Movie #48 - 1408

"The Dolphin Hotel invites you to stay in any of its stunning rooms. Except one."

In case you haven't guessed it, the room in question is 1408. Based on a Stephen King novel... isn't every good horror movie based on something written by someone with some credibility. Unfortunately, this is definitely not one of King's best movie adaptations. It ranks up there with Thinner.

John Cusack is a writer (of course) of Top 10 haunted locations. There are some additional key plot twists which is supposed to enlist sympathy for the protagonist... what the filmmakers didn't think of is having sympathy for the audience.

There are some weird twists to this movie... but I say weird in a bad reference kind of way... not in the good, 2001: A Space Odyssey type of weird.

Cusack's role is forgettable and unfortunately, he's starting to pick some poor roles for his acting expertise in recent years. I cannot think of anything good he has done recently, except for maybe Runaway Jury - which is already 5 years ago... going back further, you run into Being John Malkovich, which is now over 9 years old by my counts.

Samuel L. Jackson on the other hand... is working about par with what his skills allow. This movie is strictly another money grab for Jackson... something almost every role in his resume includes as a pre-requisite. Jackson does not add anything to the Gerald Olin hotel manager character, nor has he added anything to any of his other recent movies. If you want to look back - maybe Star Wars Episode I-III comes to mind (1999-2005 - mainly because his death scene from Episode III was pivotal to the character development of Darth Vader and he did have some cool fight scenes in the Episode II). But before that... possibly add A Time to Kill and Pulp Fiction, going back more than 12 and 14 years respectively.

I still question Jackson's validity of claiming to be the #1 actor of all-time in terms of gross movie revenues, usurping Harrison Ford in recent years. Many of Jackson's films are obscure at best and many of his roles (e.g. Star Wars) are supporting in nature. Also, although one can lay claim that Ford also has 3 Star Wars films to prop him up in this argument, at least Han Solo is included in the progression of all 3 films, yet Mace Windu is only prominent in pockets of II and III. I beg to question Jackson's self proclaimed movie dominance... hopefully, other actors will change that statement... but Jackson will continue to make crappy films, and you can probably rank many of his 2008 upcoming entries into that category.