Review: 'The Midnight Sky' navigates a rocky route before George Clooney sticks the landing

There are worse people to be stuck with in the Arctic Circle, at the end of the world, in a galactically ambitious film, than George Clooney.

Brandishing a bushy beard and plenty of gravitas – though this is no “Gravity” – Clooney stars in as well as directs “The Midnight Sky” (★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; in select theaters, streaming Dec. 23 on Netflix), an apocalyptic film that works well as a meditation on mortality and exploration of human connection. For much of its runtime, though, it rockily bounces between survival thriller and familiar space drama until the story lines finally mesh. Still, Clooney manages to stick the emotionally wrenching landing without all the parts falling off.

In Mark L. Smith’s futuristic adaptation of the Lily Brooks-Dalton novel “Good Morning, Midnight,” Clooney stars as Augustine Lofthouse, a famous astronomer who’s the last man standing at an Arctic observatory. It’s three weeks after a mysterious event has taken out much of the Earth’s population, sending what’s left of mankind underground as deadly radiation creeps toward the poles.

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Suffering from a terminal illness, Augustine intends on riding out the rest of his life alone, giving himself blood transfusions and raiding the cereal cabinet until he finds a young stowaway named Iris (8-year-old newcomer Caoilinn Springall) in the kitchen. While he tries to radio someone to figure out who left her there, Augustine also discovers there’s a crew coming back home from a space mission.

The astronauts on the spaceship Aether – Cmdr. Tom Adewole (David Oyelowo), pregnant Sully (Felicity Jones), pilot Mitchell (Kyle Chandler), thoughtful Sanchez (Demian Bichir) and rookie Maya (Tiffany Boone) – have been on a two-year quest to explore a previously undiscovered moon of Jupiter to see whether it’s habitable for humans. It is, so that's good news to bring home for the space crew, who pass the time by singing Neil Diamond and brainstorming baby names. But they’ve been out of communication range from NASA for a while and learn very late in the game that Earth is pretty much one large death zone.

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In addition to taking care of his new charge, Augustine weathers a nasty snowstorm and other dangers to the world as they race to tell the astronauts about what’s happened to the planet. Meanwhile, crew members navigate destructive meteor showers while talking with the scientist and figuring out what to do about going home.

The movie spends much of its first half fleshing out the separate stories, and when you throw in flashbacks where you learn about young Augustine (played by Ethan Peck, channeling his inner Clooney), as well as his professional and personal decisions, the film’s momentum and character development are often disrupted. Clooney does find great little moments throughout, however, to keep you invested: Augustine keeps Iris’ innocent eyes from seeing the carnage their new situation has wrought when they come upon a downed plane with casualties, while an unfortunate circumstance involving an injured astronaut results in a ballet of blood droplets, dancing about in zero gravity, that’s both beautiful and brutal.

Clooney is solid in both his roles: As a director, the landscapes he captures – from the Arctic to the vast cosmos to the trippy but livable environment on the Jupiter moon K23, all with top-notch visual effects – add a lot to the film's immersive journey. And as an actor, Clooney deftly portrays a man wanting to save some souls before his own shuffles off the mortal coil, as Augustine finds new strength as a guardian to this young girl.

A definite standout in space, however, is Chandler as the astronaut most eager to get back on terra firma. While “Midnight Sky” doesn’t spend a whole lot of time digging in to the astronauts’ personalities, one expertly acted scene in which his character Mitchell quietly has breakfast with a hologram of his family goes a long way in revealing his homesickness.

“The Midnight Sky” doesn’t always have the smoothest storytelling, yet in Clooney’s capable directing hands, the film’s emotional core and human touch are never a waste of space.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Midnight Sky': George Clooney manages to land a rocky space drama