Forrest Gump is the Baby Boom generation's tribute to itself, a panorama of American culture from the sleepy South of the 1950s to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. The film is a technical masterpiece, skillfully weaving together numerous cultural reference points, all without ever causing the audience to pause for thought. Director Robert_Zemeckis and a team of top-notch special effects experts convincingly combined actors with archival footage so that Gump (Michael_Conner_Humphreys as a child and Tom_Hanks as an adult) gets to interact with many famous personalities of the day. Of particular note are Gump's scenes at the University of Alabama, where Forrest meets then-governor George Wallace (via newsreel footage) and football coach Bear Bryant (actor Sonny_Shroyer). Similarly outstanding are the sequences set in Vietnam and the later shrimpboat scenes with Gump's best friend (Gary_Sinise), a legless war veteran. Forrest Gump won six Oscars, including Best Picture, over critical favorites Pulp_Fiction and The_Shawshank_Redemption. An interesting sidelight to Hanks' Best Actor win is Jessica_Lange's also set-in-Alabama Best Actress performance in Blue_Sky in the same year. The wins, however, did not lead Hollywood to rush to set more films in the "Heart of Dixie" state. Richard Gilliam, Rovi

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