I have not seen the original...yet. So no comparison here. The whole movie I was thinking "this is flat" "this has no depth". Great visuals, score is only so-so. Acting was subdued, on purpose no doubt. Then came the positive but detached feeling afterwards. The is a mildly uplifting movie but in a out-of-body-feeling way. Watch it. Hang with it until the end. A nice job all the way around and a movie the feels like nothing else I've seen.

A gathering of geniuses: Stanislaw Lem, Andrei Tarkovsky, Steven Soderbergh and James Cameron. Although I admire Tarkovsky, Soderbergh and Cameron have made a film that is better than the original and that is almost a miracle. Everything here is perfect - I consider this film the best work of Soderbergh and Cameron and I doubt they will surpass what they did here in the future. Tarkovsky is not capable of making a bad film so imagine how hard it is to surpass him - and that has happened here.

Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is approached to join a crew on board a space station. The crew are studying a phenomenon known as Solaris and Kelvin is asked to join the remaining crew members to discover what is going on there and also to recover the remaining crew members - only two crew members remain on the space station as the other members of the crew have either committed suicide or simply disappeared - this includes the Security Task Force who were originally assigned to the task. What seems like a seemingly ordinary task for Kelvin soon proves difficult when he witnesses the phenomena of Solaris first-hand.Solaris markets itself as a film full of intrigue and mystery, but the reality here is that it isn't really any of these things. Here are some of the problems;For a start, all the characters are bland here with Doctor Snow starting every sentence with the words 'Hmmm' 'Yeah' 'Well' 'Hey'. He never has anything interesting or useful to say (although him being part of Solaris all along does explain why), but even so as a character he annoyed the hell out of me - he both sounded and looked like a stoner. Doctor Gordon was given very little screen time and as a result made very little impact on the film. Clooney and McElhone were sleepwalking through the film most of the time, but I think this was due to the dull script which clearly limited their performances. The dialogue was also dull and rather meaningless for the most part.The bulk of the film revolves around Kelvin and his wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone). The film flits between his memories of their time together and his existence with a carbon copy of his wife that has been created by Solaris. This could potentially have been interesting, but Soderbergh seemed more pre-occupied with giving the film long silly dream sequences which often contain little narrative content meaning that the film often seems pretentious rather than insightful or interesting. Another thing that angered me about the film is the sheer arrogance of the whole thing; I got the impression that Soderbergh genuinely believes that he's actually made something clever and thought-provoking when in reality that just isn't the case. I suppose the only thing that can really be taken away from this is that it asks the question 'If you had another chance to go back and put things right would you do it?', but this whole concept is tackled in such a boring manner that I just didn't really care by the end.It's no surprise that the critics mostly gushed over this as it's the sort of film that they can claim that they get because it's deep and meaningful and intelligent and that if you're thick you won't get it. All I'll say is that I did understand what the film was trying to say, but still thought that it was a pretentious load of baloney.

This movie starts out interesting, but pretty soon it becomes silly, and much more fantasy than sci-fi. The acting is so-so. The script is often stupid/awkward, but sometimes poetic (in a good way). The characters aren't introduced much, and seem unfamiliar and hard to associate with. The movie generally doesn't evoke much emotion, except a few times, mostly because it so often induces disbelief. Certain camera shots (like seeing a character's face) feel unnecessarily long without adding substance, and at the same time, some story aspects are underdeveloped. There is no explanation for how clones of specific dead humans, with their memories, appear out of nowhere. The crew members are certain, by unknown reasons, that it's the planet below that creates them. Of course. And they are not unusually perplexed, amazed or in disbelief. The whole movie feels shallow because of this unrealism. It would have been potentially interesting to learn more about the planet Solaris.Also, more could have been done out of the main character's approach to Solaris. More emotion.At one point the characters discuss how the "visitors" are built. One of the crew members comes up with what is supposed to be a wild guess, the other one programs a particle accelerator (how come they have one on the ship to begin with?) based on that guess, and it just happens to be correct. And again, no questions asked and no explanations. There are multiple such ignored bits in this movie.The mentioned physics is bad too. Bosons do not have anti-particles, and the Higgs field gives *everything* mass, and exists everywhere. Although the Higgs was not yet experimentally confirmed by the time this movie was made, this has been theorised for some time. It would only take a simple internet search.However, the movie has some good aspects too. The visuals are beautiful. There is some really aesthetic lightning and scenery. The planet Solaris looks fascinating, and there are some nice shots of it. There are a few good story elements about love and regret, and the occasional emotional atmosphere. Background music is fitting.