——Antwone Fisher——

(B-)

This film was interesting, and yet very, very boring. The progress of the film was back breakingly slow, the dialog was said usually in whispers or hushed tones, and by the end I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. The structure of the film started to feel a little contrived to me halfway in (especially after figuring out that the therapy sessions usually lasted no more than five minutes at a time. Denzel must be the greatest shrink ever, because Antwone would tell him, like, one little chunk of his childhood at a time and then Denzel would tell him he could go home. Don’t you usually stay the whole hour?) Denzel’s direction was just simply OK, and Antwone (the real one) needs to learn a little bit about pacing because I was dying between the seemingly eternity between key pieces of information. His story was interesting, but it was made bad just by holding out on me so long. Also the barely there subplot with Denzel with his wife either needed to be fleshed out more or taken out all together. The first few scenes you can’t even tell why they are in the picture. All and all I probably wouldn’t recommend this to anyone unless it was really their cup of tea.

——Solaris——

(A-)

I really liked this, and probably would have rated it higher if I actually had any idea what the hell happened in it. Steven Soderbergh makes some of his greatest use of color here, and the cinematography is really great. I really loved the soundtrack too; the strings, the bells, and the subtle techno beat just sounded really great together and added greatly to the mood of the film. George Clooney, who I usually don’t like, actually gave a performance in this film that I enjoyed and felt like it had some depth to it. I found it to be a very enjoyable science fiction film, thankfully taking me back to a time when science fiction movies were actually about something, although it would help if I actually knew what the message at the end of this film was. The movie was also unusually short. I would have expected at least a two-hour movie, or even a three hour one with the slow pace that this film had, but no, it was only about ninety minutes. I’m probably one of the few out there who wished it were longer, as I wanted to dig deeper into the meaning of Solaris and of the relationship between Clooney and his dead wife.

Here are my questions: Is Solaris God, or some sort of recently born god made of pure energy? Does Chris die and go to Heaven with his wife, or does he join Solaris and live with her forever in a construct universe? What’s the deal with the guy who killed the other him? Did he kill his visitor or was he the visitor like he claimed? What does that whole section with him even mean? What does the ending even mean?