Reviews

OK, so I was a bit harsh with the title. But there were indeed several plot and story elements straight from the planet Uranus. Did all of this come straight from the novel? I don't know, but they were totally unnecessary and only served to add about 40 additional minutes to the running time. At this point I've just got a list of things that I thought were dumb added filler or otherwise made no sense at all, in no particular order.

1. Why even cast Liv Tyler? She doesn't speak more than 5 words in the entire film. She's only on screen about a total of 2 minutes, max. That was clearly a ploy for selling tickets. That is *not* a role that deserves top billing. The role of Eve could easily have been filled by any random up and coming actress. No acting chops needed. Seriously.

2. You never and I mean NEVER heed a distress call in deep space. C'mon!! Haven't you watched "Alien"? "Event Horizon"? "Supernova"? Anyway, McBride (Brad Pitt's character) was given the choice to override their mandatory distress response but didn't so that he didn't have to divulge the nature of his secret mission, which - given the scenario billions of miles from Earth - one would assume is because he doesn't want to assume any criminal liability for doing so. Simply telling the rest of the crew what was really up wouldn't have had any immediate ramifications on the success or failure of his primary mission. Long-term for him? Maybe, but one doesn't get the impression that anyone on that leg of the trip would have done much more than say "Oh crap, really?!" and then shrug their shoulders. OK, but keep that in the back of your mind. Meanwhile Pitt and his compatriot board the drifting ship and of course they find a disaster. Savvy viewers will recall being told several times prior that the wounded ship was an *animal* research station....cough cough....hint hint...that information was a ba'd boon that they should have heeded as even a casual viewer of Sci-Fi could have told them.

3. McBride previously decided not to risk criminal liability for divulging the nature of his secret mission, but not too long afer, on another (unapproved) leg of his mission, he has no problem dispatching 3 or 4 fellow astronauts...recall that there was no reason - besides the desire not to piss off his superiors and get prosecuted for revealing state secrets - to care whether .... OH never mind!! This is just so stupid.

4. On Mars they use enclosed land roving craft but on the Moon all landgoing vehicles are convertibles? Why?! I thought someone said this was the most realistic space travel movie ever. Does the surface of the Moon count? Besides what was the point - AT ALL - of the pirate attack on the Moon? None. It literally served zero purpose other than to keep Donald Sutherland's character from joining McBride. But let's face it, the character is at least 80 years old. Totally unfit for inter-solar system travel. So was that a bad writing/directing decision or a bad casting decision? Who knows? But anyway, why wouldn't they be using enclosed vehicles on the Moon in a known hotbed of piracy - OR - have MUCH better armed escorts with much better preparation and planning? I suppose the last question could be asked of just about any single aspect of any main story element in the film.

5. Way too many instances of guy-in-spacesuit-escapes-certain-death or guy-in-spacesuit-manages-miraculous-trip back to his craft or Earth - which is to say at least three such instances. Only one was necessary in "Gravity" - so why press the issue?

6. Isn't space VERY cold in Neptune's orbit? Yet this guy is wearing a standard issue 1985-era Space Shuttle Program suit and he's able to function normally in the ultra-cold vacuum for as long as he needs to with no signs of ice appearing in his helmet or otherwise?

7. The backpack he was wearing in the aforementioned scene - I didn't see any jet or pressure nozzles for propulsion on it and there were several clear shots of the bottom. Just general science-y type stuff. How's the guy gonna push through a field of floating ice rocks and end up right back exactly on course for his space ship? LOL

8. The woman who is in charge of the Mars base personnel. What's up with that little room she takes him to in order to tell McBride that she doesn't care what happens to his dad just after she clearly demonstrates otherwise when she tells him the story of how his father killed her own parents? So I guess I have two questions. What's up with her and what's up with the room?

9. What the heck was this underwater lake McBride uses to get to the bottom of the final rocket's launch pad? I mean, we are talking Mars here. Seriously what was that? Is there a big amount of sub-surface water on Mars that I'm not aware of or is this intended to portray some kind of system typical of Earth based rocket launches being duplicated on Mars? Either way, totally unbelievable how he uses it to get to the rocket, which he then climbs, breaks airlock in mid ascent (with massive g-forces in play) and, with a little bit of luck and skill, manages to de-commission the entire crew so that he can take over the entire mission to travel billions of miles to Neptune.

All of the above wouldn't even be things I'd be thinking about if the rest of the movie was engrossing and coherent enough to keep me interested. As it was, I give "Ad Astra" 6 stars for the amazing camera and effects work alone. This film rivaled Gravity in near- and mid-orbit scenery and disaster cinematography. The rest of the space travel stuff was also very nicely shot and rendered. The effect was a seamless integration of CGI and actual camera-shot footage according to the clearest intent of the word "seamless" - there was no point in this film at which I thought that I thought to myself that whatever I was seeing wasn't actually being shot on video rather than being generated by a computer. Perfecto! Soundtrack was also wonderful. Just enough, not too much, never overbearing, very fitting. Good job - Would not be surprised if both cinematography and soundtrack were nominated for Academy Awards.

I've seen some reviews with the ridiculous premise that people don't or won't like this film because it's not some shallow sci-fi effects and popcorn adventure flick. That's not relevant to my take on it. "Ad Astra" is a shallow space-based daddy issue flick with too many close up shots of Brad Pitt's face, too many plot holes, too many overtly stupid decisions by characters who are supposed to be the best and the brightest, and a bunch of other bad decisions by the director. Worth a watch, but in all honesty pushing the lower bounds of a 6.0-star review.

Obligatory opening statement: I live in Austin and this film has been hyped around here. I've always tried to give "local" filmmakers the benefit of the doubt and favorable reviews, but this one just dragged on too long and the payoff wasn't there for me.

Video quality was way below average, intentionally given the director's (and main subject's) choice of camera - which is also one of the main topics and underlying reasons for the film being made in the first place. Still, it got tiresome watching the grainy VHS quality footage often aimed at the director from somewhere on a dirty floor, often with his (rather cool and dog-like) cat entering the frame to explore.

I didn't share the filmmaker's interest in the other subject/object of his movie either. The guy up in New York may have a crazy history in the bodybuilding world and he is definitely a "character" - but I saw nothing from the footage that the director happened upon in a camera purchased on eBay to really pique my interest in the guy. Only later is the audience fully clued into the coincidence that prompted our director's emotional and nostalgic attraction to this particular person.

I won't provide any spoilers as far a "plot" and "twists" go, but I will say that there's a rather disturbing montage in about the middle of the film that only bears a very, very tenuous metaphorical connection to the story. Further, this montage is nothing anyone who has spent hours on YouTube probably hasn't already seen in various portions as bits and pieces. But OK, we get it, I guess.

All in all, this was a waste of time for me. A long-ish, tone poem and metaphorical way for a person to grieve the loss of loved ones, with whom even the director himself admits he had, for much of his still young life, an intentionally loose and irregular relationship. Yes it's a horrible thing that happened, a life and a fate that nobody deserves by way of an incredibly rare and uncommonly cruel genetic disorder. That makes it harder for me to say what I'm about to say, but I've got to say it. The whole thing smacks of a (rather mature and demure, FWIW) millennial's attempt to make his first feature length film. It lacked genuineness to me, and I suppose that may be as much on me as it is on the director.

If you're looking for entertainment and/or a tear-jerking meditation on overcoming sadness and grief, there are plenty of better films.

5.5/10

Excellent acting from first-time and veteran Hungarian and Syrian actors. The cinematography and effects were top notch. The script is where the weaknesses start to take over, but miraculously it never strains believability too much.

MILD Spoilers ahead:

As far as the alleged political messages - there ARE NONE. There is no "demonization" of the countries that take in or refuse refugees. There is simply a realistic depiction of how refugees are dealt with in Hungary. If showing reality for what it is (minus a flying kid) is "left wing agitprop" then you can safely discount what any reviewer - professional or hobbyist - has to say. Seriously, this is not a "political" movie at all. A young Syrian refugee and his family encounter some harsher than usual border enforcers and he then attempts to gain entry to the EU through whatever means he is presented with.

Again, there are gaps in the plot/story but nothing too bad. The city of Budapest is featured prominently and other than the supernatural elements at work, the movie is MOSTLY believable. Give it a try and bring an open mind. You will not be preached to, contrary to some reviews by people who have obviously not watched it, and to whom being an IMDB activist is more important than reviewing titles.

First off I want to say this is not noir, not LA noir, not sunshine noir....not noir. The soundtrack alone almost makes this clear. But it is a very well done film set in a gritty LA underworld of white person felons and murderers.

Of the complaints I noticed before buying a ticket anyway, the ones that most worried me were as follows:

1. Nicole Kidman's makeup wasn't believable - False. Looks fine.

2. Nicole Kidman's accent wasn't believable - False. No accent. Seriously whoever said Clint Eastwood must have meant Dirty Harry, but even then there was very little to complain about.

3. The story was unbelievable - Disagree, but there are some questionable plot devices. Still don't make it unwatchable or decrease ability to suspend disbelief.

All in all this was a pretty good movie. Some minor changes could have made it more tight but I was a fan up until the final, stupid, unnecessary sequence that spent about 10 minutes on unnecessary flashbacks and views of the protagonist dying in her car as we got closeups on skateboarding kids under an overpass. Totally random and if they had left that last 10-15 minutes out, my rating would have been an 8.

What else can I say? Things happened and it was never boring. However what did happen was completely unbelievable and it left the audience with the nagging question: "Why?"

I will not echo other reviews except to say I agree that Hill tried a little too hard with the t-shirts and music and I really hate to get into nit picking - but as someone who was in my late teens and early 20s in the mid-90s, this film rang hollow. It's like Jonah Hill didn't even try for accuracy with the female characters, in behavior or how they dressed. Their mother was a total cypher. There was literally nothing memorable about her except that she was obviously a horrible parent with no sense of fashion or self-worth and with serious personal issues that went un-dealt with both in the film and in her fictional personal life. There is no way a 16 year old popular girl would want anything to do with a 10-year old prepubescent boy, or that on the off-chance she was drunk or high and they hooked up, there is no way she would ever openly discuss this with her female peers. Like "Hey guys, I just let a 3rd grader ____ me." Yeah. Right.

Then there is the fact that his mother drags him into the skate shop, screams at the other kids as though she's about to take a much heavier hand in her son's life and what happens next? Well, he spends two or three straight nights in a bum park and partying with his much older friends. Did I mention that the lead actor couldn't pass for 12 years old if he tried? And yet we're supposed to believe that he's just adopted by a group of guys in which only one person is even remotely near his own age, but about two feet taller than him.

The failure of this film to incentivize the audience to suspend disbelief was a common theme and it ultimately ruined it for me. It culminated in the post-drunken-driving accident in which a car full of boys was flipped on its side but nobody got seriously injured or arrested. Jesus.

Less than 10% of what transpired was remotely plausible - and I think Jonah Hill must have been trying to craft some kind of memoir of the crazy life he wished he had. Why? I have no idea, but clearly there was also a desire to exercise some visual directorial chops with the silly, unoriginal montages that included the closing sequence of the movie. It's like he made this movie "Because he could."

And while I can definitely say I was "entertained" for an hour and a half, I wouldn't risk recommending this film to anyone else without serious qualification. If you have a hankering to see a group of kids do extremely stupid things with zero adult supervision, I would suggest "Kids" or even "Requiem for a Dream." This movie seemed like it might be trying for some kind of lesson, but it ended up being a total waste of time.

As a long time fan of Lee Morgan, I went into this mentally prepared for a big letdown. I had wanted to get a clearer and more complete picture of his life before dying at the young age of 33. I wanted to know more about his previous wife, a Japanese American woman for whom he wrote songs and from whom he split amicably.

In the end though, what the director did was focus on the events that led to the shooting death of Mr. Morgan on a snowy night in New York City and at the hands of his on-again/off-again lover or common-law wife, depending on what perspective one takes. And as a result the film was tighter and more linear than it would have been otherwise.

Even if I hadn't been a fan of the music and of Lee Morgan in particular, I would have walked away from the movie impressed with the directorial skill (which includes interviews and editing) on display, but the fact that we manage to get so many great people on film, including Wayne Shorter, who is 83 years old, really sealed the deal for me.

As of this writing, there is only one other review up, and while I disagree with 97% of it, I agree that this ALSO could have been a very effective PBS radio broadcast or a podcast. But that does not give sufficient credit to this director who shot the material and people (and included the music and rare footage) with such a careful and appreciative eye as well as excellent cinematography.

This is the best jazz documentary I've ever seen and even if it focused on the woman who killed the star (that she previously nurtured back from addiction) it is very much worth seeing (and hearing). I highly recommend it if you have a chance to see it while it is in limited release.

Seen at Lincoln Performing Arts Center, NYC March 2017

This movie was disjointed and disappointing. The existence of the "witch of the woods" was given away too early. Seriously, there was no mystery at all after about 8 minutes. Opportunities to expound upon sex roles (primarily suspicion of women) and religion were missed. The final scene was absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary (inapt comparisons to The Shining and other movies be damned) and the final 7-10 seconds of nothing but a black screen, repeating a theme that led the audience to expect more, was intellectually insulting. The score was often times inexplicable (dramatic music accompanying long shots of the forest from afar). Also, there isn't any consistent underlying point to the story. Most importantly, primarily as the result of the early reveal, it just wasn't scary at all.

That's the bad stuff. There is also good stuff. The acting was first rate, especially the children - specifically Thomasin and Caleb. The costumes, sets and scenery were excellent. The depiction of 1630 America and the people was entirely believable and well executed. In spite of the previously mentioned flaws, the director did a reasonably good job of ratcheting suspense and manufacturing dread.

To me this was a period piece about an unprepared family led by a less than competent husband under duress. There was also a poorly managed side story about a witch who quite literally lives in the woods, communicates with Satan and feels the bizarre need to mess with people's livestock and sacrifice babies. That last scene. Seriously. I have yet to read a sound justification for it that I can believe. What was the point?