"Project Hail Mary"

 ☆☆☆☆

Project Hail Mary is a popcorn flick, a movie whose primary, maybe even sole, ambition is to entertain and delight audiences who want to be transported by a good story well told. In that, it succeeds in ways that are genuinely admirable.

The directors of Project Hail Mary are Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who were famously fired because they wanted to make the Solo movie (as in Han) into something more comedic and lighthearted, and on the basis of Project Hail Mary that was a terrible decision for Star Wars.

Here's a science-fiction movie that takes its science rather considerably less seriously than it does its fiction, and while that might deviate Andy Weir's original novel (I didn't read it, though I did read his scientifically dense The Martian), it's exactly the right approach for the film. Even though Project Hail Mary is ostensibly about the end of life as we know it on Earth, it's fun and at times joyous, with characters that are charming and fun and often moving.

The story might be a lost episode of Star Trek: Sometime in the future, Earth is under an existential threat from an outside force. It's not a scary alien in a spaceship, rather an alien life form that is eating the sun. To be fair, it's not only picking on the sun — it seems to be devouring other stars in the galaxy, too. If nothing is done, life on Earth will end in ... well, it's never said, exactly. A lot of things are never fully said or explained in Project Hail Mary, which makes it both vague enough to be consistently interesting and also vague enough to be consistently frustrating.

Somehow, these life forms that devour the sun and stars also can be turned into a huge source of energy — which, scientists theorize, could propel a spaceship to the one star in the galaxy that seems to be immune. At least, I think that's what happens. It's all a little murky, in a messy, quirky, charming sort of way. Project Hail Mary is the kind of movie it's best to enjoy without asking too many questions.

Sandra Hüller, a genuinely compelling performer even in a relatively thankless role, is the person in charge of the project, and Ryan Gosling — a genuinely compelling performer whose looks make it easy to forget just how good he is in everything he does — is the scientist who makes key discoveries about the alien life form-slash-fuel source.

The story of how the mission is put together is told throughout roughly half of this non-linear film. The flashbacks are in widescreen, while the main narrative is told in big, "filmed for IMAX" full screen. (Both, sadly, will lose what makes them feel special on the home screen, and since this movie is funded by Amazon, you can expect it to be on small screens soon.)

In those "now" scenes, Gosling is Dr. Ryland Grace, who winds up the only surviving crew member. As he nears his destination — that immune planet — he runs across a giant alien spaceship piloted by a walking, talking, dancing (yup) rock named, wait for it, Rocky. This character is largely a puppet performed and voiced by James Ortiz.

Rocky comes from another planet whose star is under attacked. Like Grace, he's the only crew member left. The way they come together, clear their communication (and physical) hurdles and collaborate is the movie's backbone. It's adorable. It's charming. It feels totally right, thanks to Gosling's breezy, effortless performance that also flirts with deeper, more challenging emotions.

Together, they work on finding a solution to whatever exactly the problem is. They seem to understand it, so we understand it, and that's one of the beauties of the film: You don't need to grasp it all to enjoy it.

Project Hail Mary makes its plot work, and beautifully. There are quibbles — about the movie's science and its ways (or lack) of explaining things; an ending that feels too pat and perfect after some genuine moral complexity and ethical questioning about what is essentially a suicide-mission trip. At times, I found myself replaying the basic scenario in my head over and over, just to understand the stakes (at one point, a character literally describes "the stakes," underscoring the notion that movies made for streaming sometimes dumb things down too much).

But they are indeed mere nitpicks in an otherwise splendid movie, a film so full of life, vitality, fun and even — the word that seems out of fashion now — optimism that it's really hard to resist.

Viewed AMC Century City 15 — March 22, 2025

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"Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die"

  ☆☆☆½ 

A digital wristwatch doesn't tick, but it might as well, because the ticking clock is the classic device that brings constant tension to the zany, overstuffed Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die. The frequent reminders that time is running out for the movie's heroes give the film a relentless propulsion that effectively masks other more mundane problems.

Chief among those is that the movie's setup is so perfunctory, and so familiar, that the movie never offers a chance to get perspective, to really understand what's at stake or feel emotionally invested. So, it moves along like a roller coaster ride, engaging the senses and occasionally the brain, but still feels aloof and not quite fully formed.

The setup is this: Inside an L.A. diner one night, a Man from the Future (this is his only credited name) appears out of nowhere and insists he's on a mission to save the world from certain doom. He's dressed in wild fashion, and if he seems a little like Doc Brown, it's not the last time the movie is going to reference Back to the Future.

Or Terminator 2. Or Back to the Future II. Or 12 Monkeys. Or The Matrix. Or any number of time-travel and sci-fi movies that inform everything in the movie, which is crafted in director Gore Verbinski's signature style — that is, it never slows down enough to give you time to think, and is laced with darkness and despair just behind its humor.

Sam Rockwell is the Man from the Future, who recruits a number of the diner's customers to join him on a mission to find the source of an AI program that will take over and ruin the future. The customers include Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beets, Asim Chaudhry and Juno Temple. Richardson and Temple make the strongest impressions, while the other recruits don't get enough personality to make an impression.

Most of them get flashbacks that help us understand why they're tagging along, though the character that matters most — the Man from the Future — is a cypher. Ultimately, we understand his connection to one character, but beyond that the movie doesn't tell us much about the world he comes from, or why he's been selected (or selected himself).

Those aren't small complaints about a movie so filled with story and character, but they're offset by some cogent, cutting commentary about the world we live in now they ways our near-obsessive dependency on technology may have terrible implications for the future. Those ideas are worthwhile, intriguing and sometimes downright pointed.

They're key to and yet not wholly integrated into the story, which ends on a frustratingly vague and too-clever note that doesn't feel fully resolved. And yet, the moment Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die ended, I left my phone in my pocket ... and kept it there. For ten whole minutes. Vive la résistance.

Viewed March 7, 2025 — Alamo Drafthouse

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