What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

Interstellar

As a fan of Kip Thorne and cosmology, this film was an absolute disappointment. It's a great example in the publicity that can be garnered with a hyped-up director and marketing campaign. Sigh.
  • The plot ranges from weak to nonsensical.
  • The science, technology, and work involved is quickly glossed over and never discussed much at all. For a movie nearly three hours long, there is no excuse to cut away from character going into hibernation to instantly wake with their journey complete 10 seconds later.
  • Why the hell are there only 4 crewman with the fate of the human race on the line?
  • Even the visuals are a disappointment; beyond what could best be described as a matte painting of a black hole for a backdrop, 2007's Sunshine was miles ahead with inspiring awe and wonder.
  • Early on, there's a character that talks about the Apollo landings being faked. That character does so (I can only surmise) to illustrate the willful ignorance of the human race. But I don't care about Christopher Nolan's reasoning - to even give a second to this outright insulting conspiracy theory in a major motion picture is disgusting and had me annoyed ten minutes into the movie.
  • And, not only is the plot incredibly weak, but it's disjointed. The writing never goes into detail at how things are achieved (how did NASA construct a ship in orbit? how did the human race construct a Dyson shell?) and it constantly jumps around from concept to concept.
  • The big reveal is an absolute joke and makes Star Wars look like a piece of nonfiction.
A disappointing 6/10.
 
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Just got back from Interstellar. I liked it a lot more than Drithius it seems.

What I liked about it was the way they handled the effects of relativity on people, and I liked the plot twist. I feel it's heart was in the right place. What I didn't like was all the exceptional situations which unrealistically happen to allow for the emotional message to punch through. I even had a few eye-rolls in some of the situations. Plus it had at least one stereotypical action-movie scene which really didn't belong, I found.

I'd rate it a 8/10. I think Inception just worked better.
But I really have to give Nolan props for the ambition of it. It's hugely ambitious imo, and it would've been a miracle if it all worked.

Here's a short review by YourMovieSucks, with which I agree 100%.
 
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Forgiving the utter nonsense involved in so many scenes, my biggest gripe was complete lack of detail given to anything whatsoever. It's like Nolan went out of his way to include as many different "acts" as possible without ever developing them more than as a pretty picture.

  • Time it took between McConaughey being convinced to leave his family to arriving at Saturn: 5 minutes. So much for character and scientific exposition. When the audience cares more about a robot than they do the majority of human characters in a film about saving the human race, you have failed utterly as a director.
  • Let's go ahead and then visit two scientists/worlds for the hell of it… disregard the fact that it won't advance the plot one bit (dead scientist, crazy scientist, back to square one, yay). Speaking of which, why would ANYONE, scientist or otherwise, ever even consider a planet on the very rim of a Blackhole's event horizon to be habitable long-term? Did they make a pact with the Q Continuum, that the Black Hole would never increase in size?
  • McConaughey ditches Hathaway because there wasn't enough fuel to get to planet03. What? Mass would only affect their acceleration; they'd still get wherever they wanted to go just fine. This was just Nolan (who was obviously not the brains behind the movie's little science) getting Mcconaughey to willingly cross into the Blackhole - because as everyone knows, if your spaceship is getting ripped apart by the extreme tidal forces of a colossal blackhole, your flesh will be just fine - again because the Continuum decreed it.
The movie was overly long with an extreme number of superfluous scenes - something I normally wouldn't have minded as much if there was any detail given to anything whatsoever in the film beyond the concept of time dilation.

Contact, Sunshine, Europa Report - all far, far better than this movie with nowhere near the hype.

Here's a review I stumbled upon and it pretty much sums up how I feel: Ironically, in the end this movie all about gravity doesn’t have the gravitas it thinks it has.
 
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The movie had faults but this is one of my favorite bits

Time it took between McConaughey being convinced to leave his family to arriving at Saturn: 5 minutes
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Launch countdown begins as soon as McConaughey's the truck moves away from his daughter. I liked the fact that he just cut the stuff we already know from lots of other movies. The training session, the launch etc. They will server no purpose to this movie. We know they are going to space and we don't need the filler.
 
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Except that time would have been used to generate some empathy for any of the characters - of which I had absolutely none (aside from McCounaghey's character who actually had a backstory).

Instead we get Dr. Hathaway coming off like she's 14 years old with her giggly stare-out-the-window act and crush on the boy next door (where did that come from!?); some dude who dies two minutes after he appears onscreen; and some other dude who we're supposed to care about when he ages 20 years in 5 minutes.
But we don't care - at all. Again, this would be fine and dandy, almost forgivable, if the story made any sense at all. But instead Nolan has us land on waterworld, skip on over to Alaska, and then mosey on inside a blackhole for the depressingly contrived (and nonsensical) plot device contained therein.

I want to say that I truly wanted to like this movie. I stayed away from previews altogether and my excitement only grew when I learned Kip Thorne was a consultant. It proved to be a huge letdown. But, in retrospect, I should have greatly tempered my hopes; I have rarely enjoyed Nolan's work. It almost always comes off as ponderous in its laughable attempt to convey a deep meaning that simply isn't there.

Horrible plot + hollywoodized science = horrible movie.

Anywho, I'll stop posting about Interstellar now; I'm just frustrated. It is so rare for a space exploration movie to get the budget and marketing that this one got... and I feel it was completely squandered on a terrible script.
 
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Gorath said:
This guy is completely annoying. Is there anything funny in somebody talking without a break for 5+ minutes, not even using small pauses between sentences?
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That's part of his style. I really like his movie reviews/analysis. He's quite insightful and seems to know his stuff.
 
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Yeah it's just another fake YouTube troll vido, but it's good for a few laughs.;)
 
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Because I can and I'm in a bad mood right now.:evil:
That and I wish all YouTube trolls would burn in my pit of fire.:cm:
 
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JDR13 said:
So was everyone else as underwhelmed as I was by the Episode VII teaser trailer?

I'm talking about the real trailer that was released today.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/28/7297181/star-wars-trailer-force-awakens-episode-7-stream
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I haven't been following its development so it was quite a surprise as it was totally unexpected.

It is a teaser after all so we get to see very little. What I really didn't like was the "hilt" as it just seems absurd to me. Why try so hard to make it look "cooler"?
 
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Asdraguuhl said:
What I really didn't like was the "hilt" as it just seems absurd to me. Why try so hard to make it look "cooler"?
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That was my thought as well. They need to stop messing with the lightsabers.

The voice narrating the trailer is pretty bad too.

txa1265 said:
Well, compared to the abysmal new Jurasik Park trailer …
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They're actually trying to milk something more out of that franchise again? That's one movie I'll be ignoring completely.
 
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I think JJ Abrams is a mediocre director, and given the horror of the previous trilogy, my hopes aren't high.

I didn't even know there was another Jurassic Park - I see Spielberg has outsourced the milking this time. If ever there was a story that didn't need expanding upon...
 
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JDR13 said:
That was my thought as well. They need to stop messing with the lightsabers.
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Exactly, the lightsaber in its original form is already pure perfection (… which is an undisputed fact).

The Millennium Falcon seems to have a new radar :).

I also noticed that the X-Wings are different. The front fuselage has a slightly different shape and the wings are narrower and they seem to close in a more scissor-like manner. Probably just irrelevant info for most, I guess I am just a SW ship fanatic :).
 
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