James Gray's "inward-looking" sci-fi film AD ASTRA starring Brad Pitt

i saw that The Ringer had a roundtable on it by "space movie" nerds I'm quite sure have never seen a Gray film before.

I liked the beginning, where if Brad Pitt's mission succeeds then it means he'll need to reevaluate his past. then it all turns stupid around when the space pirates show up.

odd that gray watched so many experimental films and then didn't use any of it. he should have watched pandorum and lockout instead.

otm, embrace the schlock

i'll wait to rent this. it looked great but I've heard entirely too many people say it blows.

always a reason to go

ppl are eejits

This was ... no Two Lovers.

But, hey, probably the best movie with VFX in it I saw all year so far.

Quite liked this... similar to the Oedipal westerns of the '50s in an attempt to engage mythology with a middle-aged sensibility, through genre. Not shocked that innumerable Jedi/replicants didn't get it.

Sound design was stunning in this, really felt like being in a space pod seeing it in a decent sized theater. Voiceover was overwrought and some clunky lines but w/e, awesome score and it looks magnificent and there's maybe half a dozen stunning shots. not as good as First Man or BR2049 but still very solid.

I like that Natassha Lyonne is the greeter on the moon (or Mars? idfk)

thought it was funny when they get to the moon and the inside is every airport/strip mall, complete with Sbux and Subway

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is better than BR2049

this is not a fuckin' space movie

idc about space movies but la flor's most tedious hour was more engaging than this

ohhhhhhhh god no

Brad Pitt did the VO beautifully.

"what am i doing here?" - both me and brad pitt during ad astra

yeah he was great, it was the script that was on the nose

I did like one of his final lines about galaxies and nebula being beautiful "with nothing underneath"

also there's a pirate chase on the moon, this is a space movie

I haven't read the reshoot story I posted a couple weeks ago (spoilers). What scenes did they add?

The story didn’t give specifics abt scenes, just that supposedly there were reshoots done against Grays wishes

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is better than BR2049

Otm

I bet it was those stupid space wolves xp

If even that can't make it through the studio system without Disney demanding cuts and reshoots and voiceovers and extra ending scenes (and in one really dubious instance, removing a character's entire sexuality), what chance does anyone else have anymore?

— M.K. Rhodes (@mkrultra) September 21, 2019

I'd have lost at least a third of the voiceover... but it was ALL the studio's idea?

(I was confused by "Disney" until I remembered the Fox merger)

flappy, they wuz baboons

The scenes between pitt and the commander of the mars base give me a reshoot vibe, I wouldn't be surprised if those had been at tinkered with in some way. Her character seemed oddly truncated, and the way she moved the plot along seemed v perfunctory to me (I didnt totally buy that the government decided to tell the best-kept secret in the galaxy to her but not pitt, and she has the video evidence of it on her ipad ready to call up at a moments notice. unless I missed something, my memory's not clear on why exactly she had that video.)

gray said the space baboons were in his orig script iirc

yes, M K Rhodes' further tweets say that Negga's part was truncated.

obv the previous Pitt film this is most relevantly paired with is The Tree of Life

hadn't considered evaluating it along the Pitt axis. insightful!

Yeah

gray said the space baboons were in his orig script iirc

― johnny crunch, Monday, October 7, 2019 2:07 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

That is a wonderful sentence.

Thought this was pretty good--my first Gray film, will catch up with the others at some point. I thought I was clever to pick up on the Apocalypse Now affinities...but I guess every person who's ever reviewed or commented upon the film got there first. I missed that that was Liv Tyler until the credits. One unintentional laugh: when Pitt sneaks onto the spacecraft headed for Neptune, and when he fought the guy in a slow-motion space-grapple, the film seemed to follow the rule that if it's now an action film for a minute or two, somebody has to say "son of a bitch."

"Ad Astra" is one of my favourite Deerhunter songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuSgpL3J1bw

this movie was pretty to look at but i couldn't get past the hokey plotting and cliched character conflicts

this was terrible. so glad I didn't see this in a theater.

it did give a lot of heft to the action/effects episodes tbh. and not sure I would have gotten through some of the other bits in one sitting otherwise.

https://letterboxd.com/labuzamovies/film/ad-astra-2019/1/

The moon car chase was perfect for a 7am flight from Charlotte to Jacksonville.

but pointless? who was attacking them? who are we at war with? I could just ignore this if that scene wasn't so long and didn't seem like it was supposed to be important.

the narration was brutal on this, and the final scenes when he reaches dad underwhelming. was there even any revelation there?

wouldn't blowing up the ship powered by anti-matter result in an even bigger electrical surge?

movie needed more natasha lyonne

just smdh

who was attacking them? who are we at war with?

this was set up & explained pretty clearly iirc?

I don't think the details were spelled out. But there's resources, so there's raiders. That's kinda all there is to it.

I'd like to see Grey's edit before the tentpole stupid was added. I'm 100% certain that only that edit will save the film in future estimation.

#ReleasetheGrayCut

supposedly the stupid action scenes were all in the original; the later cut added the narration and removed footage from non-brad pitt characters.

lol, this was stunningly dumb and i almost quit but then SPACE MONKEYS and that was the one hat tip too many to suggest that everyone's fully aware they're on their bullshit. the "plot" hit really really close to home with my own daddy issues but come the fuck on with these metaphors. As a weird take on 40's/50's sci-fi, okay but why?

Obvs the visuals and effects (including Pitt in full on Keanu uncarved block mode and TL Jones as old man skeletor who never loved you) were outrageously good, mostly enough to keep me engaged when I wasn't shaking my head at the nonsense in general.

my opinion lies somewhere between latebloomers "impeccably crafted bourgie horseshit" and Fred's "i love that it just dives headfirst into banality." I'd likely need to watch it again to clarify but you've got to be kidding me, there is no way i'm watching this madness twice in a world so filled with other things to do.

I genuinely started laughing at the mars recording studio... with red rock baffles!
http://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/10418278a.jpg

i do wish i'd seen it in theaters if i was gonna see it.... that made gravity a fun watch and it likely woulda helped this. I woulda likely nodded off at the end regardless.

killer soundtrack tho! will listen again.

the space baboons were lab animals from Earth, no one else is saying anything different, right

"a world so filled with other things to do" is a strange concept in an era when ppl are watching last summer's Tarantella movie 5+ times

Those were space monkeys; I am willing to stake my reputation on it.

It’s very rare that I do an immediate rewatch of any film; I could see trying this again if it were in theaters in maybe, oh, five years.