Third Eye Film Society Forum Index
Author Message

<  Third Eye Film Forums  ~  Couch With A View

gromit
Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2021 6:39 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Ad Astra suffers from one fatal flaw. It's a crappy film.
Actually you can make a catalog of what's wrong with it.

First off, the background science is vague and confusing. There are power surges coming from likely Neptune, which is causing havoc on Earth and other human solar system settlements. The suspect is a rogue astronaut. How or why he could generate "power" that could "surge" all the way from Neptune is unclear, though we might be getting a mate reveal (I still have a half hour to go). Neptune is extremely far away. He was looking for alien life outside the solar system, so you could script in that he found some and they enjoy shooting super-hyper-energy at the sun or whatever.

Anyway, the problem seems rather uninspired as the major crisis that puts the plot into gear. There's another incidents that left me quizzical. A Norwegian biomedical and animal testing spacecraft floating around Saturn. It's the kind of thing typical of this film that sounds cool, but makes little to no sense without some explication we don't get. Similarly the Moon is all Mad Max, with dune buggy pirates attacking astronauts and US military in dune buggies.

And that's another problem. The film lurches from one crisis to another, without really any overarching themes. And we don't have a sense whether the Earth is some sort of high-tech dystopia or just the extra-plane tray colonization is a mess. Really we get little info about the Earth at all.

Second main problem is that backstories and conflicts are explained in the clunkiest manner as briefly as possible. Actual Brad Pitt voiceover thoughts: "My dad was the most greatest and most decorated astronaut in the history of the program." The black female head of Mars operations explains in her 2 minutes on screen that Pitt's father faced a mutiny and shut off the life support, killing all crew, mutineers and loyalists alike, thereby murdering her astronaut parents. Then she pops back in a few scenes later to offer to help Pitt sneak on board and stowaway on a mission to Neptune to confront his father.

Because how hard can it be to sneak on board a major rocket launch? You just need to use the Mars underground tunnel system, and then swim in your full astronaut suit through the underground martian lake. Uh, there's a whole lotta war below Mars surface? They could have explained that this was a water reserve cistern, built by humans and filled by hydrolysis or whatever. Instead Pitt just runs across an underground lake and uses the convenient rope to get through. I guess a fully geared up astronaut making his way through water sounded cool too.

I was amused how Pitt opens and shuts the entry hatch just seconds before ignition. It seemed as though there was a backdoor -- emergency exit hatch -- on the rocketship. And then Pitt and the astronauts engage in a zero gravity brawl, with one brainiac firing a gun. Again, must've sounded like a cool idea on paper.

There are a few good visuals in the film, and it becomes clear that the cool visuals is the point of the film and more important than the storyline. The film makes it abundantly clear that Pitt is turning into his father. It almost seemed like farce when Pitt manages to kill the crew and become a lone renegade astronaut like his father. And that's the best theme and idea in the whole film.

Pitt and the dialogue are mostly stilted and awkward. Pitt trying to emote and be serious in close-up rarely works here. No one is convincing in these crappy roles with poor dialogue and a weak storyline.

Other issues: the voiceover thoughts is a rather weak device. The flashbacks and videos of loved ones is rather cliched, but also an overedited numbing jumble. The story races from one crisis action scene to another, so there is almost no emotional resonance to anything in the film. Even though the central conceit is that the father and son are engaged in this taut cosmic drama.

Just a badly conceived film. It wants to show you cool action sequences and visuals in space, and hangs them on a skeletal story.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
bartist
Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:46 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Thanks, now I remember it. I recall reading Neil deGrasse Tyson tore the film a new one for its science implausibles.

I hope the dangerous poker game we and China are playing over Taiwan doesn't end in WW3. My wife already can't get chemicals for her old photo enhancing hobby (she cleans the negatives, then wet-mounts them on a scanner in some method that gets rids of lots of the scratches), due to the global supply chain glitch. A war over Taiwan won't help much. There's three or four items our household needs that are sitting on container ships at Long Beach CA because they can't get them unloaded and trucked.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.
View user's profile Send private message
bartist
Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:54 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
I found a Knox comment on Ad Astra that seems apt:

Quote:
Pitt was great in Once Upon. Did his best in Ad Astra, but that bit about his heart rate never going over 80 bpm sort of spills over onto the viewing audience. And, as Bart says, the crazy dad never really makes sense - especially given the premise that the psychological screening of astronauts (already pretty exhaustive ca. 1970) is so very thorough. "Hmm, secretly he was a misanthrope who wanted to kill anyone disagreeing with him - how did we miss that?"

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.
View user's profile Send private message
gromit
Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2021 3:27 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I didn't get into the father issues, because that didn't work for me and felt phony. Although the film sure hammered that theme over and over.
But the father confrontation sure petered out feebly. A surprisingly weak conclusion.

Other problems:
- why couldn't they just send to Mars/Neptune a recording made on Earth by Pitt? Either just wait until the disturbances are over, or send a courier.

- what were the energy pulses? how were they generated? Did I miss something?

- how could anyone "prove" that there is no other intelligent life in the universe?

- how would there be enough food on a spacecraft orbiting Neptune for 30 years?

- where did all the energy come from? Even the disabled biomedical ship is well-lit.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
gromit
Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2021 8:08 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Little Italy (2018)
I bailed after maybe 20 minutes or so.
I almost always stick things through to the end credits, but this was just so cutesy and uninspired and tired.
Blech.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
gromit
Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 7:06 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
My Brilliant Career. 1979
Popped this in knowing zilch about it. Quite a solid film.
Circa 1890 Australia. Strong-willed girl in a down on its luck farming family.|Fortunately they have settler relatives doing fairly well running bush estates. But a big drought is putting the hurt on everyone.

Girls are expected to marry and raise a family, not strive for careers.
The other alternative is to work as a servant.
A fairly familiar tale, based on a true story. But the casting, acting, costumes are terrific. I liked seeing the families trying to maintain a well to do British lifestyle in the Australian interior. Very solid period family drama.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
gromit
Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 12:27 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Papillon (2017). Rami Malek in the Dustin Hoffman role.
A year before his breakthrough in Bohemian Rhapsody.
Malek is an unusual looking guy, and I just watched him as a detective in The Little Things (2021) a fairly conventional police procedural.

Not sure why they bothered to remake Papillon. I vaguely recall hearing about it. Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay for the 1973 film.
Apparently Degas (the Hoffman/Malek role) was a minor character in the book/reality, but built up to give Hoffman a substantial part to play.

The 2017 film was filmed in Montenegro, Malta and Serbia.
The 1973 film was shot in Jamaica.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
carrobin
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:05 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Saw "Elizabeth Is Missing" on PBS recently, and I've posted a description on Current Film, but should have done it here. I thought it was a very good mystery, and Glenda Jackson is awesome. Read it over there.
View user's profile Send private message
gromit
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:54 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
A detective with Alzheimers. Interesting. Closest I can think of is Memento (a memory impaired detective.
And by detective I just mean someone trying to figure out a mystery/murder, not necessarily an actual professional detective.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
Syd
Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:37 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Well it took me a while, but I finally watched Departures, which got some good words here, especially from Befade, back in 2008, and some annoyance that it won the Foreign Language film over Waltz with Bashir and The Class. I'm glad it did, because it gave me a good reason to see it, and I loved it. It's about a cellist whose orchestra folds, so he and his wife go home to his late mother's house (partly because he can live there rent-free), and falls into a job ritually preparing corpses for their souls' journey to the afterlife, which, we find, is great solace for their loved ones. However, the job is sometimes disgusting, often challenging and carries a great social stigma. And it's sometimes an act of love. Well, directed, very well acted, sometimes surprisingly funny and a wonderful view of a tradition we're not that familiar with.

(Although I did sometimes think of Ally Sheedy's job in Only the Lonely, which I think I've mentioned as an incredibly wonderful movie.)

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
bartist
Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2021 11:14 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
It's free, on Tubi.

Soon I will also do a late to the party viewing. Thank you.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.
View user's profile Send private message
carrobin
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2021 2:18 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Our PBS station showed "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (Donald Sutherland version) Sunday night, and I hadn't seen it since our film class; I didn't remember most of the details, but I was glad I'd forgotten the ending. I nearly burst into tears. Terrific flick.

In college, I read the play "Rhinoceros" (Ionesco?) for a French class, which I liked very much; I saw the film with Zero Mostel (typecast as an eventual Rhino) and Gene Wilder, which was disappointing. But I had never before connected it with "Body Snatchers," though they share the same message. The original "Body Snatchers" was supposedly about Communists, of course, but now the film is more creepy than ever when one thinks of the Trumpist minority taking over through social media.
View user's profile Send private message
knox
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2021 8:44 am Reply with quote
Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 1245 Location: St. Louis
I recall some columnist would refer to the Trump base as "pod people, " a phrase derived from that movie. I liked the Sutherland/Nimoy version, by far the best of the three versions. Havent viewed the 1993 remake. The closing shot of the 1978 film is iconic....

View user's profile Send private message
bartist
Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2021 10:29 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
carrobin wrote:
Saw "Elizabeth Is Missing" on PBS recently, and I've posted a description on Current Film, but should have done it here. I thought it was a very good mystery, and Glenda Jackson is awesome. Read it over there.


Saw this last night. Thought it was brilliant. The concept of an Alzheimer's patient being a sleuth inside her own memories of the distant past was an original one, AFAIK. I liked Maud's personality. Glenda Jackson has still got it. I recall having a pubertal crush on her in "Women in Love" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday. "

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.
View user's profile Send private message
gromit
Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2021 5:15 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
BR Haul o' the Day:

Claudine (1974) - more of a slice of black life than blaxploitation per se, I believe. Diahann Carroll, James Earl Jones; Curtis Mayfiled wrote the tuneage sung by Gladys Knight & the Pips. I was just thinking about this the other day, when I read that Gladys Knights son is going to jail for 2 years for not paying payroll taxes for about a decade on the Gladys Knight Waffle & Chicken restaurants he owns and runs.

El Sur - Victor Erice 1983 film. Love his earlier Spirit of the Beehive.

Fail-Safe 1964 Sydney Lumnet Cold War thriller

Dear Comrades!
- Konchalvsky film set in 1962 with a true believer of the commie revolution very slowly gets dismayed.

Pig - I'd pretty much given up on Nic Cage ... but here I am.
I really need to catch up on some of the post-pandemic released films.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail

Display posts from previous:  

All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 2419 of 2426
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 2418, 2419, 2420 ... 2424, 2425, 2426  Next
Post new topic

Jump to:  

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum