Author: Caillou Pettis

Ad Astra: Thirty years ago, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) led a voyage into deep space, but the ship and crew were never heard from again. Now his son Roy (Brad Pitt) — a fearless astronaut — must embark on a daring mission to Neptune to uncover the truth about his missing father and a mysterious power surge that threatens the stability of the universe.

When it comes to films centered around and taking place in outer space, I tend to not get too excited for them. This is probably due to the fact that nearly all of them these days follow the exact same formula. An astronaut with big dreams wants to go to outer space to try to accomplish something, they face some challenges and obstacles along the way, but in the end, they finally manage to succeed at what they do. So many space films follow that same beat for beat structure and I was praying that James Gray’s latest feature Ad Astra would not do that.

The buzz for this movie was incredible, with many viewing the film as a masterpiece. However, I was not too sure what to expect from the film, due to Gray’s direction. His previous feature was The Lost City of Z, a picture that a ton of people viewed as just okay. It was genuinely hard to tell how Gray would handle a film with such an intriguing concept and its big themes.

But, I am ecstatic to inform you that not only is Ad Astra a hypnotic and engrossing epic and one of the best films of the year thus far, but it is one of the best space films of the entire decade.

One of the reasons why this film works as well as it does is due to Brad Pitt’s Oscar-worthy performance as lead protagonist Roy McBride. From the first time his character appears on screen and we learn a little bit about him, he is incredibly interesting. His highly respected father, Clifford, went missing on a mission, but clues lead him to suspect that he is possibly still alive. The journey that he goes on is one that is absolutely filled with philosophical questions about life, the world, and the beyond.

Not only is Pitt a great addition to the cast, but everybody present here is truly great. Although Pitt certainly gets the most amount of screen time, plenty of others such as Ruth Negga and Donald Sutherland get their moments to shine, and they utilize their scenes brilliantly. Each and every single one of these characters are highly intriguing and they are characters that feel so real. You want to learn more about them with every sequence.

But besides all of the phenomenal acting, my favorite aspect of Ad Astra is by far its story and the extremely deep themes that it explores throughout its one hundred and twenty four minute running time. The themes Gray explores here could definitely bore many audiences, but for me, I found every line of dialogue and every little detail to be greatly important to the grand picture. There are dozens of moments in this film in which we will simply spend minutes focusing on Pitt’s facial expressions, or we will hear his thoughts while he is out in space, and they are presented in great ways. This is one of the most thought-provoking films in years.

It is also emmacuately shot by Hoyte van Hoytema, who served as cinematographer on gorgeous looking movies such as Interstellar and Dunkirk and it is easy to see why Gray would want to hire him for this picture. Every frame is carefully thought out and there is a plethora of shots in Ad Astra that will leave you breathless.

Max Richter’s score is additionally euphoric and makes the entire movie feel so much more grand. It is one of the most hypnotic film scores I have heard in an extremely long time and I am heavily excited to listen to it again. It fits the film perfectly, and Richter was an amazing choice for composer.

When it comes to issues with this movie, there are really only a couple, with the first being the editing at times. For the most part, the editing is truly brilliant, but there are a couple of scenes towards the first act where the shot was cut way too quickly, and it would have been better if the scene had simply gone on a bit longer. Second, there are perhaps one or two scenes in the film where it is quite unclear what is going on and it can make for a confusing chunk of the movie, but after you see where the story is going, it makes sense. This is a first viewing problem, but upon second viewing, this most likely would not be an issue at all.

James Gray’s Ad Astra is a hypnotic and philosophical space epic with terrific performances throughout, and explores heavy themes in a deep, moving way.

The Goldfinch: The BRWC Review. Theodore Decker was 13 years old when his mother was killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The tragedy changes the course of his life, sending him on a stirring odyssey of grief and guilt, reinvention and redemption, and even love. Through it all, he holds on to one tangible piece of hope from that terrible day — a painting of a tiny bird chained to its perch.

John Crowley’s lastest feature film The Goldfinch is a fascinating one, not so much because the end result is amazing, but rather, it is fascinating because we often see glimmers of greatness sprinkled throughout the film as the plot progresses, but so many things often hold it back from being spectacular.

Crowley is obviously an extremely talented filmmaker, coming off the success of the Academy Award nominated historial period drama Brooklyn, which, much like The Goldfinch, was also a book to screen adaptation. It was the first time in which people really took notice of him as a truly talented force to be reckoned with in the industry. He even worked on the critically acclaimed television drama True Detective.

All signs pointed to this movie being one to look out for come awards season. Crowley’s direction, the highly talented cast, and the director of photography being Roger Deakins, who is one of the most admired cinematographers working in the industry.

Why does The Goldfinch not work? A large reason as to why is because of the screenplay, unfortunately. Donna Tartt’s groundbreaking novel was adored by millions due to its gripping story, interesting characters, and powerful moments. In the film adaptation however, these are elements that are strangely lacking. A ton of the dialogue in the film comes across as dull and it feels as if it is only there to keep the plot moving. The movie, while two and a half hours long, at times feels like it rushes things.

It is also one of those films that really does not have any memorable scenes whatsoever. This is such a disappointing aspect due to the source material being the exact opposite. The film, while faithful to the novel, never reaches the emotional heights that Tartt’s novel did.

The editing and musical choices for some of the sequences came across as a bit jarring and strange as well. It is nowhere near Bohemian Rhapsody level bad editing, but there are so many scenes where there are an abundance of quick cuts in one sequence that it can be frustrating.

Ansel Elgort is a grown up version of the lead character Theodore “Theo” Decker in The Goldfinch, which was something highly exciting for me. Elgort has proved himself in recent years to be an incredible actor, with great films such as The Fault in Our Stars and Baby Driver under his belt. His performance here is genuinely really good thankfully. The same can be said about the rest of the cast as well. Nicole Kidman, Finn Wolfhard, Sarah Paulson, and company are all really good in an otherwise lackluster motion picture.

My favorite element of this entire movie however, is the cinematography by Roger Deakins. Ever since my love of films began, he has been my all-time favorite cinematographer. He is responsible for some of the most beautiful looking movies ever, such as Blade Runner 2049, Prisoners, Skyfall, and No Country for Old Men attached to his filmography just to name a few. His shots are so good that it seems like he could film grass growing on somebody’s lawn and it would be interesting and beautiful to look at. All of the shots in The Goldfinch are truly amazing to look at, and there is really never a boring looking shot in the whole movie gladly.

While the cast is great and it has terrific cinematography from Roger Deakins, The Goldfinch is a disappointingly boring, slow, and uninspired film.

IT Chapter Two: The BRWC Review.

Defeated by members of the Losers’ Club, the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) returns twenty seven years later to terrorize the town of Derry, Maine, once again. Now adults, the childhood friends have long since gone their separate ways. But when people start disappearing, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) calls the others home for one final stand. Damaged by scars from the past, the united Losers must conquer their deepest fears to destroy the shape-shifting Pennywise — now more powerful than ever.

Back when the 2017 film It was nearing release in theatres, millions of horror fans all across the world including myself were giddy to see what director Andy Muschietti and the rest of the filmmaking crew had up their sleeves. The cast additionally looked quite promising with the likes of Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis, and Jack Dylan Grazer in the film to name just a few.

The film came out and was a massive success both critically and commercially, grossing over seven hundred million dollars and is currently the highest-grossing horror picture of all time. It made a cultural impact on the horror genre like no other film had and when I initally saw it, I liked it quite a bit. I did not think it was a masterpiece, but I had a really fun time. However, over the years, I have come to love the film more and more every single rewatch. It’s a movie that is full of heart, humor, exciting sequences, and truly unnerving moments.

During the ending credits for that film, we got official confirmation that a second film would be on its way in the near future, with the closing titles reading “It: Chapter One“, much to the excitement of many. Two years later, and here we are with Chapter Two officially in theatres.

A movie this large and with this much of a following is certain to stir up quite a bit of anticipation. I wasn’t sure what to expect going into it, because of one reason. The first half of 1990 Tim Curry-lead It miniseries, where we follow the Losers’ Club as kids, is quite fun and entertaining, but I found the second half with them as adults to be, quite honestly, terrible.

Much to my shock, It Chapter Two is a horror extravaganza that is heaps and bounds better than its predecessor, a movie that is still terrific. This is a much deeper, scarier, emotional, and character driven film and it is all the better for it.

Similiar to the first one, the entire cast here that makes up the Losers’ Club is utterly wonderful. There truly is not a single performance here that is weak. Out of all of them though, my personal favorite has to be James McAvoy as William “Bill” Denbrough, the former leader of the club. Right from the first time we see him in this installment, he is very much so the same Bill from what we know, but he is significantly traumatized due to the events of the first film, particularly the death of his little brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott).

Throughout the film, it is Bill who wants to take charge against Pennywise the Dancing Clown which makes a ton of sense, as he has a deep personal connection to him. In fact, there is one scene towards the end of the second act in which Bill makes a tough choice and goes out of his way to do something, and this entire scene was absolutely riveting.

Additionally, Jessica Chastain is marvelous as Beverly Marsh who also has a troubled past, due to her many years of abuse at the hands of her father Alvin (Stephen Bogaert). This time around, Beverly is a significantly different character. She is, like Bill, deeply traumatized from everything that happened before, and I found her character to be intriguing every time she was on screen.

But when it comes to delivering pure laughs, Bill Hader, who portrays Richie Tozier, is the best at it. Nearly every time he is on screen, he has something funny to say and all of the jokes thankfully landed. They never seemed out of place and they never broke the creepy tone that the film went for. But the film also does not shy away from giving him a bunch of emotion-heavy scenes that took me completely off-guard and surprised me in all the best ways.

That is one of the greatest praises for Chapter Two – the amount of raw emotion it has. This is a far more emotional movie than the first and there are a couple of scenes in the third act where it can be hard not to get emotional. Almost all of these scenes have to do with the Losers’ Club and I loved how the film was so character driven. It actually felt like I was watching a group of friends banding together for the first time in twenty seven years.

Naturally, a lot of audiences are going to want to watch this picture to see one thing and one thing alone – Pennywise. To be completely honest, in the first film, I found him to be a rather creepy and interesting character to watch, but this time around, he is even scarier and deadly than ever. Skarsgård gives his all in this performance, and it is not hard to tell that he loves to play this character. Every single scene involving Pennywise makes for some great and wonderfully creepy moments that I will be remembering for a long time.

When it comes to issues with this film, there are really only a couple that stand out to me. Firstly, there is a scene in the second act involving Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone), one of Pennywise’s forms, and for some odd reason, out of nowhere, an incredibly random song plays for about three seconds and abruptly cuts out. It was so jarringly edited and thrown in the movie for seemingly no reason that it actually did take me out of the movie for a minute.

Finally, there are a couple of times in which certain characters will dump a whole pile of exposition on a character, but in all reality, it is just the screenwriters telling us important things that we need to know. It would have been nice if we had learned these things through visual storytelling.

It Chapter Two is a rare sequel that improves upon its predecessor with an invigorating cast, a compelling story, hair-raising scares and heart-wrenching emotion.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged – The BRWC Review.

Four teenage divers discover that the sunken ruins of a Mayan city are also a hunting ground for deadly great white sharks. With their air supply steadily dwindling, the frightened girls must navigate the underwater labyrinth of claustrophobic caves and eerie tunnels in search of a way out of their watery hell.

If you were to tell me two years ago that there was going to be a sequel to the abismally awful 47 Meters Down directed by Johannes Roberts, I would not believe you. Not only was the film a failure with the vast majority of critics, but the film seemingly disappointed audiences as well.

Here we are in the year 2019 and we already have its sequel, subtitled Uncaged with the same director and screenwriter attached to it. Some part of me was optimistic about this follow-up, as I was willing to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt. After seeing that the original did not resonate with critics and audiences alike, I thought that they would most certainly try to shake things up a bit this time around; try to come up with a more investing, gritty story and make the characters more likeable and flesh them out.

Sadly, Uncaged follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, with another batch of frustrating characters that make ridiculously dumb decisions, an extremely familiar and trope-ridden story, and moments that make absolutely no sense whatsoever and instead come off as funny.

All of the characters here feel so disposable. The film has zero interest in fleshing them out and making them compelling. In fact, if all of the lead protagonists were to die half an hour into the film or something like that, it would not be maddening at all. This is drastically disappointing, though. I legitamately wanted to go and see this movie and walk out of it saying that it was surprisingly good and better than expected, but it sadly is not.

As aforementioned, this movie is completely littered with things that make no sense at all and come across as unintentionally hilarious. By far one of the biggest examples of this here, is the way in which our main characters interact with one another throughout the course of the film. As practically the whole picture takes place underwater, you would think that communication would be impossible between the characters. However, we constantly see our leads having conversations with each other while they are underwater. If this were real, and you tried to talk to somebody while submerged in water, everything would sound muffled and inaudible. It would have been at least something had the film explained that the characters are wearing ear pieces or some sort of device in their ears that allows them to communicate, but they never once show anything like that or mention it.

There is one sequence in particular however, that is insanely awful yet so hilarious at the same time that it was honestly hard to stifle laughter once I viewed it for the first time. This moment in question involves a shark that literally makes a screaming sound from its mouth. The last time I checked, sharks did not have vocal cords, and even if they did, there is no way real life sharks would be able to make the sound that the one in this movie does.

To finish, it is quite a boring movie to look at too. Besides from the obvious plot and storyline being a drag to sit through, the cinematography is just plain bad here, shot by Mark Silk. It is nearly impossible to see what is going on in certain scenes due to the lighting being incredibly dark and therefore it is hard to be invested on what is transpiring on screen.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged follows the same trope-ridden cliches of the first, with yet another batch of annoying characters, nonsensical moments, and weak cinematography.

Good Boys: The BRWC Review.

Invited to his first kissing party, 12-year-old Max (Jacob Tremblay) asks his best friends Lucas (Keith L. Williams) and Thor (Brady Noon) for some much-needed help on how to pucker up. When they hit a dead end, Max decides to use his father’s drone to spy on the teenage girls next door. When the boys lose the drone, they skip school and hatch a plan to retrieve it before Max’s dad can figure out what happened.

Upon my initial viewing of the first official trailer for Good Boys, I immediately had a concern about the film but I was hoping to be proven wrong. Practically everything about the trailer sold the film as a downright crude, disgusting, and unfunny movie that only had children swearing to offer and nothing else.

However, I was trying to hold out hope due to the fact that it is directed by Gene Stupnitsky, and co-written by him and Lee Eisenberg. These two served as writers on my favorite television comedy series The Office. As soon as I figured this out, my curiosity was rising quite a bit with this discovery, also with the fact that Seth Rogen would be producing, who is usually hilarious.

Gladly, Good Boys is exactly the type of movie that I was hoping it would be. Instead of solely relying on crude humor and featuring annoying children throughout its running time, we are treated to an exceptionally funny yet grounded story of a group of best friends who get into some trouble, but are still good at heart, hence the title.

Honestly, the kids involved here are actually pretty funny and they are quite hard to dislike. Each one of them has something unique about themselves and they all have goals they want to accomplish by the end of the film. By far the most compelling character was Tremblay’s Max, who has a massive crush on his classmate Brixlee (Millie Davis). All he wants to do is to attend a party that a fellow student is hosting in order to hopefully tell her how he feels. Nothing is too crazy to believe about the story which was nice to see.

The most impressive element of Good Boys is without a doubt its humor and the amount of heart it has. All of the jokes, while massively inappropriate, worked really well for the story and what the film as a whole was going for and I never found them to be annoying like the trailers made them out to be. Throughout the film, I constantly laughed at the scenes that were being shown which was a major surprise.

It is not all fun and games at every single second however, as there are some great moments where the picture shows that it has quite a bit of heart. There are a few sequences in the third act that were quite sweet and will warm the hearts of many viewers.

When it comes to issues, sometimes the editing styles can be somewhat jarring, notably in the first twenty minutes or so. The scenes in question utilize slow motion and music cut together and it just felt off. In addition, the third act, while highly entertaining to watch, felt like it was going on way longer than it needed to. Several scenes felt as if they could serve as the final moment in the film and it would have been fine, but the picture keeps moving along. When we finally approach the ending, the final shot was completely unnecessary and it would have been better had the credits rolled just one scene earlier.

Finally, this is a movie in which so many insane things happen that it can be a bit hard to believe at times. If viewers can learn to suspend their disbelief for one hundred and ninty minutes, they will have a fun time. It is not entirely unbelievable, but some plotlines definitely would not work in the real world.

With a terrific cast full of young and funny stars, a ton of heart, and some pure craziness sprinkled in, Good Boys is a highly entertaining time.