Mark Kermode reviews Interstellar
Вставка
- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- Mark Kermode reviews Interstellar. With our time on Earth coming to an end, a team of explorers undertakes the most important mission in human history; traveling beyond this galaxy to discover whether mankind has a future among the stars.
Please tell us what you think of the film -- or Mark’s review of the film below. We love to include your views on the show every Friday.
www.bbc.co.uk/5...
Fridays at 2pm on BBC 5 live.
A film with a lot of rough edges, and yet having watched it last week for the first time I can't stop thinking - or more precisely, feeling - about it. The last 15 minutes is probably the most hauntingly emotional piece of cinema I've experienced. I tear up a little just thinking about it.
I totally agree with you. I am not a Nolan fan, until now. This film is among the best SCI-FI storytelling I've seen in quite some time. It's actually far more than standard sci-fi.
I went to see Interstellar at IMAX, I realised half way through that if i was on E this would be the most intense and awesome thing ever. Either way Interstellar is a highly enjoyable film :)
Just saw this Movie an hour ago and it is amazing. I agree with the good Dr. here and Mark also has some good points especially as he included Contact. I think Interstellar will be a classic film, as do I think Inception will also be a classic. These are films people will call "must see" movies. Interstellar is just...go and watch it.
Well put.
***** the pretension only came from the fact the script tries to over explain it'self. The film is a great watch otherwise. I do think the one thing Nolan lacks is a sense of humour in his films. I don't mean he should be making comedies, but just give us a giggle, even a black one, every now and then.
*****
I agree - and Matthew's deep low talking was irritating.
I think you pinched that last line from someone else, I've read that before.
Glad to hear some appreciation for The Prestige.
My top 5 films with batman begins (bale) . K pax (spacey) . Deja vu (washington) and 'the bouncer.(van damme)
Brilliant visualizations in the third act...the themes and concepts being explored and how Nolan did his best to accurately visualize it on screen is quite well executed. I loved the film.
My greatest experience in the cinema ever. By far. Not my favorite movie, but an amazing, thrilling ride.
Gay
Spot on!
@@MasterRace777Twit.
Greatest poster quote for Interstellar "I really like Contact" - Mark Kermode
I loved the ending. It brought a tear to my eye, and that's no mean feat.
I really liked the ending actually. Surprised by people's reaction to it
Imagine if, after the 5th dimension handshake with Dr Brand, and with his gift of humanity’s saving grace delivered to Murph, Coop disappeared into the infinite. “You gotta leave something behind,” and to further his children’s existence he gave himself to Gargantua. In my head it’s much more heroic and stirring if, for example, we see all that we do in the ending scene but without the man who made it happen, who is elsewhere now.
@@norm3844 maybe he died when he went into the black hole
@@billymabum3514 you haven’t seen the film have you?
@@MarlboroughBlenheim1 of course I have
@@billymabum3514 how can he have died when the entire tension of the plot and film is that he returns home?
There's a great actor in Interstellar, revealing who would spoil parts of it, but he plays a wonderfully dark character who acts as the complete antithesis of Cooper. He's someone who ventured out as a pioneer, but feels himself lost and alone in the ether, begging for a human connection, and when he finds it, will fight tooth and nail to hold on to it. Nolan does a really neat trick of nailing the human side of space exploration, abandoning home and being brave enough to explore.
Saw it last week. definitely up there in my top films of all time! (in my opinion of course)
Same here! Amazing movie!
Possibly the best film I've ever seen
The score of this film blew my mind!
This film is a masterpiece. I've seen it more than 10 times and each time I watch it I see new things I didn't notice before. The science blows my mind. The visuals are outstanding, even almost 10 years on. Until this came out my favourite film of all time was Back to the Future. Now it's this. By far!
I have seen this three times already, twice in IMAX and I plan to go see it again. It is an astounding film, quite possible Nolan's best. I saw that because of the sheer intimacy, emotional heft and grand spectacle it brings to the big screen (Amateur review coming up, remember a review is opinion you are allowed the politely disagree, potential minor spoilers). Nolan has always been a big proponent on celluloid image, and as the good Dr. pointed out, the scale brings back thoughts of 2001, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, one of the most breathtaking examples being the establishing shot of Saturn before cutting to the tiny Endurance floating in the midst of its rings. This is the cinematic scale of old. Moving onto the emotional heft, as again the Dr. points out Nolan has always had the theme of family in his movies e.g. Memento is driven by getting revenge for his wife, Batman is ultimately created by the death of his parents, Inception Cobb's ultimate goal is to reunite with his children, but this is the first movie of his where I felt truly connected to the family and the challenges it faces. The scene when Cooper departs is one of the most heartbreaking things in cinema. On another note it seems that this is the first time we have seen the family broken up in a Nolan movie, instead of the movie starting after those events with the protagonist already in his predicament. Concerning the plot and actual plot devices, I don't mind exposition through character, it shows that they are there more than to simply be background dressing and can engage with the primary characters. Also the fact that many of the things in the film are based on established scientific laws and/or scientific theory also helped pull me into the film further. I have seen some people in the comments section here say people are complaining about not understanding the plot because they are stupid. I disagree in the fact that statement is just plain rude, but it does help if you are somewhat interested in science fiction as you will naturally grasp the ideas of that element, even though the film does a perfectly good job of explaining to the uninitiated. On a final note concerning the movie itself (and returning the intimate point made earlier) this feels like Nolan's most open film, the passion project closest to his heart like no other movie in his back catalogue. Even though Inception had been brewing in his mind for longer, Interstellar seems to harken back to the days of the space race, when children and adults alike would look up into the night sky and let their minds wonder, instead of locking their dreams up and throwing away the key as they do today. If you read this far thank you for paying attention to one fan's amateur review of Interstellar :)
Appreciate the effort put in, but please use paragraphs!
Having watched it roughly 5 times. I had the same reaction as mark the first viewing. The second viewing had me in floods of tears and it's become a top 5 fav for sure
The film was incredible, I was left speechless as I left. 2nd favourite film after Bladerunner!
Just amazing just amazing it was incredible one of the best sci-fis to date
Fack off u ponce!
its been two years since interstellar came out and i still yet to come across a movie that hits the soul like that movie did.
Shurrrup u mug.
@@Nathan-gd7xq murph
Try What Dreams May Come, does the same thing to me as Interstellar even though a different genre.
I saw it again recently...and it very quickly reduced me to floods of tears. I think its a very beautiful and bold film, overwhelmingly cinematic, and ambitious in the best possible sense.
Absolutely fascinating film that feels like one hour and a half instead of like the 3 hours it lasts. Best cinematic experience of 2014 and one of the best 3 films of 2014 for sure. And that´s difficult to do when the scale and ambition of the film is this huge. Kudos to Nolan again. The acting is better than some of the acting offered by a few of the oscar nominees this year, the score, the cinematogrphy... everything baby, everything! 9.5 out of 10.
sanyrub ok, do you mind explaining the last 15mins. because i want you to outline the last 15mins because i think you are forgetting how totally stupid it was.
RobinHoodUKIP Time isn't linear... if you can understand that, it gets very easy to explain the rest, and any plotholes/paradoxes you might think are present (albeit, it's a bit of a science fiction cop out; a future event, ie future human beings transcended into the fourth dimension manipulate gravity perfectly such that they can make a wormhole in the past. There is no timeline involving a wormhole and one without a wormhole, in a way, history has been rewritten, or, it was always written that way, ie it was predetermined that in order to save humanity, a wormhole would appear created by humans who were saved from said wormhole...) I can understand the argument that it's not something new and therefore could be seen as cliche in a way, but if you think it was totally stupid with no meaning, I think you were trying too hard to hate it, most likely because you associate with the anti-Nolan bandwagon, a dedicated fanbase 2000 times worse than blind Nolan followers (which in retrospect, have a reason to blindly follow him as he has continuously delivered time and time again)
i wasnt talking about the wormhole, they never actually explained if it was future people or aliens that put it there, but thats not what i was talking about, it was the cheesy bit where he went in the blackhole and the blackhole lead to a childs bedroom, and he explained it as "love has no timeline" that so cringey cheesy nonsense it just ruined a very clever film.
RobinHoodUKIP I think you just didn´t get those scenes. My English is not good enough to try to explain these type of things though. Sorry.
+RobinHoodUKIP I understand where you're coming from. The idea is that gravity stretches across time and inside the black hole you can pull at the strings of gravity. The reason he was able to find his daughter was because they share a connection, that the movie argues is physical. Just as the girl astronaut explained about her physical draw to edmunds planet. This makes sense from the point of view that without love we would eat are children and we would have died of as a species long ago, the idea is that love has always been important guide in the evolutionary process, and that at the edge of space the role of love, or human connectivity, does not diminish, instead it becomes greater.
Very accurate review by Mark Kermode. I did really enjoy this movie. I just wish it had better exposition. One of the best films I've seen in a while.
People in our cinema cried a lot, felt a lot throughout the film, It was an awesomely enjoyable movie with many plots to think about, and some may need another try (watching the movie again) ... so may the story might be not understandable some places, the whole experience itself is a great epicness. And also, the film was well built up, I loved that I found myself watching a sci-fi which unreasonably went into an Action flick, but with the hypercube and similar sci-fi elements in the end it saved the whole movie for me. So Overall great movie, another top notch product from a top notch director and music composer.
One of Mark's best reviews..glad you like it!
Agree 100% with this review. There were always parts of the film that I liked, but the huge flaws and overly-contrived plot (especially at the end) designed to serve the sentimentality of the film ended up making this just miss the mark of being a truly great film for me.
Came out of the cinema blown away by this epic grandiose film. I think its as good as Inception and the other films Kermode mentioned. The last 40 mins is Nolan's tip of the cap to Kubrick's A 2001 Space Oddesy. An excellent cinematic experience.
Ambitious but not great film. Last 40 mins strangely I get some "The Abyss" vibes....
Agree too about The Abyss. I was blown away by it. When you leave the cinema with that feeling isn't that the main thing? The sheer scale of the film is huge.
It's quite something seeing the sheer gravity of the themes that are being explored visualized on screen...very well done.
One of the few great movies I've seen. Was totally blown away, I had no idea what to expect.
I wouldn't call myself a Nolan fanboy, I do think he's made some very flawed films, though I don't think he's made a bad one yet. I'm also rather cynical as well. That being said, I was completely taken with this film. It's Nolan's best and most emotionally charged work as far as I'm concerned. My legs are sore from being so tensed up during certain jaw-dropping, awe-inspiringly intense moments. Also I have to say, I was reminded a lot of Tarkovsky's films during the time spent on earth. Specifically the Mirror, the Sacrifice, and a bit of Solaris of course. Anyone else feel the same?
Totally agree. I'm neither a massive fan or detractor of Nolan, but I can't deny his talent as a filmmaker. I thought Interstellar was brilliant. Surprisingly emotional.
Fantastic movie. I found it very emotional. Not Nolan’s best but all his other movies are just so great.
Matthew McConaughey is brilliant in this.
@@Nathan-gd7xq murph
MURPH.
This is by far Nolan's most ambitious and most personal film. I think by the end of this decade, critical reassessment would be more positive.
Let's hope.
nope lol
Errrrrrr no
Hell yeah 😎!
well i weeped like a child at the end
Surely you wept?
@@Nathan-gd7xq murph
This film is possibly the best film I have ever seen. As a huge fan and follower of current research in to the scientific theories explored in this film, I think it is by far the best visualisation of concepts and even dimensions humans have never fully explored.
10/10
Classic in every department!!! A masterpiece in film making!!! My girlfriend & I love it x
Ive literally just rewatched it for the 19th time in the cinema yesterday. Its a masterpiece 👏
You can tell when Mark is not really taken with a film he wanted to like. He always skirts around the edges in his review and doesn't really talk about the actual movie - but every film that was better that it reminded him of.
Yes!!! i too felt exactly the same way with the last few mins of the film, everything up till then was an epic journey
I'm finding it difficult to find people who have all out good things to say about interstellar. For me it was the best space film I have ever seen, I found it extremely immersive and also fantastically thought provoking. Interstellar requires you to give it your undivided attention otherwise you will get stranded trying to follow the story, the acting was also at an extremely good level. For some reason I found interstellar very emotional, I don't usually cry at films but I did for this one within various scenes, not so much your typical emotions, I felt a kind of awe and compassion but I still find my emotions for this film unexplainable. Overall I have to give it a 10/10 due to its immersive, intellectual and emotional directive.
+Dom Harper What about the ending? I dont want to spoil it but it was cheezy and stupid.
+Dom Harper Just fantastic that cinema can still produce a spectacle that can be so enthralling and emotional at the same time. Left the cinema shaken. Shed tears on the 2nd and 3rd viewing. Hats off to Nolan
After The Dark Knight, my next favourite Nolan movie is the underrated Insomnia!
I really liked the last third. It's worth putting up with the sometimes clunky first two thirds for the quite thrilling end.
This film is a 10/10, just forget the reviews and go see it.
I THINK everyone (including critics) are grading Nolans work very harshly because he is Nolan. People are nitpicking at him expecting classics after classics and going in with such high expectations that they come out as little nit pickers. I reckon if movies like 'Guardians of the galaxy" and "Boy hood" and "night-crawler" (some of the highest rated movies this year) were under his name, they would receive allot less praise than they do, thus receiving lower ratings. Maybe we just need a new scale for nolan movies. A Nolan scale?
+Hash “Hans” moleman Maybe, though I personally enjoyed "Interstellar" just as much as Nolan's other films. I also loved "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Nightcrawler" just as much. I'm not a film critic though.
+Hash “Hans” moleman Or, OR, people just aren't a fan of the film :P Some people are only entertained if the movie has a VERY coherent plot, set of characters, etc. Just let people have an authentic opinion; they don't need to like every movie you do. It's sort of sad that people still can't come to grips with a difference in opinion in this day and age. I thought we were over all that.
Jacob Brockway I think you're kind of missing the point. Mistakes he made are brought up more, even though the same people would not point out these things with other directors. Even I as a fan noticed it with myself.
+PauLtus B um...are you saying that as a fan you noticed more mistakes in this film? Because that is exactly my point. If you found this film to be less good, dare I say worse, than his others, then maybe this film isn't as good. Just a thought. Also, the original +Hash "Hans" moleman is saying that we should all gauge Nolan's films based off of his filmography because they are at such a high standard. This is entirely an opinion. I like his films, but I do not by any means see him as a filmmaking God. That is all, just my opinion. Don't blame critics for not liking Nolan's films as much as one person does.
Jacob Brockway No, what I'm saying is that people basically DO see him as a filmmaking God so when there is a fault in his movies they're like: "What, a mistake? But it's Nolan..."
Also most critics love Nolan.
I liked it. Saw it in IMAX back in November
I'm not the biggest Nolan fan [though I do love Memento and the Prestige] and I've generally not found his recent stuff engaging on an emotional level - I've mostly found the characters in his films like Inception and The Dark Rises to be quite uninteresting.
This was the first of his "BIG" movies that got me emotionally [in a similar way to Contact as Kermode points out very well]. Also because I was going with it I didn't really have a problem with the ending - I do, however, think if I hadn't believed in the central relationship the ending would've annoyed to no end. It's also the first Hanz Zimmer score that I've tolerated.
For me Nolan's best film is still The Prestige but as huge sci-fi goes, this is pretty good.
:)
I rewatch Interstellar every few months. While 2001: A Space Odyssey is the undisputed grandfather of science fiction cinema, Interstellar is the finest example of its genre so far this century. A true gem that stirs every fibre of my being from beginning to end. A masterpiece. 👏
I saw it Friday night in the US and - I don't know why this should matter - kermode is spot on. As ever.
One of my very favourite films 🚀
Interstellar is a masterpiece. Period.
I mostly agree with Kermode's review. Nice effort, but all the sentimentality and new-agey stuff put me off. But I have to say, the scene on the planet orbiting the black hole is amazing. I find the basic concept terrifying... just the idea that you could spend a couple of hours in this place, and meanwhile everyone you ever knew has grown old and dropped dead. It's so bleak and chilling, like something Lovecraft might have come up with. And then you remember that it's not sci-fi, it's reality...
"Planet orbiting a black hole"? Is that from Futurama?
@@TheKamikazenaz You think Nolan pinched the idea ? Hmm, come to think of it Futurama also had a sassy wise-cracking robot. Coincidence ? I'm starting to wonder...
I rewatched it last night and while the Matt Damon scenes are about as unintentionally funny as I remembered, the rest of it is really incredible. When it really works I think it's better than anything else he's done, and overall I'd only put it behind Memento and The Dark Knight.
A life changing film.
Well, I wouldn't say family is a big part of ALL of Nolan's movies, but I mean he DID write this one with his brother again so family being part of it is not too much of a surprise. But the way 'love conquers all' ended up shaping the ending is where I agree with Mark, in that it needed a bit more grit/rigor perhaps.
I feel so satisfied that the first film on the list of potential best Nolan's is Batman Begins - people usually look at me funny when I say that's the most complete Batman film as well as my favourite one.
I'm a huge Nolan fan. One of the few people that think TDKR is superb but I respect others opinions. I saw Interstellar in IMAX and visually it is stunning. Overall I have mixed feelings. I kinda liked it but I thought it was flawed and the longer it went on the more it dragged. However the scene when cooper leaves his family is pure cinema and the scene where he looks back through a video on the years he has missed out on with his kids is heartbreaking. Overall i thought it was ok but I really wanna see it again :/ Nolans magic i guess.
Yep, as a visual spectacle, it is often stunning, no question about it.
I completely disagree with Kermode here. Not with his review (I haven't seen the movie yet) but with his statement - "Nolan trusts his imagery to convey his ideas". I love Chris Nolan, a lot, but the biggest issue I have with him is his complete lack of faith in the imagery. In almost all his films, it's never the images, it's the characters that convey the ideas. Honestly half the characters in Inception (and Dark Knight Rises) had only one task - to explain the plot. Their motivations and intentions are left blank and there is no aspect of humanity in any of them. It almost feels like Nolan distributes the expository dialogue among the unimportant characters and saves the actual bit for the important characters. Even in Memento, Leonard explaining his condition to EVERY SINGLE PERSON he met felt awkwardly out of place and somewhat incoherent. The first 2 Batman movies somewhat drifted away from the plot explaining business, but only because the characters were too involved in talking about the several ideas and ideologies in the film (and the Dark Knight had more philosophical dilemma's than a book on nichomachean ethics). I hope Interstellar takes a different approach but at the moment if I was to pick Nolan's best movie, it would be either Memento or Dark Knight.
yeah agree with this, Nolan's recent films have been all tell and no show, all text but no subtext and it gets really frustrating. I think Memento sort of gets away with it because Leonard is such a mentally damaged person it feels more likely but still that is a good point.
Lewis C I think Memento is the one that suffers the most because it reveals a glaring flaw in the film. Leonard shouldn't remember that he has short-term memory loss. He obviously learned that after the accident so how does he keep recalling it? And then you can further question how does he remember all his techniques of taking pictures and making notes, how does he remember whom to trust all the time, and the entire film breaks down. I think Dark Knight remains Nolan's best so far.
I think it's mostly important that he puts real people in his ideas (if you know what I mean). If it's the characters that experience the ideas, and the ideas are not just the set-up. So Nolan does that right
I do think Mark is aiming at the spectacular imagery in his movies that really do support the plot in a way rather than being just an action set piece (not that there are no action set pieces). I may just like it that lot of things look incredibly spectacular but do not involve a fight or just any kind of destruction.
zxbc Great answer. I think you are spot on when you said Nolan needs to reply on strong characters. I think the dialogue is great in most of his movies. But characterisation in Batman Begins, Inception, Dark Knight Rises were quite underwhelming. All threw too many characters at us in one go without telling us too much about any of them. But Memento doesn't face that problem. Structurally Memento is no inferior to citizen kane. In fact Memento has been my favourite chris nolan movie for years. Recently, I seem to be leaning more towards the Dark Knight. The moral crisis in the Dark Knight has moved me so profoundly, even more so than Memento. The triumvirate stance against evil was brilliantly executed. There are problems in the Dark Knight - the editing discrepancies, the slightly overcomplicated plot, the 3rd act feels a bit too long and the I can also understand Kermode's criticism that it's jam packed with too many ideas, too many moral dilemma's, too many philosophical ideologies for one movie.
But I think the visuals in the Dark Knight is really stands out. The blueish background of approaching darkness, the beautiful cinematography and lighting and I don't think even Nolan realised how artistic the "joker leaning out of the car" shot was.
But regardless I've convinced myself that Nolan's best is either Memento or Dark Knight, not anything else.
zxbc I just saw Interstellar and I was not impressed. This felt like an even bigger exposition party than Inception. I think Interstellar is one of Nolan weakest.
Good to see some objectivity in this review despite Kermode being a "Nolan fan".
1. Interstellar
2. The Dark Knight
3. The Dark Knight Rises
4. Batman Begins
5. The Prestige
6. Inception
7. Following
8. Memento
9. Insomnia
I agree with kermode. I thought that it definitely wasn't his best. But the visuals and the suspense at points were inception and memento like
The pandemic got me to finally watch this for the first time and what a fantastic film.
Time has been necessarily kind to this masterpiece.
@@Nathan-gd7xq DON'T LEAVE ME MURPH
agree 100% regarding interstellar but memento has to be nolans best movie
It's a beautiful film.
Nolan's films are the last bastille of blockbuster movies with life and red blood running through their veines instead of gas and oil and bile (see Bay and friends).
Let's praise him lavishly !! Let's celebrate Nolan and Del Torro (Pacific Rim) :) !
Brilliant film... as soon as I got home I wanted to back and see it Imax
Question for those who have seen it: Somebody explain to me why the first 99% of the movie every character in the film is concerned about finding a new planet to populate, and in the last 1% nobody cares about that anymore? So much so that Matthew McCoughnahey needs to secretly steal a shuttle to find the 1 person on that mission (whom also nobody cares about for some reason)? I thought they only solved how to transport people, so why are a handful of people so content on a space station? I thought the whole point of what McCoughnahey taught his daughter is so they could execute Plan A.
What ?
Just seen it in IMAX for its 10 year anniversary. It’s doesn’t get much better.
Mark you need to re-watch Contact. The father was not halfway across the universe, the alien took the form of her father as it was an image she was familiar with. The alien did explain that.
It only took sixty seconds of this man speaking for me to click the like button.
First time I've ever 100% agreed with a Mark Kermode review! I will say though that the film felt like a cross between 2001 A Space Odyssey, Grapes of Wrath and Koyaanisqatsi :)
It still pains me deeply that we'll never see the Nolans as a 5 piece all singing all dancing family troupe again. I'm in the mood for dancing is an all time classic foot tapper.
This movie is a masterpiece. Even if most critics didn’t “love” it
It lost me at the end, not the content I should say. But just when I thought something wasn't going to be explained through terrible dialogue... Oh wait, here's someone the character involved can talk to so that they can, yet again, explain what is happening visually. All of Nolan's films carry audio description, whether you want it or not.
Everything I new about movies was changed in 3 hours. Thats all I have to say. I want to get on my knees and thank nolan forever. I really do.
Gareth Hogan I have watch all Stanley's movies, most of scorcese. all coens. all pt anderson. But i never had the chance to watch them on a big screen.
I hope someday, they re-release, movies like punch drunk love, goodfellas, or full metal jacket ect. On the big screen.
I suddenly don't feel alone loving this movie
The end ties everything together, it’s not sentimental, it’s humanity at its best, it’s why humanity was worth saving.
I usually stumble out of the cinema with a vague sense of disappointment, but I thought Interstellar was very good. I don't really like Nolan that much, TDK is the only one of the 3 Batman films I enjoyed.
I think Kermode is right, there are some clunky moments and things that don't make much sense, but there's so much good stuff it's definitely worth seeing. I don't want to call it great because I can't tell that after seeing it once a few hours ago. And there are two action sequences that feel like they go on longer than was necessary as what's going to happen is very obvious, you just have to wait them out.
9 years on and people still mention and refer to this absolutely Legendary extraordinary movie ,it works it still works and it will go on forever,i think its still one of Nolans best
I really liked the ending
Is there any word on how well the early-release celluloid screenings did? Though I know intellectually that it's foolish of me to hope so, I can't help but wonder if they made any dent for film?
Ive been looking forward to this since i first heard about it last year. I intentionally avoided all traliers and reviews and even descriptions because i didnt want to know anything going in.
Matt Damon is the villain in the movie...who is miscast .
Vinny L
*spoilers* i thought he was pretty good as the villain. he sold it well and i didnt anticipate the turn and completely bought his performance.
BakehousePictures i may have mispoke when i called him the villain. i geuss antagonist would be a better term.
I get that this film isn't going to be for everyone, but in all seriousness, if a film maker set out to create the perfect film for my personal tastes, they'd come up with something pretty close to Interstellar. I loved absolutely everything about it. Objectively, it's not my favourite film. But subjectively... yeah, it just might be.
Kermode, ultimate defender of the sentimental Silent Running (and why not?) shying away from sentiment in Interstellar.
Wow it's so nice to see other people appreciating the Robert Zemeckis film "Contact" - I have always thought it was under-rated.
After all a sci-fi film without the human-element isn't really a sci-fi film - as an example, you only have to look at "Silent Running" to realise that.
Go on Mark, give us a retro-review of Contact to remind us how great this "little" film is.
They should have gotten Zemeckis for Man of Steel.
He's nailed it. I agree 99% with this (we only disagree on Nolan's best work!)
A lot of people are saying that certain parts of the film didn't make sense, while I do agree, there are parts that are hard to follow however I did think to myself that made it all the more entertaining.
Science and space has always been beyond my tiny mind so I never went into this film with the intention of understanding it. They could have explained it better but I don't think was Christopher nolan's idea from the start, I think he wanted us to be confused... he wanted us to feel the predicament Matthew McConaughey's character was in which was the threat of never seeing is family again without having a logical explanation for it.
This is exactly how I felt about Interstellar to a tee. Like Mark, I really wanted to unequivocally love this film but the flaws are way to apparent to just let slide.
His thoughts mirror mine. I loved the spectacle and the grand ideas that inhabit the film, but the moments of over-sentimentality made me roll my eyes, especially near the end. As the good doctor says, it definitely could've used more rigour.
It's simply Breathtaking.
Kernode is too harsh about the rigour and last 15mins. You just have to go with it and accept that its an emotional guess. It really worked for me.
It's not about it being emotional, it felt tacky and ill-conceived
I thought the film was pretty average to be honest. Yes it had a grand story with lots of interesting themes and ideas (bar the last act, which to me tried too hard to be complex and emotional at the same time) but the execution in telling the story was really lacking. Many times I felt that I should have been feeling like I just witnessed something incredibly profound and more than often than not, they just fell flat.
I absolutely love Interstellar and the sentimentality isn't a problem for me, in fact its one of its strongest aspects in my opinion. However, it seems like Nolan may have taken Kermode's advice about having the sentimentality work within the rigor of the film. You don't have to bold and underline specific moments to elicit emotion. Instead, allow the characters' actions to tell the story. That's something I love about Dunkirk and Tenet. Moments of sentiment are rare but when they hit, they hit hard.
Interstellar is my favorite Nolan film, followed by Memento.
Memento is superb. My brother told me if you watch it through then it let's you watch it the 'right' way round. Never checked into that as it just didnt seem right
@@richarddimeck4578 There is a hidden feature on the DVD which lets you watch the movie with the scenes in chronological order. I've watched it like that and it's still a good movie.
@@Julesacu I might have to have a look at it that way then. Does it work just as good front to back so to speak?
''There is a moment..''
Last 15 minutes Mark I cried like I did when Stansfield shot Leon in the back.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought of Thunderbirds when they revealed the rocket.
Thank you for doing a so much better review than Film 2014 who, with the exception of Danny Leigh, were very po-faced about it. Peter Bradshaw spoiled one plot element and Antonio Quirky chucked in a throw-away line that it made Armageddon look like Solaris! I've finally given up on that programme
I agree with you. I was very disappointed that Peter Bradshaw gave away a part of the film. It was quite unnecessary as Mark Kermode just proved. As for Antonio, it was obvious she wasn't going to like it as it was neither a black or white or silent art house film, they are the only ones she likes.
A of people like to knock this movie, but it's one of my favorites.
I saw the movie last night and was not overly-impressed. I had high expectations from a Nolan film (my favourite of his being the cerebral Memento) but if I were to describe the film in one word it would be - vacuous. The plot really wasn't as good as it could have been. More focus could have been placed on explaining why humanity needed to leave planet earth. The reason given, a crop killing disease called 'blight' just seemed laughably weak to me. Perhaps a better line would have been the premature slow death of the sun - but that has been covered elsewhere (see Sunshine) I suppose. And what was the story behind all of those dust storms? Were they due to the burning of blighted crops, or was it some other phenomena? The first half of the film was weaker than the second I felt.
The film has striking similarities to Gravity, Oblivion, Contact, and 2001: A Space Odyssey and I would have to say, it was worse than all of them with no new ground being covered.
I didn't like Matthew McConaughey in the lead role as I found him difficult to understand as he didn't project his voice and spoke with quite an ungainly accent. He, like the flim was a little too visually polished and vacuous too. And lastly, it was simply just too American. There were hardly any other references to any other nation on the planet which really was pitiful. More style than substance one would have to say. Certainly one of Nolan's worst films to date.
I posted a few weeks back on this video (i think) and i've watched it several times since and my view has only improved. That said i can appreciate some of the points Kermode makes will be true for many who have seen it, the only problem i have with Kermode's review is when he said some of the film doesn't make sense and to quote him "it would collapse in on itself". Kermode is more intelligent than some of the people i've debated this film with across various forums, blogs etc., and yet having read some of "The Science of Interstellar" i am struggling to see any plot flaws. Now i'm sure there is one, a plot flaw in a film is like a glitch in a game, doesn't matter what effort you put into the story before hand something will come up, even if it's quite minor in the plot. But i haven't seen one. I do accept the point about sentimentality, i do think narrative is an issue and specifically i do think the wormhole shape explanation was unnecessary. But the great thing about this film is even if you didn't like it and have a long list of issues you would include in a review for the film, the science, the theories, the 5D, is extraordinary. I think of the film as a masterpiece if you want it to be. What other film can achieve the heights of this film, as it has done for many who have seen it?
I beg to differ on the explanation part. The vast majority of people, if they even know what a wormhole is, think of it as a two-dimensional warp in flat space; a two-dimensional abstraction of a three-dimensional phenomenon. Truthfully, with the brunt of the criticism towards this film being the "plot holes" and the "inaccuracies" (which are all thoroughly unfounded, by the way), maybe a few explanations were warranted.
If only people took the time to watch it a second, or third time and then possibly read the book to educate themselves about real scientific dialogue... Unfortunately many rather prefer to keep themselves in the dark.
so is it good or not
Do y'all not think this subject matter required much more screen time? Would a TV series not have fleshed out the ideas? I'm thinking Athur C Clarkes Rama trilogy. The last half hour wasn't great, which is a shame because two thirds of it are excellent, remember the school vignette about the "fake" moon landings. home Cinema TVs make a mini series of this spectacle plausible.