The Midnight Sky is a science fiction drama about a scientist Augustine(George Clooney) who stays behind at an artic communication station after an unidentified worldwide catastrophe in order to contact a spaceship returning from investigating the possible habitability of one of Jupiter's moons, his efforts to contact the ship are contrasted with the challenges the ship has on their way back to Earth. Sound unnecessarily complicated? It is!
Clooney is a movie star and his charm and ease on screen is undeniable but there's simply not enough meat on the script or scifi ideas that go beyond trope to make this particularly interesting or unique. The crew of the ship played by Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, and Kyle Chandler are all great, they have chemistry, there is an ease and comfort with the characters that make the ship-dynamic engaging but their scenes are brief, they're constantly cut away from for Clooney scenes which deflates the momentum, and the issues that come up are the same as any spaceship-in-crisis movie when it'd be more effective to slow down and let the characters just be.
The production is effective enough but not unique, it's a copy of things that have already gone before and been significantly more successful. Ultimately the look and feel, and the story for that matter, have no distinct personality within the genre.
Competent filmmaking and a wonderful cast can't raise the derivative script beyond the mediocre.
Currently streaming on Netflix.
Stream It.
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