This summer we’ve celebrated the 45th anniversary of “Alien” and the 15th anniversary of “Moon,” two of the greatest stuck-in-space films ever made. We’ve also been watching a related plot play out in reality, as Boeing’s ill-fated Starliner has left astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore idling at the International Space Station.
So perhaps at another time, Mikael Håfström’s “Slingshot” would get a pass for effort, if nothing else.
This is, admittedly, a challenging genre. But given its provocative potential (and Håfström’s repeated references to Stanley Kubrick’s all-time interstellar icon, “2001: A Space Odyssey”), a halfhearted take feels particularly disappointing.