Interstellar - Christopher Nolan Directing - Nov 2014

[Fury4k]

Well the best way would have been for McConaughey to explain it to his kids.

[Mr Hatfield]

but it was bollocks though

[K]

You have got to be joking!

It's not exactly fair to compare them given that they're films that are clearly going for completely different end results, but given the choice between watching Interstellar and watching Event Horizon, I'd watch Event Horizon any day of the week.

[Camel]

The first half of Event Horizon is excellent.

[JoeK]

The first half of Event Horizon is excellent.

"DO YOU SEEEEEEEE?"

[catinthehat]

I watched it again tonight. Not seen it since the cinema (loved it then), and thought it was even better this time. Yeah, it's got a few dodgy moments, and the last 20 minutes really need you to just go with it, but fucking hell it's a great film.

Looking forward to making my way through the special features on the blu-ray this weekend.

[Alex W.]

This really harks back to classic Clarke-esque big space stories, complete with a somewhat iffy grasp of this thing you humans call emotion. It didn't need to be more than two and a half hours long but considering it's Nolan, it came out downright efficient. I'd agree that a lot of the first act exposition didn't need to be in there - it's not worth a few hundred thousand dollars and two minutes to explain why the space portal is round - but past that it moves along nicely.

It goes without saying that the production design was flawless, and I have a new entry in my list of top ten movie robots for the first time in an age.

[Space Renegade Ulala]

It's great how when TARS first shows up you're all "what the fuck is that shit, why would you even..." and by the end you're all "fuck yeah, I wanna hang out with TARS and CASE, best bots"

[Bazjam]

This is a film that definately gets better with repeat viewings. I liked it a lot at the cinema, but couldn't really get on with the last 20 minuites. But watching it again at home with the knowledge of where it's heading, you go along with it a lot more. I now absolutely love it. For me Nolan is now up there with Gilliam, Del Toro, Kubrick and Scorsese amongst my favourite directors.

[Sabreman]

...steady on there...

[Alex W.]

Given that the movie's kind of a pastiche of old-school SF films, and also a discussion of how we've lost that love of space exploration, I really liked...

...that in the ending, the guy born 40 years too early to be a space explorer is racing off in a hijacked ship with is wisecracking robot buddy to rescue a marooned scientist from a space colony. It's not a film that calls out for sequels, but you can have a lot of fun picturing how that world plays out.

[Bazjam]

...steady on there...

Nah, love the guy. For Inception alone I'd view him as a great director. Throw in the Dark Knight films, The Prestige and this one, and he's on one hell of a run. Plus his films feel totally unique being big budget blockbusters that aim for the head as much as the heart.

[Guest]

just finished my first viewing. Far too long and it was obvious what was coming. Saying that I did enjoy it up to a point (that point being the waking of one Matt Damon) and was incredulous by the end.

[Weavus]

I thought it was awful from start to finish and was looking forward it to ending from about 20 minutes in. It's the film equivalent of Marmite.

[Harsin]

Plus his films feel totally unique being big budget blockbusters that aim for the head as much as the heart.

Dark Knight Rises missed both by a wide margin and ended up hitting the spleen or something.

[Guest]

Inception and The Dark Knight are undeniably excellent.

[Space Renegade Ulala]

Dark Knight Rises missed both by a wide margin and ended up hitting the spleen or something.

Nah it's a hot mess but it owns.

[Bazjam]

I love Dark Knight Rises. I know it's another film that people have daggers out for, but for me it's a great end to the trilogy. Like Interstellar it gets better with repeat viewings. Plus, like Inception, I think it has impeccable pacing.

[Alex W.]

TDKR is many things but it is not well paced. I really enjoyed it but I wanted it to just end by the fifth hour, and if it improved on repeat viewings it's because I knew its wonky rhythm already. Loads wrong with it structurally.

[SpagMasterSwift]

Really enjoyed this, I'm more into the fiction side than the science so was happy to go along with it all and enjoy the father/daughter story. The only thing that niggles at me is

how did they get off the planets in the dropships so easily when they need rockets to get off Earth? Wasn't one of the planets meant to have stronger gravity than Earth too? Or were the ships attached to the mothership just more powerful? It doesn't really matter when you have some visually realised 5th dimension time bookshelf in your film, but still...

Anyway, really good stuff.

[Alex W.]

It took me a while, but I think there are three ships - one big one that takes off on the rocket and two little shuttles. I think the shuttles are the only ones that land. Could be wrong though.

[Commander Jameson]

I think they use the big rocket on Earth to save on fuel for the smaller ship. The smaller ships can escape from planets but at a big fuel cost.

[Glasgowchivas]

I really enjoyed it and totally bought into the whole premise but like most Nolan films, once you start to think about it afterward, it's flaws become all too apparent and it's significantly lessened.

There's tons of stuff to enjoy in 'Interstellar'; I loved the realism (within reason) of it all, the mind-bending, time-bending of relative space travel and McCouaghy really sold me on the uneasy mix of a man who's desperate to escape his life on earth and being horrified by the reality of watching his kids lives flash past his eyes.

But it's also got problems. The son and his lack of importance to anything. The constant undercutting of tension by switching back to the (pretty dull) Earth-bound storyline. The sudden reveal of "my boyfriend's on an alien planet" and the "love is a unit of measurement" speech.

I loved the whole 2001/black hole/library bit; it was properly awe inspiring, even if it was the obvious end point when the "ghost" was mentioned in the film's first minute. The only bit that did make me go "Ahhh, righ!" was when we saw that it was McCounaghy who "reached out" to Hathaway when they first went through the wormhole.

To date, I still think that Nolan's best film is 'The Prestige.'

[Alex W.]

the "love is a unit of measurement" speech.

That was so, so bad.

[rumblecat]

But it was also kind of amazing because it came out of nowhere. It was a genuinely insane bit of loopy dialogue which was bordering on total campness, it's the sort of thing you can imagine being spouted in a fifties sci fi film like Queen of Outer Space - "Love is an artefact from a higher dimension we can't perceive. Now kiss me, you fool..!"

Like there's a fairly straightforward boring version of Interstellar, the Gravity kind of version, that could have existed, and I quite like the fact the film ended up being so weird in places, and sometimes not intentionally. Like the bookcase stuff isn't really weird because it quite thought out, but everything that happens in the last ten minutes or so is actually very odd and bizarre (in an enjoyable way) when you stop to think about it for more than a millisecond.

[Pob]

That was so, so bad.

I was hoping once she'd finished that speech, McConaughey would look at her for a second, then silently pull a lever which sucked her out of an airlock.

[Sabreman]

I kind of liked that speech, even though I don't buy it. It's the desperation of the moment that's important.

[Alex W.]

I see what it was meant to be doing emotionally, but nobody talks like that. Fits with the crusty old SF vibe though.

[superfunk]

Why did all of his descendants not at least want to say hi? They looked at him like he was a child murderer.

[Alex W.]

I think it would've been hard to squeeze that in without slowing down the pace of the ending or taking away from the sense that Murph is remembered as a much more important figure than he was. It'd play out differently in a novel I think.