Solaris

Rating:
Summary: A great movie...but not for everybody
Review: Solaris is NOT a film for everybody. There, I said it. Now, knowing that, you must also know that this is a terrific piece of moviemaking that deserves to be viewed by anyone with interest in cinema.

Another thing you must know about this film is that, even if it's story takes place in space, it is more drama than science fiction. The basic premise of the movie has sci fi roots, but the story plays out more like drama and even suspense than a space/action flick.

George Clooney plays Kelvin, a widower who is called by one of his friends to go to a spaceship orbiting the planet Solaris, because "he's the only one who can figure out what's happening". Once he arrives there, he finds a desolate ship, it's only surviving crew made up of creepy Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Dr. Gordon (Viola Davis). After his first night there, Kelvin experiences first hand what Solaris does to people, as his dead wife (Natascha McElhone) suddenly appears by his side. The rest of the film follows Kelvin as he tries to understand what's going on. Is this really his wife or is it something else? Is he dreaming or is this really happening?

The pace of the movie is rather slow, and the acting is quite controlled (for lack of a better word). The sets are amazing, with a retro-futuristic look and some of the camera placements give very interesting takes. The special effects are very wisely used here. As stated before, this is not an action movie, but it is placed in space and there's plenty of takes of a few spaceships and of the planet itself (very nice looking, by the way).

If there's another thing you should know is that the movie was written and directed by Steven Soderbergh, a man who was nominated for Best Director twice in the same year (Erin Brockovich and Traffic) and actually won one of them, and produced by James Cameron, the same guy who wrote, produced, directed and edited the highest grossing movie of all time, Titanic. This is a very interesting coupling, and I promise you the commentary track on the DVD is not to be missed.

To conclude, this movie is a remake of the 1972 russian film (Solyaris) based on Stanislav Lem's book.

Rating:
Summary: And the award goes to.......
Review: This movie won my "Worst of the year" award. I thought this film had great potential, but it never lived up to its potential. I really wanted to see this movie, about after seeing it. I wish I had seen "Dude Where's my car" instead.

Rating:
Summary: Cryptic Psycho/Drama
Review: SOLARIS isn't like most sci-fi adventures. In fact, it isn't like most movies of any kind. It begins with psychologist Chris Kelvin being sent to the space station orbitting the planet Solaris in a last-ditch effort to re-establish contact. When he gets there he finds the remnants of the crew haunted by some strange phenomena. They are playing host to some uninvited "visitors". In due course, Kelvin gets a visitor of his own, in the form of his dead wife.

The hows, whys and wherefors of this situation could have made for a pretty interesting and intense tale. There are some intense and emotional moments as Kelvin tries to grapple with the situation and his own personal baggage, and the acting is generally good, too. As one character comments, however, "there are no answers, only questions". That's an accurate summation of SOLARIS. It raises lots of questions in the viewers mind, but never answers any of them. Instead, after providing almost no action and deadening viewer's senses with ponderous visual interludes accompanied only by station background noise, the story concludes without any real resolution and without any explanation of what was going on.

SOLARIS has its plusses, but it isn't a movie most people will enjoy watching. Fortunately, I got my copy essentially free. It came packaged with a movie that I definitely wanted and at the price of a single DVD. Don't spend your money on this unless you've seen it and are sure you want it.

Rating:
Summary: Boy was this ever...Slow
Review: I guess in the future everybody moves in slow-motion, because that's what this entire movie is filmed in. And when I say entirely slow-motion, I mean ENTIRELY SLOW-MOTION.
It's unfortunate, because it seemed to want to have a little potential there for a minute or two...

Rating:
Summary: unambiguously terrible
Review: This is definitely the worst movie I saw last year -- it may be the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life. The music was annoying, the lighting dark, the acting almost non-existent and the story ridiculous. Even a die hard George Clooney find would find little to like in this amazingly bad movie. (I took a friend last year, and his distaste was sufficiently strong that he still won't let me choose any new movies.)

Rating:
Summary: The best Science Fiction movie since 2001: A Space Odyssey!!
Review: I know that many people hate this movie, but for me it's one of the greatest trips I've ever been on. It haunted me for weeks, no, months. It's really a piece of art. I loved every second of this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Tarkovsky's version is the one you should watch, period.
Review: I must admit I am more than a bit biased here because I am a Tarkovsky fan. When I heard that Hollywood wanted to do the remake I just fell clean out of my chair. Then I managed to see this thing, although I did not want to, and I must say that although I would have given it a little bit of credit for maybe trying an alternative take on Stanislaw Lem's book of the same name, this one just ends up being not that engaging with an uneventful plot that does not even try. You can cook this one up anyway you want but this is just plain bad.

Clooney walks circles around every other actor here and gives it all he has got. Seeing him going crazy, breaking away piece by piece, was fantastic but the film is really not that inspired and ends up looking like a 2001 ripoff (including the DVD cover).

The metaphysics behind the story are messed up in the worst possible way. Somewhere along the line the director just gave up and decided that the love story was what this film was about and the metaphysics where just pointless to engage in. So he is left doing this thing about Clooney trying to establish if being with a space ghost that looks and feels like his wife is the same thing as being with his wife and ponders over this again and again and again... until you just snooze away into your hybernation chamber wanting to wake up when Clooney draws his conclusion... which is like 76 Billion light years away at the rate this film moves along.

It is amazing that although the director tried to get back to Lem's grass roots and away from Tarkovsky that he still made garbage out of it. The film may *look* good but that only lasts so long. Producer James Cameron was obviously absent from the whole thing, still in Titanic na-na-land, until the distributors put it out. There is nothing here to even remotely suggest that the talent wanted anything less than to get it over and done with and the hell out of the studio so that they could get on with their lives. To be honest they should have just burnt the negatives and cut their losses. This one is not something good to have on your CV - or for anyone to see it for that matter either.

This film did not break the bank, but it did do a number of things. Darren Aronofsky lost his production funds for "The Fountain" because Hollywood was afraid that it would bomb like this one. I think that it was terrible that Hollywood would do that to such a talent like Aronofsky based on this over-rated director's botch up job.

Sadly this is just more proof that some gems should be left alone. Why try to fix what is not broken?

Rating:
Summary: SLOW AND TIRING/I WANT MY MONEY BACK
Review: George Clooney did good when he was in ER. Then he decided to be a big shot and I haven't seen one movie he was in that was good. Every movie he is in is not his movie. The best thing about "The Perfect Storm" was Mark Wahlberg. The best thing about "Batman" was the scenery. The best thing about "Solaris" was the ending. It was finally over and I went to sleep or was that during the movie?

Rating:
Summary: Solaris
Review: I enjoyed this movie. Many might not like this movie because its slow and perhaps hard to follow. It involved crew memebers on a planet called solaris. Something was going wrong so they called in a Psychologist (George Clooney) to find out what was going on the planet Solaris (Sol r us..hehehe), a planet which made the crew memebers materialize their desires or memories. Whatever energy or entity was on this planet it was tapping into or experimenting with the human soul or consciousness. Perhaps it was changing the human makeup. A type of "CoEvolution";o)

Rating:
Summary: The Unbearable Density of Solaris
Review: I recall seeing the original Tarkovsky film in the then dirty and dingy Cinema Village on E. 12th Street. It struck me as an ambitious mess, at times, even crude, hardly crying out for a "re-make". Unfortunately, egos not reasons rule in Hollywood.

That said, I have enjoyed the non-commercial films of Mr. Soderbergh (THE LIMEY; sex, lies, and videotape,etc.) as opposed to his commercial (ERIN BROCKOVITCH, TRAFFIC,etc.) ones. This time, Mr. Soderbergh's creativity seems to have been subordinate to the company he kept during its making. The filmakers seem so determined to make the viewer prostrate before their consideration of "serious issues", the film becomes pervaded by a smugness that renders the material as leaden, inert and lifeless as a small moon.