INTERSTELLAR (2014) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

interstellar (2014) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   169 minutes

Released         |   7 November 2014

cast

Matthew McConaughey ... Cooper
Anne Hathaway ... Brand
Jessica Chastain ... Murph
John Lithgow ... Donald
Mackenzie Foy ... Murph (10 Yrs.)
Timothée Chalamet ... Tom (15 Yrs.)
Casey Affleck ... Tom
Matt Damon ... Mann
​Wes Bentley ... Doyle

director

Christopher Nolan

writer

Jonathan Nolan ... (written by) and
Christopher Nolan ... (written by)

cinematographer

​Hoyte Van Hoytema ... director of photography

music

​Hans Zimmer

film editor

​Lee Smith

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box office result

Worldwide               $677,463,813 ​

Australia                 $​16,971,232 ​

North America        $​​​​​​​​​188,020,017

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movie minuitae

Like INCEPTION (2010) and the last two DARK KNIGHT films, Christopher Nolan has focused on as many real environments as possible.

"We have spatial interiors. We built closed sets and shot it like a documentary, like the actors were really there," he said.

Nolan had the film's visual effects created in advance, and projected onto screens placed outside the spacecraft set, so when the actors looked out the windows of their vessel they would be able to see and react to a real environment, and not a green screen.

​Technically, Nolan said he shot with an IMAX camera on this film more than on any of his previous pictures. He also wanted to give greater enhancement to the audio experience this time around. He stated that he has "very ambitious sound mix plans. I want to give audiences an incredible immersive experience. The technical aspects are going to be more important than any film I've made before."

The wormhole explanation using paper and pen is exactly the same as it appears in EVENT HORIZON (1997).

​The film has six Oscar winners in the cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Sir Michael Caine, Ellen Burstyn, Casey Affleck, and Matt Damon. It also includes three Oscar nominees: Timothée Chalamet, Jessica Chastain and John Lithgow.

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RELATED MOVIES

INCEPTION (2010)

INTERSTELLAR (2014) MOVIE IMAGES

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INTERSTELLAR (2014) STORY SYNOPSIS

​​In Earth's future, a global crop blight and second Dust Bowl are slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. Professor Brand (Michael Caine), a brilliant NASA physicist, is working on plans to save mankind by transporting Earth's population to a new home via a wormhole. But first, Brand must send former NASA pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and a team of researchers through the wormhole and across the galaxy to find out which of three planets could be mankind's new home.

INTERSTELLAR (2014) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 6 November 2014

Pop ​Movee Rating

INTERSTELLAR is an intriguing piece of film-making. It’s full of ideas and ambition, but is let down by parts of the film-making process that aren’t able to translate that ambition. Christopher Nolan (THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY & INCEPTION) delivers a movie that makes people work for their entertainment, eschewing an effects-driven extravaganza in favour of characterisation set in a near-future world on the brink of agricultural collapse. It uses the structure of classic science fiction films such as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND to convey its message, which some viewers may find too on-the-nose. It’s a strong but compromised work of speculative science fiction that is a calculated risk by the director to deliver a cinema experience that doesn’t just spoon-feed the audience every narrative outcome.

Somewhere in the near future, humanity’s demand upon Earth’s resources has taken its toll. There is not enough food to feed the planet’s population and desperate agricultural practices have expelled too much nitrogen into the atmosphere. Climate change is taking a brutal toll, as dust storms become major weather events and crop blight is marginalising food production. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a former NASA pilot & engineer who has become a corn farmer in order to do his bit to help humanity struggle on. The appearance of a strange phenomenon in his home lead Cooper and his 10 year old daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) to the covertly-operating NASA lead by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway). Brand convinces Cooper to pilot a mission that will allow an intergalactic expedition to find humanity a new planet to call home.

INTERSTELLAR was co-written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan. The pair certainly brushed up on the “great science fiction movies” before they sat down to write this film, as there are nods to the genre’s past great littered throughout the film. Cooper and Amelia are joined on their mission by Doyle (Wes Bentley) and Romilly (David Gyasi), along with TARS, a robot voiced by Bill Irwin. Whether it was intended or not, this segment of the movie feels like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Nolan’s dedication to making sure that the space travel appears and feels to be scientifically accurate is similar to the same dedication paid by Kubrick when he was making his masterpiece back in the mid-1960s. Those who have seen 2001 will also find it hard not to draw comparison between TARS and HAL-9000. 

The story also addresses the passage of time associated with space travel and cleverly uses it to link back to events on Earth, as an older Murph (Jessica Chastain) joins Professor Brand in a bid to solve a mathematical equation that will help NASA to defeat gravity itself and launch massive ships from the planet’s surface in order to save the planet’s population. Murph’s visit back to the family farm to her brother Tom (Casey Affleck) highlight the situation is more desperate than ever, as the dust storms are never-ending and the clogged atmosphere is suffocating people to their death. The Nolan brothers do not shy away from the question of mortality throughout the story, as a number of important characters do not make it to the end of the film. It’s an example of Nolan’s calculated risk that the audience will accept, in a story that spans several decades and has an interplanetary space mission central to its premise, that life will play out the same for his characters as it does for all humans.

At its core, INTERSTELLAR is a story about faith and love. Not the feel-good romantic comedy stuff; more the power of connection that two people can have between them that transcends all other matters in the universe. Cooper and Murph are the embodiment of this connection in the film. McConaughey is rock solid as Cooper. He’s both a superman and an everyman and the character is not an easy sell, but McConaughey’s passion when he talks about Cooper’s children’s future make him relatable as a parent and believable in his delivery. Jessica Chastain impresses again as the older Murph and her performance injects emotion into the story at a point where technicalities of the plot could have completely overwhelmed the story. Anne Hathaway as Amelia is miscast and lacks the dramatic punch to match it with McConaughey. Nolan’s acting talisman Michael Caine looks similarly out of his depth. The director has used the veteran actor in every film since he has made since BATMAN BEGINS and it’s unusual to see him turn in a performance that doesn’t hit the mark. John Lithgow, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace and David Oyelowo all appear in the film, but none have a great deal of screen time to do anything other than get through the lines and keep the story moving. 

A lot of attention has been paid to the technical production of Interstellar, especially Nolan’s use of 35mm film and IMAX technology. A number of the scenes were filmed using IMAX cameras, but it ended up becoming quite distracting. The clarity of the 35mm footage on the bigger screen lacked resolution and Nolan’s selection of IMAX shots did nothing to improve the story. Hoyte Van Hoytema was Nolan’s cinematographer on INTERSTELLAR and the film looks different to the five films that Wally Pfister has done for the director. (Given the poor box office result of Pfister’s directorial debut TRANSCENDANCE, it would not be unreasonable to suggest you should never mess with a winning combination. )

Another element that does not work for INTERSTELLAR is its musical score. Hans Zimmer is a wonderful film music composer and he has provided Nolan with great accompaniments to his previous movies. The score for Interstellar is not one of them. The signature theme – Our Destiny Lies Above Us – is a moving piece of music in itself, but the manner in which it is cut into the film becomes increasingly jarring the longer the film runs. It’s especially overwrought in scenes where the crew of the Endurance spacecraft are tested to their physical and mental limits. It’s but another example of the film-making process not quite matching the ambition of the story.

It’s easy to say that this is not Christopher Nolan’s best film, but it is a comparison borne of a body of work not matched by any other director over the last decade. Nolan sets very high standards. INTERSTELLAR is an extraordinary piece of film-making by comparison to the great majority of what makes its way onto cinema screens. Viewers need to be prepared to think to enjoy this film, but it doesn’t come with an in-built automatic satisfaction button that can be pushed at the end of the film to make sure it’s everything that’s wanted or desired.  ​

INTERSTELLAR MOVIE (2014) USEFUL LINKS

Interstellar (film) - Wikipedia
​Interstellar (2014) - IMDb
​Interstellar (2014) - Rotten Tomatoes​

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