John Wick 2, Ad Astra, Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

Chad Stahelki's John Wick 2 is a bigger and teeny bit better iteration than the original. The franchise is a first person shooter game with a soupçon of humor and ample martial arts fu. The film dodges critical inquiry by escaping into the sublimely balletic realm of pure action cinema. Beauty, even if it is dumb, is still pleasant to gaze upon. The references to The Lady from Shanghai and El Dorado belie a saving trace of intelligence and taste in a vulgar genre piece.

James Gray's Ad Astra has some plodding intensity and good mise en scene, but it adds up to very little. Brad Pitt is an astronaut with Daddy issues because Dad, also an astronaut and pungently played by Tommy Lee Jones, flipped out and did the full Kurtz on a space station near Neptune. Pitt is in stoic good form, but Gray gives him an offscreen narration that overliteralizes the film's themes and obliterates nuance and subtext. Gray handles instances of piracy and mutiny well and builds a "Heart of Darkness" feel of dread and doom as Pitt flies to Neptune to confront Dad. Sadly, the ending is as unbelievable as anything in John Wick 2 and much more unsatisfying. Ad Astra ends up being a long slog to nowhere.

Roberto Rossellini's Blaise Pascal, a minor effort by the great director, is even more sluggish and overly literal than Ad Astra. Nevertheless, Rossellini's attempt to evoke the thoughts and transcendental ache of the great Frenchman is profoundly moving. Rossellini, in his historical films shot for television, aims to picture and explain the heroes of humanism providing enlightenment and trying to vanquish superstition and ignorance. Rossellini shows the toll his work and spiritual strivings took on Pascal. Rossellini uses slow zooms into and out from the face of Pascal to frame his utterances as a last gasp means to spread enlightenment to his fellow man and, thus, serve God. Out of meager means, Rossellini transcends his didactic form and provides a minor miracle of meditative cinema.