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<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong> <\/p>\nJonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em> <\/p>\n
Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n
EUROPA REPORT<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u2018Europa Report\u2019 doesn\u2019t refer to a European soccer league or a study of the European economy, but one of Jupiter\u2019s moons, which scientists have concluded has a hot, molten core. That means that beneath Europa\u2019s thick crust of ice, there\u2019s liquid water and super-hot undersea vents, much like those on earth where it\u2019s believed early life on this planet may have began. That means Europa may be the most likely place for us to find life in our solar system, and \u2018Europa Report\u2019 is a dramatization of what a mission to Europa searching for it might be like. I call it a dramatization because while the trailer might cause some to write off \u2018Europa Report\u2019 as simply a found-footage horror movie set in space, the filmmakers\u2019 attention to detail and their respect for the spirit of exploration makes \u2018Europa Report\u2019 something quite special.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say \u2018Europa Report\u2019 isn\u2019t a found-footage thriller, because it is. In the film, an international group of astronauts is sent on a privately-funded, years-long mission to Europa, hoping to bring back proof of extraterrestrial life on Jupiter\u2019s fourth largest moon. Something went wrong along the way and the mission lost communication with earth, but using declassified footage captured by the spacecraft\u2019s many interior and exterior cameras, investigators have been able to piece together what actually happened. \u2018Europa Report\u2019 is supposedly made from this footage, which is framed by interviews with the mission\u2019s chief earthbound officers (played by Embeth Davidtz and Dan Fogler). The six-person crew onboard the ship are played by Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, and Sharlto Copley.<\/p>\n
While most sci-fi horror movies would have an alien or a mysterious virus stalking the crew, the makers of \u2018Europa Report\u2019 are smart enough to know that real-life space exploration is inherently interesting and dangerous enough that you don\u2019t need to add much for it to be dramatic. Whether it\u2019s the jolt of the ship\u2019s bone-rattling liftoff, watching how the crewmembers relate to each other during their downtime, or rendering the eerily beautiful surface of Europa, everything in the \u2018Europa Report\u2019, especially the meticulously designed spaceship set, is focused on absolute realism, and it\u2019s an impressive feat to behold.<\/p>\n
Without sci-fi horror tropes, \u2018Europa Report\u2019 more closely resembles movies like \u20182001\u2019 or \u2018Apollo 13\u2019, as the astronauts do the best with the tools they have in order to survive and complete their mission. So when the crew is confronted by difficult questions and serious complications, as they are during a harrowing spacewalk to repair the communications system, you get the sense that you\u2019re watching intelligent, highly-trained professionals forced to make split-second decisions that could mean life, death, or the premature end of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to one of mankind\u2019s most nagging questions \u2014 whether we\u2019re alone in the universe.<\/p>\n
Though that\u2019s not to say that there isn\u2019t extraterrestrial life in \u2018Europa Report\u2019, as the astronauts find tantalizing evidence that life on Europa may be more complex and diverse than scientists had theorized. But as complications compound, the question increasingly becomes how much the crew is willing to risk their lives to help mankind make an enormous scientific leap forward.<\/p>\n
\u2018Europa Report\u2019 seems to touch on so many different genres that it may take a while to get oriented. Maybe that\u2019s because, in the end, \u2018Europa Report\u2019 isn\u2019t so much about science fiction, aliens, or survival as it is about the insatiable human urge to explore and learn, to look up at the sky and ask big questions, and take the biggest risks imaginable to answer them. And even though the astronauts\u2019 mission is privately funded with billions in technology, support, and manpower behind them, \u2018Europa Report\u2019 is about the spirit of modern-day adventurers and their willingness to travel farther and farther from home, chasing the intoxicating lures of discovery and knowledge, for the betterment of us all. <\/p>\n
\u2018Europa Report\u2019 is rated PG-13 and opens today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37007,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36986\/revisions\/37007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}