Rating: 
Summary: Worst ever-do not waste your time
Review: I have been watching the DVD version of this movie for an hour, and still have no clue what the point is. If I were in a movie theater, I would get up and walk out. About the only high point for a female viewer would be to see George Clooney's rear end. Totally confusing movie.
Rating: 
Summary: one of Clooney's best
Review: this movie is mesmerizing and mind-bending. Clooney brings you into the life of Chris Kelvin who is sent to Solaris becuase his friend Gibarian wants him to and so he goes up there and people are dead including Gibarian and there are only two people there, Snow(Jeremy Davies) and Gordon(Viola Davis). then Clooney starts to see his dead wife Rheya(Natasha McElhone) and he finds out its Solaris and this is what killed Gibarian and the others. a nicely done version of Stanislaw Lem's classic which is awesome too and this one is great also. Clooney and McElhone work great and I really enjoyed it all the way threw. nice work by James Cameron and Steven Soderbergh
Rating: 
Summary: Don't worry, I'll explain
Review: Reasons I didn't like this movie:
1. It contained about ten thousand confusing dream/memory/reality sequences. It seemed to me that the director made the film and was watching it and decided it was boring, so he put in a whole lot of short face shots to make it boring and confusing (which of course is a whole lot better than just boring). Anyway, it was nearly impossible to tell what was real and what was not, and instead of providing the viewer with a thoughtful sense of surreality, depth, isolation, and insight, it simply left the viewer dazed and confused.
2. There was far too little dialogue, and far too much whirring, crackling, disjointed music, and that sound that comes with being pulled into the gravity field of a planet. This of course was combined with the confusing visuals.
3. The acting--what little acting there was; George Clooney was the main character, but mostly we saw unmoving and asleep or a shot of the back of his head. (Anyway the whole movie was too dark to see him anyway but I'll get to that later.)The little dialogue he had was adequately given but did not make up for anything. The supporting characters were mediocre EXCEPT for one guy whose name I couldn't catch, due to the inarticulate speech of his fellow characters. He played his part exceptionally, keeping to character and using incredibly expressive gestures.
4. The movie was dark--it was hard to see faces and expressions, which is what the entire movie was comprised of.
5. Solaris. They kept showing it, with its little electric currents, and at one point an unnamed man said it seemed to be responding to their observations--only unfortunately, no pattern could be detected in the movements of the pink and purple gases. Sorry-I missed something here? And at then end, it kept getting smaller, until it sort of looked like a doorknob, I guess, which was sort of significant, but there was no connection-there was the blue wire and the red wire, and they were telling us as the viewer to put them together.
7. It was hard to detect any sort of plot, theme, meaning, or point in this movie. I know many people would argue otherwise and some would say I'm just too stupid and shallow to see it, but while I admit that I may not be the deepest thinker, I really did try to find a meaning and couldn't. I think it may have been because of all the defects above befuddled whatever point it may have originally had. Or maybe it never had one in the first place. Its based on a book--maybe it was one of those books where the author had an inkling of higher thinking, of deeper thoughts, but couldn't quite grasp the concepts and so retreated into vagueness.That's it--those are the reasons I didn't like Solaris. If you bothered to read the whole thing, I hope you understand my point of view. (If of course you simply read the first line and then scrolled down to say that my review wasn't helpful, well, I hope that you feel tremendous shame.) If I can get one person to save their money--and hopefully end up donating it to charity--by not buying Solaris, my job is done. Thanks for reading.
Rating:
Summary: Could Have Been Longer...
Review: About the only "problems" I have with this film are:
1) I've grown accustomed to longer films. This one feels longer than it is, however. From the commentary, apparently a lot of this film was cut.
2) Personally I would have liked to have seen SOME specific discussion as to the location of the planet and the propulsion systems invloved in getting there ( although that stuff admittedly isn't the point of the film ). As a storytelling device, the film is seemingly set in the "near future" ( complete with the constant rain and corresponding streetwear from Blade Runner ); the urban yuppie scenes are mostly indistinguishable from the actual present, and how interstellar travel has been developed is a mystery. Unless Solaris is supposed to be in the outer reaches of our own system, which I doubt. To summarize, the film mixes a relatively familiar Earthscape with interstellar human travel, which realistically is a **LONG** way off if it's even going to happen at all.
3) In a later part of the film the music seems to be almost a direct ripoff of the music used in the 2001 Stargate sequence. Hopefully this was done as a homage, not based on the theory of "these idiots don't remember 2001."
Overall, this movie is very cool, and benefits from a modern Soderbergh-esque cinematography.
Rating:
Summary: Intellectual but sterile - and boring. Fit for a museum.
Review: At his best, Steven Soderbergh is a high-art director of straight genre films - his creative-yet-pragmatic editing and camera tricks elevated "Out of Sight," "Erin Brockovich" and "Traffic" above straight popcorn; his work in "Traffic" was particularly impressive considering the material had been tread and retread for 15 years. But there is the other side of bizarre and inexplicable failures, like "Schizopolis" and inane "Full Frontal." "Solaris" belongs on that team of Soderbergh's films that has intentions beyond the genre audience, and unlike Soderbergh's "sex, lies and videotape" no provocation to tempt them along. It could one of the more beautifully shot films you'll see, with a dark, lush look worth swimming in, but it is minimalist and spare, stiff when it should be touching, and tremendously boring. The movie's title refers to a planet in the future, a ball of energy and water, with the capacity to react and manipulate human emotions, specifically that of a science crew sent to research it. Another scientist, Chris Kelvin (Clooney) is sent to the ship after a member of it requests him. Kelvin discovers a room of dead bodies and the planet's powerful relationship with the remaining crew, a skittish, tic-filled technogeek (Jeremy Davies) and a stern, scared-alive captain (Viola Davis). His first night he is visited by his dead wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone); the planet, it seems, culls memories from its human subjects and presents them, in the flesh, slightly altered. Just how is for you to discover, but those alterations tear the initially grateful Kelvin in two directions. Hashing out those inner demons accounts for much of the picture. "Solaris" reveals an intriguing reality about the tenets and boundaries of memory, but it, like the rest of the movie, is an understatement to some mood Soderbergh never plugs us into. This is not Clooney's finest moment. Best when he's smooth and smirking, Clooney is called upon for anguish for his dead wife, and he can't produce anything more than a lilted voice and painful wincing. McElhone, if mysterious and stunning, is equally cold. Passions lacking, the main thrust of "Solaris" is lost, and the blue planet is nothing more than a special f/x outside the window. The movies erects a giant, pale edifice to art form of passing time, its camera tracking behind Clooney from empty room to empty room, no discernible goal awaiting, in between several long scenes of Davies affecting some mild version of Tourette's syndrome. Viola Davis, for her part, is very good, suggesting a gathering, palpable threat that never comes to head. Soderbergh holds his cards close as if to deliver a late-in-the-game salvo that substantiates the buildup; what he does deliver is an incoherent "transformation" sequence that cannot be entirely explained on first viewing. So it never will be. James Cameron produced the film, which makes sense: No other way is $60 million offered to such a repressed, calculated remake of Russian filmmaker Sergei Tarkovsky's 1972 film, widely hailed as a (very long) classic but no bowl of jelly itself. "Solaris" is product of three Hollywood heavyweights with limitless line of credit and artsy romantic leanings, and the end result is an abstract product that will fail the main litmus test for most viewers - is it entertaining? - and for the others who eat this material up, may they paint the town blue.
Rating:
Summary: "You may tell yourself---this is not my beautiful wife!"
Review: So just like the old Talking Heads song, psychologist Chris Kelvin (masterfully and bravely played by George Clooney) wakes up in his spartan sleeping chamber aboard a space station orbiting the enigmatic planet Solaris to discover his wife Rheya by his side. His beautiful wife, awake, close to his side, easing him out of one nightmare and into another. There's one minor complication: Rheya has been dead for years. So there you have it: Kelvin, stunned, having one of those David Byrne-esque "Once in a Lifetime" moments, wondering, indeed, "is this my beautiful wife"? And for much of Steven Soderbergh's heartbreaking, masterful, quiet and searing "Solaris", the supposition is that maybe that doesn't matter very much. "Solaris" is not Soderbergh's finest hour; for that look to "Kafka". But that said, it is a quiet masterpiece, a brave film that operates solely on its own terms and offers the viewer absolutely no quarter nor compromise. Surrender yourself and your time to the film's immediacy, just as the survivors on the film's spartan space station give themselves over to the unknowable forces on the planet, then you will probably be as moved as I was. Based on Stanislaw Lem's novel and reprising the material in Andrei Tarkovsky's epic Russian film, "Solaris" is only incidentally science fiction, more a thin skein of science fiction stretched taut across a dense, luminous surface of human pain, of the anguish and fallibility of memory, of love, of love lost, of the possibility of redemption. Have you lost the thing you loved most in your life? Have you lost true love? Fine: what would you do if you thought you could reclaim it, salvage the moment you lost it, make things right again? What would that be worth to you? That, in essence, is "Solaris". Oh yes, to be sure, the plot is about a space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris; the station's corporate owners have lost contact with it, and a rescue team is equally silent. The DBA Corporation turns to Clooney's Chris Kelvin, a psychologist who was a colleague of the station's chief scientist Gibarian, who had sent across a mysterious invitation to Kelvin before the first security team had been dispatched. He arrives to a scene of unnervingly, creepily quiet chaos, with Gibarian dead and the rest of the crew having retreated to quarters, plagued by what they contend are visions. Much like Polanski's "The Ninth Gate", "Solaris" suffered from a marketing campaign that perhaps emphasized too much the science fiction elements of the piece. The space station, the planet, the sere, technical, sleek surfaces of the examination rooms and sleeping quarters are merely palletes on which Clooney paints his own internal torment and very private suffering, writ large; the space setting is, like Holocaust-era Warsaw in "The Pianist", almost incidental to the movie. This film could have been set underground, in the desert, in a skyscraper penthouse. Soderbergh directs deftly, fluidly, using his technically precise sets as counterpoints to the choices the crew of the space station must make. The acting here is top-notch: Clooney turns in a laser-perfect performance, Natasha McElhone is remarkably poised and completely convincing, Jeremy Davies provides a few wan laughs as the unnerved Snow, and Viola Davis fights the good fight as Gordon, who absolutely, positively will not let the Human Race be undone by good intentions. For all the breathtaking expansiveness of the shots, which draw favorable comparison with Kubrick's work in 2001, this is an interior movie, and the film lives or dies on the chemistry and work between Clooney and McElhone. For my money, they are remarkable together, and each scene between them, each line, each breath, each facial contortion, tells; there is not a wasted sequence or shot here, and technically this may very well be Soderbergh's most compact, complete, and least pretentious film. Tragedy, horror story, tale of a love lost---whatever it is, "Solaris" is unforgettable.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary movie
Review: This is an extraordinarily moving, thought-provoking film for those willing to let go of attachment to past versions, science fiction "thrills", and verbalized philosophical discourse. It is a triumph through its depiction of character, use of "quiet," and cinematic beauty. The questions of "what is life, consciousness, love, and possible redemption" are all dealt with through visuals and superb acting--rather than Hollywood standard fare. Both aching and triumphant--it may be one of the 10 movies you remember most in your lifetime.
Rating: 
Summary: Classy sci-fi drama.
Review: Luckily not having seen the original Solaris, I could watch this film with an open mind. And two things came immediately to mind: 1) this is NOT as bad as the one-star-review folks have implied and 2) this is a philosophical, contemplative slice of sci-fi/drama - high on substance. I liked it (and I'm quite picky when it comes to sci-fi). The plot - which, has anyone noticed, bears a striking resemblance to the movie Sphere - is basically about relationships reconstructed with the benefit of hindsight. The pacing is admittedly slow, but it wouldn't really have worked otherwise. You still get sucked in, believe me. George Clooney pulls off the non-hunk role admirably, although personally I would have cast someone a little less well-known. In any event Clooney is upstaged by Natasha McElhone, who is beautiful, strange and frightening and...just amazing. This is a great, lavish work of cinematography. The camera lingers lovingly on the flickering lamps and sterile, minimalistic environments of the spaceship interior (Stanley Kubrick's influence is unmistakable). To sum up, this is a great sci-fi movie that is more about love than slimy, malevolent beings (your girlfriend will enjoy it as much as you will), and there are plenty of moral and ethical insights that crop along the way, making this hugely enjoyable viewing for amateur philosophers, sci-fi buffs and coffee-table intellectuals alike. I only hope the original matches up to it.
Rating:
Summary: A totally superficial approach to a deeper issue.
Review: Being a philospher and a working artist myself I was really excited about this film. This story has so much potential, it brings together all sorts of interesting questions about love, afterlife, grief, time etc. But the film does a really bad job of handling these questions. First of all the underlying philosophy never seems to surface in a real way, meaning that it vaguely brings out the questions and does not try to bring out the argumentation. Because philosophy is not just questions or perspectives it is an argumentation of some sort of an issue or a question. If you don't have the argumentation you loose the philosophy. And that does not mean that questions have to be answered either. George Clooney does an OK job of being the main character, he does not have the acting skills or the necessary strong presence to carry out this film all by himself. Natascha McElhone does even a worse job then he does. I don't know if it is their poor skills to blame or poor directing. Their love is the core of the whole film and not once does the audience sense their love or any chemistry between them for that matter. They are totally unbelievable and Natascha never gives you the feeling that there is something under her cool surface. She is just like a beautiful photo reading out the script slowly and always avoiding changing her tone of voice. The directors choice of making the film, cool and slow paced does not automatically make it artistic or interesting. I have never been impressed by Soderbergh's so called artistic talent because I have never witnessed it. He doesn't handle the project of Solaris and should stick to things he is good at like doing regular mediocre films like Erin Brokovich.
Rating:
Summary: What if you had a second chance?
Review: We are all haunted by ghosts from our past - memories of people whom we've deeply bonded but fate - or our own unthinking actions, takes them forever from us. Such ghosts harbor a special meaning to the small crew aboard a vessel deep in space. A psychologist, haunted by guilt and loss over his wife's suicide, is called to investigate a space probe studying a phenomenon, Solaris, light years from earth. He enters the space craft to find its small crew on the verge of sanity and soon learns the cause of their maladies. Solaris has to the ability to use subatomic matter to reconstruct faxcimilies of loved ones from your dreams. What if you were given a second chance? Steven Soderstrom executed this difficult material brilliantly. It's a cerebral, intimate psychological drama that has a haunting dream-like quality. It's moody but never boring. Provocative and stylish but not heavy handed. It asks difficult philosophical questions but is never inaccessable; deeply moving without being saccarine. This is the third attempt to bring the challenging Russian novel by Stanislaw Lem to the screen, and it's fantatic. I rented this on a whim with 2 other films and watched Solaris several times instead of the other films. An a-typical hollywood film and labor of love from an excellent filmmaker. It's a minor classic. The performances and visuals are excellent. Give its far-fetched premise some latitde, and watch without distraction -lights out, late on a rainy night.
|
