A worthy title.

Rating: 8/10 (10 May 2018)

This movie, which I just saw for $4 at the Academy theater and hadn't checked out since I saw it on video a few years after it played in theaters, is a terrific 3-out-of-4 stars sci-fi as I remembered, all right. What's great about this picture -- even though, at times, it may cause dialogue to be a bit clunky and the pacing to not be the best -- is there isn't a wasted shot in the movie; everything's bringing you new information, and you need to know what is going on, and orient yourself. I've always liked the Alien/Outland-esque "we're working class dudes-and-gals in a tin bucket who could die no less in space than if we were in the middle of the *ocean*" trip, and Laurence Fishburne is one of the most quietly compelling actors of the nineties (let's not *just* count The Matrix, okay?). Sam Neill's range slips a little, here; he seems to be "I'm Sam Neill GOING CRAZY!" a bit too quickly and willingly here, but that's alright. The premise of Solaris is all over the place, the movie reeks of it; what with the ship that thinks, the suicidal wife, and different rules when you're "way out there," if you know the Tarkovsky original, the Soderberg re-make (which I haven't seen) or the Stanislaw Lem novel it's going to be on your mind. Still, this movie's not predictable; it earns its dangers and recoveries -- you're finding out with the crew, including Dr. Sam Neill (who does a not-bad job about explaining how the Event Horizon could skirt spacetime, years before Interstellar came out).If you don't live in Portland, you might not remember ...