Politically I thought Interstellar was a simple story about the US getting a chance to be a colonial nation all over again.

I liked the way the film looked, 60% of it felt fairly plausible and the rest was utter bollocks with some particularly egregious examples. Suffered a bit from Prometheus syndrome where you were absolutely certain that no group of scientists would ever conduct a mission plan they way these did.

Overall I liked it on a first viewing. I think at this point I like it more than Inception and his Batman films. Been a while since I've seen Memento or Insomnia. I reckon The Prestige might be his best film.

I'd rank the movies I've seen of him like this:
1 The Prestige

2. The Dark Knight
3. Memento
4. Interstellar
5. Begins
6. Rises
7. Inception

I think I like Interstellar better than Memento, but I realize that Memento is a better film, if that makes sense.

Is Insomnia any good?

Going to see interstellar tonight, fucking stoked!

insomnia is bloody amazing. It's a simple film without any flash but the pacino-williams duel stays with you forever.

I haven't seen Insomnia, but Prestige is one of my favourite films ever and certainly the best Nolan film for me.

Insomnia's more about Al Aska than Al Pacino. Didn't like the great man's character in it very much.

Back from interstellar, thought it was fucking brilliant.

Saw it on the weekend in Gold Class - lucky as it's 170 minutes long. My wife and I enjoyed it, but it's not a fantastic film that we'll want to watch again and again. If you've read Julian May's Intervention books you'll pick one of the plot points.

Yes, I had that same problem with the Julian May plot element. Not sure if it was a lift, but it felt like it. Both the main twists were rather predictable.

I really enjoyed Interstellar, granted it's not up there with the vampire diaries but it was still a good watch.

I'd rank Nolan's films:

Memento
The Prestige
Interstellar/Batman Begins (I can see Interstellar jumping above BB if I watch it again)
The Dark Knight
Inception
Insomnia/Following
The Dark Knight Rises

Not sure if you're having a dig on The Vampire Diaries or if you genuinely like it...

Klaus wrote:

Watched Interstellar tonight. I really wanted to like it but I thought it was pretty poor. Probably Nolan's worst film so far. It's not the wonky science that scews it up though (even if it's laughable stuff) - it's the storytelling. It's fucking awful. And so is the dialogue. The Nolans can't write good conversations if their life depends on it usually, but this is laughably bad. They basically went full retard.

banduan wrote:

Remove two plotlines in Interstellar and tidy up some dialogue and that would have been a great movie.

Agreed with these mostly, though I preferred it to Inception. The space stuff was lovely (as it should have been in IMAX), but the weaknesses were overwhelming, especially the Basil Exposition/ 'tell don't show' ending. There was plenty in there I enjoyed, but the annoying sections of the film (Anne Hathaway's character, Dr Mann, the awful last half hour) are only going to get worse on subsequent viewings. 

The wormhole, and docking scenes were absolutely spectacular on the big screen though.

the docking scene is mesmeric

If I'd directed this film it would've been called The Grapes of Space

Naaaahh, it would get confused with Planet of the Apes/Space Chimps etc......

Insomnia was alright. Probably liked it the least of Nolan's movies, but I like them all, so.. 7/10, I'd say.

What I think is amazing about Insomnia is how tired (and I do mean tired, not bored) Al Pacino's performance makes you feel. I think it's a superb film. I also think The Dark Knight is properly overrated, though I do like it.

Off to watch The Terminator at the BFI on Monday night, very excited to see one of my all time faves on the big screen.

Interstellar was worth seeing, and is a good movie. It's just a shame when a move like that is bogged down by some of the dialogue and a few cheesy scenes. There were some incredible parts but you were never fully absorbed because every 20 minutes or so something was said that brought you out of the moment (not in a good way).

THought the 'robot humor' was really good.

Latest Hunger Games movie is rather good. There are some blatant visual allusions to Gaza in there and plenty of other stuff to ponder.

PSH's death hit me quite hard all over again, as his character is very endearing during his brief screen time in this one.

RocktheCasbah wrote:

What I think is amazing about Insomnia is how tired (and I do mean tired, not bored) Al Pacino's performance makes you feel.

That's an interesting comment RtC as I generally really like works that give you the same emotional experience as the protagonist(s). Might have to rewatch it based on that, food for thought.

Burnwinter™ wrote:

Latest Hunger Games movie is rather good. There are some blatant visual allusions to Gaza in there and plenty of other stuff to ponder.

PSH's death hit me quite hard all over again, as his character is very endearing during his brief screen time in this one.

Watched it now. This series gets too much stick, it isn't aweful. This is probably the best one yet, I think. Still, there's something off about it. I enjoy watching these movies, but they're not at all memorable. When it started, I realized that I almost didn't remember anything from the first two movies. I feel that they aren't ambitious enough in their efforts. The actors are mostly really good, though. 

The books are written primarily for teens, so there is only so much you can do.

I don't think that's an excuse. Maybe 50% of one. At least not when they've chosen to make two movies of the last book. Then it's their responsibility that there's enough content to make it memorable. It's true that most movies from young adult novels turn out average at best, though. The Prisoner of Azkaban was good, Ender's Game not bad.. Still wishing they would make an Artemis Fowl movie, it's the only young adult book series I read.

It's a conceptually interesting work compared to your beloved Marvel flicks Quince.

The premise is a collective struggle to transform an unjust society—the opposite of the superhero model of "übermensch step in where civil society has become weak and degenerate, or corrupt".

Obviously it's targeted at girls and young women and has all that love triangle stuff, but it's not too bad.

Watched "Desolation of Smaug - Extended Edition" yesterday. Exactly 25 Minutes more than the movie version, and they've been worth it. Some great new scenes have been added to an already good movie I thought.

Hunger games??  

That's not even a chick flick. It's a teen chick flick.

Burnwinter™ wrote:

It's a conceptually interesting work compared to your beloved Marvel flicks Quince.

The premise is a collective struggle to transform an unjust society—the opposite of the superhero model of "übermensch step in where civil society has become weak and degenerate, or corrupt".

Obviously it's targeted at girls and young women and has all that love triangle stuff, but it's not too bad.

I do love four of the ten Marvel movies.  Some of the others are okayish, like this one. And some of them are worse.
I know this movie wasn't targeted for me. I'd rather go see Equalizer, but my friends wanted to see Mockingjay, and so it was. I actually think they kept the love triangle stuff to a minimum and showed that it isn'r really important in the scheme of things that's going on there, so that's good. Either 6,5 or 7/10.

Kel Varnsen wrote:

Hunger games??  

That's not even a chick flick. It's a teen chick flick.

So what?

Honestly, if it were me I'd probably go Liam Hemsworth over Josh Hutcherson.

Speaking of Quilsheres beloved Marvel movies I watched Guardians of the Galaxy and I quite liked it. Its not really like the Avengers stuff and is a bit Star Warsy.

It was pretty pulpy eh? Definitely in that "planetary romance" vein.

Saw it the other day and thought it was quite silly to be honest. It contains the line "Necrocraft pilots, enact immolation initiative!" … in no way can it compare to the masterpiece that is Mockingjay: Part I.

It mixes being silly in a good way with being silly in a bad way. I thought it was a lot more entertaining than the usual Marvel stuff though. Too bad they completely wasted Lee Pace, who's one of my favourite actors. You couldn't even tell it's him beneath all that CGI.

Agree with that. The plot was the biggest issue for me. Get through the sub-bosses then the big boss with the "power of friendship" … ugh.

The juxtaposition of cheesy 70s/80s pop with the comic book sf imagery was really successful. They should've just turned that up to eleven.

Burnwinter™ wrote:

Saw it the other day and thought it was quite silly to be honest. It contains the line "Necrocraft pilots, enact immolation initiative!" … in no way can it compare to the masterpiece that is Mockingjay: Part I.

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/312/563/05d.jpg[/img]
(Does the width/height function not work? When I post, the picture is as big as when I copied it).
I see that it's already fallen to 110th on the top 250 list. Hopefully it won't fall much further, an excellent comic book movie that merges humor and action in the way deserves to be up there!

How I see your situation in my head:

BW: Hey, I'll watch this movie about a talking raccoon and a living tree who can only say one single sentence.
One hour later
BW: Wait a second... Immolation initiative? Pft, this is silly!

Tsk, tsk, grasshopper.

There's something about evil done badly that's a real problem. A lot of modern pulp sf has this issue—see also Thor: The Dark World (Ecclestone), Chronicles of Riddick, and the Star Trek reboot.

You've got to do more than paint on furrowed brows in makeup, and the lack of motivation for the boringly intrinsically evil Ronan was a major problem with GotG, one which made the "immolation initiative" line seem about as tonally derailing as this:

I've spent long years learning to discern the difference between pulpy-cool-Weird (which can potentially include a talking tree or a man who doesn't understand metaphors) and deflatingly silly cartoonish bathos. Perhaps the distinction is pretty much what Klaus alluded to above. Because above all else, pulp needs to be cool. This is why Loki is so damn necessary to Marvel.

I see what you mean, but still disagree. As with the first (of the new) Star Trek, I think it's the right choice by the director to focus on the relationships between the leads who are supposed to form a team. In the second Star Trek - and eventually GotG, I think the relationship between heroes and villain become more important. I like Cumberbatch, but agree that he wasn't given much to work with and that's too bad. In the first Star Trek the villain was unimportant to me.

Interesting logic, but I can't accept the argument that villains should be poorly drawn and the tone inconsistent just to ensure the spotlight isn't removed from the team-building exercise in preparation for the next instalment. Fascinating insight into the franchise mindset though

I don't say that villains should be poorly drawn. I just don't think the villain is a big deal in a movie like this or the first Star Trek.

True, you didn't say villains should be poorly drawn—sleight of hand on my part.

What you said was that the entire dramatic conflict in Guardians of the Galaxy was more or less irrelevant except in so far as it dramatically justified a bond of friendship between the protagonists for the benefit of the inevitable sequels.

We're used to this kind of approach in serialised literature and TV I suppose. Call me old school, call me prescriptive, call me a sad old chap who just doesn't enjoy "entertainments", but I think a $200m pulp blockbuster that's over two hours long should arguably still be a self-contained dramatic experience full of light and shadow rather than a prolonged sfnal reenactment of a corporate team-building weekend.

Burnwinter™ wrote:

True, you didn't say villains should be poorly drawn—sleight of hand on my part.

What you said was that the entire dramatic conflict in Guardians of the Galaxy was more or less irrelevant except in so far as it dramatically justified a bond of friendship between the protagonists for the benefit of the inevitable sequels.

We're used to this kind of approach in serialised literature and TV I suppose. Call me old school, call me prescriptive, call me a sad old chap who just doesn't enjoy "entertainments", but I think a $200m pulp blockbuster that's over two hours long should arguably still be a self-contained dramatic experience full of light and shadow rather than a prolonged sfnal reenactment of a corporate team-building weekend.

Not necessarily because it benefits inevitable sequels. Simply because I enjoyed watching the chemistry between them and it didn't bother me that the villain lacked personality. I didn't notice anything wrong with the tone either.