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.

Bram Stoker's Dracula Is A Sexually Charged Piece of Cinema That Makes For A Delightful Watch

Bram Stoker's Dracula is one horny movie. It's so horny you might as well call it a crash of rhinos. It's so fixated on getting it on that one is surprised some James Brown tunes don't pepper the soundtrack. Director Francis Ford Coppola has assembled an A-list cast and some extraordinary production design, not to mention Bram Stoker's iconic source material, to create a vivid erotic fever dream about the one, the only, the vampire called Dracula. That description is meant to be a compliment, Bram Stoker's Dracula has refreshingly no inhibitions about what it wants to be is and fully embraces any opportunity to revel in both sex and hamminess, frequently at the same time.

The Godfather Doesn't Just Live Up To 45 Years Worth Of Hype, It Exceeds It

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #37
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #21 (Tied with L'Avventura and Contempt)   

In 1979, director Francis Ford Coppola would unleash a realistic drama called Apocalypse Now that emphasized the realistic emotional and mental turmoil experienced by soldiers dropped into Vietnam. Coppola dove right into a war that had grown bigger than any human being could imagine and dared to imagine what it must be like to live, to breathe, to exist in the midst of all that carnage. Seven years prior, this same guy was responsible for a minuscule indie you may have heard of entitled The Godfather that applied the same thought process of pondering what it's really like to live a life of pervasive violence to the world of mobsters.

The End Is Nigh In The Engrossing Apocalypse Now

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #9
Placement On Sight & Sound 50 Best Movies List: #14

Every single war in human history is a brutal affair from which no participant in it comes away unscathed. But the Vietnam War took on a whole other life of its own that made it a particularly gruesome affair. New innovations in cameras and TV news allowed people to see grisly first-hand footage directly from the battlefield, once that footage was actually allowed to be aired on TV that is. People were getting an up-close glimpse at the harshness of war for the first time and the fact that the Vietnam war ended in a loss for America only added a further layer of tragedy to what was already a cataclysmic affair.