Interstellar (2014)

The following is a stream of consciousness review I jotted down after watching Interstellar during the spring semester of my freshman year at college. My overall rating for the movie was 2.5 stars out of a possible 4. On my scale, 2.5 stars qualifies as "decent."

From the moment that Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) enters Gargantuan forward, this movie approaches 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of complexity and in doing so raises itself a whole star. The ending is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but the rest is nowhere near special or impressive by any means. The quiet dialogue, the unnecessary transformation of Matt Damon’s character, the acting of Casey Affleck… all of these are faults. The score has its moments, but on the whole, it is definitely not deserving of an Oscar nomination. And the moron in the sound department who figured that it would be a good idea to play the score louder than the already inaudible whisperings of characters really needs to re-evaluate how they work. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this movie is the fact that there is no clear terrific acting performance. Everyone ranges from decent to awful – I’m looking at you, Casey – with the best performance and closest to a quite good performance coming from David Gyasi as Romilly. I did not have all-star hopes going into this film, the reviews and personal opinions ranged from confusing and over-ambitious to a wonderfully made and innovational sci-fi flick. This, for sure, is a remarkably ambitious movie and it does seem from time to time like Christopher Nolan is trying too hard to impress the world that he is a top-class director, which bugs me. Nolan is a very good director, and I don’t think that he should try to over impress like he did here. He just needs to make the film, the impressiveness is 90% expected and inevitable – notice the reference I made here with the percentage – and I do look forward to his next film, which should be moving as it follows events of World War II. Returning back to the movie, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this to anyone just on the whim of “Hey, I want to watch a movie, what would you suggest,” but I certainly would not object if someone decides that they want to watch it and ask for my opinion and insight. I will not turn them away from Interstellar. I will highlight the positives and gloss over the negatives, but stay reserved enough so that they can make their own opinions and critiques.