NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL
#420
Interstellar (2014)
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
Invisible Invaders (1959)
The Invisible Woman (1940)
Lakeview Terrace (2008)
Neighbors (1971)
every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the I’s, with anti-alphabetical cheats)
Interstellar (2014)
This is the third time I’ve seen Interstellar. First time, in a theater, I mostly liked it but had some complaints. Second time, at home, I liked it less and had more complaints. Then someone suggested that I might have missed some of the magic, so I’m giving it another looksee.
The story is set a few generations in the future, with Earth in a desperate famine caused by pollution and climate change. Matthew McConaughey plays just plain Cooper, a farmer who, despite the aforementioned famine, drives his pickup truck right into and over miles of ripening corn when he gets excited.
What he’s excited about is some strange gravitational anomaly in his daughter’s bedroom, which leads Cooper to a super-secret NASA facility, where it’s revealed that he used to be a hotshot NASA pilot — why, everyone says he’s the best pilot anyone’s ever seen (a tiresome movie trope).
Of course, NASA pulls him out of retirement to command a mission to find a new planet Earthers can migrate to, having ruined this one — but if you’re on the crew of a mission to rescue humanity, wouldn’t you be chaffed at taking orders from someone who’d been retired and farming corn for eight years? Wouldn’t Cooper be kinda rusty at NASA stuff, with eight years of technical briefings and upgrades that he’d be woefully un-informed about?
The movie’s cute robots are basically walking rectangles, very clever and well-engineered, with adjustable settings for humor and frankness. All of Interstellar‘s science seems to be based on science, and that’s refreshing, but since there’s so much science, there’s a great deal of dialogue explaining it, which is sometimes less than fascinating.
There are numerous movie stars in small roles, which is often a distraction, especially since most of them have little to do and don’t do it well. See Michael Caine, delivering every line as if it’s the poetry of Dylan Thomas, which it sometimes is.
The effects are IMAX-worthy, and it’s clear that thousands of people gave this movie their best efforts. I was thrilled again at the ending, but jeez, it takes nearly three hours to get there. The movie would be improved if 45 minutes and several characters were chopped away entirely.
It’s a good movie, but frustrating to watch. Leading man McConaughey speaks only in mumbles and whispers, while over-hyped director Christopher Nolan loves jump cuts to roaring jets or explosions or a blaring score. With that combination, it’s inaudibly quiet, then uncomfortably loud, and the entire movie must be watched with a finger on the volume controls.
That’s not accidental. Nolan is an acknowledged master moviemaker, and an outspoken advocate for the cinema experience. He wants you to see his movies at a theater, and if you’re watching on video, I think he’d rather you didn’t. Certainly, he knows all his fiddling with the sound levels means you’ll also have to fiddle with the sound levels, so this is Chris Nolan saying Fuck you to the audience.
And he’s screwing with the volume all the way, so let me reiterate how frustrating it is, trying to watch this. I wanted to climb out of my chair to shout Fuck you back at Nolan.
That’s from my earlier review, 2023. Here in 2025, the movie definitely has its moments, but also its yawns, and much of the very long story exists only to show us gee whiz visuals. It’s a movie worth seeing, once, but not three times. And I’ll add two more complaints:
When we’re finished destroying Earth, an alien civilization probably won’t provide a wormhole conveniently near Saturn for an easy escape. It seems trite to imagine humanity gets a fairy tale rescue from space aliens.
And despite the movie’s general wholesomeness, it’s creepy that those aliens take such an eternal interest in a young Earth girl’s bedroom.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
I’m a fan of the Coen brothers, Joel & Ethan. Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski — the list goes on and on. Most of the Coen brothers’ movies have a spark of creativity sorely missing from Hollywood product.
But everybody makes occasional mistakes, even the Coens, and Intolerable Cruelty is a watchable but sparkless comedy.
George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones star as a cynical divorce lawyer and a golddigging serial ex-wife, two despicable people being despicable. It’s sometimes a laugh, more often just mean, but whatever might elevate this material and make it fun or even funny, just isn’t there.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Invisible Invaders (1959)
John Agar stars, but John Carradine is what you’ll remember here. He’s exploded in a nuclear explosion, then molecularity reconstructed by space aliens, and demands the world’s surrender.
“My people will come to your planet, and inhabit the bodies of other dead earthmen. The dead will kill the living, and the people of Earth will cease to exist.”
In campy narration, we’re told that, “Throughout the entire world, the dead are leaving cemeteries to attack the living,” but the actual action we’re shown seems limited to stock footage of riots and natural disasters. Other than that, the movie is mostly white guys acting tough, and arch narration.
Further warnings come when invisible invaders kill broadcasters and seize the microphones at a hockey game, then a football game, warning again of worldwide destruction. Humans are stubborn and fight back, mostly by developing a screeching sound weapon that made my cat hide in the closet for hours.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Invisible Woman (1940)
The Invisible Man was a very effective, serious drama, so it’s disappointing that when the premise gets regendered, The Invisible Woman is a bland comedy.
Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce) signs up for an invisibility experiment, hoping she can sneak around and get vengeance on her horrendous boss (Charles Lane). She does, and that subplot is enjoyable. Other subplots involve criminals and romance, and aren’t as successful.
The relentless comedic music subtracts interest from the movie, and my honest total of laughs was zero, but with Margaret Hamilton, Shemp Howard, and Charlie Ruggles, the flick sits right on the edge of a recommendation.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Lakeview Terrace (2008)
New neighbors move into a Los Angeles hillside neighborhood, and they’re an interracial couple. Their racist next-door neighbor, an L.A. cop, disapproves, and makes things difficult. The mild twist is that Samuel L Jackson plays the racist cop, and all this happens while one of L.A.’s infamous hill fires comes closer and closer, almost like an approaching metaphor.
Lakeview Terrace is OK as a thriller, and absolutely not a bad movie, but from the other paragraph of this brief review, you can guess everything that happens.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Neighbors (1971)
An aging white couple (Andrew Duggan, Jane Wyatt) are about to sell their upscale house to a younger black couple (Raymond St. Jacques, Cicely Tyson), and the four of them meet for cocktails and liberal tension.
This is a play more than a movie, filmed for PBS. It’s very earnest and ever-so-slightly over-written, but scores some points that still need to be scored, and it’s the only movie on this page that held my attention from beginning to end.
Directed by Fielder Cook (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings).
Verdict: YES.
10/27/2025
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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