Spaceman

From time to time, a movie comes along that’s hard to define, and, hence, it’s hard to know what to make of it. Such is the case with the second feature outing from filmmaker Johan Renck, a director best known for TV commercials and music videos, a reputation that bleeds through at times in this production. Viewer opinions and interpretations of this one are all across the board, making “Spaceman” one of the most challenging releases to peg in recent memory. This space-faring sci-fi release tells the tale of an astronaut (Adam Sandler) on a solo, long-term deep space mission to investi...

In director Johan Renck’s science fiction fantasy “Spaceman,” adapted from Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia, viewers are taken on a philosophical journey into the depths of one man’s self-inflicted loneliness that manifests as a nightmarish friendship with a giant space spider. It takes a lot of guts to attempt a screen adaptation of such an abstract story, but Renck pulls it off, mostly with the help of a strong lead performance from Adam Sandler.

Dubbed “the loneliest man in the world,” Jakub (Sandler) is six months into a solitary mission to investigate a m...