The Midnight Sky (C+ or 2/4 stars)
Part outer space opera/part gloomy apocalypse story, 'The Midnight Sky' (directed by & starring George Clooney, based on a novel) opens in 2049, when Earth has all but destroyed itself. When the crew of a remote Arctic Circle outpost departs to face doomsday at home, terminally-ill astrophysicist Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney) stays behind at the desolate observatory. Listening for radio frequencies, Augustine discovers that there is a returning American spaceship headed for Earth after scanning a then-habitable moon of Jupiter, a celestial safe haven that Augustine, himself, discovered. It is of utmost importance that he makes contact with said spaceship so that he can urge them to return to Jupiter ... as human civilization is damned to extinction.
While roaming the now-deserted base, lonely Augustine finds that he has company -- the curiously silent, 7 yr. old Iris (Caoilinn Springall), who was seemingly left behind when the staff departed. Ailing, woeful Augustine is reluctant to care for a young child. In any case, Augustine must take Iris along on a perilous journey across the Arctic's icy wasteland to reach a satellite station with a stronger radio signal. Scenes alternate btwn. our courageous duo & the American astronaut crew (Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demian Bichir & Tiffany Boone) that is barreling home from planet K-23. Can they survive and stop the astronauts from returning to a global catastrophe down on Earth? The future of humanity hangs in the balance.
'The Midnight Sky' is a movie that aims to be a dystopian epic but doesn't spend enough time with the characters to generate ample emotion -- it's a chilly film. The two parallel storylines do exhibit SOME interest; just not enough. In the one storyline, the dying, grizzled Clooney evokes a combination of save-the-world determination + human frailty. His weary face & physical attributes reflect the futility of the journey he's on. But I couldn't connect with his Augustine. I don't know if that is Clooney, himself {never been a huge fan}, or the writing/directing. In the parallel storyline, we're meant to connect with each member of the 5 person astronaut crew through relationships with each other + their individualized holograms of family life back home on Earth. But again, it's just not quite enough to bring about the necessary emotion desired when members of the crew are put into harm's way or worse. Only the final 5-10 minutes made me FEEL something.
What films like 'The Midnight Sky' DO offer is the creative, gorgeous invention of other worlds. Martin Ruhe's weather-battered cinematography is great. The production design of the Arctic outpost, the spaceship & planet K-23 are sublime. And the special effects employed in the space sequences {mending something on the outer part of the ship, followed by a meteor shower} are marvelous. I also must mention the film's prominent music score by Alexandre Desplat; as ever, the composer stirs emotions & moods in us that the film itself can't otherwise accomplish. 'The Midnight Sky' is not a bad film. It's just a sleepy one; and even predictable -- it is part Gravity/Solaris/The Martian and a host of other like-films, yet isn't as strong as most of them. And though I liked the ending & its themes of regret & redemption, much of what occurs before that end didn't move me like I wanted it to.
While roaming the now-deserted base, lonely Augustine finds that he has company -- the curiously silent, 7 yr. old Iris (Caoilinn Springall), who was seemingly left behind when the staff departed. Ailing, woeful Augustine is reluctant to care for a young child. In any case, Augustine must take Iris along on a perilous journey across the Arctic's icy wasteland to reach a satellite station with a stronger radio signal. Scenes alternate btwn. our courageous duo & the American astronaut crew (Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demian Bichir & Tiffany Boone) that is barreling home from planet K-23. Can they survive and stop the astronauts from returning to a global catastrophe down on Earth? The future of humanity hangs in the balance.
'The Midnight Sky' is a movie that aims to be a dystopian epic but doesn't spend enough time with the characters to generate ample emotion -- it's a chilly film. The two parallel storylines do exhibit SOME interest; just not enough. In the one storyline, the dying, grizzled Clooney evokes a combination of save-the-world determination + human frailty. His weary face & physical attributes reflect the futility of the journey he's on. But I couldn't connect with his Augustine. I don't know if that is Clooney, himself {never been a huge fan}, or the writing/directing. In the parallel storyline, we're meant to connect with each member of the 5 person astronaut crew through relationships with each other + their individualized holograms of family life back home on Earth. But again, it's just not quite enough to bring about the necessary emotion desired when members of the crew are put into harm's way or worse. Only the final 5-10 minutes made me FEEL something.
What films like 'The Midnight Sky' DO offer is the creative, gorgeous invention of other worlds. Martin Ruhe's weather-battered cinematography is great. The production design of the Arctic outpost, the spaceship & planet K-23 are sublime. And the special effects employed in the space sequences {mending something on the outer part of the ship, followed by a meteor shower} are marvelous. I also must mention the film's prominent music score by Alexandre Desplat; as ever, the composer stirs emotions & moods in us that the film itself can't otherwise accomplish. 'The Midnight Sky' is not a bad film. It's just a sleepy one; and even predictable -- it is part Gravity/Solaris/The Martian and a host of other like-films, yet isn't as strong as most of them. And though I liked the ending & its themes of regret & redemption, much of what occurs before that end didn't move me like I wanted it to.