Review: Ad Astra IMAX, or Not As Spectacular As I Hoped It Would Be
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| Now imagine this mug on an IMAX screen. |
Although not shot in IMAX, the trailers and previews kept promising how this movie should be seen in IMAX. Which I did. It actually made a difference, sure, because space movies are always more breathtaking in the IMAX format.
Okay, before anything else, let me just say this: I don't remember the film that much, because I may have slept through some parts of it. Well, I'd say my sleep lasted maybe five seconds tops, but there was a lot of it, so add that up and you get one hazy memory. Sorry, James Gray. It's not that your film was boring. I was just tired from work, maybe? I caught the last full show that day.
Anyway, let me try and give as objective a review as I can, discounting the fact that I slept through some parts of it.
Brad Pitt was good, as always. The thing with Pitt is that he always was a great actor, notwithstanding the fact that he was a Hollywood pretty boy. Since this film plays more on drama than science fiction, Pitt has had plenty of screen time to showcase his acting chops, and he did not disappoint. I think there's a subtlety required when acting in front of an IMAX camera, because even the littlest micro expressions will register on film, and overacting will be something very evident on the big screen. Brad Pitt, however, was superb.
I can hardly remember the other cast, though. I guess that's an effect of having Brad Pitt as the lead actor; he eclipses everybody else. I know Tommy Lee Jones was his dad, and that Donald Sutherland was a colonel or something. And also Ruth Negga was an astronaut on Mars or something. I don't know. I don't really remember, because like I said, I was really sleepy. Everything was like a haze.
Now let's just go to the cinematic depiction of space. Did it succeed in giving us the "most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie"? That would be debatable. In my opinion, Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity bags that title. Even Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Ridley Scott's The Martian were better than Ad Astra. But this film does have something going for it, which is the excellent lunar chase sequence. That's something new I haven't seen before onscreen, so good job.
Anyway, I've run out of things to say. I'm just waiting for this film's video release, so I can rewatch it again. Who knows, it might actually be better the second time around.
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| This looks very Lego. |
Ad Astra. USA/China. 2019.
Rating: 6.5/10
Lunar chase sequence: +0.1
Final rating: 6.6/10
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