Splintered as the story is between its two extreme settings, The Midnight Sky is an enjoyable Friday-night viewing experience, but misses the potential to expand on its themes of isolation and optimism in a memorable way.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 23, 2024

The Midnight Sky shines with Clooney's deep and abiding belief in the human condition, in compassion, in ... "redemption" is the wrong word, too Catholic. Rather, in connection, even if it is brief, even if it is seemingly one-sided.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 12, 2021

The two-hour running time seems like two years as it drags on indefinitely.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 5, 2021

This is an odd movie overall. The pacing is slow - in the space sequences I started wishing for Darth Vader to turn up - and the music, by dual Oscar winner Alexandre Desplat, is overbearing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 30, 2020

The Midnight Sky is a good example of a movie that sells itself short by trying to be one thing -- serious, heavy, emotional -- when, by all available indicators, it should be more of a thriller, or more ridiculous, or at the very least more fun.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 28, 2020

A beyond-bleak post-apocalyptic thriller, the sci-fi film reaches a reasonably satisfying finish, but follows an uneven orbit in getting there.

| Dec 28, 2020

George Clooney stars in this space parable that starts out well, then goes adrift. I felt like I'd seen it before, such is the familiarity of its plot points and its most ambitious action scenes

| Dec 26, 2020

But my heartstrings were still tugged, and even if the contrivances required to bring things to a conclusion are a little obnoxious, I can't work up the energy to get bent out of shape about it.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 25, 2020

It may seem appropriate that a space epic is short on atmosphere (sorry), but that pun doesn't help sustain attention during the uninteresting crises and unsurprising traumas.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 24, 2020

Clooney, who directs here, generates neither pulse nor point. His film has some visual flair, but too few emotionally engaging moments. "The Midnight Sky" is mostly a dull affair.

| Dec 23, 2020

The Midnight Sky looks beautiful... But once the stakes are established, the film struggles to fill the rest of its time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 23, 2020

The sleek sci-fi visuals occasionally elevate it, although more often it's just a bit of a slog.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 23, 2020

At its best, the film shimmers with a thoughtful, poetic moodiness. At its worst, it's pretty damn slow.

| Dec 23, 2020

Clooney's space drama looks lovely but lacks drama and tension.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 23, 2020

The film's themes of extinction and survival are worthy of thoughtful treatment, something that eludes the ambitious movie as it succumbs to a schematic and sentimental telling that overreaches for a grand gesture and obscures the more meaningful ideas.

| Dec 23, 2020

If it were just half as slow, "Midnight Sky" would be half as long and twice as good.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 22, 2020

You want your money back, but it's on Netflix.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 22, 2020

"The Midnight Sky" unfolds across several timelines, yet none of them register on a human or a basic storytelling level. It's like the apocalypse arrived and nobody bothered to put up a fight.

| Original Score: C- | Dec 22, 2020

It's a carefully balanced movie that gives as much time to human connections, loss, regrets and hope in the small moments as it does to what we reveal of ourselves when survival is at stake.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 22, 2020

The film's conclusions are simple, but worthy of the drama: life carries on if it can, and thus ideally so does some sense of ourselves, whatever meager or profound contribution we made to the world - or beyond.

| Dec 21, 2020