The Midnight Sky (2020)

Directed by George Clooney. Starring George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Tiffany Boone, Caoilinn Springall, Ethan Peck, Sophie Rundle. [PG-13]

Well-mounted and uncomfortably relevant science fiction story of an ornately-named scientist, Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), one of the last surviving humans on Earth, who’s trying to contact a team of inbound astronauts that had set out to explore a potentially habitable moon orbiting Jupiter—his is a grave message, however: go back. Sober and ambitious, with an appreciable focus on ideas over thrills and a stripped-down performance from the grizzled star, but it feels too much like a hodgepodge of a half-dozen other sci-fi/apocalyptic pictures over the last couple decades (from Gravity and The Martian to The Road and The Day After Tomorrow), and efforts to encourage an emotional connection with the narrow roster of characters don’t quite ring true; Clooney’s owl-like interactions with a young mute girl (Springall) who’s his only companion would have been more affecting if she was built up as anything more than a plot device. Tries to chase away lapses in credibility through ruthless edits (e.g., how exactly did Clooney manage to dry off after falling through the Arctic ice?), and rather than hitting a resonant peak of poignancy at the conclusion, the movie instead fades out with a whimper, where the sight of a gorgeous skyward shot lingers far longer than any concern for the fates of these principals, or, for that matter, the entire human race. Scripted by Mark L. Smith from Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel, “Good Morning, Midnight.” Clooney also co-produced.

66/100