Ghost Protocol

Rating: 6/10 (13 November 2014)

There are moments during "Interstellar" which may be compared to "2001: A Space Odyssey" (a better movie). There are moments during "Interstellar" which may be compared to "Prometheus" (also, a better movie). There are even moments and storytelling techniques within "Interstellar" that are completely ripped off from "Inception" (a much better movie, from Christopher Nolan himself). That said, "Interstellar" should still be touted as the most ambitious film of the year so far, and in the same breath, should ultimately go down as one of director Christopher Nolan's worst films to date.
This highly anticipated Nolan project depicts a future riddled with dust storms, where the world's food supply is nearly depleted (or at least 40 to 60 years out from being depleted, but that doesn't sound nearly as dire) where astronauts are working as farmers and children are taught that the Apollo space missions were faked. During this time, an underground government institution called NASA commissions a group of astronauts (including Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway) for a top secret space mission. This mission will have them traveling through a newly discovered wormhole, with the promise of finding another inhabitable world.
OK, let's get right to it. Any praise I heap upon this movie will be directed at the final 90 minutes of this two hour and 49 minute long film, since the first 80 or so minutes of "Interstellar" (while absolutely gorgeous at times to behold) is drenched in sequences of McConaughey seemingly reenacting moments from those pretentious Lincoln car ads, caught in a continuous and almost finger wagging diatribe about how the human race was never meant to die on earth, which nearly put me to sleep. In other words, the first half of this is as slow and lifeless as watching a dead astronaut drift through space. Anyway, this is Intersellar's fatal flaw, since the latter half is ripe with big budget yet very symbolic action sequences, stunning cinematography and fascinating talking points dealing with the nature of human survival in the face of an unsympathetic universe, due to some really insightful slabs of dialogue from a script written by Nolan and his brother, Jonathan. Even the literal rocket science lingo becomes more and more palatable as the "gravity" of this plot begins to set in, near the midpoint of Act 2.
Final Thought/The Ending: Allow me to take a quick spoiler free moment to discuss this ending. During the final act of "Interstellar", for most film nerds, Nolan's story will be encroaching on the hallowed grounds of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey". Some will admire the sheer ballsyness of what he does in this pivotal moment and others will find it in bad taste. Though this is not a huge issue, since I don't believe this niche group will have much effect on ticket sales, the problem is that for the millions who didn't see "Interstellar" for any film school aesthetic reason, Nolan's ending will simply come off as so strange and obnoxiously far-fetched, that many may leave the theater angry that the punch-line wasn't worth the nearly three hour set up.