Huey, Dewey, and Louey's Rendezvous with A Space Oddysey

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2015)

I would not call this film a "Remake" of "2001: A Space Oddysey" but there are several references to that film in this one. There are Monoliths (TARS, CASE and KIPP), a two-year trip to a Jovian Planet (Saturn in this case), Scientists in Frozen Sleep, a message of sorts, and the film even shows a kind of psychedelic trip through a spacial anomaly, ending in a scene with an old figure in a bed, Ellen Burstyn as "Old Murphy".
As I read the IMDb Trivia I note that many of the scenes are shot using actual film and practical effects, a true rarity these days. Also that the "Wormhole" look and feel was created using actual scientific data, rather than something just thought up in a CGI house. The Documentary Style of the Film is precisely the right amount, not too much "shaky cam" - So it gives the feel of actually being there with the central figures.
This film proposes some future calamity (unspecified) that leaves the Earth reverting to an atmosphere that would support ultimately only Anaerobic life forms, aka "The Blight" which are choking out oxygen using Life Forms. The Midwest "Dust Bowl" of the early 20th Century is referenced, and this film even uses interviews from a Documentary about it.
But this film also proposes a world where the 1960-70's trips to the Moon are considered faked, propaganda to cause the Soviet Union to go Bankrupt. A world where Engineers are no longer useful, only farmers. Such a world makes me shudder. This Earth as shown here, does have Technology, even more advanced technology than we have today, but in a correct move, Nolan suppresses it's appearance and importance, at least while we are "on Earth" with Coop, Murphy and Tom (older version played by Casey Affleck).
A world where Nasa works in secret to perform a thankless, impossible task.
This is the first film I have seen with Matthew McConaughey (As "Cooper") that I really believed his character, one of the last Engineers and former NASA Astronaut who now uses his skill to fix farming machines. His "Daughter" (Named "Murphy's Law") is a little doll played by Mackenzie Foy (at 10 years old), Jessica Chastain as a young woman, and the aforementioned great Ellen Burstyn as an old woman. Murphy is a scientist at age 10, she understands the scientific process: Investigate, theorize, prove.
But she has a "Ghost" in her room that is toppling her books, and sending cryptic messages, In Morse Code and even in Binary in the dust left by an Open Window. Clues. Clues which lead Coop to his former Professor, "Brand" (Michael Caine) and his daughter, also called "Brand" (Anne Hathaway).
I had to laugh at Coop's first meeting with TARS. I can't and won't say anything more.
One of the main points of this film is time. Therefore, Hans Zimmer's score is based on 60bpm and variations, depending on how Time is moving on Earth vs for Coop and Brand.
One final reference to "2001" is how a member of the expedition goes mad, in "2001" this was an artificial intelligence. Here, it happens to "the best of us". And just as Hal 9000 had created falsified Data, that happens in this story as well.
The AI's "TARS, CASE and KIPP" could be a reference to Huey, Dewey and Louey from "Silent Running", but they are more than just walking, talking Monoliths. They are important characters, they are treated as people, we have to consider them people to believe this. People preprogrammed with the amount of honesty and humor they use.
This film as with "Predestination" explores the cyclic properties of time, we perceive time as ever flowing only forward. But is that the only way time can flow? Where "Predestination" dealt with the "Grandfather Paradox", this film deals with Relativity, and Gravity, using Robert A Heinlein's "Tesseract" theory (From "-And he built a crooked house") to show how the past can be affected by the future. So, both films use elements from The Dean of Science Fiction.
There are also things that bring to mind Arthur C Clark's "Rendezvous with Rama". It's really about Hope.
I doubt if the troll who just handed me a down-vote even read this, or the other two trolls who piped in. I, and several others have been accused of being paid to write a good review, in reality the ones being paid are for the dupe negative reviews. And there are several verbatim dupe reviews in here.