Interstellar

An early Oscar frontrunner which oddly failed down the stretch run of voting, Interstellar was still one of the most highly decorated films of the year, piling up at least twenty three awards and nominations worldwide. For the Oscars, it deserved much more than just a Visual Effects award. But, anyone who has followed Oscar voters, long ago learned that they are vulnerable to politics, favoritism, bias, and sometimes just lame brained choices. Google "Academy Awards Worst Oscars - Greatest Films", and you'll get a good idea how bad it has been.Directed by Christopher Nolan, the skill behind the outstanding effort of 2010's "Inception", this film starts with a more traditional storyline of space exploration, but, it ends up following the same riveting, sometimes exhilarating complexity that made Inception such a wild and fun ride of brain gymnastics. The difference is mostly in the time it takes to get there. Note: Nolan also co-wrote the screenplay with his brother, Jonathan Nolan.While Inception threw you into a kaleidoscope of sci fi scenarios head first that guaranteed you'd be ready for anything, Interstellar warms up slowly and methodically through deep space and personal drama until the last act, when it presents you with some real mind-bending concepts about time, alternate dimensions, life, and love, which is beautifully woven into the mix. It is quite stimulating.Watching the last scenes, as I started to finally figure things out, I found myself thinking how I have often daydreamed about these existential possibilities, and how complex the effort is just to contemplate metaphysics and quantum theories. Both Christopher, and Jonathan Nolan found a way to present these concepts wrapped in a very human story, that ultimately gushes forth to a dynamic conclusion.Nearly flawless direction, and outstanding visual imagery, and a great turn by Matthew McConaughey. This one deserves your time.

Another post-apocalyptic movie. Earth is in dire straights: drought, famine, climate change. Time to ditch home and search for a new one. In another galaxy. Chris Nolan ('Batman,' "Man of Steel') has penned and directed this new "Lost in Space" flick. Mathew McConaughey (a former NASA pilot) along with Anne Hathaway as Dr. Brand are sent into a worm hole to find a new planet to colonize.The science behind "Interstellar" seems iffy, though I buy moving through a worm hole. Black holes are another story (I don't find it plausible to survive infinite singularity nor be retrieved from it) however Einstein's theory of time and space seems correct. At least to my college understanding of it. McConaughy (as Cooper) is well, McConaughy. MacKenzie Foy (little 'Murph', Cooper's daughter) is good, as well as adult 'Murph' played by Jessica Chastain. Hathaway seems whiny. Or at least her character. (To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Anne.)The film is a bit sluggish in the beginning. Though it does set up the final act: you'll see why.The visual effects are excellent, as with most Nolan films. The outer space sequences are on par with "Gravity."The over-riding theme is love. Love can span time, space and dimensions.Though I'm still vexed by the very premise of the film: NASA and whomever can spend countless gazillions of dollars on transplanting human kind to another world, but can't solve problems on Earth. It's not like the sun is about to peter out.I guess we can all wait to terraform Mars as we ready to give up on Mother Earth.At any rate, "Interstellar" is a watchable film. Not great, but far better than a lot of heavily VFX driven action/science fiction films.

Spoilers in this review.... IMHO, the plot of the movie initially had a feel of the Blair-witch or Cloverfield style of "the viewer's own imagination is far greater than anything we can conjure up on page" style of writing, with even a spooky edge to it. Somewhere in the middle of the story, it still remained friendly and plausible with throwback feelings of 2001: A space Odyssey. But towards the end, it's as if the writers ran out of ideas and hastily tied the plot together in a crazy, far out there, hard to believe even for sci-fi sort of way. It became so abstract that I don't think it was even sci-fi anymore. There were also several plot holes left to fill in such as who were these benevolent aliens sent to help us. Also I was upset to see the little girl at the end get screwed around so much throughout the movie in that she had to spend her whole life without her father until her death bed, and then finally when she gets to see him during her last moments, it's only for a few minutes at best. I also don't think the girl would have maintained such a grudge her entire life, especially as she matured. As long as the movie was, the whole concept was just too compressed to have enough time for the emotions to take affect and bind the audience to the characters in the right way the writer intended so that the events had more impact as they unfolded. It was as if the writer tried to shove an entire show's complex, rich story arc (like Babylon 5) into a single 3 hour movie. But it is the most original thing I've watched in 20 years, so props overall.

Interstellar forces the viewer to think of the world differently. Not only we see the world only in 3 dimensions (at the most 4) but our view of the world is confined to our experiences on earth. Interstellar takes us out of the confines our own physical and intellectual limitations and puts us at a world that is not only scientifically feasible, but also beyond our wildest dreams. This movie celebrates the science of physics unlike any other film I have watched. The artificial intelligence (TARS and CASE) of this movie is quite well done. The movie correctly portrays AI as something far more capable but also incapable than humans. AI are far better at raw computations and memory. But humans are superior in terms of imagination and intuition. "Man couldn't create something like this" says TARS (AI). "No, man WILL create something like this in the future. This (teserract) is something that man created!" says Cooper (man). Perhaps the most ultimate form of intelligence is the combination of AI and man.Pros:1)Takes the viewer into another world which is not only scientifically accurate, but also probably exists.2)Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey did a wonderful acting job.3)Mind-blowing because the nature of scientific reality can be wilder than our wildest imagination.Cons:1)I could barely hear the dialog because the audio was either too faint or the characters were speaking importance sentences too fast.2)The end of humanity was too prosaic. I would think people all over the world would be killing, stealing, and lying to each other just to survive. I would think the military would the last bastion of human organization (not NASA) but the movie implies the military had been disbanded.

This thing redeems my faith that Hollywood is actually able to create a movie that properly shows explosions in the vacuum of space – accompanied by silence. Aside from that, I think this is a movie that is not made for the theater, but rather, for watching on your personal player. There are some many subtleties that are impossible to catch except for repeated viewings, that I think you need the ability to replay and jump. From that, you get more of the scope and beauty of the movie.That said, this is one very few that I think and ponder over and re-watch. Favorite implausible and yet compelling things:1) While the opening takes place in decades into the future, everybody is driving old cars.2) NASA is one of the governmental agencies you'd least expect to get wrapped up into an effort to scout for a new home for Mankind.3) Anne Hathaway...is scientist Amelia Brand -– and it works.4) Cooper mumbles through the whole movie (except for a few parts), but it works.5) Morse code? Now that's off the wall.6) The book that ejects from the wall at the beginning while Cooper is LEAVING the room to go his mission, is being pushed out by Cooper who, through time dilation is Cooper in the future trying to stop himself from LEAVING the room.7) Amelia and Cooper get married and live happily ever after (that's what the audience is imagining) and spawn a new civilization in the process.I have watched several scenes over and over again and I have discovered things I hadn't noticed initially. The the process of pealing away layer after layer is almost like the movie itself.

Had to watch this one twice...I have always liked Sci-Fi. However, most of the recent Sci-Fi movies are a bunch of explosives, an unbelievable amount of foul language, scantily clad women and actions scenes that are so unrealistic that I have walked away wondering how to get my 2 hours back. Yes, this movie deals with technology and situations that we have not dealt with yet on earth and obviously this is a fictitious situation. Yet and still, it was an emotional roller coaster for me and my family. Without providing any spoilers, there are parts that deal with warped space time that posed significant issues that I had never considered. I will say that this is not your typical Sci-Fi Shoot 'Em Up movie. It harkens back to the days of the 2001 and 2010 Space Odyssey movies with significantly better graphics and in my opinion a much better story line. Definitely NOT a sleeper. It created much conversation in our home, even after a couple of days. If you appreciate good Sci-Fi with a riveting storyline, this one is for you. If you are looking for an Independence Day or Star Wars style movie, this would NOT be a movie that would fit that bill. One of the few recent Sci-Fi films that I can actually let my family see, very little violence and none of which would be considered to be "graphic" or gratuitious. I only had to mute a few words and I do mean FEW, which given this genre of a movie, is refreshing. Would love to see more movies that evoke such a range of emotion like this in the near future!

Interstellar opens in the not too distant future where the earth’s crops are being rapidly destroyed by blight. Cooper, a former astronaut, has reluctantly taken up farming corn. He lives on a farm with his daughter Murph, his son and father in law. After an unsavory encounter with his daughter’s teacher, who denies there was lunar landing, we get a sense of Cooper’s frustration when he complains bitterly to his father in law “We used to look up at the sky and wonder about our place in the stars. Now we look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”However anomalous events in Murph’s bedroom soon lead Cooper and Murph to a secret NASA base where they learn about a project to find a new home for mankind off of the dying earth.The rest of the movie is essentially a dramatized tour of contemporary speculations in astrophysics including wormholes, super massive black holes and the singularities, naked, gentle or otherwise at their cores, gravitational time dilation, quantum gravity and a 4th and 5th dimension. In between the action there is time for a discussion of a benevolent vs a malevolent universe, how time passes in different frames and the nature of love.A subplot in the movie is whether the current inhabitants of earth should sacrifice themselves so future generations can live off the earth. The tone of the movie and Cooper’s words and actions firmly reject this premise.A lot of the science in movie is speculative to be sure but this is what science fiction does and Interstellar does it quite well. The photography is spectacular, the acting excellent, the sets impressive and the music memorable.I don't know if Christopher Nolan is planning a sequel as the end of the movie appeared to suggest. I sincerely hope he does.

This was such a beautiful movie the acting was great, story line was very well written it was emotional and gave everything. It excelled my expectations. Christopher Nolan directed this very well and the actors did a phenomenal job.

Love everything about this movie. I bought it right away.

Almost from the beginning, you realise Interstellar is not going to be a typical movie, even for Christopher Nolan. Combining science, philosophy, politics, and film, Interstellar is a journey unto itself. Like Inception, Nolan takes the viewer on multiple planes of reality and makes the seemingly surreal plausible. Surviving a journey through a black hole, for example, is not thought to be possible, but with the amazing cinematography, the concept of the time space continuum is re-imaged and rei-magined to where one could imagine such a possibility, however slim. Then Nolan throws in the question of human emotion, which journeys through many forms of pathos, trauma, and the actual meaning of love. It is existentially optimistic in its myriad landscapes, from the global dust bowl which has come as a result of climate change, to the planets of water and ice, which have their own foreboding warnings, as well as the age old struggles from the power of hubris to leaps of "faith" that there is always another way to save humanity if only we can remain altruistic. Nolan is not afraid to ask unsettling questions and is not looking for easy answers, but allows the viewer to try and think for her/himself. The film could have easily become pedantic, but he is careful enough to pull back without losing the central element. Like Inception, you're left second guessing what is happening, yet there is no easy resolution on which to rely. One thing is certain, if you don't develop an interest in learning some basic science, then you weren't paying attention. This is a film worthy of being called a classic. It simply breathtakingly beautiful and amazing.