Michael C here with your weekend review...

With its plot about humanity taking the next step of evolution into outer space, it was inevitable that Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar would be compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey. But despite surface similarities the comparison is a poor one. Nolan has never shown any inclination towards the kind of mind-expanding abstractions that constitute Kubrick’s version of the infinite. It is no coincidence that Interstellar’s plot centers around Jessica Chastain’s quest to complete an equation. Nolan movies demand answers. Even when his films appear to be ambiguous they pull back to reveal an underlying order. The mysteries of The Prestige are shown to be a complex web of interlocking secrets; the infamous spinning totem from Inception’s ending isn’t an enigma so much as the precise punchline to an elaborate riddle. Even the blazing anarchy of the Joker takes the form of moral conundrums with tidy binary choices.

So to complain that Nolan is no Kubrick is both accurate and something of a non-sequitor. Nolan is not going to stop being Nolan and whether that qualifies as a good thing will vary according to viewers’ willingness to ignore the persistent groaning sound of the plot buckling under the weight of ponderous exposition. Interstellar is no different than Nolan’s other films in this regard, but it’s also the same in that its peaks are so amazing they justify wading through all manner of shortcomings to reach them. Interstellar may be overstuffed and clunky and it crosses the line into silliness more than once, but every so often it will lay a fingertip or two on the sublime. How many films can make that claim?