Lucy in the Sky (2019)

Lucy in the Sky is special because it dares to dramatize something movies rarely capture honestly: the quiet, disorienting aftermath of awe, when the universe has rearranged your sense of scale and ordinary life can’t keep up. Natalie Portman throws herself into Lucy’s unraveling with a fierce, intimate commitment, making the film feel less like a conventional thriller and more like a haunted character portrait that happens to pulse with romantic longing and creeping dread. The vibe is dreamy, tense, and slightly off-kilter—an ambitious swing that reaches for emotion and interior experience over tidy explanations, and that’s exactly where its power lives. It won’t be for everyone, especially if you want clean plotting and clear answers, but if you’re drawn to misunderstood films that take big risks to get under a person’s skin, this one is worth the trip.

Lucy in the Sky is clearly reaching for an intimate, unsettling portrait of an astronaut whose post-mission high turns into a slow personal unraveling, mixing romance and paranoia to show how “normal life” can feel unbearably small. The problem is the storytelling often feels scattered and undercooked, with choppy pacing that drains tension instead of building it, so what should be gripping can come off as a confused slog. Natalie Portman does committed work and there are moments of striking mood and imagery, but the film doesn’t consistently land the emotional impact it’s aiming for. If you want a tight, coherent thriller or a deeply satisfying character study, this may frustrate you; if you’re okay with a hazy, uneven psychological spiral held together mainly by performance, you might find something to appreciate.