Tag: brad pitt

BULLET TRAIN (2022)

A wild, bloody, ridiculous action-comedy from the guy behind John Wick and Deadpool 2.

It’s assassins on a speeding train, with multiple overlapping jobs, changing objectives and an escalating series of Chekhov’s guns.

Feels very antithetical to a lot of modern Hollywood action fare: the edges are rougher, the gags don’t feel like they’ve been run through a committee. It’s refreshing, loose, silly fun.

It’s kind of a hot mess, but in a good way — pinballing from one absurd scenario to another, juggling a big cast of goofball personalities, and never for a moment taking itself too seriously.

Recommended.

by Thomas Scott Holland

AD ASTRA (2019)

Part CONTACT, part GRAVITY, part 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, part SOLARIS, part INTERSTELLAR… and that’s kind of the problem.

Because for all its ambition to be a Terrance Malick-like space movie it doesn’t have anything to offer that hasn’t already been covered in more arresting fashion elsewhere.

The visuals are great and would have likely been impressive as hell on a big screen, but at the end of it all we’re left with a perfectly mechanical character performance from Brad Pitt that only ever threatens to become transcendent and ultimately doesn’t serve anything especially interesting.

Underwhelming.

by Thomas Scott Holland