Spaceman

Okay so I am in the camp of thinking that people like Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and the like might have a lot of acting range. They just don’t use it very often. Adam Sandler has like one serious movie over the last 20 years, and honestly his brand of comedy is exhausting. That said he was in a new movie this year that is classified as a sci-fi/drama which is something that he has never done before. I was intrigued to say the least. So we are watching Spaceman with Adam Sandler, and Carey Mulligan.

Adam Sandler plays an astronaut on an extended mission to space. This, of course, means that most of the movie happens with just him on screen in complete isolation. This immediately raises the bar for his acting as it is very difficult to carry a film on your own. It is certainly a challenge for any actor.

He has a wife on earth who is super pregnant but she left him and now will not talk to him. Leaving your husband while he’s alone in space in perhaps the shittiest thing you could do.

And then our little spin here is that a giant space spider thing has gotten aboard his ship. It’s large, and super creepy and now I am having a super bad time. I have a feeling this is going to be the rest of the movie so now I have to stomach a giant spider thing. My literal least favorite thing. There was even a scene with a little version of the spider thing crawling around in Adam Sandler’s head and coming out of his nose. If you know me, you know that I hate things coming out of people. It is my biggest ick. So as long as that doesn’t happen again we should be mostly okay. I also have an irrational fear of bugs crawling in my ears so every time this stupid spider thing is on screen I am covering my ears.

The story follows both our astronaut who is dealing with his estranged marriage and trying to figure out where it went wrong with the help of this space spider, and his wife who is about to have a baby and is reconciling with her decision to leave him. I loved how they kept going back and forth and I really appreciate using the sci-fi setting for emotional exploration that is really when the genre is at it's best.

I have to talk about the cinematography for a moment. I think it was the best part of the movie. It was interesting, it conveyed emotion all on it's own as well as aided in the actual storytelling. I think this is one of the most visually interesting movies of the year.

This really was some of Adam Sandler’s best work. I think he showed more emotional range in this movie than he ever has before.

Overall I really liked the film. It falls under the category of what I call “quiet films” ; they tend to be more introspective. And regardless of the setting the story is carried by its emotional weight and I think that definitely applies here. This is a Netflix movie so I don’t think it’s actually eligible for any awards this season. But it should be. We will be doing a whole discussion on that later. But I think Adam Sandler’s performance was a stand out for the year. The cinematography should also get some recognition. The space spider continued to freak me out for the whole movie and for that reason have to take a point off. So total it's gets an 8.5/10.