In a slight change of format, I present to you a "review" of Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) in a pros & cons fashion.
PROS
-Matthew McCounaghey is great as the lead. Stellar, one might say. Tee-hee.
-Very good bit parts thanks to Michael Caine and John Lithgow.
-His relationship with his daughter pretty much takes up the first hour of the movie and it builds up into a strong theme that carries pretty much the rest of the film.
-Following from that, I'm pretty sure this is Chris Nolan's most humane movie ever made. A good point of contrast is the token relationship Inception's protagonist has with his kids, and how his actions are motivated by his will to get back to them. Whereas we never really care that much for them - we never learn anything about them or spend any time with them - we spend enough time with Cooper and Murph to think of them as characters rather than a protagonist and his endgame.
-Nolan is a very good director when it comes to creating suspense and drama out complex juxtaposition. Just look at that one scene in which he juggles no less than 5 different sequences spread across different planets, time zones and timelines, all to great effect. It's all hot air once you look back but you need to be that good to pull it off then and there.
-The photography, sound design and score are beautiful, of course. This leads to...
CONS
-The photography, sound design and score riff off 2001: A Space Odyssey. Everything from the subject matter of interdimensional travel to the monolyth-like robots that assist the mission to the trippy first-person journey through a spacetime rift (complete with the traveler's haunting reaction stills) to the symphonic crescendo ala Thus Spoke Zarathustra that seems to end most of the "sublime" scenes.
-Anne Hathaway puts me off. I don't know what to tell you folks. She shows up on the screen and my mind goes "ugh".
-Is it just me, or did none of the characters give a fuck about certain characters that got killed along the way?
-The ending is incredibly disappointing on two counts: both in concluding the premise of man's emigration to outer space, as well as Coop and Murph's relationship. Not that we don't get closure on both counts, somehow, but it's an incredibly disappointing kind of closure.
-Also, for all the "hard science" the movie boasts to be about, towards the end it throws "the power of love" into a mathematical equation. Come the fuck on.
-William Devane shows up in one shot, says his one line and then vanishes from the rest of the movie. No name, no intro, no build-up of any kind - didn't get it. Topher Grace shows up for the final 30 minutes in another inexplicable role, playing a character with no name or context. Throughout the movie you get the feeling a lot of material was cut out, and snippets of characters and subplots have been poorly trimmed.
Overall it's a good movie, if only because it's taking many of its cues from an excellent one, and while it's nowhere near as ambitious and profound as it builds itself to be, its story remains endearing thanks to its human element and spectacular presentation and execution.
PROS
-Matthew McCounaghey is great as the lead. Stellar, one might say. Tee-hee.
-Very good bit parts thanks to Michael Caine and John Lithgow.
-His relationship with his daughter pretty much takes up the first hour of the movie and it builds up into a strong theme that carries pretty much the rest of the film.
-Following from that, I'm pretty sure this is Chris Nolan's most humane movie ever made. A good point of contrast is the token relationship Inception's protagonist has with his kids, and how his actions are motivated by his will to get back to them. Whereas we never really care that much for them - we never learn anything about them or spend any time with them - we spend enough time with Cooper and Murph to think of them as characters rather than a protagonist and his endgame.
-Nolan is a very good director when it comes to creating suspense and drama out complex juxtaposition. Just look at that one scene in which he juggles no less than 5 different sequences spread across different planets, time zones and timelines, all to great effect. It's all hot air once you look back but you need to be that good to pull it off then and there.
-The photography, sound design and score are beautiful, of course. This leads to...
CONS
-The photography, sound design and score riff off 2001: A Space Odyssey. Everything from the subject matter of interdimensional travel to the monolyth-like robots that assist the mission to the trippy first-person journey through a spacetime rift (complete with the traveler's haunting reaction stills) to the symphonic crescendo ala Thus Spoke Zarathustra that seems to end most of the "sublime" scenes.
-Anne Hathaway puts me off. I don't know what to tell you folks. She shows up on the screen and my mind goes "ugh".
-Is it just me, or did none of the characters give a fuck about certain characters that got killed along the way?
-The ending is incredibly disappointing on two counts: both in concluding the premise of man's emigration to outer space, as well as Coop and Murph's relationship. Not that we don't get closure on both counts, somehow, but it's an incredibly disappointing kind of closure.
-Also, for all the "hard science" the movie boasts to be about, towards the end it throws "the power of love" into a mathematical equation. Come the fuck on.
-William Devane shows up in one shot, says his one line and then vanishes from the rest of the movie. No name, no intro, no build-up of any kind - didn't get it. Topher Grace shows up for the final 30 minutes in another inexplicable role, playing a character with no name or context. Throughout the movie you get the feeling a lot of material was cut out, and snippets of characters and subplots have been poorly trimmed.
Overall it's a good movie, if only because it's taking many of its cues from an excellent one, and while it's nowhere near as ambitious and profound as it builds itself to be, its story remains endearing thanks to its human element and spectacular presentation and execution.
