News

This review originally ran September 12, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

It’s hard to articulate, let alone recreate, the feelings of camaraderie and wonderment that spontaneously arise from the participants of any discovery, formal or otherwise. The makers of “Good Night Oppy” try anyway in this new documentary about Spirit and Opportunity, two robotic Mars space rovers that outpaced everybody’s expectations.

Writer-director Ryan White uses a mix of talking-head interviews, expository voiceover narration (provided by Angela Bassett), and computer-animated reenactments (produced by Industrial Light and Magic) to relate some of the unexpected successes and challenges met by the NASA team members when they oversaw Spirit and Opportunity’s surprisingly long trip to Mars.

Unfortunately, White’s presentation — making its premiere at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals — fails to make the most of his primary pieces of dramatic evidence, making...

Steven Spielberg has been known to explore science fiction in many of his films, like Minority Report, E.T. The Extraterrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But his company Amblin rockets into science fact with Good Night Oppy, a documentary about NASA’s 2003 mission to send rovers to Mars to look for signs that water once flowed on the Red Planet.

Amblin approached Ryan White to direct the film, a wise choice given not only his skill as a director but his affection for the subject matter.

“I’m a space geek,” White tells Deadline. “So, I had followed these missions myself.”

NASA engineers at work designing the Mars rovers in the early 2000s

NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched two rovers to Mars within weeks of each other — first Spirit and then Opportunity (the “Oppy” of the title). White documents the maniacally tight deadline faced by engineers...

Click here to read the full article.

NASA missions and movie productions have more in common than you might think, according to Steve Squyres, a scientist who was the principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission.

“There are way, way more good ideas for movies than there are movies that actually get made,” Squyres tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And there are way, way more good ideas for space missions than there are missions that actually get selected to fly. With space missions there’s even more money on the line. The time that it takes to make the thing is comparable or maybe longer. And if you fail, you fail big.”

Squyres has a unique perspective on the similarities between the space exploration and entertainment businesses, because both his brother and daughter work as film editors. But that perspective is deepening lately thanks to a new role the scientist...

Click here to read the full article.

Amazon’s Good Night Oppy is likely to be sold to audiences on the strength of its adorably anthropomorphic robotic protagonist and ambitious surface-of-Mars special effects from the wizards at Ilm. But the appeal of Ryan White’s endearing and emotional documentary is much more grounded.

Good Night Oppy is a lively celebration of unabashed nerdiness and enthusiastic problem-solving, the sort of movie that feels designed to attract Wall-e-loving children, who can then be shaped into the engineers and astrophysicists of the future. It’s a glossy advertisement for NASA and Jpl — I thought of Disney+’s recent Ilm documentary/commercial Light & Magic more than a few times while watching — but it comes by its waves of emotion honestly.

In 2003, two robotic rovers were sent to Mars on separate missions to collect data about the Red Planet’s topography and, hopefully, its history with water.

No documentary has ever won the Oscar for Best Picture. In fact no documentary has ever been nominated. If ever there was an opportunity to change that statistic, at least in terms of a nomination it could be the remarkable, emotional, and uplifting Good Night Oppy which transcends the genre to become a richly rewarding cinematic experience, kind of a cross between Wall-e and The Martian. this all actually happened, but it is quite unusual in that it is truly feel-good, and it has all been brought to new life in an irresitible new film that in a time of divisiveness and negativity will remind you of the very best of us.

Debuting tonight at the Telluride Film Festival, this Amazon Studios and Amblin Entertainment production is the story of a fantastic voyage, that of two rovers sent to Mars on what was only expected to be a 90 day mission,...

The 49th annual Telluride Film Festival will host the world premiere screenings of Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” and Sebastian Lelio’s “The Wonder” – as well as North American premieres of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Bardo,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Todd Field’s “Tar,” James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Broker” among other top fall titles.

In keeping with the Telluride Film Festival’s famously late-breaking announcement process, the 2022 lineup was revealed on Thursday morning, just one day before the prestigious festival kicks off.

Due to the nuances of how the Toronto International Film Festival positioned some of its debuts as well as the roster of features debuting at the Venice Film Festival this week, industry observers had long expected many of the 2022 titles to screen in the Colorado town. But that doesn’t make the Telluride list any less impressive in its variety.

As customary, Telluride Film Festival has unveiled its lineup on the eve of its kickoff. For its 49th edition, taking place from September 2-5, the festival features new work by James Gray, Luca Guadagnino, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Hlynur Pálmason, Todd Field, the Dardennes, Sarah Polley, Mia Hansen-Løve, Werner Herzog, and more, as well as a robust section of classics and filmmaker-related docs.

The 49th Telluride Film Festival is proud to present the following new feature films to play in its main program, the Show:

• Armageddon Time (d. James Gray, U.S., 2022) In person: James Gray, Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway

• Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mexico-u.S., 2022) In person: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Íker Sánchez Solano

• Bobi Wine, Ghetto President (d. Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo, Uganda-u.K., 2022) In person: Christopher Sharp, Moses Bwayo, Bobi Wine, Barbie Kyagulanyi

• Bones And All (d.