User reviews

Fantastic performances from some true talent. Wonderful direction from a great artist. Some well executed sequences of horror and suspense. An interesting first-act. Wonderful music and design. And a fairly good piece of source material in the form of a Michael Crichton novel.

I just don't get how "Sphere" wasn't a wonderful film!

You can feel so much potential in that opening half-hour. And there are so many good elements at play. But it just sort-of falls apart at times. It feels unfinished. (A sentiment also echoed by one of its stars, Dustin Hoffman.) It feels like it could use some tightening in some spots, some additional scenes in other places, some more work with the pacing and maybe a re-shoot or two. Then it could be a great, wonderful film. As it is now, it's merely "ok."

When a team consisting of a psychologist, mathematician, biologist and an astrophysicist are sent 1,000 feet below the surface of the ocean to investigate what could be an crashed alien spaceship, things take a bizarre turn when two revelations are unveiled. First, the ship might actually be human in origin, and second... a mysterious spherical object is found in storage on the ship, and it's influence could lead to the brink of disaster.

The performances are almost universally incredible in this film. Featuring the aforementioned Dustin Hoffman, we are also treated to the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone, Liev Schreiber, Queen Latifah and Peter Coyote. And all are able to make a good impact, even when the script and storyline don't give them too much development as characters. The talent elevates the experience.

Director Barry Levinson does some incredible work here as well. Levinson (responsible for some great films) really treats the audience with a combination of intimacy and spectacle from scene to scene. His sense of storytelling, like the acting, elevates the entire feature. (Particularly admirable are some great scenes of horror and suspense. Levinson makes some interesting choices as to what he chooses to show and what he chooses to hide.)

And many other aspects of the production are equally high in quality. Elliot Goldenthal's score is magnificent and haunting. The cinematography of Adam Greenberg is perfect and gives a great aesthetic. Visual and practical effects are almost uniformly excellent. (Save for one or two "gory" effects that don't quite work.) Everything here just seems to work.

The problem, as said above, is that the film sadly doesn't feel finished. And I can't place my finger on any specific aspect of it that fails. It just needs... more work. Some parts of the film feel overlong and in need of trimming. Other parts are abrupt and feel like scenes and shots are missing. Some moments feel contrived and out of context. The pacing is all over the map. And it betrays everything that works so well. It's just a bit too sloppy in its current form.

I honestly think that if the film was given another month or so of time for post-production and editing (and maybe a week or two of re-shoots), it would have been infinitely better. Heck, it might have even been great.

But as is, the film's troubled storytelling and inconsistent pacing all but ruin the experience. Although I will contend that there is enough good here to make "Sphere" worth checking out. Even if only once for the sake of curiosity.

I give it about an average 6 out of 10. I'd say check it out if you see it on cable or available to rent. You just might like it.

The Sphere (1998)

Barry Levinson is one of those directors who has no interest in art, or in invention, or in pretension, either. And so his films sometimes hit a popular strain that makes them take off. He has some terrible misfires, for sure, but his best films ("Rain Man," "Sleepers") have people who you relate to, and who have to confront something extraordinary.

That was the idea here, based on a Michael Crichton novel (that should have been a heads up). The cast is headliner stuff. Dustin Hoffman is particularly convincing, Samuel Jackson plays a great type, and Liev Schreiber is sharp. Sharon Stone is a dull fourth. They bond, and realize they have things in common, in the first minutes of the film as they converge and go under water to check out an alien spaceship. Even after they are deep below the surface and beginning their unlikely exploration they make a viewer connect. As much as it borrows from "Alien" and "Aliens" this could have been a good film on its own terms. Even the talking computer/alien has its own edge compared to HAL.

What goes wrong is the plot itself, and not acting, or even directing, can overcome that. As it gets hairier, we need it to be more plausible, not less. Events get increasingly chaotic, so that action and loud noise drive some of the scenes. Subplots are continued but seem increasingly meaningless (at one point, Hoffman and Stone are rushing into the water in an absolute emergency and they start to chitchat about their distant failed love affair). And finally, as people die off and the menace becomes more ambiguous, the movie becomes completely ambiguous, and as a kind of escape valve, announces that any number of crazy thing we have been watching may or may not have been imagined by one character or another.

But what does that mean about the camera? Isn't there still a differentiation between cinema reality and one character's delusion? Or if these are global delusions including the viewer, shouldn't they do more than simply disorient us? Well, don't hang on for answers. Just hang on. An explosion (of course) caps it all off (why they didn't hit the disarm button isn't explained), and a final logical wrap up that avoids the time travel paradox is warm and fuzzy.

When the military discover what they believe to be a spaceship at the bottom of the ocean they bring in Dr Norman Goodman who had once written a report on the protocol for an alien encounter. His report had named a team of experts – this team is also assembled. The team descend to the craft and begin to find some astonishing things about the craft. However when they find a huge golden sphere they begin to experience problems. Problems that become worse when a storm traps them at the bottom of the ocean.

With a cast like this – you gotta have high hopes. With a director and a writer to match you deserve something fantastic! And for the most part this delivers. The build up is dark, mysterious and exciting. However once the sphere is found it goes downhill. It still has some really good moments – the jellyfish bit is scary and other actions bits are cool. But it gets all muddled up in what the sphere is and who is doing what on the base. It almost manages to hold together until the final half hour then it all just collapses like a flan in a cupboard! It's a shame because for the most part it felt like it was building to something much better, but no.

The cast promised much but didn't deliver. Jackson was great, but I don't think he can be bad – even in a bad movie. Hoffman stutters around like he doesn't know what he's doing. I know he's meant to be playing a character that isn't used to heroics, but he doesn't bring anything. Stone is OK but at times looks like she reading her lines off a board. Coyote is OK and Schreiber is understated by his own hammy standards. It's also cool to see Queen Latifah in a role.

Overall this is worth watching as for the majority it's real good. However you notice that the film has got 30 minutes left to go – make your excuses and leave, by then you've seen the best it has to offer.

It is 2017 and I'm still discovering movies from the 90's that are worth a peek.

The government has discovered a space craft buried beneath some coral in the Pacific Ocean. The government concludes that this must be an opportunity at alien contact so they grab a team of scientists to make the first contact. Within the crashed vessel they find a shimmering sphere. A few of the scientist decide to enter it and then things get weird.

I liked the cast: Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, Liev Schrieber, Queen Latifah et al. The setting was very claustrophobic as they spent the majority of the movie 1000 feet beneath the surface surrounded by water. Once people started being killed by odd creatures it was race to figure out what or who was causing this before they all perished.

This movie was really about man's inability to handle alien gifts/technology. That's a lesson we've learned many times over. The movie got a bit confusing towards the end as they tried to solve the mystery of who/what was the cause of the death and destruction. I felt there were a lot of holes in the movie and it left me a bit unfulfilled.

A spaceship is discovered under three hundred years' worth of coral growth at the bottom of the ocean.

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 12% based on 50 reviews, with the critical consensus that "Sphere features an A-level cast working with B-grade material, with a story seen previously in superior science-fiction films." Indeed, one wonders what Sharon Stone and Dustin Hoffman were doing in this. Hoffman, of course, was brought on by the director, his friend Barry Levinson. But Stone should have had better projects.

Some aspects of this are interesting, and even though it was a flop at the time, I could see people today (2015) going back and really giving it a second chance. It has not become a better film with age, but it has something to say about science fiction films of the 1990s. (Most, it seems, were dystopian, so this is something of a fresh change.)

The book sphere, by Michael Crichton, is excellent. The movie on the other hand, falls short. The film of course, doesn't follow the book exactly, like all book-to-movies, however, it does follow pretty closely, considering. Dustin Hoffman fits into PERFECT character. He plays his character just like the book plays him. Quiet. Not very excitable. Samuel L. Jackson, was also good. However, my casting flaw would be Sharon Stone. She's horrible, not playing her character at all well. However, for some reason people don't like this movie, even despite Sharon Stone and some other flaws. I watched this before the book, so I don't like it because I read the book. I like this film before I read the book. So, I don't get why people don't like SPHERE. I mean, sure it's not great, but it's entertaining enough on a friday/saturday night to watch along with some popcorn. Give this film a break. Rent it.....I'm sure you won't be too dissapointed.

A seemingly random team of professionals are called together to investigate a mysterious spacecraft at the bottom of the ocean.

The premise behind this movie is excellent, but I feel it didn't go as deep as it could have. The namesake sphere seems almost to be a secondary character in the movie - so much more could have been done.

Surprisingly, the high caliber actors in this movie didn't put out their usually high quality performances. It feels as though they learned their lines the night before and didn't put much emotion behind their parts.

Still, lacking so many things, this movie holds a strange appeal to me. It has a high level of intrigue and mystery that keeps me interested.

6 of 10

After reading many users' mixed comments on the movie..i can't help but feel that a majority have underrated the film. True it could have been better, especially in the latter half, but having read the book first, i did not feel it actually falling off midway like the way other viewers have described it. People who have read the novel will acknowledge that the movie does follow the novel fairly closely. Thus comments about Hoffman's role and the ending are unfair, since i feel they are the closest big-screen reproductions of one of Crichton's best works. I feel Stone's character was the role followed the weakest.

Definitely the giant squid thrills are insufficient (note that Crichton devoted a good part of his novel describing encounters with 'the monster'). I guess animation artists were short budgeted...though the film as a whole still is a visual treat...and the atmosphere is rightly captured, with nice music.

Overall, I think the movie is worth watching and is definitely of a much higher caliber than 'The Lost World'. It follows a psychological-cum-sci-fi thriller theme and i feel is better than the similar flick 'Abyss'. As from the novel's point-of-view...it could have been done better though. 8/10 stars!

Most times when a novel is made into a film, you can follow the story without having to read the book. Sphere has a very strange and complex story. If you haven't read the book first, the movie will be hard to follow.

The movie follows the book pretty closely. Barry Levinson directs his 2nd Crichton adaptation, following Disclosure. There is a terrific superstar cast. Dustin Hoffman is a legend and has made several great movies with Levinson. Samuel L. Jackson, always fun to watch, is one of the top actors of today. The sexy Sharon Stone here continues to prove how good of an actress she is.

Sphere is a very strange, but entertaining movie. I do reccomend reading the book beforehand, though.

Of course this is not one of the greatest 100 movies of all time, but telling this is a sorry film is missing the whole point. More, I believe the ending is the best part. It gives a meaning to the whole thing. I would give more money to see this movie again, that I would do to watch Lord of the Rings. Cinema is the place where we can build bridges between the world of fantasy and illusion (which is what a movie really is), and the real world in which we live in, and that means giving you a message. The message that I can read from this movie is simple: "We could make the world a better place, but, we're just not ready...yet." It's something that makes me think and I believe that's what a movie should do. If you watch movies just for the fun of it than probably this is not the best movie. Even so, it is quite entertaining.

The poster of Sphere has been ages on my mind that I'd like to see what the movie is like, and recently I found a cheap dvd, so let's...dive into it.

The film starts right away very interesting, as we follow a couple of scientists that go exploring a supposed space ship in the bottom of the ocean. Then weird things start to happen like you would expect. In the middle the plot seemed a bit random but towards the end it starts to make more sense, and I liked the ending makes you think like good sci-fi should do.

The cast is solid with three famous stars Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson taking the lead. The movie has good looking underwater scenes though most of the plot takes place inside the observation station and the space ship.

The only thing that bothered me a little bit is that the movie felt like a mash-up of every other sci-fi film. Movies that came to mind while watching: The Abyss, Alien, Cocoon, The Thing, Event Horizon, Solaris, 2001, Forbidden Planet...Put all those in a blender and here you have a sci-fi smoothie that is Sphere. Of course you can notice that most of those titles mentioned are pretty good movies, and you could also make a coctail of much worse ingredients.

It boils down to a drama based sci-fi film and psychological thriller, and there's only a little bit of horror elements. But it is quite suspenseful. Not a super classic but quite good, quite solid for what it is.

If you like sci-fi and especially movies set deep in the ocean then this is for you.

I need to start off by saying Sphere ranks as one of my top favorites among Michael Crichton's novels.

As a kid, I vaguely remembered glimpsing Sphere (1998), but for some reason I hadn't (re)watched it until now. I'm convinced that if I had watched the whole thing back then, I'd felt far more nostalgia for it.

The book laid out a quasi 'foolproof' formula for a hit movie: gather a small group of intellectuels, isolate 'em from the outside world, add some mystery and the unknown, and voilá! Sound familiar? Despite this, the filmmakers couldn't quite crack the code for this one.

While the first act showed some promise, later acts felt rushed and ultimately fell apart, failing to capture the impact of the book, especially the end. Perhaps those story changes were as helpful as a screen door on a submarine.

Regarding the casting: Hoffman was a great choice for Norman, and Schreiber was fine as Ted. Well, Jackson is like the 'wildcard' of actors, he can work with anyone and anything, so that's that.

However, whenever Stone was on screen, I couldn't help but wonder who could portray Beth instead of her. In my mind, I envisioned actress like Amy Brenneman from Heat, or rather Kim Dickens from Mercury Rising, or even Radha Mitchell from Pitch Black --someone with a bit of edge, yet still lively and likable. Unlike Stone, who seemed devious from the get-go. While she really excelled in Basic Instinct with such mannerisms, here she seemed miscast.

Visually, some aspects still hold up. Though initially disappointed by certain missing elements, maybe it's for the best.

As for recommendations, it's probably a once-in-a-lifetime watch (even as a devoted Crichton fan, once in total is enough for now).

I rate it a weak 6/10.

PS: I'd recommend opting for the book instead, or for the audiobook (with a sample by Scott Brick, sounds nice).

An alien ship is discovered deep in the depths of the ocean, a team of scientists are sent down to investigate, where they discover a strange, perfect, metallic sphere, that they all have the curiosity to enter.

I haven't seen this since it was first released, and I don't think my opinion has switched much on that time.

When I think of classic 90's sci fi, I think initially about Event Horizon, a film that still packs a punch, I had all but forgotten about Sphere.

It's sci fi, but it's to tame to be classed as a sci fi horror, they could have turned up the heat a few notches, it would have worked better.

Pacing is an issue, at times it feels slow, other times it feels frantic. The first half an hour or so is pretty good, full of intrigue, but as soon as Jerry appears, it goes on a downward spiral. The latter stages just don't work, it should have been tense and claustrophobic, it just isn't.

It boasts a terrific cast, but I still think it was a strange choice for both Hoffman and Stone, the pair are somewhat wasted, despite putting in good performances.

Best scene, I've always liked that bizarre moment with the jellyfish, that looks great.

It's watchable, it should have been a classic.

6/10.

Excellent! I went into the film thinking it would be bad, since that is what I had heard from someone before watching it.

However, I was pleasantly surprised at what a terrific film this actually was. The only downfall to the film, was Dustin Hoffman. With all due respect to one of the best actors ever, he just wasn't suited for this particular role. He was good in it, but just not the right person for the job.

The film begins with Dustin Hoffman flying over the Pacific Ocean in a helicopter, going to a Submarine investigating a plane crash. As a psychologist, he is impatiently waiting to speak to the survivors, and after having been on the sub for over 3 hours, is upset with the Capatain. However, the Captain informs him there was no plane crash, but rather an arrival of some sort not quite 300 years ago, under the Ocean.

Sharon Stone, Leive Shreiber and Samuael L. Jackson join Hoffman as apart of his team, to go beneath the surface to discover and determine what it is exactly that they have found under the Pacific.

With complete intensity and excitement non-stop throughout the entire film, it will leave you feeling a little disturbed at times, and perhaps a bit paranoid, also.

I would advice anyone who does not have a liking to intense sci-fi type films...this is not going to be your cup of tea, but for those enjoy good horror, intensity and a great story line, you will definitely enjoy this flick!

The first 30 minutes of this movie was compelling but after that it just fell flat. With all the new technology in the ship wouldn't 5 geniuses be a little more interested in what was inside? Not to mention the Sphere itself. With something so interesting you think the director would want to titillate us a little with its powers. Did anyone else notice how emotionally detached the characters were? After every tragedy that included deaths of supposed friends, there just sitting around sipping coffee trying to figure out what happened all the while, smiling!? This really could have been a great movie, its got all the elements. The director just blew it.