Spaceman (2024)

Direction: Johan Renck
Country: USA

Adam Sandler takes on the role of a solitary Czech astronaut in Spaceman, tasked with a research mission to the edge of the solar system to investigate a mysterious interstellar cloud. As he spends six months isolated in his ship, he becomes increasingly anxious about the possibility of his pregnant wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), leaving him. Amidst this emotional turmoil, he encounters an intelligent ancestral creature—a giant space spider—that helps him confront his selfishness and grapple with feelings of loneliness, guilt, and regret. 

Based on Jaroslav Kalfar's novel Spaceman of Bohemia, the film adaptation, helmed by Chernobyl’s director Johan Renck and written by Colby Day, fails to delve beyond the obvious, offering a forgettable space journey masquerading as a couple’s therapy. Despite attempting to create impact with an ambiguous open ending, the film ultimately falls short, missing the mark on its potential for depth and exploration.

One of the film’s most dispiriting aspects is the mediocre character development and absence of tension. Neither shaping as a real sci-fi adventure nor grounding itself in a compelling romantic drama, Spaceman falls into a middling territory, promising more than it deliveries. Its slow narrative pace, coupled with verbose sequences that prioritize cerebral musings over genuine insight, results in a film that struggles to maintain logical coherence and foster empathy. It’s a half-interesting, half-baked illustration weighed down by a listless melancholy that sedates more than inspires.

Hustle (2022)

Direction: Jeremiah Zagar
Country: USA

Co-produced by NBA star LeBron James and actor Adam Sandler, Hustle plays like a smooth, aerodynamic sports drama film that, failing to inspire me completely, managed to retain a certain surface-level charm. The film stars Sandler in a sober role alongside real NBA players, including Juancho Hernangómez from the Utah Jazz and Anthony Edwards from the Minnesota Timberwolves.  

The script by Taylor Materne and Will Fetters (A Star is Born, 2018) is not particularly innovative, and the film, competently directed by Jeremiah Zagar - who put out the wonderful indie drama We the Animals four years ago - systematically falls into stale formulas. However, it was great to see Sandler stepping out of his comfort zone and carrying an unrestrained, totally convincing passion into his role, which is both refreshing and invigorating to watch. He is Stan Sugarman, a former player turned scout turned assistant director, and then demoted to scout again by Vince Merrick (Ben Foster), the stuck-up co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers. Stan has been in the business for 30 years, refusing to give up on his newfound talent Bo Cruz (Hernangómez), a constructor worker and single father from Mallorca, Spain, who delights the crowd at every street basketball court he enters. 

Taken to the US, it is revealed that the Visa bureaucracy involved in the process is not the main problem but rather Bo’s lack of concentration and temper each time he’s provoked or insulted in the field. The film is basically divided into two aspects: the flourishing friendship between Cruz and Sugarman, and the exciting moments of basketball. Forgoing cheap shots, Hustle is fairly entertaining and possibly something more for the fans of the sport.

The Meyerowitz Stories (2017)

Directed by Noah Baumbach
Country: USA

Noah Baumbach is an American writer/director with a knack for witty dramas, usually loaded with amazing characters and a driven emotional content. These are the cases of “The Squid and the Whale”, “Greenberg”, “Frances Ha”, and “Mistress America”, irresistible highlights of an admirable filmography.

His new film, “The Meyerowitz Stories” showcases a brilliant cast with Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Emma Thompson in the main roles and depicts with ups and downs the gathering of an estranged, dysfunctional family that has the elderly patriarch as a model.

Harold Meyerowitz (Hoffman) is a retired art professor and established sculptor whose work is frequently exhibited at MoMA and Whitney Museum. However, like most of the artists, he seems never satisfied with what he achieves and shows signs of pickiness, selfishness, and petulance in several details related to his life, past and present.

Harold lives with his third wife, Maureen (Thompson), a gem of a person but also an incorrigible alcoholic. Suddenly, their house is invaded by the arrival of Harold’s son, Danny (Sandler), an uninspired, jobless loafer who could have been a great pianist and just feels disoriented after separating from his wife. He and his sister, Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), whom nobody pays much attention to, were always the ugly ducklings of the family. All the attention went to their half-brother, Matthew (Stiller), a successful accountant in L.A., who still bears a little grudge against his father due to past issues. Notwithstanding, he’s peremptory when affirming: “I don’t get angry anymore. Now it’s kind of funny to be with him because I have my own business, a wonderful kid, and I live three thousand miles away from him.”

Everyone in the family deals with an unexpected shake-up when Harold has to be transported to the hospital with a chronicle hematoma in his head. This mishap coincides with a group show at the Bard College, where his most famous piece, wryly entitled ‘Matthew’, is one of the attractions. There, his sons take the opportunity to talk publicly, yet, instead of focusing on their father or his work, they open up about themselves and how they feel as his sons, good and bad. While Baumbach devises this scene with a purposely increase of dramatization, the scene that precedes it, a brothers' fight, feels nonsensically overstaged.

The humorous side relies solely on Danny’s daughter, Eliza (Grace Van Patten), an unflinching self-starter and talented videographer whose artistic work exhibits a very naughty sexual content.

Baumbach set the dialogues with interesting lines and the pretentiousness of the artistic milieu is perfectly calibrated. Even without digging too much, it’s easy for us to find humanity and even warm-heartedness among the family members, regardless the emotional instability that follows them like shadows. Although lacking the habitual attractive charm and magic spell that made Baumbach a treasure of the contemporary American cinema, “The Meyerowitz Stories” is perfectly good to watch, demonstrating a genuine keenness to amuse.