“Museum Hours” is an absolutely beautiful and hypnotic film; one that depicts the idea of life as art, and vice versa, while examining how we have become disconnected from this notion and from one another; and how it is through the smaller more intimate details in both life and art that this connection is re-established.

This is explored through a week or so of the life of Johann, a guard at the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum, who enjoys his quiet life amongst the artwork. He spends most of his day pondering the meaning of the paintings around him, as well as ruminating over the visitors who are either transfixed by the images or as he points out “seem to be competing over who can be the most bored”.

Early in the film Johann befriends a Canadian woman named Anne. She is visiting Vienna to care for her comatose cousin who she hasn’t seen in years. The burden of being in a country she has never been before and tasked with the care of an unconscious cousin she barely knows weighs heavily on her. She appears lost, an outsider disconnected from the people and culture around her.

Luckily for her Johann agrees to play tour guide and the two spend most of their free time together as Johann brings her around the city. It is in exploring Vienna with Johann, and seeing not the tourist attractions but the small shops, pubs and flea markets that she begins to feel connected again not just with the cities culture but also with her cousin. The joy of her time with Johann awakening memories long lost.

For Johann there is a similar revival. All these old places he once visited in his past seem new again. Not simply because he hasn’t been to them in years but because they have changed in such subtle ways that the experience feels new again. For both of them, it is the small things, the details we usually overlook, that reestablish a connections with family, country and friends.

This is reflected in the works of Pieter Bruegel whose art is the center piece of the film. He was a Dutch artist who made richly detailed paintings in which, as Johann explains, someone might find something new hidden within the frames with each viewing. You could easily say the same thing of “Museum Hours”. For director Jem Cohen, the film is his canvas and the streets, museums and pubs of Vienna his subjects. He plays observer, like a visitor in a museum, finding and capturing the intimacy of a city and its people. Inspired by art and human nature, he paints a richly detailed picture of the world we live, seeing details one might usually miss.

The importance of all this is expressed in one of the best scenes from any film this year as we watch an art scholar lead a group of tourists around the museum’s Bruegel exhibit. Here she points out that although many of his paintings depicted important religious tales, the focal point of the imagery is not the central religious figure but a bystander or object that gives the piece a meaning more important than that central figure. It is a powerful moment. At first glance we might all think we are seeing the same things creating a false sense of inter-connectivity. But ultimately it is how the smaller details affect us that truly matter. It is through this that the connections between life and art are reestablished, in ways that the bigger more seemingly important aspects of life can’t. A great artist can capture this. Cohen has done so here, by making the familiar feel new.

“Europa Report”, which is available to rent on VOD, is a sci-fi gem that has me conflicted. On one hand, it does what many similar films have not – it delivers a unique story, rooted in actual science, that examines the sacrifices some are willing to make in the name of exploration and discovery…but on the other hand, it is a film weighed down by a format that begins to overshadow the human element and the themes mentioned above.

The film follows a crew of astronauts on their two year journey to Europa, an ice covered moon around Jupiter that scientist believe contains an ocean of water right below the surface; and as one scientist in the film points out, where there is water there is also usually life. The possible discovery of that life is the crew’s mission. They are to explore the ocean below the moon’s surface in hopes of finally discovering that we are not alone.

To tell the story the film is played out like a documentary. It consists mostly of archived video footage of the ship’s crew, as well as interviews with the earth based mission control members who organized the operation. It is this format that on one hand is a brilliant way of documenting the crew’s journey, but on the other really hampers the themes and suspense of the film.

Through these recordings, we get to see the crew bonding and encountering tragedy on their journey to and on Europa. It turns out to be a really wonderful human tale of a group of people who without any hesitation or pretensions are willing to give anything and everything in order to make a discovery that could change the way we view ourselves, life and the universe. This portion of the film is a wonderful thing to behold, especially when their treacherous journey has some truly thrilling moments, including one gut wrenching scene played beautifully by Sharlto Coley. This is made all the better by the fact that unlike other similar sci-fi films (“Sunshine”), it doesn’t cop-out in the end and actually contains a third act that is tonally in tune with everything that comes before it.

Sadly, this documentary style also means that the story is broken up by interviews with scientist and mission control members on earth explaining the crew’s goal. The issue here being that everything these individuals say in their interviews is simply exposition that is already clearly expressed through either the words or action of the mission’s crew in the recordings. So although the video footage and central story and themes are pretty clear cut, the addition of the interviews makes it feel like the filmmakers are trying to beat you over the head with them. It just ends up feeling unnecessary and breaks up the tension which is really disappointing.

Luckily, for me at least, this didn’t ruin my viewing experience. In the end the film still works, with a core story and themes that are still expressed and earned that lead to a brilliant ending; where the result of their mission is made clear and as ridiculous as it initially may seem, everything really comes into perspective and it ends up having an emotional punch and staying power one wouldn’t expect. Because of this I highly recommend this ambitious little gem of a film. If you can look past the interviews, and focus on the central story as I did, then you are in for a real treat.