CLASSIC MOVIES: RAIN MAN (1988)

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Brief Movie Synopsis [courtesy of Turner Classic Movies]:

A con artist discovers he
has a wealthy, autistic brother.
Winner of 4 Academy Awards, including
Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

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REVIEWS:

"This film is everything a 'Best Picture' Oscar-winner should
be, in my view. It has tenderness, romance, drama, compassion,
likeable characters, and a biting humor as well. It's a 'road'
picture, while at the same time encompassing
so many other things too."

-- David Von Pein; May 24, 2004

"For [Dustin] Hoffman, 'Rain Man' is a star's dream of
a role. From the moment Raymond comes onto the screen,
a slight, small buttoned-up figure, avoiding eye contact,
speaking in tight little sentences that match the steps
he takes, Mr. Hoffman demands that attention be paid to
his intelligence, invention and research as an actor. ....
The performance is so remarkable, in fact, that it overwhelms
what is otherwise a becomingly modest, decently
thought-out, sometimes funny film."

-- Excerpt from The New York Times; December 16, 1988

"Rain Man works so well within Raymond's limitations because
it is a movie about limitations. .... At the end of Rain Man,
I felt a certain love for Raymond, the Hoffman character. I
don't know quite how Hoffman got me to do it. He does not play
cute, or lovable, or pathetic. He is matter-of-fact, straight
down the middle, uninflected, unmoved, uncomprehending in all
of his scenes -- except when his routine is disrupted, when he
grows disturbed until it is restored. And yet I could believe
that the [Tom] Cruise character was beginning to love him,
because that was how I felt, too."

-- Roger Ebert; December 16, 1988

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