Solaris

Rating:
Summary: Freefall Existentialism
Review: If you are thinking about buying or renting Solaris, consider the following first:

Did you know there are three versions of you? First there's the actual You that lives in the physical world; second there is the You of self concept - the You that you believe yourself to be; and finally there's the You that lives in other people's minds. The You that people think you are. Everyone who knows you has constructed a profile of your personality in their mind and, for them, that is the real you.

Solaris asks what would happen if the You that exists in someone else's mind could somehow be brought into the physical world as a separate person from the original? What would be the difference between the real you and the perceived You? To complicate things even further, the movie explores the existential crises that might occur when the dreamed-up version you becomes aware of their predicament and begins to lament their lack of authenticity.

The problem with this movie is that mulling these questions over beer and pizza is great fun; but, for the vast majority of viewers, it's a little much to process over a bucket of popcorn - especially if you were expecting a romping, Science Fiction, movie with killer robots and lots of explosions.

Rating:
Summary: Great for Clooney fans, not great for Tarkovsky fans
Review: Tarkovski's version of this film (1979) was a classic.
A skeleton crew of scientists are stuck on a run-down spaceship much too far from home as back on earth the budget-cut Soviet space program considers cancelling the whole mission. Isolated and cut off from normal society and each other, they gradually start to lose their grip on reality, but the researcher sent to make sense of the collapse of the mission realises that the crew's crumbling personalities are not just down to isolation fatigue, and that their hallucinations are rather more substantial than mission control realise. As the planetoid Solaris reacts to their presence, the crew find themselves in a situation that they are not intellectually, ethically or emotionally equipped to deal with. Think of "Dark Star"'s pessimistic view on life in space combined with "Alien"'s haunted house reworking and throw in "Forbidden Planet"'s Id Monster and questions about what really makes a human being, and you'd be somewhere in the vicinity.

Anyway, in the (2002) remake, that's kinda changed. The grubby spaceship where gloomy unshaven crew sat around in dirty vests and drank coffee out of cheap polystyrene cups is now replaced by a clean shiny late-1990's designery aluminium and stainless steel construction, with pretty CGI external views.

That great hauntingly-mournful Bach piece that you couldn't get out of your head in the Tarky version is replaced by a nondescript "modern" soundtrack. There are no dirty socks. The frustratingly mist-shrouded custard-surfaced planetoid of the original becomes a pin-sharp purple computer-graphics plasma ball.
The nightmarish scene with the liquid oxygen in the earlier film is very tame here and not very credible ... In the remake the "liquid oxygen" seems to be some sort of theatrical blooping green Hollywood goo, and they seem to have forgotten to make it look cold. That really shouldn't have gotten past quality control.

And that incredible mind-blowing final panout in the original is replaced in the remake by the purple fireball fading into the new Solaris logo.
The best they could come up with for the big ending was "fade to logo"? Doesn't that just make you think "We didn't know how to end the movie" ? Hmm.

On the plus side, Clooney does a very good acting job, and manages to "do" silent shock and horror very well, while McElroy looks convincingly unreal throughout. Clooney has an awful lot of screentime where all he does is /look/, and he manages to carry it off without any of the normal acting crutches ... no flashy props, conventional action scenes or snappy dialogue in THIS film. Unfortunately, you often get the feeling that the actors are trapped in a limited script ... Viola Davis in particular often gets stranded without a proper line or anything much to work with.

So if you are a Clooney fan, you'll probably love it, and if you have never seen the Andrei Tarkovsky version and want to feel stretched by something that's emphatically not your standard Hollywood scifi film, then you might also think it's great ... but if you liked the Tarkovski version you might feel that the main value of this version is that it shows just how good a job Tarkovski did ... by comparison, this sometimes feels like an experimental student film script being acted out in a very expensive set.

Still, at least they were trying ...

Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: This movie was boring beyond belief. Thinking it would be scary and a mystery before viewing it i was very wrong... it was very confusing with no scene of fright. It is not worth paying this much.

Rating:
Summary: I want my 90 minutes back...
Review: This is by far one of the worst movies I have ever seen. This movie will be on Rotten Tomatoes site very quickly if it hasn't already been added.

Clooney should stick with ER or movies with fishing boats in them, because this movie doesn't cut it, or if it does it is cutting cheese.

There is no story to the movie, and the acting is horrible. James Cameron should also stick with movies about boats and let the Sci-Fi movies be directed by people that have seen a good one.

Good luck if you buy this one!

Rating:
Summary: Lame, Boring, Dull, Pointless, Waste of Time & Money
Review: I was so excited when I heard about this film. Steven Soderbergh, James Cameron, George Clooney, it's Sci-Fi, remake of a classic... But I'm sorry to disagree with everyone else here but I have tried to watch this movie three separate times and cannot get past the 45 minute point. It has a very disjointed feel to it, you don't care about any of the charracters because by the time you meet them they already uninteresting. Hardly anyone speaks and I just cannot stay awake. If you have difficulty sleeping, throw away your Nyquil and pop in your copy of Solaris...or better yet, take mine.

Rating:
Summary: Solaris.....a planet that keeps you interested!
Review: George Clooney plays Dr. Chris Kelvin, a shrink, who embarks on an "adventure" to Solaris to find out why communications have been lost with the last crew. What he ends up finding is a secret that the planet Solaris reveals....that it brings dead loved ones back to life. Steven Soderbergh does a great job with the directing of this movie by rarely switching camera angles to give this movie a creepy yet, interesting look. All in all, a great performance put on by Clooney as always and some excellent music to accompany him. It starts off slow, it gets you involved 20 minutes later and leaves you with tons of questions when it's over.

Rating:
Summary: Brain Candy
Review: As evidenced by its meagre box office, this film has limited appeal. However, if you liked "English Patient," "Vanilla Sky" or Soderberg's own "Limey" and your attention span hasn't been destroyed by Michael Bay, this slow-moving actors' workshop is worthy of your 99 minutes. Clooney's no Olivier, but like Bruce Willis can be an effective dramatic presence when he wipes the smirk off and keeps his head still. The gorgeous MacElhone is stuck with the difficult part, but extracts maximum mileage from her Mona Lisa smile and eerie body language. Soderberg ignores much of the sci in Lem's source material in favor of the philosophical issues, namely, what is the relationship between memory and humanity and how much can you know about anyone, including yourself? The film provides no answers; instead it serves as Rorscarch test and debate fodder for viewers, which is a rare and valuable things in movies today. BTW, to the reviewers who thought the ending was Spielbergian, I urge them to watch the movie a second time, paying close attention to what the "Gibarian" doppelganger says to Clooney's character. To me, this version is no more sentimental than Tarkovsky's.

Other items of note: nicely understated, futuristic production design by Phil Messina; beautiful cinematography by Soderberg himself; several nods to great '70s films (check the informative commentary featuring Soderberg and producer/kingoftheworld Jim Cameron); and imaginative scoring by Cliff Martinez (processed steel pans!). The high production values are particularly impressive in view of the fact that Soderberg banged this one out in 8 months.

Rating:
Summary: another Soderbergh throwback
Review: SOLARIS is yet another in the series of Seventies-style movies by director Steven Soderbergh. I'm a big fan of his other films, so despite the negative reviews, I approached SOLARIS with positive expectations and an open mind.

This is a re-make of a 1979 art house cult film by legendary Russian director Andrei Tarkowsky. Both the original and the new version of SOLARIS are also an homage to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: An Odyssey In Space".

There are obvious similarities between 2001 and SOLARIS. The way the films are shot, the set designs, and the pulsating sense of mystery that runs, like an endless undercurrent, below the weird head trips of the plot.

But there is an important difference between the two films. Kubrick's 2001 had sense enough to keep the audience highly entertained with classic sci fi elements: stunning visuals and a thrilling man-vs-computer struggle.

Solaris, instead, never rises above the level of a boring, introspective hall of mirrors. The impressive acting job by George Clooney is not enough to rescue this movie. It's no surprise that it flopped at the box office. Like some of the latest sci fi attempts by Steven Spielberg (A.I., Minority Report), this film is simply gloomy, depressing, cold, lifeless -- and too impressed with its own weirdness.

Rating:
Summary: the soderbergh solaris
Review: it all begins with sounds out of sequence, a voice over...it's this theme of the senses that attracted me to this film. visually, i was satiated the rendering of solaris was an optical feast painted in silent blurs that echoed this theme of geometry, systems, order...the architecture/industrial design demonstrated a realistic modernism, as if this could all be happening in today's tomorrow...the soundtrack, at times it seemed familiar, others forced, but mostly like hearing something from the inside out, womblike i suppose. touch, well it's only the sense of the sense via visual/audio textures, we'll have to wait for huxley's "feelies" to consummate all 5 senses... rain, lots of rain, but it didn't feel wet or like drowning (as i'd thought it would make me feel.) quite american in its length, i found myself wanting more of tarkovsky's patience, his willingness to linger, indulge, and meander.

george clooney does 'stretch himself' however, there are those moments where you can almost hear soderbergh's direction: george, pause, bend, slowly turn, and stare off w/that deer-in-the-headlights look.

i still am standing firm that it fulfilled something for my ears, eyes, mind. were there to be 10 directors who'd attempt a remake of this idea/concept, none would be replicas of one another. having seen the original tarkovsky vision/version, you'll be a little more tuned into the tone of the idea, and your eyes & mind trained to see w/a certain perspective, i just wish hollywood would let up on the disney-fication of happily ever afters, allow us a little bit of reality, a little bit of the deeper unknown.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the simple.
Review: I just finished watching Solaris and since I missed it in theatres I only now wish hadn't, on the big screen it would have wowed me. This is why I go to the movies, I like to leave a film still wondering about its motives and its message (I also like escapism but in moderation) It is a very slow paced movie and also an amazingly still piece of work. The drama unfolds in bits and pieces and even in the end you are not sure what to think. Not a very big fan of Clooney. I have to admit he was amazing in this. He reminds me of a young Cary Grant, truly his gift of acting became clear in this movie. I urge anyone interested in hard core Sci-fi or even the most amazing love story should view this film. It is intelligent and thought provoking. The kind of movie that leaves the viewer questioning faith, love, and the power of the mind. Simply Excellent.