Solaris

If you dream it, she will come. This love story with a sci-fi façade expands Phil Alden Robinson’s Field of Dreams philosophy into the overheated debate between destiny and choice. George Clooney stars as the lonely and morose psychologist, Chris Kelvin, who is oddly chosen to board the Prometheus Space Station in order to aid the crew of astronauts studying Solaris, a mystical celestial body with a gaseous, iridescent atmosphere that ends up studying them. Once Kelvin has a series of lucid dreams about his courtship with his beloved wife and his guilty feelings about her pill-induced suicide, Rheya suddenly appears alive by his side, although "alive" is a questionable term since she possesses no certain memories or identity. Regardless, the two get a second chance at love and try to rebuild their relationship, but instead expose quandaries about whether or not the past can be revisited and altered or if fate has predetermined the mistakes they have made. Director Steven Soderbergh is the reincarnation of the late Stanley Kubric as he conveys this much talked about issue through long and silent stylistic cues, such as the dramatic lighting that casts shadows upon characters’ eyes in order to obscure the windows to the soul. If you don’t believe in the supernatural hocus pocus of this remake of the 1972 Russian version, at least stop by your local theater to check out Clooney’s multiple butt shots.