Mark Kermode reviews Interstellar 

My top 5 films with batman begins (bale) . K pax (spacey) . Deja vu (washington) and 'the bouncer.(van damme)

Well put.

***** the pretension only came from the fact the script tries to over explain it'self. The film is a great watch otherwise. I do think the one thing Nolan lacks is a sense of humour in his films. I don't mean he should be making comedies, but just give us a giggle, even a black one, every now and then.

***** I agree - and Matthew's deep low talking was irritating.

I think you pinched that last line from someone else, I've read that before.

Imagine if, after the 5th dimension handshake with Dr Brand, and with his gift of humanity’s saving grace delivered to Murph, Coop disappeared into the infinite. “You gotta leave something behind,” and to further his children’s existence he gave himself to Gargantua. In my head it’s much more heroic and stirring if, for example, we see all that we do in the ending scene but without the man who made it happen, who is elsewhere now.

@@norm3844 maybe he died when he went into the black hole

@@billymabum3514 you haven’t seen the film have you?

@@MarlboroughBlenheim1 of course I have

@@billymabum3514 how can he have died when the entire tension of the plot and film is that he returns home?

sanyrub ok, do you mind explaining the last 15mins. because i want you to outline the last 15mins because i think you are forgetting how totally stupid it was.

RobinHoodUKIP Time isn't linear... if you can understand that, it gets very easy to explain the rest, and any plotholes/paradoxes you might think are present (albeit, it's a bit of a science fiction cop out; a future event, ie future human beings transcended into the fourth dimension manipulate gravity perfectly such that they can make a wormhole in the past. There is no timeline involving a wormhole and one without a wormhole, in a way, history has been rewritten, or, it was always written that way, ie it was predetermined that in order to save humanity, a wormhole would appear created by humans who were saved from said wormhole...) I can understand the argument that it's not something new and therefore could be seen as cliche in a way, but if you think it was totally stupid with no meaning, I think you were trying too hard to hate it, most likely because you associate with the anti-Nolan bandwagon, a dedicated fanbase 2000 times worse than blind Nolan followers (which in retrospect, have a reason to blindly follow him as he has continuously delivered time and time again)

i wasnt talking about the wormhole, they never actually explained if it was future people or aliens that put it there, but thats not what i was talking about, it was the cheesy bit where he went in the blackhole and the blackhole lead to a childs bedroom, and he explained it as "love has no timeline" that so cringey cheesy nonsense it just ruined a very clever film.

RobinHoodUKIP I think you just didn´t get those scenes. My English is not good enough to try to explain these type of things though. Sorry.

+RobinHoodUKIP I understand where you're coming from. The idea is that gravity stretches across time and inside the black hole you can pull at the strings of gravity. The reason he was able to find his daughter was because they share a connection, that the movie argues is physical. Just as the girl astronaut explained about her physical draw to edmunds planet. This makes sense from the point of view that without love we would eat are children and we would have died of as a species long ago, the idea is that love has always been important guide in the evolutionary process, and that at the edge of space the role of love, or human connectivity, does not diminish, instead it becomes greater.

Fack off u ponce!

Surely you wept?

@@Nathan-gd7xq murph

@@Nathan-gd7xq murph

MURPH.

Let's hope.

nope lol

Errrrrrr no

Hell yeah 😎!

yeah agree with this, Nolan's recent films have been all tell and no show, all text but no subtext and it gets really frustrating. I think Memento sort of gets away with it because Leonard is such a mentally damaged person it feels more likely but still that is a good point.

Lewis C I think Memento is the one that suffers the most because it reveals a glaring flaw in the film. Leonard shouldn't remember that he has short-term memory loss. He obviously learned that after the accident so how does he keep recalling it? And then you can further question how does he remember all his techniques of taking pictures and making notes, how does he remember whom to trust all the time, and the entire film breaks down. I think Dark Knight remains Nolan's best so far.

I think it's mostly important that he puts real people in his ideas (if you know what I mean). If it's the characters that experience the ideas, and the ideas are not just the set-up. So Nolan does that right I do think Mark is aiming at the spectacular imagery in his movies that really do support the plot in a way rather than being just an action set piece (not that there are no action set pieces). I may just like it that lot of things look incredibly spectacular but do not involve a fight or just any kind of destruction.

zxbc Great answer. I think you are spot on when you said Nolan needs to reply on strong characters. I think the dialogue is great in most of his movies. But characterisation in Batman Begins, Inception, Dark Knight Rises were quite underwhelming. All threw too many characters at us in one go without telling us too much about any of them. But Memento doesn't face that problem. Structurally Memento is no inferior to citizen kane. In fact Memento has been my favourite chris nolan movie for years. Recently, I seem to be leaning more towards the Dark Knight. The moral crisis in the Dark Knight has moved me so profoundly, even more so than Memento. The triumvirate stance against evil was brilliantly executed. There are problems in the Dark Knight - the editing discrepancies, the slightly overcomplicated plot, the 3rd act feels a bit too long and the I can also understand Kermode's criticism that it's jam packed with too many ideas, too many moral dilemma's, too many philosophical ideologies for one movie. But I think the visuals in the Dark Knight is really stands out. The blueish background of approaching darkness, the beautiful cinematography and lighting and I don't think even Nolan realised how artistic the "joker leaning out of the car" shot was. But regardless I've convinced myself that Nolan's best is either Memento or Dark Knight, not anything else.

zxbc I just saw Interstellar and I was not impressed. This felt like an even bigger exposition party than Inception. I think Interstellar is one of Nolan weakest.

+Dom Harper What about the ending? I dont want to spoil it but it was cheezy and stupid.

+Dom Harper Just fantastic that cinema can still produce a spectacle that can be so enthralling and emotional at the same time. Left the cinema shaken. Shed tears on the 2nd and 3rd viewing. Hats off to Nolan

Matt Damon is the villain in the movie...who is miscast .

Vinny L *spoilers* i thought he was pretty good as the villain. he sold it well and i didnt anticipate the turn and completely bought his performance.

BakehousePictures i may have mispoke when i called him the villain. i geuss antagonist would be a better term.

Gareth Hogan I have watch all Stanley's movies, most of scorcese. all coens. all pt anderson. But i never had the chance to watch them on a big screen. I hope someday, they re-release, movies like punch drunk love, goodfellas, or full metal jacket ect. On the big screen.

Memento is superb. My brother told me if you watch it through then it let's you watch it the 'right' way round. Never checked into that as it just didnt seem right

@@richarddimeck4578 There is a hidden feature on the DVD which lets you watch the movie with the scenes in chronological order. I've watched it like that and it's still a good movie.

@@Julesacu I might have to have a look at it that way then. Does it work just as good front to back so to speak?

It's not about it being emotional, it felt tacky and ill-conceived

Everyone has a different opinion. Kermode wasn't a big fan of either Memento or Dark Knight. Although I vehemently disagree, that's his opinion.

I'd certainly recommend, its visually spectacular, emotionally intimate and rather thought-provoking afterwards. Its not perfect, but it's a hell of a experience for sure

The "science" in this film is bunk. There is no proof of black holes.

A faster pace dos not equal a better pace. 2001's slow pace is deliberate and powerful

Implantedclub well its a matter of taste, and usually i like a slow paced movie, but to me 2001 was a little over the line.

Fair enough. 2001 is admittedly polarising among viewers. Personally I think it's a masterpiece.

don't get me wrong, i love it.

IXM360 nah.

You don't need to apologise for an opinion, if you thought it was awful then fair enough. However i disagree with your reason why it was awful. The idea of a film featuring worm holes, black holes and whatever comes with it (time dilation and so forth) came from a reputable physicist: Kip Thorne. The "Contact" element comes from Nolan, i also think he came up with the idea of 5D being in the film, but everything else is from Kip Thorne. Also the point you make about Einstein and Hawkins is actually the whole reason of "love" in the movie, something a lot of people, even fans, have misunderstood. The message (through morse code on the watch) only worked because of the connection between Cooper and Murph. He simply had to figure out how to send a message through time using gravity, so he believed she would recover the watch later in life.

......It was boring

I think you fail to see what the watch meant, it's partly because of the morse code using the 5dimension to do so, but also the love and the emotional connection between a father and his daughter, this love we have for people is not a physical thing but something us humans have for each other inexplicably

+Dom Harper Not really inexplicable, love is a very useful evolutionary strategy. If it didn't confer a great benefit on the chances of survival it wouldn't be so common.

lol, no way dude!n 2010?!? It looks great and as a popcorn flick, it's great, but we cannot escape the fact that it is and always will be 2001 Lite.

Giveme Thatwhistle I meant the plotting and characterisation. Can you think of another SF mainstream/major studio film that used a plot that hinged on character relationships and logic. That's what I meant.

Star Wars does. Avitar, Blade runner too. Great sci fi only works because it has a human story to tell somewhere. So I agree with you, I'm just a huge Kubrick fan and think once he has done something, it can't be bettered. That's where I was coming from.

upto 72%...there goes your theory.

Yeah, the first half the movie is like that but improves as the film goes on but that's a big issue with a lot of Nolan's movies where its hard to hear what the dialogue is.

Dead as Dreams Pretty Lame? Yeah hahaha like you

Captain Possible Nope like you

charliesealvids Like me? You don't even know me son

Son? I ain't yo son?

Captain Possible do you really now?

begins IS better than dark knight tho

***** Agreed, it's tough for me to choose between Begins and Knight but TDK just about edges it out for me simply because of that tragic Two Face storyline (the one arc Kermode didn't like) and that the ideas are the biggest of the entire trilogy. But I'm glad there's still love for Batman Begins despite being overshadowed by far bigger sequels.

Batman I think The Dark Knight is overstuffed and too fragmented at the end (should have ended the Harvey Dent story with a cliffhanger for film three). Batman Begins on the other hand is like an entertainment machine from start to finish. Also.....Katie Holmes > Maggie Gyllenhaal (in these films anyway). Yes I said it :)

To be fair, I would prefer to watch Batman Begins rather than Dark Knight at any instant simply because it's more fun, it's more inspiring and it's far more entertaining. That's no secret. I think most people would agree with me that Batman Begins is a much more accessible movie than Dark Knight because the Dark Knight was suicidally depressing. But that shouldn't imply that I think it's the better film. From an artistic perspective, the Dark Knight is far far superior. The Dark Knight unbelievably juggled morality, fortitude, existentialism, anarchy and chance, all one go (and I think this was one of Kermode's criticism's - There's too many ideas for one movie). Hack movies like [Babel] get fawned over for insipid themes like not communicating is bad, the Dark Knight deals with dark thematic issues most movies never touch, like West's responsibility for terrorism, deceiving the masses for their own good, love not saving anyone and the impossibility of living upto heroic expectations. The Joker "leaning out of the car" shot, the interrogation scene, the Othello-ian hospital manipulation, the "game-theory" bank heist scene ......etc etc. Batman Begins never quite supplies anything of this calibre. My biggest issue with Batman begins is the 3rd Act which is literally jam packed with action. That's when it stopped being great. It almost felt as though Nolan said to himself - "I've supplied the audience with the goodies, now to sell the movie I must fill the last third with mind numbing action." The Dark Knight holds on until the end never giving in to the desires of the audience. That's where it win out. It loft over conventionality. So although personally I loved both movies, but if I were to pick the better film (and not the better Batman film), the Dark Knight wins, by quite a distance.

Nameless Paladin That'a a great defense, but then you actually have to see the movies and suffer through scenes like the insanely chaotic goggles scene, the the rather obvious boat dilemma, the constantly unnatural speechifying by every character (making sure we "get" every idea and theme in the movie) and the endless and embarrassingly raspy speech by Bale at the end. I think Begins is a 9/9. Less ambitious but more perfect as a genre piece. Dark Knight is a 9/10. A more ambitious but also flawed film, that can't deliver its pretensions with any subtlety.

I always felt dark knight rises was the weakest. And honestly if it wasn't for the joker being so mesmerising id say batman begins is the best. But hey ho each to their own I guess

The Harvey Dent's storyline and Aaron Eckhart's performance is a great part of that film.

Gay

Spot on!

​@@MasterRace777Twit.

+Hash “Hans” moleman Maybe, though I personally enjoyed "Interstellar" just as much as Nolan's other films. I also loved "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Nightcrawler" just as much. I'm not a film critic though.

+Hash “Hans” moleman Or, OR, people just aren't a fan of the film :P Some people are only entertained if the movie has a VERY coherent plot, set of characters, etc. Just let people have an authentic opinion; they don't need to like every movie you do. It's sort of sad that people still can't come to grips with a difference in opinion in this day and age. I thought we were over all that.

Jacob Brockway I think you're kind of missing the point. Mistakes he made are brought up more, even though the same people would not point out these things with other directors. Even I as a fan noticed it with myself.

+PauLtus B um...are you saying that as a fan you noticed more mistakes in this film? Because that is exactly my point. If you found this film to be less good, dare I say worse, than his others, then maybe this film isn't as good. Just a thought. Also, the original +Hash "Hans" moleman is saying that we should all gauge Nolan's films based off of his filmography because they are at such a high standard. This is entirely an opinion. I like his films, but I do not by any means see him as a filmmaking God. That is all, just my opinion. Don't blame critics for not liking Nolan's films as much as one person does.

Jacob Brockway No, what I'm saying is that people basically DO see him as a filmmaking God so when there is a fault in his movies they're like: "What, a mistake? But it's Nolan..." Also most critics love Nolan.