If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good concept, poorly executed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Stanislaw Lem's Solaris is a highly regarded book and Andrei Tarkovsky's film adaption is pretty much spot on, though Tarkovsky being an auteur brings his own touch to the proceedings. The story is about a cosmonaut who is sent to a space station revolving around a mysterious planet in the future. The cinematography and production design are haunting- the spaceship is so different than what we usually see in Hollywood. The acting is restraint and works here. Some people have said there is a sense of pretentiousness and rightfully so as some scenes go on way too long. But hey, this is Tarkovsky we speak of. This is one of the finest hard science fiction films and you should see it at any cost.

A lovely A Space Odyssey-esque film. Artsy and filled with quiet, comtemplative scenes. It's interesting how the film explored human personality and extraterrestrial communication through the ocean's probing of the scientists' mind and trying to understand them using "guests". The philosophical ramblings seemed out-of-place sometimes. Good cinematography too, there's a bunch of pretty shots and cool visuals. Solaris got me into Tarkovsky's other works.

Somewhere in Solaris there's a great episode of Star Trek trying to emerge. As it is this movie is, though well acted, badly edited and badly scripted; the first half an hour or more is nothing but lengthy verbal exposition that's completely unnecessary and extremely tedious.Plot: you saw it on Star Trek many times: an alien life-form reads human minds and projects what people imagine into reality; mainly the psychologist's dead(?) wife, who refuses to die any more. The scientists on the Solaris space station make up no end of sub-Roddenberry guff in their plan to defeat the mysterious green glob.Do they succeed? I don't know, I turned it off after two hours. Maybe that's what the scientists should have done, would have saved a lot of trouble.Elaborate sets, Russian 1970's fashion-leather doubling for space gear, and a male lead who makes William Shatner at his heaviest look svelte. You probably need to smoke a pipe or two to get the full benefit of this. I can see why people say it's a classic; the actors have good chops, but goodness me, it's slower than Windows 95 in a deep freeze.

This is more than a Sci Fi film. It is intelligent, provocative, and extremely well directed. It involves a planet, Solaris, which is a puzzle to astronomers. Astronauts have been there and one, in particular, has been affected by the planet. Of course, he is initially thought to be suffering from some mental imbalance and hallucinations. But as explorations go on, there seems to be something about the oceans on the planet. They seem to be sentient. While this is an incredibly long film, it is a joy to watch. I believe that this is a film that requires a second look, especially if you think you got it. Of course, it's in Russian, and that makes certain demands on English speaking viewers, but many of the events are visual, with fairly long, almost surreal moments. I put this near the top of all the films I have ever seen.