Film Review: Ad Astra

"He Gave His Life For The Pursuit Of Knowledge. Because Up There Is Where Our Story Is Going To Be Told..."

After sending half the audience to sleep with the ridiculously overrated, The Lost City of Z, back in 2016, American filmmaker, James Gray, returns to the world of cinema this week with Ad Astra, a spectacle heavy, big screen science fiction blockbuster which continues the volcano-sized, heatwave of excellence the one and only Brad Pitt is currently on after his absolutely superb work on 2019's best film of the year so far in the form of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Co-written by both Gray and Ethan Gross who reunite after their work together on Z, Ad Astra is a knowingly, and at times shockingly uncanny hybrid of Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey, a strangely sanctimonious science fiction thinker set in the near future which sees Pitt as Major Roy McBride, a decorated, dedicated and emotionally vacuous astronaut who is sent to the now commercially exploited reaches of Mars in order to make contact with his revered yet long lost father after power surges damaging the Earth are seen to be originating from his last known position; the far reaches of Neptune.  

Upon accessing the IMDB trivia page, director James Gray wanted Ad Astra to include the most "realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie" and likened the project himself to include elements of Joseph Conrad, the author who of course supplied the blueprint for Apocalypse Now with "Heart of Darkness", and whilst the picture does indeed owe an enormous debt to simply beautiful cinematography from Hoyte van Hoytema, the acclaimed DP with previous credits on Interstellar and Dunkirk, it's fair to say that Gray's movie is one of the most ill-disciplined, so-called "clever" science fiction movies I have ever seen. Whilst I can bypass all manner of technical specifications when it comes to science fiction if the narrative has me engaged all the way through, Ad Astra is so clearly a rip-off of all similarly plotted movies to come before it that as soon as I was aware the full extent of where the movie would ultimately go, I simply became a vessel of negativity eager to plot black hole-shaped craters into elements which just didn't work whatsoever. Whilst Pitt does a solid job offering a central performance which is one half Ryan Gosling circa First Man and the other half Sam Rockwell à la Moon, as soon as the poorly designed, floating, maniacal monkeys (yes, really) showed up, I'd had enough of the narrative and focused more on the stupendous technical achievements of a movie which felt the need to become more stupid as it went on, and whilst Ad Astra failed to send me to sleep, Gray's latest is indeed a spectacular technical achievement which fails at the first hurdle when it comes to a decent narrative. Want good science fiction? High Life is the 2019 movie to go to. 

Overall Score: 6/10

Film Review: Dunkirk

"There's No Hiding From This Son, We Have A Job To Do..."

The release of a new Christopher Nolan movie is always the time for utmost rejoice, a filmmaker who fundamentally adores the classic ways and means of cinema, and more impressively, a director who, like a modern incarnation of Steven Spielberg, is a guaranteed win for both box office and critical success, something of which each and every one of his films have achieved since his early work all the way back in 2000 with Memento. After the brilliance of Interstellar, a film which although may have been slightly divisive with critics, undoubtedly remains up there with the best work Nolan has offered up so far in terms of spectacle, the London-born filmmaker returns this week with Dunkirk, a live-action blockbuster focusing on the infamous titular evacuation which took place during the early stages of the Second World War and a movie which holds extra levels of kudos for being filmed in the heart of my very own hometown in sunny, sunny Dorset. Whilst you can expect nothing less than a movie with many different levels of wonder from a director such as Nolan, Dunkirk still manages to exceed the already vertigo-esque levels of anticipation which preceded it, and to put the experience of watching Dunkirk into words is a staggering undertaking in itself but what Nolan has ultimately accomplished can only be regarded as a masterpiece of spectacle, sound and sumptuous levels of tension, resulting in the best film to be released so far this year. 

Avoiding completely the notion of a stereotypical, singular, character-driven wartime epic in the vein of Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan and Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, Nolan's determined decision to focus on the triage of land, sea and air narrative threads means that although we are in the company of many different characters throughout each of them, their really isn't time to discover backstory for any of the respective characters before the real power of the movie starts to come to fruition. From the first opening shot, screeching bullets and the tick-tock of Hans Zimmer's unbelievably stunning soundtrack grip you in a contortion of spellbinding unrelenting tension, with the face of Fionn Whitehead's youth-inflicted Tommy at the heart and centre of peril for most, if not all, of the time you share his particular journey of death and destruction, all caused by the unseen entity of the enemy soldier. Whilst Zimmer is renowned for being the brains behind classic musical soundtracks of the past, Dunkirk is undeniably up there with his best work to date, using Nolan's own personal fob-watch at the heart of the metronome-esque piece of music which fuels the rising anxiety which encompasses the main thrust of the narrative, and by utilising his work hand in hand with the simply stupendous sound design, Dunkirk is the type of movie which is crying out to only be watched on the biggest screen possible in order to truly experience the craft at the heart of it.

With the film's cinematography being left in the hands of Hoyte van Hoytema, whose previous works includes Her, Spectre and Nolan's own science fiction epic, Interstellar, it comes as no surprise that Dunkirk is absolutely beautiful to behold, and although the particular screening in which I was in was the normalised digital approach to projection, if you are lucky enough to get the chance to witness Dunkirk in IMAX 35mm or 70mm, take it, with scenes of tantalising air to air battles and sweeping camera shots of soldier infested beaches showcasing an artist at the top of his respective game. Whilst pretenders such as the likes of Michael Bay believe the best use of IMAX cameras is to showcase how endless amounts of pointless explosions look within the format, thank god for the likes of Christopher Nolan, a filmmaker who is grounded completely in the epic grittiness of practicality and more importantly, a director who believes wholeheartedly in the importance of film. Dunkirk isn't simply just a movie, it is a masterstroke of spectacle and a work of artistic tendency, and a film which not only results in the best blockbuster of the year and perhaps, even the past decade, but is the finest of examples of why cinema is so darn integral and important to those who truly love to witness a filmmaker at the peak of his powers. Nolan is just that, and in spades. 

Overall Score: 10/10