Remake of: "Solaris" (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)

Soderbergh’s melancholy ode to science-fiction imprecision riffs on Stanislaw Lem’s famed source novel and Tarkovsky’s landmark adaptation thereof with equal furrowed-brow affection. In the process, however, it settles on a tone all its own: more wistfully romantic than Tarkovsky’s, patently in love with its empty spaces, its sporadic intrusions of movie-movie warmth illuminate rather than compromise the core themes. Both films have an essential place on the shelf, but Soderbergh’s is the one my heart goes to first as the years pass.