Steve Chahine

As far as Asylum movies go, this is near the top. This movie is from 2008 when you could actually get real actors like Michael Gross. He does a fantastic job and keeps the entire story grounded in the human consequences of time travel gone amok. This is NOT Jurassic Park. The CG is poor. But if you have time to burn, give it a shot.

Ad Astra or "To the Stars", is a wonderful, deeply moving film that tells the smallest of stories on the vastest of canvases. This is not a sci-fi adventure for kids or teenagers. It is an answer to the question of what truly matters in our brief lives and how a father and son search for that answer in very different ways. Brat Pitt is magnificent. This would not be as engaging a film without him. His star power is truly necessary to keep the viewer engaged. If you are over 35, lost your father, or have unresolved 'daddy issues', you will enjoy this film. PLOT: Roy McBride (Pitt) is recruited to find his father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones), who disappeared decades ago while on a trip to Neptune in search of extra-terrestrial life. The spacecraft in orbit around Neptune is sending deadly anti-matter waves directed at Earth causing catastrophic damage. Is this a deliberate act, an accident or something more sinister? Brad Pitt travels to the Moon, now a battleground between rogue factions fighting over natural resources, then to Mars where he is ordered to send a personal message to his father in the hopes of getting a response. Although Roy is forbidden from traveling any further, he sneaks aboard the ship headed to Neptune where he confronts his most personal of demons in the vastness of space. MILD SPOILER: There is a wonderful sequence, en route to Mars, where they encounter a research vessel sending a distress signal. They board the station only to discover the horrific sight of experimental lab primates running amok, after having killed the entire crew. At first the sight of a feral baboon lunging for Brad Pitt seemed odd and out of place. "What in the world are primates doing in outer space?", I thought. But this is a movie about the search for super-intelligent life in the universe and it hit me like an anvil. We ARE primates in outer space. Imagine if the intelligent life we encounter looks at us the same way Roy looked at the baboons? Are we really that much more advanced in the grand scheme of things? BIG SPOILER: My biggest disappointment with the story involved the anti-matter pulses that triggered the entire journey. I imagined numerous possibilities: Maybe Clifford lost so much faith in humanity that he targeted Earth deliberately? Maybe Clifford found intelligent life but it was so malevolent that he was attempting to knock out Earth's ability to communicate beyond the stars so we wouldn't be found. But sadly the answer was simply this: it was just an accident caused by the crew while attempting to mutiny. An accident that coincidentally pointed an anti-matter beam directly at a target 2.8 billion miles away. If the antenna were .0001 degrees to either side it would have missed Earth by millions of miles. Even more absurd, Clifford's ship has a degrading orbit around Neptune so each time around it's in a different position, yet all the beams seem to go straight to Earth. A small gripe, perhaps, that did not detract from the true emotional impact of the film.