Marks Magnificent Movie Reviews: Interstellar Interstellar... in IMAX... from the front row. Mind. Blown. So, first things first. This isnt Transformers, or some other action-oriented popcorn flick filled with bullets and explosions. This isnt the kind of movie you want to walk out of the theater and back into line to buy another ticket to see a second time; your brain is still processing stuff as you walk out to the car. It covers heavy topics like famine and survival, and cool sci-fi topics like wormholes and time dilation at extreme speeds, and does so with respect to the science. (Well, enough not to ruin the plot.) In the end, this film wants desperately to be this generations 2001: A Space Odyssey. It might not quite get there, but boy it sure tries hard; in fact, John Lithgow (from the sequel, 2010) plays a key role in the film. The film is long, nearly 3 hours (handle bathroom issues beforehand!), and the setup scenes take a little while, but you really get a feel for what it would be like on Earth as the crops fail. In the near future, crop blight is ruining crops. Former NASA pilot Joe Coop Cooper (Matthew McConaghey) is now a farmer, raising corn in the hopes of feeding the masses; wheat and okra have already permanently failed, dust storms hit regularly, and hes told by his kids principal that the world needs farmers, not engineers. His daughter Murphy claims to be getting visits in her room by a poltergeist, knocking books off the shelf and arranging dust on the floor. Following a clue left by the ghost, they find that Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and the government has one last space mission to try, and they need Coop to be the pilot. Murphy, naturally, doesnt want him to go. The scenes traveling to Saturn and through the wormhole are the most obvious homages to 2001. Theyre lovely and elegant. Once through, Coop and the rest of the crew (including Anne Hathaway as Amelia Brand) and a couple robots (who arent even vaguely humanoid looking, which was odd at first) have to choose between 3 possible planets that may sustain life. The earlier they find a suitable one, the more folks back home they can save. Each planet poses its own problem, and each scenario leaves you wondering how the &%^# theyre going to get out of the problem theyre in. Its brilliant moviemaking, constant tension and drama with some nice CGI mixed in. We get an important cameo from Matt Damon later on, and (since folks on Earth age faster than folks travelling through wormholes) we see the now-grown-up Murphy, played by Zero Dark Thirty star Jessica Chastain, working to help solve the conundrum. In one particularly emotional scene, Coop is on the planet for a few hours, then gets back to the ship to watch video greetings from the family, who have seen twenty years go by and wonder if hes even still alive. The ending does get a bit surreal (come to think of it, so did 2001) and I imagine some folks will find aspects of it unsatisfying. Not me. It wraps up unresolved family issues, relationships, and all the other questions we built up during the film. **** (4 stars out of 4) -Mark
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 02:02:06 +0000
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