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Another Earth
Sci-Fi Drama / English / 2011
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
ChatGPT recommendation.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
This was a much better ChatGPT recommendation than Coherence, because while I'm always game for a psychological thriller, I'm relatively hard to impress in the drama department, and this was a movie that I think actually did pretty good in the drama department... up to a point.
Your premise of the hour is Main Girl is a space nerd recently accepted into MIT. While leaving a party intoxicated she looks up into the sky in response to the radio jockey announcing the discovery of another visible, habitable planet, which is later determined to be a copy of Earth, and gets into a car crash killing 3 and leaving a 4th in a coma.
She's sentenced to 5 years in prison, is let out in 4, and returns to her life thoroughly detached from the world around her, even as "Earth 2" descends upon them. She follows a shuttle journey lotto planned for Earth 2 but in taking a job as a high school janitor she decides to come clean to the man she put in a coma and killed the family of since we recently woke up... but she chickens out and instead agrees to "come clean" his house on a regular basis, which eventually stirs him out of his drunken stupor.
Eventually it's determined that Earth 2 not just looks like Earth but also consists of the same people and a theory is floated that it may be a "cracked mirror" in that Earth 2's reality is yet somehow different from Earth 1's and Main Guy's family may still be alive on that other planet. This leads Main Girl to give Main Guy the ticket she wins in the lotto and after he leaves with it we timeskip to the reveal that Main Girl 2 traveled to see Main Girl 1. Cut to credits.
Overall, I'd like to say that the presentation of this movie is very nice, it opens with a great head-boppin' beat, we establish the central conceit very quickly, the overall pace of the movie is very brisk and we still get plenty of solid establishing shots, with eerie sci-fi melodies, voiceover of various programs speculating about the Earth 2 phenomenon, all while we watch a relatively low dialog montage of Main Girl going through life day to day, either cleaning up student graffiti, trying to kill herself, or pursuing any number of other minor plot beats in the story.
I LOVE the presentation, and Main Girl's performance was decent enough to where I really didn't need her to say a whole lot to imagine what she must be going through. Making a friend of the man she otherwise ruined the life of is basically the only thing that keeps her going, but her understanding of the futility of keeping the context of their relationship a secret still drives her to want to escape to Earth 2, whatever it may be.
I cannot help but think though... that this movie took a fat ****ing nosedive into the ******* ground at the 50 minute mark.
At the 50 minute mark, Main Guy presents some terrible counterargument to going to Earth 2, citing Plato's Cave, arguing that ignorance is better than the unknown... which is the opposite reason just about anybody cites Plato's Cave.
He gets irrationally upset and drives her out of his home but later returns to apologize and creepily asks her to leave her Mom and come see something late at night. That something turns out to be a private performance in which he bows a handsaw, which creates some weird sounds and evokes images of astronauts in space, which are awkwardly superimposed over her face as she thinks about them. Easily the worst bit of editing in the whole movie.
Thinking about astronauts and some old guy you slaughtered the family of playing a handsaw for you apparent made her gushing wet because this scene immediately hardcuts to consensual sex which just RUINS this ****ing movie for me.
You secretly killed this man's wife, son, and unborn daughter and you're intentionally having sex with him?
I can honestly imagine a slightly alternate scenario where he pressures her into it, or even rapes her, or maybe there's actually some sort of romantic development, but no it goes from cleaning his house, to playing Wii Boxing, to snogging his face off. That absolutely WRECKS my opinion of this movie.
I can kind of appreciate the ending because the alternate reality outcome was only a possibility up until we see Main Girl 2, and the existence of Main Girl 2 implies the possibility of Main Guy's family still being alive.
But Main Guy's family getting killed was also presented as a motivation to go to the other Earth in the first place, and simply revealing Main Girl 2 and cutting to black without answering any questions is not the sort of cliffhanger I enjoy, and I do enjoy some cliffhanger endings.
If I could get this presentation in another movie, that'd be great, but apparently this movie was written, edited, produced and directed all by the same guy? And he's only done all of that for like 2 other movies? And at least one of them is a romance?
The worst part about this movie is the romance, I'd have given a much higher score if it didn't have the ****in' romance.
Anyway, this movie was 90% my style, but maybe 40% my writing. I may try watching it again at some point.
Final Verdict: [Okay]
Another Earth
Sci-Fi Drama / English / 2011
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
ChatGPT recommendation.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
This was a much better ChatGPT recommendation than Coherence, because while I'm always game for a psychological thriller, I'm relatively hard to impress in the drama department, and this was a movie that I think actually did pretty good in the drama department... up to a point.
Your premise of the hour is Main Girl is a space nerd recently accepted into MIT. While leaving a party intoxicated she looks up into the sky in response to the radio jockey announcing the discovery of another visible, habitable planet, which is later determined to be a copy of Earth, and gets into a car crash killing 3 and leaving a 4th in a coma.
She's sentenced to 5 years in prison, is let out in 4, and returns to her life thoroughly detached from the world around her, even as "Earth 2" descends upon them. She follows a shuttle journey lotto planned for Earth 2 but in taking a job as a high school janitor she decides to come clean to the man she put in a coma and killed the family of since we recently woke up... but she chickens out and instead agrees to "come clean" his house on a regular basis, which eventually stirs him out of his drunken stupor.
Eventually it's determined that Earth 2 not just looks like Earth but also consists of the same people and a theory is floated that it may be a "cracked mirror" in that Earth 2's reality is yet somehow different from Earth 1's and Main Guy's family may still be alive on that other planet. This leads Main Girl to give Main Guy the ticket she wins in the lotto and after he leaves with it we timeskip to the reveal that Main Girl 2 traveled to see Main Girl 1. Cut to credits.
Overall, I'd like to say that the presentation of this movie is very nice, it opens with a great head-boppin' beat, we establish the central conceit very quickly, the overall pace of the movie is very brisk and we still get plenty of solid establishing shots, with eerie sci-fi melodies, voiceover of various programs speculating about the Earth 2 phenomenon, all while we watch a relatively low dialog montage of Main Girl going through life day to day, either cleaning up student graffiti, trying to kill herself, or pursuing any number of other minor plot beats in the story.
I LOVE the presentation, and Main Girl's performance was decent enough to where I really didn't need her to say a whole lot to imagine what she must be going through. Making a friend of the man she otherwise ruined the life of is basically the only thing that keeps her going, but her understanding of the futility of keeping the context of their relationship a secret still drives her to want to escape to Earth 2, whatever it may be.
I cannot help but think though... that this movie took a fat ****ing nosedive into the ******* ground at the 50 minute mark.
At the 50 minute mark, Main Guy presents some terrible counterargument to going to Earth 2, citing Plato's Cave, arguing that ignorance is better than the unknown... which is the opposite reason just about anybody cites Plato's Cave.
He gets irrationally upset and drives her out of his home but later returns to apologize and creepily asks her to leave her Mom and come see something late at night. That something turns out to be a private performance in which he bows a handsaw, which creates some weird sounds and evokes images of astronauts in space, which are awkwardly superimposed over her face as she thinks about them. Easily the worst bit of editing in the whole movie.
Thinking about astronauts and some old guy you slaughtered the family of playing a handsaw for you apparent made her gushing wet because this scene immediately hardcuts to consensual sex which just RUINS this ****ing movie for me.
You secretly killed this man's wife, son, and unborn daughter and you're intentionally having sex with him?
I can honestly imagine a slightly alternate scenario where he pressures her into it, or even rapes her, or maybe there's actually some sort of romantic development, but no it goes from cleaning his house, to playing Wii Boxing, to snogging his face off. That absolutely WRECKS my opinion of this movie.
I can kind of appreciate the ending because the alternate reality outcome was only a possibility up until we see Main Girl 2, and the existence of Main Girl 2 implies the possibility of Main Guy's family still being alive.
But Main Guy's family getting killed was also presented as a motivation to go to the other Earth in the first place, and simply revealing Main Girl 2 and cutting to black without answering any questions is not the sort of cliffhanger I enjoy, and I do enjoy some cliffhanger endings.
If I could get this presentation in another movie, that'd be great, but apparently this movie was written, edited, produced and directed all by the same guy? And he's only done all of that for like 2 other movies? And at least one of them is a romance?
The worst part about this movie is the romance, I'd have given a much higher score if it didn't have the ****in' romance.
Anyway, this movie was 90% my style, but maybe 40% my writing. I may try watching it again at some point.
Final Verdict: [Okay]