Movie Review: Interstellar

Christopher Nolan is back folks. The acclaimed director’s new sci-fi, space exploration epic, Interstellar, is finally upon us. The hype behind this film has been ginormous to say the least. Shot in IMAX 70mm…on actual film! Features minimal CGI! Uses man made sets and practical effects! Academy award winning cast! Etc. etc. Does the film actually deliver? Kind of.

Matthew Mcconaughey stars as “Cooper,” a former NASA test pilot marooned on a slowly decaying American farmstead. In the not too distant future, Earth has had enough of mankind’s shit and ravaged the environment with a deadly wave of blight and dust storms, causing massive crop failures and respiratory problems up the wazoo. Our time on Earth is running low, and humans toil about their increasingly miserable lives trying to get by. Cooper begrudgingly raises his two children on his dying farm, mourning his dead wife, and extinguished dreams of exploring the stars. But thankfully, his genius daughter’s pet ghost tasks them on a crazy errand that reunites Cooper with the remnants of what used to be NASA, who’ve been literally hiding in his back yard the entire time, hatching a plan to save the human race: move to a new galaxy. Yes, you read that correctly.

wut?

Interstellar could have been a great film, instead of just a good one. Unfortunately, it’s beyond convoluted plot and insistence on ham-fisted melodrama takes the film down several pegs. The ‘wow, I can’t believe what I’m seeing!’ sense of awe that Nolan’s visuals instill throughout the film, gives way to a ‘wow…I can’t believe this is what I’m seeing,’ lament, stemming from the mediocre script. The film is long and ambitious but surprisingly, despite the ‘lol wut?’ problems with the plot, doesn’t feel like an eternity while watching. Maybe that’s because the film crams what should have been twelve hours of screen content into a mere three [we got off easy if you think about that way].

Interstellar’s ensemble cast turns out to be film’s saving grace. With so much trippy NASA jargon and space talk thrown around and tons of eye rolling exposition being spoon fed to the audience, it’s the actor’s stellar [eh eh?] performances that keeps the movie from collapsing in on itself. Matthew Mcconaughey’s character Cooper might be written as the dumbest astronaut ever [he needs diagrams to explain how wormholes work], but his performance is unyielding throughout. He spouts that dialogue, no matter how painful, like it was the word of God [or Nolan]. In fact, the scene where he watches messages from his family on Earth is some truly powerful stuff and one of the highlights of the entire film. Anne Hathaway is billed as Interstellar’s other big star, but Jessica Chastain is the movie's real leading lady. Hathaway isn’t bad per se…even though her character is written so, but Chastain’s performance is just miles beyond hers.

the real MVP

Interstellar is three hours of bizarre entertainment. If you can ignore the bloated plot and relish some solid acting and cool visuals you’ll probably have fun. It was refreshing to watch a sci-fi film with real people and not a massive CGI cartoon, just as it was cool to see Nolan finally play with a new cinematographer for a change [hello Hoyte van Hoytema, nice work dude]. There’s some really gripping, suspenseful scenes that almost make up for the bang your head against the wall stupid ones. This movie would have been a sweet ass summer time blockbuster, but since it came out in fall and is surrounded but tons of, you know, good movies; it just doesn’t hold up as well in comparison.

Movie Review: Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty is an exhausting film. It's long and tedious. It's intense and shocking. You'll cringe and find yourself laughing at the most random, mundane things because of how dark and smothering the overall tone of the film is. As difficult as the film is to sit through, it's still amazing. A technical marvel that's beautiful to watch (even if it's content is jarring) and loaded with great performances, Zero Dark Thirty is easily one of the best films of 2012.

The film is based on the decade long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden. Jessica Chastain plays a young and determined CIA agent named Maya who devotes eight years of her life to capturing the terrorist mastermind. I shouldn't say devote, more like obsess. Her character is barely human. From her depiction in the film, Mayas work is all consuming. She barely eats, hardly sleeps and when awake, only focuses on the manhunt. Maya is a strong willed and intelligent person. She's pretty much always the smartest person in the room and must navigate through the sexist and bureaucratic nightmares of the CIA/political world, as well as the very real physical and psychological dangers she's faces in the line of duty.

Jessica Chastain's performance is the heart and soul of the film. The audience grows (colder) as Maya becomes more engrossed, and jaded, by her work. She can barely stand through the horrific torture sequences that open the film but by the second hour, she doesn't flinch. Instead you might become more enraged at how frustratingly incompetent our government appears to operate with all the behind the scenes spy stuff. Bureaucratic bungling becomes just as reprehensible as waterboarding over enough time. The film's final act, the raid on Bin Laden's compound, is dazzling. It's edge of your seat film making, which is quite a feat considering the entire world already new the end result (spoiler: they kill him). Director Kathryn Bigelow is an ace when it comes to building tension, and the way she handles all the military and CIA procedural stuff makes Zero Dark Thirty feel more like a documentary than a feature film sometimes, which reiterates just how good she really is.

I don't understand all the controversy the film has been generating. It doesn't promote torture in anyway shape or form. In fact it should be blatantly clear that the film as no agenda or political message behind behind it at all. This isn't go go USA propaganda or an anti-Muslim, pro torture film by any means. There's hardly even any real cohesive plot or narrative in the first place. The film jumps around between a span of ten years, following obsessive compulsive CIA agents damn near spiral into madness to accomplish their mission. Bigelow's film is like a two and half hour Nietzsche infomercial,

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

...that, and it's a damn fine movie.


(That is, without the doubt, the BEST trailer of 2012 also.)