Ad Astra

A more intimate version of Interstellar, with similar formal opulence, musical arrangement and philosophy, but less ambitious artistically and script-wise, without a climactic finale or even highlight scenes. A cosmic father-son relationship drama and a story about making the right life choices and decisions that doesn’t take place exclusively on planet Earth. Brad Pitt is again fantastic. (09/24/2019)

I regret that Ad Astra is one of the few films I missed in the cinema this year, because the trailer was deceiving. It is definitely not a boring sci-fi drama, but a pretty action-packed and intense space thriller, the kind we haven’t seen in a long time. Brad Pitt is excellent in his role and I was very impressed by the colonization on Mars and the Moon, where there are even pirates already (Mad Max in space) – I wouldn't be angry at all if the whole plot was set only there – but the search for the father was also quite entertaining and, moreover, I don't remember a cinematic portrayal of Neptune. The action scenes are awesome, the opening explosion on the Tower of Babel is thrilling as fuck, or the chase with the lunar vehicles, or the fight with the infected monkeys. In places the film is unexpectedly gritty and I liked that a lot. Despite my big fears, it was a lot of fun and a nice space experience. 8/10. (12/03/2019)

If the movie consisted only of the shots of the Universe and those from outside the Earth with the grandiose music, it would make the most beautiful documentary about the Universe that has ever been made with that unbelievably beautifully filmed moon-action which was at the top level. But as it is now, the movie has a story with Brad Pitt in it and neither of those things add to its quality. It might captivate you with its visual, for example, in iMax but from the screenplay point of view you can’t wait for it to end. (10/07/2020)

Ad Astra is a film that is easy to shoot down or mock with a withering catch-phrase, but which nevertheless hypnotically draws in the viewer and long afterwards smoulders in one’s mind. It is impossible to avoid the impression that something is simultaneously missing and excessive, whether monologues, action scenes or pulpy elements thatturn contemplative absorption into amused mockery. Like a cosmic Heart of Darkness, Ad Astra gives the impression of being abridged, as if a full range of other stops on the road to the destination have been bypassed. Glimmers of the film’s world give the sense of a well-thought-out future and colonisation of the solar system. Director James Gray's film comes across asa several-hour miniseries that has been edited down and promises the possibility of not only seeing more of everything but, primarily, getting everything in a more sophisticated, dramaturgically refined and, above all, more slowly flowing form. I very much would have liked Ad Astra’s runtime to be twice or even three times as long, with proportionately more stops in space and some motifs more thoroughly developed. In its actual form, it is a sort of Reader’s Digest, the fragments of which do not conceal the masterful filmmaking and give a sense of an epic vision. (01/05/2020)

A beautifully filmed show of tasteful gibberish and persistent utterance of everything. In addition, culminating in a B-movie, which fully reveals how, despite the burden of beauty, Ad Astra is actually an internally simple movie that ostentatiously wears the robe of spiritual science fiction. I would have made it all about the monkeys. Space Baboons. (09/21/2019)