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The only discussion to be had is whether it's the best of the past decade.

Is it better than The Avengers?

It's definitely more artistic than the Avengers.


On a side note, I hated the movie. I've never felt more uncomfortable in a movie theater. Nolan's worst work by far (which, thankfully, isn't saying much at all and I look forward to his future films).

This topic is a disgrace.

I thought it was interesting, and despite being so long kept me engaged the whole time. Won't go so far as to say it was best of the year though...

I will not cast my vote on the movie of the year until I've had a chance to see the new Hobbit movie.  If it can live up to the commercials I've seen so far, it should be a great movie.

I will not cast my vote on the movie of the year until I've had a chance to see the new Hobbit movie.  If it can live up to the commercials I've seen so far, it should be a great movie.

Agreed. IMO the last 2 were the best of the last 2 years.

Daniel, what confuses me is that you seem to be a big fan of Nolan, but all your gripes with Interstellar are clear issues with other films of his as well. Nolan films, without exception, are the height of pretension, they're almost always absurdly preachy (none more so than the Dark Knight trilogy), and the dialogue has never felt organic. The first two I overlook with him because in the grand scheme of things, they don't really impact the film making at all, and I don't mind the dialogue because it still makes sense, and fits into his style quite well. I won't argue that Interstellar isn't all of these things, but pretty much all of his films are all of these things, so I'm curious where the divide is for you.

Spoilers Ahead

I loved the first two-thirds or so of Interstellar, to the point where the phrase "greatest movie I've ever seen" started rattling around in my head a little bit. It started to lose me a bit after Michael Cain's death, and further after Matt Damon's character was introduced. I felt that these events caused a major shift in tone from the beginning of the film. It went from hopeful and extremely sentimental to dark pretty rapidly, and it rubbed me the wrong way. Part of this I guess comes from my own expectations; I kind of assumed I knew where the film was heading, and I ended up being wrong. Problem was, I actually preferred my own assumptions over what actually ended up happening. See, I assumed that things would continue with the general tone, with a full on 2001 type of ending. The second planet ends up roughly the same way the first one did ("darn, it doesn't work for some really cool reasons!"), they move on, and get to the third planet and it ends up being aliens. That's what I expected, and because I have so much respect for 2001, I was more than okay with that as an ending. It fit the tone and narrative that Nolan, up to that point, had built.

Instead, we got bookshelves and black holes. To his credit, Nolan sold me on it a whole lot more than what I thought he would, but as well-constructed as most of the film was, it felt weak. Most of the plot holes are directly related to the events inside the black hole, and it feels unfortunate that so much could have been avoided. Maybe I'm not being fair because my expectations were dashed, but it just felt weak by comparison. I still felt it was an excellent movie though; I liked it a lot more than Daniel or Olijar did.

There's a good quote by Damon Lindelof, in regards to the movie Prometheus (a superior film in my opinion):

Blade Runner might not have done well financially when it first came out, but people are still talking about it because it was infused with all these big ideas. Scott was also talking about very big themes in Prometheus. It was being driven by people who wanted the answers to huge questions. But I thought that we could do that without ever getting too pretentious. Nobody wants to see a movie where people are floating in space talking about the meaning of life.

And that's essentially all we got with Interstellar. The Dark Knight trilogy might have been preachy, yes, but it had lots of great qualities that clearly outshine that element. Interstellar was pure pretension, which I'd argue is a first for Nolan. Yes, his films are consistently serious and purposefully complex, but he's no Lars Von Trier or Terrence Malick when it comes to injecting pure cynicism and disdain for the general audience into his films on a regular basis (there's a reason his fanbase is mostly composed of teenage males).

AGAIN, I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad movie. It's totally beautiful and I love the Grapes of Wrath feel throughout. I suppose I expected more of a mind twister and less of an unholy marriage between Spielberg's sentiment and Kubrick's grandeur (the latter of whom I am totally a huge fan of, pretentiousness included) with the big twist being My god, HE was the ghost in Murph's bedroom.

I will not cast my vote on the movie of the year until I've had a chance to see the new Hobbit movie.

Same here. but it was a great movie that kept me thinking.

I think they really wanted this movie to be called "Gravity". 

Differences between Gravity and Interstellar:
Interstellar had:
Plot
Great characters
Themes

Gravity had:
Random space junk action
Darth Vader noises

Similarities between Gravity and Interstellar:
They both take place in space.

Yeah, I hated Gravity almost as much as The Avengers.

Yeah, I hated Gravity almost as much as The Avengers.

My question is whether you like Interstellar more than your previous favorite Nolan film?  So which is it, Interstellar -or- Batman Begins?

Quote from: Westy on December 03, 2014, 09:38:04 PM

Yeah, I hated Gravity almost as much as The Avengers.

My question is whether you like Interstellar more than your previous favorite Nolan film?  So which is it, Interstellar -or- Batman Begins?

Haven't seen it enough yet. I think BB will likely win out due to themes of identity, fear, etc. while Interstellar just had "LOVE TRANSCENDS EVERYTHING YAAAAAAY", which wasn't even that well done if I'm being totally honest.