The film works best when it is only Evy and her headphones on the screen, the character’s head (and ours) becoming overwhelmed by some truly impressive, singularly creepy sound design.
At almost every turn, Project Hail Mary attempts to convince you that it is groundbreaking, innovative filmmaking. But in actuality, the movie lands as a grand act of cinematic recycling – the fusing together of familiar, comforting bits and pieces into something determined to please crowds and warm hearts.
It flails wildly from minute to minute, bursting with ideas and themes it barely has time to articulate, but the sheer unpredictability of its narrative and aesthetic gesticulations guarantee that your attention never threatens to drift, and that your nerves remain constantly on edge.
Shot entirely in the director’s home country with a largely amateur, untrained cast, the film blends a striking sense of street-level realism, political commentary and poetic nostalgia for the naive innocence of youth.
While Ed Harris, as the cruel patriarch of the Redfellows, is not so much phoning his role in as he is sending it by carrier pigeon, it is Margaret Qualley and Glen Powell who do the most unintentional damage.
An ambitious but ultimately sloppy time-travel epic, Good Luck wants to deliver an incendiary critique of artificial intelligence and our reliance on big tech. Yet it ends up being so exhausting and weirdly dull that it will force audiences to pull out their phones out of sheer restlessness.
It’s all too silly to arouse, but too garish and annoying to be thoughtful. It feels as if Fennell is torn between having her cake and eating it out, too.
The evolution of Colin and Ray’s relationship is traced with a steamy kind of sensitivity. Lighton, in his feature directorial debut, never treats the BDSM scene as an object of fetishistic curiosity, but rather a culture rich with yearning, compassion, jealousy – the entire gamut of romantic life.
