| Twentieth Century Fox | Release Date: September 20, 2019 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
50
Mixed:
6
Negative:
0
|
Watch Now
| Buy on |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
| Stream On |
|
Critic Reviews
Sep 19, 2019
The canniness of Gray’s procedure is matched by the boldness, even the recklessness, of the extremes to which he pushes it—along with his characters, his story, his emotions, and his techniques. The result is to turn Ad Astra into an instant classic of intimate cinema—one that requires massive machinery and complex methods to create a cinematic simplicity that, for all the greatness of his earlier films, had eluded him until now.
Read full review
The TelegraphAug 29, 2019
Emotionally, the film operates in a classic Gray area, with barely perceptible eddies that build to a mighty existential wrench. All of which, it should be said, rests on Pitt’s shoulders – which feel like very different shoulders, somehow, to the ones that slouched so appealingly through Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. His performance here is as grippingly inward and tamped down as his work for Tarantino was witty and expansive – it’s true movie stardom, and it fills a star-system-sized canvas.
Read full review
IndieWireAug 29, 2019
Sep 17, 2019
Sep 19, 2019
To lavish too much praise on Mr. Pitt’s performance would be to somehow suggest he isn’t already among the best actors on screen. He is. Between this film and the current “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” he could and should be a double Oscar nominee next year. If he’s not, it doesn’t mean his performance in Ad Astra isn’t an epic one.
Read full review
Sep 19, 2019
In a mesmerizing, minimalist performance, Pitt forms the gravitational center of a film that takes its place in the firmament of science fiction films by fearlessly quoting classics of the genre (as well as those outside it). The net effect is that Ad Astra feels both familiar and confidently of itself, all the more boldly affecting by being unafraid to acknowledge the forebears it explicitly invokes.
Read full review
Sep 18, 2019
Director James Gray’s style harks back to classic space movies, such as “Alien” and “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” that played around with the vastness of the stars, and made it seem like there was nowhere lonelier. Ad Astra also has an old-school visual panache, with deep-colored, dramatic lighting that’s regrettably fallen out of fashion.
Read full review
Sep 18, 2019
Ad Astra is poised to kick-start the most passionate style-vs.-substance debate cinephiles have had in years. Individual viewers will probably find that where they fall on that well-worn cinematic divide will determine how much they appreciate this visually breathtaking, emotionally inert drama.
Read full review
Sep 18, 2019
While Gray may have told basically this same story before, Ad Astra’s cosmic setting makes it even more poignant, because it puts into such sharp relief how small each of us is against the vastness of space, and how our time in that space is the most finite blip possible when compared with the totality of cosmic history.
Read full review
Sep 26, 2019
In Andrei Tarkovsky’s science-fiction masterpiece Solaris, a character observes that even in the depths of outer space, “we want a mirror.” Perhaps that’s why Ad Astra—starring Brad Pitt as an astronaut in the near future who travels to Neptune to find his missing scientist father—feels like the most visually arresting session of talk therapy you’ve ever experienced.
Read full review
Sep 19, 2019
Can a movie be simultaneously infuriating and inspiring? Ad Astra (“to the stars” in Latin, because the kids love Latin) is director James Gray’s biggest, boldest, most ambitious and epic film to date, and easily his best. And yet… you know how some filmmakers seem simpático and others just rub you the wrong way? Gray is the latter for me.
Read full review
Sep 16, 2019
Ad Astra is Gray’s most formidable paradox to date, liable to leave you awed, confused, and sad. It is a work of calculated grandeur, and, if you get the chance to catch it in IMAX, and thus to revel in the breadth of its beauty, do so. But there’s something small at the movie’s core.
Read full review
Aug 29, 2019
Gray proves beyond measure that he’s got the chops to make a movie like this. He also has a vision, of sorts — one that’s expressed, nearly inadvertently, in the metaphor of that space antenna. Watching Ad Astra, you may think you’ve signed on for a journey that’s out of this world, but it turns out that the film’s concerns are somberly tethered to Earth.
Read full review
Sep 18, 2019
Ad Astra is grand but, rather frustratingly, it's not great. James Gray’s film is a most impressive technical achievement, and the first half is exciting and flirts with profundity. The second half, however, slows to a maddeningly sluggish pace, and the film ultimate leaves you worn out and disengaged.
Read full review
Sep 17, 2019
At heart, though, odd as it sounds, Gray has created a pocket-sized version of “Apocalypse Now.” Ad Astra bends the Francis Ford Coppola Vietnam-era extravagance, about the rogue commander, Kurtz, and the errand boy, Willard, into its own thing. Like Coppola’s film, and the Joseph Conrad novel “Heart of Darkness," the new film examines the limits of colonialist hubris. It’s also, and primarily, a father/son parable of betrayal, confrontation and forgiveness.
Read full review
Sep 17, 2019
So which side of the movie finally prevails — the lackluster conventionality of its text or the breathtaking singularity of its visuals and action? The latter does, if just by the nose on Brad Pitt’s perfectly imperfect face. Combined with the film’s lavish technical achievements, his classic movie star sturdiness makes Ad Astra a memorable filmgoing experience even as the story it tells slips off into the ether.
Read full review
Movie NationSep 13, 2019
Ad Astra (Latin for “To the Stars”) has dazzling eye candy and reasonable extrapolations of what near future space colonization might look like...But like too many imitation “Space Odysseys,” it flunks that most basic test applied to science fiction of this nature. It doesn’t make us care what happens, and I, for one, don’t care to see it again.
Read full review
Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
