Originally Posted by :
while less is more for the actor, that's not necessarily the case for the movie, which tends toward the obvious and often feels adrift in a suspense-free void. Writer-director Gray's handsomely crafted planet-hopping drama is by turns vividly eventful and deliberate in its uneventfulness, and it feels caught, somewhat awkwardly, between stark simplicity and violent leaps into hyperdrive. Similarly, the voiceover track that threads Roy's thoughts through the action veer between the poetic and the psychotherapeutic — sometimes bitter and incisive ("We go to work, we do our jobs, and then it's over") and frequently unnecessary ("I've been trained to compartmentalize," he points out, as if we hadn't noticed).
Ad Astra has, at times, the meditative pace of sci-fi forebear Solaris, but certainly not the narrative complexity. Stripped down to the archetypal bones, the story revolves around straightforward father-son themes of love, veneration, abandonment, fear and longing: The missing astronaut Roy seeks is none other than his dad (Tommy Lee Jones), who happens to be the American space program's most-decorated hero.
As potent as that premise is, with its Marlow-Kurtz dynamic between the narrator son and the off-the-grid father he'd long presumed dead, it plays out in a way that makes it easier to admire than to be swept up by. Perhaps because Ad Astra's genre tropes, however striking, are also familiar — a distracting bit of Gravity here, the inevitable nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey there — this episodic saga feels gussied up by them, as opposed to fully inhabiting the terrain. Lurching from one Homeric ordeal to the next, the film can be stubbornly uninvolving.
Originally Posted by :
At heart, it’s a short story set in space, decorated with major FX (the double rings of the evanescent blue Neptune are its most memorable image), held together by Pitt’s stalwart presence. This actor rarely makes a false move, and the fact he’s now having a moment — the well-deserved “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” Oscar buzz — could help “Ad Astra” at the box office. Yet what would help it more is if the movie had a genuine wow factor baked into its retro sci-fi aesthetic. I hope James Gray, as a director, continues to explore uncharted worlds, but even his cult of fans may find it hard to get too excited over a movie that, beneath its eye-candy space trappings, is this conventional.
Gray (who also wrote the script alongside Ethan Gross) is an established purveyor of big, brooding, ambitious cinema, from The Yards through The Immigrant to 2017’s Amazonian adventure, The Lost City of Z. But he’s never made anything as ambitious as this soaring psychological space-opera, with its cool surfaces, dark pockets and sudden flashes of violence. Ad Astra is so deadly serious that it verges on the silly; so immaculately staged and sustained that it sweeps us up in its orbit.
Originally Posted by :
Despite a blockbuster-sized budget and whatever box office aspirations Disney might still have for this leftover piece of Fox’s pre-acquisition production slate, Gray’s largest film is light years removed from the crowd-pleasing likes of “Gravity” and “The Martian.”
This is spare and mythic storytelling; the more expansive its vision gets, the more inward-looking its focus becomes. Even with a linear narrative that never slows down, a chase sequence that feels like “Fury Road” on the moon, and a suspenseful vision of the galaxy that makes room for any number of unexpected surprises (beware the claw marks inside a seemingly abandoned spaceship), “Ad Astra” is still one of the most ruminative, withdrawn, and curiously optimistic space odysseys this side of “Solaris.” It’s also one of the best.
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
Well that looks kinda awesome.
I mean, I still kinda feel like Brad Pitt, for everything he does well, is maaaaaybe a little stretched trying to play the lead in a dramatic movie like this. He's fantastic in an ensemble and great when he can play Brad Pitt: Charming Rogue. But this just seems a bit out of his wheelhouse.
I loved him in Fury but anytime he's tried to just the serious dramatic roles I've just been kinda...meh. Can he be a heavy character?
I guess it depends on what this movie is going to be. If it's something of a tense sci-fi movie, he can probably do that. If it's gonna be an introspective case study on the human condition using space as a plot device....eh.
He can play Tom Bishop: Astronaut and reprise his approach in Spy Game (friggen love that movie) but I think 7 Years in Tibet may be something similar to what they're going for here and if so...well that movie kinda sucked, IMO. Shoulda had Leo do it...
Pitt is a superstar that is at his best in a supporting role.... Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.... [Reply]
Originally Posted by keg in kc:
Well, the one constant in all the reviews I've seen so far is that Pitt is great in this. So maybe...
Boy, when you read something that boils down to "Solaris but less dynamic..."
Uhhh........that.....ain't good.
Solaris was one of the most tediously overwrought movies you will ever see. It is a movie that has become self aware and capable of smelling its own farts. And dull as dishwater.
If you take Solaris and somehow make it less interesting....egads, man.
This is gonna hit the ol' Netflix queue or I'll wait until it gets chopped to pieces and re-aired a million times on FXX. [Reply]
I'd have to look it up to link it, and i'm not gonna, but I read a pretty lengthy av club review earlier that was effusive in its praise. Gave the flick an A-. So it ain't all bad, evidently, on the review front.
Edit: and checking RT it's sitting at 84% right now. [Reply]
If you like Real Sci-fi then you will like this movie. Real Sci-fi has a message and this movie delivers on that. It is a slow burn though but it keeps you engaged throughout. If you go in expecting Aliens and a Shoot em up star wars type thing you will be disappointed.
Brad Pitt was really good in this and this will probably get him an award.
If you like reading Sci-fi and and see the message they get across and then it made you think, then I think you would really like this movie. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
Well that looks kinda awesome.
I mean, I still kinda feel like Brad Pitt, for everything he does well, is maaaaaybe a little stretched trying to play the lead in a dramatic movie like this. He's fantastic in an ensemble and great when he can play Brad Pitt: Charming Rogue. But this just seems a bit out of his wheelhouse.
I loved him in Fury but anytime he's tried to just the serious dramatic roles I've just been kinda...meh. Can he be a heavy character?
I guess it depends on what this movie is going to be. If it's something of a tense sci-fi movie, he can probably do that. If it's gonna be an introspective case study on the human condition using space as a plot device....eh.
He can play Tom Bishop: Astronaut and reprise his approach in Spy Game (friggen love that movie) but I think 7 Years in Tibet may be something similar to what they're going for here and if so...well that movie kinda sucked, IMO. Shoulda had Leo do it...
Agreed! Spy Game is one of my all-time faves. [Reply]