Two prestige productions drop on Netflix this Christmas weekend. Whether they’re true delights; or more projects in fancy dress and a lot of hype, is the million dollar question.
The Midnight Sky (Netflix) - George Clooney starring and directing is the proverbial ‘hot ticket’ surrounding this SciFi drama that dropped on Netflix this week. Early on in his directing career, I actually thought a lot of Clooney’s efforts - Good Night, and Good Luck, and the Ides of March, among my favorites. But unfortunately, his more recent films have failed to hit that mark. Based on a novel by Lily Brooks-Dalton, this one has to do with an end of the world scenario set in a science outpost in the Article Circle, coupled with a returning space mission whose crew don’t realize what has befallen Earth. Clooney plays the cancer-stricken scientist (Augustine) who’s left to be the solitary man on the outpost (or so he thinks); and at some point, he embarks on a life-threatening trek to a radio station in order to give fair warning to the crew of what awaits them. By diverting them, the hope is to save the human race.
Essentially, this is really two distinct films. One is the Clooney-led saga, all Revenant-style survival against great natural odds, while the second is us being asked to familiarize ourselves with and empathize with the crew that’s led by Felicity Jones as Sully, and David Oyelowo as her husband and fellow crew member. In the end, more than SciFi this is a slow moving, self-indulgent, clunky melodrama. There are flashes of inspiration in the space mission sequences, and a great reveal in the final quarter will reward those who’ve been patient and are still hanging around - although said reveal is somewhat manipulative. But the film is bogged down by the slow pacing. A fully bearded, emaciated Clooney in the North Pole is definitely no Santa, so I wouldn’t put this under the Christmas tree unless you’re looking for something to leave on while being lulled to sleep - it is just as effective as Melatonin.
Bridgerton (Netflix) - Thanks to Netflix and it’s pursuit for content, noted producer/directors of TV-fame such as Ryan Murphy have found a lucrative second life on the streaming giant. Now it’s the turn of Shonda Rhimes, best known for Grey’s Anatomy & Scandal. The strange choice for her Netflix debut is a Romance Drama set in the Restoration era. It’s Mills & Boon given an update, a lot of energetic sex scenes, and a wild, historically inaccurate patina of racial diversity. Think Jane Austen meets 50 Shades meets Black Lives Matters. You can’t fault the 8-episode Limited Series for doing all this with energy & gusto, and the young cast are ready to go through their paces. But you can’t help feeling this has been craftily packaged to play to the predominantly female audience of Netflix, and make Romance and a pre-Downton Abbey-vibe rather sexy, hip, and relevant.
It’s all pretty to look at, and I’ll give them points for making the whole enterprise ‘woke’. But isn’t there an irony that all this racial diversity ‘woke-ness’ is used against a storyline whose central theme has to do with young women vying for being presented as ‘most marriageable’ as part of a social season? There’s Julie Andrews as narrator and authoress of a scandal rag that becomes the most read publication of the circle of high society we’re introduced to. My main issues with the series are how storylines disappear, and the rather obvious direction of the primary story takes too ponderous a path - I think four episodes would have sufficed for this slickly calibrated ‘bon-bon’. Sugary and sweet, but without all that much in its center.
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