There’s little I love more than a movie that defies my expectations. Taking that further, there’s little more exciting than falling head over heels for a movie that I had zero enthusiasm for going into it. Maybe “zero” is a tad harsh in the case of Ad Astra, the new James Gray movie; I like his work! I like The Lost City of Z, for instance! But I also don’t remember a damn thing about it, so pardon me for struggling to muster up excitement about Ad Astra.
No, seriously, pardon me, because Ad Astra is phenomenal.
Stellar filmmaking with a top-tier Brad Pitt performance in a story about the passage of isolationist masculine tendencies from father to son, and how those tendencies damage everyone around them? I’m sold. Also, there’re a few random sci-fi genre beats in there that I wasn’t expecting, including a space rover chase and, well, I don’t want to give the other one away.
You can read my full piece over at The Week.
A Constant Visual Feast 