Interstellar - Christopher Nolan

From Grantland:

Some pluses:

Everybody loves space. That doesn’t make you unique. There’s not a human being alive who can stare up into the night sky, blanketing himself in the never-ending obsidian quilt of shimmering moons and twinkling stars, and then say, “I prefer the mundane certainty of this decrepit, slowly dying prison planet to the infinite and unknowable wonder of what lies beyond what I can see with the naked eye.” It just doesn’t happen.

Some minuses:

There is a lot of dust in this movie. There are daylight-swallowing dust clouds rolling through the fields and dust eddies gently floating through sunbeams in the house. There is dust on the bookshelves, dust falling in interesting patterns on the floor, dust slowly choking out an entire planet. This movie might be the biggest moment dust has ever had.

http://grantland.com/hollywood-pros...sumers-decision-making-guide-to-interstellar/

 

A big, lovable, metaphysical, mess of a movie and, without doubt, the worst dialog mix in any major release I've ever seen. This is a very "talky" movie and critical parts of the explanations, such as they were, about the obtuse goings on, are lost. From what I've heard, this is common around the globe and not just a result of my fer ****e ears.

 

Here in Dallas, this Wednesday, the movie just stopped at about the 2 hr mark. Manager came out and said it was the first time they had used this projector and they'd have it up and running in a few minutes and, they did. Plus, we got a free pass. A search of IMDB shows there have been many technical malfunctions worldwide showing the film.

 

Nothing wrong with a break at the two hour point I just watched Lawrence of Arabia on Blu-ray the other day and applauded the fact that they used to give us intermissions so that we wouldn't become locked with rigor mortis in our seats

 

This I will give you! There were points where Hans Zimmer's score completely obliterated the dialogue! I didn't know if that was intentional or not. I thought he was doing a Paul Thomas Anderson thing! And I didn't understand a freaking thing that Michael Caine said in his bed

 

Just got back from seeing it on a 70mm IMAX presentation. Just like the first Batman, 80% great but the story lost me at one point. I do not buy some things that happen. The major plot resolutions left me a little flat. 4 stars for effort, 4 stars for visuals, and 3 stars overall.

Better Sci Fi movies: Gravity, Sunshine, Contact, Gataca

 

If Contact was better, then I'm not holding out much hope. Contact failed on just about every level.

 

Not on every level. It was quite interesting until the end, in a similar way that 2010 failed to deliver.

 

God, I couldn't disagree more. I loved Contact, though it's a greatly-simplified version of the novel. I thought it was a very warm-hearted, interesting, thoughtful film. There are aspects about the film that were flawed -- I never bought the romance between Jodi Foster and Matthew McConaughey (as one example) -- but the level of acting in the film was terrific, the direction was fantastic, the effects were great, and all the technical aspects were fine.

2010 I really hated, and I worked on that one. Peter Hyams is a nutcase.

As to Interstellar: here's an article complaining about sound problems with the dialogue being too low and getting overwhelmed by the music and effects...

http://www.slashfilm.com/interstellar-sound-issues/

 

In regards to sound, I would agree on some scenes it was hard to hear the dialog. A couple of times during the movie when the spaceship was rumbling, some character would say something that I could tell was important, but I had no idea what they said. This movie is about the visuals and the overriding story arc. It is not a masterpiece so missing a line here or there does not matter.

I saw the movie at the flagship IMAX at Navy Pier in Chicago. This is a great screen at 60' x 85' and the seating is at a steep incline (you can also buy seats online and reserve the specific seat you want like on an airplane). There was one scene where the sound really startled me. I think it was just a scene with something disengaging or breaking off the spaceship, but I jumped out of my seat like it was a "gotcha" scene in a horror movie. I can't remember ever doing that before.

 

Wow. And I thought the sound issues were due to some technical failure at my local theater or that the italian version had some dubbing problems and was botched. Still, we're talking about 2 minutes out of 169

Spoiler: Spoiler

Must have been the scene where the airlock of the Endurance is depressurized and Matt Damon's character is killed. The sound of that explosion was huge.

 

I saw it yesterday and I absolutely loved it. There were some weak dialog moments but most of the movie I found to be awesome. Don't listen to somebody say "it's better/not better than x movie" because I'm sure everyone will have a different reaction to it.

It is almost like a combination of 2001 and Inception, so if you liked those movies, I think you're in for a treat.

 

Interesting from that article:

We’ll start with my personal experience. I saw Interstellar at the TCL Chinese Theater IMAX on opening night, 8 p.m. November 4. It was a sold out show; an employee greeted the crowd by explaining how Nolan himself had been watching every early screening in this very theater to make sure this was the best place to show his full vision for Interstellar. According to the man introducing the screening, IMAX had spent $600,000 to upgrade the theater for the film, including bringing in a brand new film projector just for this movie.

Good! Maybe I'll see it there now. When I drove an hour there to watch "Gravity", the damn projector was out of focus! I hope the Chinese keeps the new projector.

 

Peter Rosenthal's review at The Onion. Don't you hate it when . . .

http://www.theonion.com/video/the-onion-reviews-interstellar,37387/

 

I just got back from the movie and I enjoyed it but I also thought the finale could've been better. Not really a negative since I kind of predicted what ending would happen. And speaking of the predictions, I was able to predict almost every damn thing in the movie before they even happened in the movie:

Spoiler: spoiler

1) The "Ghost" in the girl's room.....I predicted early on who it would be and I was right.
2) After finding out Matt Damon was "crazy", I knew some sort of fight would break out and he would jeopardize their mission (Plan A).
3) Using the Black Hole to get back home.
4) Matthew McConaughey would go back to find Anne Hathaway and they would be some sort of Adam and Eve on the new world.

There were a handful of other things in the movie that were also predictable, but those four above stood out to me.

I do appreciate that they got the science correct (for the most part) about relativity, gravity, black holes, wormholes, etc. Many science fiction movies and TV programs, recently, have either gotten the science wrong or just brushed away the scientific explanations.

By the way, I saw this in a normal screening and there were no sound issues at the normal screening. So I can't comment about the sound at an IMAX screening.

Even though I enjoyed the movie, I don't think it is the type of movie I would want to watch over and over, like I do for many other movies.


Definitely the bright spot was the acting by Matthew McConaughey and the little girl who played his 10-year old daughter. Jessica Chastain, who played the grown-up daughter, also did a nice job.


Edit: I forgot, one thing did irk me. Either I missed it or they didn't tell why the Earth was dying. Sure, there was a world-wide Dust Bowl happening over many years, but they really never said why (unless I missed it.) I assume it was something to do with Sun affecting the Earth's magnetic field or something affecting Earth's gravity.

 

I know some really dislike Contact, but I thought it was beautiful. So much so that I own the movie. I think it's paced beautifully, very thoughtful and serene. I think people are used to alien-associated movies being about an aggressive, invasive species, but this was more about hope for the future, which is a very Sagan-y type of thing. My wife and I went with a friend of mine and her husband and they were bored out of their mind, she being both audibly (afterward) and visibly (during the movie) displeased. It should come as no surprise to me that a few years later our friendship dissolved due to just plain not agreeing about much of anything anymore.

 

I too enjoyed Contact. After seeing the movie, it actually gave me the incentive to go out and buy the novel on the same day. I then proceeded to read the entire novel in one sitting. Very rarely does a movie make me want to read the novel it is based on. Usually it is the other way around for me.....Read a novel, then see the movie.

 

I love Contact and never got the hate some have for it. I think people were maybe expecting Independence Day action?

 

I also love Contact. "Why buy one when you can get two at twice the price"?

Independence Day, not so much.

 

I'm hoping to see this tomorrow in 70mm IMAX downtown.

 

I'm only skimming this thread right now because I'm really looking forward to this picture and I am very much spoilerphobic. Has anyone posted a list of where one can find 70mm IMAX screenings? My favorite IMAX is no longer showing Hollywood pics.

 

I see that my comment has brought a lot of discussion about Contact out.
I now understand that a lot of people like it. It just never appealed to me. I was not expecting a shoot-em-up or violent alien type movie. I like movies with a storyline and a bit more cerebral. I just never thought that Contact pulled it off well. In short, I had a hard time actually believing the characters and getting into the story. Jodie Foster was about as stiff in this movie as I've ever seen her. She's a very good actress and I'm a fan of Jodie and Sci Fi, but I thought this was among the worst performances of her career going back to Freaky Friday.

I'm not trying to argue that it wasn't a good movie, it seems like a lot of people like it. Just trying to explain why it didn't satisfy me personally.
Back to the topic at hand - Interstellar sounds like it could be good. I'm hoping it is.

 

After thinking more about this, the cause of the "Dust Bowl" over those many years was mentioned in the movie, but I had forgotten since it was brushed over:

Spoiler

A blight was affecting various crops over many years and they had to burn away the diseased crops, leaving the soil barren (I do remember Michael Caine saying something about blight and that corn was the "last" crop being affected. Eventually growing corn would be impossible.) But, I am still irked about them not mentioning the underlying cause of the blight and why it couldn't be contained, why it came back every growing season, and how it spread world-wide.

 

Oh, sure, for all the 70mm prints that are going to be coming out in the years to come...

 

here's the list

http://www.imax.com/community/blog/advance-tickets-for-interstellar-on-sale-now/