INTERSTELLAR

Paramount Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 169 Minutes

Click below to watch a movie trailer of Interstellar.



In Paramount Pictures Interstellar, former farmer astronaut Matthew McConaughey agrees to leave his family behind in order to pilot a desperate mission through interstellar space in order to save a doomed Earth.

A combination of Gravity and 2001: A Space Odyssey - especially toward the end - Interstellar, Written with his brother Jonathan Nolan and Directed by Christopher Nolan, is a dramatic science fiction movie that explores the fate and potential of a doomed human race. This is not your typical CGI action-packed science fiction movie - but a practical examination of the exploration of deep space and the intentions of actually going out into space, with astronauts McConaughey and Anne Hathaway on opposite sides of the argument. It was great that Nolan had researched NASA and the private space program SpaceX - as well having former astronaut Marsha Ivins and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who has a cameo, as a scientific consultant to Interstellar to maintain the authenticity of the movie.

With Earth's natural resources, especially food ravaged from a blight, becoming so scarce - humanity is on the verge of failure in the midst of a dust bowl. McConaughey does what he can to improve his farm. It was nice that Nolan got permission from Director Ken Burns of the TV mini-series documentary The Dust Bowl, which took place in America during the Great Depression of the 1930's, to use their interview footage in the movie Interstellar. The logos for Warner Bros., Paramount, Syncopy, and Legendary all have a "dusty" look to them to foreshadow the movie. What got to me the most was the historical revisionism of the Apollo moon landings in McConaughey's daughter Murphy's/Mackenzie Foy's school. Of course McConaughey takes umbrage to such revisionism.

One of the most important plot points in the movie deals with time dilation and suspended animation  - time will go slower for the astronauts than for the people back home on Earth due to Einstein's general relativity equations, especially near the black hole, of which the black hole and the wormhole are two completely different things in the movie, so the people on Earth will age while the astronauts will remain the same age while they travel through the wormhole and are out on the other side of the galaxy. This was a tearjerker of a plot point theme with McConaughey and reminded me of The Twilight Zone episode The Long Morrow as the movie bounces back and forth between Earth and space.

I thought the constant use of the poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas, which was written for his dying father, was quite appropriate - especially during the launching of the spacecraft Endurance while it searches for a way to save the human race as they follow after the Lazarus missions.

Interstellar also has an interstellar cast, most of whom were never in the marketing of the film that I am aware of - with at least one star's involvement kept secret. So it was awesome to see these people in the movie, without have any preconceived notions of what kind of characters these stars would be playing. I really do not want to give away the stars of this movie - except for this, it was funny seeing Topher Grace in the movie as I had just seen him that morning on TV in That 70's Show. It is curious when I saw this movie that it was the day before Anne Hathaway's birthday.

Since Nolan wanted to avoid using anthropomorphic robots in the movie, it was strange to me not to see a traditional humanoid-looking robot. But the use of the quadrilateral design of the robots, Bill Irwin and Josh Stewart, were interesting - and more human with intelligence and emotion than most robots, especially with McConaughey programming the robots - and that the design of these robots was especially impressive to me when used on the water planet Miller.

Hans Zimmer's unique musical score was dictated by Nolan who wanted the traditional instruments to go by the wayside.

The movie is a long movie. With the movie trailers, Interstellar is close to three hours.

It is curious that for the limited release of the movie - Interstellar was released in 70mm and 35mm film in theaters that still support those formats, including 70mm IMAX theaters. This is an exception to Paramount Pictures goal to stop releasing movies on film and to distribute only in digital format as nearly all the theaters in the United States have converted to digital projection.

At the end of the movie, the audience applauded.

Click below to watch another movie trailer of Interstellar.



Click below to watch a final movie trailer of Interstellar.



Rated PG-13 for violence and language. Running time: 169 Minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

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