Midnight Special [2016]
I can't believe this didn't get more attention and that I'd never heard of it...
Midnight Special is Super 8 meets No Country For Old Men with the pure scifi of Arrival and Tales From the Loop. You guys, I loved this movie, and my only regret; was watching it alone. I cannot, for the life of me, explain to you why it only has a 6.6 on IMDB. This is an easy 8.2 at least.
Visually engaging from start to finish, Midnight Special is science fiction at it's best and most unadulteratedly wonderful. I don't mean wonderful in the guise of amazing, I mean it literally. This film, start to finish, inspires wonder with each of it's scenes that really delve into the strange. Some of the effects are dated even for 2016, but they save the best for where they need them, and this film has clearly taken heavy influence from the soul of science fiction when it was at it's greatest. Midnight Special feels like a 60's pulp adventure brought to the modern era with all the charm some of those original tales brought into our homes. This feels like a tale Jules Verne or H.G. Wells would have not only written, but loved.
On a technical level, the film is also quite good. Not stunning, but good. The cinematography is impressive for having received virtually no recognition with some very interesting shots, fast paced and well framed action sequences, and dynamic ranges of light and motion. The score is absolutely beautiful, minimal, and moving. It reminds me of some of the best video game scores out there more so than film, in that it is more of a character itself, than just a bit of music.
At a 1:52 run time, it's digestible without cutting itself off or making you sit around waiting for things to happen. I could have used a slightly longer run myself as well as an R-rating instead of PG-13, simply to add some sinister and heavier elements to the parts of the movie that make me think of No Country. As they are though, they serve and are fine, if just a little banal.
This movie was unfortunately buried when it came out. Amid films within it's genre like Arrival, the highly anticipated (but not very good) 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Captain America: Civil War as well as those outside it's genre: Lion, Nocturnal Animals, Moonlight, and Captain Fantastic; it simply didn't garner the attention that I think it deserved. A year earlier or later and we would have heard a lot more about this fun little charming film. (It came out the same week as Deadpool and only 3 weeks before Clover).
This is a hidden gem, and it's only hidden on Netflix. Go watch this, preferably with someone with whom you like to share wonderment with, it's well worth your time.
"You don't have to worry about me.
--I like worrying about you.
You don't have to anymore.
-- I'll always worry about you Alton. That's the deal."
