George Clooney and Caoilinn Springal in The Midnight Sky. Photo: Netflix/ Press screeners for The Midnight Sky went out with a charming, slightly apologetic introductory video from director-star George Clooney, and part of me wishes that the film, which Netflix released last week, still came with it.
As a director, he’s always been more about conjuring a mood than telling a story, about immersion rather than suspense. Filled with large, empty rooms, great blank stretches of barren landscape, and forlorn glimpses of the lonely vastness of space, The Midnight Sky is a movie you’re supposed to lose yourself in, at least a little bit. And on a small screen — even on a really big small screen — that’s practically impossible.
One day, back in the forlorn present, Augustine discovers another soul in his giant, empty observatory: a young girl, Iris , who seems to have been struck with the same cinematic ailment that afflicts many young girls in grown-up movies: She is completely silent. With a young child to take care of, the otherwise forlorn Augustine, who had previously consigned himself to slow, certain death as perhaps the last human left on the surface of the Earth, suddenly finds urgency in his life.
The urgency that Augustine supposedly feels over Iris’s sudden appearance, alas, doesn’t translate to any actual urgency in the filmmaking: Realizing that he and Iris need to relocate to another, bigger, even more remote weather station, both to flee the rapidly approaching radiation and to find a way to communicate with the Aether and warn them not to land on Earth, our hero sets out across the frozen landscape.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.