The Cynical Cinephiles

Director: James Gray Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland In the near distant future, the entirety of human life is threatened when unexplained power surges hit the Solar System. Astronaut Roy McBride (Pitt) is approached by U.S Space Command and informed that his missing father of 16 years, H. Clifford McBride (Jones), is suspected to be alive and that the surges are a result of Clifford's "Lima Project" in deep space. Roy accepts the mission to go to Mars and establish communication with his father in order to prevent a worldwide catastrophe. As deeply personal as it is visually gorgeous, Ad Astra is perhaps the most artful and impactful big budget movie since Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017) . The film relies less on action sequences (although there are a handful of those to be found) and instead favours an introspective view on humanity, touching on densely thematic and allegoric philosophies. Gray enacts all of the a...

Director: Lorene Scafaria Cast: Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, Julia Stiles, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo, Cardi B Having endured a summer where an onslaught of sequels and tent pole films dominated the box-office, the arrival of writer-director Lorene Scafaria's Hustlers (based on an acclaimed New York Magazine feature) provides a much needed dose of refreshing indulgence by telling a story that feels comfortingly familiar and simultaneously wildly subversive. In order to make ends meet, Destiny (Wu) begins working as a stripper in a New York City night club. New and inexperienced, Destiny is befriended by and taken under Ramona's (Lopez) wing, the top earner and most in demand out of all the dancers. After the financial crisis diminishes their income, Ramona convinces Destiny and two other dancers to indulge in her scheme to fleece the wealthy Wall Street clientele who frequent the club. The core bond and sisterhood that the women develop is unlike any dynamic th...