Ad Astra Takes Brad Pitt On A Thoughtful Voyage To Space

Judging by the basic plot and tone of Ad Astra, it appears that writer/director James Gray is a big fan of both Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Can you blame him? Both of those movies are, like any Lizzo album, flat-out excellent. Taking the story structure of Apocalypse Now concerning an internally tormented man making a trek to a mysterious legendary figure isolated from general society and then mixing it with the slow-paced cosmic aesthetic of 2001: A Space Odyssey is already an interesting framework for a somber exploration of Astronaut Brad Pitt's daddy issues. Much like how last weekends Hustlers used a clear love for Scorsese to make something new, so too does Ad Astra take two beloved films from decades past as a springboard for its own distinct feature film.

Jeff Nichols Small-Scale Sensibility Works Like A Charm For Loving

Loving is a departure from some of director Jeff Nichols past few movies in quite a few ways, most notably in that this one takes more cues from his 2013 film Mud rather than his other 2016 film, the incredibly underrated Midnight Special, in terms of its story scope being very much grounded in reality. That more down-to-Earth approach ties into another crucial element that differentiates Loving from past Nichols movies, this one's actually based on a true story. The tale of Richard Perry Loving (here played by Joel Edgerton) and Mildred Jeter Loving (Ruth Negga) attempting to live a life together as a couple amidst prejudice against interracial real life is an event that really transpired, which offers new storytelling challenges that Nichols handles with the level of craft we've all come to expect from him.

Warcraft Review

Now, the story of Duncan Jones 2016 motion picture Warcraft is a tad complex, so let's get the plot summary right out of the way, shall we? The world of the Orcs is dying and they need a new home. Their leader, Gul'Dan (Daniel Wu), uses green mist to extract energy from innocent people to power a portal to the human world where a large group of Orcs intend to gather enough human prisoners to power up the portal to a point where it can bring all of the other Orcs over. Among these Orcs is Durotan (Toby Kebbell), one of the few explicitly "good" Orcs and one of our lead characters of this movie who ends up having no impact on this narrative whatsoever.