "Star Trek" series, at least twice in the 1960's. I saw this on a big screen and it was a far superior experience, with all the format-size changes on the screen. Viewing it once every few years is enough for me. Both exhilarating and incredibly disturbing at the same time, even on a small(er) home screen.

Scarecrow-88 Dazzling visual effects (no surprise considering the director) and a superb Louise Fletcher performance (it is hard to believe with this kind of performance, she'd be little more than a surrogate grandma to Drew Barrymore just a year later in Firestarter) really lift Douglas Trumbull's Brainstorm into an A-picture. Too bad Natalie Wood's death undermines what could have been perhaps a highly recognized science fiction film. Wood plays the wife of star, Christopher Walken. Fletcher has dedicated her life and career to a project which allows others to sense, feel, and experience what another does, through the use of a head device. Wood is the one responsible for finding a cosmetic means to make the head device acceptable and efficient. Walken has developed a type of love affair with Fletcher while working closely with her on the "mental and sensory device", and this has estranged him from Wood. While a great deal of what has bonded Walken and Fletcher is intellectual and built respect for the work they have accomplished, their project could be "kidnapped" from them by the military that helped their "financial backer", Alex (Cliff Robertson), continue to fund it in the hopes of using the device as a possible brain-washing and torture weapon "against those who threaten the country" (or use it to further the benefits of high ranking officials in the government). The potential for something extraordinary is all there, but the military involvement ruins the satisfaction and gratification for how the project has proved to be successful. An obsessive smoker and a series of health setbacks due to her heart, Fletcher's Lillian Reynolds eventually succumbs to the weight of the stress overwhelming her thanks to the seizure of the sensory project. What happens that makes their project even more extraordinary is how what they see, feel, and experience can be "recorded" on tape for others to visualize and relive. Lillian's death and "journey to the afterlife" is recorded and Walken wants to experience not just that but thoughts and memories "stored away and ready for access", all available on tape. An excitable member of the project, kind of a human guinea pig, named Gordy (Jordan Christopher), who was in the other helmet, his experiences visualized and felt by Walken's Michael Brace at the beginning of the film, perishes when the military insist on seeing what he was during a playing of Lillian's final moments (although, Michael is able to make modifications that removed literally feeling the heart attack that killed her, while Gordy wasn't so lucky to have such "upgrades". When another member of the project, Hal (Joe Dorsey), experiences orgasm thanks to a tape recorded when Gordy had sex with a woman, this "ultimate experience" is the trigger the military needed (they were "keeping tabs" (spying) on Lillian's project to see how far they were advancing) to pursue the helmet device for their soldiers and officers in a type of "factory assembly".The plot of the device is quite a gem, considering the idea that I could possibly experience what it feels like to surf on the open wave or ride high above the Golden Gate Bridge or experience sex with a super model. Wood, although I have read so many say this, isn't just "wasted" in her role. It serves its purpose. No, this isn't Splendor in the Grass; its science fiction based on a married couple finding themselves reunited once the head device has them realizing what they did to each other from their own perspectives. One great moment has Mike understanding how it feels to be ignored, the anger his wife feels and what she sees when he's an asshole. Fletcher's heart attack is quite hard to watch, but the hell and approach to heaven sequences are quite eyepopping, as is the way her memories are seen as "bubbles to open and view" by Walken. The systematic, schizophrenic meltdown of the factory and technological breakdown that results from the work of Walken and Wood so that he can access Fletcher's last-of-life and death tape is hilarious (particularly when the foam expands as water hits the boxes containing the material.) A motley group (which includes Hal, and a character played by Walken's wife, both of whom worked on the project and were against the military's seizure of their work against their wishes) of scientists being able to cause ruination to a heavily operated government takeover is always rather entertaining, none the more so than seeing a faux "marital spat and attempted recovery" across "the telephone" being "spied on" by members of the military coup that took over the project as a means to gain access to Fletcher's tape. The "seeing through the eyes" technique and overall letterbox format / ratio presented by Turner Classics Movies and directed this way purposely by Trumbull for optimal effect might not be for all tastes, but I thought it was an aesthetically pleasing presentation that (to coin the phrase used to describe the head device and its abilities) "knocked my socks off". Robertson is basically the middle man that sees that finances go to the project, that it is successful, and then those who benefit from it profit him (he's the bureaucrat with benefactors waiting patiently for Lillian's team to be successful). Fletcher's fight for her project, and how it eventually kills her is essential to film's dramatic power, and the device itself (how it rewards, kills, and can be used for good and evil) is as good a plot tool as anything sci-fi could produce. Quite an adventure, but at its best when the device develops its characters and their motivations.

SnoopyStyle A team of scientists led by Michael Brace (Christopher Walken) and hard-smoking Lillian Reynolds (Louise Fletcher) have developed a recorder for the brain. Michael's estranged wife Karen (Natalie Wood) is tasked to miniaturize the apparatus. CEO Alex Terson (Cliff Robertson) is pushing the work. There is a push for the tapes to be used for military purposes. Technician Gordy is recording various experiences and in one of them, he records having sex. Team scientist Hal Abramson (Joe Dorsey) gets addicted to the sex tape. Meanwhile the machine helps the Braces to reconcile. Lillian suffers a heart attack and records her death on tape. Michael almost dies replaying the tape. Michael is shut out of the experiment which is turned into a military operation called Brainstorm that includes torture. The group hacks in so that Michael could finish Lillian's tape.I remember watching this back then on cable TV and being fascinated by the ideas of a brain recorder. The playback has this other worldly quality. Christopher Walken has his creepy intensity and Louise Fletcher is terrific. I didn't know Natalie Wood died during the filming and quite frankly, I didn't know who she was at the time. The whole concept is so fascinating that it carries the whole movie for me. It's like a 2001 for life after death.