Ad Astra: A journey upriver to meet your demons, internal and otherwise

Brad Pitt stars as an astronaut in search of his long-lost father (Tommy Lee Jones) in Ad Astra.

On its own, the title of this week's blockbuster release—Ad Astra, Latin for "to the stars"—doesn't tell you much about what the film is about. The trailers haven't done much to clarify that, promising everything from family drama to violent car chases on the Moon.

None of the details provide much clarity, either. It's co-written and directed by James Gray, whose films have tended to be on the critically acclaimed, publicly obscure end of the spectrum, and are set in realistic versions of the present. Yet this one is clearly set in a sci-fi future and is loomed over by enormous Hollywood figures including Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Pitt, and Donald Sutherland.

Having seen it, however, the movie holds together much better than that might suggest. While there's plenty here to nitpick, the film offers an interesting vision of the future and a plot that enables its focused human drama to become central to that future. What follows is a review that will attempt to spoil nothing that wasn't already revealed in the trailers.

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