Episode 92 - October Sky

In 1999, famed director of "Jurassic Park III," Joe Johnston, outdid his previous attempts at making the perfect melodramatic cheesefest movie with "October Sky." The film is about teens with hardscrabble beginnings who launch a projectile as an attempt to escape their upbringings, but the insincerity of the performances made audiences want to projectile launch their lunches into jumbo-sized popcorn buckets. Prior to learning how to act, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Homer Hickam, a boy who immediately becomes obsessed with rocketry after witnessing Sputnik orbiting the Earth and begins a personal correspondence with a famous Nazi scientist, Wernher von Braun. Homer and the rag-tag group of misfits that he assembles go from accidentally blowing up a picket fences to winning the National Science Fair after a ton of montages that are meant to let us know how tenacious they were. Chris "The Sherminator" Owen plays a nerdlinger dweebizoid named Quentin who is such a pariah at his high school that even the act of approaching him at lunchtime warrants an audible gasp from the entire rest of the student body. Quentin is the brains of the rocketry operation and indispensable to its success, but he somehow receives almost no credit because Homer was busy lapping it all up. Laura Dern's portrayal of a passionate teacher named Miss Riley who is diagnosed with a terminal disease just as the students she inspired were about to realize their dreams was as thirsty for an Oscar nomination as humanly possible. They actually have her witness their last launch from her deathbed. This is what we are dealing with here. Chris Cooper plays Homer's dad, and he's just doing his typical gruff dad role like in every movie he's in other than "Adaptation."  Join us as we discuss passive-aggressive painting, the differences between the memoir and the movie, and why The Sherminator should've won an Oscar for this movie. Tell us what you think by chatting with us (@filmsnuff) on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, or by shooting us an email over at [email protected]. This episode is sponsored by 23 and NOT Me. Visit our website at https://www.filmsnuff.com.