It’s a light week for movies in terms of sitting down and just watching something with all my attention focused there. It’s still too easy to load up a couple of different short shows and just engage in that at the moment. But I did get two movies in at least!
First, I had picked up a digital version of Mr. Baseball awhile ago as I only had the original snapper-case DVD release in my collection and I wanted a proper HD Version. I’m not someone who watches baseball but I love baseball movies and anime so this was completely up my alley. Having grown up watching Tom Selleck in Magnum PI and his run on Friends, as well as a few other films, this one delighted as it delved into his character being transferred to Japan to play baseball as he’s not holding up well in the big leagues in America. He ends up on the Chunichi Dragons and has the whole culture clash thing going on that you’d expect.
What works is that even as bad as he gets there’s a layer of understanding to it as he’s not getting the help he needs to transition with some of it. And none of this was really by choice either, so there’s a stubbornness that sits with him for awhile until he gets past it. Filmed largely in Nagoya, they brought in a lot of people who went through these experiences and built off real people and events for it to work. What definitely works is that it doesn’t really go and treat anything that you see here in Japan as “weird or strange” in the way where it attacks it. It’s a frustration point of Selleck’s character and just a matter of figuring out how the game is played here. Naturally, there’s lots of cross-learning that comes along with it because it is that kind of film. But even as blunt as it is, it never feels as blatant as a lot of other films do in this regard. It’s a natural and more nuanced piece overall, reflected in the truths of it by those who have lived it and consulted on it.
I’ll always be amused in a secondary kind of way in just imagining this as an elaborate Golgo 13 mission as the Chunichi Dragons’ coach, Uchiyama, is played by Ken Takakura. Takakura held the Golgo 13 role with the 1973 feature film. He’s had great roles over the years with The Yakuza for Sydney Pollack and Black Rain with Ridley Scott. Sadly, Aya Takanashi never seemed to do much more after this which is unfortunate as I thought she brought something special to the role.
Getting out to the theater with all that’s going on isn’t easy but Ad Astra was a film I wanted to see since the first trailer hit. With the initial trailers presenting it as a serious science fiction film with its concept, including actors like Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, and Donald Sutherland just made it something I had to see. I like all of them and they generally turn in great performances. Directed by James Gray and co-written by him with Ethan Gross, I was definitely curious since The Lost City of Z had good buzz about it and I enjoyed his debut back in 94 with Little Odessa.
The film is one that is definitely paced in a way you don’t see often for science fiction films that actually take place in space. Frankly, you don’t see a lot of those in general anymore, which is unfortunate. This is a character film more than anything else, which is true for how a lot of hard science fiction films go that aim for realism but allow things to go anywhere in the third act. The influences of 2001 are pretty heavy here and that’s welcome as it helps to ground it and give it the authenticity it needs. Watching as Pitt’s character, keeping himself as emotionless as he can in order to not feel after all the things he’s been through, going on this mission with such secrecy about it and people dying along the way without knowing what’s going on hits the right marks as it progresses. It has a good supporting cast as I had said but they’re really used sparingly, often from a distance in order to highlight the disconnect of Pitt’s character. It’s not a film that’s going to go big or wide but it’ll appeal to those that like this genre and wish we had more of it.
The whole opening action sequence, however, gave me the chills overall because of how it messed with me visually.
