George Clooney can’t save slow-paced, chilly ‘Solaris’

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In theaters

SOLARIS, written and directed by Steven Soderbergh, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem, 99 minutes, rated PG-13.

Of the two films Steven Soderbergh has released this year – the first being the failed art-house stinker “Full Frontal” – his new movie, “Solaris,” is by far the better film.

That doesn’t mean it’s recommended or that it’s entirely successful. Indeed, like “Frontal,” it smacks of pretension, self-indulgence, a deliberately plodding pace, an emotional chilliness that nearly suffocates it and an ending that will satisfy few.

Still, unlike “Frontal,” there’s a story here, one that doesn’t come off like a high-minded experiment cobbled together in one’s spare time with the help of one’s cheeky, A-list friends.

The movie is evasive and rigid in ways that Soderbergh’s best films, “Erin Brockovich,” “Out of Sight” and “Ocean’s Eleven,” never were. But tucked within it are noteworthy performances, a moody score by Cliff Martinez and a premise that offers compelling ideas about the collision of dreams, the subconscious and the afterlife as unleashed in an altered universe.

The film, which Soderbergh adapted from the novel by Polish author Stanislaw Lem and, in turn, from the three-hour, 1972 Russian epic by Andrei Tarkovski, stars George Clooney as Chris Kelvin, a troubled psychologist consumed with guilt after the suicide of his wife several years before.

Without giving too much away, Kelvin is summoned to the space station Prometheus – a giant ship orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris – after his friend Commander Gibarian (Ulrich Tukor) sends a cryptic message suggesting all isn’t well onboard.

Indeed, when Kelvin arrives, he finds blood splattered on the walls, a very dead Gibarian stretched out and frozen in a body bag and the ship’s two other astronauts, the jittery Snow (Jeremy Davis) and the frightened Dr. Helen Gordon (Viola Davis), in a barely controlled state of panic.

Apparently, the ship has been experiencing some odd phenomena, which Kelvin himself experiences when his dead wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone), suddenly appears at his side after he wakes from a dream.

Is she real or just a cruel figment of his imagination? As the film unwinds, plunging into territory that Soderbergh himself describes as a cross between Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris,” a satisfying mystery builds without a satisfying solution. Indeed, to quote a character early in the film, “there are no answers here, only choices.”

If “Solaris” isn’t entirely what audiences have come to expect from the versatile, Academy Award-winning Soderbergh – and if it fails to capture the poetic nature of Tarkovski’s superior film – at the very least it’s a fine showcase for Clooney, who grounds the movie with McElhone and offers what interest the film generates before its story collapses in a frustratingly detached, murky haze.

Grade: C+

On video and DVD

AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER, directed by Jay Roach, written by Mike Myers and Michael McCullers, 90 minutes, PG-13.

The new Austin Powers movie, “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” is a loaded pistol plugged with more blanks than bullets.

It has its moments – some of which are as inspired as audiences have come to expect – but they don’t come as often as you hope, certainly not as fast as they did in the series’ first two films, 1997’s “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” and 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”

As directed by Jay Roach, who helmed the previous films, “Goldmember” gathers together all of Mike Myers’ characters – Austin Powers, Dr. Evil and Fat Bastard – and now a new character, Goldmember, a roller-skating, disco-dancing, Dutch relic from 1975 who lost his genitalia in a smelting accident.

As compelling as Goldmember sounds, he is, at best, a freckled distraction, only occasionally getting the laughs his gleaming phallus promises.

Still, he’s crucial to the unwieldy plot, which focuses on Austin and his saucy sidekick, Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyonce Knowles), trying to save the world from Dr. Evil and his mincing clone, Mini-Me (Vern Troyer), while also trying to save his father, the randy Nigel Powers (Michael Caine), from Goldmember, who kidnapped Nigel and locked him in 1975.

The film’s main problem is that it moves away from what made the series so special in the first place – Austin Powers himself.

With Myers stretched so thin as Dr. Evil, Fat Bastard and Goldmember, all of whom give Austin a run for screen time, Austin is in precious short supply. He remains the best character of the bunch, the most lovable and likeable, the glue that holds the series together even as, in this film, it threatens to bust apart by branching away from him.

To bring the series back on track, Myers needs to reconnect with his alter ego and rediscover why audiences wanted to be shagged by Austin Powers in the first place.

Grade: B-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays and Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores, starting alphabetically with the most current releases.

Austin Powers in Goldmember ? B-

Lilo & Stitch ? B+

Ice Age ? B

Lovely and Amazing ? A

Men in Black II ? C-

Sunset Boulevard (DVD) ? A+

Reign of Fire ? C+

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron ? B+

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing ? A

Bad Company ? D

The Importance of Being Earnest ? B-

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones ? C+

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys ? B-

The Powerpuff Girls Movie ? B

Pumpkin ? C+

The Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood ? B+

Eight Legged Freaks ? B

Spider-Man ? A-

Sum of All Fears ? D

E.T.: 20th Anniversary

Edition ? A

Mr. Deeds ? D

Insomnia ? A

Life or Something Like It ? B-

Scooby-Doo ? C-

Windtalkers ? C-

Big Trouble ? D

Enough ? C-

Jason X ? Bomb

Brotherhood of the Wolf ? B

The Scorpion King ? B

Enigma ? C

Monsoon Wedding ? A-

Murder by Numbers ? C

Death to Smoochy ? B+

40 Days and 40 Nights ? C-

Monsters, Inc. ? A-