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

I'll take a self-indulgent/butchered by the studios mess by a good director over anything fucking Tootsie Tarantino does 4eva!

Kinda got overlooked I like this movie quite a bit for what it was, Hollywood outer space pop psych... Sound design was fantastic.

Finally got around to this - a bit ponderous but ultimately solid. Of the nu-ratpack space movies was definitely the best or, at least, the one with the most ideas and best visual + sound design.

yeah i liked this a lot more than i expected to

seemed to draw from various New Wave sf deconstructions of the space program - Moorcock's Black Corridor, various Malzberg books (Beyond Apollo, etc.), but I think Morbz is also correct about the debt to Westerns

just saw this, it was phenomenally stupid. I liked the way it paid the smallest attention to some aspects of physics but completely fucked up almost everything else. Praise for being one of the rare vacuum-is-silent brigade, though.
Voiceover was terrible and ponderous. Pitt's line deliveries also often unintentionally funny.
Also like the way when they meet the space baboon they don't even bother looking for the people presumably also on the space station (unless baboon sent the SOS itself because it was bored).
What the fuck did Tommy Lee Jones eat all those years? His station was tiny.

yes, worst movie I saw last year by some distance.

nice to read wrongness

It looked nice and I think there’s a seed of a good movie there, but yeah, it is not great. B-rate Malick voiceovers maybe a big part of what dropped it.

Gray >> Malick this decade

indubitably

I want a panel show with Morbs and Alfred now

pay us!

He and I meet in Manhattan twice a year.

lol

I'm behind on 2019 films, but I've put this at the top of my cue

the Morbs-Lord Sotosyn doc?

I'd make all my film-loving (hating?) friends throw a pittance at a patreon

I've got a dozen or so

He and I meet in Manhattan twice a year.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 29, 2020 8:21 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'd buy tickets to this

I am going to choose to read that as a tryst

no, my hair isn't good enough for him

I mean, I know the fans here want this to be something with fucking, but I just want pure snark. Which is dirtier tbh

ad astra - visually stunning, some great scenes, some of the most heavy-handed "meaningfulness" i've ever seen in a movie (e.g. when brad and his dad are clinging to each other in space at the end and tommy lee jones says "you have to let me go" and a big blinking neon subtitle comes up that says HE DOESN'T JUST MEAN PHYSICALLY LET HIM GO HE ALSO MEANS EMOTIONALLY as tommy lee jones winks at the camera), overall pretty dumb and a step down from lost city of z

(e.g. when brad and his dad are clinging to each other in space at the end and tommy lee jones says "you have to let me go" and a big blinking neon subtitle comes up that says HE DOESN'T JUST MEAN PHYSICALLY LET HIM GO HE ALSO MEANS EMOTIONALLY as tommy lee jones winks at the camera)

lol yes, this gave me a severe pain

lol @ neon subtitle

I am not afraid to admit that I enjoy a movie where there is SPACEYELLING at SPACEDAD

also SPACE APES

and of course SPACE MADNESS

ad astra - visually stunning, some great scenes, some of the most heavy-handed "meaningfulness" i've ever seen in a movie (e.g. when brad and his dad are clinging to each other in space at the end and tommy lee jones says "you have to let me go" and a big blinking neon subtitle comes up that says HE DOESN'T JUST MEAN PHYSICALLY LET HIM GO HE ALSO MEANS EMOTIONALLY as tommy lee jones winks at the camera), overall pretty dumb and a step down from lost city of z

― na (NA), Thursday, January 30, 2020 8:52 AM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is basically otm, even though i am generally pretty lenient when it comes to visually stunning space movies

maybe i should see lost city of z??

yes you should

yes!!

thirded

n/a's right, and Ad Astra is certainly his weakest film, but the visual and sound design and Pitt and the staging of the violence more than compensanted.

I didn’t hate it. It’s no Silent Running, though.

What is?

Could’ve also gone for scratching the AstroKurtz crap and just enjoying a lunar Mad Max movie.

more Pop-timist

for Doug Trumbull + Pitt ya got Tree of Life

cynical me is getting much better at watching stuff uncynically and I really liked this as a result

Beautiful but ponderous. The narration is at least as bad as the much-loathed Blade Runner voiceover.

It's not that this film was so monumentally dumb (and as a sci-fi it is staggeringly, relentlessly stupid), it's that it was ever touted as anything else. Looks great, though, and I'll watch any daft shit if it's set in space. I think it might become a camp classic.

I want a panel show with Morbs and Alfred now

― babu frik fan account (mh), Wednesday, January 29, 2020 10:20 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

pay us!

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius),

I wish I had!

I remember literally nothing about this aside from the rover chase.

how did no one make the horrible Dad Astra pun

p sure i made it irl

The rover chase was cool but had me questioniong the viability of moon piracy as a business model. Also Donald Sutherland was there but also not there which was odd.

finally watched it, there are some great sequences but also several wtf moments some of which have been mentioned already:

- so he accidentally kills the crew that in theory could've done what he's done? "sorry guys but i really need to see my dad"

- the message had to be recorded in an anechoic chamber because why? ("well, neptune is very very far, we really want the sound quality to be the best, you know")

- natasha lyonne looked so out of place that i'm hoping she's intentionally planting herself in different movies and it will somehow come together in russian doll season 3

i don't remember one second of this film I was so looking forward to and found so disappointing