Ad Astra

This is rare, nuanced storytelling, anchored by one of Brad Pitt’s career-best performances and remarkable technical elements on every level. It’s a special film.

An awe-inspiring film.

Given the nature of director/co-writer James Gray’s admirably daring, bold and ambitious, sure-to-be-polarizing, flat-out weird, crazy fever-dream space opera, it’s only fitting for the title to be so obscure and challenging.

Gray’s filmmaking is tremendously exciting.

It’s a probing, searching movie by one of the medium’s best American directors whose reach, like his protagonist’s, exceeds his grasp.

It’s a movie that is well intentioned and aims big, but ends up being somewhat shallow.

Scenes come and go with a weightlessness that has nothing to do with zero gravity.

Not that anyone actually reads unbiased user reviews, but seeing Brad Pitts acting skills in this syfy movie was pretty damn good if not one of his top 5 movies. If anything, he nailed it in terms of physical facial expressions, body behavior and voice tone levels to reflect the realism of his character. Also, seeing Donald Sutherland/Tommy Lee Jones in the same movie like Space Cowboys was pretty damn cool and meshed well. I hope we get to see more of these talented actors teaming up in again

All seemed a tad too slow for me. Not the worse but definitely not the best I’ve seen and Liv Tyler’s role was far too minimalist. You could almost hear the director saying “Just walk on here and look beautiful”.

Great care was put into crafting a believable future, and the technical aspects of Ad Astra are all of high quality. Really good direction, a great performance from Brad Pitt, and beautiful cinematography. I only wish it had a stronger story to pull it all together. Unfortunately, its simplistic themes and a couple of oddly out of place action sequences make this a bit of a chore to watch.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Pitt carries this movie beyond its predictable plot and various subplots that are touched upon but never truly explored. Couple that with a crippling slow pace and you have a pretty mediocre movie. I really don't get the praise of this one. There was so much they could have axed out to quicken things up and not miss a beat, would have made for a better movie too.