By Rob Fagin
I'LL BE CLONED ZEN
CINEMATIC FOR CHRISTMAS
T
here's a forgotten little movie
called The Love Letter that was
fleetingly famous for being the
one movie crazy enough to premiere the
same weekend as frigging Star Wars:
Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
Nowadays, every summer blockbuster
flick has at least as many CGI shots as
the infamous Star Wars prequels and
(since pretty much everything is a
(Matthew McConaughey) finds out his
daughter is being taught this soul-sucking theory in school, he is consumed
with rage (a rage as played, of course,
with McConaughey’s signature Zen
chill). This is a key revelatory moment
not only in this movie, but one that happens in all of Nolan's motion pictures.
Nolan is clearly expressing his own disgust at the systematic stifling of enor-
Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar
sequel, prequel, reboot or adaptation)
nearly the same name recognition.
Practically every week a new extravaganza is released, so it's difficult to stir
up anything near the level of excitement
and awe for photo-real fantasy that we
experienced 16 years ago (although J.J.
Abrams' new Star Wars movie is certainly building impressive fandemonium).
Now that these astounding sights are so
ho-hum ubiquitous, producers are less
reluctant to release smaller movies in
theaters simultaneously with special
effects smorgasbords.
This month we will see the tent poles
Avengers: Age of Ultron (May 1), Mad
Max: Fury Road (May 15), the Poltergeist
remake (May 22) and the highly anticipated Tomorrowland (May 22) challenged
by such counter-programming as the
new Cameron Crowe soul-searcher
Aloha, a dreary remake of Thomas
Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd,
and a quirky, Scotch-American western
called Slow West, among many others.
At least we’re seeing something for
everyone these days.
Here are two recent films that could
have happily gone head to head in theaters last year...
First Up:
Interstellar (2014)
Director: Christopher Nolan
DVD, 169 min., Rated PG-13
In a vaguely not-too-distant-future
where civilization is in its last gasps, you
can see the numbing logic at work that
interprets one of man's greatest triumphs – landing on the moon – as simply a hoax designed to bankrupt the
Russians. When our hero, Cooper
mous ideas.
Since the beginning of his career he's
sought to make each of his movies an
unforgettable experience for audiences.
His characters are symbols, they speak
in maxims, their stories twist through
many stages and heighten to extraordinary moral and existential stakes. He
refuses to shoot in digital and fills his
gargantuan celluloid canvases with
frozen landscapes, psychotic ghouls,
impossible tidal waves and bending
horizons. He shows time slip, time in
reverse and gravity shift. He weaves
together philosophy, poetry and quantum physics to tell stories about families
in crisis.
Smashing all of these huge elements
together means that his movies are
always fascinating, always at least a little disappointing. His language, images
and editing are blunt – which can be
enthralling or clumsy. A simple way of
putting it is that he regularly bites off
more than he can chew. But is that a bad
thing?
Interstellar is interesting because even
though the project was sparked by
physicist Kip Thorne, developed by his
brother Jonathan Nolan and teased by
Steven Spielberg, this movie stretches
all of his own favorite pieces of storytelling to his furthest extremes yet. It's
absolutely his most audacious ride for
audiences and arguably his most emotionally familiar. Yet it lost the box office
to 15 other movies domestically that
were either shinier or more patriotic the first time since The Prestige that he
didn't have a movie in the top 6.
But the remarkable thing about his
movies is how lasting they become i