Posts Tagged ‘Interstellar’

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR: 3 STARS. “the real tension comes from the fraught atmosphere.”

3040151-poster-p-2-created-the-moody-gritty-feel-of-a-most-violent-yearDon’t let the title fool you. “A Most Violent Year” doesn’t have fight scenes, much gunfire or even a Steven Seagal cameo. The violence implied in the title refers to the time. Set in 1981 New York, statistically one of the most brutal years in the city’s history, it’s really the story of a man trying to sidestep violence and grab the American Dream by the tail.

Oscar Isaac is Abel Morales, a young man in an old and dangerous game—the oil business. His distribution business is successful and about to expand, but there are problems. An aggressive city attorney (David Oyelowo) is sniffing around his finances while someone—a business rival perhaps—is systematically hijacking his trucks. Each time a truck loaded with oil disappears it erodes his bottom line and puts his dream of a waterfront distribution depot further out of reach. At home the violence and corruption of the times seeps into his personal life as his wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) the daughter of a Brooklyn gangster, gets restless.

Director J.C. Chandor is unafraid to take his time telling this story. Some will find his deliberately paced film a bore, others a slow burn. He concentrates on the characters, not the situations, putting Abel’s honesty and entrepreneurial spirit front and center. Much time is given to overcoming setbacks through sheer strength of will. His iron resolve is the character’s cornerstone, and much dialogue is devoted to it, but Isaac’s nicely delivered, understated performance keeps it from becoming repetitive.

The fireworks (such that they are) come later when Abel is at the end of his rope. Chastain (in a far more interesting performance than her work in “Interstellar”) on one side, corruption and violence on the other, the film pushes Abel, building to a satisfying climax. Still, Chandor doesn’t allow “A Most Violent Year” to live up to its name. A truck chase is pulse racing and a sub-plot about driver traumatized by a hijacking adds a hint of character-driven action, but the real tension comes from the fraught atmosphere Chandor creates with ruthless efficiency behind the camera and the restrained performances in front of it.

INTERSTELLAR: 3 STARS (ONE FOR EACH HOUR OF THE MOVIE). “sentimental sci fi.”

What’s a wormhole anyway? According to Wikipedia it’s a “postulated method, within the general theory of relativity, of moving from one point in space to another without crossing the space between.” Huh? Maybe it’s easier to think of them as a cosmic shortcut to the past or future. If Bill and Ted could figure these things out—their first “excellent adventure” saw them sucked into a wormhole to assemble historical figures for a high school project—then so should we.

Christopher Nolan uses these theoretical bridges through time as the bridge through his new space opera “Interstellar.”

In the earthbound portion of the story crop blight has led to a food shortage and a worldwide ecological disaster. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), is a pilot-turned-farmer trying to find a way for his family to survive the impending apocalypse. An answer to his problems arrives in the form of Professor Brand and his daughter Amelia (Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway) who believe a new planet with the possibility of supporting life exists on the other side of a wormhole near the planet Saturn. “We’re not meant to save the world,” Brand says. “We’re meant to leave it.”. Cooper, Amelia and a team of astronauts embark on a year-year quest to find the planet and find humanity’s salvation.

“Interstellar” is twice as long as the similarly themed “Gravity,” but only half as enjoyable. It’s larger in scope—this is Christopher “Billion Dollar Baby” Nolan after all—than the Sandra Bullock movie, and more ambitious too, but it’s a strange mix of sci fi and sentimentality that plays up the idea of the power of love. The only thing missing is a Celine Dion over the final credits.

Nolan reaches for the stars with beautifully composed shots and some mind-bending special effects, but the dime store philosophy of the story never achieves lift off.

McConaughey’s been down this road before in “Contact,” and acquits himself well enough, but the interesting actor who anchored “True Detective” gets lost in space for much of the 169-minute-running time.

On the upside “Interstellar” earns points for not being based on a novel or video game. On the downside, it’s not based on good sci fi either.