Interstellar (2014)

What's it about? Ostensibly a science-fiction film about a desperate mission to find an alternate habitable planet for mankind, after the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to crop blight, Interstellar is as much about life, love and family as anything else. Matthew McConaughey's former pilot, now farmer, must leave his family behind to join a mission that will travel through a nearby wormhole in order to find a new home for mankind. The planets they find need to be assessed for suitability for starting over, while fluctuating gravity fields wreak havoc with the relative passage of time, not only for the mission compared with life on Earth, but also between the people on the mission itself. McConaughey's everyman Cooper wants the mission to succeed but more than anything he wants to keep the promise he made to his daughter Murphy that he would return.

What's it like? Phenomenal, but not to everyone's taste. In its final third it very much moves into the fiction part of the sci-fi genre, which is fine, but the plot developments will have to be accepted on their own terms if you are to come out of the cinema feeling satisfied. The visuals are imaginative and stunning, the alien worlds plausible and breath-taking and the passage through wormholes, black holes and frozen atmospheres thrilling. For a film-maker like Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight, Memento, The Prestige) who has always brought a strong element of veracity to his film making, this is his most fantastical venture yet, but it also has perhaps the strongest heartbeat of any of his films to date, the unbearable heartache of Cooper and his daughter as he leaves her behind being among the film's most resonant and affecting scenes, despite being one of its quietest. All of the acting performances are top-drawer, especially McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy, who plays the youngest iteration of Murphy. Many will have wished that Nolan had finished on a more open-ended note (like Inception) rather than something a lot more neatly wrapped up (like The Dark Knight Rises), but that is the film-maker's prerogative - they get to choose the film they make and thankfully this one is ace.

Should I see it? It certainly is a big screen experience, given the spectacular visuals, but if thought-provoking, mind-bending sci-fi isn't your thing then you might want to save some pennies. Although the film carries a 12A certificate, there's is relatively little violence, no sexual content and very little bad language, so in terms of taking children it is more a question of what they can understand and make sense of, rather than a concern over inappropriate content. At over two and a half hours, there's quite a lot to take in.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

What's It About? Christopher Nolan brings his rightly lauded Batman trilogy to a close. It is eight years since the events that concluded The Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne is a recluse at the rebuilt Wayne manor, Batman a fugitive from the law. His years of crime-fighting have wrecked his body and he hobbles around the mansion on a walking stick. Meanwhile, a mercenary by the name of Bane has arrived in Gotham City, working with an industrialist who seeks control of Wayne Enterprises, but with a murky agenda of his own. Selina Kyle, a cat burglar of surprising ability and agility is also lurking, seeking a way to wipe the slate clean and start a new life.

*****

What's it Like? In a word, astonishing. Some critics, friends of mine among them, were less impressed, but all comic-book films, all summer blockbusters, should be this intelligent, exciting, thought-provoking and affecting. It might seem a little long at 160-odd minutes, but as has often been said, a good film cannot be too long and a bad film cannot be too short. The running time doesn't drag at all but instead gives room for characters to breathe - developing believably without story strands feeling rushed. Towards the end, a couple of developments feel a little too conveniently quick, but this is to be forgiven in the overall scheme of things.
This time around, Bruce Wayne is given more time and we see that he continues to be weighed down and inconsolable over the loss of Rachel Dawes, though still beset by a literally crippling sense of duty and responsibility. As Anne Hathaway's excellently portrayed Selina Kyle says to Batman at one point, "you don't owe these people anything more, you've given them everything", "no I haven't", he replies, "not yet". It is heart-breaking, moving and compelling in a way that Nolan's film sometimes fail to be - he always crafts excellent stories, but has not always managed to get to our hearts, he has not always made us care. Here he does.
It taks a good chunk of the film before Batman returns and this enables other characters their time - although Bane wears a mask that obscures most of his face and some of his voice, Tom Hardy makes for a physically threatening and intellectually challenging foe for Batman, Gary Oldman is excellent again as Commissioner Gordon, bringing shades of dark and light to the dignified chief of police. As the new cop on the beat, John Blake, Joseph Gordon-Levitt essays goodness, compassion, decency and integrity and gets plenty of time to shine as the action closes in on Gotham in ther film's latter stages.
To say too much else plot-wise would be spoiler-ish, but there is a lot going on and it will take repeat viewings or at least a lot of thinking time to piece it all together and make sense of it, but it is thrilling, fascinating, compelling stuff. The story may not have the propulsive, linear clarity of The Dark Knight, but it touches on sacrifice, forgiveness, hope, despair, self-destruction, political and economic commentary and fate/destiny. A lot to get through in anyone's book and for Nolan to have done so amidst such thrilling action and without getting bogged down in "worthiness" is to his utter and enduring credit. See it.

*****

Should I see it? Yes. By avoiding any blood-letting during the violence, Nolan has kept himself to a 12A certificate, but there is a lot of brutality and callousness on display here and under-12's should stay away. No doubt lots of children below that age will want to see it, so exercise your parental decision-making carefully. It is of course unmanageably expensive to see it twice, once on your own and once with your kids, but somehow you will need to find a way to test the waters for younger children. There is no nudity, sexual content or coarse language, but the themes and content are grown-up across the board. Much of the boardroom shenanigans won't make much sense to the younger audience members, so you may prefer to wait for the DVD/Bluray release to enable you to pause, skip sections and explain what is going on.
For those who want to see it and can, there is so much that bears discussing and contemplating over a drink afterwards. How much of ourselves are we prepared to give for those in need? When despair threatens to overwhelm us, can we find the hope to persevere, to overcome, to triumph? What do we do with our fears? Can we wipe the slate clean and start again? Can we live with ourselves when we run away, or set someone up so that we can get away? Can we stand by when those we love and care for are bent on self-destruction? Can we overcome the seemingly insurmountable? There's a month's worth of dinner table discussion right there.