Steven McC
Basic
As this is such a big release and I imagine many of you will go to see it I'm going to make a huge effort not to include any spoilers...but no promises!
I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's films. The Dark Knight really surprised me. I couldn't envisage how any film about a man who dresses up as a bat and beats up criminals could contain serious content, but through personifying Batman as 'good' and the Joker as 'evil' Nolan lifted the film to another level and made it a dialogue about human nature, with Harvey 'Two-Face' ending up as the physical embodiment of humanity - half-evil, half-good; the main players of the film making the executive decision to tilt his head so that only the 'good' side showed in the end. Since most blockbusters are completely empty of thematic content this made TDK stand out a mile and Inception also showed brains and brawn.
So I was eager to see Interstellar. A sci-fi epic about humans reaching out for a new world to replace the increasingly uninhabitable Earth seemed the perfect vehicle for Nolan's talents.
The movie is definitely not your average blockbuster. The pacing is slower than Nolan's previous films; purposefully so, I felt, with very few action sequences in the first half. I wondered if Nolan was testing the modern audience, a little, seeing if they could handle pacing similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and judging by the amount of people I could hear talking during the film (for which they surely have to introduce capital punishment) sadly the answer may be no.
As the story takes place over a number of years and the space travel regularly involves the atronauts going into cryo-sleep for several years the structure can feel jagged and forced at times, though when the action sequences arrive they are engrossing and Matthew McConaughey is a compelling lead. His relationship with the daughter he leaves behind on Earth is the bond of love that attempts to anchor the film amidst some relatively technical science involving wormholes, gravity and relativity. Some comic relief is provided along the way by TARS, a robot successor to HAL (2001) who has a sense of humour setting that can be altered and some decent lines. Matt Damon makes an appearance but doesn't really shine. Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain are better and Michael Caine makes his obligatory appearance in a Nolan film.
Nolan's objectives in Interstellar are genuinely as broad as this: to address the science underlying space and the place of human love within this spectrum. I don't believe he fully achieves this - Interstellar didn't feel like a classic to me, not everything worked - but I admire him for trying. A big budget director who wants to explore intelligent ideas and has the guts to challenge an audience is all too rare. Not quite stellar then, but worth a watch.
I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's films. The Dark Knight really surprised me. I couldn't envisage how any film about a man who dresses up as a bat and beats up criminals could contain serious content, but through personifying Batman as 'good' and the Joker as 'evil' Nolan lifted the film to another level and made it a dialogue about human nature, with Harvey 'Two-Face' ending up as the physical embodiment of humanity - half-evil, half-good; the main players of the film making the executive decision to tilt his head so that only the 'good' side showed in the end. Since most blockbusters are completely empty of thematic content this made TDK stand out a mile and Inception also showed brains and brawn.
So I was eager to see Interstellar. A sci-fi epic about humans reaching out for a new world to replace the increasingly uninhabitable Earth seemed the perfect vehicle for Nolan's talents.
The movie is definitely not your average blockbuster. The pacing is slower than Nolan's previous films; purposefully so, I felt, with very few action sequences in the first half. I wondered if Nolan was testing the modern audience, a little, seeing if they could handle pacing similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and judging by the amount of people I could hear talking during the film (for which they surely have to introduce capital punishment) sadly the answer may be no.
As the story takes place over a number of years and the space travel regularly involves the atronauts going into cryo-sleep for several years the structure can feel jagged and forced at times, though when the action sequences arrive they are engrossing and Matthew McConaughey is a compelling lead. His relationship with the daughter he leaves behind on Earth is the bond of love that attempts to anchor the film amidst some relatively technical science involving wormholes, gravity and relativity. Some comic relief is provided along the way by TARS, a robot successor to HAL (2001) who has a sense of humour setting that can be altered and some decent lines. Matt Damon makes an appearance but doesn't really shine. Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain are better and Michael Caine makes his obligatory appearance in a Nolan film.
Nolan's objectives in Interstellar are genuinely as broad as this: to address the science underlying space and the place of human love within this spectrum. I don't believe he fully achieves this - Interstellar didn't feel like a classic to me, not everything worked - but I admire him for trying. A big budget director who wants to explore intelligent ideas and has the guts to challenge an audience is all too rare. Not quite stellar then, but worth a watch.
The film sounds good but I'll most likely wait for it to come out before I see it. The idea of leaving Earth behind frightens me a great deal! All the people and animals and lives lost. 
I don't think I'd leave.