Eric Hayden's ASTRONAUT: THE LAST PUSH

Movie review by Dennis D McDonald

Wow, a decent science-fiction film that thoughtfully deals with big issues including loneliness, long-duration missions, and exploration!

With modest resources the director and team make an intense and thoughtful movie with occasional flashes of planetary beauty. I would never have thought of using a “slingshot” approach for a long-duration manned mission like this but the story and the ample graphical elements explain the flight plan quite clearly.

It’s great to see Lance Henriksen apply his gravitas here but the focus is really on the astronaut played quite effectively by Khary Payton.

Be warned: there are no ghosts, no monsters, no babes, just an astronaut trying to survive on a mission gone very wrong.

Related reading:

• Sebastián Cordero’s EUROPA REPORT
• Duncan Jones’ MOON
• Craig Nelson’s ROCKET MEN: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon
• Brian DePalma’s MISSION TO MARS
• Richard Corfield’s LIVES OF THE PLANETS: A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
• Makoto Shinkai’s THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS
• Boris Chertok’s ROCKETS AND PEOPLE VOLUME 3: HOT DAYS OF THE COLD WAR
• Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR
• Fritz Lang’s WOMAN IN THE MOON
• Walter A. McDougall’s THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH: A POLITICALHISTORY OF THE SPACE AGE

Review copyright (c) 2015 by Dennis D. McDonald