High Life

Director: Claire Denis
Year Released: 2018
Rating: 2.0

Scientists come up with a flaky idea to send criminals on death row - including Robert Pattinson, Mia Goth, André 3000 and Juliette Binoche as their physician (who's also a child murderer) - light years away to "harness energy from a black hole" and it ends with most of them dead and Pattinson taking care of a baby.  It's not the worst idea for a movie - and Denis recruited physicist Dr. Aurélien Barrau to handle the science-y stuff - but the way it's presented is fractured and mechanical: you find out what happens to the crew (and things from the characters' past) very quickly, and the rest of the time is spent juggling time frames with no payoff (I can only assume the last shot is not an optimistic one).  Sexuality is viewed as the true enemy - more so than gravitational acceleration (although that does wipe out Goth) - and Pattinson's character is the only one to deny that side of his being: three cheers for voluntary celibacy (that is, until he's drugged and raped).  It's only fitting that Denis, who's so accustomed to draining the air out of life on Earth, takes her act to the Cosmos.