Combining ENTER THE VOID, THE LAST MIMSEY and .. GENESIS

Rating: 10/10 (23 January 2015)

Not so much film as much as strange milestone for Hollywood.
With A-List stars and a final running length of about 3 hours.
This in an age where Hollywood is so desperate for profit and fast turnover that even TV shows have more commercials and less content.
How is this possible? Easy answer: Nolan Brothers. Look in a mirror, say those names 7 times quickly, the Hollywood Rule Book disappears.
The bizarre length effectively gives the viewer not one but three entirely separate movies joined only by the title.
This reviewer in particular was gob-smacked by the first movie, effectively from the beginning until the space flight, and wanted to jump to an alternate universe where the whole movie took place in that small town, post-apocalyptic setting. With the dust. And stray drones. And the school teachers who taught that the trip to the moon was just propaganda.
I cannot over-emphasize how strange this is. Even though that was not the point of the film, I suggest the production company unintentionally created (in that first hour) the best sci-fi future-world ambiance in the history of film; and, unaware of what they had accidentally done, they just moved on.
BTW, a number of futurists have said that in the early part of the 21st century the odds favor at least one major volcano going "super," or blowing for extended days or weeks. This will place ash/dust in the air will will cover the planet. Until this film, I never saw the image of what this might look like. Now I know. Wow.)
The second film is like every Star Trek film you have ever seen, but by way of Stanley Kubrick. Not bad, but nowhere near as much fun as the first portion, Another really really cool thing is the robot that resembles one of those ladder kits you buy at Home Depot, that can form a variety of shapes. Ultra cool.
Until you finally get to the third and final movie (or Act) which is meant to have profound spiritual implications but in reality only works if you have been paying careful attention for the first two and a half hours. Which is itself a strange contradiction.
But the whole film is full of contradictions. There is an Epilogue too (following the unstated theme of three Acts and an Epilogue). It is fun, it is moving, it connects with the viewer, and it makes no sense at all. There are plot holes in the Epilogue that you could lose a Black Hole in. Joke intended.
So, there you go, one of the oddest and most contradictory films of all time.
Oh, don't even bother trying to figure out how a society that can develop AI to a degree beyond anything ever seen in film before (the Costco ladder people) still has teachers that dispute the Moon Landing and doctors who can't deal with a cough.
As I keep saying, a very strange movie.
But a very powerful one
*** REVIEW UPDATED OCT 2016****
Greetings from the year 2016. For those reading this from the far future when everyone who wishes it has instant access to the IMDb database, probably beamed right into the cortex, I am updating my review with this addenda: I confess I missed the point of the film on first viewing. After all, this is a Nolan Bros 3 hr opus which, sadly, never really achieved a proper audience and now is more or less lost to time, much like the characters in the story. On second viewing, I "got" that this is basically a love story set against a sci-fi backdrop. The love of a father for his daughter, the growth of Man to a new dimensional experience where love itself is quantifiable - these are amazing concepts and this is an amazing movie.