BRAD ASTRA

MOVIE
Ad Astra
Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones
Director James Gray
Review Ray Chan

THIS is not merely a movie in which Brad Pitt is the lead - it's virtually the Brad Pitt show from start to end. He’s featured in just about every scene and gets most of the dialogue, delivered in a curious whispery monotone that apparently reflects what a cool, composed guy he is.
    The actor – whose star (pun intended) seems to be ascending again after his role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - plays Major Roy McBride, an astronaut extraordinaire who is so good at everything he can probably pilot a space craft blindfolded while juggling balls in anti-gravity. Which is pretty close to what he ends up doing in the film.
    Sombre, pensive and thoughtful, Roy has a pulse rate that never goes above 70 beats per minute, not even in the opening sequence when he’s knocked off a vertiginous sky-high antenna by a mysterious power surge and plummets to Earth.
    Later, after Roy survives the plunge in best James Bond fashion, it’s revealed to him that the waves of energy – which have caused the loss of more than 40,000 lives across Earth – were likely caused by cosmic rays emanating from Neptune, specifically an exploratory station run by Roy’s long-lost father and decorated pioneer H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), whose original mission was to seek out new life and civilisations and literally go where no man has gone before.
    Officials believe that he is alive, gone rogue, and causing the power bursts, and so assign his son to locate him by traveling ad astra: “to the stars”.
    Roy is at first reticent because of abandonment issues, but he learns to overcome his fears as he traverses the solar system to find his father, opening up ever so slightly into his persona with each new person he encounters.
    The story is set in the “near future”, when travel to the moon and Mars from Earth is commonplace, and evidently the journey to the far reaches of the Milky Way only takes a few weeks.
    To get to the Mars launch pad from where his vessel will take him to Neptune, Roy takes a commercial trip to the moon, flight stewardesses and all, where he will transit to a ship bound for the red planet.
    But the route there is across hostile territory, and Roy’s ATV is attacked by resource pirates who have built a base on the colonised satellite.
    The ensuing chase and action scenes are well-staged, particularly when his dune buggy careens into an open crater and takes an eternity to spiral down to the bottom, thanks to the lower gravity.
    This sequence, together with a later incident in which Roy helps to rescue a stranded craft, only to confront a hostile cargo of experimental subjects gone wild, get the first half of the movie off to a rollicking start, but from there, the tone shifts to a less frenetic pace as we follow our hero across the dark emptiness of space.
    Suffice it to say he ends up travelling to Neptune all by himself, eventually confronting his father, who sheds not an ounce of emotion at the reunion.
    Metaphorically, the message seems to be that the farther Roy moves away from life, the more desolate he becomes, with the people he loves, such as his long-suffering wife, quickly moving out of his orbit, just like he escapes Neptune’s.
    There’s hardly any sign of any sort of bonding between the two McBrides, which seems to be somewhat of an anticlimax given that most of the movie’s running time has been used up getting to this point.
    Roy convinces his old man to return to Earth, but as they begin the spacewalk to the ship, McBride Snr begs for the safety tether connecting the two men to be severed, no doubt symbolising the cutting of the umbilical cord which kept any semblance of a relationship between them alive.
    Watching the movie on a big screen is wonderful though, as the cinematography and effects are brilliant, taking viewers on a stunning visual tour of the planets, stars, rings, comets and assorted celestial bodies in between.
    Unfortunately, the spectacle doesn't translate as well to the storyline. If you’re looking for a big emotional payoff, well, you might find a bit of a black hole instead.

#adastra #kinnandco

HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD

MOVIE
Once Upon A Time ... In Hollywood
Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt
Director Quentin Tarantino
Review Ray Chan

Most of Tarantino’s films are like exaggerated Jerry Seinfeld sitcoms on a grand scale: random observations of the madness of life's idiosyncrasies within various settings, but grittier and in the end connecting with each other even if you have to work a little to discover how.
    His latest offering follows the same groove, and is certainly aptly named, recounting as it does the days in the life of a fading TV star in the flower power era of 1969, half a century ago.
    But while some have chosen the occasion to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing or commemorate Woodstock, Tarantino chooses to spend the summer of 2019 revisiting the Charles Manson killings, a crime that shook the show business community in Los Angeles.
    Indeed, the theme of violence recurs throughout, with many of the sundry characters glorifying bloodshed and brutality, and allying it to the culture in which they were brought up to “love that stuff—y’know, the killing” on TV (a line Al Pacino, as promoter Marvin Schwartz, says in a great nod to Scarface); or in the case of actors, reciting the lines written for them in these productions. When a scripted gunslinger in a Western reminisces at one point that “people died that day,” for example, his cowpoke companion replies, “but we had a good time”.
    And it’s this American affection for ammunition which also provides the spark for the movie’s climax, with the Manson clan planning the mass murder of the cinematic stars who taught them how to kill.
    For Rick Dalton, the fallen idol played by Leonardo DiCaprio, the assumption that viewers enjoy witnessing sudden, painful death is the foundation on which he based his career, gaining fame as he did in cancelled TV series Bounty Law, in which the manhunter he portrayed preferred “dead” to “alive”, and encouraged the audience’s agreement with a cheeky wink to the camera.
    The irony here is that that while Tarantino reflects on a general American desire to be entertained by slaughter, it also shows up his own role in satisfying that appetite in all his movies to date.
    In Once Upon a Time, the director gradually ratchets up impending carnage and then releases the tension in a gorefest of stabbing, shooting, gnashing, bashing, and even charbroiling, in the best tradition of a slap-up Machete-esque massacre.
    Sharing the spotlight with Rick is his stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who’s anything but a double though: he’s an easy-going gofer, chauffeur, handy jack-of-all-trades, confident and confidant in one, and as rough and tough as Rick is soft, emotional and an alcoholic, his weaknesses evinced in a slight stammer, a hacking cough, forgetfulness about his lines, and an aptitude for furniture-smashing bouts of self-pity.
    Cliff doesn’t give a damn about pleasing anybody, and even upstages an arrogant Bruce Lee on the set of the Green Hornet.
    He eventually ends up visiting the Manson family at the abandoned movie and television ranch they’ve taken over, some of whom, in the Tarantino world of cosmic coincidences, end up intruding Rick’s house several months later.
    Rick’s next-door neighbour is the sweet and innocent Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who resides in the abode with director Roman Polanski and celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring.
    Both Tate and Sebring were real-life victims of the Manson atrocity, and Tarantino keeps the suspense up as he leaves viewers on tenterhooks wondering if and when the killings will start.
    Tate’s murder was widely seen as signifying the USA’s death of innocence and the end of the peaceful swinging ‘60s, and in the movie, Tarantino fully embraces her iconography and cultural importance, while amplifying her generosity, talent, joy, and integrity; and ultimately, her shining unfulfilled promise.
    Make no mistake, the moviemaker’s rep and pulling power remain stellar, attested to by the number of name actors in the cast.
    What’s not so certain is the reason for an apparent foot fetish which pervades the film, bare-soled, shoe-coutured, or otherwise.
    Is there attempted symbolism here? Bare feet have come to represent innocence, while footwear was considered a sign of power: both themes which are featured to the fore.
    Or maybe Tarantino’s just being Tarantino, and saying that when you see all those shots of feet, think of who’s being stepped on.
    All in all, as the film’s title implies, the movie functions as a fairy tale, and a compelling, entertaining one that ranks among his best; it's a wistful tribute to a bygone era and a loving testament to a period in which men like Rick and Cliff are about to be swept aside by a future they can’t comprehend.
    As Mick Jagger sings as the final act begins, “baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time”.

@SonyPicturesAus #onceuponatimeinhollywood