Ad Astra

For most of its running time, Ad Astra amounts to a rather somber and sterile two-hour orbit.

This is slow, obtuse filmmaking with little emotional connection.

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).

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.

The film's geography takes us on a cross-solar system journey but the real trajectory is deep into the human experience - finding meaning in life and coming to grips with being left behind.

Gray has a gift for shrinking massive set pieces and enlarging private dramas.

A seamless mood piece about loneliness, colonization, and fatherhood and ranks highly among the current onslaught of space movies.

This should feel like a thrill ride IN SPACE, not like an actual 3-day trip to the moon where you wish the pulmonary embolisms developing in your legs would kill you.

One of the difficulties is that Ad Astra is a space movie with a fundamental lack of interest in what's out there, in the form of intelligent life or otherwise.

It seems unusual to me that the narrative of the space odyssey ends with a hopelessly conventional and unsurprising solution. [Full review in Spanish]