Tag: Ruth Negga

Cinema Dispatch: Ad Astra

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

ADASTRACD0

Ad Astra and all the images you see in this review are owned by 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Directed by James Gray

We already sent Matt Damon into space and couldn’t get rid of him, so I guess its Brad Pitt’s turn on the intergalactic chopping block.  Space movies, especially ones that try to reflect our current understanding of outer space and an approximation of our current technology have been a great way to explore our own humanity as well as the stars themselves with 2001: A Space Odyssey still being the gold standard that these kinds of films try to aspire to.  Does this newest sci-fi drama about Brad Pitt IN SPACE prove to be a worthy contemporary of the genre, or will the only favorable comparisons be to Plan 9 From Outer Space?  Let’s find out!!

Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is an astronaut in the near future where that’s back to being a viable career and NASA has morphed into the SpaceCom which has put bases on the moon, on Mars, and they even sent a space ship out to Neptune to look for life beyond what they can see back on Earth.  That space ship was part of the “Lima Project” which was launched sixteen years ago with Roy’s dad Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones) and hasn’t been heard from in years and is presumed lost forever.  That is until weird electrical pulses start to reach Earth that knock out power in a lot of places and even causes a giant space antenna to come crashing down that Roy just so happened to be working on at the time, and SpaceCom thinks that it might be the… super science generator (something to do with dark matter maybe?) that they stuck on Clifford’s ship all those years ago.  On the off chance that this is the case, they want Roy to get his butt to Mars and use their super science broadcasting antenna (basically pirate radio IN SPACE) to get a message out to Neptune and hopefully to his dad.  Things get complicated right away however as there seems to be more going on than SpaceCom is telling him, and on top of that he’s got some unresolved issues with the old man, what with him leaving his family to never return, that may or may not complicate things even if they DO get a message to him.  Will Roy come to terms with the decisions his father made as well as finally get the closure he’s looking for?  What challenges will he face and what secrets will he uncover during the rather long voyage from Earth to Mars?  How do you pack for kind of trip anyway?  A lot of protein bars I guess?

ADASTRACD1
“Really wish we could find a Starbucks out here.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Warcraft

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

WARCRAFTCD0

Warcraft and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Duncan Jones

On the one hand, we are now in an age where four different video game movies are getting wide releases at the theater!  On the other hand, two of them have been far from impressive so far and Assassin’s Creed looks as dull as dishwater.  I guess all we have left to give us hope is this film based on one of gaming’s most influential franchises… that I know nothing about.  Does this manage to bring in new fans while satisfying Blizzard die hards, or is this gonna be yet another example of why we just shouldn’t expect much from video game movies?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is about… too many things, but in the broadest terms it’s about the war between the Orcs and the Humans of Stormwind.  See the Orcs kinda fucked up their own planet (or it’s dying of natural causes) and so they need to go through a dimensional portal to find a new place and take it over.  Our key Orc players in this are Durotan (Toby Kebbell) who’s the chieftain of one of the Orc tribes that’s the first to notice that things seem to be amiss with the leadership, Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) who is said leadership and uses dark magic all over the place, and Garona (Paula Patton) who’s a half breed and gets captured by the humans early on.  Now the Humans are led by King Llane (Dominic Cooper), his right hand man Sir Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel), a young sorcerer who first notices the dark magic being used by this new threat named Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) and some super mage given the title of The Guardian who I guess just sits in a tower waiting to be called upon named Medivh (Ben Foster).  As stated earlier, Garona is captured by the Humans early on during an unsuccessful raid by the Orcs, but it is during this fight that Durotan realizes just how bad the magic shit that Gul’dan has been throwing around is and decides to overthrow him to save the Orcs from the dark magic.  While he’s doing that, the Humans begin mounting a counter effort with the help of Garona, but Medivh may not be quite up to the task of taking on this new dark magic which does not bode well for the Kingdom of Stormwind.  Can the Humans fight back from this invading force?  Can Durotan stop the OBVIOUSLY EVIL dark mage from… corrupting the souls of the Orcs I guess?  Does anyone else think this should have been a TV show instead?

WARCRAFTCD1
“WHAT IS GOING ON!?  SOMEONE TELL ME NOW!!”

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