Dream Stream: The Midnight Sky, WandaVision, Orange Is The New Black

The Midnight Sky

Netflix

Directed by George Clooney and starring the man himself, 2020’s The Midnight Sky is one of the finest sci-fi efforts of the last 10 years and one of the greatest movies to hit our screens during the pandemic.

Based on the 2016 novel Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton, the film stars Clooney as a scientist who must venture through the Arctic Circle to warn off a returning spaceship following a global catastrophe.

Scientist Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney) has devoted his life’s work to finding habitable planets where humanity can expand. In the year 2049, an unspecified disaster has wiped out most of the Earth’s population and left the surface contaminated with ionising radiation. Lofthouse refuses to join the evacuation of his Arctic base, knowing he does not have long to live due to a serious illness. He searches the base’s computer system for active crewed space missions to warn about the situation on Earth, and finds only one: the interplanetary craft Aether, returning from an exploration of Jupiter’s habitable moon K-23, which Lofthouse himself discovered. The crew has lost contact with Earth but does not know why. Now it is up to Lofthouse to make a dangerous trip across the Arctic to reach a means of contacting them, and in doing so, save them and humanity itself.

With a brilliant turn from Clooney both in front of and behind the camera, and with fantastic performances from Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler and Caoilinn Springall, The Midnight Sky is moving, gripping and entirely enchanting until the end.

WandaVision

Limited series – Disney+

Even in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), where things are strange beyond measure, they can always get a little weirder...

Created by Jac Schaeffer and released in 2021, WandaVision was the first of numerous projects produced by Marvel Studios that have brought the celebrated MCU straight to the small screen.

Following the Marvel characters of Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), the series shares continuity with the films of the franchise and takes place after the Earth-shattering events of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

Three weeks after the events of Endgame, Wanda Maximoff and Vision are living an idyllic suburban life in the town of Westview, New Jersey, trying to conceal their true natures.

With numerous nods to classic sitcom tropes of the past, the couple’s strange surroundings begin to move through different decades and the audience is firmly kept guessing as to what is causing the two protagonists to be living in such an apparently bizarre world.

As Vision in particular begins to question the nature of their new reality, the couple suspects that things are not as they seem.

But what is the darkness at the heart of their situation, and could the problem be a lot closer to home than anyone has realised?

With typically superb turns from Olsen and Bettany, a fantastic supporting performance from Kathryn Hahn, and the return of Kat Dennings as MCU fan-favourite Darcy Lewis, WandaVision is a bonkers joy from start to finish.

Orange Is The New Black

Seasons 1-7 – Netflix

Life in a women’s prison… and back in 2020 we thought lockdown was tough.

Created by Jenji Kohan and based on the memoir of Piper Kerman, Orange Is The New Black chronicles the experiences of a woman who is without doubt a fish out of water during her incarceration in a minimum-security American prison.

The series begins revolving around Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), a woman in her thirties living in New York City who is sentenced to 15 months in Litchfield Penitentiary, a women’s federal prison in upstate New York.

Chapman was convicted of transporting a suitcase full of drug money for her girlfriend Alex Vause (Laura Prepon), an international drug smuggler.

The offence had occurred 10 years before the start of the series and in that time Chapman had moved on to a quiet, law-abiding life among New York’s upper middle class.

Her sudden and unexpected indictment disrupts her relationships with her fiancé, family and friends. In prison, Chapman is reunited with Vause – who named Chapman in her trial, resulting in Chapman’s arrest – and they re-examine their relationship.

Simultaneously, Chapman, along with the other inmates, attempts to grapple with prison’s numerous, inherent struggles.

With great performances from Schilling, Prepon, and a host of other acting talent including Kate Mulgrew, Danielle Brooks and Samira Wiley, Orange Is The New Black is a binge-worthy delight of no mistaking. You will be hooked.

Got a streaming recommendation for our readers? Email daniel.morris@mnamedia.co.uk