Interstellar Review

Interstellar is a brand new film which comes directed by Christopher Nolan who many know as the director of The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010). Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey, Wes Bentley,  Anne Hathaway,  Jessica Chastain, Elyes Gabel,  Bill Irwin and Michael Caine. It follows the story of Cooper who is played by Matthew McConaughey. Cooper is asked to pilot a spaceship on a dangerous mission through a worm whole near Saturn which will take him to a new galaxy and hopefully a new planet for the people of Earth to live on in the future, as the current Earth won’t survive for long and all hope now rests with Cooper and his team.

Interstellar Trailer

Interstellar Review

In terms of the plot, it could be said by some to be kind of all over the place, particularly if they didn’t understand all the time distortions that characters face when travelling at fast speeds. But while the movie does constantly twist and turn its plot to keep you guessing. I found it to be quite easy to follow once I left the cinema and thought about it for an hour and chatted to my friend about it, that’s when we figured it all out. Interstellar is kind of similar to Inception (2010) in the sense that it leaves a lot of questions open in the end for you to chat about and I like that about the film.

I didn’t mind the plot of Interstellar, for the most part it was great, except for the ending…. which I didn’t really like. Where I also didn’t like Interstellar and I really wanted to give this film a higher score because I do believe it is really well made, but this one factor holds me back, the characters… While Matthew McConaughey’s character of Cooper is pretty much fully developed and superb in almost every way including the acting and dialogue from him. I found Anne Hathaway’s character of Amelia to be one of the most boring characters to watch ever. I don’t know if it was because of Anne Hathaway’s performance or that the character just does nothing great the whole time but there was more joy in watching TARS ( Bill Irwin) who had no emotion because he was a robot then having to watch Anne Hathaway act in this film.

I didn’t mind Jessica Chastain as Murph who was Cooper’s daughter in the film and she did well with her role. Michael Cain delivered strongly with his performance as he always seems to do. There’s also a short appearance from Matt Damon during Interstellar which I enjoyed all the way and consider a high point for the film.

Special effects in Interstellar are something that I think everyone will want to see. It’s probably one of the better looking films all year and having seen Interstellar in the IMAX I felt that I could really enjoy everything that was on screen to the fullest. I do recommend watching Interstellar in the IMAX if you do go as Christopher Nolan filmed quite a lot of Interstellar using IMAX cameras.  Some of the visuals, the space flight scenes and the special effects look nothing short of phenomenal, I felt like I was actually watching people fly a real ship at some points in the film.

Some of the effects for when they fly around Saturn or the Earth or any of the space flight sections are really captivating to look at and you do feel the vastness of space when watching Interstellar. Christopher Nolan really captured the right tone for space exploration for his film, some scenes can feel really tense at times and when you combine that with Hans Zimmer’s score you get something that’s very entertaining to watch.

For the people out there who love the  “science” part of science fiction films there is quite a lot here in Intestellar for people to talk about. Mainly about travelling at fast speeds, appearances of worm holes, what’s inside a black hole? All those types of questions are addressed in Interstellar and we get some philosophical points here and there for us all as humans to think about. With much of the screenplay having been based on the works of Kip Thorne who is prominent theoretical physicist Interstellar is scientifically a heavy film to take in. But I felt that I could understand all of the basics of what was happening and in that sense the storytelling was well done, because a poorer filmmaker would have lost the audience earlier on. But I didn’t really feel lost at all with Interstellar.

At its heart Interstellar is about humanity and addresses many concepts about exploration, finding a new home, sustaining the Earth, survival, family and aging with time. All  of these concepts are interesting and I’m glad there is a film here that not only has these human elements, but also manages to mix them in with the scientific ones. It kind of reminds me of the Star Trek (1966-1969) which focused on space exploration and concepts either scientific or human. Interstellar does focus much more on concepts and ideas for the film and less so on action and space explosions which I guess the modern Star Trek films seem to now do. I really do miss old science fiction. This is the type of science fiction I like to watch and it’s far more interesting and compelling. It’s something that I wish there was more of at the cinemas and in that sense I have to give the film high marks.

Overall Interstellar is something that you don’t get much of at the cinema these days. It has a lot of content in there for people to think about and talk about regarding humanity and the limitations of science in the future along with exploring what is possible for mankind. The special effects are phenomenal and the acting from Matthew McConaughey is excellent. However other cast members like Anne Hathaway are a bit of a let down on screen which is disappointing and the ending wasn’t that great but this is really the only reason I take a point off the film.

I really enjoyed my time with Interstellar overall and  it’s a really cool movie to watch. Even though though its run time is almost 3 hours coming in at 169 minutes it didn’t seem long and passed by quick. I was very much into the movie the whole time and after figuring everything out some time after I left the cinema, I have to say it was pretty good. I wish there were more science fiction movies out there like Interstellar. Go see it in the IMAX if you can.