Review 777: Project Hail Mary

The film is based on the novel, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (who also wrote The Martian); Astronaut Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakens on the spacecraft Hail Mary with no memory of himself or his mission. He deduces he is the sole survivor of a crew sent to the Tau Ceti system to save Earth from disaster. To do so, Grace must rely on his vast array of scientific knowledge, sheer ingenuity and human will, but he soon learns that he is not alone.

The film unfolds in a nonlinear fashion and opens with a series of overhead shots as Gosling's Ryland waking up from 

Project Hail Mary is a film about friendship, communication and how miracles are possible. 

Project Hail Mary was directed by directing duo Phil Lord & Chris Miller (who's previous work has been primarily comedies such as the 21 Jump Street movies and The Lego Movie, none of which I seem to have reviewed or indeed seen. And considering they were fired from directing Solo (but we don't talk about that), I had a few reservations going to see this film and was worried that they would dumb it down to say the least. I was surprised at how well and earnestly they handled

the cinematography is stunning and captures the vastness and the detail of space as well as lighting up with 

At the centre of Project Hail Mary is Ryan Gosling   he really carries this film on his shoulders   bringing to life his character's sense of irony which proves what an excellent comic actor he is  In the end, he steps up not because he is the best, but because he's the only man for the job and because millions of lives back on Earth depend on him.

a rock monster named Rocky who learns to communicate with Ryland via a speak and spell. 

Apart from Gosling, the only other noteworthy cast member who isn't a rock creature is Sandra Huller from Anatomy of a Fall playing Dr. Eva Stratt, the head of the Hail Mary project and Ryland's superior 

Ken Lung, Milana Vayntrub from NBC's This Is Us & Lional Boyce round out the films small cast with competent but ultimately unmemorable performances