AD ASTRA

Brad Pitt     Liv Tyler     Ruth Negga     Tommy Lee Jones     Donald Sutherland     Anne McDaniels     Loren Dean

     A space journey.  And what a journey. Ad Astra is a captivating experience both in terms of travel in space and in the distinctly human journey its main character, Roy McBride, undergoes.  This may be one of Brad Pitt’s most significant roles, even given so many others such as Moneyball, Inglorious Basterds, and Fight Club.  Here, on “mental health exams” given to him by the U.S. Space Command, he reflects on himself and what has happened to him in his life in an honest, forthright manner that allows us to see him as a real person, a committed, sometimes troubled man with doubts and fears.  Yet, he has a reputation for being the coolest of cool in any emergency, and we will see that manifested brilliantly in the course of the film.

     The ways in which space travel is presented by the filmmakers becomes so realistic the sense of being out there remains long after leaving the theater.  Directors James Gray, cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, production designer Kevin Thompson and their crews portray so vividly the atmosphere, the views, the instrumentation, and the tumbling/floating/falling that are inherent in space travel, afterwards, you really feel like you’ve been there.

     The story is interesting, pulling in themes of father-son relationships, government policies and projects, military command hierarchies, and conspiracy issues. Roy McBride has become an astronaut following in the steps of his heroic father Clifford McBride, head of U.S. Space Command’s Lima Project, but who has been missing for years.  Roy assumes he is dead.  

     But when the Space Agency discovers that Clifford may be alive, it calls on him to go on a mission to find his father.  The concern is that he may be responsible for the majorly disruptive, unpredictable global power surges currently wreaking havoc in the world. Roy is ambivalent for personal reasons (he has a hard time seeing his heroic father as a rogue), as well as evidentiary.  His doubts are based on what he knows about his father and the weak evidence against Clifford presented by the agency.  Roy feels sometimes that he is being “pulled down the same dark hole” as his father.  Not only Roy, but the viewer too is likely to wonder about the evidence.  It suggests that Clifford has become a megalomaniac who has gone off the deep end.  But the evidence presented seems very slim.

     Despite his misgivings, Roy is dogged in following the command given to him. In the process, he has to make difficult decisions and potential sacrifices—not only those of his own, but those of others as well—to resolve the problem he was presented with. Some of these are the nail-biting episodes where life and death are in the balance.

This is a story where the hero takes things into his own hands and makes something of them, gleaning hard facts and drawing insightful conclusions from what he learns.  

Grade:  A-                                    By Donna R. Copeland

ALLIED

Brad Pitt     Marion Cottiard     Jared Harris     Lizzie Caplan     Matthew Goode

          “Marriages made in the field never work”, so says Max’s superior on learning that Max (Pitt) and Marianne (Cottiard) have gotten married.  The two were partners in a successful operation that killed a German ambassador during WWII.  The statement is prophetic, but not in any way Max suspects.  Nevertheless, the couple seems very happy together, they have a child, and except for Max being called away frequently for work, their life is golden.

         The film begins with the first meeting of Max and Marianne in Casablanca, Morocco, where they have to convince everyone in the community that they are married and are uniting after a long separation. In truth they are British and French spies who are charged with a critical operation.  It’s interesting to see this introduction, as I imagine it’s a true reflection of the awkwardness that agents must experience when they are pulling off an act with someone they’ve never met before.  Marianne seems more experienced than Max—she has certainly been in Casablanca for a longer time, and since she is charismatic and very social, she has made many friends.  He doesn’t seem to mind; when he is put to the test of being a card shark in order to be invited to a party, his assets are quickly apparent.

          Things seem to float along; Max is promoted and Marianne seems entirely fulfilled with her role as homemaker and mother.  Then some earth-shattering news (for them) arrives, and Max is in a major dilemma.  That’s when the cat-and-mouse game really starts, for despite his instructions to do nothing, Max can’t help doing some investigating on his own.

        The script by Steven Knight (who also wrote Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises, and Locke, which he also directed) is layered and nuanced, and the central, ultimate conflict is intriguing, both in its conception and in its resolution.  Unlike Knight’s previous film, Locke, which was an ingenious account of a man in a car on the telephone, Allied contains some artificialities in some of the scenes that detract from its plausibility, e.g., the couple’s baby being born in a building while it is being bombed, and an operation to extract information from a man in jail resulting in numerous killings).  These are unnecessary exaggerations.  It may be that the director, Robert Zemeckis, who nevertheless has fine work to his credit, and/or the producers wanted to hype up the story, which results in my reaction of “Oh, c’mon!"  But this is not a major detraction.

         Marion Cottiard carries off the role of a spy to perfection and with real heart.  At one point her character states that she is so good at what she does because she uses genuine emotions.  And that is what Cottiard does in acting; we’re drawn to the charisma and quick wit she infuses into her characters.  Brad Pitt is…well, Brad Pitt is so known to us because of all the publicity he gets in his personal life, that it may interfere with our seeing the character.  It was Brad before me the whole time rather than Max the character.  On the other hand, he is usually a very good actor, and perhaps the filming of Allied occurred during a stressful time in his personal life, which could have affected his performance.  I thought the chemistry just wasn’t completely there between Max and Marianne.

A spy thriller with imaginatively conceived intrigue.

Grade:  B                                    By Donna R. Copeland

BY THE SEA

Brad Pitt     Angelina Jolie     Malanie Laurent     Melvil Poupaud   Niels Arestrup

          By the Sea opens up with beautiful panoramas of the Mediterranean as a couple winds down the road in a red convertible.  They stop at a bar in Malta (she downs her glass of wine in one swallow) then make their way to an upscale hotel on the water.  It’s noticeable how silent they are—the woman barely speaks and then only when spoken to.  They unpack and rearrange the room in a way that tells you he is a writer.  The couple, Roland (Pitt) and Vanessa (Jolie), do not appear like people on a holiday, but in response to someone asking them why they’ve come, Roland answers cryptically that they just needed to get away.

         As time goes by, we can see that Roland is frustrated with his wife, but speaks lovingly of her.  He goes out every day to write (which he is having a hard time doing) and drink, and comes back in the afternoon or evening and drinks.  He has good conversations with Michel (Arestrup), the local bartender, but not really with anyone else.  Vanessa has been in the room all day, except maybe for a quick trip to town for supplies.  He comes in and chats a bit, but she says little.  He approaches her; she rejects him; and finally he says in exasperation, “Are we ever going to talk about it?”  It’s a long time before we find out what “it” is.

       The couple next door on their honeymoon, Lea (Laurent) and Francois (Poupaud), cautiously approach Roland and Vanessa about socializing—playing cards, shopping, sailing—which they accept rather tentatively.  This is odd, because we have seen that Roland and Vanessa have clearly developed a keen interest in them (I won’t tell you why or how, although it turns out to be rather a silly and unrealistic artifice),

        I would never have thought that I could be bored looking at the painterly Mediterranean seascape with blue sky, puffy white clouds, and a quaint fishing boat, but have to admit that I did get impatient in this film with so little action and so much scenery and other views of the high life.  Vanessa is always dressed and made up elegantly, as is Lea next door.  It’s obvious no one has to worry about expenses. 

       Although I enjoyed the music (Gabriel Yared) and cinematography (Christian Berger), it was not enough to sustain audience attention with so little going on.  Jolie and her editors should have cut at least a half-hour or more from the film.  The last twenty minutes actually had drama that was interesting and made the two main characters more understandable.  Too bad it came so late.

      Jolie is gorgeous in this movie—in fact, most of the characters looked like “The Beautiful People” on some TV program—and hers and Pitt’s scenes together when there is dialog and action are up to their usual quality, as are Laurent and Poupaud.  But I particularly enjoyed Niels Arestrup’s character, a kindly, thoughtful, older man grieving for his dead wife, but full of gently delivered sound advice for Roland. 

Plan to enjoy the seaside scenes; there is not much action or dialog until the last part of By the Sea.

Grade:  C                                                        By Donna R. Copeland