Category: Reviews

Christopher Nolan thinks big. There’s little question he has an impressive imagination and his body of work speaks to those larger issues. Often writing with his brother Jonathan, they have produced a series of films with a polish and gravitas that few other big budget spectacles can match.

And yet…

And yet, in almost every case, the lapses in story logic rob the movie of its power so you always walk out of the theater shaking your head in bewilderment. The great ideas and execution found in Memento and again in Inception are spoiled in his other films, notably The Dark Knight Rises. Such was the case with Interstellar, coming to home video via Paramount Home Entertainment this Tuesday. The larger theme of where we do go when we ruin the Earth beyond repair is a timely one as more and more reports indicate this is the century we hit the ecological tipping point.

In a near future that looks remarkably like 2014, a blight has decimated the world’s ability to feed its growing population. Federal resources have been yanked from programs that do not directly address the problem or so people are led to believe. It turns out NASA has become a black book operation, off the grid and dedicated to finding somewhere for us to go.

From there we’re propelled into the story of Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former NASA pilot turned farmer, raising his children Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and Murphy (Mackenzie Foy) on the family farm with his father-in-law (John Lithgow). Murph thinks her room is haunted until she and Coop realize there are messages and coordinates being sent by some intelligence. They follow the message and find NASA, which just happens to be in need of a pilot for their last mission. Just like that, Coop says goodbye with a promise he’ll return, while he rockets off towards a wormhole and whatever may be on the other side. Accompanying him are biologist Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway); physicist Romilly (David Gyasi); geographer Doyle (Wes Bentley); and robots TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin) and CASE (voiced by Josh Stewart). Back on Earth, Brand’s dad, Professor John Brand (Michael Caine), promises he will solve some of the physics that will help determine how to get millions from Earth to the stars. In time, the adult Murph will join his quest.

Basically, the entire second act of the film gets us to the other side where one of the three potential new homes for humanity turns out to be a watery dud and the second one is a frozen wasteland. There, they find Dr. Mann (Mat Damon), long believed dead, and here the conflict escalates with the fate of civilization hanging in the balance. Oh year, and thanks the time dilation effects from the wormhole, hours to them become years back home so video recordings show us Murph (Jessica Chastain) and Tom (Casey Affleck). growing up. Then things go very, very bad.

And then they get outright weird. Nolan offers us a heady homage to 2001 with the Tesseract within the black hole and all sorts of gibberish follows until the inevitable return to earth.

So, we’re left asking lots of questions about how the time dilation really works, why the gravity of the black hole doesn’t crush everything in its path, how it is anywhere near Saturn without wrecking the solar system, and so on. Coop spends zero time training to fly the new vessel or get to know the crew but when push comes to shove, he coaxes the starship to do amazing things that provide some of the few thrills. Other story logic questions plague the third act as well but for those who haven’t seen it yet, I’ll leave those alone.

For a movie that hinges largely on the relationship between father and daughter (now Ellyn Burstein), their meeting in the waning minutes is surprisingly mild and anticlimactic. Similar emotional peaks and valleys are missing from the film which spoils some fine performances, notably Mackenzie Foy’s young Murph. Some of the most intense moments are when Coop returns to the ship after the first world and catches up on 23 years of video messages from his kids. It stands out because so much is missing from the rest of the film.

As a story, it feels like bits and pieces have come from elsewhere, especially Stanley Kubrick’s head-scratching 2001. There is, therefore, one plot twist I didn’t see coming and it was a welcome surprise given how much else was predictable. Even so, so much remains unexplained, all of which robs the film of the greatness is aspires to.

The high definition transfer nicely mixes the widescreen 2.39:1 and IMAX full-frame 1.78:1 ratios, using the storytelling to help. Only true videophiles will be concerned with the little nits in the look of the film. The rest of us will think it looks just fine, albeit diminished, on our home screens. If anything, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is even better so together, it makes for a fine viewing experience.

While the combo pack boasts three hours of special features, the film’s missing coherence is not here. Instead, there’s a dedicated second Blu-ray disc that starts off with The Science of Interstellar (50:20) as Matthew McConaughey narrates a look at the film’s scientific foundations. Consulting Scientist Kip Thorne looms large here, as the feature explores the film’s themes and the current theories on finding life in the universe, space-time, wormholes, black holes, and the theory of relativity.

After the engaging science, we move to the fanciful stuff under the umbrella title Inside Interstellar. There are fourteen features of varying lengths, exhaustively looking at the music, mechanical beings, starship designs, miniatures and so on. The final piece has the cast and crew reflecting on the film’s goals and hopes for the future. For the record the pieces are Plotting an Interstellar Journey: (7:49); Inside Life on Cooper’s Farm (9:43); The Dust (2:38); Tars and Case (9:27); The Space Suits (4:31); The Endurance (9:24); Shooting in Iceland: Miller’s Planet/Mann’s Planet (12:42); The Ranger and the Lander (12:20); Miniatures in Space (5:29); The Simulation of Zero-G (5:31); Celestial Landmarks (1080p, 13:22); Across All Dimensions and Time (9:02); and,  Final Thoughts (6:02). Overall, these not only vary in length but in detail and interest but there’s certainly something for everyone.

The combo pack does also offer up a nifty and collectible IMAX film cell.

One could argue that Moses is the most significant and influential character from the Old Testament. After all, he led the Hebrew out of slavery and delivered the Ten Commandments. His birth story proved influential, notably to Jerry Siegel a few thousand years later. As embodied by Charlton Heston, there was never a mightier figure which is why it has taken until 2014 before anyone attempted a modern day retelling of his story.

Ridley Scott brought all his filmmaker skills to Exodus: Gods and Kings and the movie is a visually sumptuous. The Middle East provides a nice visual backdrop to this story and the movie deserves to be seen on the large screen. Watching the Digital HD version on my computer screen, courtesy of 20^th Century Home Entertainment, shows the limitations of epics on any home screen. There is so much detail and scope that deserve the silver screen so the home version blunts its impact.

Scott was roundly criticized for his casting white folk in the lead roles but commercial considerations made any other choice untenable. With that said, he chose well with Christian Bale as Moses, paired opposite Joel Edgerton as his adoptive brother Ramesses II. Yes, more racially accurate people should have been cast from there on down but this is an argument you’re not going to win so let’s move on.

I wish the movie was so deft. The film’s pacing is one of its largest problems. We dwell on a battle with the Hittites at the beginning that has little bearing on the rest of the story and should have been trimmed so we could get on with things. As it is, there are long, drawn out scenes where very little of note happens or gets said. Then, when we get to the 10 plagues, we only see a few of them, when we wanted each and every one. That said, when the plagues arrive, we do get a far better sense of how each decimated the Egyptian people, weakening Ramses’ resolve to keep the Jews in his grasp.

Which brings us to another issue of contention which are the biblical and historical inaccuracies. While Ramesses II is likely the unnamed Pharaoh in the Exodus story of the Bible, the pyramids the Jews are seen building were completed centuries earlier. What were they building? Hard to say but certainly the pyramid for Seti I (John Turturro) since these resting places tended to take over a decade to complete. Moses’ divine power to turn a staff into a snake is absent as is his stutter – he’s downright eloquent at times.

There are some very interesting character dynamics that are begging to be better explored. First, there’s Moses being raised by Seti after his daughter and his even-handed treatment from Seti, much to Ramesses displeasure. Then you have Moses and his long-lost brother Aaron (Andrew Tarbet) or his wife Zipporah (Maria Valverde). But the chief dialogue is between Moses and God, in the form of a young boy named Malak (Isaac Andrews), who is at least seen next the Burning Bush. Malak seems unhappy with Moses’ performance and attitude but sticks with his chosen avatar and there’s no reason given. Why Moses? Why let the Jews suffer for years while Moses goes into exile, marries, and raises a son of his own? Nope, no one questions this, just somberly accepts their fate.

The film overall is somber and dreary, lacking in the spark of life. There’s little sense of joy in the palace or the caves or the huts or the desert. There’s a distinct lack of humor in the tale, which may be true in the Bible, but here, we had a chance to bring more life to the players.

Instead, we get a visually feast beginning with the arrival of the plagues right through the parting of the Reed Sea (wherever that was). Here, Scott easily outdoes Cecil B. DeMile and brings us a parting worthy of the moment’s spectacle.

The 2:30 film has a very nice transfer and plays smoothly. The colors are rich and the sound, through standard computer speakers, was acceptable.

The Digital HD comes complete with the bonus features, which features Scott’s Commentary. There also The Lawgivers’s Legacy (23:14), where academics extol the facts and suppositions surrounding whether or not there was a real Moses and if so, when did he operate and whom did he oppose. There are nine Deleted Scenes (14:37), the most valuable one being Moses coming down from the mountain to find his people worshipping the Golden Calf. Additionally, there are fourteen BTS Enhancement Pods (48:13) covering each major aspect of mounting a production of this nature. Finally, there are The Gods & Kings Archives split between Pre-production, Production and Post-Production stills, sketches, artwork, and design.