Interstellar: Review

"We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt." - Cooper

There are two kinds of movies in the world, normal movies and Christopher Nolan movies. The normal movies would sometimes be good and sometimes they’d be horrible. Christopher Nolan movies will always be good if not great and will never let you down. In this day and age where the directors are the stars of the movie, Christopher Nolan has definitely made a name for himself. After seeing Interstellar, it’s safe to say that the mind screwing director is back in action with another hell of a film.

Interstellar takes place a few decades or maybe a century in to the future. In this future, our resources are scarce. Mankind has been forced to go back to the olden times and become farmers and grow the only sustainable crop left; corn. There are frequent dust storms that will ultimately be the end of us because that is essentially what is killing us. Cooper, our protagonist, is an engineer and ex-pilot for NASA who is now a farmer as well. He is sent out on a mission to go through a wormhole and find a habitable planet in another galaxy that may be the salvation of the human race.

I cannot put into words how immaculate the cinematography for this movie is. Once the countdown began and we were off to space, jaws were dropped. If you thought Gravity was a visual spectacle, then you’re in a for a treat with this one. Christopher Nolan was able to capture the vast emptiness of space and darkness that comes with it. How everything that is visible in space is actually light-years away, Nolan made sure that the audience knew they were light-years away. It was truly awe-inspiring.

Something else that Christopher Nolan was able to do brilliantly was to capture the elements of time. Once you’re travelling at the speed of light and have gone into hyper sleep, time will move very different for you as oppose to the people on earth and Christopher Nolan did a fantastic job to illustrate that as we had seen him do it before in Inception. Time and space were the two key elements that Christopher Nolan explored in this film, and they were extravagantly clear. Also, the emotional pull of the movie was very well executed, all though sometimes shaky. The father daughter bond between Cooper and Murph was very human and touchy. 

The performances were expectedly amazing. Matthew McConaughey, the winner of the Best Actor at the Academy's last year brought his A game in this movie again. Anne Hathaway brought the brains and the soul to the film and Micheal Caine… well he’s Micheal Caine, he’s going to be amazing. The surprise performance for me was from Jessica Chastain who really stood out and shined. Hans Zimmer’s musical score was so hauntingly beautiful, it made you feel like you were in space. When the situation was tense, you could hear the tension flowing through the Organ music that filled the speakers in the theatre. It made the experience that much better.

Now this movie is definitely praise worthy, but not a masterpiece. There were a few things that didn’t fully connect with me. For starters, this film is complicated. This movie presents really bold ideas and grand theories, but its very hard to follow along with them. There was a lot of talk about physics and astrophysics, and if one has no knowledge about either, they can get lost. Although the film does explain itself fairly well, it’s a lot of information to grasp. Also, there is something that happens around the 2/3 mark of the movie that might pull away some of it’s viewers. If that thing doesn’t click with you, you might just come out of the movie not liking it. It clicked for me and I came out a happy camper.

For a movie that spans three hours, I felt nothing. The pacing was perfect, the effects were mind blowing and the story, although a little shaky at times, was very well thought out and almost perfectly executed. Irrespective of if you like the movie or not, you have to appreciate it’s ambition and the heights it tried to achieve. The only way to grasp everything this movie has to offer is to watch it on the biggest screen possible. This movie demands multiple viewing of itself to fully comprehend all it’s themes and ideas, an exercise I will do without any hesitation. One thing is for sure, Christopher Nolan cannot make a bad movie.

8.5/10

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Bill Maher's Problem

"How 'bout more than a billion people, who aren't fanatical, who dont want to punish people, who just want to go to the store buy some sandwiches and pray 5 times a day." - Ben Affleck

I usually don't take my time out to discuss things as an uproar against Islam (again). Simply, because people like Bill Maher are not worth the time and effort to be debated about as long as they give factual and logical arguments with their claims. They have no affect on my life and I will continue to practice my religion as I want to. But notice how I said 'factual and logical' and not 'biased and absurd.’ When someone comes out with a sweeping statement, or in this case a sweeping late night talk show, my mind produces a few counter arguments that I feel I should ink out.

Bill Maher is an atheist and/or an agnostic. I actually don’t care what he is. It means nothing to me as a person if he believes in religion or not. What bothers me are his radical views on religion, specifically Islam. He talked about Female Genital Mutilation and how it’s an Islamic practice and how wrong it is, making a wider generalization statement against all Muslims and referring to the religion as, “the mafia, that will f--king kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book.” Now, I have a few issues with that.

As Reza Aslan has already pointed out, FGM is not an Islamic activity, rather than an African cultural practice that happens to be practiced in Islamic states in Africa. But wait, there’s more. As already stated by Aslan, Eritrea and Ethiopia are largely Christian countries with more than 70% FMG. Also, of the 29 targeted UNICEF countries that exercise FMG, 14 of them are Christian majority countries. Can we suddenly draw a sweeping statement that Christianity promotes FMG? Of course not, that would be juvenile.

This is exactly what Mr. Maher has done. I understand in a free country you’re allowed to say what you want and the whole ‘Free Will’ business is essential but is there a line that has to be drawn between free speech and nonsense talk? Can you suddenly generalize and call 1.6 billion people terrorists? Mr. Maher in the past has been ‘alarmed’ about the most used name for babies in Great Britain is Mohammad. He said in his talk show that he fears Muslims will rule the western world in some 300 years and he hopes that it doesn’t make him a racist if he thinks that way. News flash, it does.

I humbly appreciate Ben Affleck trying his best to protect Islam on Bill’s talk show while he was promoting his new thriller Gone Girl, but has Maher hit a new low by discussing Islam without having Muslims on the panel at all? It fails to seep through my hollow brain the thought of discussing a religion without its ambassadors there to defend it. It just doesn’t make sense. Islam is a religion open to debate as long as there is a defense there as well. You cannot expect a Hollywood movie star to defend a religion he barely knows anything about albeit he did a good job.

The problem with Maher is that he thinks his liberal views are the liberal views period. He has embedded in his mind that Islam is a religion of violence and that the only way to discuss it is to defame it. I understand you have issues with Islam Mr. Maher, but next time please do your homework. You only look like a kid who’s out of insults so he slanders the other kids mother. You’ve stooped too low Bill.

 

Twitter: @itsNazar

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