Review of Interstellar (2014) by Ducknation — 11 Nov 2014

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is a awe-inspiring, powerful, and thought-provoking film that leans heavily on the human emotions. Now of course people will compare this to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A space Odyssey and why I do think Interstellar is an amazing film I don't think its on the level of Kubrick's 2001 but while others see this as a bad thing I don't and I wish that wasn't something people judge the film by.

Interstellar opens up in the near future on a dying earth which cannot sustain life for much longer with food becoming scarce and frequent major dust storms it's reminiscent of the 1930's Dust Bowl only worse. The film follows Cooper (McConaughey) a former NASA test pilot and engineer who is now a farmer that lives with his daughter Murph, his son Tom, and his father-in-law Donald. This is where we spend the first 30-40 minutes of the film that serves as the set-up for things come and while nothing really amazing happens here this is where the film builds on its emotion of love with Cooper and his daughter which ends up being the whole underlining theme of the movie. I can understand why people don't like the whole "love theme" of the movie but to those people I want to know if they even understand the movie itself?

Now after using a wormhole or should I say the sphere-hole the group which consists of Amelia (Anne Hathaway), Romilly (David Gyasi), Doyle (Wes Bentley), and TARS a walking, talking, pillar-like, robot thingy they find themselves searching 3 earth like planet to see which one is habitable. On the first planet they show off time relativity which was a really cool thing but this was where I had my first problem with the film, that being the pacing of it. Alright so basically for every hour they spend on this planet 7 years will have passed on earth and of course after something goes wrong on the planet some of the group gets stuck there for what seems like 20 minutes but in fact is like 4-5 hours so in total they end up spending almost 24 years on that planet and that's my problem with it at no point did it feel like they were on that planet for 4-5 hours maybe 2 or 3 hours at the most.

Now I wont go into much more into this as it will be giving away key parts of the story and I don't want to do that to a movie like this. I will say though that the ride doesn't end there and if anything it just keeps getting crazier and crazier for me the movie felt a lot like Inception by which I mean the different layers the film has. I'm not sure if others feel like this too I don't know maybe its just me but that does bring me to my next point. Just like Inception I feel like Interstellar will get a love it or hate it reception by this I mean since its like Inception people will end up finding its story too complex and hard to follow but for me I was able to follow this movie just fine even with all the scientific space talk it has.

Its visuals were jaw dropping to say the least I love how great Nolan gets his movies to look with filming on film rather than digital like most movies nowadays. Film gives you something different something digital has yet to offer it just sucks that more and more studios are trying to push digital because its cheaper and more efficient but its great that some of the best directors still around like Nolan, Scorsese, and Tarantino still love to use film lets hope it doesn't fade away with titans like them still using it. Now onto the Score by Hans Zimmer while I did absolutely love it I did feel like there was a bit too much of it being used in the film by that I mean I would have liked a few more silent scenes of the spaceship just spinning around with the earth in the background or when its just out in space something to give off that "there is no sound is space" feel but other than that the score was perfection. One more thing I was hoping for in the movie was that there were more scenes of stars, galaxies, and of just being in space in general, although the movie takes place in space a lot of it is spent either inside the ship or on a planet so you don't get that full immersed feeling but what we do get to see like the wormhole, the space-warp, and the few shots of planets, its just simply amazing to look at but I do understand that if they add those scenes it would only slow done a film that was already approaching 3 hours... still though I personally would have loved it.

The overall acting was solid but that's to be expected with so many great actors and with most already having worked with Nolan on previous films that wouldn't be an issue. Yes of course Matthew McConaughey does another great acting performance but thats nothing to be surprised by anymore the guy has seriously turned his acting career around but Mackenzie Foy's acting performance as young Murphy was something I was moved by she is quite a talented young actress for sure someone to keep an eye out for later roles.

Overall I give it a 9.