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

JASON BOURNE

Matt Damon   Tommy Lee Jones   Alicia Vikander   Vincent Cassel   Riz Ahmed   Julia Stiles

          Matt Damon is back again as the unstoppable, hunted and haunted Jason Bourne.  In this journey, he is still off the grid, earning a living in physical fights.  Tommy Lee Jones is the current Director of the CIA playing his usual double-dealings with his agents.  New on the scene is Agent Heather Lee (Vikander) as a computer whiz who can spot and track targets and assets all over the world.  The terrifying, ruthless CIA asset is played by Vincent Cassel who carries a grudge toward Bourne from way back and pursues him relentlessly, impervious to the scores of bodies he leaves behind as collateral damage.

       In addition to searching for Bourne, the CIA has proposed a secret surveillance program (Iron Hand) that it desperately wants Aaron Kalloor’s technology company to agree to.  The proposal is highly relevant today in light of the U.S. Government’s recent efforts to get Apple to allow it to look at terrorists’ e-mails and search for anti-government hackers who have invaded the government and U.S. companies’ websites. The CIA wants Kalloor’s social media platform, Deep Dream, to allow it to search its posts, but Kalloor is having the same response as Apple, saying that privacy is freedom and we need to protect that.

         Bourne learns about this from Nicky Parsons (Stiles), in addition to her finding out more about his history and about his father.  She and others have pulled an Edward Snowden maneuver and gained access to the CIA’s data set about black ops. She wants him to help them bring the CIA’s operations to light.  When the Director of the CIA learns of this, he goes after Bourne and Parsons with a vengeance, sure that they intend to expose his department.  He then sends out the asset to kill them by whatever means necessary, and when that is not entirely successful, his plan gets hopelessly convoluted.

        Damon puts his all into this role as in all the previous Bourne films, and pulls off superhuman feats in planning ahead and evading the pursuers with clever strategies and all kinds of vehicles; he’s always one step ahead, startling his adversaries with his acumen.  I must say, though, that I much prefer seeing him as the quirky botanist in The Martian. Jones can play a mean, double-crossing s.o.b. easily, giving the appearance of an all-knowing father.  There is probably no better actor to play the calculating, vindictive killer than Cassel. 

         It’s refreshing to see Alicia Vikander again take on a completely different role from those she has excelled in previously, and here she comes across as extremely intelligent and accomplished, but with feminine intuitions that serve her well.  She has read Bourne’s file and thinks she has such a keen sense about his psychology that she can “bring him in” again. 

          Riz Ahmed is an up and coming actor to watch; he is winning high marks for his roles in Nightcrawler and the current television drama, “The Night of.”

Paul Greengrass directed this production of Bourne and helped write the screenplay with Christopher Rouse.  They have succeeded in making the pace fast and furious, with nerve-wracking close calls and scenes of high suspense.  I only wish the car chase and hand-to-hand combat at the end had been shortened by half.  The camera is so jumpy, it’s hard to follow the action, and it ultimately becomes simply boring.

Another Jason Bourne thriller that hits the same high points.

Grade:  C                        By Donna R. Copeland

THE HOMESMAN

Tommy Lee Jones     Hilary Swank     Grace Gummer     Miranda Otto    

Sonja Richter     Meryl Streep     John Lithgow     James Spader

     The Homesman is not your typical western movie; it has more to do with human psychology and sociology, and what sometimes happens to those who are under stress and ill-equipped to manage.  Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) is apparently not one of these; she farms a homestead on her own, maintains her house, goes to church, does her Christian duty, and plays the piano.  When she doesn’t have a physical piano, she fingers a cloth keyboard and sings.  When three women in the congregation lose their minds, she volunteers to take them east to Iowa so their families can take care of them.  When two women protest that as a woman she should not take on the task, the minister (John Lithgow) says she is “as good a man as any man hereabouts.”

     She is nervous about transporting them in a wagon across the prairie, however, and when she comes upon a man (Tommy Lee Jones) hanging from a tree, she agrees to cut him down if he will help her take the women east to their families.  He agrees only out of desperation; he is not ready to die.

     The women are indeed psychotic; one has to be tied down because she attacks whoever is in sight.  They seem to have been driven crazy for various reasons, such as losing children to disease, but the film does not always clarify their histories.  We’re introduced to them rapidly in the beginning without much explanation—which I see as a weakness in the exposition. 

     At any rate, the women are loaded onto a makeshift wagon that can be locked from the outside, and Mary Bee Cuddy and “George Briggs”—a name he decides to call himself—take the reins of the horses and head out.  You can imagine (I actually had a hard time of it) some of the issues they would encounter along the way (a runaway, Indians, snow), let alone hygiene (one of the woman has to be held and told to pee), food preparation, sleeping arrangements, etc.  As expected, Cuddy and Briggs will have major disagreements along the way to establish dominance.  The resolution of their conflicts and the outcome of their destination is one of the perhaps unique and surprising endings of a western genre film.

     The Homesman is well directed by Tommy Lee Jones, and the cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto is exquisite.  The main actors (Jones, Swank, Lithgow, Spader, and Streep) are some of the best and shine in their roles.  Jones has a couple of song and dance routines that are totally out of his usual character presentations and are a hoot—although you may not be able to understand the lyrics; it’s enough to watch him dance and shout.    Swank easily conveys Cuddy’s strengths, and is able to elicit sympathy—maybe even pity—from the audience during her times of weakness.  Spader and Streep have only cameo roles, but are powerful in the brief time they are on screen.  The actresses portraying the psychotic women (Grace Gummer, Sonja Richter, and Miranda Otto) capture their distresses perfectly.

     The Homesman is not likely to be a film for everyone; I had mixed feelings about it when I left the theater—presumably because of some of the more depressing, hopeless scenes, as well as a rather surprising ending.  In addition, I think one character in particular is not consistent across time with how she is presented initially—not that I’m saying people don’t change, only that how this character is presented in the beginning does not plausibly lead to what happens later.  Not so with Briggs or the psychotic women, all of whose personalities are entirely consistent with their characters throughout. 

Not a homespun tale.

Grade:  B-                        By Donna R. Copeland