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Interstellar - Christopher Nolan Directing - Nov 2014

FishyFish

By FishyFish,
in Film, TV & Radio

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shesaid

shesaid

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Posted

So, Michael Caine tells them they chose

the 12 planet explorers specifically because they had no earthly attachments, yet Anne Hathaway is in love with one of them and decides to stalk him across a fifth dimension? How bad is she that this Dr Edmunds guy decided he'd rather take his chances with an alien planet than stick around? :lol:

I think both Hathaway and Chastain were terribly miscast - this is basically a proto-postapocalyptic world where humanity is surviving in enclaves for a generation, production has reverted to primary activities (food production), and yet we have these sophisticated looking people in the mix? In what world does someone who looks like McConaughey

who abandons his daughter and lets her be raised by a weirdo produce a rocket scientist that looks like a socialite

? Same goes for

hairgel man in the dapper suit (who died on the water planet).

It doesn't match the world they live in, it's incongruous.

Still, despite a lot of minor continuity niggles (e.g.

never mind the timeline between Earth and the astronauts - I got lost in the timeline of the fight between Matt Damon and McConaughey - how did Damon get to his spaceshuttle so quickly, and weren't they fighting next to a ravine?

), this didn't irritate me enough to dislike the movie. It was alright.

Best thing was finding out that Cineworld is rescreening 2001: A Space Odyssey next week! :omg:

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InsideOutBoy

InsideOutBoy

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At least it wasn't boring, that's the best I can say. I dreaded going to see this because the trailers painted it as such a serious movie that went on for 3 hours. So right now I'm just relieved I didn't spend my time staring at the dark ceiling wishing it could end. It was all right.

But apart from that, nothing really to love about it at all. Like the soundtrack, I felt it was leading somewhere, but it never really delivered. A couple of interesting visual effects, a couple of nice sci-fi ideas. But at least it kept bouncing from one plot idea to the next that I couldn't get bored for long. Liked the utterly random Star Trek system with 3 completely wacky planets and a black hole.

The bookcase stuff reminded of Signs.

I guess it has the problem that certain other modern directors seem to have, they're clearly film buffs and they want you to know it. So great, he can impersonate Malick or Tarkovsky, or whatever. Well done. Now go make an original movie.

Christopher Nolan has got a pass before because there's this threat that if we don't let him continue doing big-budget plot movies that Michael Bay will take over the world, but that also gives you the Nolan problem - he's stuck in the middle. He makes blockbusters that hold back under their need to reference great directors, and art cinema held back by its unoriginal ideas and cliched action.

He's a pretty unsatisfying director but I'll probably be suckered into seeing his next movie because it will, again, have the promise of being Kubrick meets Spielberg. But it won't be because he ain't either of them. :mellow:

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InsideOutBoy

InsideOutBoy

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But if you were dreading going to see it, or any film for that matter, why go and see it? You make it sound like you were going to the dentist - something that may be unpleasant that you have to do every 6 months. And forced at that!

Because of hope it might be good. It's a big screen kind of movie, I've got to try and see it at the cinema, but it was a risk.

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Meh

Meh

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There's dumb, and there's braindead.

Interstellar was a big dumb try at being as clever as a mainstream audience would accept, in a film about black holes and time dilation and the like, and it's greatly entertaining - for the most part.

It all falls to shit once it's done smashing your eardrums around the time of THAT sequence - but I still couldn't bring myself to hate it.

Plus, I'm a total fucking man-whore for any movie with a great soundtrack.

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johnj

johnj

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The fact that some people are really struggling, and some people are able to hear every word in the same cinema (Waterloo Imax) makes me hope that there's an audiologist out there doing large scale attempts at testing for auditory processing disorders.

I thought it was pretty meh and agree with all the negative stuff in here, ludicrous plot holes (I don't mind a couple in sci fi as long as there's some consistency to the world), what I found amazing was for a film about space, how little I was made to feel my place in the world, I never once really got a sense of wonder, probably because we spent so long in extreme close up dialogue / man looking at chalk board / back of the envelope around orbint slingshot calculations. The robots dialogue was great and very funny, but there design was just....it didn't seem real and I'm sure falls into a thing that seems to be happening a lot in in Sci-fi (Exant is another one) of super advanced AI that would seem to far outstrip anything and everything around it and be out of step with general technological considerations. The Red Mars series books are good for doing this well I think as it considers what an AI that advanced imapct on society would be.

Did anyone else get reminded of Cactuar from final fantasy 7 by the robots?

And now at least we know what mcconaughey having sex sounds like.

And lots of it felt ALOT like Red Dward episodes, particularly the first planet they visit and what happens there. I'm aware Red Dwarf will have been riffing on something else, but still.

And Imax: Only good on the centre middle top rows. We were left of screen and low today and as someone else described, just felt like you were looking at it side on.

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Pob

Pob

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The Red Mars series books are good for doing this well I think as it considers what an AI that advanced imapct on society would be.

Which Mars book is that? I got about a third of the way through the third before I gave up but don't remember advanced AI coming into them much.

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lolly

lolly

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Nolan's sound mixer has dodgy hearing, I'd say. Such a weird thing to get 'realistic' about since there's FUCKING MUSIC PLAYING.

Nolan must love having conversations in busy canteens with over-loud background radio.

He pitches movie ideas to execs at Skrillex gigs.

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squirtle

squirtle

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Posted

the gravitational pull would distort space time causing your underpants to become logged with forces beyond your control. Hence you'd end up drifting up - and away - into space.

Would it? Did the worm hole exude massive gravitational forces? I remember them saying something about it disturbing m distorting space, but surely they could have put it a bit closer to earth...? Anyway, it's no big thing. Still really enjoyed it.
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rumblecat

rumblecat

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I loved it. Didn't expect to, but after a few minutes found myself settling in and really enjoying it. It's a big messy over-emotional blockbuster, full of some ridiculous plot contortions and moments, yet it also installed a total sense of awe in me in certain scenes, as well as hitting home emotionally at one point in a way I didn't expect.

It's the bastard child of Armageddon and 2001 - (especially in terms of Armageddon and it's blue collar hero being the only one who can save earth, yet he's made a promise to his daughter to come home etc etc...) - sometimes the characters are odd and unconvincing and feel like mouth-pieces for ideas, - but none of it really mattered because I loved nearly every minute of it, especially with the demented soundtrack pumping things up another level. One of those times the IMAX ticket price felt justified.

But the scene where he got back to the spaceship after the water planet to find out he'd been gone for 23 years... as he sat watching twenty-three years of his son's life, knowing it was gone forever and that he couldn't get it back... bloody hell, I was wiping away tears, it totally floored me.

I kind of think the ending is bullshit- the whole amazing coincidence that in the vastness of space his body managed to be picked up... his brief reuniting with his daughter where he didn't even bother acknowledge the rest of his family or ask about his son... felt like it was determined to stick in a happy ending where even Armageddon had the balls to make the father break the promise to his daughter...

And yet... I was fine with it. Him dying alone in space, knowing he had saved his daughter and the earth, even though he'd never see her again- probably would make it more realistic, at least in terms of the story world... but it feels a bit churlish to deny the poor guy a happy ending to his story.


I can totally see why it'd rub people up the wrong way, but it worked for me.

The comparisons with Armageddon and 2001 are probably a bit off- overall it reminded me mostly of an oddball 70s sci fi short story that you might find in some old tattered anthology.

Stuff like the bookshelf and him communicating with her. I can totally imagine reading that and frowning a little... thinking the story had gone way off tangent but okay... guess it works...

And him becoming the astronaut. Showing up at the base and basically being given the job in fifteen minutes- it's got a real pulpy feel to it. I mean, I don't know what the hell that speech Anne Hathaway had to give about love was about, I just know that it was a delightful loony little moment that should have probably been cut but I'm really glad it wasn't even though I hated every second of it. :)

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dunni

dunni

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Would it? Did the worm hole exude massive gravitational forces? I remember them saying something about it disturbing m distorting space, but surely they could have put it a bit closer to earth...? Anyway, it's no big thing. Still really enjoyed it.

Maybe they can't just stick a wormhole anywhere and they need to find an area with the right conditions to enable them to do it. So maybe the place they made it was the closest suitable spot to Earth.

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