Interstellar & Other Chris Nolan Films

Interstellar is awesome.  Saw it and LOVED it.

Some scenes were so suspenseful I thought I was going to hyperventilate.

There were some funny parts.

And then there were some really heartbreaking and also heartwarming parts with the gal that plays his daughter.

The film really makes you think too.

I'd recommend it.  It is almost three hours but you don't notice it.  There weren't any "slow" parts for me.  It seemed like it was just enough time to fully tell the story. 

This isn't like Gravity. There is a lot of character development of those on earth not just those in outer space. And I was surprised at some of the actors in the film.  Just didn't realize they were in it since you don't ever see them in the previews.

I would like to see this movie, I hear it is very good, outerspace adventures.I liked Gravity with George and Sandra Bullock.especially with George came in a dream sequence with a glass of wine and had a drink.I hope to be in the Hail Cesar movie coming up and they need some background. bg

I saw Interstellar but still think Gravity is better and that's not because I'm a George fan.
Interstellar isn't a better film than TDK or Inception which are arguably Nolan's best films. 
Interstellar has its problems in editting.Some really strange or uncomfortable scenes got editted apart or together. 
And the first40 minutes and the ending just dont impress me. The key plot simply doesnt convince me. And the outerspace scenes arent that much as expected.A few sequences are visually beautiful though. And it tries too hard explaining everything without deeply develop the motives behind all the roles. They're just talking and talking and Nolan seems to have more ambition than his grip. Anyway it's not Nolan's best work but if you love science fiction you should see it. I dont usually watch sifi films cause I'm always bothered by the plot holes. Maybe that's just my problem.

Missa wrote:Oh, I don't deny he's sexy.  He's just one of those good looking guys that makes me think, "Shhhh, don't open your mouth, you'll ruin it."  And he's been talking a lot over the past year. But is there some extra sexiness in Interstellar that makes it worth three hours?  

That's how I feel about him. I fell in love with MM when he broke out in A Time to Kill. Then I saw him being interviewed and the illusion was destroyed. He's great in a movie when whatever comes out of his mouth was written by someone else but he comes off as dumb as box of rocks when he's on his own. Still cute but if I had to spend time with him I'd put a muzzle on him.

Sevens, have you seen Insomnia? That's my favorite Nolan movie. MUCH smaller scale than anything he's done recently, with Al Pacino, Robin Williams (in a super creepy dramatic role), and Hilary Swank. And I think George was one of the producers on that film.

Here's my question: When did "all right" become "alright?" When I was being taught grammar, the distinction was made between "already" as one word, and "all right" as two. There was no such word as "alright."

Matthew M even has hats with 'ALRIGHT' written on them. It makes me want to punch him in the throat for not knowing better. Or did I miss the memo, and that's now a real word?

Way2, here is the oracle.....

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/all-right-or-alright


Guess it along the lines of, but not quite really, memo instead of memorandum........?

Missa wrote:Sevens, have you seen Insomnia? That's my favorite Nolan movie. MUCH smaller scale than anything he's done recently, with Al Pacino, Robin Williams (in a super creepy dramatic role), and Hilary Swank. And I think George was one of the producers on that film.

Sorry I haven't seen this one. Not a big fan of Nolan. His films normally feel very complicated , like solving a puzzle, but once you know the ending, the movie itself left little impact.
BTW, he's got the craziest fanbase around the world even including China. His films are always overrated on IMDb and even more on China's biggest movie site. They're so arrogant that they idolize him as a GOD.
Thanks for the advice. Maybe I'll check that film out.

party animal - not! wrote:Way2, here is the oracle.....

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/all-right-or-alright


Guess it along the lines of, but not quite really, memo instead of memorandum........?

I guess I'm going to go full-curmudgeon today.

"Altogether" and "all together" have two different meanings, and the former has always been a single word; there has been no change in convention to make it acceptable.

Likewise, "all ready" and "already." Different meanings and usages.

"Alright" has no meaning outside of the proper usage of "all right."

So I'll stick to what I was taught a half-century ago. Yes, I am tiresome about these things. My granddaughter will testify to that.

Sevens wrote:

Missa wrote:Sevens, have you seen Insomnia? That's my favorite Nolan movie. MUCH smaller scale than anything he's done recently, with Al Pacino, Robin Williams (in a super creepy dramatic role), and Hilary Swank. And I think George was one of the producers on that film.

Sorry I haven't seen this one. Not a big fan of Nolan. His films normally feel very complicated , like solving a puzzle, but once you know the ending, the movie itself left little impact.
BTW, he's got the craziest fanbase around the world even including China. His films are always overrated on IMDb and even more on China's biggest movie site. They're so arrogant that they idolize him as a GOD.
Thanks for the advice. Maybe I'll check that film out.

I don't care much for Superstar movies. But Nolan did make the Best Batman movies. Of course you can't go wrong with Christian Bale and Michael Caine. He also did a strange but interesting film, The Prestige, with Bale and Caine again and Hugh Jackman. Yummy.

I haven’t seen Insomnia for a long time so I forgot Nolan did that film. I always liked Robin Williams in more dramatic roles and he is creepy in this film.And when I looked it up George is executive producer.

Silje wrote:

Sevens wrote:

Missa wrote:Sevens, have you seen Insomnia? That's my favorite Nolan movie. MUCH smaller scale than anything he's done recently, with Al Pacino, Robin Williams (in a super creepy dramatic role), and Hilary Swank. And I think George was one of the producers on that film.

Sorry I haven't seen this one. Not a big fan of Nolan. His films normally feel very complicated , like solving a puzzle, but once you know the ending, the movie itself left little impact.
BTW, he's got the craziest fanbase around the world even including China. His films are always overrated on IMDb and even more on China's biggest movie site. They're so arrogant that they idolize him as a GOD.
Thanks for the advice. Maybe I'll check that film out.

I don't care much for Superstar movies. But Nolan did make the Best Batman movies. Of course you can't go wrong with Christian Bale and Michael Caine. He also did a strange but interesting film, The Prestige, with Bale and Caine again and Hugh Jackman. Yummy.

I haven’t seen Insomnia for a long time so I forgot Nolan did that film. I always liked Robin Williams in more dramatic roles and he is creepy in this film.And when I looked it up George is executive producer.

I like Nolan's Batman films and Inception. However TKDR and Interstellar disappointed me in some ways  as the anticipations were so high...

Why Are Christopher Nolan Fans So Intense?
http://screencrush.com/christopher-nolan-fans/
This is what I was talking about...



Why Are Christopher Nolan Fans So Intense

The last time Christopher Nolan released a movie, film critics got death threats. That was back in 2012, when Nolan released ‘The Dark Knight Rises,’ and the first writers who dared to stray from the positive consensus about the film received waves of overwhelming backlash. After Marshall Fine published his pan, his site and his page on Rotten Tomatoes were both bombarded with angry comments politely requesting he “die in a fire” and hoping someone would beat him into a coma with a “thick rubber hose.” Not just any hose; a thick one. Getting beaten into unconsciousness with a normal-sized hose wasn’t adequate punishment for the unpardonable sin of not liking ‘The Dark Knight Rises.’
The response to Nolan’s new movie ‘Interstellar’ hasn’t been quite that severe (because it’s hard to out-severe fantasies of bludgeoning someone with a hose), but it bears a similar strain of white-hot anger. When The Village Voice’s Stephanie Zacharek called the film “numbingly sexless” and claimed Nolan “lacks the human touch,” readers accused her of being “too old and too stupid to understand criticism.” ScreenCrush contributor Britt Hayes wrote an essay about ‘Interstellar’’s “aggressively masculine perspective” and received a particularly disgusting response on Facebook filled with misogynistic language and threats. His argument, in a nutshell: “‘Interstellar’ doesn’t have an aggressively masculine perspective; I have an aggressively masculine perspective!”
Not every hardcore Nolan fan’s reaction to negative (or even mixed) reviews is that severe. But even the more thoughtful responses share a similar intensity. Earlier this week I joined The /Filmcast to help review ‘Interstellar’; all four critics on the show were mildly-to-mostly positive on the film, and everyone said it was an experience worth having on the big screen. Reading many of the listener comments about our discussion, though, you would think all four of us not only panned it, but accused Christopher Nolan of immoral activities involving a farm animal.
To be fair, we did receive a few encouraging responses (and a couple very thoughtful ones sent privately over email). But many hardcore Nolan fans ignored all of our positive comments and focused entirely on the negatives ones, which they then proceeded to systematically dismantle. It’s not that Nolan leaves out some seemingly important scenes between characters; it’s that those scenes were actually unnecessary (and we should simply assume what happened, even if we never saw it). It’s not that the end of ‘Interstellar’ betrayed its emotional core with a pat conclusion; it’s that we, as viewers, were not properly equipped to interpret Nolan’s meaning. One listener went so far as to claim that host David Chen was incapable of properly appreciating the film because he didn’t have children. So don’t even waste your time, viewers with fertility problems! This movie’s going to go right over your heads.





Aggressive or not, the underlying subtext of all these reactions is the same: Christopher Nolan is totally infallible. If there’s a potential mistake or flaw, it’s always the viewer’s fault, never the film’s (or, Nolan forbid, the director’s). No matter the situation, no matter the context, Nolan is right and those who disagree with him are wrong. It’s a level of auteurist devotion so extreme it would make Andrew Sarris uncomfortable.

It’s extreme, and extremely unusual. There’s no modern director who earns this kind of loyalty, at least not at this scale. The term “cult film” or “cult director” typically applies to artists on the margins; they might inspire intense dedication, but only from a faithful few. Nolan’s fanbase is cultish and enormous. Marvel movies have their share of compulsive fans, and I’ve witnessed some ugly examples of online aggression aimed at people who disliked ‘The Avengers,’ but nothing quite this excessive. ‘Star Wars’ nerds might be the most fanatical of all, but they tend to lob more criticism at their beloved franchise than anybody else (you didn’t see a lot of death threats aimed at the critics who hated ‘Attack of the Clones’). Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino all have their legions of supporters, but few-to-none with the same level of feverish fervor.

So the question then becomes why; why are Christopher Nolan’s fans so intense? It’s a subject I’ve been wrestling with for the last several days. In private, I’ve posed that question to several colleagues. To a man (and woman), they each gave the same response: “Batman.” Nolan made Batman (and, particularly, ‘The Dark Knight’) and endeared himself forever to overzealous fans of the Caped Crusader. Now and forever, he’s their guy.




That could certainly be part of it, but I’m not sure that’s the whole story. After all, Tim Burton made at least one Batman movie that was almost as beloved in its time as Nolan’s is today, and he certainly didn’t get a lifetime pass from moviegoers. (I would be pretty surprised to see someone menace a critic who doesn’t like Burton’s upcoming ‘Big Eyes’ with a thick rubber hose.) Joel Schumacher doesn’t have to live his life looking over his shoulder just because he made ‘Batman & Robin’ and temporarily turned the title characters into laughingstocks. Batman fans might be ardent, but they’re not quite so singular.

Perhaps the situation has less to do with the fact that Nolan made a great Batman movie than the kind of Batman movie he made—and the kinds of movies he’s made throughout his entire career. Looking over Nolan’s filmography you see the same archetypal protagonist reappear again and again: the moody loner who is laser-focused on his mission. That’s Leonard from ‘Memento,’ hell-bent on finding the man who killed his wife, even though he can’t remember who did it (or anything else). That’s Robert Angier from ‘The Prestige’ who is determined to discover his rival’s secret and become the greatest magician of all time. That’s Dom Cobb from ‘Inception,’ who takes a supposedly impossible job (implanting an idea in someone’s subconscious) in order to reunite with his estranged family. That’s Cooper from ‘Interstellar,’ who journeys to deep space to save the future of the human race, but never abandons his promise to return to his young daughter. And that’s definitely Bruce Wayne of the Batman franchise, on a one-man war to rid Gotham City of crime. Nolan’s movies include other ideas and themes, but his most common focus, and the most strongest emotion in his work, is all-consuming obsession.

That certainly doesn’t mean you have to be an all-consuming obsessive to enjoy or admire Christopher Nolan’s work (just as I don’t think you have to be a father—or a mother—to appreciation ‘Interstellar’). But perhaps Nolan’s subject matter and his preferred sort of hero resonates particularly strongly with the kind of person who might, oh I dunno, feel so passionately about a movie that they would threaten to strangle someone over it. Some of Nolan’s defenders have their heart in the right place—they love something and want to communicate that—but they simply refuse to accept other potential viewpoints. Their personal blinders prevent them from entertaining other ideas. It’s their way or the highway. That sounds familiar from Nolan’s movies and heroes too.

I could be totally off about all of this. It’s very possible there’s another reason I haven’t thought of yet, one hidden within layers of my subconscious that can only be infiltrated by a single, dedicated man who will stop at nothing to succeed. I’d honestly love to hear other theories (provided they don’t involve beating me to death with gardening implements) in the comments below.