Ad Astra - Review

 

“Per aspera ad astra” – latin; through hardships to the stars

It’s common in fiction of any kind to use the fantastical to examine deeper and more common truths of humanity. Films like “Blade Runner” and “The Truman Show” have used elaborate and fanciful concepts to look at the simple concept of identity. “Ad Astra” is following in the footsteps of those films, using the concept of a not-to-distant future and space travel to examine some deeply human ideas.

Brad Pitt (“Fight Club,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) stars as Roy McBride, the lone spaceman traveling across the galaxy to find his long-lost father, played by Tommy Lee Jones (“Men in Black,” “No Country for Old Men”). Both Pitt and Jones are delivering career best performances here. While Jones is onscreen less than Pitt, the moments where he is there are captivating thanks to a deeply soulful and weathered delivery. There’s a loss and emptiness to his character that feeling genuinely authentic and heartbreaking.

Pitt, meanwhile, is an absolute showstopper. While its easy to throw criticism at the abundance of voiceover present in the film, it at least makes sense within the context of his extensive space travel solitude and the “psychology exams” the film brings up. Regardless, Pitt is delivering a stern and cold character whose life and character and fundamentally changed over the two-hour run-time. It feels so authentic and real, as if you’re watching a documentary of a man whose core beliefs and being are being changed over the course of his life.

Apart from Pitt and Jones, the rest of the cast consists of roles so brief they may as well be cameos. There is an extended sequence on a space shuttle to Mars with some great smaller roles and chemistry between the supporting cast and Pitt, but its over too quickly to really make an impact.

Ruth Negga (“Warcraft,” “Loving”) and Donald Sutherland (“Ordinary People,” “Animal House”) are the only supporting members present for long periods of time. Negga is as fantastic as she’s always been but is painfully underutilized here. Sutherland is victim of the same fate, introduced with boatloads of character potential, but written out in a fairly understated manner.

The script, penned by director James Gray (“The Lost City of Z,” “We Own the Night”) and Ethan Gross (“Fringe”), manages to straddle the line of believability and wordy vocabulary extremely well. It never falls into the pitfalls of a film like “The Goldfinch,” instead settling into a neat spot of vocabulary heavy seriousness. The middle of the film is a bit strenuous, as that is when the pacing drags for a bit. But its only really one scene that really feels out of place, a distress signal, and it at least has a purpose, even if it doesn’t seem entirely necessary.

However, where “Astra” truly shines is in the moment of quiet contemplation. This is an absolutely knock-out gorgeous film, without a doubt containing the best cinematography of the year so far, courtesy of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (“her,” “Interstellar”). Some moments swell with incredible beauty and jaw-dropping vistas. When the seamless mix of practical and computer effects is coupled with that cinematography and the score from Lorne Balfe (“The Florida Project,” “The LEGO Batman Movie”) and Max Richter (“Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” “The Leftovers”), it becomes a purely incredible achievement in atmosphere.

Thankfully, Gray and Pitt put that atmosphere to good use. This is not a toothless film, and despite the inky blackness of space, there is a lot to ruminate on after the credits start to roll. The concepts of home, as well as what a parent owes their children, are constantly dealt with throughout the surprisingly short 124-minute runtime.

It might very well be one of the most affecting films to ever touch upon the subjects of isolation and loneliness.

Despite these heady themes, it never feels like a downer either. There’s a warmth to “Astra” that helps permeate through the seriousness of the subject matter to create a film that isn’t lighthearted by any means but feels remarkably human. It eschews the melancholy feelings from films like “Blade Runner 2049” or “Interstellar” and it creates a much more appealing film to the general populous as a result, without sacrificing the artistry.

It is worth noting that, even with its shorter than blockbuster length and consistent pacing, this a slow burn of a film, and therefore won’t be for everyone. Some moments just exist to showcase the mental state of the characters, and while they are satisfying in a story context, they might not be particularly entertaining for a general movie-going audience.

For those willing to see a slow burn film though, “Ad Astra” is a masterclass in emotional authenticity and theme work. For a film about space, the authenticity and artistry of the atmosphere is undeniable. Lead by career best performances from Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones, this is a singularly wonderous piece of science-fiction, with only minor blemishes from underutilized supporting characters and a somewhat out of place sequence. Its at times thought provoking, thrilling, gorgeous, and insightful, sometimes all at once. Talk about shooting for the stars. 4.5/5

Hustlers - Review

The evils of Wall Street have been dragged onto the big screen for years and years. Whether it’s a story about the general greed seemingly inherent in that strip of New York business (“Wall Street”) or more focused stories about the market crash of 2008 (“The Big Short”), the concept of the everyday person hitting back at the Wall Street crooks is an American power fantasy second only to that of becoming a Superhero.

“Hustlers” is different though. There’s something about it; the sense of style, the tone, the cast, something inherent in this project specifically that sets it apart from the rest of this miniature genre.

Jennifer Lopez (“Jersey Girl,” “Gigli”) is an absolute knock-out, both on and off the stage as Ramona, the queen bee of the strip club Moves. She glides through each scene with an attitude somewhere between a hungry shark looking for prey and a mother bear protecting her cubs. She’s completely fierce, funny, and dangerous. This is a role for the ages and one that can easily rest alongside other corrupt mentor figures in cinema.

Despite ample, and justified, praise being thrown at Lopez, she is still second to the incredible performance from Constance Wu (“Crazy Rich Asians,” “Fresh Off the Boat”) as Destiny. She is the definition of a layered character, constantly being thrown into moral quandaries that are given the exact amount of weight they need. Wu straddles the line between someone you want to root for and scream at, and it culminates in an emotionally vulnerable and fierce protagonist.

While some of the supporting cast has been a bit exaggerated for marketing purposes; as great as they are, Cardi B and Lizzo are basically just cameos. Its the other half of the main quartet who deserve just as much praise at Lopez and Wu. Keke Palmer (“Scream Queens,” “Akeelah and the Bee:) lights up the screen as she radiates anarchistic energy as Mercedes, and Lili Reinhart (“The Kings of Summer,” “Riverdale”) is the supporting scene stealer as Annabelle, the sweet younger one who just wants a home of her own. She will melt your heart.

Actually, all of them will. The friendship that grows as the film progress feels incredibly authentic, and its an excellent example of why the film is a cut above the rest. Throughout the film there are smaller scenes that seem to serve no purpose to the overall plot, such as a Christmas day bash or training Destiny on the pole.

However, it quickly becomes apparent that these scenes exist seemingly specifically to show how the friendship between these characters naturally grows over time. Because of the ample focus spent on fleshing these friendships out, it means they’re more believable, more engaging, and therefore easier to identify with and invest in.

It would be easy to worry about the film’s tone, as most of the trailers showed both the darker antics side by side with the glitter and glam. Thankfully, this is yet another example of how excellent the pacing is. As the film moves on, the tone shifts from hilarious party antics to terrifying life choices. The change is slow and purposeful, meaning it never feels out of place. It builds smartly on itself over its runtime, eventually exploding towards the end in a way that is nothing short of fantastic.

Even within the frame narrative of “Hustlers,” there’s interesting choices being made. The decision to have the film be told as if Destiny is talking to the reporter who published the real-life article, played with a warm, purposefully simple demeanor by Julia Stiles (“Silver Linings Playbook,” “10 Things I Hate About You”), is nothing short of genius. It allows for a brilliant audience surrogate to step in, and also means that there is ample room for the frame to be turned on its head.

Writer/Director Lorene Scafaria (“Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World”) injects the wit and sarcasm present in her previous features into the script here with fabulous results. It is consistently funny, with great visual gags and amusing dialogue throughout. One scene involving a popular singer is an absolute riot and will go unspoiled here.  So much of it is so funny because the banter is so natural, again going back to the believability of these relationships. There’s even an art to the way its shot, with cinematographer Todd Banhazl (“Blow the Man Down,” “Dirty Computer”) letting the camera sit and rotate, fly, and hover exactly where it needs to.

There are tons of little details in “Hustlers.” Whether it’s the cuts back and forth to the frame narrative just for a well-executed joke, or the club’s DJ announcing things to the audience over the end credits, as if the club was closing, they all serve as perfect metaphors for the film itself; they didn’t have to exist, but they do, and they’re all the better for it thanks to the ridiculous amounts of effort therein.

“Hustlers” is a rollicking good time, with excellent tonal escalation, award worthy performances from Lopez and Wu, a delightful supporting cast, and a narrative that thrives on the friendship of these women and capitalizing on flipping audience expectations for a loop. It’s a neon drenched delight that should not be missed. 5/5

The Goldfinch - Review

 

“To lose something that should have been immortal. Please tell me it isn’t true.” That line may be referring to the titular “The Goldfinch” painting by Carel Fabritius, one could also repurpose it as a statement on the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “The Goldfinch,” by Donna Tartt.

Because, despite having an A-list cast, an Oscar nominated director, an Oscar winning production team, and a fairly substantial amount of hype prior to release, “The Goldfinch” flops hard and in incredibly interesting ways.

Ansel Elgort (“Baby Driver,” “The Fault in Our Stars”) and Oakes Fegley (“Pete’s Dragon (2016),” “Wonderstruck”) both play the protagonist, Theo. Elgort tackles the role in Theo’s older years, and he’s the best of the two. There isn’t anything amazing about his performance, but Elgort’s base level of charm that was shown off so excellently in Baby Driver helps him soldier through most of the incredibly poor script.

Fegley isn’t as successful and ends up spending most of the film either rambling with bizarrely high vocabulary levels given his age or staring into nothingness, looking cute and helpless. Meanwhile, his other child actor counterpart Finn Wolfhard (“IT (2017),” “Stranger Things”), is completely trying too hard. As Boris, Theo’s childhood Russian friend, he’s earnest and clearly trying to give a good performance, but the overblown and ridiculous nature of his character just doesn’t allow it.

The rest of the adults are just…bizarre. Luke Wilson (“The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Idiocracy”) plays Theo’s dad and his trying eyes aren’t a result of the father’s characterization, but clearly an actor trying with an extremely poor script. His wife/girlfriend, Xandra, shows Sarah Paulson (“Ocean’s 8,” “Glass”) desperately trying not to fall apart on set, and Aneurin Barnard (“Interlude in Prague,” “Dunkirk”), as adult Boris, at least fairs better than Wolfhard, mainly by toning down his eagerness and actually having a real Russian accent, instead of Wolfhard’s “I’ve seen Red Dawn” impression.

No one’s performance is a stupendously bizarre as Nicole Kidman (“Destroyer,” “Rabbit Hole”). As the mother of Theo’s best friend, who’s family takes him in after the horrific tragedy that kickstarts the story, there’s an expectation of motherly love and warmth. However, at every turn, Kidman seems to be trying to audition for a Friday the 13^th remake.

Her steely gaze and hushed whisper don’t give off any kind of motherly intent. Instead, it just comes across as is she’s giving bedroom eyes to Theo at all time; as a child and adult. While it initially seems extremely creepy, it eventually tumbles into the realm of comedy, making Kidman’s performance and every scene she’s in laughable when they clearly should be taken seriously.

Before touching on what makes this film baffling, it is worth noting that there are still elements of good within it. John Crowley (“Brooklyn,” “Closed Circuit”) directs the scenes excellently. It’s weird to say that, given how poor the film’s overall quality is, but Crowley and Academy Award winning Cinematographer Roger Deakins (“Blade Runner 2049,” “No Country For Old Men”) both shoot “The Goldfinch” in gorgeous shades of creamy white colors and utilize things like silence and sepia tones extremely effectively. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, a gorgeous looking and gorgeously shot film. The musical score by Trevor Gureckis (“Rattle the Cage,” “Bloodline”) contains some wonderful string pieces, and during the moments of silence and wonderful cinematography, it shows just how phenomenal the production crew of this film is.

Jeffrey Wright (“The Manchurian Candidate,” “Casino Royale (2006)”), as Theo’s pseudo caretaker and mentor, is also the only actor who seems to come out of this unscathed. He’s warm and understanding, a bright spot and a real person in a movie otherwise filled with cardboard Bloomingdale’s cutouts. Ashleigh Cummings (“Pork Pie,” “NOS4A2”) as Pippa is not as good as Wright, but she manages to deliver a pleasant and simple performance in the sea of actors trying to keep their heads above water.

Without a doubt the biggest stumble of this film is the script, and not just for reasons of poor dialogue. It makes sense of hire screenwriter Peter Straughan. He’s an accomplished playwright and wrote the screenplays for “Frank (2014)” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” However, his most recent job was the screenplay for the abysmal 2017 adaptation of “The Snowman.”

It’s clear that his work here more closely resembled the half-melted thriller from a few years back. Characters are stiff and speak extremely eloquently, regardless of their age. It’s the opposite of a writer like Aaron Sorkin, who mixes a complicated and specific way of speaking with the messiness of casual encounters. Everyone always knows exactly what to say at exactly the right moment, as if the characters they’re playing are being fed lines through an earpiece. The entire film has a thick air of privilege, as if someone wearing 15 million-dollar pants waltzed in and farted up the entire theatre.

Having a film focused around characters with immense wealth and privilege doesn’t immediately damn the film, but the way in which they’re presented here quickly becomes insufferable. Films like “The Princess Diaries,” “Arthur (1981),” “Legally Blonde,” hell, even “Iron Man” have characters with immense wealth and privilege, but it’s worked into the story in ways that make sense. Here, it seems so lazy, like an afterthought. Characters talk at length about antiques, painters, going for sailing weekends in Maine, and it all feels hollow. At no point does anyone ever appear to know what they’re talking about or to even be real people.

However, there’s a point where thing shift. Maybe it’s because the film is stupidly long at 2 hours and 20 minutes, with a second act that not only feels pointless, but literally is pointless to the overall plot. But something happens. Things become amusing, laughable even. The tone hasn’t changed, but things become so overblown and ridiculous, that it turns from frustrating to hysterical. It becomes a gorgeously shot train wreck, and starts to have more in common with the bizarre watch-ability of the similarly over-privileged Kardashian shows that the Oscar-bait films it’s trying to imitate.

At the very least, the last 30 minutes becomes even more weirdly engaging. It could just be because of a out of nowhere mobster movie subplot, or the headache inducing way it wraps everything up, but there’s something weird intriguing about the ending, as it all spirals into nonsense and veers straight off a cliff.

This should have been a resounding success. This adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, by an Oscar nominated director, from a star-studded cast, and a writer who’s even done pretty admirable things. It’s a complete nosedive on everything but a technical level. It may be amusing and even funny it it’s drawn out, ridiculous nature towards the end, but that doesn’t change the fact that someone should’ve fed this bird to a street cat. 1/5

It Chapter Two - Review

 

Welcome back to Derry, Maine. Returning seemed inevitable. After the runaway success of the 2017 “IT” remake in the form of critical praise and box office records, it seemed like only a matter of time before the second half of arguably the most famous of Stephen King’s novels was adapted to the big screen.

Released almost two years to the day of the first film, “Chapter Two” picks up 27 years afterwards, focusing on Pennywise’s return and subsequent rampage throughout the town of Derry. However, given the way the first film ended, it’s understandable to expect his attacks to be more focused on the Losers Club.

Director Andy Muschietti (“Mama”) returns and he and cinematographer Checco Varese (“The 33,” “Lemonade Mouth”) manage to bring together some wonderful and evocative sets to life. Practical effects ooze from every pore, and even some of the CGI manages to not be as obvious or overbearing as it could have been. Composer Benjamin Wallfisch (“Hidden Figures,” “Blade Runner 2049”) also returns and continues to use music to underscore the creepiness expertly.

The group of kids who escaped his grasp in the first film all return, now aged up, and the way they’ve been brought back is hit or miss. Some, like James McAvoy’s (“Atonement,” “Split”) adult Bill, Isaiah Mustafa’s (“Shadowhunters”) adult Mike and Bill Hader’s (“Barry,” “The Skeleton Twins”) adult Ritchie are excellently done, with interesting dynamics within the rest of the group and ample story time.

Others, like Jessica Chastain’s (“The Tree of Life,” “Molly’s Game”) adult Bev or Jay Ryan as adult Ben, give performances that pale in comparison to the younger actors who portrayed them in the previous film. Meanwhile, the rest of the Club, James Ransone (“Sinister,” “Starlet”) as adult Eddie, and Andy Bean (“Swamp Thing,” “Power”) as adult Stanley are all just fine and they get the job done respectably.

As in the first film, though, the clear star of the show is Bill Skarsgård (“Hemlock Grove,” “Assassination Nation”) as Pennywise. He continues to show excellent work here, diving headfirst into the physicality of the role like few others can. Thankfully the film gets to showcase more toned-down moments of Pennywise as well, even featuring a few scenes where he’s just talking to the Losers and it fleshes out his fearfulness.

However, those talking scenes are most of Pennywise’s moments in the film. He just doesn’t show up that much. Not only does this mean that Skarsgård’s charm and chemistry with the rest of the cast are absent for most of the film, but the scares without Pennywise just don’t hit as hard as they should.

While the last 40 minutes is bombastic and excellent, the previous two hours feel both incredibly slow and not very scary at all. Yes, there are frightening things happening, and some are just as expertly pulled off as in the first film. But others feel like cheap retreads or even cop-outs. One even seems closer to a moment from a summer blockbuster, as opposed to a scene that fits into a Stephen King film.

For example, the leper as seen by Eddie comes back twice in “Chapter Two” and the heavy use of flashbacks in the second act makes it hard to keep track of what is happening and when it is happening. This also means that the ample time spent on reintroducing the Club and getting them all back to Derry drags far more than it should have.

What could very well be the film’s biggest issue however is in its tone. While a lot has been said in recent years about putting comedy in films like “Star Wars” or the MCU, the implementation of humor here might just be the most egregious. It’s understandable for there to be an element of humor in Pennywise, as he is a clown and there is something darkly comedic about his scare tactics.

But moments that exist seemingly just for a joke; misunderstandings in conversations, unexpected pratfalls, musical cues, and oddly delivered lines, completely throw off the tone. How can a scene be scary if, less than two minutes before, the audience was in hysterics over a pratfall off of a bike? The worst offender is a pop song musical cue directly in the middle of a scary attack scene.

Despite all of these issues, the last 40 minutes of this film is truly something special. It feels like something truly connected in tone and quality to the previous film, and thankfully Muschietti knocks it out of the park where it counts the most. The CGI, practical effects, lighting, music, and acting all coalesce to create some of the most jaw-dropping entertainment put to screen this year. There is no exaggeration when saying that when the acting, production design, and music all come together in the end it is fantasy horror at its most excellent.

“Chapter Two” unfortunately can’t entirely capture the horrific magic of the first film. It has excellent performances, but they’re less consistent. The few scares and Pennywise scenes, as well as tonal inconsistencies, are juxtaposed against a phenomenal third act, excellent filmmaking on a base level, and a wonderful sense of place. It’s fun for a spell, and definitely shoots for the stars (or Dead Lights) this “Chapter Two” likely could have used another draft to truly become something spectacular. 3/5