By Mark Kennedy, AP Entertainment Writer
Netflix is on a roll this year, with "Mank,""Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,""Da 5 Bloods" and "The Trial of the Chicago 7" all garnering Oscar buzz. Well, hold onto your spacesuits for the latest — "The Midnight Sky."
George Clooney directs and stars in this feature film adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton's novel "Good Morning, Midnight" and what he has done on both sides of the camera is astounding.
He has managed to craft two intimate, connected stories set against the vastness of the cosmos and the white sprawl of the Arctic. He has turned in a tragic but yet hopeful tale grounded in, of all things, Earth's destruction.
"The Midnight Sky" opens with a grizzled Clooney eating a microwaved meal in an empty cafeteria. He stares out into nothingness. It is 2049 and three weeks after an unclear disaster has befallen Earth.
Clooney plays a cancer-ridden astrophysicist who is waiting out his days alone in an Arctic lab, trying to warn a returning spaceship about what has happened back home. Then he discovers he's not alone — a girl is also in the outpost and needs looking after. Until now, he's been drinking whiskey, playing chess against himself and undergoing transfusions. "I'm the wrong person," he tells her.
To contact the astronauts, the scientist and the girl must travel across icy wastes to reach another station with a more powerful signal, in a sort of nod to "The Road." The film alternates between the pair on Earth and the five-person crew in the heavens, the story switching from the white of Arctic snow to the blackness of space.
Clooney's filmmaking is unrushed, poetic and elegant, admiring beauty in its extremes — the ballet of manmade machines spinning slowly in space and the austerity of a blizzard in empty wilderness. Mark L. Smith's script is equally spare, letting every word count.
This is Clooney's seventh outing as a director and there are artistic touches everywhere, like a tiny bright spacecraft against the darkness dissolving into a dark tent on an endlessly snowy plain. One scene in which blood droplets float in zero gravity is horrific and beautiful at the same time. His camera lingers on the space station like a proud dad showing off his son's toy model.
Music by Alexandre Desplat is rich and evocative and the addition of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" and Chris Stapleton's "Tennessee Whiskey" feel natural and integral. There's even a nod to "On the Beach," Stanley Kramer's post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama.
With five calm and capable astronauts in the sky and two characters in the Arctic, "The Midnight Sky" touches on themes of regret, parenting, fragility, familial responsibility and the conflict between love and career. It's also a film about an environmental disaster whose final editing had to be done during a global pandemic.
Felicity Jones and David Oyelowo play husband-and-wife astronauts with a cool and sexy playfulness, while Demián Bichir is deeply moving in his scenes as a wistful and grieving mission specialist.
Kyle Chandler plays the ship's pilot with a tangible ache for his family. "I was the one who was supposed to be at risk. And they were supposed to be safe — home and safe," he says. And 7-year-old newcomer Caoilinn Springall almost steals the movie outright with her silent expressiveness.
But it's hard to beat Clooney when he's this good. You can see the life draining from his character, shambling about with his thick beard and limp. Clooney is not afraid to be ugly — drooling, vomiting, frightened, old. Seeing him drop his gruffness for a delightful food fight with peas is a delight.
The filmmakers battled 50-mile-per-hour winds at the top of an Icelandic glacier at 40 below zero. They also had to write around Jones being visibly pregnant, a pivot that proved perfect in the end, when all the floating parts of this story beautifully snap into place.
It's a film that will satisfy every kind of fan — sci-fi, intimate drama, romantic and fantasy. It is gentle and deliberate, deeply felt and yet lighter and less cerebral than its distant cousin, "Interstellar."
Clooney has said making "The Midnight Sky" was like shooting "The Revenant" and then shooting "Gravity." What a coincidence: Both those films also won a bunch of Oscars.
"The Midnight Sky," a Netflix release, is rated PG-13 for "some bloody images and brief strong language." Running time: 118 minutes. Four stars out of four.
“Heretic” and “Maria” Set As Red Carpet Premieres At AFI Fest
The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced that Heretic, the psychological thriller starring Hugh Grant, and Maria, based on the life of opera singer Maria Callas starring Angelina Jolie, will round out the Red Carpet Premieres section at this year’s AFI Fest. The Heretic Gala Screening will take place on Thursday, October 24, and the Maria Gala Screening will be held on Saturday, October 26. The complete Red Carpet Premieres section includes the world premieres of Music By John Williams, Robert Zemeckis’ Here, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2. All Red Carpet Premieres will take place at the historic TCL Chinese Theatre. The full lineup for AFI Fest 2024 will be unveiled on October 1.
“At the heart of AFI Fest is an unwavering dedication to celebrating the best in global cinema--together,” said Bob Gazzale, AFI president and CEO. “We look forward to uniting artists and audiences once again to be inspired by the art form in a powerful sense of community.”
Heretic follows two young missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) who are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr. Reed (portrayed by Grant), becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse. The film is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods and produced by Stacey Sher, Beck, Woods, Julia Glausi and Jeanette Volturno. The film will be released nationwide by A24 on November 8.
Directed by Pablo Larraín, Maria presents a tumultuous and beautiful depiction of one of the world’s most renowned artists and reimagines the legendary soprano in her final days in Paris, as Callas (Jolie)... Read More