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Rating: PG-13 (Brief Strong Language|Bloody Images|Some Violence) Genre: Sci-fi, Adventure, Mystery & thriller. Original Language: English. Director: James Gray. Producer: Anthony Katagas,...
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Ad Astra showcases the struggle of looking into the abyss...
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Sep 20, 2019 · The result is a film that feels both massive and deeply personal with its themes, which is no easy feat. Don’t get me wrong, while this is a deeply philosophical film there are also traditional action elements and what feel like real stakes throughout McBride’s journey. People die. People make mistakes. People are selfish, scared, and greedy.
- Brad Pitt stars in James Gray's slow and somber sci-fi spectacle.
- The 25 Best Sci-Fi Movies
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By Witney Seibold
Updated: Apr 28, 2020 10:17 pm
Posted: Sep 18, 2019 5:00 pm
James Gray's Ad Astra takes the perfectly decent premise of a fun, schlocky space adventure cheapie, then sits down next to it with a trowel full of thick, creamy, slow-moving profundity and starts smearing. Brad Pitt plays Roy, an astronaut in the near future who must travel to the bitter climes of Neptune to find his thought-lost father Cliff (Tommy Lee Jones) who may or may not have an antimatter widget that's threatening the fate of the solar system.
Roy traverses increasingly hostile territory while contemplating what might have happened to his father's mind, and what might be happening to his own. On his journey, he will encounter a lot of his own Terrence Malick-like voiceover, an incredible score (by Max Richter), some of the most amazing space photography in a film (by Interstellar's Hoyte van Hoytema) and an eventual near-insufferable tone of slow, bleak somberness that will leave audiences wanting to give Gray a chocolate cream and a pat on the back just to cheer him up.
A sci-fi version of Heart of Darkness is a fine idea, and the ordinarily somnambulistic Gray allows himself to be awestruck and even a little playful through the first half of Ad Astra. Gray and his production designer Kevin Thompson have effectively constructed a lived-in near future where moon bases look like chintzy airports, where raygun-wielding moon gangs roam free across the lunar landscape in souped up moon buggies, and where therapy has devolved into a series of frequent office-mandated visits to corny meditation rooms replete with relaxing images of butterflies and dreamy Music from the Hearts of Space-style muzak.
Indeed, the film's opening sequence – wherein Roy falls from an impossibly high space tower – is a unique and exciting action sequence that might rival anything in Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity for sheer nail-biting thrill. In the film's early scenes, Gray has never been so enervated, bringing a coltish energy (for him) to his sci-fi world that he's rarely employed in any of his previous films (We Own the Night and Two Lovers aren't exactly brisk and sprightly).
It's a pity Gray's sense of sorrowful grandeur eventually eclipses the energy he builds up. After an amazing mid-film sequence involving an abandoned spacecraft and, yes, an attack creature, Gray pumps the brakes pretty hard, and slows his film into a sluggish contemplation of its own navel. “I don't know,” Pitt gravely intones “if I hope to find him, or to be free of him.” The exploration of daddy issues floats right to the surface, as do a series of somewhat-profound metaphors for God (and Godlessness) and meaning (and meaninglessness).
By the time Roy reaches the end of his journey (and I will certainly not reveal where it ends or what he finds there), Ad Astra has been sleepwalking for nearly an hour. I confess I needed a cup of strong tea to stay alert through the back half. And this is coming from a turgid-pessimism-loving cinephile who has seen the 1972 Solaris twice in theaters.
Watch Brad Pitt in action on the moon in this scene from Ad Astra:
It's difficult for a filmmaker to look into space and not feel a profound sense of the infinity of the cosmos, and some of the best films of all time have been about that very topic. And, as with all filmmakers who feel equal to the task, I admire James Gray's willingness to dive headlong into the vast inky void, contemplating our own smallness and insignificance and relationship to our absent fathers/Gods. There is, at the very least, an intellectual boldness to asking these types of questions in a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, one that aims to provoke more than it does to thrill.
I can admire Ad Astra as a smart thriller for grown ups, however, more than I can its ultimate effect as a film. Gray's lack of levity and his own hangdog solemnity undercuts his film's emotional impact, leaving one bummed out and tired rather than moved or intellectually stimulated.
Ad Astra is grand but, rather frustratingly, it's not great. James Gray’s film is a most impressive technical achievement, and the first half is exciting and flirts with profundity. The second half, however, slows to a maddeningly sluggish pace, and the film ultimate leaves you worn out and disengaged
- Witney Seibold
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Oct 28, 2019 · Critical Movie Critic Rating: 4. Movie Review: Synonyms (2019) Movie Review: The Kill Team (2019) Tagged: astronaut, experiment, father, journey, mission, space. Movie review of Ad Astra (2019) by The Critical Movie Critics | An astronaut seeks the truth about his missing father and the secret mission he commanded.
- Dan Gunderman
- PG-13
- James Gray
Sep 19, 2019 · James Gray’s Ad Astra plays like a sombre, space set version of Apocalypse Now. The film is a brooding, atmospheric affair that features one of Brad Pitt’s finest and most restrained ...
- 3 min
- Geoffrey Macnab
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 83% based on 392 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, " Ad Astra takes a visually thrilling journey through the vast reaches of space while charting an ambitious course for the heart of the bond between parent and child."
Sep 20, 2019 · The majestic Ad Astra takes Brad Pitt on a distant journey. In more ways than one. Independent-minded auteur James Gray gets a lot of things right in Ad Astra, his seventh feature as a writer and ...
