'Ad Astra' uses space travel as therapy | movie review
Ad Astra follows an astronaut as he goes on an interstellar mission to undo the effects of his father's failed mission 30 years earlier.
Quick cut review: Ad Astra isn't the thrilling space adventure it's being marketed as — for good reason — and is instead a deepl moving meditation on emotional repression and the traumas that shape our lives.
★★★★
Science fiction is one of my favorite genres because the further you get from Earth and from what you know and understand to be true about our world, the more you have to grapple with your own humanity and the baggage that goes along with it. The best sci-fi movies understand that.
Arrival is a meditation on grief. Interstellar explores the limitations — or lack thereof — of human connection. Blade Runner questions the very fabric of our humanity. However, none of those movies are quite as idiosyncratic as James Gray’s magnificent Ad Astra. If anything, this film has more in common with Apocolypse Now or The Tree of Life than any other sci-fi m…