INTERSTELLAR Review

"That's what I love about these time dilations, man. Murph gets older, I stay the same age..."

INTERSTELLAR is a movie I have wrestled over in my brain. I have spent the last ten days or so trying to process how exactly I feel about the film, and while I'm probably going to come out of this mostly positive, we'll see where the review takes us. I'll be using the good/bad format on this one, as it'll be the only way I can fully articulate my final verdict. Here we go... (SPOILERS)

THE GOOD

- Acting: The cast is tremendous, as you would probably expect them to be. Matthew McConaughey already completed his career resurrection earlier this year with the one-two punch of his Oscar win and TRUE DETECTIVE, so this is essentially a victory lap for him. He infuses Cooper, our protagonist, with all of the familial charm and emotion that he can muster, and is perfectly cast. Anne Hathaway does the best that she can with a somewhat underwritten role, selling us on Brand's abruptly introduced romantic interest in one of the earlier astronauts. Jessica Chastain is as good as usual as the adult Murph, but Mackenzie Foy may have her beat as the child form (while also appearing to have been sent from the fifth dimension in order to perfectly represent little Chastain). Michael Caine is Michael Caine in a Christopher Nolan movie, as per usual, even if his constant repetition of a certain Dylan Thomas poem can get a little repetitive at times. The rest of the cast mostly delivers as well, with Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, John Lithgow, and especially Bill Irwin as the voice of TARS, with one weak link exception that I will get to later.

- Visuals/Direction: INTERSTELLAR is not shy about aiming for the grandeur of space travel and all of the hope and fear that it represents, and Nolan delivers this angle on every level. This is a movie that demands to be seen in IMAX, as you feel like you'll be falling through black holes, wormholes, and dimensions at every turn. The alien planets, while somewhat monochromatic in appearance, also dazzle, with the ice cloud planet and the space station almost feeling like companion pieces to the dream warping scenes in INCEPTION. The movie also has a few mind-blowing setpieces, with a manual ride onto the hatch of the Endurance being the highlight of the movie. The entire theater I was in burst into applause as Coop piloted the craft through a perilous situation. TARS is also one of the coolest movie robots in a while, as he's funny, soulful, and exceedingly well-designed.

- World Building: While the aforementioned flight sequence was the movie's best scene, the movie's best act is its first. The brothers Nolan succeed as bringing us to a terrifyingly plausible future, one where the New York Yankees play baseball on an elementary school diamond (the most Spielbergian moment in a movie once meant as a Spielberg project), where the Apollo moon landings are historically retconned as being faked, where the majority of the world's population are farmers, where corn is the only viable food crop left, where dust storms plague the remnants of humanity and do lethal damage to childrens' lungs, and where there is only a generation left before the world will starve and then suffocate. The Nolans never let us forget what is at stake should Coop and crew fail their mission, and the sadness of the Earth they leave behind is all set up in the first forty minutes.

- Ambition: As you may have already gathered from the earlier points, this is a film of towering ambition. It aims very high and, like NOAH earlier this year, is a big-budget spectacle that demands that the audience turn their brain on. It doesn't reach as high as that aforementioned movie, but it reaches much higher than many movies of its ilk would ever dream of doing. Kudos to Paramount for getting involved in two such high-aiming projects (it ALMOST makes up for TRANS4MERS)

- Score: Hands down the single best thing about the movie. Hans Zimmer finally moves away from the sounds that have defined his recent career (his Batman scores, MAN OF STEEL, INCEPTION), and comes up with a new, fitting, and incredibly epic sound that perfectly fit with the movie. It's probably my favorite Zimmer score of all time, and is worth the price of admission alone.

THE BAD

- Exposition: Christopher Nolan movies have always had difficulty with the delivery of expository dialogue, and INTERSTELLAR may be the most problematic of them all in this particular regard. Characters spit explanations at each other constantly, plot developments (Brand being in love with one of the earlier astronauts) are introduced willy-nilly, and most damningly, the exposition in some scenes (particularly as we near the ending) end up over-explaining, dampening the ability to have an emotional response to scenes designed to deliver such a reaction, as well as completely removing any degree of interpretation or mystery. At times, the third act feels as if it was 2001, only with a compulsive need to explain the exact nature of the Star child, how the bedroom came into being, and who exactly sent the monolith. INCEPTION managed to make its rapid speed of plot development into a strength. Not so much luck here.

- Matt Damon: Some may disagree with me on this, but I found Damon being cast as the "antagonist" astronaut, Dr. Mann, to be distracting to an alarming degree. I get that the goal was to have Damon's presence help sell Mann as the legendary space explorer he was built up to be, but it in turn made in difficult to buy Mann's descent into cowardice (though I liked it on the level that Damon is famous for doing a McConaughey impresssion). Damon's a great actor whose work I very much enjoy, but he was simply misused here.

- The Third Act: On one level, the third act was absolutely spectacular, a visually stunning sequence that channels Kubrick in every way. However, it also asks that the viewer be very invested in the goings-on, something that is somewhat difficult to do when we've never really gotten a chance to know Coop or Murph as people. Cooper's only defining attributes are that he loves Murph and was an ex-pilot, and Murph's only defining attributes are a keen intellect and a resentment of her father's departure. It tries to sell Cooper's paternal love as an eternal, quantifiable matter that brings Coop's fifth-dimensional message through time to save the Earth, but it never quite got me. Also, it sort of simplifies a complex movie down to a simple "love conquers all" result. Not a bad sentiment, but not particularly intellectually stimulating either. And again, TARS' exposition means that not an iota is left to interpretation.

THE VERDICT

INTERSTELLAR is a movie that is at times beautiful, emotional, and visually exhilarating. But it just as often limps and plods through long pages of exposition and rather obvious thematic conclusions. It's a handsomely made movie, one that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible, and one that I will recommend wholeheartedly. However, be warned that your mileage may vary. People talked up THE DARK KNIGHT RISES as being polarizing; however, I feel that in the long run, the anomaly of Nolan's career may indeed be INTERSTELLAR.

I'm going to refrain from giving the movie a grade on this one. It's just too difficult to gauge in such a way.

Recent Movie Roundup

AKA the best roundup image on Google

I've seen a few movies lately, but I haven't had time to review any of them. As such, I'm going to condense all of the films into one column, with mini-reviews for all. Here we go:

THE EQUALIZER

I consider "from the director of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN"
to be a far more encouraging tagline

Denzel Washington has sadly lost his touch. Not as an actor, mind you, he's still pretty great there. However, he either is having a serious midlife crisis or has a terrible agent, because he's pigeonholed himself into doing one crappy action movie after another (many of them directed by the late Tony Scott), with the last really great movie under his belt being the eight-year-old INSIDE MAN (FLIGHT was decent but uneven). The latest in this line of generic extravaganzas is THE EQUALIZER. It was directed by Antoine Fuqua, aka the director of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN (aka the greatest movie to watch while drunk), but also TRAINING DAY for those remembering his last collaboration with Denzel. Sadly, since then he's become sort of like a proto-Tony Scott, belting out one action movie after another, only without any of the borderline experimental and hyperkinetic style that makes Scott's movies interesting. THE EQUALIZER is a glum, plodding, and most damningly, boring action movie that offers virtually no surprises or thrills. Denzel gets pretty far on charm alone, but it's not enough to save this rickety ship. 3/10

GONE GIRL

Only Fincher could make this image that interesting

Thankfully, I saw David Fincher's newest outing next, and that made for a far more engaging filmgoing experience. GONE GIRL is delightfully dark, trashy, and sociopathic, with Fincher providing a flawless translation of Gillian Flynn's (who also provided the excellent screenplay) novel about a journey into a marriage's heart of darkness. It's got all of Fincher's usual pleasures as well, with the low-key and unnerving score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Jeff Cronenweth's dark and moody cinematography, and of course, Fincher's masterful direction. He also absolutely nails the casting, with Ben Affleck delivering the performance of his career. He was born to play Nick Dunne, and he's just as perfect as one would imagine while reading the novel. Rosamund Pike, though, is on another level as Nick's wife Amy, the titular gone girl, as we watch these two extremely detestable human beings navigate the icy waters of marriage. It isn't Fincher's best movie, but it's probably his best one that isn't a masterpiece. 8.5/10

JOHN WICK

The man who kills the boogeyman...

Now THIS is an action movie. JOHN WICK is everything that THE EQUALIZER should have been, and so much more. After years of providing action movies with all the stunts, David Leitch and Chad Stahelski step behind the camera, and deliver what will become a modern action classic. Not only is JOHN WICK filled with kinetic action, vibrant cinematography, and a healthy dose of humor, but it also succeeds at building a fictional world parallel to ours, one run by assassins. It's more ambitious and exciting than the places that most action films would go, and it enriches the already invigorating experience. As a side effect, this movie also gives us a great gift: the return of Keanu Reeves. Reeves plays Wick with the conviction of a man who will destroy the men who destroyed his hope, come hell or high water. It's Keanu's best role in years, and it will hopefully spawn a franchise that will allow us to play in this world for years to come. It also doesn't hurt that it has a stellar supporting cast, including Michael Nyqvist as the almost comically resigned villain, Alfie Allen (THEON GREYJOY) as his shithead of a son, and minor turns from such greats as Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, and even lesser known talents like Adrianne Palicki and Lance Reddick. Make this the action movie you see this year. 8.5/10

NIGHTCRAWLER

LA always looks so badass in movies...

And now, the golden goose of the Roundup, NIGHTCRAWLER. The directorial debut from screenwriter Dan Gilroy (brother of Tony, the BOURNE series writer) feels a lot like a masterpiece. Alternately tense, hilarious, biting, and horrifying, NIGHTCRAWLER is a dark look into the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles crime journalism, as one extremely sociopathic go-getter, Louis Bloom, attempts to fashion himself a career by getting news outlets the footage that more decent men will not. It also gives us possibly the best performance of Jake Gyllenhaal's career, one that he's been working towards for years. Louis is a man driven by nothing but cold hard ambition, and Gyllenhaal successfully sells the ice running through his veins. There are decent supporting turns from Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, and Riz Ahmed, but NIGHTCRAWLER is predominately a one-man show, and Gyllenhaal takes it down into the murkiest, darkest depths. 9.5/10

And that's it for the roundup. I've seen INTERSTELLAR, but I need a little more time to process it. My review will be up soon.