the m0vie blog

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode thrown in.

This time, Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump.

Forrest Gump is an unremarkable man who has lived the most remarkable of lives, a feather caught in the breeze of history. From his childhood in Mississippi through the turbulence of the sixties and seventies, Forrest Gump lives a life that intersects repeatedly with the biggest moments of the twentieth century, having a profound and unspoken effect upon the course of history.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 12th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Show notes:

• Recorded 22nd April 2018.
• Forrest Gump at The Internet Movie Database.
• The IMDB 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
• Wesley Morris at Grantland discusses the incredible pop cultural impact of Forrest Gump, July 2014.
• ABC News names Forrest Gump as the best Best Picture winner of all time, February 2014.
• Noel Murray on the IMAX re-release of Forrest Gump at The Dissolve, June 2014.
• Entertainment Weekly on the still-polarising nature of Forrest Gump, January 2004.
• Brandon Griggs at CNN on the challenges of reading and interpreting Forrest Gump, July 2014.
• Brian and Brad Pritchett discuss Forrest Gump at The Awl, February 2013.
• Jennifer Hyland Wang on the conservatism of Forrest Gump in Cinema Journal, Spring 2000.
• National Review ranks Forrest Gump as one of the best conservative movies of all-time, February 2009.
• Ashley Fetters on Forrest Gump as part of a conservative battle for the narrative of history at The Atlantic, August 2013.
• Alex Sayf Cummings at Tropics of Meta on Forrest Gump as an ode to the power of the free market and of white racial innocence, June 2014.
• Nicolaus Mills at The Christian Science Monitor on the nineties culture war backlash against the liberalism of the sixties, June 1997.
• Andrea Paul at The Artifice on how Forrest Gump blurs the lines between memory and history, April 2014.
• David Gritten at The Los Angeles Times ponders international audiences’ reactions to Forrest Gump, March 1995.
• Ryan Vlastelica at The A.V. Club discusses the differences between the source novel and the feature adaptation, September 2016.
• Robert W. Welkos at The Los Angeles Times on the Hollywood accounting used to argue that Forrest Gump made a loss, May 1995.
• Bill Murray talks to Rolling Stone about turning down the title role in Forrest Gump, October 2014.
• Andrea Passafiume at TCM on how Tom Hanks’ accent was derived from the actor playing the younger version of the title character.
• Joe Blevins at The A.V. Club on the film’s use of computer-generated imagery in understated ways, like helping Tom Hanks play ping pong, April 2016.
• Chris Pratt talks to The Independent about being discovered while working at Bubba-Gump Shrimp, July 2014.
• Follow The 250 on Twitter.
• Subscribe to The 250 on iTunes.
• Subscribe to The 250 on Stitcher.
• Listen to The 250 on Soundcloud.

Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: america, american character, decency, film, forrest gump, history, memory, Movie, nostalgia, postmodern, robert zemeckis, special effects, tom hanks |