Solaris 2002

Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News: If you give it half a chance, it will bore into your subconscious, mess with your mind and leave you mumbling, 'Hmm, what if --' Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: [Soderbergh] goes so far into the terrors and rewards of romantic love that he comes out the other side into the universal. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: An example of an A-list director and movie star using their clout to do what more people in their position should: challenge themselves and their audience. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: This cold, occasionally dull movie practically defies you to embrace it. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: It's very thoughtful and it's the kind of movie you have to discuss afterwards. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: It's a lovely, eerie film that casts an odd, rapt spell. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: In the Hollywood pantheon of recycled heroes, [Clooney] suggests a Clark Gable for the new millennium, without the raised eyebrow and rakish leer. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: While it's rather bracing to see a movie in which everything isn't spelled out from the start ... Solaris is too often a mystifying genre experiment. Read more

Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: A hushed, haunted tone poem about love and loss. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: It's an example of sophisticated, challenging filmmaking that stands, despite its noticeable lack of emotional heft, in welcome contrast to the indulgent dead-end experimentation of the director's previous Full Frontal. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: [Soderbergh] tends to place most of the psychological and philosophical material in italics rather than trust an audience's intelligence, and he creates an overall sense of brusqueness. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: The filmmaking is extraordinarily assured, and any credible attempt to keep science fiction from becoming exclusively the province of 13-year-olds is welcome. Read more

Steven Rosen, Denver Post: A serious movie with serious ideas. But seriously, folks, it doesn't work. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Soderbergh, in essence, has come up with a plodding and far less psychologically arresting version of Ghost. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: A shrewdly pared-down version that confines its focus to a single issue for the ages: the nature of romantic passion. Read more

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: Its audacious ambitions sabotaged by pomposity, Steven Soderbergh's space opera emerges as a numbingly dull experience. Read more

John Powers, L.A. Weekly: Tautly elliptical story of love, memory, guilt and redemption. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: A return to what sci-fi was meant to be: Not a way to titillate teenage boys, but a means of finding a context for complex human issues. Read more

Jonathan Foreman, New York Post: So beautifully made (everything in it is understated except the gorgeous good looks of its stars) and turns out to have such real cumulative power that it is worth holding out to the end. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Solaris is neither as effective nor as ambitious as Kubrick's masterpiece, but it's still a compelling cinematic experience for those who are willing to abandon themselves to the unforced, measured rhythms of an issues-based motion picture. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The kind of smart film that has people arguing about it on their way out of the theater. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Visually astonishing and thoroughly admirable. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Comes across as less than a spontaneous work of the heart and more like a grim-faced stab at artistic importance. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: A solemn, splintered meditation on lost love: a movie about personal space, in space. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Meshing philosophical inquiry with a propulsive otherworldly mystery, it has the smart-pop quality of a vintage episode of Star Trek. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Scripted, shot, directed and edited by Soderbergh with his customary intelligence and assurance, this is perhaps the most ambiguous and cerebrally sophisticated Hollywood movie in nearly three decades. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Soderbergh does a fine job creating a moody atmosphere of pervasive anxiety. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Despite its undeniably pure and earnest intent, Solaris is equally undeniably an arid, dull affair that imposes and maintains a huge distance between the viewer and what happens onscreen. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: This is as elegant, moody, intelligent, sensuous, and sustained a studio movie as we are likely to see this season. Read more