“To The Stars” is the Latin translation for Ad Astra, James Gray’s (The Lost City of Z, The Yards) powerfully ambitious space travel movie that features astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt – By the Sea, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) going from Earth to the moon to Mars to Neptune in an attempt to stop pulse bursts that have been devastating the Earth that has taken thousands of lives are a poised to take thousands more. The perceived bursts are thought to be coming from The Lima Project, a missing exploration ship piloted by Roy’s father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones – The Fugitive, The Company Men), presumed destroyed decades earlier. Taking the story out of it for a second, Ad Astra is a visually stunning masterpiece that deserves a viewing on the largest screen possible. It doesn’t quite feel like you are floating in outer space (like the equally brilliant Gravity does), but it’s not that far off.
Category Archives: Mystery
The Jacket (2005)
There is something inherently unique about John Maybury’s (Man to Man, The Edge of Love) that has me wanting to watch it every few years to see if I can pick up something more with it. I’m not sure I’ll ever truly have it figured out, and I’m wondering if it’s a movie meant to be figured out completely. I think Maybury wants you to draw your own conclusions about his film. Sometimes I love that. Sometimes it drives me mad. With The Jacket, I find it riveting because this is a small-budget movie with some big ideas and aspirations. While not a hit with audiences ($6.3 million) or critics (44% on Rotten Tomatoes), The Jacket is one of those movies I refer to as a hidden gem. You might not even know about it unless someone suggests it. This is me suggesting it.
Transsiberian (2008)
At eight days, the Transsiberian Express from Beijing to Moscow is the longest train journey in the world. So why wouldn’t it be the perfect backdrop to one of the most suspenseful journeys in quite some time? Paul Anderson’s (Beirut, The Machinist) presents the Transsiberian in a way that makes you think of Alfred Hitchcock. It’s dark. It’s moody. It’s twisted. It’s purposeful. It’s rooted. It’s intense. It makes you feel like a fellow passenger on this train, watching everything unfold next to you rather than on a screen projected in front of you. Oh. And it’s cold. It’s like an Arctic cold. We feel that sense of dread in the deepest of winter in the coldest places. Yet, it never feels like we are even close to approaching freezing. So it certainly adds to the ambiance of our film.
Searching (2018)
While by no means a perfect movie, what an ambitious and stunning debut for first-time director Aneesh Chaganty. At the ripe age of just 27 years, he took a movie that many people (including the cast) thought was an impossible task while others thought would come across as a complete trainwreck and made this one of the absolute must-sees in 2018. Searching is so entuned with today’s technology, especially relating to social media, webcams, the dangers of communicating online with strangers, and the idea that an online persona can be so different than who a person is in real life. Chaganty considered that technology, including social media platforms, constantly evolves. He knew he only had a while to write, cast, film, edit, market, and release this movie that felt relevant and current.
A Simple Favor (2018)
Capitalizing on the same success as 2014’s incredibly meticulous Gone Girl and 2016’s cluttered and underwhelming Girl on a Train comes Paul Feig’s (Bridesmaids, The Heat) adaptation of A Simple Favor, an adaptation of a 2017 novel by the same name. Unfortunately, this movie feels like a lousy knockoff with two Hollywood A-listers made hastily with a less-than-believable story by a director who was clearly over his head with this genre. This movie was preposterous in its concept and was only topped in absurdity by its cursory character development and inability to define a genre clearly. It leaves us asking as many questions about the movie’s style as it does its other elements.