Almost a Masterpiece

Rating: 8/10 (13 June 2019)

It had been a long time since I'd seen this movie. Actually, I can tell you the exact moment I last watched this: November 7th, 2014 around 7:00 in the evening, in an IMAX theater (I feel like I'm about to start detailing a crime scene). I only saw this movie once before rewatching it for the first time last night. Why? Well, I thought the first two hours and twenty minutes of this film were absolutely spellbinding- brilliantly executed, intriguing and foreboding, intense and sometimes funny; it was perfectly acted, the music was dazzling, and the visual effects were out of this world. Then, the third act came and it took me completely out of the movie. The first time through this film I thought the third act was wildly misjudged and a whimper of a way to end this otherwise epic space odyssey. I disliked the ending so much that even though I owned the film on Blu Ray, I'd never gone out of my way to watch it again until last night. Upon my second watch, anticipating the ending, I enjoyed the film a bit more, but I still maintain that it has problems.