Movie Breakdown: The Midnight Sky
Pre-Screening Stance:
If I’m being honest, George Clooney hasn’t been in a great film since 2013’s Gravity, and his directorial efforts have largely been misses since 2005’s Good Night, And Good Luck. So, should I temper my expectations for The Midnight Sky? Yes. Will I? No. I like post-apocalyptic tales too much to do that.
Post-Screening Ramble:
The Midnight Sky jumps back and forth between two stories. One follows Augustine (George Clooney), a renowned scientist who is one of the few remaining people on a ruined Earth, and the other is centered around the crew of a ship called The Aether. As for how the two plots are intertwined, Augustine is trying to contact the astronauts – Sully (Feliticy Jones), Adewole (David Oyelowo), Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), Sanchez (Demian Bechi), Maya (Tiffany Boone) – to tell them there is no point in returning home, as the planet is now uninhabitable.
In lot of ways, The Midnight Sky feels like an amalgamation of Ad Astra and Gravity. Just about everything involving Clooney’s Augustine is a total slow burn. He stares, he thinks, he remembers and so and so forth. Even when he discovers a young girl, Iris (Caoilinn Springall), hiding in his lab, his demeanor doesn’t change all that much. He’s a man, like Brad Pitt in Ad Astra, with a lot on his mind. Likewise, most things involving the crew on The Aether pretty much screams Gravity. There’s even a scene with a daring space walk (complete with an astronaut playing music) that gets interrupted by debris crashing into the ship.
Here’s the deal though, even without much originality at all, The Midnight Sky is pretty solid. Clooney turns in good work behind and in front of the camera, and even though it’s a little long, the movie is compelling enough to keep you engaged. If you like your sci-fi with more of a dramatic lean, be sure to check the film out when it hits Netflix on December 23.
One Last Thought:
It’s just a small thing, but I really appreciated how much stuff in this movie has a 3D-printed look to it. Seems likely that’ll actually be the case here in the real world before too long.
