I loved GRAVITY and really, really liked INTERSTELLAR. So there.

I too think this is Nolan's least realized film, but it has enough great moments to still make it an effective film to watch. This needed to be tighter and better explained, and the twilight zone inspired twist is pretty laughable, but it doesn't exactly kill it. Way too long and not enough truly happens to make this the masterpiece it desperately wants to be. I regret to say I really wish Spielberg never left as I know he would have done it better justice. As far as emotion goes, I actually found the love argument much more compelling in Inception than here. I feel like the Nolan hype is the film's biggest flaw. It's a good Sci Fi film. Nothing more, nothing less. Good acting, great visuals, the middle is the film's best parts. Problem is it's bookended by almost 90 minutes of "this could have been much better." As for my preview crowd. 3 people clapped, 250 of the 300 left when I did within a minute of the credits. No awe inspiring gazes at the screen.

Also, If I don't hear the word "Professor" in the next year, I might be able to watch it again.

Solid B/B+ First Nolan film I'm fine with not revisiting.

Stop being foolish and watch Jiabiangou by Wang Bing, you petit wyrm.

This

I just need to organize my ideas of what I just watched

The earth is dying, as it so often is in contemporary films and television series. American farmland is plagued by blight and dust storms. One such stretch of troubled acreage is owned by Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a widower and former aviator now striving to maintain his crop and raise his son and daughter. The galaxies-traversing plot of Interstellar, the new film by Christopher Nolan, is set in motion when NASA recruits Cooper for a secret expedition: he and a small crew will travel beyond our solar system in search of another habitable planet. He is reluctant to leave his children behind, but joins the noble cause. Meanwhile, as they venture forth into the stars, benevolent, yet realistic academic Brand (Michael Caine) tries to solve the problem of how to transport the enormous human population into space.

From its ensemble cast to its production design to its organ-centric original score to its just-shy-of-three-hours length, this is a grand film: vast, unrelenting, enchanting, a bit self-important, and maybe a bit confusing, but ultimately extremely satisfying and audacious. Beneath the substantial and chic pageantry, it has two chief concerns: space and child rearing. To achieve its goals as a space adventure, it does, yes, submerge viewers in a vast well of jargon, and the inside-baseball debates over fifth dimensions and singularities will no doubt amuse certain viewers and numb others. However, the film also understands the majestic and menacing power of uncharted space. It draws both awe and suspense from the idea of humans, so fragile and insignificant, entering outsize realms previously beyond the reach of exploration. Nolan, ever a showman and stylist, also delivers his fair share of straightforward, exciting, balls-to-the-wall action set pieces, including a nightmare visit to an oceanic planet where every hour equals seven years on Earth and the waves resemble mountains.

And the gifted actors assembled lend authenticity and depth to Interstellar as a story of an estranged father and daughter searching for each other through time and space, even if there are a couple moments where one is tempted to hide under the seat to avoid the corny power-of-love testaments Nolan flings through the screen. McConaughey, still riding a wave of career resurgence after such projects as Dallas Buyers Club and HBO's True Detective, is an established pro at exuding laconic, salt-of-the-earth masculinity, and he also nails the moments in which his otherwise confident character expresses fiery feelings of doubt and regret. The same dynamic is true of the performance delivered by Jessica Chastain, who is as elegant and focused as ever and deserves even more screen time. She plays Cooper's daughter Murphy as an adult, envisioning her as a woman whose steely devotion to data, method, and theory is betrayed now and then by traumatic childhood enigmas left unresolved. This is the seventh time Nolan has cast Caine in a paternal, wisdom-dispensing role, and the legendary actor is able to bring charisma and humanity to unwieldy expository monologues. Also deserving of praise is Matt Damon for his brief, but tantalizing and haunting role as a solo space traveler whose isolation has deeply impacted his worldview and sense of purpose. He provides the film with a welcome jolt of antagonism and conflict, yet the character is too complicated and melancholy to register as a simple foe.

A-

Way too slow to engage most audiences, good lord. it's a strong film technically but its boring. Nolan bit off a bit more than he could practically chew with this one.

I disagree. It is long, but always moving at a nice or even ferocious clip. If anything, it could use a few more moments of comparative pause and silence to let us savor the scope.

No, it is not always moving at a nice clip. TDKR had slow scenes but moved very fast. This one drags. and drags. and drags. I would say this is Nolans first real misfire upon first viewing.

Can someone explain how Murph solves everything? Like, what is the equation and what does the answer do

I believe since the human population and resources needed to keep them alive would have added up to a far enormous weight than a small mission like the Endurance, they needed to be able to control gravity with that equation.

I'm a little confused as to whether Matt Damon was on his planet for 35 years (counting the +23) despite the film saying they could only last a decade. Or without the film saying it did his planet also have time warped by the black hole

matt damon was in cryosleep, that's why he could survive longer

One part I cannot figure out: what precisely inspires Cooper to say the "tesseract" is not an alien design, but rather created by an evolved form of humanity in the future? It is an interesting thought and reminds me in a way of the robots-created-by-robots at the end of A.I., but I am curious as to what reveals this to Cooper.

It's brilliant and amazing.

I'm not going to go to in depth with repeating a lot of the praises but more question some of the faults people have with the film. I think the biggest fault people have with this that doesn't seem like it should be a fault is the love conquers all aspect. It's not like this was something added in the film at the end to wrap everything up, love and relationship was a major part of the film before resolutions had to come into place. Plus, with the film doing a good job grounding itself in more realistic science than has been done in a long while in film, why not have love be the grounding force to the extra dimensions instead of some very complex scientific idea that would have gotten ridiculed or been too confusing? It's a simple solution which keeps up with the grand scheme of the entire film.

Time in general was the most interesting aspect of the film particularly when on the water planet. They really seemed to do a good job tackling what changes when one is so close to a black hole. The consequences the team experiences as a result in a space of time that is minimal to them cements the emotional core of the film. I was reading how Neil Degrasse Tyson was actually not too pissed off the film as he was with Gravity, and actually appreciated a lot of what was attempted here especially with the black holes which I agree with.

Now I'll get into my take on the praises. I mean the visuals are beautiful in this film. The black hole travel scene is perhaps the most beautiful thing visually I've ever seen in a film. Once they get on to the planets, the beauty still doesn't stop. The score does a really good job as well as a companion through these already very intense and/or emotional scenes. The acting is all strong across the board with McConaughey and Chastain being the standouts.

I'll need to see it again before I can decide if it is better than Inception, but Nolan has done it again in providing a quality film with blockbuster totals.

Film's 2 most glaring flaws so far:

I get what they were trying to do but this is a large misfire. Needed another script draft. The gravity equation makes zero sense to 99.9999% of the audience hence nobody gives a fuck about her solving.

Other than few scenes, we don't feel involved with the characters at all. Nolan got way too cute with this one.

He needs to halt production on BVS, give Batfuck the batboot, bring back Bale and go full blown TDKR in order to save his career. It is the only way.

No one else thought that the whole Gravity theory was a big Fuck you to Gravity the film?

Man saves world by spying and being a creeper in his daughter's bedroom. It does drag at time but it made up for it by having a bleak and bittersweet ending similar to Castaway. Has Cooper completely forgotten that he has a son by the second half of the movie? If I was going to have a robot in a film set in the future, it should look like Gundam and not some vision of a robot what the people in the 1940s envision.

Far too many Bs in that post.

This is an incredibly (incredibly) ambitious movie that unfortunately largely comes up short of those ambitions. It's all extremely dense and its attempts to be off the chain cerebral just end up feel like overreaching by the end, coupled with the unnecessary long 3-hour running time. When I say Interstellar "comes up short," that doesn't mean I disliked it. I didn't; in fact, I enjoyed most of it. But it's no modern masterpiece or the next 2001 as the early hype had suggested. It's also probably my least favorite Nolan film since Insomnia. Matthew McConaughey is wonderful as the film's emotional center, adding another significant accomplishment to his rejuvenated career. The rest of the cast is fine for the most part; Jessica Chastain does all she can to wring the emotional beats out of a character who needed more screen time, but Anne Hathaway is unfortunately stuck with a rather poorly written character and is not well served by mostly anything occurring here. So, goodness. This was definitely a worthwhile cinematic experience when you factor in all the technicality at play, and a lot of the film's sentiment worked for me. But it all just seemed like too much. B

After a second viewing my thoughts are much clearer on this. And I fucking loved it, not to the extent I expected too but that almost never happens. Despite it's long running time I never felt bored for a second and I would actually love to see a longer cut. It's an amazing movie and the first one in a while that really stayed with me. Can't wait to see it again.

Seconded.

To quote Drax the Destroyer:

You're an imbecile.