“Interstellar” reaffirms Nolan as the premier big-canvas storyteller of his generation, more than earning its place alongside “The Wizard of Oz,” “2001,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Gravity” in the canon of Hollywood’s visionary sci-fi head trips.
Hollywood Reporter is equally positive. I was sort of hoping that this would help reverse the Anne Hathaway hate. I'm not a great fan of hers, but the whole collapse of her cred with audiences this past year has been sort of surreal.
Unfortunately Variety doesn't spend a single word about her performance, and the Hollywood Reporter describes her as irritating.
^ Agree about GRAVITY-- not a brilliant script or performances but the pure moviemaking craft in GRAVITY upped the bar on how a movie can look and feel and move through space for all time. Just astonishing, particularly if you saw it on a big screen in 3D.
As for INTERSTELLAR, well sure I'll take a look, but I haven't really been a huge Nolan fan since his great early works like MEMENTO and THE PRESTIGE. INCEPTION in particular left me utterly cold.
The movie was shot digitally (like nearly every movie made today) rather than on film, true, but those images outside the windows of the spacecrafts were all real-time in-camera live shots, NOT green screens. I may mangle the explanation here, but basically the sets were each mounted on gimbals (for rotation) which were then surrounded by 360 degree LED screens that actually displayed the stars, the sun rises, the earth views, etc, so that the celestial sources would properly light the interior scenes. Radically new way to create the CGI-like images you saw in the finished film that weren't CGI at all.
Not a fan of the Toy Story movies, but I do agree that Gravity was a superb achievement. I mean, yes, I can see how it not being filmed in actual outer space could be considered something of a let-down, but that had no effect on my enjoyment of the film or its stunning marriage of live action and computer animation/simulation. I was genuinely excited and thrilled for the duration of the film. I even caught myself holding my breath in a couple of places.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
I'm still excited for it because I very much liked The Dark Knight and The Prestige, and I plan on watching Insomnia soon and it looks really good. Didn't love Inception, Memento or the first or last batman movies, but he certainly has made some good movies.