MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: HIGH LIFE (2018)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Monday, May 5, 2025

HIGH LIFE (2018)

Even the title feels second-hand in this film from longtime critic’s pet writer/director Claire Denis, who comes a cropper in this colonizing space opera. Once again, Earth withers away while a team of criminal volunteers heads to a rendezvous in space to find a new home for humanity. You’d think someone on the Denis team might have told her just how played out the idea is without a new angle or visual splash. Robert Pattinson is last man standing, or rather cleaning, caretaker to his dilapidated ship and a little toddler, four years into a mission gone wrong. A big flashback brings us up on the internecine fights and sex that led the crew to oblivion before they could resupply by choosing the right Black Hole to shop at like some Outer Space Amazon as they pass thru to the other side. Seems those Black Holes suck up everything and hold for resale. If only they offered over-night delivery, the line for pick-up can be deadly. SPOILER: That trip will be put off till Juliette Binoche, the controlling doctor onboard, uses knockout drops on the crew so she can secretly give a sleepy Pattinson the most pleasurable/productive wet dream of his life.* Before long, this sole survivor's toddler has become a teenage girl. The future beckons. Yep, that kind of ending to go with this kind of film.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Attention paid by Pattinson who didn’t learn his lesson here before commercially bombing again with more Space Colonization in MICKEY 17/’25. (not seen here)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Rape is Rape, Ms. Denis. Even when it’s a older woman straddling a drugged guy. (Imagine a gender swap to make it all extra clear.) For similar discomfort, see ‘family-friendly’ BIG/’88, but imagine a gender swap so that Tom Hanks isn’t the 10-yr-old boy in a man’s body, but a 10-yr-old girl in a woman’s body losing her virginity to a thirty-something co-worker. Not so charming and innocent, no?

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: See what these space soliloquies were like back when the ideas were still fresh and film technology to handle space travel was improving by leaps and bounds in SILENT RUNNING/’72: Bruce Dern; Douglas Trumbull - dir.

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Now over 6000 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Monday, May 5, 2025

HIGH LIFE (2018)

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