Movie Review: Interstellar

Let's get the bad news out of the way for those of you who don't have the patience to read an entire review: I really wanted to like Interstellar, but it just didn't move, entrance, or excite me like I thought it would. I give it three stars. Those of you with short attention spans may now move along to other parts of the internet. If you'd like to know why I gave the film this rating, feel free to keep reading.

Obviously I wanted to like Interstellar because I'm a space geek and because it's been quite a while since I saw an upbeat vision of space exploration depicted on film. And let me be fair here: that is what Interstellar provides. And the stakes are high: astronauts heading off to the far reaches of space--via a black hole, no less--to save the Earth. So you've got the broad tapestry we expect from space operas, as depicted by SF Grand Master Brian Aldiss:

Ideally, the Earth must be in peril, there must be a quest and a man to match the mighty hour. That man must confront aliens and exotic creatures. Space must flow past the ports like wine from a pitcher. Blood must run down the palace steps, and Ships launch out into the louring dark. There must be a woman fairer than the skies and a villain darker than the Black Hole. And all must come right in the end.

Without giving too much away, I would say, again, that Interstellar includes most of these ingredients. Plus, as an extra bonus, the director got scientific input from an actual astrophysicist. Also on the positive side, the visuals of entering the black hole are amazing and worth seeing on the big screen. The space hardware, too, is believable. In fact, the spacecraft look very much like NASA hardware (which, in fact, they're depicted to be). Though truth be told, my favorite bits of screen eye candy are the closeups of the planet Saturn. And on the human interest side of things, we have people who are stock characters to serious SF fans: we have our plucky astronauts doing what they can for their own disparate reasons--the hot pilot (Matthew McConnaughey) flying off to live his dream and save his family; the scientist's daughter, out for reasons of her own and following in her father's footsteps; the robot with a sense of humor; and a range of characters who are either worth knowing or easily disposable.

So why does this film disappoint?

Let's start with the exposition--the "world building," as SF writers call it. We've got a future Earth that is dying from some sort of blight that is killing crops, eroding the oxygen in the atmosphere, and shrinking the world's population. The most obvious signs of this negative future are massive dust storms, which call to mind the nuclear winter parts of The Day After. In fact, a few aspects of Interstellar reminded me of The Day After, including the corn-country setting, the blowing dust, the air of despair, and the presence of John Lithgow, who in this film portrays a crusty grandfather instead of the scientific genius (that role is played by Michael Caine, who does much less crying in this film than the last Christopher Nolan Batman film). But the last thing that reminded me of that "epic" made-for-TV movie was the bad acting. Honestly, I can't recall the last movie I saw where I felt the actors just phoned it in, but this film had an abundance of it, including bad acting by a couple of famous actors whom I figured would know better. The best explanation I have for this bad acting is an unfamiliarity with science fiction and its unavoidable technobabble.

Next thing? The buildup. Interstellar suffers from pacing problems and is therefore too long, by about 40 minutes. There would be no shame in curtailing the exposition to get McConnaughey's pilot into space, but Christopher Nolan felt otherwise.

I was going to say nice things about the soundtrack, which has touches of classical Earth themes that will definitely remind audiences of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That is good and bad. 2001 definitely has grandeur, and the Interstellar soundtrack manages to evoke that grandeur in some cases. However, there are a couple places in the film where the soundtrack overwhelms the actors' voices. At the time, I was frustrated because I couldn't understand what the actors were saying. Only later, like this morning, did I realize that the sound problems had been on purpose, which somehow made it worse. A little reminder to Hollywood directors: don't make your game-playing so obvious. As with good written material, you don't want to disrupt the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. If the reader or movie-going audience is made aware of the artifice of what's going on, they are no longer paying attention to the story but are instead paying attention to the storytelling.

Lastly, there is the plot, which is convoluted in places, messy in others, and in some places outright unbelievable. It takes too many steps to get from Earth to the heart of the plot (the "MacGuffin," which was also the name of the bar where I bought a bourbon before entering the theater). And when I got to the MacGuffin, I found that...well, I just didn't buy it. It was like a "high concept" for a science fiction film written by someone who doesn't read a lot of SF but thinks, "Hey, if we do this, it'll be really cool and deep," but it's not.

Which brings me back to my original three-star rating. I applaud Christopher Nolan for making a space opera with a positive view of science, technology, and the human future. And he delivers that...BUT: I didn't care about the characters. The story is too long. The central "high concepts" that resolve the plot make no sense or are muddled. So Interstellar gets three stars from me. Your mileage could vary.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

I'll talk about the horrific events surrounding the movie's premiere another time. I need a little time to process that first. Right now, since I just saw the film, I'll take it on as a work of cinema first.

What does one say about Christopher Nolan's third Batman film? Well, it lives up to the tone of the other movies in the series: it's violent, it's loud, it's dark, it's brooding, it's the whole Batman schtick as writ for the 21st century.

Okay, so what's the story? Well, we start with a James Bond type of opening and a new bad guy getting loose--Bane. And who's that? Well, Rush Limbaugh's claims to the contrary, he was not an invention to connect the "bad guy" with Mitt Romney--"Bain Capital," get it?--Bane (as in the bane of your existence) was created and named in the early '90s. Read enough comic books, as I do, and you learn a few things. Anyhow, Bane the bad guy is bald, muscular, and wears a Darth Vader-type breathing mask that gives him a voice that is utterly incoherent about 50 percent of the time. Drove me crazy. Bane and his thugs start letting loose on a Gotham City that had been relatively pacified and Batman-free for eight years. Batman has been missing since the death of Harvey Dent and the anti-crime act that bears Dent's name--the events of The Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne is a recluse and the people and organization around him are falling into disarray. All it takes, of course, is for a serious bad guy or two to appear and Wayne decides to resume his role as the Caped Crusader. And then, as my pal Widge would say, hijinks ensue.

This movie is a graphic novel writ large, as are the other two Nolan Batman stories. By the way, if you're not a comic book fan and are wondering what the heck a "graphic novel" is, it's a high-prestige comic book, often using familiar characters, better artistic quality, and better binding. Graphic novels, as opposed to the average comics you can find on the magazine rack, are complete stories and are meant to provide Deep Insight or to deal with Serious Issues in a literary field that usually focuses on super-villains with crazy plans for screwing up the world. The Dark Knight Rises addresses serious issues while telling a Batman story: about contributing to a civil society, about trust, about alternative energy, about vicious populism against "the 1%," and yes, it's about heroes and our need for them.

Along the way, this movie features some really good characters, some familiar, some new. Familiar ones would include Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman; Michael Caine as Bruce Wayne's faithful guardian and butler Alfred; Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, CEO of Wayne's corporation; and Gary Oldman as Police Commissioner Gordon. New secondary characters include Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who, a friend reminded me, starred in Nolan's Inception) as a "hothead" policeman named Blake and Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, a.k.a., Catwoman.

Oh my, yes: Anne Hathaway.

This is the first time Ms. Hathaway has appeared in a movie I wanted to see, and she's just darling. Kyle/Catwoman has always been an ambivalent character in the Batman universe because she was a love interest for Batman but also a clever, witty, violent, acrobatic, and notorious kleptomaniac. Hathaway nails the character and provides a light touch this very dark film needs. Okay, and she looks great and moves gracefully in a black catsuit.

Dark Knight Rises is certainly a long movie for the genre (make all necessary stops before entering the theater because it's easy to get lost). A scrupulous editor could probably have slashed 20 minutes from the story, but then I thought the same thing about The Dark Knight. If you don't like violent, loud, complicated movies with costumed heroes and villains, this film isn't for you. If you have a problem with Michael Caine crying a lot (and yeah, one spoiler: he does), this might bother you.

All that said, for me this was mostly a fun film, and it ends well. What more do you want from a superhero movie?

[Oh yeah, speaking of which: the trailer for the reboot of Superman, Man of Steel, was shown prior to this movie. Looking forward to that!]

Movie Review: Inception

It's been awhile since I went to the movies, but the raves I heard about this film from a couple of fellow science fiction geeks seemed to make this film a must-see. I'm glad I listened. Inception is an inspired movie.

The trick with reviewing or recommending a seriously gimmicky SF movie is knowing how much you can or have to explain without blowing the whole thing. I'll make this simple: if you're not a fan of science fiction or movies with multiple timelines going on, you might want to pass. Imagine, if you will, technology (mysterious portable boxes and "compounds") that enable specially trained individuals to enter other people's dreams and then steal secrets out of their minds. That's the MacGuffin for this film. The visual effects involved in entering people's dreams are likewise mind-bending and worth seeing on the big screen.

But what makes this movie inspired is what writer-director Christopher Nolan does with it. He manages to incorporate dreams within dreams (and then some!). He plays with memories, with long-lost emotions, with the psychology and implications of manipulating others' minds. I was hooked.

The acting in this film, too, deserves special notice. Leonardo di Caprio, never a favorite of mine, has finally starred in a film that a) I wanted to see, but more importantly b) one in which he didn't just act like a Good Looking Movie Star. He manages to convey some serious acting chops as he deals with his rather shady line of business and complicated emotions related to his wife. His sidekicks are an interesting bunch of polished rogues who manage to come across as wholly developed personalities. Convincing acting matters in a complicated plot like this.

Another thing I enjoyed about Inception is the overall pace and tone of the story. The technologies (MacGuffin) are taken as givens in this "world." Aside from throwing in exposition to help the uninitiated get their bearings, the characters take the machinery for granted and focus more on doing their jobs. This is what some of the best SF does. Inception had the feel of a thriller/adventure written by Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, or Alfred Bester. It's set in our own world and time, more or less, but they're able to do these crazy things with dreams, and the audience is taken along for the ride to see what happens.

I envy Christopher Nolan's talent. That he's a year younger than me chafes only a wee bit. :-) My buddy Doc informs me that Nolan wrote this script as well as the scripts to both of his Batman films and Memento, which I have not seen but also dealt with a lot of scene/time-shifting. Nolan's two Batman movies are like Inception in that they concentrate on characters in extraordinary circumstances rather than on the machinery or externals that make the circumstances unusual (dream invasion, costumed superheroes). In this way he is able to tell better and more subtle stories than, say, James Cameron's heavy-handed Avatar, which is akin to a technophilic "message movie," which can get tiresome.

I look forward to seeing whatever Nolan comes up with next. He has made me a dedicated fan.