In James Gray’s movies characters seem to act as if they were in a novel, indulging in an inordinate amount of self-reflection. It may, therefore, have been inevitable that the director would eventually set a film in space where there is no limit to introspective opportunities.

Ad Astra (Latin for “to the stars”) introduces us to melancholy astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), who will travel all the way to Neptune to assuage his Oedipal anxieties. Roy is a hotshot with nerves of steel, but his dad, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), was a space legend. The gloomy aspect is that 30 years ago, McBride senior led a mission called the Lima Project to Neptune and never returned. This had a predictably depressing effect on young Roy who has never stopped longing for his missing father.