Interstellar (2014)

[MekaGojira3k]

The new trailer has me much more interested, but I highly doubt it'll be a successor to 2001 or any such nonsense. Probably a solid bit of scifi though.

[jellydonut25]

Those kinds of taglines are non-sense.

You don't get to be "the next 2001" or "the successor to Alien" or anything....EVER. Sorry, but it doesn't happen. What you CAN do (and should INSTEAD aspire to be) is be the FIRST [Blank].

How many "the next Jaws"es have we seen? A thousand. How many have been memorable? Jaws.
How many "the next Matrix"es have we seen? Dozens. How many have been memorable. The Matrix.

Greatness is never measured against greatness, only itself.

[Destroysall]

^I think what people hope for is the same visual impact and tone of 2001 to be incorporated.. I do agree with you, Jelly. I think a true masterpiece should be on its own.

[MekaGojira3k]

I think Nolan's style is so forgettable visually that it could never hope to have the impact of 2001. You could easily confuse other modern films for Nolan's stuff, but it's hard to confuse anything for Kubrick's.

[Destroysall]

Kubrick's films focused more on storytelling. The man loved creating dynamic ways to tell a story using cinematography.

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[tbeasley]

[klen7]

[mr.negativity]

[Dai]

If you love Hard SF, you owe it to yourself to see Interstellar. It spends a lot of time on world-building and character, far more than a typical Hollywood movie. Tonally, it's like a blend of 2001, The Abyss and Contact, and the overall look and mood is delightfully 1970s (especially the robots). I can see it being divisive on some of the areas it explores, but I expect that however you felt about Contact, you're likely to feel about this.

If you plan on seeing it, make sure it's on the largest screen possible. The space scenes and stark, other-worldly landscapes are just stunning. My only real criticisms are the sound mix (Zimmer's overwhelming score buries some of the dialogue) and that a major plot point near the end gets into territory that traditionally has some SF fans banging their heads against the wall.

[mr.negativity]

Christopher Nolan's long-awaited, wildly ambitious film is a new kind of galaxy movie — but is that a good thing? THR's chief film critic weighs in

[Dr Kain]

If you want to see a movie that has phenomenal acting, great visuals, but an overstuffed, convoluted plot, with some of the worst sound mixing ever, this movie is for you. There is so much greatness here, that its negatives ultimately sour the experience, causing it to be one of Nolan's weakest films ever. Thankfully it is no where near as bad as Insomnia, but it is almost on the same level as The Dark Knight Rises when it comes to disappointment. There was no need for this movie to be 3 hours long, in fact, it would have been fine right at 2. I just don't understand why these filmmakers these days seem to think they have to make their movies as long as possible when the movie clearly feels bloated just to increase the running time. Visually, the movie is stunning. However, it tends to spend a lot of time shoving the same side shots of the space ship down our throats to the point that those shots no longer look appealing after two hours. Regardless, the biggest atrocity this movie holds is in the sound mixing department. The music is so overbearing and loud that it muddles out a lot of the dialog and sound effects. In fact, this is another issue The Dark Knight Rises suffered from and I do not understand why WB feels the need to do this on a constant basis. Overall, I can not go into any more detail without spoilers, but I will say this, TARS was the best character in the movie and he was a freaking robot. I am not sure what I exactly want to give this movie, so I'm going to just say it is somewhere between a 6-7/10 stars.

[tbeasley]

Interstellar was my first IMAX experience and it was fantastic. I was really blown away by it. I'll definitely be seeing it again but it might just replace The Prestige as my favorite Nolan film. On a sheer technical level the film looks and sounds extraordinary. I've already seen some comments about how it's too sentimental in a Spielbergian kind of way, but like Spielberg it never feels hokey or disingenuous, so I don't see how that's too harsh a criticism. While your mileage may vary in that department, in terms of world building and practically driven special effects, Interstellar towers above its contemporaries. Nolan has truly outdone himself.

[mr.negativity]

They talked about the experience of making the film, how the project came together, how much the script change once Nolan replaced Steven Spielberg as director, writing a science fiction movie with so much hope, working in the space suits, space exploration, if there were any deleted scenes, the involvement of NASA, and so much more.

[MouthForWar]

I'll be honest, I was a little underwhelmed. Visually, it was gorgeous, but the story didn't pull me in as much. I thought (like most Nolan films) it took a bit too long to get going. And I thought it just got a little silly at the end. I think the twist and the last 15-20 minutes was a little too cheesy in a very overly sentimental Spielbergian way. But Spielberg knows how to pull it off a little better than Nolan. It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't overly explained as much as it was. The whole tessaract sequence was just way too on the nose. I know people like to compare Nolan to Kubrick, but Kubrick had a strength with ambiguity. Nolan has a weakness of over explaining everything, and once they lay out what's going on point blank, it took away some of the imagination for me. The most accurate criticism I've heard of the last act was "Its like Nolan made a movie about what happens during the last 15 minutes of 2001"- But what made that part of 2001 was NOT knowing exactly what it all was.

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie. Its not nearly as sloppy or poorly constructed as Dark Knight Rises, but I don't think its as entertaining.

I enjoyed it, but its definitely lower on the totem pole in Nolan's filmography for me. I'd give it a 3.5/5. I liked it for sure, but I was expecting to be blown away and I simply wasn't.

Then there are some nitpicks I have with the storytelling. Some things that just didn't make sense. First off, when they are on the water planet, they say that an hour there is equal to something like 10 years, but Nolan films the whole thing like they are there for like 10 minutes. He doesn't do anything to show any passing of time. It is one sequence and I don't see why they would have been there long enough for their friend in the ship to age 23 years.

Also, Nolan has a real weakness when it comes to the story, especially at the end. wtf?

I dunno, this is the first time ever that a Nolan film won't end up in my year end top 5... which is kind of depressing in a way. It was good but I just couldn't fall in love with it, and that's kind of what i was expecting. Which is partly my fault, I know. I'd still take a ton of ambitious and original sci fi films like Interstellar than a constant string of middle of the road "passable" films (like Thor 2 or something).

[canofhumdingers]

Saw it last night. Loved it. It was a fantastic return to hard scifi space exploration in the vein of 2001, Silent Running, the beginning of Planet of the Apes, etc. I LOVED the production design and the incredible robots. If I had any complaints it would be that at times the way the story was told felt too derivative of some of the films that clearly inspired it.

Mouth, on the water planet there is dialogue (from the robot) that clearly states the engines are waterlogged b/c of her mistake and they have to wait an hour or two for them to drain. McConnaughey asks Hathaway how much time that will cost them and she answers "decades". He may not give us the FEELING of time passage in that sequence but it is made clear to the audience what is happening and then we are shown the result once they get back off the planet. I don't think this scene was an issue because it didn't really handle time in a different fashion than the rest of the film. There are numerous times throughout the movie where huge chunks of time pass without the audience "feeling" it but rather being told or shown the results of it. I think this was done on purpose because that would be how McConnaughey's character experienced his journey and it was a way to convey to the audience how that must feel. For me it was very effective. This movie had a stronger impact on me than any other film has in years.

[Dr Kain]

I agree with a lot of what you say MFW, but yeah, they are told it will take an hour for the engines to dry out so they can leave. It just goes by way too quick, which is actually where I thought even The Dark Knight Rises failed in. There is no sense for the passage of time, we are just expected to know that four months have passed since Bane took over. Subtitles or something to make it feel like time has gone by would have helped a lot.

I also agree that this is the first Nolan movie that will not end up in my top 5 for the year.

[canofhumdingers]

Ugh, you guys are totally not talking about this film enough! I didn't talk about the score in my last post. It was AWESOME! I loved the tremendously effective use of the organ. I know some people complained about it overpowering some dialogue but I felt those complaints were overblown. I read about that issue prior to seeing the movie, so I was cognizant of it while watching and I can only remember once in the entire three hours where I missed a line of dialogue that seemed important (i.e. Not some inconsequential line during an intense action scene with lots of noise and stuff) because the music or sound effects drowned it out.

[Dr Kain]

[canofhumdingers]

That's not even close to what I said. I can only remember once in the whole movie where I couldn't understand what was said. I don't even remember what scene it was, I just remember it happened and it was something I was expecting to be more of an issue based on complaints I had read prior to seeing the movie myself. But my experience was that the sound mixing was not nearly as bad as I feared it might be and I had very little trouble hearing the dialogue.

[jellydonut25]

[Rodanex]

I also thought the music was way too loud....glad I'm not the only one that noticed that.

Besides that, I thought the movie was pretty good.

[canofhumdingers]

So since the last true 70mm film IMAX theater in Houston converted to all digital, I didn't think I'd have the chance to see this the way I really wanted to. But I just found out I'll be traveling for work later this week and will be in a place that's still showing it in 15/70 IMAX!! I am SOOOOO pumped!

[Destroysall]

Saw this movie twice. Overall, one of my favorites this year.

[Rodanex]

One thing I was a little confused about was the whole bit about Michael Caine working on some kind of gravity theory. Was the theory related to generating artificial gravity, without a spinning spaceship?

[Dr Kain]