Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC, 16:9 (720x480) VBR | 01:28:35 | Covers | 6.69 Gb
Audio: AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps (each): English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Subs: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai
Genre: Drama, Coming-of-Age, Adventure
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC, 16:9 (720x480) VBR | 01:28:35 | Covers | 6.69 Gb
Audio: AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps (each): English, French, Spanish, Portuguese
Subs: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai
Genre: Drama, Coming-of-Age, Adventure
Based on the Stephen King short story The Body, Rob Reiner's easygoing nostalgia piece is set in Castle Rock, OR, over Labor Day weekend, 1959. A quartet of boys, inseparable friends all, set out in search of a dead body that one of the boys overhears his brother talking about. The foursome consists of intellectual Gordie (Wil Wheaton), born leader Chris (River Phoenix), emotionally disturbed Teddy (Corey Feldman), and chubby hanger-on Vern (Jerry O'Connell). The boys' adventures en route to the elusive body are colored by the personal pressures brought to bear on all of them by the adult world. Richard Dreyfuss, playing the grown-up Gordie, narrates the film, while Kiefer Sutherland dominates every scene he's in as a brutish high-school bully.Synopsis by Hal Erickson, Allmovie.com
Given last summer's glut of preteen movies that you had to regress in order to understand, it was without a mote of enthusiasm that I went to see Stand by Me, a movie about four 12-year-old boys living in smalltown Oregon, circa 1959. I was grateful that at least there wouldn't be any extraterrestrials, computers or gremlins to speak of.
Stand by Me left me grateful for much more than that.
Finally, a boy's life movie that's about humans instead of toys, emotions instead of gadgets! A coming-of-age movie about the getting of wisdom rather than the losing of virginity! Sensitively directed by Rob Reiner and adapted
from a Stephen King novella, Stand by Me is a small, quiet film that walks tall and resonates long after.
It's a memoir, narrated in the present day by a novelist (Richard Dreyfuss) who recalls Labor Day weekend, 1959, in Castle Rock, Ore., and the experience that made him become a writer. "I was 12, going on 13, the first time I saw a dead human being," he begins, with the graceful matter-of-factness that characterizes Stand by Me. (Incidentally, the movie takes its name from the Ben E. King rock ballad.)
Flash back to late summer 1959, to a woodsy, inland hamlet that looks as though it sprang from the imagination of Norman Rockwell. Inside a treehouse, two 12-year-olds play gin rummy like veteran card sharps.
The dealer is Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), the no-nonsense leader of the gang, whose blond flattop cut, like his humor, is spiky as a porcupine. His partner: bespectacled Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), barking like a drill sergeant. Enter beanpole slim Gordie Lachance (WilWheaton, the incipient novelist), silently observing the rituals of boy-baiting. Which largely involves finding new - and preferably degrading - ways of demeaning another boy's mother.
Squaring off the quartet is Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell), the chubby kid and the butt of everyone's jokes. But Vern has the last laugh: He has overheard his older brother talking to a chum about having found the corpse of a 12-year-old who went berrying and never returned. The four boys decide to hike up to the woodland gravesite to discover the body and thereby become local heroes. What better means to mark their graduation from grade school and entry into junior high?
Reiner has a remarkable ear for the rhythms and slang of these boys on the cusp, a keen eye for their bravado. The boys debate such philosophical issues as "Do you think Mighty Mouse can beat Superman?" But what they're really preoccupied with is whether they, human mighty mice, can stand up to the supermen of their fathers, supermen whom they are beginning to see through. In its effortless handling of the complexity of group dynamics, with its undeclared wars and mercurial alliances, Stand by Me is something of a pre- pubescent Diner. Or a children's crusade through the Pacific Northwest and into adulthood.
It doesn't hurt that the four principal actors, particularly Wheaton as Gordie and Phoenix as Chris, are preteen Oliviers and Gielguds, capable of investing a throwaway gesture and line with many levels of meaning. (Kiefer Sutherland - Donald's son - has a scarifyingly authentic supporting role as a teenage bully, exactly the kind of adult the boys don't want to grow up to be.)
Because Stand by Me is an adult's recollection of the turning point of his youth, the film very effectively contrasts a boy's consciousness with that of a man's. Dreyfuss' dryly funny narration provides both shrewd comic relief
from the juvenile melodramatics and a mature perspective of a child's crisis.
At its worst, Stand by Me descends into The Breakfast Club pop psychology. But at its best, it ascends, not without struggle, to the craggy heights of self-awareness. It is, finally, a story about familiarity breeding not contempt but friendship. Regrettably, it's rated R, so kids can't see it without adult accompaniment.
Stand by Me is not a summer movie. It's the summer's sleeper. I'm convinced that as a director, Reiner, whose debut was the spoof This Is Spinal Tap and whose follow-up was the romantic comedy The Sure Thing, can do anything.Review by Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic, August 22, 1986
IMDB 8,1/10 from 204 826 users, Top 250 #179 at the moment
Wiki
Director: Rob Reiner
Writers: Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon, Stephen King
Cast: Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, Casey Siemaszko, Richard Dreyfuss and other
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Stand by Me (1986) Special Edition
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Director Rob Reiner
- Isolated Music Score
- "Walking The Tracks: The Summer Of Stand By Me" documentary (37mins)
- Ben E. King Music Video (3mins)
- Talent Files
- Bonus Trailers
All thanks to original releaser
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