Notable: Ad Astra (2019)

Ad Astra reaches for the stars and, man, I guess it's pretty at least

You ever date someone so into their image that they have nothing else to fill their time? Every thought and action is how others perceive them while they lack any substance? Ad Astra is the story of a man sent to find his father because the old man abandoned everyone and may pose imminent danger to the earth. It's full of daddy issues and overdone themes that are square on the surface with little going on underneath. Despite deep story problems, however, the look, sound, and acting are all top notch. I saw this movie on one of those faux IMAX screens with decent speakers, and it's gorgeous. Director James Gray and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema create an empty atmosphere of space that's both giant and all encompassing, yet intimate with closeups that detail every motion of the actors's faces. The sound design amazed me as it skipped between score and effects, blending the silence with tonal melodies that almost did the work of sound in the emptiness of space. Everyone moving through the story does their best, with Brad Pitt standing out for the minimalism required of his character. While I want to tell people to see this movie, in the end I can't. It's beautiful but fleeting with little to think over but the myriad of plot holes and science inaccuracies careening through a tired B-movie level story.

Here are my notes with some thoughts, beware spoilers.

Near future

We start with text saying it's the near future, which is fine if a little lazy and condescending to the audience. Show us some crazy clear tablets and then I don't have to wonder how near into the future when people start talking about being born on Mars.

Good IMAX

I can't go on enough how gorgeous this movie is. Confession time: I have a problem with heights. Gravity and the Man on Wire remake trailer for The Walk almost made me vomit as they gave slow spins atop dizzying heights. Here, though, I get enough to marvel at the space elevator thing while also seeing its relationship to the earth. I don't feel like I'm going to fall with Brad Pitt when the shit from the trailer starts happening, but I do feel that I'm afraid when he does for him. That's great visual storytelling.

Pitt's getting older

It's tough to see your heroes edging along the timeline, getting lines that your parents have and then seeing in the mirror the beginnings of those lines. Pitt is going forward gracefully and using all those crows feet and laugh lines to accentuate nuanced performances like this.

Space Cowboys 2

I kinda wanted Donald Sutherland to make it to Tommy Lee Jones. I've never seen Space Cowboys, but I wanted to see what happened to that aged Sutherland face in zero gravity. I'm a monster.

Virgin Flight

Here comes the speculation without any introspection. Flights to the moon are handled by our current airlines, but the moon is an outlaw wasteland. There's places on this earth Delta won't fly because they are lawless craters, but sure, the moon is on the tourist list.

Stage rocket as good as it gets

So we have been traveling to the moon regularly enough to set up airlines and airports, but the technology to fly up there is still the same three stage rocket and landing pod? Seems super wasteful. Even Superman Returns speculated an alternate space flight idea. I'm nitpicking, but there's some crazy hand wavy fantasy science coming that begs how much the writer thought about this.

Moon - Space Gatlinburg

For all the silliness of space pirates on the moon, I kinda like the idea that there's safe parts and then parts maybe you should not go. It's like going to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. You can eat at a Dukes of Hazard themed restaurant, go to Ripley's Believe It or Not, and take pictures with stuffed bears. But you get out of the Smoky Mountains park and happen upon the wrong house after making a wrong turn in those hills, I speak from experience when I say they don't like strangers. They shotgun don't like strangers.

Music as SFX

As the fight across the moon happens, I was struck by two things: 1) why aren't these moon rovers armored? and 2) OMG the music is amazing. Sticking to the lack of sound in space, the score punctuates perfectly the sound effects we would be hearing as the rovers crash and people shoot. It's simple and hidden and beautifully done, if generally silly if any thought goes into the overall scenario.

Must take mood stabilizers

Pitt's making his way to Mars from the moon, so they give the crew mood stabilizers to pass their psych evaluations on the long journey. Pitt's character Roy is a stoic, so he pockets his. In any other movie, this would be a buried gun so that later, when he freaks out, he can pull out this little pill. Does he? No. The pill never comes back. Why include the scene if it's meaningless later on or redundant showing he has a cooler head than them? If this wasn't the only buried gun that never comes back, I could overlook it, but this film doesn't so much as subvert my storytelling expectations as shake a stick at them, chanting "Oh, does baby think he knows what's gonna happen?" It feels almost as condescending as the early text on screen.

Mayday space sleep

En route to Mars, the crew have to stop at a ship calling out for mayday. More gorgeous spots of space, a slow build as they board the seemingly empty ship, and my eyes drifted. I see a lot of late night movies after work, but I rushed to make the evening showing. I was not tired. At one of the most suspenseful scenes as the tension is high, just before what I'm gonna call the most WTF moment I've had in the theater this year, I was almost asleep. That's a good overall feel of this movie. I mean, you're told this is a Norwegian research station. This is what previously woke me up, I think, hoping that this movie suddenly turned into John Carpenter's The Thing. And it kinda does for a hot second.

All authority dies

Holy shit the monkeys. Great apes. Whatever. Baboons coming out of nowhere to eat off the Captain's face. If you track this movie, all authority over Roy dies in one way or another. Shot, monkey attack, left behind, and dumped in space. There's a message that's either too subtle or just not enough for me to decide what that is.

Bits of religion

I do take some comfort that we see astronauts with some kind of faith. As an agnostic, I don't really give a shit, but it is nice to see that some humanity exists. People give last rites, they say prayer over St Christopher medals, and they act as though they are not cold and distant. It gives even more weight to Roy's lack of humanity. What's wrong with him in all this? What compels him to keep up the traditions we see his father discard? 

She's squirrelly for space

As Roy and the survivors of the monkey attack land on Mars, they are greeted by one of my favorite people acting today, Natasha Lyonne. I just love her choices and would watch her do anything. Here, she's playing the ultimate coked up, community service Wal-Mart greeter for a space station on Mars. We learn later that it's far enough in the future for her to be born here (people gotta do something and I guess everyone's mom can't get them a library job).

Space camo

More interesting choices. On the moon, the camouflage was white and grey. On Mars it's black and red and grey. It speaks volumes that it seems more thought was done for production design than actual plot mechanics.

Fake space speech

So Roy's whole reason for going to Mars is to get far enough out that a laser transmission of his voice reading a planned speech can reach his dad on Neptune. Nobody and nothing will be able to interfere, or something. But basic science tells us that it will take about four hours for that laser to go from Mars to Neptune and take four hours to come back. Roy waits around the recording booth like he just ordered an Uber and expects it to come around the corner any minute. At no point is it mentioned that they could have just lasered the same message from Earth and relayed it to Neptune or that Roy's dad is insulted by anything less than the highest fidelity in his recordings.

This all to test him?

Right around here I began to believe the movie was smarter than it was. Is all this faux science here to have us believe Roy's being tested in some simulation for a greater mission, my brain thought. It was not.

7 weeks off, does he shave?

There's lots of interplanetary distances involved, long amounts of travel time. Brad Pitt either has the slowest growing beard of all time, or they just didn't bother to care. I don't know why I do either, except as it gets colder the thought of growing a beard is on my mind. 

Dad's bad, weak twists

So Roy gets the Mars, and they tell him his dad went crazy and killed everybody. The movie treats this as a second act twist, but we saw Tommy Lee Jones in the trailer. He's not well. Also, has there ever been a space movie where "we lost all contact" lead to flowers and soothing music?

Did rocket thing so help get on the ship to Papa?

So that makes no sense, but here's the thought behind it: As they land on Mars, yet another gun is buried that never goes off. Roy has to pilot the ship down to the surface using his nerves of steel because the guy in charge after monkeys ate the captain face, that guy in charge sucks at his job. The buried gun is Roy saved them, so of course they're gonna help him when he needs to get to Neptune, right? On the mission to go kill his dad?

Just hijack

Nope. Motherfucker jumps on a rocket as its about to fly off and climbs aboard. Not gonna lie, I've never seen that before in a movie that is supposed to have real science. It's super interesting right up until...

Knife fight

Yeah, those fuckers he saved an indeterminate amount of time before pulling out knives and come at that dude like he's a plague ridden stowaway. I mean sure, he's a stowaway and they are going to kill his daddy, but that buried gun just pokes its head out and says it'll see us later.

Poisons Crew

And then the motherfuckers pretty much all kill themselves like those kids in Tucker and Dale VS Evil. Just a lot of panic flailing until they impale and poison themselves. It's kinda anticlimactic, and I can't tell if it was trying to be subversive, or they just didn't know what to do with the crew if they helped Roy out.

79 days, no beard still

This just bugged me. I don't know. Maybe because I've never been able to grow a full beard and feel less adequate for it. 

Chest scar

Does Brad Pitt have a lateral chest scar or did the character? What the fuck was that heart operation looking bullshit? I can't find anything about it online, although I swear I saw it. 

Old footage looks old

More playing with the timeline and confusing the shit out of me. Footage of Tommy Lee Jones pre-going out into space looks like it was filmed in the 1970s. I'm sure it was done with bad photography to hide the de-ageing on Jones, but once again I'm sitting here wondering when the hell this "near future" happened. Nitpicking, maybe, but I believe that anything that brings you out of the narrative, especially with a beautiful movie like this, deserves to be pointed out.

Crazy Pitt is back

OMG it's the return of Twelve Monkeys Brad Pitt for a brief moment! Look, the dude can act for sure, this movie proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. That being said, when Roy's been out in space all alone for months and starts to go a little sideways in the brain it's amazing to watch.

Odd not intro pod

There's an escape pod that Roy uses to get down to his dad's space station as the station slowly descends to a fiery crash on Neptune because we needed that ticking clock… Wait, that's another buried gun that doesn't pay off. Goddammit.

No space burial

Proof that Space Dad Tommy Lee Jones has gone all evil: he doesn't space bury the folks he killed. Plus he admits he killed them. Plus...

Bad Dad

Oh man, this is right up there with Shazam and Rambo: Last Blood adding together to make 2019 "The Year of the Fucked Up Parent." Space Dad tells Roy straight up he never felt anything for Roy or his mother. Roy's mother. Fucker is harsh to the point that he made Brad Pitt for real cry and keep it in the movie (without going all space floaty).

Resembles Monkey

Maybe it means something, paralleling the monkey attack from before, but Tommy Lee Jones has a look about him that I don't think I've seen. People look different as they get older, but Jones has that hooded-eyed ape look about him. Or the dude just got old, and I'm reading way into things. 

Spacecicide

What's the word for suicide by space? Still suicide? Not Spacecicide or something silly? Cool. My mind might have been wandering as Roy said bye to Space Monkey Dad floating off into the great beyond.

Space shield

Roy has to get back to his ship. Between him and his ship are the rings of Neptune, all full of rocks and shit. What's the answer? Tear a door off the busted shit ship and ride that fucker back home like Superman carrying a door. Sir Issac Newton shit himself as those rocks bounced off but Roy kept right on in the same direction.

Infinite Resources

I don't know much about space travel. Hell, I just got weirded out by that video of Chris Hadfield demonstrating what crying in space is like. But look, this movie just… you know what? I don't care. There's space problems in this space movie.

What was light? Ship?

Really not clear about what the light was that Roy sees. I figure it's his ship through the rings, and I'm gonna stop right there.

Liv Tyler, Space Girlfriend

I wonder if they got her to do the movie by saying, "You get to date Brad Pitt instead of Ben Affleck and Michael Bay won't be there."