Does the world need another movie about a middle-aged white man riding a spaceship into the dark to save the world? AD ASTRA is a conspicuously old-fashioned film. Yet its weary dystopian mood belies the gripping space adventure tropes. The movie’s true subject is how the Right Stuff of Space Race heroism morphed into the Toxic Maculinity of our own age. As Brad Pitt pursues long-lost father Tommy Lee Jones to the ends of the solar system, the male heart-to-heart has never been more one-way or awkward.
