The Astronaut's Wife
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Movie Reviews of The Astronaut's Wife
Movie Review: Sci-fi Fun!
Summary: 4 Stars
I think this is a great fun film! Intellectual types may be offended by its plot stretches and silliness, but it's one of my favorite sci-fi movies, both Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron are great in it!Movie Review: A flop with redeeming qualities.
Summary: 3 Stars
What was potentially supposed to be a good movie, as boasted by its promotional ads, is somewhat ruined by something (I say this because I can't quite pinpoint exactly what it is). But that doesn't mean the movie is a complete waste; it does contain a reasonably high level of suspense, and is visually interesting at times. The cast works to the best of their ability to make the characters authentic and believable, and director Rand Ravich creates a moody yet ultimately lackluster atmosphere of thrills with one or two chills tossed in for good measure. Spencer Armacost and his wife, Jillian, live a happy life in Florida, where Spencer is an astronaut for NASA and Jillian is a second grade teacher. The film's opening scene lets us know they are married, showing the couple laying in bed, watching an old movie, Jillian lamenting how she will miss him when he goes up to space the following day to repair a crippled satellite. The launch goes well, and Spencer even finds time to call Jillian from space. Things get tense when Jillian sees a news report about an explosion in space involving Spencer and his partner, Alex Streck, and she is soon rushed to the base by NASA official Sherman Reese. Upon landing, the astronauts are rushed to the hospital ward and are soon released with clean bills of health. Following an awards ceremony to recognize the heroes, Spencer tells Jillian that he wants to quit flying and move to New York to work as an executive for an aerodynamics firm. Jillian agrees, though finding it quite strange.
At their going away party, Spencer's partner dies of multiple strokes, and at the funeral, his wife kills herself, supposedly over losing him. But there is more to that part of the story which comes in later in the plot. After the move to New York, Spencer becomes more mysterious in his mannerisms and behavior, and when Jillian soon discovers that she is pregnant with his twins, she feels that something is terribly wrong with the lives growing inside her, as well as with her husband.
With so much going on in the movie, you would think the story was solid gold. The truth is, the film is a good example of ingenuity, but there is still something missing, which keeps it from being a total winner. Perhaps it's the few yet ever-present points at which the movie moves slowly without much going on. Or it may be the ending, which will come as a letdown after all of the suspense and intensity that the movie puts forth for the first and second parts. One of these elements, or both, depending on your opinion, keep this film from being a three or four star film.
However, this suspense-laden story does manage to make your heart beat at certain times. Throughout the entire movie, there is an underlying of uneasiness through the music, which is constantly playing at points where the intensity is high. Jillian's visions of her children and flashbacks of events in her mind are quite interesting to look at. When things begin to go wrong after the mission ends, the story picks up the pace a bit with the move to New York, and it really never stops moving, not even in the anticlimactic ending.
The acting talents employed here are put to good use, though tend to sound a bit forced in the beginning. Johnny Depp, who does not have as much on-camera time as his co-star, does a good job of portraying the sinister Spencer, but it is clear that this movie is Theron's. Charlize Theron does a spectacular job of portraying Jillian, though it must be said that her performance in the beginning is less superior to her acting ability displayed in the end of the movie.
Overall, the film is not a total flop; it does have its defining moments, and proves that it can bring an acceptable amount of suspense to the screen. However, the movie does have its flaws, and should not be watched without realizing that there is the possibility of a letdown.
Movie Review: Film Tactics in The Astronaut's Wife (SPOILERS)
Summary: 3 Stars
In The Astronaut's Wife, photography elements are used to increase the intensity of the film because unsettling camera angles are used and because aggressive and vibrant colors are present. In addition, a close-up on a radio meant trouble.
I rented this movie because I had never seen it before and have watched it once.
In this movie, the wife of an astronaut deals with suspicions of her husband after he is involved in an unusual event while in space.
Several camera angles that are known for their ability to unsettle the audience were used throughout this movie. During one scene where Spencer is acting aggressively towards his wife they used a shot of him looking directly up from beneath him. It was pretty much the opposite of a bird's eye view. It took a while for me to get used to seeing the image being filmed from that angle and focused on Spencer. The use of this angle made him seem even more creepy and overpowering. There is also an extreme low angle of Spencer's wife, Jillian, while she was digging in the refrigerator. The odd camera angle was almost a piece of foreshadowing because you sensed that something was going to happen. The next thing we know is that her husband shows up. There was an oblique angle of the hand rail of the stairs leading to the subway. At that time Jillian was hiding from Spencer below the rail and his hand was reaching towards it. The use of this angle increased the amount of suspense in this particular situation. Near the end of the film, Jillian is attempting to electrocute herself in a suicide attempt. Spencer shows up and tries to manipulate her. We get a bird's eye view of the scene as he gets electrocuted and killed.
The use of the colors red and orange were tools of foreshadowing. Jillian was cutting carrots when she cuts her finger. She starts to clean it up when she sees the story of a problem that happened in space that involved her husband. Sherman Reese was the only person that was willing to look into the possibility that something may have affected the astronauts while they were in space. His red hat gave us the clue that something bad was going to happen to him. It is later implied that Spencer kills him. One night, Jillian wakes from a dream in which Spencer is harming her sister. She wakes shaken but convinced that it was just a dream and there was no chance that there was even the slightest possibility that it could be reality. Jillian notices that Spencer's hands are red when he gets home that night. She realizes that he has indeed done something to harm her sister. She got the "vision" from the unborn twins that she was carrying.
Early in the movie it gets stated that radios are the ways for the extra terrestrials to communicate with each other. At a party there was a shot of a radio and the next thing we know a scream is heard and somebody has just committed suicide. There are several close-ups on a radio in Spencer and Jillian's house. This is foreshadowing that a situation similar to that is going to happen soon.
Beware the odd camera angles.
Movie Review: Performs well until its rediculous conclusion
Summary: 3 Stars
When The Astronaut's Wife landed in theaters, it didn't take off. In fact, it appeared to fall off the distributor's launch pad. I can see why. It has a fatal flaw which denyed its having much commercial or critical success, but I feel that what's good about it is that it tries very hard to overcome this problem. Juliann and Spencer Armacut [Charleze Theron and Johnny Depp] are a married couple who are still madly in love. He's an astronaut, and she's a grammar school teacher. Except for his exotic profession, they could be a typical couple. Naturally, she worries about him, and her worst fears almost come true when there is an accident aboard a space shuttle. Spencer and a fellow astronaut are outside the craft repairing something when they are suddenly cut loose. For two agonizing minutes, they float helplessly in space. The rest of the crew manages to rescue them. Back on Earth, both men are hospitalized for a short while. It doesn't take very long for the two men's wives to figure out that their husbands are somehow different. Very different, as it turns out. These changes are not for the better.
The movie is beautifully photographed. One scene in particular is brilliant. After the accident, the wives are rushed to NASA headquarters. There, Juliann stands in front of a huge television. A camera in the nose of the shuttle shows its approach for landing. It is as though Juliann were landing with the craft. The set designs are also good. In the beginning, all the sets are cozy and warm. When the couple moves to New York afterwards the incident, the sets are vast and cool and elegant. And somehow as empty as space itself.
I have long felt that Johnny Depp is the best physical actor on the screen today. He has an otherworldly quality about him to begin with, and so he does not do as well as some other performers in the emotional sense. He builds his characters by body language. Charleze Theron is one of the most promising, as well as beautiful, young actresses around. She does her best work through her emotions. I think that, as a screen couple, they are an interesting pairing.
Naturally, I won't reveal the ending, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say that it is the fatal flaw. It makes The Astronaut's Wife end up like an elaborate joke with a bad punch line. I think the problem a lot of people have had with it is that everything else is crafted so well. This prevents it from being in the category they call Bad Movies We All Love. It is a shame that no one was able to bring the cast and crew back to shoot a different ending. Doing so is not all that uncommon. Many movies have been salvaged this way over the years. One famous example is Sunset Boulevard. The original opening had the unintended effect of causing the preview audiences to roll in the aisles with laughter. A new opening was filmed, and the movie became a hit, not to mention a classic.
Movie Review: Is he or is he not? (3.5 stars)
Summary: 3 Stars
Commander Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp), an astronaut and a loving husband to Jillian (Charlize Theron), is lost in space for 2 minutes along with his partner Captain Alex Streck during a routine space walk to repair a broken satellite. After coming back to earth, tests are run on them and everything comes up ok on Spence, but Alex's heart takes a beating. He survives, but barely. The recordings that their suits picked up have them screaming in panic, but apparently, nothing happened. During a party that is thrown for the two astronauts, Alex suddenly and quite freakishly dies leaving his wife behind who begins to say some strange things about him to Jillian. As time goes by, an ex NASA employer comes to Jillian to tell her that he's discovered some strange things about her husband Spencer's readings. How everything is the same, but just a tad off. As pieces being to come together, she begins to second guess who her husband really is more and more. Did her husband return from space, or did something else? Or is she just going insane?
I like this movie. Yeah, sometimes it felt a little drawn out, but I liked it. Until the ending that is. The whole movie felt very `what if'ish' to me. As in, "What if he is or isn't an alien" "What if she's just going nuts". I really don't think you can tell what's going on, until the very Hollywood ending. And when I say that I mean that Hollywood decided we were too stupid to decide on our own what happens, so they just let you know. Up until the ending though, I felt like I was watching a pretty good thriller. When we find out that Jillian had been locked up in a nut house before, you really don't know what to think. And every little thing you've seen becomes a `Well...this could be the reason' sort of idea.
In the end I would say give it a rent if you've never seen it. Johnny Depp plays his party really well. So does Charlize, even though it felt and looked like she was doing Devils Advocate at the same time (same craziness and same short hair).
P.S. My ending that I came up with would've been really good and I think had made the movie better.