George Clooney is without a doubt for me one of our greatest actors and perhaps is the last great vestige of true talent and star power aligning in the male sphere, along with Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio. These actors do epitomise a sort of bygone Newman and Redford charm that we just don’t see anymore nowadays. If Clooney reflects one of these stars most, it would naturally be Redford, with his own personal forays into directing and producing, aswell as still maintaining a thriving acting career. The Midnight Sky is his latest directorial effort and whereas some of Clooney’s directing has been some of my favourite subtle and underrated pieces of cinema of the 2000s, the other half of that coin is some bland work that never really fulfills the possibilities of its high concepts. The Midnight Sky is unfortunately such a film.

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George Clooney has led this film from the off-set in the production state of things, finding what he described “a way to do it”. The “it” in question is Lily Brooks-Dalton novel Good Morning, Midnight, a novel that I have not read. The film follows two parallel stories as we find Clooney as Augustine, a lonely and seemingly seriously ill scientist all alone in the Artic. Augustine is the last gasp of humanity following an apocalypse and spends his days flash-backing to a romance he once had with a woman named Jean. These flashbacks, although rather corny and overdone, do some good work, mainly down to the brief moments we get with Sophie Rundle and Ethan Peck as a younger Augustine and the darling love of his life. First off, Peck looks and sounds obnoxiously like Clooney and it’s a great impression, but Peck also has some smaller moments where this impression gives way to a fine performance where we get to see the foundation of what Clooney’s character is going through. Clooney is great in the film, so bitter and aged that we can’t help but feel for the character from very early on and until the very end of the film. The film’s plot with Clooney kicks in survivalist mode when he finds Iris, played by Caoilinn Springall, a young child who is currently not speaking. This old man and young child through the wilderness routine has been seen many times before and this doesn’t really bring anything to the plate, but still serves us the clichés and beats of this sort of plot that we do enjoy when done well. This is where the film hits its best stride, when we are closest to Clooney and furthest away from the very mixed bag of CGI effects in this film, some look great and are bettered by the beautiful vistas of cinematographer Martin Ruhe, but some genuinely look quite terrible for a film of this supposed calibre. Clooney can direct sequences very well, for instance a water based one around the middle of the film is genuinely rather thrilling, however Clooney just has nothing to work with. The plot is contrived and dull and Mark L. Smith’s dialogue and circumstances just aren’t all that interesting. Any moment of humour or drama is down to Clooney and other performers making the best out of it.

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Perhaps the largest problem with the film is the dual plot, as we follow a crew returning to earth. It’s not that the talent isn’t there. The crew consists of Kyle Chandler, who has an excellent scene receiving some rather horrific news, as well as Demian Bichir, who has a great scene in turn with Chandler. Tiffany Boone and David Oyelowo are pretty serviceable and don’t really bring much to the table. Their captain is Felicity Jones, who is really just rather dull. She’s not a bad actress per se, but I find that all of her performances, despite a change in accent here and there, all have the exact same tired inflections. I can’t put all the blame on Jones, but whenever we are with this crew the film just seems to go to a dead stop, in its pace and plotting, and in our interest. It’s not the Clooney stuff is overly exceptional, but it is certainly more interesting than what we are viewing on the spaceship. This isn’t helped by the surrounding writing and CGI, but I don’t think it would have helped this story very much. Another prime example of thwarted quality is with Alexandre Desplat’s score, which has some very nice sweeping moments, but then some genuinely laughable cues that are just painfully cliché and corny. The entire film can’t be described that way, but it can’t be praised an awful lot either.

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An unfortunately disappointing 5/10 that repeatedly focuses on its weakest elements, when a great film rears its head multiple times. Stay for some good Clooney direction and some great Clooney acting, but don’t get too comfortable for the long run, cause lots of this film drags and ends up being a rehash of a rehash of something that wasn’t very good to begin with. We’ve seen it before and we’ve seen it worse, but we’ve also certainly seen it better.

P.S. The spaceship twist on The Graduate ending was a nice ending, unfortunately what makes that ending work is because we care for the characters. Here we frankly couldn’t care less. Clooney knows the strength of that ending, hell, he was in a version of it in Michael Clayton. Hell, don’t watch The Midnight Sky, watch Michael Clayton, or The Graduate for that matter, or re-watch for that matter. I guess the downbeat message of this P.S is that no matter what film you are watching, there is a better film that you could be watching instead.

P.P.S Also the log of the "twist" quickly starts to wain once one starts thinking about it too much, or rather how one reflects on its presentation of facts and characters earlier in the film.

-Thomas Carruthers