#interstellar review

I don’t even know how to begin reviewing this movie, I’ve thought of many different ways of doing so – so I’ll just go for it. Undoubtedly a great film in terms of entertainment, visual effects and just keeping you intrigued as to what will happen next. I loved the different twists the movie takes that just add to the complexity (in a good way). I was so enjoying it that I didn’t realise the movie lasts almost 3 hours.

So, although I did enjoy this immensely,  I found the last quarter of the movie a bit hard going, mainly because I just got a bit confused, like I always do when watching movies about time travel (Back to the Future, Terminator), so I struggled with the concept of Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) sending himself and his daughter Murphy (Jessica Chastain & Mackenzie Foy) messages from the future.

The film raises a number of interesting questions, such as the deterioration of Earth’s environment to the point that civilisation is threatened; conspiracy theories around NASA moon landings (text books have been rewritten to say this was propaganda to defeat the Soviet Union); the existence of higher beings that have created a wormhole for humans to explore other galaxies, versus the creation of the universe by God; to parenthood – what would it take to have to leave your children for years (or forever) – is it to save the world or to relive your dreams? There’s a lot to think about stemming from the movie, other than the pure entertainment factor.

In a nutshell, the Earth is running out of food and there is little hope. As such, NASA has been secretly developing technology and launching probes into other galaxies to find suitable planets to move humankind to. of the 12 probes that have been launched, only 3 show optimistic signs that they are apt for humans to live on. Cooper, through Murphy, discovers binary coordinates to an unknown place, which he follows, only to discover where NASA is now hiding. He’s talked into piloting the final flight that will take the spacecraft Endurance to these 3 potential planets to start the process of moving humankind. That’s when it all starts to go wrong.

This is very much in the Jonathan and Cristopher Nolan mould though, Inception had a lot of this, as does the Batman trilogy. There are few writers and directors that can create this level of complexity in a plot and still make a great movie. I guess the performances of the cast contribute a great deal to this, as does the idea of space travel and what else is out there.

McConaughey keeps getting better and better as an actor, he’s no longer the shirtless rom-com hunk he was in his younger years, he’s now, dare I say it, a (young) middle-aged man who knows what he’s capable of and is meeting the different challenges his wide variety roles are throwing at him. Jessica Chastain is great as the grown up daughter who still misses the father she lost at 13 and wants him back. She’s become a scientist to help Dr Brandt (the ever brilliant and often seen in Nolan’s films, Michael Caine) get his father back home (Mackenzie Foy is great as the young Murphy, and the change from Foy to Chastain was seamless).

Anne Hathaway is the beautiful but emotionally cold Dr Brandt II, Caine’s daughter who is also on the trip. She’s stubborn and always thinks she’s right to the detriment of the mission, as they land on a planet that is covered by water that has massive tidal waves, which almost destroys the mission and causes them to be gone for 23 years from the spacestation, due to gravitational time dilation (very scientific and I won’t try to explain this but the longer they spent on this planet the more the dilation between time and time on Earth). In the meantime, his father-in-law (John Lithgow), who was looking after this children has died, his son Tom (Casey Affleck) has taken over the farm, got married and had a son, and Murphy is now grown up. Cooper watches all this in a video format sent from Earth – an amazingly emotional scene, as one moment he’s hoping to get back to his kids and the next they’ve grown up and he’s missed it all.

One of the biggest twists is when they go to the next planet that’s showing positive data, but they find a desolate, cold landscape with no sigh of life or prospects of it. they find Dr Mann (Matt Damon) frozen, so they revive him and he tells him about all the great possibilities on this planet, but he’s faked all the data and he just wants to be rescued. He leaves Cooper to die, takes the ship and heads back to Endurance to try and save himself, but he ends up blowing himself up and almost destroys the spacecraft. Brandt and Cooper make it back but low on fuel Cooper sacrifices himself so that Brandt can travel to the last planet to see whether this is the one – and then it gets a bit complex and too scientific for me, with five-dimensional space, singularity, tesseracts, etc. And although there was a happy ending, I don’t know how the 40-something Cooper ends up reunited with the very old Murphy (Ellen Burstyn)???

Film: Interstellar

Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure

Watchability factor: 4/5 – I’d love to watch this one again, this time to just enjoy the ride and not have to think about what the heck is going on!

Standout performances: the cast is great, all of them make this complex plot believable and enjoyable

Contrary to the collective Christopher Nolan worship that rears its ugly head whenever another of his films comes out, I wasn’t altogether impressed with Interstellar. His attempt at a modern-day 2001 was duly noted, but the hammy dialogue, unimaginative dependence on exposition and tiring pace made the film feel like an ambitious mixed success at best. Nolan had a strong grasp of a visual…

Thought I’d start up this blog with a film I saw just yesterday: Interstellar. Although I’m aware I’m pretty late to the theatre on this one, I figured I’d review it for those who are still yet to see it and are still questioning if it’s worth the time at this point. Sorry if it’s a touch long, it is my first review!

In Short:

Worth Seeing: Yes, but only if you have plenty of time to kill and a decently-sized screen at your disposal. The dramatic space scenes would be lost on small screens; in fact, I almost feel as if the film were only worth watching in theatres.

Oscar Prediction: Although it will most definitely receive multiple nominations, it probably won’t be a huge winner in most categories. A likely win would be for special effects.

Rating: 3.5/5

A huge focal point of Interstellar’s plot is what the characters learn throughout they story is a three-dimensional being’s greatest commodity: time. Which is ironic, because all kinds of time is wasted focusing on scenes that could be cut from the film and have absolutely no affect on the overall storyline.

The first half of Interstellar really had me. Although it is arguable that the amount of background story given about Cooper and his family on Earth is excessively long for the average audience, I believe it was one of the strongest parts of the film. I really felt we got to know the characters, and it aided my sense of sympathy toward Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) whenever he complained of leaving his family behind; the exposition given slowly turned Cooper from a bratty parent who cares only for himself and his daughter to a loving father who puts his family before anyone else, himself included. 

From there, the first few scenes in space were even more superb. Beautiful images of space swept across the screen, so realistic I often forgot that the film was not, with exception of some low-orbit earth footage, actually filmed in space. However, the part I enjoyed most once again was the focus on human connection: seeing connections and relationships of all types grow between these four strangers who have been nominated to carry on the future of the human race. This element seemed to separate Interstellar from your average sci-fi film: the character’s reactions made the film feel inherently real. I felt I was watching four people actually deal with space flight for the for the first time, and how it would feel to be so isolated, away from earth and in such a dangerous position. Their safety and future compromised at all times, these four characters were not always composed, leaving their raw emotions on display. Although the tough heroes of sci-fi space films are fascinating to watch in action and their journeys wildly entertaining, my ability to see myself reflected in Interstellar’s four astronauts made the film more real, and therefore more awe-inspiring than any space-travelling ass-kicker I’ve seen in a while.

However, the film started to lose me after they left on the first planet. The last scene which was connected to the original storyline, witnessing watery planet on screen left me, once again, awestruck. However, after Brand’s (Anne Hathaway) confusing speech on love, I felt a little removed from the storyline. Ever since, I struggled to follow as I found the story fall apart and focus primarily on aspects that seemed irrelevant compared to overall plot. Although all that appeared to happen after this scene was (ending spoilers ahead) the landing on Mann’s (Matt Damon) ice planet and the conflict that followed, the escape through the black hole and finally, Cooper somehow surviving his (rather unbelievable) trip through the black hole’s centre, magically being dumped on the other side of the worm hole and apparently being found while adrift somewhere near Saturn and revived in time for his daughter’s death, the rest of the film seemed to take longer than the bulky exposition, scientific explanation, Cooper’s decision to leave Earth and the majority of the space flight altogether. 

During these final scenes, I found there was often too much focus on little details, and not enough focus on overall storyline. Usually, with a film so complex this wouldn’t be an issue, however, I found myself often lost during the film’s final scenes. No matter how much attention I gave to the film, I still felt very separate from the film, and aware of my role as a viewer rather than feeling immersed in the storyline. 

My final commentary on this film is the scene where it finally really lost me: (warning! major spoilers ahead) the black hole scene. Depending on your scientific background, most of Interstellar is presumably within most people’s willing suspension of belief. Nothing so crazy happens it would be deemed unbelievable by the average viewer in earlier parts of the film, especially as the focus is on people rather than special affects or unbelievable science. The apocalypse, the space travel and the planets all seem viable, especially within the film’s storyline. And it all remained fairly believable right up until Cooper found himself in the middle of the black hole.

Now, if black holes really exist and if we could really bend time and space laws through gravity, could Cooper actually magically find himself inside his daughter’s fifth dimensional bookshelf so he could leave her secret messages as she grew up? Maybe. But, in comparison to the utter realism of the rest of the film, did it seem possible? Absolutely not. I, as well as other viewers I spoke to after, all expressed similar feelings about the scene: it really was a few endless minutes of Mathew McConaughey hopelessly yelling at a bunch of unrealistic looking 5-D bookshelves that could have existed for a much shorter time, or even not at all.

This was probably the strangest movie I saw this year for me. The reason is that, for every moment that was amazing and had a lot of impact, there was also and incredibly mind boggling scene or plot point thrown into the mix. But I'll go into more depth about that later. So, whats the story of Interstellar? The story is that the world is kinda bad now, since there dust-storms happening all the time, the only food Earth can produce now is corn. So an engineer played by Mathew Mcconaughey is sent by NASA on a space exploration mission to find another planet that is more habitable. But the engineer still has a family and has to say good bye to them before his big expedition. He then travels through other galaxies with other characters, one played by Anne Hathaway and a robot named TARS who kinda looks like Hal 9000 if he could walk. Well that's just the basic story anyway. If I told anymore it would just be a spoiler. First lets talk about the good things. The acting in this movie is really good, everyone seemed to play there parts well…. for the most part. There were some emotional scenes that were done incredibly well with the acting and how it was shot. That's another thing, the movie was shot incredibly well. There were some scenes in the movie that reminded me of Gravity or 2001: A Space Odyssey with the cinematography. The soundtrack also helped create an amazing atmosphere of outer space. Again, reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now the best thing about the movie for me was the special effects. Oh my gosh, these effects were amazing. There were so many scenes that helped build the atmosphere of the planets the characters went to, so much so that I felt like they were really on a different planet and not some green screen over some random set. The use of practical effects were also done beautifully. The scene where they were flying the little ship felt like they were really flying. That was all my positive thoughts on the movie, so now time for the bad. But first…..

Warning: This section of the review will contain spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled about this movie then just scroll down the dash away from this review.

First off, the characters go to a planet that's made entirely out of water. After a while they notice that this planet can create gigantic waves the size of buildings. When they got there 3 characters that came to this planet, Mathew, Anne Hathaway, and character who only had 3 line up to this point. Gee, I wonder if there's someone who's going to die? Of course the guy who I'm not even sure if they mentioned his name, dies. After that they just go back to the station. It seemed like there was no point to going to that planet besides have an expendable character die and not even have it advance the plot in anyway. Then the biggest problem with this movie is in the last third of the movie. So the protagonists arrive on a snowy type planet, where they meet a surviving astronaut played by Matt Damon. When I first saw this movie I thought, 'Let me guess, hes going to act like a friend but then betray them for some dumb reason and also for the sake of having another sub plot in a Christopher Nolan movie.' And guess what, he does just that! It then leads up to a scene where Matt Damon is trying to go into the space station, and the pacing makes this scene fell like it going on for 20 minutes. And for no reason at all an asteroid randomly hit Matt Damon's ship out of sheer convenience, and I almost burst out laughing. Then Mathew has to go into a black hole for some reason that I can't remember well. Then whats happens next is so freaking confusing and strange that you need to see this scene for you're self because of how confusing it is. And people thought Inception was hard to follow. And I'm still not sure if it had some scientific relevance or if it was just a Deus Ex Machina disguised as something complex. Also the entire ending is just one big giant convenient ending because this movie is already almost 3 hours long.

Final Thoughts: Even though there were a lot of great things about this movie, there also so many bad things about this movie. I feel like it is still worth seeing for the good acting and special effects but it won't hide some of the inconsistency's of the movie. And this may be the only time I have been completely split down the middle about my opinion about the movie. Which is why I'm interested what everyone else thought about the movie

Can Christopher Nolan live up to his growing reputation? In a word: Yes. Yes he can.

(more…)

Of course it’s grand. After all, it’s Nolan we’re talking about – is he capable of anything but? Master of the intercut, wielder of the ensemble cast. He’s back in style with what we all hoped would be an endeavour as original as Inception. Here, perhaps, is his grandest conquest of all – space.

The score’s too loud, they’re saying, but really I was fine with it. Pipe organ orchestral riffs (if so they might be called) probe so deeply into sub-sonics that while thematically the film’s getting at your core, the music’s doing the same, albeit physically. Zimmer eschews conventional melody for thick swathes of orchestral harmony – a study in tone, free-flowing but fleshed.

And that flexibility is necessary. Because Nolan’s vision is absolute. In terms of its science, what results is a vivid exploration of space-time, visually sharp and conceptually sound – he’s not afraid to confront the frightening realities (frightening for directors) of near-light-speed travel.

However. Nolan doesn’t often patronise, but here he kind of has to – scientific exposition takes place through Cooper similar to the way Ariadne was used in Inception. Clumsy in the same was that the dialogue occasionally was – clumsy, but he meant it. Clumsy, but it was necessary, in a drama heightening, audience extending sort of way.

Nolan the auteur; this is his stage, and we’re not soon forgetting. Like the best of storytellers, his drama is one that unfolds on two fronts, finding conflict in the most unexpected of places.

How much wider in scope can you go? This is humanity, here, with a tale to tell that tugs at the essence of being. It touches a primal sense buried deep down because we haven’t had to worry about it for so long – survival. Set on such a scene as this, each turn of cause and effect is blown to super-massive scale, Cooper’s every hope and fear lingering to haunt us.

And what could be more powerful? Nolan examines humanity’s very existence. Humanity as a species – and existence implies end. Will we burn and rave at close of day?