The Midnight Sky (M, 117 minutes)
2 stars
I've enjoyed some of the previous films directed by George Clooney - The Ides of March and Good Night, and Good Luck, for example, were both intelligent and entertaining. The Midnight Sky, unfortunately, is one of the director-star's lesser efforts, like The Monument Men.
The film is full of overfamiliar elements from other - better - movies. Clooney himself cited Gravity (in which he starred) as well as the historical drama The Revenant as inspirations, but there are plenty of others.
Adapted from Lily Brooks-Dalton's book Good Morning, Midnight by Mark L. Smith, who co-wrote The Revenant, this science fiction film is set in the not-too-distant future, in 2049. A recent "event" has ruined Earth and survivors are fleeing underground to survive as long as they can.
We don't get specifics about what happened - it appears to be some sort of radiation problem that has turned most of the green parts of the planet brown - but the look-after-the-planet message is obvious (there's even a clip from the old apocalyptic film On the Beach to help drive home the point).
The film's focus is not on spectacular catastrophe but more intimate, on people in two places trying to survive and to communicate with each other. There's nothing wrong with that if the actors are good - which they are - and there's the right material and tone, both of which are more problematic.
The seriously ill scientist Dr Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney) stays at an Arctic research station when everyone else is evacuated. He wants to make contact with the space shuttle Aether. It is returning from a two-year mission to ascertain whether one of the moons of Jupiter could provide a sanctuary for humanity.
But the Earth the shuttle's crew are coming back to isn't the one they left, and Lofthouse wants to warn them.
Lofthouse also discovers he's not alone: a seemingly mute girl named Iris (Caoilinn Springall) was left behind during the evacuation. We're in Little Miss Marker territory now, as the gruff, preoccupied man slowly succumbs to the charms of the child.
At least it's not insufferably cute: the scene in which the ice is broken is a welcome bit of light relief.
Having the kid around also gives Lofthouse someone to talk to, though often it feels like he's explaining things to us rather than her.
Meanwhile, the crew of the Aether have their own longings and problems. The treatment of these characters - including pregnant Sully Rembshire (Felicity Jones) and her partner Tom (David Oyelowo) who is the ship's commander, among others - feels almost as cold as the Arctic winter in which Lofthouse and Iris are stuck. It's not the actors' fault, and there are some more emotional moments later on, but the temperature is a bit too 2001: A Space Odyssey.
There are some impressive special effects in the latter part of the film that look good on the big screen and don't feel gratuitous.
One of the other annoying things about the film is the use of flashbacks: while there's a payoff of sorts, for too long it is simply confusing and feels like the film is being slowed down, and it's pokey enough without that. It's hard to fault Clooney's good intentions but this is a bit of a slog.
If you've seen the above-mentioned films and a few other recent ones like Ad Astra and The Martian, you won't find much that's novel here.
