Well, I envy you because you got to watch it on the big screen. This is clearly a film that warrants a big screen to maximize its visuals and perhaps its shortcomings.gunnar wrote
I was looking forward to Ad Astra and saw it in the theater the first week it was out, but I left disappointed. The film was interesting at times, but I was really turned off by its glacial pace. I also seem to remember that the lighting didn't really work for me at times either. It's definitely not a film I have any interest in watching again, though perhaps I would appreciate it more on a second viewing.
Y'know... in the day or so since I saw Ad Astra, I've had a slight change of heart. I can't shake the suspicion that it just doesn't quite thread the needle between soulful and thoughtful. This is as scientifically uninterested as any outer space movie as I've seen and its solution for ducking larger questions is to foreground the filial drama. This is especially apparent when Roy finally meets his father on the Lima Project. Clifford is a potentially very interesting character, who is fascinated in finding extra-terrestrial to the exclusion of anything else, but we're granted zero insight into his findings over the years beyond "Haven't found anything yet." The film errs in portraying him as un-complicatedly straightforward, such that I wasn't affected by the following scene because I had already made my peace that I was watching a film that required him to do or be whatever was needed for the script.
Still mostly like everything I wrote about below but "one of the better films I've seen where I never bought the premise" is overstating it.