or
Our Future...Didn't Quite Turn Out That Way
Onboard ship, the crew—"Captain" David Oyelowo, Felicity Jones, Kyle Chandler, Tiffany Boone, and Demian Bichir—have successfully scouted the Jovian moon in question and it hits the "Goldilocks" sweet-spot of conditions: not too cold, not too hot, but "just right." Water is plentiful and vegetation abundant. The orange sky will take some getting used to, but the close proximity to Jupiter has its compensations and abundant landscape photo-ops.
The crew has been out of touch with Earth and that's caused some issues. Astronaut Sully (Jones) thinks there might be a glitch in their system somewhere, but the ship is complicated enough with artificially-generated gravity, supplies, greenhouses, and the like that trying to pin-point a fault would be harder than finding a hospitable planet in the Solar System. Now, on the leg home, they're spending a lot of time being nostalgic for Mother Earth and their families on it. A lot of time being spent in therapeutic holo-suites with family-memories. They don't know that anything is wrong on Earth or that there is nobody on Earth trying to contact them.
Except for Augustine, of course.
The Midnight Sky is directed by Clooney and, given his access to so much material because of his demand, it's always interesting to ponder why he does the projects that he does. Perhaps his ever-increasing age (he's a "twinkly" 59 years) is making him consider that time is short and its one commodity that his earnings can't buy more of. But, this film—which looks great, and it's a pity that a film of this budget and scope isn't playing theaters (except in a limited Oscar-qualifying engagement), but is stuck in the limited dimensions of Netflix—has an interesting ability to stick in the head and make one consider the shortness of life amid the imponderable extent of cosmic time. 
Barbeau Observatory, located near the Arctic Circle, has been evacuated after a global nuclear catastrophe—everyone wanted to go home for the end. Except for Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney). Someone has to stay at the observatory watching the night skies and maybe contacting the space missions still out there. And he's dying anyway. As one of the departing techs observes, given the situation, he'll probably outlive them all.
There is one ship out there that hasn't been evacuated and is still occupied and functioning—the ship Æther, which went out to the orbit of Jupiter to explore K-23, a moon of the gas-planet that seems to be—as they say on "Trek"—"Class M". It can sustain human life. They're supposedly on their way back, but nobody knows that because they've been out of contact for a long time. Augustine has a personal stake in the mission as it was his theoretical work that inspired it, and he's completing his life's work trying to reach them to tell them that it's no longer a reconnaissance trip and to go back. There's nothing to come home to.
Now, the only one at the observatory, Augustine settles into a routine of taking pills, daily hemodialysis, the perfunctory meals (usually taken with scotch). Isolated and alone, he has a lot of time for there to be flash-backs, nightmares and mind-wanderings. So, he can be forgiven if, at breakfast, he finds a half-finished bowl of cereal sitting at the table. Maybe it's the aloneness, maybe it's the drinking, but obviously, the routine has slipped.
But, it's more than he's thinking. Wandering around the station, he finds a little girl (Caoilinn Springall)—curled up, sleeping, hiding. There had been some confusion during the evacuation...and then, this child. Another responsibility, which he is not ready to cope with. At first, he tells the deliberately mute child (whom he finds out is named "Iris") that she's on her own, that he can't handle the work AND take care of her. But, there's nowhere to send her. They are now stuck with each other, and she is now a constant presence ("Don't touch anything!" he frets while he's working "You know, there's no rule that says you have to TOUCH everything."). Eventually, she will be a comfort.
There are complications aboard the Æther: their trajectory from Jupiter is slightly off and they have to weigh whether to do course-correction burn or take a chance going through a route in space that hasn't been properly "mapped-out." Personally, I'd go for the course-correction because any deviancy from "true" will only increase the farther they go, but they vote to do nothing and risk it. How like "Earthlings". Oh, and Sully is pregnant with Captain Adwole's child. Everyone has a suggestion what to name it. Except for that off-kilter trajectory, everything is nominal.
Back on Earth, the atmosphere around Barbeau is becoming increasingly toxic and time is running out, so Augustine decides to travel to a weather station at Lake Hazen with a more powerful antenna in the off-chance that it'll be just enough to reach the Æther. He packs up his supplies, dialysis gear, and does the proper parent-thing of bundling up the girl for a snow-day, and they set off on a snowmobile to reach their destination.
At the Æther, there is another problem: a hitherto unknown cluster of ice-fragments is hurtling around the solar system in the asteroid belt and the ship runs smack-dab into it, causing a lot of damage to a couple of the ship's systems—radar and communications, mostly. They're going to need the communications, so they decide to "take a stroll around the block" and make repairs. Sully, Adwole, and Maya (Boone) suit up and crawl around the outside of the craft with their spare parts to DIY the broken systems.
At this point, you begin to realize time is running out on both sides of the solar system, despite there being very few people to do anything and a lot of space to do it in. In all that expanse—of space and snow-scape—the chances of connection, despite wonders of radio communication, are remote given the solitary beings 329 km apart. With all that geography, time becomes a precious commodity while also being a brutal deterrent. Nature, or the destruction of it, will make its course in its own time. It makes an interesting conundrum to ponder while everyone is trying to hurry things up...but can't.
And, as a director on this one, Clooney is focusing on spectacle rather than letting the performances carry it. The landscapes are artfully presented. The framings are formal, often symmetrical, only to break the rule to go full-tilt Alfonso Cuarón during the space-walk (and even then he has a nice feel for perspective—you're rarely disoriented). There are long stretches without dialog, but the movie doesn't drag and there's a nice sense that there isn't a lot of unnecessary "explaining" that needs to be done for the audience's benefit.
It also takes the time to have little "grace-notes," little touches of a shot or two which speak volumes about the characters without having to talk about it. The performances are uniformly good, but, for me, Demian Bichir and Kyle Chandler get the kudo's for most elegant acting here, with Tiffany Boone providing the most comic touches and the most tragic. A bonus is another of those lovely scores by Alexander Desplat.
It's a good watch, but it's not "whizz-bang." The Midnight Sky is one of those proverbial "good" science fiction films whose brain-shelf-life goes beyond the ephemeral "what happened there?" of its "Twilight Zone" machinations and makes one consider the possibilities mythic, parental, and biological all in one melancholy little package*—a 21st Century version of On the Beach** for the Space Age.
* Melancholy in the same way that George Carlin broke down the hopefulness behind Earth Day: "EARTH day! The EARTH will be FINE. WE'RE the ones who're fucked!"
** At one point in the film, Kyle Chandler's family man on the Æther is watching that Stanley Kramer picture in his room.
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