Life (2017)

Gravity meets Alien meets John Carpenter's The Thing. Set in the near future (a reference to the age of the ISS points to the year 2028) the crew of the international space station find dormant biological cells in a soil sample from Mars, and foolishly decide to revive one. The new life from, named Calvin in a contest by elementary school students which oddly features voice cameos by 20/20 anchors David Muir and Elizabeth Vargas, grows and develops at a very accelerated rate and inevitably starts killing the crew, who lose contact with Earth and must try to defeat the alien on their own. The movie succeeds based largely on momentum, it kept my interest, but I can't image there is much if any rewatch value to this thing. Characters routinely make very stupid decisions, and the missions quarantine officer Dr. Miranda North (played by Rebecca Ferguson, a Swede playing a Brit) certainly did not earn her pay on this assignment. Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds are the films name stars, just guess which one of them is the hot head and which the quite, reflective one. The film has an ending that would be truly frustrating if it wasn't so cliché, but the film did well enough at the box office that there just might be a sequel, and honestly I think that sequel could be more interesting then this tired 'original'. **