Rating: 
Summary: Could've been a lot better
Review: I wasn't really wanting to see "The Astronaut's Wife," but my mom told me that it was good and that I should watch it. There wasn't anything else on, so I watched it. It turned out to be real disappointment in my opinion. Jillian (Charlize Theron) is the wife of an astronaut, Spencer (Johnny Depp). He almost gets killed after being trapped in space for two minutes. Jillian begins to worry when Spencer comes back and starts acting real strange. "The Astronaut's Wife" took an original idea and never really made the best of it. For the first hour of the movie, I thought it was boring, but it kept me interested enough to want to see what was going to happen. The last 30 minutes of the movie was the only part of the movie that was pretty good. "The Astronaut's Wife" had good acting, but the script and plot just weren't what they could've been. I don't really recommend getting the movie if you ask me, but some people really like it, so you might.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, but the last third is a stinker
Review: Imagine, just for a little while, that you are a 20ish blonde schoolteacher in Florida, married to an extremely handsome astronaut husband who dotes on you and with whom you enjoy certain very active forms of recreation on a seemingly regular basis....He has to go up again, and you really don't want him to --you never do-- but this time you have a sort of feeling, a doubt. And, just as you worried, something happens and all commmunication to/from the shuttle --and him-- is cut off for two minutes. He seems alright upon returning, then begins to do odd things, including quitting his job and moving to NYC. At a company cocktail party, you both are drunk, and you ask him once again what it was like, up there then. His response of, "it was cold....cold....i wanted to be with you....inside you...." only makes you feel the need for him. You wake up the next morning, aching and with the certainty that SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED. The events of the next months only serve to amplify your worries, as your belly grows larger and your husband grows sinister. Now snap out of imagining. Had Ravich used the power of suggestion more, fewer special effects, and more secrecy, this film could have been a tightly woven thriller. As it is, it has far too many loose ends, and it seems as if Ravich himself may have been posessed by something-or-other while filming the last third--it goes off the deep end into cheesy visual overload and is devoid of plot, too stylized for it's own good and with not nearly enogh substance to carry off half this style. Other than that, it is not a bad movie, and if you are a fan of science fiction, Depp, Theron, or space films in general, it is worth a look.
Rating: 
Summary: Save Yourself...
Review: ...and don't even bother with this video. I wish I had even one good thing to say about it but I don't. I especially hated the mousy Charlize Theron. Geeeze talk about poor acting, she wins the razy for 1999. It is hard to believe this film even made it to release. Want to see a great film instead? Rent, or rather, buy "Bottle Rocket."
Rating:
Summary: Some good stay in the car scenes
Review: This movie is one-dimensional and predictable but that does not mean you can not still say "stay in the car." Find out why having twins is spooky? Rosemary's Baby never grew up to be a pilot so. Yeah, and such common names like Spencer Armacost; what ever happened to Igor or Dahmer? They put in quiet space so you have time to think about what happened (or did not happen); you may call it dull. Do you really think that they would intentionally make a bad movie? ... The movie is not designed for repeat viewing.
Rating: 
Summary: A movie worth seeing!
Review: This is an enjoyable movie. You are entertained throughout, even though it's not surprising. Johnny Depp is a superb actor in all of his roles, but this is the first time I've found him soooo attractive. Charlize Theron does pretty well, in a role very similar to hers in the Devil's Advocate. So here's the story... Depp and Theron are married and he is an astronaut about to go out to space on a mission. She's sad, doesn't want him to go... Something happens while he's out there, and you really don't have a doubt what it was if you've watched any x-files episodes. He comes back, there's a really intense love scene between the two, and she gets pregnant with twins. I've seen correlations here between this movie and Rosemary's Baby, but I don't think that is at all the case. Theron starts to wonder what's up with him, and that's when all hell breaks loose. I loved it. Worth at LEAST a rent. :-)
Rating:
Summary: A movie that goes nowhere!
Review: This movies, i.e., The Astronauts Wife starring Johnny Depp has a premise that could have been both interesting and terrifying. However, the movie soon delves into medriocaty, i.e., the lines become predictable and the scenes boring and the acting of Depp cannot revive this stillborn picture. Apart from the intense love scene, this movie sleepwalks for most of the time and I really felt like I wasted two hours that I will never get back.
Rating:
Summary: Very uncompelling
Review: Like many viewers, my expectations were low. It's a shame. Some good performances are really wasted here. Johnny Depp is truly creepy as his face twists into its more intense form while the movie drones on. Most of the secondary actors were pretty good (esp. Donna Murphy and Joe Morton). Charlize Theron was not enough to carry the movie though. The plot was ho-hum, and it was paced poorly. None of the relevations were surprising, or interesting. The "twist" ending was executed poorly. Some pretty high lameness all around. Only get this if you are a big fan of the principal performers.
Rating:
Summary: Why?
Review: This movie has it all: bad dialogue, bad story, bad acting and of course bad directing. You can tell that the director is trying really hard to affect the audience but he's just not good. The dialogue is among the cheesiest I've witnessed in 1999 (and I thought films were getting out of that type of dialogues bar The Matrix). The acting? From stiff to over-dramatic to "huh?" - even cult-figure Johny Depp is a let down. The director is obviously trying hard to make you feel un-easy, or whatever he's trying to get out of the audience, but he just can't pull it off! Borrowing elements from Rosemary's Baby this movie isn't worth watching other than a good unintentional laugh if it doesn't bore you throughout. Trying to watch it and get some sense out of it will prove a hard task since this movie shows no signs of answering the questions it creates. Why? Why would the creature/alien/whatever do what it did? For what greater purpose? and blah blah blah to reach the "Why am I still sitting here watching this?" question. This movie is just not complete. Try Rosemary's Baby instead.
Rating:
Summary: derivative sci-fi film
Review: What do you get when you mix six parts "I Married a Monster From Outer Space" with four parts "Rosemary's Baby," "The Omen" and "Village of the Damned," shake it and stir it, then add "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and the "Alien" movies as chasers? You end up with "The Astronaut's Wife," a film cobbled together from so many disparate and familiar sources that the audience is always ten giant steps ahead of both the plot and the characters. This shamelessly derivative film, essentially an unattributed remake of "I Married a Monster From Outer Space," stars Johnny Depp, taking one of his rare side forays into straight commercial moviemaking, as an astronaut who experiences a strange, inexplicable two-minute long phenomenon while outside his space capsule and who returns an oddly changed man - though Depp plays both the before and after roles in so similarly deadpan and lowkeyed a style that we frankly cannot see too much of a difference. Charlize Theron portrays Spencer's wife, Jillian, who slowly comes to perceive that all is not true blue with her hero husband. "The Astronaut's Wife" suffers so fatally from a sense of deja vu that it becomes almost impossible to stay interested despite a yeomanlike performance by Theron who even sports the shorn pixie hairstyle made famous by Mia Farrow, thirty-two long years ago, as she too ran around New York City, desperately searching for answers as to just what diabolical force was incubating deep inside her womb. This film does provide an admirably dark finale as well as art direction, cinematography and music that create a spare, almost hermetically sealed world, devoid of sunshine and life. Too bad these quality elements are placed into the service of such completely unimaginative material.
Rating:
Summary: Expertly crafted suspense thriller
Review: I rented this film without much in the way of expectations. I am not a big sci-fi fan and even less of a horror fan, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. In fact, I was extremely impressed, not with the story, but with the filmmaking, particularly the direction by Rand Ravich. The story was a patchwork of a lot of different worn out sci-fi themes. There was the "alien takes over the human" theme, the "alien dwells among us" theme and of course, "the evil baby gestating in the good and pure mother" theme. Suffice it to say that this wasn't fresh material. But let's be honest. How many stories are really fresh material? Why are we suckers for the same old romantic comedy storylines again and again and yet we expect that sci-fi must be completely novel to be good? What is outstanding about this film is the suspense. I haven't seen a film that was so effective as a suspense film in quite some time. It was effective because of daring use of the camera by Ravich that visually left me begging for relief in scene after scene. Actually, if there is any criticism of this film it is the fact that the suspense was too well done. It wears the viewer out without sufficient mental rest stops. Ravich's use of extreme close ups, wide angle shots, rapid camera movements, odd perspectives, and tight sets produces a sense of relentless suspense that made me want jump into the screen and yell at the characters. For some, this was probably overwhelming and tedious. It seems that viewers today want pace, novelty and surprises. Yes, we knew Spencer (Johnny Depp) was now an alien. Yes, we knew that Jillian (Charlize Theron) had alien babies growing inside her. What we didn't know was what she was going to do about it and what he was going to do about her. So I thought the story was ultimately effective in achieving its goal...thrilling suspense. What this film lacked was a hideous monster and a lot of blood and gore. This is why it wasn't popular in my opinion because these are staples of today's mass market viewer. This is the very reason I thought it was excellent because it produced fear and anticipation, not by what was seen, but by what was unseen. From an acting perspective, this was a shining moment for Charlize Theron. This was a very demanding film for a female lead and she handled it like a pro. Her part demanded a full range of emotions from sweet adoring wife to the terror of a caged animal and she delivered the most complete performance I've seen from her to date. As a matter of fact, Theron so controlled the screen that Johnny Depp didn't really have much to do except give the occasional menacing look. I'm going to buck the tide with this one and give it an 8/10. This film was about style. It failed to deliver the obvious and this elusiveness made it unique among all the weird science fiction rip-them-to-shreds hack movies that jam the video store shelves. And that's what I liked most about it.
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