1408, The Astronaut Farmer

DVD reviews from Nick at Nite

1408

I loved this movie. Test of a good scary movie? Easy, did you get chills at any point during the movie? This movie gave me the hee-bee jee-bees on at least three occassions. It is certainly worth checking out. 1408 is derived from a short story of the same title written by Stephen King. The short story is about a journalist and critic who travels the country visiting haunted hotels and places. He scopes out the locations and prepares books on the subject, e.g, the ten scariest places to sleep, the ten creepiest cemeteries, etc ... I actually read the short story several years ago and found it to be clever and entertaining. I am not one of those people that are critical of Stephen King because his writing amounts to little more than today's pulp fiction. He deserves more credit. Stand by Me, The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, let's be fair, the guy is good. A little plot. 1408 is a hotel room in a old hotel. No one that enters 1408 for any extended period of time ever comes out okay. In the near 100 year history of the hotel there have been over fifty deaths in the room. Some natural, others not so natural. For sometime, no one has been allowed to stay in 1408. It has maid service once a month. The maids do not close the door. The hotel managers stands in the door way and supervises the cleaning. The room is evil. Our intrepid hero, played ably in the movie by John Cusack, is intrigued and decides to spend the night in the room. I will leave the rest of the story and plot to those who may want to read the story or watch the movie. I give it an "A." This would have been a great Halloween movie. You could always wait until next Halloween to catch it.

The Astronaut Farmer

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I am sucker for all things science fiction. I am such a sucker for all things science fiction that I suspended all reason and logic and rented this movie. Starring a blood drinking Billy Bob Thornton (he does no blood drinking in this movie) and Virginia Madsen (I really like her, why has she only been in one really great movie?) this movie follows the adventures of a farmer who is trying to build his own space rocket to launch himself into orbit around the earth. This movie is a little hokey. Okay, it is a lot hokey. The short plot is crazy farmer starts building rocket, nearly loses family and farm in the process, his family rallies around him, and the crazy farmer achieves his dream. This movie is Field of Dreams without the baseball. I give it a "B."