INTERSTELLAR (2014) - Christopher Nolan

[AndyDursin]

Sounds like a breakthrough for Nolan in many respects...certainly big, big hype now going in after reading a review like this one.

....An exhilarating slalom through the wormholes of Christopher Nolan’s vast imagination that is at once a science-geek fever dream and a formidable consideration of what makes us human. As visually and conceptually audacious as anything Nolan has yet done, the director’s ninth feature also proves more emotionally accessible than his coolly cerebral thrillers and Batman movies, touching on such eternal themes as the sacrifices parents make for their children (and vice versa) and the world we will leave for the next generation to inherit. An enormous undertaking that, like all the director’s best work, manages to feel handcrafted and intensely personal, “Interstellar” reaffirms Nolan as the premier big-canvas storyteller of his generation, more than earning its place alongside “The Wizard of Oz,” “2001,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Gravity” in the canon of Hollywood’s visionary sci-fi head trips.

http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/fi ... 201338475/

[Monterey Jack]

Ugh, another 165-minute bladder-burster from Nolan.

[AndyDursin]

Maybe this one will be worth it. INCEPTION wasn't. This sounds like it's a lot more promising than that, admittedly.

[sprocket]

Ah, the hype .. oh, the HYPE!

You have to wait six months after a film is out to find out if it is any good these days.

[Monterey Jack]

Hey Nolan, if you have so much clout, how about an INTERMISSION for your long-assed movies so I can take a piss halfway through?

[AndyDursin]

Well, it certainly looks like Variety's rave review is an outlier, much like their effuse praise of SUPERMAN RETURNS.

Lots of mixed reviews coming in, many citing the film's pretentiousness and total lack of humor (now THERE'S a surprise!).

Maybe folks are finally figuring out Nolan's weaknesses, which IMO have always been there even if most critics have heaped praise on some of his films where they didn't deserve it (MEMENTO, THE PRESTIGE and INCEPTION in particular).

[AndyDursin]

Non spoiler review --

http://andyfilm.com/2014/11/06/11-11-14 ... -releases/

I have to add the audio was unbelievable -- downright incoherent at times, and I know it wasn't just my theater because there are comments all over the web from reviewers and audience members who are complaining about the same thing. To wit:

From Leonard Maltin's review:

Incidentally, I was delighted to be able to see the film at the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, but dismayed that so much of the dialogue was unintelligible, in scenes both quiet and loud. I don’t know if this was a matter of acoustics or sound mixing, but it was maddening, to say the least."

and from Mick LaSalle --

"But yes, the sound mix is odd. The music/background noise is very loud and the dialogue is obscured. I just assumed it was an IMAX problem, but the article says it might not be. This problem occurred intermittently, but it was most apparent (or at least more damaging) in a critical scene between Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine. He reveals some enormous piece of information . . . but the sound was too muddy to hear him clearly. Only by paying attention to what other characters say later was it possible to figure out what he was talking about.

At the same time, every time Anne Hathaway went into a speech the sound was completely clear, which also could be characterized as a problem with the mix."

http://blog.sfgate.com/mlasalle/2014/11 ... -problems/

[mkaroly]

LOL!! I love the Anne Hathaway quote...for whatever reason, she irritates me to no end.

[jkholm]

I am THIS close to finding a review with spoilers before I decide to see it. Is this one of those movies that will be ruined if you know the ending? As it is, all I can do now is think of all the ways a movie like this could end that would be dissatisfying, like younger characters meeting older versions of themselves or characters meeting "alternate universe" versions of themselves.

[AndyDursin]

There's fortunately nothing that drastic -- what there is in terms of a "twist" is an explanation for something that happens early in the film...that's really not very difficult to guess what's going to happen when you see it. Nolan goes about revealing it in a very Shyamalan like way -- but it's really not that shocking a story development. There's no "mind blowing twist" like it's all in someone's mind or something (hope that's not a spoiler!).

I actually LIKED where the story went -- it's Nolan's one-note handling of the story and the fact that Zimmer's music does nothing dramatically to enhance it that's the problem.

I'd talk about the "star cameo" some more but not until everyone else has seen it. Suffice to say there are issues with that too -- as in, you can figure out within a minute of seeing him what his function is going to be.

[mkaroly]

I plan on seeing it tomorrow or Tuesday - despite the press, I am looking forward to it (though I am NOT looking forward to Hathaway's and Zimmer's contributions).

[AndyDursin]

Surprisingly I had no problem with Anne in this one.

To me, THIS is the "Kubrickian sci-fi" film Spielberg should've made. He would have connected with the characters and Williams would've delivered something dramatically potent whereas Zimmer and Nolan keep everything on the same emotional flatline they always do.

[mkaroly]

Just got back from seeing the movie, and I did find it entertaining. I enjoyed the 2001-like atmosphere in some of the sequences; Anne Hathaway was not as bad as I imagined she would be. I did not feel that the film was emotionally sterile; I did feel emotional where Copper and Murph were concerned - I thought that came across well. But a little more development of relationships would have been nice. The story and all the details are things I would need to chew on more by watching the film a couple more times. I can't digest all that stuff in one sitting.

The biggest weakness of the film for me was Hans Zimmer's music. He has not added a single thing positive to film music that has helped grow or evolve over the years, If anything, he has deadened it; his music is infantile, uncreative, unemotional, and (perhaps not all his fault) way too loud in the movie. His music RUINED scenes that could have been so much more because of his music. His music (if you can even call it that) added NOTHING to the movie (it was like a black hole that sucked the emotion out of everything), and I cannot for the life of me understand what people like about his music. How has his music contributed to film music as an art form? How has he contributed to the growth and evolution of film music? The answer IMO is that he hasn't. In my opinion, he is the biggest charlatan on the planet - and people who keep paying him to create these "masterpieces" are the ones who ultimately look the most foolish for buying in to his sales pitch. What a piece of garbage. I'm just sick of what I consider to be banal dreck that passes for "music" in films nowadays, thanks in large part to HZ.

If this film had been made by Spielberg (to address Andy's point), I think people would be complaining that it contained too many Spielberg-isms and didn't go far enough. Yes, the subject material would, in the hands of Spielberg, be much more "emotional"...actually, I imagine that he would have developed the Cooper/Brandt relationship much more, and that would have worked well as a positive in the film (and been on par with his family idioms). But ultimately, at this stage in Spielberg's career, I don't know if he would be able to take the material and make a well-balanced film out of it without too much sentimentality. AI is about as far as he can go.

The "star cameo" - I don't know why it's so hush-hush...am I missing something on that? Or maybe it was the wrong star that I was thinking of.

Overall it was a decent film and worth watching. I'd give it an 8/10, with one full point deducted for the mess that is Zimmer's unwelcome noise.

[AndyDursin]

It's actually less a cameo than a supporting role they kept under wraps (the doctor on the planet they encounter)

[DavidBanner]

I just saw the movie this past week, and at the risk of stirring the pot, I greatly enjoyed both the movie and Zimmer's score for it.

For me, the movie picks up conceptually where Inception left off - in terms of relative passage of time and in terms of scope. There are certainly logical and scientific lapses in the narrative, but the emotional whole of the movie worked fairly well for me. It's mostly a serious movie, but there are still plenty of bits of humor - between Cooper's confrontation with the school administrators to nearly all the dialogue with TARS. It's quite a beautiful film and I'm glad I saw it.

I also appreciated the score, which I realize will be a minority report here. The use of the pipe organ was interesting to me, particularly in the two big "blast off" moments. Yes, they're bombastic, but for me they worked quite well. I went ahead and purchased the soundtrack for that reason, and it's the first one I've bought since Gravity last year. There were multiple motifs that worked for me, and most films I see these days don't even have that anymore. I don't know if anyone else caught this, but several moments with the pipe organ really called up memories of John Carpenter scores from the 80s. (Particularly Christine)

And while I'm on the subject of irritating people about movie music, I'll say again that I've appreciated the work of Ramin Djawadi for "Game of Thrones" - as with the Giacchino scores for "Lost", there are multiple consistent motifs that play out very nicely over time. I cite the consistent use of "Rains of Castemeyre" for a Lannister theme, as well as the motifs heard for Stannis and for Theon's fall. Again, there's plenty of bombast, but Djawadi's main title theme is the first one I've heard people humming out loud in public in a long time.