The Midnight Sky [Netflix]

This film, and its star/director, George Clooney, has its heart in the right place but unfortunately the heart was neither pumping strongly enough nor fast enough as the story just clung desperately onto life support as it inched towards its inevitable conclusion. And in keeping with the analogy, there were some moments of spark and hope of life, like a brief burst of adrenaline, but it never did sustain and resuscitation proved futile. 

The Midnight Sky was just a series of space adventure/survivor thriller cliches. It was as if Clooney had a checklist and was just dutifully checking them off one at a time, but he did not even seem to bother about executing these cliches properly. 

There was nothing really original about the story or the concept, and so it was left to the director to try to invigorate the old with something new or infuse an original vision. Unfortunately, again, Clooney is not the director to do so. His pacing was laboriously - and unnecessarily - slow and his directing style was littered with cliches and eye-rolling predictability. Sure, there were some gorgeous shots courtesy of cinematographer Martin Ruhe, and one really exciting - adrenaline pumping - sequence, but that was about it. The emotional core was missing. 

Clooney could not decide if the emotional weight should be carried by his Earth-bound character or the space team, and so attention was divided 50-50 and both parties ended up being shallow and superficial. 

Clooney's vainglorious attempts to insert flashbacks to possibly flesh out his gnarly old man was clumsy and blatant, more or less backfiring on its purpose since neither young him or his love interest remotely even provided depth or insight into the old him. 

As for the space-crew, the interpersonal relationships did not have enough time to deepen. They may have been in space for two years but other than Felicity Jones and David Oyelowo who have a reason for closeness, the others were just broadly characterised with cringeworthy bantering and trope-y backstories. Kyle Chandler, Tiffany Boone and Demian Bichir tried their best, but alas, writer Mark L. Smith and Clooney did not. 

Alexandre Desplat's schizophrenic score did no favours too. There were beautiful moments but it lacked consistency throughout, sometimes veering on jarring and too in-your-face. For a film that emphasised so much on thoughtful silence, the music cues were unfortunate. 

After the success of Ma Rainey's and Mank, it looks like Netflix has hit a road bump.