The MoFo Top 100 of the 2010s Countdown

Interstellar was my #3, I feel for me personally it has improved with age and I watch it every year or so. Yes, you can critique the end somewhat but damn some of those visuals, entering the worm hole, scooting along the black hole all enhanced with the monumental organ score of Hans Zimmer. It's a bit like Arrival in how it's central theme is a very personal story between parent and child and the Sci Fi bits are the sideshow.

Special mention to the docking scene, I didn't notice it was happening but I was gripping the cinema seats hard there, for me it's the film scene of the decade.

I didn't vote for Gravity but that was a hell of a cinema experience too, a film where you're sat there saying finally, a film that's not only worth but made for 3D.

__________________

Finally two films I've actually seen!

I love sci-fi but didn't love Gravity. First off I really, really don't like Sandra Bullock and I thought the whole movie was silly and cheesy with holes...ala swiss cheese. Though I have to admit it works wonderfully as eye candy coupled with a glossy big budget popcorn movie.

Now Interstellar, is mostly pretty darn good but like so many self aware director's Nolan can't help by showing off by going over the top with multiply stories and one long ass movie with a rather disappointing ending. I'll post my reviews of these two below in a few minutes because my bribes to SpelingError hasn't really been paying off lately

And that's exactly why I never would;ve guessed Gravity. That seems to be the general consensus.

But this is the first two-fer you caught?

Gravity (2013)

They should have been left...in space!

Gravity is nothing more than a dressed up disaster movie with one harrowing death defying escape after another and another and another...and another! It's cliche ridden with unbelievable cartoon like characters who act so ridiculously that it's hard to buy into the movie.

Sandra Bullock is the likeable but goofy Ryan Stone. Ryan is a klutz, who's crashed the shuttle landing simulator every single time and yet NASA sends her into space anyway. She can't hang onto her space tools, can't follow an abort order and panics easily. Hardly astronaut material. But wait she's not the worst.

George Clooney is Matt Kowalski, a wise cracking space cowboy who spends his time flying around circles in space with his jet pack. Maybe he should have saved some of that pressurized gas just in case a disaster strikes and he gets stranded in space, ha. Apparently NASA didn't teach him too well.

The dream sequence where a dead astronaut comes back to life, magically appearing at the air hatch...opening it as Sandra Bullock (who has removed her space suit), pleads, don't open it...it will kill her.

The feel sorry for her scene, where Ryan reveals to the audience her daughter was killed in a traffic accident so now she's sad and just keeps moving though life. This is suppose to tug at our heart strings, ack.

Gravity's main selling point is it's massive CG special effects. On the big screen and in 3-D this movie must have looked impressive with it's wall-to-wall eye candy. But there's no hiding the fact that there's no story and no character development. Just one over the top thriller-disaster-survival scene after another. As soon as Bullock escapes a near death tragedy, another pops up to challenge her. And that's called good movie making?

Interstellar (2014)

Premise: Earth is dying and humanity is in danger of becoming extinct...A mysterious wormhole then appears in the solar system. It leads to another galaxy where 10 humans have each been sent to explore 10 different planets. Are they still alive? Did they find a habitable planet for humans to colonize? Finally another team of explorers travels to find the answers.

Review: I went into this film with a bad attitude! I don't like most CG sci-fi that Hollywood churns out these days. And as this was written and directed by Christopher Nolan who also gave us The Dark Knight Batman films....I expected an action story aimed at teens, with lots of gee-whiz CG special effects and in your face action every 12.5 seconds. I was wrong! This is a serious film that is a contender to carry the torch of 2001 A Space Odyssey.

I was impressed with the sensitivity of the story material in this film, it had a humanistic quality to it. Which is rare for sci-fi these days. The Nolan brothers take great care in grounding this film in reality....the corn fields of Kansas. First and foremost this is about family love and sacrifice. The sci-fi parts of the film were the kind that makes you think what if? It's more cerebral than action. All of the actors were superb. The film looks great too. Yes it's almost 3 hours long but those hours go fast as the film is engrossing.

I think I had one or two other two-fers but I was starting to think nothing else I'd seen would appear in the countdown. I almost voted for Interstellar.

MoFo Trivia: Gravity and Interstellar are 41 and 43 on our Top 100 Sci-Fi FIlms poll. So they're coming close on each other again. Looks like we really got a community of Gravity fans.

Two very good sci-fi movies.

Gravity’s star power (pun intended) was distracting for me and kept me from being fully immersed in the danger.

Interstellar’s messy third act prevents it from being great for me and probably is the biggest hurdle in my desire to rewatch it.

I saw both these movies in IMAX and have watched both of them a couple times at home. I’m not sure either will live up to that initial theater watch, but I think both are really good. Interstellar is in the running for my favorite score these days. No votes from me, but I am pleased they are both here.

__________________
Letterboxd

#JusticeForHamilton

Interesting pairing. Both are sci-fi films... and both are way too high on the list.

Gravity is Lubezki's show(-off) time. Although praise may not be due, the opening one-take aesthetic performed in a nauseating cosmic vacuum amazes for the first quarter of an hour. Then, this stylistic conundrum gimmick hitherto carefully built to the amazement of the public gives way to a more conventional spare, as Cuaron seeks to modernize a nexus of melodramatics through an intensified cosmic tryst. Nevertheless, the abomination of the imaginary facet can be implemented as an instrument of dilution that is unable to compel any true reaction, thus consequencing an aberrant semi-moving vaporousness of CGI-refashioned atrocities which eventually conclude far away from the verge of acceptable filmmaking panache.

Interstellar is one of Nolan's worst, which already says a lot because Nolan's best isn't that good, to begin with. An eye-rolling proskynesis to the cult of IMAX awe, Interstellar turns out to be devoid of any aureate effulgence that it may be pledging in its introduction. Its stylistic demonstration embarks on a prodigious use of IMAX to saponify a simulacrum of digitized hallowing. Resultant from its conveyance of a sci-fi story balancing on irredeemable kitsch, this unorthodox trachea of cinematic immorality scintillates to coalesce celestial philosophy and alleged cosmic beauty into the rank of elucidating pulp for the satiation of a rapacious public. The infinitesimal wonder that it does manage to generate and its clangorous lack of spectacle (in a film that should scream spectacle) are detrimental to the unhinged renditions that plunge toward an exhibition of oneirism. Effects, however prevalent, hardly become the revolutionary recompense wished, while the uninspiring content is seemly too accommodating for its own well-being. In its totality, Interstellar is a behemoth offense to cinematographic art. Affronting the musty conventions of tralatitious film production, it descends into the venom of a lickspittle auteur creating a poor spectacle, coloring it in artificial paracosms of the utmost vulgar realization of possibly compelling concepts.

__________________
San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

Two space films that I was a little disappointed with but probably ought to watch again.


I watched Gravity as a sci-fi so should probably see it again to see how it works as a metaphor after seeing the comments on here. I thought it was good but not great. It looks good but I didn't find I connected well to the characters. I felt there was something a little impersonal about it.


Interstellar... Again I didn't really connect with the characters. I also thought there were some fairly nonsensical aspects to the plot which irked me. I thought it was a disappointment after Inception and the Batman films. But perhaps I should give it another chance.

Should add that I did vote for different films by both today's directors that I would hope would be on the list. I still think one will show top 20, maybe top 10, but starting to worry for the other now we're this high up. (Will be funny if they both show up tomorrow).

Both decent films, but no where near my crappy ballot.

I haven't seen Gravity.

Interstellar was my #19. Its place in the list looks really good in my opinion. I guess I'd except it between #20 and #30. Firstly I think it is a big movie, it feels like magnificent and it's important. It didn't bring something very different to cinema in my opinion, but it is a really good example of an experience movie for space. I think it's not that easy to find this kind of a movie with these technical capacities now, I mean absolutely there are movies like that, but really few. So, it is a blessing movie for cinema especially because of the fact that many people can like it. Finally the emotional tasks are well done in the movie.


Now my ballot:

2)A Separation
3)Burning
6)Room
8)The Favourite
12)Black Swan
14)Toy Story 3
19)Interstellar
23)The Revenant

SEEN 54/68
BALLOT 14/25

I would listen to a Sci-Fi related Rodent-Sedai podcast..

Gravity is a great theater experience and cinematography over story. And there's nothing wrong with that. Bullock's performance exceeded my expectations and Clooney was solid as always.
Happy to see it show up, I have it at #108 atm, used to be higher before Ad Astra and The Martian came out.

Yes, the third act is a hypothesis I would rather see in documentary or debate form and takes away a bit from the rewatchability, but overall Interstellar is a beautiful thing. I have it at #34.

__________________
Entertainment Log
Letterboxd profile

A peak into my ballot, noticed I have very few repeaters.


Adam Driver - 2
Allison Janney - 2

Gravity...if you seen it at a theater in 3D: 'The most amazing thing ever!'
Gravity...if you watched it on a mobile phone: 'I don't get what the buzz is all about?'

Interstellar has pretty much everything I could ask for in a movie. The love theme works for me as an exploration of the unsolved mysteries of the universe and they way the story comes together is entirely satisfying to me. The only part I didn't like initially was the Matt Damon section, because I didn't think the movie needed a villain, even though I get what they were going for. But I'm over that now.


In contrast to some, I wasn't a big Nolan fan when this came out, so there was room for him to blow me away rather than disappoint. The same is true for McDonagh and Three Billboards. I've been kind of slow to develop as a film lover. I've just started enjoying Tarantino's stuff at an age when some people grow out of it.


1. Room (97)
2. Interstellar (33)
3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (44)
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11. Jojo Rabbit (89)
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22. Inside Out (59)
23.
24.
25.

I've seen both #34. Gravity (2013) and #33. Interstellar (2014), neither was in consideration for my ballot, they are even outside my fixed top 60 of the decade.

I saw Gravity for the awards season back then. It was OK. Good visual and thrill entertainment, artificially leading to the victory of the great female. - (67/100) Anyway, I can even watch this film again for fun.

I've avoided Interstellar for years, taking it not very seriously. Finally, I saw it about three years ago and forgot about it soon after that. I remember, my impression was it is OK but again there was some space team politically designed by the regime controllers in the cinema, executed by their mediocre protege Nolan.
- (57/100)

__________________
"Population don't imitate art, population imitate bad television." W.A.
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." M.T.

Interstellar - I definitely thought this was Nolan's most successful film in a while and, I think if I was forced to sit and watch a Nolan film, I would choose this one (though I admit to not having seen Following, Dunkirk, or Tenet). I think Nolan is a fine director but not always a great storyteller and this is maybe the only time I can think of that I felt like he stuck the landing.
Didn't make my 25 but might have made my Top-40.

Gravity - I thought this was quite good if very simple. The allegory is clear. Really, really clear. But the film is good, the performance(s) strong, and I actually did like the allegory despite being clobbered over the head with it.
Didn't make my 25 but might have made my Top-40.

If I was forced to choose between them I believe I would take Interstellar.

Oh, have I missed something?

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd