I also like good Science Fiction, but this strange 2018 Amazon Prime offering just gave me an excuse to make multiple trips to the kitchen for snacks.
Somewhere in the not too distant future, criminals are being sent on voyages of rehabilitation from a ravaged planet to a black hole approximately eight light years from Earth. Well, surprise, it’s a one-way ticket to the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Everyone knows you can’t fly into a black hole and hope to come out intact. The premise for recruiting crews is the concept of circling the black hole to investigate the possibility of harnessing its energy to augment Earth’s own diminished resources.
This French produced film stars Robert Pattinson as the father of an infant daughter, apparently alone on a large vessel that recycles waste, grows plants and can approach light speed. But what happened to the crew? Hold on, you’ll find out. It feels at first very much like 1972’s Silent Running with Bruce Dern. But here we don’t have cute little repair-bots named Huey, Louis and Dewey. Instead, the criminal crew is being sexually manipulated by an erotically hypercharged female doctor who spends a lot of time in a machine reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron in 1973’s movie Sleeper.
Yeah, it’s a weird ride just short of two hours and rated R.
