“orgasmic brilliance in deepest space with Robert Pattinson” Charles Bramesco, The Guardian

Below is our review roundup and/or reactions to Rob’s performance in High Life.  If a review doesn’t mention Rob’s performance (which surprisingly happens at times), then I will post what they thought about the film overall.  I have also created a new category WTF Did I Just Watch – this will contain both good and bad.  I will try to avoid spoilers, although I have a feeling it will be pretty much next to impossible with this film given initial reactions at TIFF which you can read HERE.  This post will cover all future releases and I will collate together under each festival or country of release and will of course will be updated frequently.  Here’s the first batch from TIFF…

The Cool

Screen Daily (TIFF18)

“[Pattinson] is the most engaging human element in an intriguing, playfully provocative Denis piece that has us in search of a depth and meaning that simply may not be there.”

The Playlist (TIFF18)

(this, by the way, is yet another scorching Pattinson performance; he plays the character’s menace and rebellion with brio, but look at his face the first time he sees the baby).

Rob looks like he’s having a blast.  These photos are from Variety Studio and I can’t wait to hear all the interviews from today.

I was anticipating waking up to the High Life trailer but for me this is so much better.  I can’t wait to see Rob’s interpretation of Roy.  I love Donald Ray Pollock’s quirky writing style and this character … I’m not surprised Rob was drawn to him.  Fingers crossed this cast sticks and they do start production in February 2019.

According to Deadline:

Christine and Simon Killer director Antonio Campos has set up his next film just in time to be a hot Toronto sales package. Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Chris Evans and Tracy Letts are in talks to star in The Devil All the Time. The pic is an adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 novel that Campos and Paulo Campos penned. Antonio Campos will direct. The film will be produced by Randall Poster, and Jake Gyllenhaal and Riva Marker of Ninestories Productions. Production is set to get underway in February 2019.

Updated:

IMDbPro updated today showing new cast mates and also change release date to 2020

Quite a few people are making sure #HighLife is on their “Must See” lists at TIFF this year and here’s why:

Screen Daily:

High Life (Ger-Fr-Pol-UK-US) – dir. Claire Denis
High Life may be set in space, but with mercurial French creator Denis at the helm, it will not be science fiction as we know it. Robert Pattinson plays a man living in isolation in space with his daughter (Mia Goth). The cast includes Juliette Binoche, Lars Eidinger and André Benjamin (aka OutKast’s Andre 3000), with visual input from feted Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. Production companies include Alcatraz Films, Pandora Filmproduktion and the UK’s The Apocalypse Films.

Huffington Post (Canada):

“Thirty years into her filmmaking career, Claire Denis is making her English-language debut with nothing less than a sci-fi piece set in space. I’ve been following the development of this unicorn since early 2016, when novelist Zadie Smith was attached to write the first draft and Vincent Gallo and Philip Seymour Hoffman were eyed for the lead role.
“Robert Pattinson is accompanied by a who’s who of multidisciplinary geniuses: André 3000 of Outkast, legendary international thesp Juliette Binoche, Scandinavian installation art visionary Olafur Eliasson, French physicist/philosopher/scientific consultant Aurélien Barrau, and Tindersticks frontman [and] film composer Stuart Staples. I still can’t believe this thing exists.”
— Marko Orlic, film acquisitions and sales at Mongrel Media

The Ringer:

Nayman: High Life
Claire Denis has been my favorite filmmaker (sorry, Jason Reitman) ever since I saw her astonishing 2001 vampire thriller Trouble Every Day,one of the most viscerally violent movies of the last two decades as well as one of the thirstiest. The spaces between these contradictions are where Denis thrives. At her best—which is almost all of the time, including her dusty, Corona-drunk all-timer Beau Travail and this year’s wonderfully flinty romantic comedy Let the Sunshine In—she variously seduces, perplexes, and brutalizes the senses like no other director I know. At 72, Denis is a genuine legend and a punk original, and the quotes that she gave The New Yorker earlier this year about her upcoming sci-fi drama High Life seem to promise a work of both conceptual and politically incorrect daring. Set in the future on a spaceship populated by convicts (including Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, and André 3000, whom the director pegged after seeing his performance as Jimi Hendrix) and being piloted toward a black hole, the film is reportedly as dark and grim a vision as Denis has ever offered up: even more troublesome than Trouble Every Day and on a larger scale than her French-language work.

The reference points for deep-space art house are inescapable, but I’m not expecting High Life to be its creator’s Solaris or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Instead, I’m hoping it’ll end up casting its own long shadow over a movie landscape that could use more authentically mysterious monoliths

IMDbPro has updated the status of #TheKing overnight to show that it’s in post production as at 16 August 2018.  Now it’s just a waiting game to see when we will get to watch this on Netflix in 2019.