Review of Ad Astra (2019) by Brunovn00 — 25 Sep 2019

Far from the best of the year, but still a pretty good movie. I was expecting the tone and pacing to be comparable to other films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (although not as good because come on, 2001 is 2001), which is a movie some people drew comparisons to. However, compared to 2001 or even other space movies like Interstellar, this is pretty straight-forward and fast-paced, despite being slow-paced for most of the movie. The movie is just 2 hours long and it felt like 2 and a half hours or 3 hours because at times the pacing was really bad. I can't call this movie boring because at least it had interesting visuals, I would call it slow and hard to watch in a single viewing honestly.

In the technical aspects this movie is phenomenal. The cinematography and visual effects are great, it reminded me a lot of First Man, another space movie that has some great VFX. The tone sometimes can get a little inconsistent. Just to give you an idea, most of the movie is slow but there are "action" parts that felt that they belong in another movie, it takes a little bit away from the experience, but not too much to the point of ruining it. The writing and story aren't anything special and can get predictable at some points.

The performances are other redeeming quality. Every actor gives a great performance, specially Brad Pitt. If the acting wasn't good or remarkable, then the movie would be pretty bad, but that is not the case and overall, this is a pretty enjoyable movie, but don't expecting to be blown away and leave the theater asking questions like with Interstellar or 2001, nor expect a fast-paced action movie like Gravity, nor to be emotionally moved like with First Man.