Interstellar: Very Good, Not The Best

Rating: 8/10 (18 November 2014)

The problem with movies like Interstellar, and internet darlings (even one as well deserving as Nolan) is that the hype surrounding is so great, that it takes time to properly digest the movie, think about it for a while before reviewing it, which is why this review comes late, but here it is.
Interstellar at it's heart, is about a Father and his daughter, I personally found that it draws a lot of inspiration from other wonderful movies like Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey, and even Contact which is another great film of a similar genre.
Let me start off with good. It has wonderful acting, direction and sound design. Everybody plays their role great, I especially loved Matthew McConahughey as Cooper. Jessica Chastain is great, and so is Anne Hathaway. I found Michael Caine's character to be very interesting when all was said and done, and he's just what he needs to be. The sound design is wonderful, there are points in the film where the director uses sound to masterfully elicit a jump from the audience, which I found to be fantastic. There are scenes where the music is so perfect that it gets you into the scene completely, the characters are believable and you find yourself sympathizing with all of them, which is what really makes a story good.
Now, on to the bad. It is long, I think twenty minutes too long. The background score was a negative, now I'm in no way saying I didn't like it, but it's a credit to Hans Zimmer's talent as a composer that even with a score this great, I still think it's not one of his finest. The music does drown out the dialogue in a few scenes, which is never good. The one, big problem I have with the movie is the exposition scenes, I believe in showing and not telling, and I think the audience is smart enough to understand that, never explain something to an audience, just let them understand it on their own, they'll feel better and it makes your movie that much more interesting to watch and re-watch. The other would be the sentimentality, I think Nolan went overboard with being sentimental, there was one particular scene at the end, the climax which I found completely unnecessary.
Interstellar is not Nolan's finest, I think it's one of his worst movies, but again, Nolan has a resume that is so great that one of his worst movies 8/10 in my book (the other was 'The Dark Knight Rises') It's not challenging enough, like 'Inception' or 'Memento', and is perhaps a bit too sentimental, but it does make you think. I found myself looking into the stars after I watched this movie, wondering if there will come a day when we will leave the confines of this beautiful world of ours and step out to conquer the unknown, the movie made me think of human being's greatest accomplishments, the thirst for knowledge that has driven our race, and the ability to accomplish things that were considered impossible in their time, when we need them to happen.
It's a movie everyone should watch at least once, and Nolan is going to go down in history as one of the greatest directors that has ever lived, and no matter what he makes after this, he's got my money.