Ad Astra

Quite A Mess And The Pitt

Ad Astra
Directed by James Gray
2019 China/Brazil/USA
UK cinema release print.

This movie has been getting some good word of mouth on Twitter and I have to say that, while it falls just slightly short of being an all time classic, Ad Astra is definitely one of the best films of the year. I have some reservations about it... or one anyway... and I’ll get to that a little later but this one is quite the spectacle. I was somewhat put off that people had been comparing this to the absolute brilliance of 2001 - A Space Odyssey (reviewed here) but I have to say that, in a way, they’re right. There are a few little shots scattered around here and there which, if you know Kubrick’s film well, you'll realise are pretty much done in homage, I think, to 2001... although shot in a totally different way of course. But, yeah, there are some direct references back to the look, or at least content, of certain moments in that.

What I haven’t seen mentioned as yet, although, I’m pretty sure I will be seeing a lot of this commentary fairly soon, is the film’s striking resemblance in terms of tone and narrative structure to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. This is something I really wasn’t expecting but by about 20 minutes into the movie I realised that this was definitely part of the vibe the writer/director was going for here.

The set up of the film is very close to the Coppola movie (and presumably Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness too, although it’s been so many decades since I read it that I can barely remember it). In the near future and after the start of a series of bursts of antimatter pulses originating from somewhere near Neptune, which almost kills main protagonist Roy McBride (played by Brad Pitt) during the film’s opening sequences, Roy is sent on a mission hopping from Earth... to the Moon... to Mars and then on to Neptune. His father who was said to have died in space decades before, working on something called the Lima Project near Neptune is, it turns out, suspected of being very much alive and probably gone insane. He is the prime suspect for directing these bursts that drain all power from their target and he needs to be dealt with as swiftly as possible, before the bursts get stronger and destroy everything in the universe. So he is obviously set up as the ‘Colonel Kurtz’ figure of the movie and the film is about Roy’s journey, including speculative voice-over narrative which helps bring the Apocalypse Now vibe into the mix, to try and get to his father and stop whatever is going on. Things are quite a mess up there.

Brad Pitt in this is very strong and I don’t know why I’m always so surprised when I see him turn in a good performance. After all, he’s done some great work in pictures like Inglourious Basterds and World War Z, not to mention his absolutely stunning job in Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. This film gives him some good stuff to work with, playing an almost machine-like character who is nearly always in control and who doesn’t get an accelerated heartbeat, even in times of crisis. Pitt shows the slight flaws and cracks in his character’s approach to life and he gives some nice, subtle shading to a role which could quite easily been a much more clinical, cypher of a part in the hands of certain other actors.

He’s joined by big, acting war horse names like Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones... plus some really interesting, more contemporary performers such as Ruth Negga and Liv Tyler. Between them all, they and their supporting cast do a terrific job here.

The special effects, quality of the set and prop design and just the overall mise en scène of the thing in general is all absolutely brilliant too and, even though there are a few concepts which threaten to enter more ‘fantasy’ rather than hard sci-fi territory on occasion, this ‘near future’ tale all seems very believable and relatable. It’s got a nice slow pacing but that’s kind of deceptive because there’s a lot of information flying around which has a progressive, emotional effect on the viewer.

For instance, when Donald Sutherland’s character exits the movie fairly early on, he leaves Roy with previously unseen information about the ‘top secret’ mission he’s on and, after this is revealed to both him and the audience, it makes one constantly ‘on the lookout’ for any life threatening situations which could covertly sneak up on the main protagonist and take him... and the audience, by surprise. So, a lot of the suspense comes... not from the actual situations and incidents depicted themselves (although there are some very intense moments, to be fair) but from the expectation that anything or anyone could be about to sabotage that mission and threaten its success in the most terminal fashion.

There’s also... and it’s a very delicate tightrope to walk so, hats off to the director for this... a few action sequences scattered throughout the film and, rather than jar against the tone of the piece, they actually complement and lift the plot rather well. So the ‘space buggy pirates’, not to mention the uneasy tension (due to heightened audience paranoia) of what happens when the crew go to check out a distress signal, make for some interesting moments and hugely enjoyable sequences which don’t damage the overall, less speedily paced nature of the beast.

The score by Max Richter and Lorne Balfe is also quite brilliant, managing to be low key and unobtrusive while still giving you an elevating background hit appropriate to the mostly non-action nature of a lot of the story. I’d love to get hold of this on CD but, as of the time of writing this, it just doesn’t seem to be available. Which is a shame because it’s really cool in the film.

Okay, so far so good. It’s a brilliant film but, for this audience member at least, not an all time classic. Why? Well, the ending just feels a little weak. When Roy finally gets himself to Neptune, by ways I won’t reveal here, the state of his dad and the real issue that is causing the pulses are... well... they’re a bit anticlimactic, to be honest. I did feel kind of short changed after such a sense of foreboding had been kept up throughout the movie and, to add insult to injury, the last ten minutes or so just seemed like Hollywood wanting to please audiences by giving a much nicer ending than any of the characters had a right to expect. So there’s that and it’s why, for me, Ad Astra is a great movie but not a classic. Maybe the ending will grow on me when I watch it again (which I certainly will be doing when I grab the Blu Ray) but, for now, I was a little deflated by the time I got to the final credits.

Ultimately though, if you like science fiction movies then you’re in for a treat with Ad Astra. Definitely go and see this one on as big a screen as possible because it’s fairly spectacular and, the journey to the home stretch is a really great cinematic experience. Like I said earlier, it’s easily one of the best films of the year and you can count on it being in my year end list when the time comes. Go see it.

Morgan

Guten Morgan

Morgan
2016 USA Directed by Luke Scott
UK cinema release print.

Typical. You wait ages for a movie to play at your cinema with Michelle Yeoh in it and then two come along within seven days of each other (see my review of Mechanic Resurrection here for the other).

Morgan is the feature length debut of Luke Scott, son of Ridley (and I promise I won’t mention that fact again... there’s a lot better things to be than someone living in the shadow of somebody else). After the totally chilling teaser trailer and the somewhat less scary full trailer for the movie, I was pretty much hooked on seeing this and went on its opening evening. I have to say that, although I do have some big criticisms of the movie, for the most part it’s a quite compelling, well oiled machine which would probably bear repeat viewing well.

The trailer makes the film look a science fiction tinged horror movie but... it’s not quite. There’s a lot of punch, chase, stunt work in the last third of the movie and so it’s more along the lines of a sci-fi fuelled action movie in some ways. The strength of it is... even though it’s “not quite a horror movie”, it’s kind of shot in the cinematic style of one. The director is pretty great in keeping to that methodology too and, although some of the editing seemed a little choppy in places, the shorter shots dovetail nicely into the longer ones, delivering an overall satisfying experience, at least in terms of story content and the visual and audio style in which it’s executed.

He also does some nice things with the design of the compositions in places, making full use of the widescreen aspect ratio to present characters on opposite sides of the screen, often leaving the middle of the shot bereft of movement and nicely forcing the collective eye of the audience to work at it and, thusly, propel themselves into the immersive experience a little better. That kind of tactic doesn’t always work for directors, to be honest, but it does in this movie and, at the very least, makes for some real eye candy in terms of the look of some of the scenes.

More compositional retinal soda pop comes from Scott’s decision to use surrogate visual planes to frame important parts of the action... such as putting the focus of a scene as something playing out on a screen somewhere or using reflections in panes of glass to enhance the look of the shot. Indeed, some of the work he does with reflective surfaces in the movie reminded me of some kind of enhanced “Ingmar Berman on acid” style of composition, in the way faces are superimposed either next to each other or directly over the top of one another... which in the case of certain shots I’m thinking of actually are a clue to something which you’ve probably already guessed but which isn’t finally spelled out until near the end of the movie. More on that ending in a few paragraph’s time.

Morgan also has a terrific cast and they are all working very well together. It’s very much, until the last third, an ensemble piece and hardly anyone gets more screen time than anyone else. Here you have the likes of Kate Mara, as company Risk Assessment trouble-shooter Lee Weathers, Anya Taylor-Joy  as the titular created superhuman... and other wonderful performers such as Toby Jones, Rose Leslie, Vinette Robinson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Giamatti, the aforementioned Michelle Yeoh, Boyd Holbrook, Chris Sullivan and even Brian Cox, among others, all playing corporate employees in one guise or another. And everyone is turning in amazing performances... especially Toby Jones, whose role may get a bit overlooked but who I believe gives one of his finest and understated performances as Dr. Simon Ziegler.

The film tells of Kate Mara’s Lee coming into a locked down facility where a home grown product, the now five year old Morgan of the title (although at five years old she already has the physical appearance of a late teen and a keen intelligence much greater than a lot of grown adults), has been confined to her quarters after an incident involving Jennifer Jason Leigh. In this incident, which is executed in a single, top down view and which comprises the pre-title sequence, Morgan is sullen and then, as seen in one of the trailers, suddenly compelled to leap into action and stab out one of Leigh’s eyes. Kate Mara’s character is there, seemingly, to see if the company product needs to be ‘terminated’ or if, in fact, Morgan is, indeed, a suitable case for treatment. Something which the company psychiatrist, played by Paul Giamatti, will be able to evaluate when he comes the day after Lee’s arrival at the facility.

As I said before, Scott pitches the movie to the audience couched in the trappings of horror/suspense films and he does it pretty well, ratcheting up the tension to the sequence where Giamatti arrives and interviews Morgan... something the well prepared audience will already guess goes horribly wrong from the indications in the trailer. From here on out, the film is a hunter/prey kind of movie and the action sequences come to the fore... there’s even a car chase at one point. The director keeps these action sequences playing out in the same visceral but low key visual style, though, which means that the change of pace in the last act doesn’t jar with anything you’ve seen before... which, again, is deftly handled.

However, one of the problems with the movie, and one that I alluded to earlier, is that one of the characters you are introduced to in the first few minutes is obviously holding some kind of secret and... it’s pretty obvious what that secret is liable to be. One of the other characters, more or less, partially calls it out early on in the film too and we really didn’t need that hint so early on. Also, the story seems to treat this minor revelation as some kind of ‘twist’ at the end of the movie when, in fact, you already know this half an hour into the procedings, if you’re paying attention. And with absolute certainty by the time the aftermath of a slightly grizzly impalement scene kind of proves a point. This, in itself, is kinda forgivable because, really, that’s one of the few places the script could logically go to anyway. However, the really big problem with this movie is the “post ending”, which seems tagged on as a “let’s bring Brian Cox in to re-explain it for the exceptionally slow people in the audience too” kind of conclusion. This ending is completely false and it doesn’t just insult the intelligence of the audience, it bludgeons their intelligence repeatedly over the head and then pokes it again with a sharp stick just to make sure it’s done. I was really offended at the way everything was recapped at the end and I think the film would have been a much stronger experience if the last five minutes was just scrapped and the film ended as one of the characters gets in a car and drives away. This really did put a dampener on a film that was, really, pretty great up until this point.

The other aspect of the movie which I found a little disappointing stems from my expectations raised by the trailer campaign. In the first teaser, the Morgan creature starts repeatedly humming a little fragment of melody and its really quite chilly and creepy. Somewhere in between that first trailer and the second, I’m guessing, where this was not heard again, the people behind the film must have decided to eliminate that creepy character quirk from the final product. Now, I can almost understand this as it maybe it’s too pointed about certain aspects of Morgan’s psychological profile but... I honestly think the trade off would have been worth it because that humming sent a real shiver down the spine.

Another thing that those trailers promised was a Morgan who “is still evolving” and, possibly by sheer editing alone, hints at an almost psychokinetic ability from the title character. Now, this idea seems to have been eliminated mostly from the final product too. Certainly there are still big trace elements of this character’s meta-human powers, such as the fact that the character can tell when she is being watched through a video camera or the revelation that she knows all about various people who are coming to visit her for the first time. However, I suspect there might have been a much different cut of the movie originally delivered and the character was somewhat toned down or reshaped in the final cut, at some point. Possibly when that terrible post-ending explanation scene was added into the mix. I’m not sure if this possibility of a more invincible version of Morgan would have been a good thing or not but... well I guess we’ll find out over the next few decades if there was, in actual fact, a different slant on the character... as stories get told about the production over the years, maybe.

As it happens, despite that awful ‘explanation ending’,  which nearly ruined the whole movie for me (note to studio heads... if you don’t spell it out for the audience, some of them might pay admission a second time so they can work it out for themselves and you get more profits), the film is actually a great piece of work and a startling full length feature debut from Luke Scott. Amazing performances aside, there’s a lot to recommend about Morgan and, even if it does have a kind of Ex Machina (reviewed here) meets Splice (reviewed here) vibe going for it, it’s also a better film than either of those and well worth a visit to the cinema with a possible Blu Ray pick up at a later date. I only hope Max Richter’s score for this thing gets a proper CD release at some point. He’s a great composer and seriously under-represented in soundtrack releases. Either way, though, give Morgan a go... it’s a nice little movie.

The Last Days On Mars

Liev On Mars

The Last Days On Mars
2013 USA
Directed by Ruairi Robinson
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Slight spoilers discussing the nature of this particular beast.

The Last Days On Mars was not a film I’d even heard of, or known was in production, until I looked at an app on my phone and found out it was playing at my local fleapit. I read a few words of synopsis about it being a horror film set on Mars but, since I have had an unfortunate internet black out for a week or so now, I have not been able to even watch a trailer for it. So I went in completely blind other than a few IMDB comments from people who were, to put it mildly, less than impressed with the film.

I’m happy to say that I don’t agree with those naysayers and that I found the film to be quite gripping in general. A taut little sci-fi thriller that borders on/strays into the realm of the horror movie.

Now I don’t usually like Liev Schreiber and Elias Koteas as a rule... except, when I think back to the films I’ve seen them in, they’ve actually always been pretty good. So I don’t really know why their names started sounding alarm bells but, all I can say is that they are both terrific in this movie... as are all the other actors and actresses involved in this project.

The film has that nice kind of “claustrophobia while roaming wide open spaces” kind of feel which you can probably only get from movies where the landscape is poisonous to you if you take off your oxygen helmet and, in some ways, the film felt a little bit like the old Hammer fun fest Moon Zero Two (reviewed here) in terms of the sense of the “humans versus the environment” kind of atmosphere created in this one... or should that be “lack of atmosphere” created in this one? Given that, you know, it’s set on a planet which doesn’t actually have a breathable one.

The Martian landscape is depicted throughout as quite yellow itself and I’m guessing they did their research enough to know something I didn’t know about the surface of the planet when you are actually situated within its atmosphere. People who like red, though, need not worry. There are some amazing sequences where control rooms are bathed in red light at various points in the running time... not to mention a certain amount of blood spilled at key moments.

The story set-up itself is extremely simple and not exactly original...

On their last day or so on Mars, a crew who have been stationed there for six months find a bacterial/viral life form. Of course, as soon as they do, one of them gets himself in trouble and gets infected by it and this has the effect of... well... turning them into crazy mixed up zombies. Except only in appearance because, unlike the zombies they resemble facially... as each one’s visage is turned into a nightmarish vision synonymous with zombie films over the last fifty years or so... these ones are faster (much like the pseudo-zombies of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later) and they retain the intelligence and reasoning of any sentient life form. Even so, they still want to, well... “kill all the humans” and that is what they start to do, by violence and then infection as our heroes and heroines are pitted against both the rudimentary problems of staying alive on Mars without an abundance of air while simultaneously avoiding violent encounters, and fending off each other from all manner of arguments and personality clashes in the process. You need a good ensemble cast to be able to pull off something like this well and, thankfully, the director Ruairi Robinson got one.

As I said, it’s really nothing special in terms of either originality or in terms of finding ways to surprise or interest the audience, in most respects. Thankfully, though, it really doesn’t have to be as, even though we think we know the probable outcome of the movie, it’s really well executed and the intensity of some of the scenes is spot on. The mise en scene is, again, not particularly attention grabbing, but it’s certainly very competently handled and, despite a lot of hand held camera work, there is a certain sense of beauty and simplicity within the way some shots are framed and edited together.

The musical score by Max Richter, too, is very good... treading a fine line between minimal space atmospheres, high pitched noodlings that act in the subconscious like certain elements of the Blade Runner score, and some full on majestic melodies at key points. I’d love to get a CD of this to have a proper listen but, so far, all I can see is an MP3 album knocking around.... which frankly isn’t good enough. The companies should be investing in their scores and putting these out in shops on CDs for people. Not making them take up valuable real estate on their potential customer’s computers. This score needs a decent release!

So there you have it... a nice film set in base camps, surface buggys and the Martian landscape, which uses the mystery of the possibility of some kind of life on Mars as a lead in to a quite claustrophobic and relatively edgy sci-fi thriller. It’s not new but it is neat and I thought the director, cast and crew did a wonderful job on it. If you’re into old school science fiction concepts, ripped from a plethora of old 1950s science fiction short stories, then you’ll probably have a great time with what is, basically, a zombies in space movie. I know I’ll be grabbing the Blu Ray of this one fairly soon after it gets released.