The Midnight Sky (2020)

Sorry, George Clooney, we did not love this bleak story of a scientist in an Arctic outpost trying to contact some astronauts and warn them not to return to our destroyed planet. Clooney directs and stars and assembled a top-notch cast, including Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, and Tiffany Boone as the space crew, and Caoilinn Springall (KAY-lin) as a mysterious little girl on earth. The acting is all good.

I'm not sure whom to blame for our reaction––Lily Brooks-Dalton's 2016 book Good Morning, Midnight or the screenplay adapted from it by Mark L. Smith or Clooney's direction. The story is definitely non-linear but not confusing.

The movie is, however, rightly nominated by the Oscars and elsewhere for visual effects.

Alexandre Desplat's music––funereal to ethereal to exciting––has earned some nominations, too, as has Martin Ruhe's cinematography. I'm streaming the soundtrack with my subscription to Apple Music and it's also available free on Spotify.

Clooney was last blogged for acting in Money Monster, Jones for On the Basis of Sex, Oyelowo for Middle of Nowhere, Chandler for First Man, Bichir for The Hateful Eight, Clooney for directing Suburbicon, Smith for co-writing The Revenant, and Desplat for scoring Little Women.

Boone played young Mia in two episodes of Little Fires Everywhere and the only one of Ruhe's projects I have seen is The American, which I did not enjoy (sorry again, George! We're still fans!).

For a change, Jack and I are in the same same time zone with the critics at Rotten Tomatoes, who are averaging 51%, though not as dark as its audiences at 26.

The movie was made for Netflix and we streamed it on the 16th.