Mike Anderson

Normally I would have looked at the reviews of this film & given it a miss, but seeing that Christmas TV was particularly poor this year & the cinema was closed, I settled in with my wife to watch this on Netflix. The reviews do not reflect the reality. The film pushes way above your average film critics viewpoint & expectations & delivered a memorable film in a season of dross. The film is based around an apocalyptic Earth, from the viewpoint of George Clooneys lone scientist based in a research base in the Artic Circle, with a mysterious child, abandoned by his hurriedly evacuated colleagues for company on one hand & a returning spaceship having being sent out to discover a potential new world, a recently discovered Jovian Moon, with a crew concerned at not being able to contact the Earth on the other. The films poor ratings seem to be on account of the fact that it’s neither a purely scientific space exploration movie (like the Martian - but then like the Martian outside of a documentary, what is?) or space fantasy (like Interstellar), but that is it’s USP in, to my mind, successfully chartering a path between both. It’s a thought provoking intelligent drama, without being too clever, thereby pleasing an inquisitive mind not too overly fussed about scientific correctness, while at the same time with the appropriate amount of drama for a film seeking to maintain a sense of realism in portraying an environmentally dying World. The accusation of boring seems to be particularly harsh & well wide of the mark. Yes it’s not Fast & Furious in space, but I’d have no interest in watching that. The fantasy market is well crowded with such fare. It has enough action to give the constant impression of life teetering on the edge of existence & is therefore no more a bore than Gravity, Interstellar or the Martian, films I thoroughly enjoyed, but that have been rated far higher than this for distinctions of tension, dramatic effect & flow that I can’t clearly decipher. A really good movie, far underrated& one in which the critics views can be parked for an enjoyable & memorable 2 hours.