“Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice” is a documentary about the life career and great talent of Linda Ronstadt. With all documentaries and movies about a life in show business, depicting the life of a professional singer, whether or not you have enough talent to ever make it, can be extremely daunting. A successful career in show business is all about gambling with your life and if you fail, you will have to live through many difficult years. We always hear about the few who make it who are always prevalent on TV, movies or social media, but we never hear about the thousands who never give up on their dream, travel the world desperately trying to succeed within a field that very often can be impossible to navigate.

The thing about someone like Linda Ronstadt is, her voice was so rare and powerful that there was no way she could not have made it as one of the best female singers of all time. While watching this documentary I could only wonder how she could have sang in so many concerts, recordings and practice for that many years and did not overuse her voice long before it was finally lost when she contracted Parkinson’s disease in August 2013. While watching this documentary, you just cannot help but admire Linda’s work ethic and sacrifice for so many years.

Ronstadt’s family and Mexican heritage was all about singing, and she developed a strong talent and love for music very early in her life. For someone with this level of talent, becoming a singer who travels the world seemed her destiny from birth. Due to her choice to become a famous singer who travels the world, Ronstadt’s personal life suffered and she was never married or had children. Her most publicized relationship was with the Governor of California, Jerry Brown and she was even engaged to director George Lucas. Now 73 years old and suffering with Parkinson’s, Linda Ronstadt can look back on her great career with satisfaction and pride. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.

This documentary was very well done and includes appearances of many of Linda Ronstadt’s friends in show business, including Dolly Parton and Bonnie Raitt. I highly recommend this film.
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The simple logline for “Downton Abbey” is: “A huge Hotel/Mansion in the 1930’s is surprised when the King and Queen of England decide to stay there for a few days”. How an idea this trivial has been made into a 2 hour movie is a mystery to me. There are a few side stories along the way to the coma this film creates and they are all equally boring. Downton Abbey was a TV show that ran from 2011-2016 – a show that I never watched and considering how bad this movie was, I never will. I am at a loss to figure out why this movie has such high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. My only theory is – people are very curious about the lives of Royalty and the extremely wealthy, so it doesn’t matter if there is not much of a story or no story at all.
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This movie was a nightmare to sit through that involved constantly checking my watch and even taking the risk of turning on my cell phone. This movie is so boring, with so little story that its almost impossible to even review. In summary, run from this trivial and boring waste of 2 hours.
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Ad Astra is a popular Latin phrase meaning “through hardships to the stars”.

The new movie starring Brad Pitt, “Ad Astra” is mostly about one thing. What would happen to any human being if he or she were traveling in space for a very long period of time, with no hope of ever returning home again?

What the world knows right now is traveling to Mars or further is going to take a huge amount of new technology, and trillions of dollars. Phase one of this new technology will have to address the huge problem of keeping any human being from going insane over months and years of traveling through the nothingness of space. Environment simulators, deep sleep and so many other technologies would be necessary for such a huge undertaking of long term space travel. The realization that the longer you travel away from the earth, would mean that much time again, to ever return home. Long periods of time being confined to small spaces with many hours of little or nothing to do is another problem. Like any person in prison knows, “while you’re in here, there is no place to go”.

As for the film Ad Astra, the story is about an astronaut Roy McBride, played by Brad Pitt trying to rescue his father, Clifford McBride, played by Tommy Lee Jones who is deep in space near Saturn and may have gone insane, along with all in his party – that left earth some 12 years earlier.

I thought this movie was either slow or boring in too many places, because the story is mostly about several mishaps in space as Roy tries to save his father and also prevent power surges that are being emitted from his father’s space ship. I thought the technology behind the power surges did not make much sense, considering the 2.5 billion mile distance from the edge of Saturn to planet Earth. The special effects of this film will remind everyone of “Gravity” from 2013, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. I thought Gravity was a far better movie, that had excellent space special effects along with a better story. Ad Astra tries to make up for a mostly weak story with great special effects and it fails in some areas and succeeds in others.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for Ad Astra is a solid 82%, but because of the slow moving parts of some of this story, I give this movie only a 75% rating, with a mild recommendation.