Interstellar

[Your Usual Table]

EDIT: Removed

[hobbes]

Interstellar

I'm all for shallow sci fi eye candy.

[Ginger Yellow]

Interstellar

Huh, Nolan doesn't strike me as a particularly sentimental director - maybe a bit in Inception. Anyway, I'm looking forward to this but I didn't know anything about it until about a week ago, so I don't have much in the way of expectations.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Interstellar

I trust Nolan not to let me down. I'll watch it regardless.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Interstellar

Saw this on Wednesday (free ticket from a friend) and I'd say "great visual spectacle but intellectually shallow and overly sentimental" can't prepare you for how tedious, vacuous and mostly plain-looking it is. For three and a bit hours.

Mind you, the people I was with - who are more into his thing, and sci fi/geek films generally - really liked it. For background: I thought Inception was stupid, a James Bond film dressed as ideasy sci-fi, but I liked his Batman films (that stuff's more his speed, cause he's lost when it comes to ideas and characters - he had some ready-made to play with there, and as they were comic-book characters realism wasn't a concern). He really can't do 'deep' but won't stop trying. The climactic passage looks incredible, but it's so difficult to connect emotionally with the sort of committee-written bilge that can get made with such a big budget that it can't be anything more satisfying than a demo of nice cinematography.

Quote for the poster: "There's a cool bit about two and a half hours in, but then it gets boring again."

[Lucia Lanigan]

Interstellar

Actually, "sentimental" isn't a fair criticism. The crux of it is [or probably began as, before the whole thing became idea soup] finding a guiding force once you get beyond scientific knowledge, which is hardly Disney territory. Someone could have made a fine sci-fi film on that premise back in 1970s, but not in today's big-budget system.

One warning, though: Hathaway gives it some serious wuss-mouth.

[Come along, Min]

Interstellar

I havent seen anything with Hathaway which makes me like her - thing. She comes across a bit like an overachieving Apprentice contestant.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Interstellar

She even managed to overact in Les Miserables , which seriously takes some doing.

[Come along, Min]

Interstellar

She was cringey on Graham Norton last night, embarrassingly gushing all over McConaughey who was more subdued than normal because of it. Generally being over-attentiony in that dull way people like that usually are.

Outside of The Batman films I like Nolan's stuff so I'm still looking forward to it, just not as much after reading Lucia's thoughts though. Which is probably a good thing.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Interstellar

She doesn't overact in this (everyone's very straight-faced throughout) she's just a wobbly lip kind of actor. Matt Damon plays Matt Damon in space, which is exactly like Matt Damon on earth. He just sort of stands there in films having a face.

[stevue81]

Interstellar

Have skipped the thread as I'm seeing the film on saturday, but I want to declare that I feel that Nolan is in no way overrated and is the one of the greatest living film-makers. Inception, Prestige and Memento are three of my favourite films of all time.

[Crusoe]

Interstellar

Lucia Lanigan wrote: She doesn't overact in this (everyone's very straight-faced throughout) she's just a wobbly lip kind of actor. Matt Damon plays Matt Damon in space, which is exactly like Matt Damon on earth. He just sort of stands there in films having a face.

Matt Damon looks like my thumb. It's that blank thumbnail expression. You could put my thumb into a remake of a Bourne film and few would notice.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Interstellar

Oh god he was in them wasn't he. That's why I can't remember watching them, even though I did.

[Max Payne]

Interstellar

Lucia Lanigan wrote: Saw this on Wednesday (free ticket from a friend) and I'd say "great visual spectacle but intellectually shallow and overly sentimental" can't prepare you for how tedious, vacuous and mostly plain-looking it is. For three and a bit hours.

Mind you, the people I was with - who are more into his thing, and sci fi/geek films generally - really liked it. For background: I thought Inception was stupid, a James Bond film dressed as ideasy sci-fi, but I liked his Batman films (that stuff's more his speed, cause he's lost when it comes to ideas and characters - he had some ready-made to play with there, and as they were comic-book characters realism wasn't a concern). He really can't do 'deep' but won't stop trying. The climactic passage looks incredible, but it's so difficult to connect emotionally with the sort of committee-written bilge that can get made with such a big budget that it can't be anything more satisfying than a demo of nice cinematography.

Quote for the poster: "There's a cool bit about two and a half hours in, but then it gets boring again."

Given that I hated the Batman films with a passion - OK. I hated one of them, I wasn't going back for more no sirree - and enjoyed Inception (Didn't rate Prestige or Memento that highly) I have a feeling I might like this.

[Max Payne]

Interstellar

That said the Mrs is gonna fucking loathe it....but she very rarely likes Sci Fi and only barely made it through that last Tom Cruise Groundhog Day one which was actually pretty decent by his standards.

[Fussbudget]

Interstellar

stevue81 wrote: Have skipped the thread as I'm seeing the film on saturday, but I want to declare that I feel that Nolan is in no way overrated and is the one of the greatest living film-makers. Inception, Prestige and Memento are three of my favourite films of all time.

This, absolutely. The trailer for Interstellar didn't exactly grab me, but I don't need any extra convincing to go and see a new Nolan film given how perfect those three films are.

[hobbes]

Interstellar

Lucia Lanigan wrote: Oh god he was in them wasn't he. That's why I can't remember watching them, even though I did.

I bloody love the Bourne films. But then the character is supposed to be a cipher, so Damon was perfect.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Interstellar

It's telling that Matt Damon is so anonymous and such a cipher in this movie that most people think he's Matthew mc Connaghy

[diggedy derek]

Interstellar

I would certainly say it hurts Kubrick's films. I go back to them less and less as I get older.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Interstellar

Ambient Moyes Levels wrote: Just a couple of things about Nolan:

A lot of what's been written about him has focussed on a perceived "lack of emotion" in his movies and his poor grasp of female characterisation. The second criticism is valid but I wonder about the relevance of the first. Kubrick, someone who Nolan is erroneously compared to on account of the superficial similarities between 2001 and Interstellar and a certain emotional detachment common to their work, famously just didn't "do" feelings at all.

There's enough else - ideas, visual style, sheer off-kilter, can't-put-your-finger-on-it weirdness - in Kubrick's best bits to keep me involved. There aren't any rules about this at all, though (sorry screenwriting coaches). It's entirely subjective.

His films are none the worse for this.

This is where I disagree in regard to this particular film (which I have, let's remember, seen). I won't spoiler anything but emotion is the crux of the entire thing. I don't think the film works if you ain't feeling it. Nolan fans probably will feel it though.

How do people measure a concept as nebulous as "emotion in a movie", anyway? How it makes you feel? How you think the director and writer feel about something? How well a movie can stimulate your feelings?

I've bolded the answer, although I think the third sentence repeats it. It doesn't matter what happens behind the scenes, the viewer's experience of the work is everything. Sounds obvious, that, but it often gets lost in a comment-heavy culture like ours.

[hobbes]

Interstellar

But Spielberg has turned into a saccharine hack who makes Ron Howard look dispassionate, George Lucas was ever thus and just happened to get lucky that he had 2 good ideas and some very good directors and script editors for Empire and Jedi, Cameron is a fucking moron who hasn't made a decent film since Aliens and as for Jackson. Well he started brightly, but has utterly disappeared up his own hole with these Hobbit films that are doing their best to undo the fairly good work he did on LoTR.
Nolan would have to be spectacularly shit to be as bad as that lot currently are.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Interstellar

[Kubrick] had a unique, dark take on the world and had a wicked sense of humour to boot, he revelled in portraying and capturing isolation, madness and alienation. Nolan's films are cold because he can't help it.

Nail, head. There's something inscrutably puckish about them despite the cold tone. They're really odd things, Kubrick films.

[jason voorhees]

Interstellar

Memento may end up being one of the greatest classics of this generation. May even have a shot at Sight&Sound's Top 10 one of these years.

The remake of the Norwegian cop movie was also great. He got one of the greatest performances out of Robin Williams, which takes some doing. One of the more original takes on a killer. Pacino was also great in it.

I didn't like the Batmans as much, but loved Heath Ledger and the Scarecrow to death.

As far as Speilberg, I felt he got much better with age. Catch Me if You Can may be one of the more underrated movies over the past 20 years. One of those that's as fresh and watchable no matter what scene you catch. Schindler's List is still incredible. I would say the 1986-1994 was his talentless hack stage, but Amistad ? Munich ? ANIMANIACS ?!!!

Peter Jackson was always scattershot, even back to Meet the Feebles (really ugly and gross...even for when I was a Junior in High School) to Dead/Alive (really ugly and gross in a good way...even when I was a Freshman in college,) to Heavenly Creatures (Brilliant) to The Frighteners. I mean The Frighteners...FRIGHTENERS...was the last movie he did before Lord of the Rings, and I literally can't remember a movie that I was more disappointed with (I forced my girlfriend and her friend and my friend who we were trying to set up with my girlfriend's friend, and they hated the movie so much that it ruined their date and all future contact and ruined my reputation that was only avenged when my wife made me see Made of Honor.)

[Felicity, I guess so]

Interstellar

I don't think the film works if you ain't feeling it

I was certainly not feeling it. Christopher Nolan's new clothes. Field of Dreams in space. Awful.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Interstellar

The remake of the Norwegian cop movie was also great. He got one of the greatest performances out of Robin Williams, which takes some doing. One of the more original takes on a killer. Pacino was also great in it.

I'd completely forgotten Nolan directed that. Great film, and yeah - Williams was outstanding at playing that creep.

This one, though: don't expect a thrill ride like Inception, or mindless sci-fi fun like someone else would make, or head-squeezing psychonausea like Memento or Insomnia. Interstellar is none of those things and less. For hours.