I loved Andrei Tarkovskys' "Solaris" so I felt I should check this out. It doesn't reach the heights of the 1972 film but is still a great effort. It's also a case of which ever one you see first as I was bored by the story as I knew exactly what's happening while I was left confused and intrigued by the other one.

It's very well made. The score is beautiful and it's used minimalistically to create a realistic/eerie atmosphere. The set design is also great, maybe not as interesting or as unique as the "original" but it's aesthetically pleasing. The cinematography is great and I was surprised at how static it was, I'm glad they kept that element, it's…

Once again Steven Soderbergh proves himself one of the most elastic filmmakers in the business with this haunting, elegiac and meditative remake of cult 70's sci-fi drama and Stanislaw Lem novel Solaris, not to mention his frequent production partner George Clooney who throws out his all-American charm to provide a quiet, moving performance fitting this equally poised, beautifully shot and at times quite profound piece of drama.

An affecting question lies at the heart of Solaris: what would you do if the person you loved the most, a person you'd lost, came back? Would you be afraid? Would you embrace it? Not understand it? Fear it? Those questions are all posed by Soderbergh through Clooney's haunted doctor Chris Kelvin, who…

I try hard to not compare adaptations too closely to one another, but in the case of Solaris, my mind seemed unable to separate the two films or to treat the more recent one as a genuine independent work. Also, as a big Big BIG fan of the original, remakes can be something of an “uncanny valley” for me where I only see what makes the newer version different and focus on those points as reasons of inferiority, especially with what could potentially be a “Hollywood” rendition of a art-house classic (Peckinpah no doubt rolled in grave as a result of the Straw Dogs remake).

But, out of faith in Steven Soderbergh, I did my best (and ultimately failed) to…

I try hard to not compare adaptations too closely to one another, but in the case of Solaris, my mind seemed unable to separate the two films or to treat the more recent one as a genuine independent work. Also, as a big Big BIG fan of the original, remakes can be something of an “uncanny valley” for me where I only see what makes the newer version different and focus on those points as reasons of inferiority, especially with what could potentially be a “Hollywood” rendition of a art-house classic (Peckinpah no doubt rolled in grave as a result of the Straw Dogs remake).

But, out of faith in Steven Soderbergh, I did my best (and ultimately failed) to…

I loved Andrei Tarkovskys' "Solaris" so I felt I should check this out. It doesn't reach the heights of the 1972 film but is still a great effort. It's also a case of which ever one you see first as I was bored by the story as I knew exactly what's happening while I was left confused and intrigued by the other one.

It's very well made. The score is beautiful and it's used minimalistically to create a realistic/eerie atmosphere. The set design is also great, maybe not as interesting or as unique as the "original" but it's aesthetically pleasing. The cinematography is great and I was surprised at how static it was, I'm glad they kept that element, it's…

(Reposted from Soderbergh review series)

“And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not
And death shall have no dominion.”
- Dylan Thomas

In retrospect, it’s not hard to see why Solaris didn’t light the box office on fire, or why audiences hated it (it got a Cinemascore of F, after all). A second adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s sci-fi novel (Andrei Tarkovsky’s…