Ad Astra

Official Australian release date: 19/9/19. Viewed: 29/9/19.

Director: James Gray

Actors: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler

Genre: Sci-Fi / Drama

Rating: M

  

‘Ad Astra’ is another very solid entry into the semi-realistic space films of the past few years – ‘The Wandering Earth’, ‘Interstellar’, ‘Gravity’ – and is conveniently set in the “near future”, meaning some of the potentially questionable physics can be explained away. Major Roy McBride (Pitt) follows in his father’s – Clifford McBride (Jones) – astronaut footsteps. Clifford’s either dead or stranded around Neptune, so Roy sets off to rescue/recover him.

Firstly, it’s amazing that Jones is only 17 years older than Pitt – he looks about 30 years older! Good to see him again, but he has very little screen time – as does Eve (Tyler), Helen (Negga) & Pruitt (Sutherland). Basically, this is Pitt’s journey and most of the film is him on his mission from Earth -> Moon -> Mars - > Neptune. Thankfully, Pitt brings a great earnestness and honesty to the role  and is easily watchable.

As well as being visually spectacular, with all the planets (including Earth and the Moon) and the spaceships looking excellent, the score’s good and the colour motifs are superb, especially on Mars and around Neptune. It’s also great to see a futuristic Moon, with a few winks to ‘Total Recall’. The father/son relationship is pivotal and well-handled – it never gets too overbearing, but is still logical. The isolation of space is very well depicted.

Overall: A very well-made space journey.

Gav's Rating: 4 stars.

Good Boys

Official Australian release date: 19/9/19. Viewed: 21/9/19.

Director: Gene Stupnitsky

Actors: Jacob Tremblay, Brady Noon, Keith L. Williams, Molly Gordon

Genre: Comedy

Rating: MA

  

‘Good Boys’ is almost a prequel to ‘Superbad’ and ‘Pineapple Express’ (both of which are better), but this time around, there’s three of them & they’re in grade 6, not grade 12. The three “tweens” call themselves the “beanbag boys” – Max (Tremblay), Thor (Noon) and Lucas (Williams) and they do everything together, including the main plot point – trying to get to a spin-the-bottle party.

Needless to say, as a Seth Rogen-produced film, there’s plenty of language, drugs and crude sex references. Plenty goes wrong and they end up on a low-stakes adventure, trying to replace a drone, even though they end up in a cat-and-mouse game with Hannah (Gordon) and Lily (Francis), two college-aged women who they’ve accidentally stolen drugs from.

There’s lots of winks and ‘adults-only’ jokes as the three boys mess up terminology or misinterpret things. Some good physical comedy and a fair few laugh-out-loud moments. Plenty of stupidity too, but in the end, they are genuinely boys trying to be good and not intentionally bad – the underlying story of friendships and how they change resonates.  

Overall: Quick & simple with enough laughs.

Gav's Rating: 3 stars.

It: Chapter Two

Official Australian release date: 5/9/19. Viewed: 5/9/19.

Director: Andy Muschietti

Actors: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgard

Genre: Horror / Drama

Rating: MA

  

‘It: Chapter Two’ is the sequel to ‘It’ from only two years ago, but this is now the prophesized “27 years later”, with Pennywise (Skarsgard) back to wreak havoc on Derry. The seven teens from ‘It’ come home as adults to fulfill their oath of stopping Pennywise. This time, they’re: Bev (Chastain), Bill (McAvoy), Richie (Hader), Ben (Ryan), Mike (Mustafa), Eddie (Ransone) & Stanley (Bean). Don’t worry – there’s plenty of flashbacks so you can recall who’s who.

Thankfully, there’s some humour, thanks to Hader and Ransone, but the others seem to kind of coast through – no one’s bad in this, but no one stands out either. Unfortunately, for a film based around his psycho-killer-clown, Pennywise has very little screen time until the final 30min and you kind of forget what his motivation is. Being released so close to the first one, not sure we need so many prompts/reminders. That’s the main problem with the film – it’s almost an hour too long at 2 hours 50 minutes.

The second act where they have to each get a totem could’ve been done in a 10min montage, not a 45min drawn-out mini-mission for each character. There’s a few good CGI bits, some jumps, some gross moments, but nothing truly terrifying. Still, wouldn’t want to be watching this is I was under 12. Considering how tongue-in-cheek the film is with it’s references to Stephen King and crappy endings, I’m not sure if the ridiculous ending is supposed to be meta, or is just poor.

Overall: Better than the 1990 version, not quite as good as the 2017 one.

Gav's Rating: 3 stars.