Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actress

The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.

Best Actress

The nominees are:

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter

Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart for Spencer

We saved the best for last, as far as these acting categories are concerned. For once, a truly wide-open race. I have spent almost 4,000 words talking about the acting categories already this year and have mentioned the BAFTAs over and over again. If it wins the BAFTA, it wins the Oscar. Well, we cannot rely on that here. Why? Because not one of the performers nominated for the Academy Award this year was also nominated for the BAFTA.

Going back to 1990 – before that, eligibility deadlines just don’t line up in a way that makes the data useful – this has never happened. Not once. The closest approximation is 2003, when the organizations matched just one nominee – Naomi Watts in 21 Grams. That year, the BAFTA went to Scarlett Johansson for Lost in Translation, while the Academy went with Charlize Theron in Monster (Note: At the BAFTAs, Theron was not eligible until 2004, when she lost to Imelda Staunton for Vera Drake). 

We are not flying blind, per se – Jessica Chastain won the Screen Actors Guild award and the Critics’ Choice – but we are missing our most significant bellwether. As a result, the predictions are all over the map, with support spread out across three or four of these nominees. For our purposes, what this means is one fun race right down to the end. By the way, for those curious, the BAFTA this year went to Joanna Scanlon for her work in the British drama After Love.

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Tammy Faye Bakker, as portrayed in this film, is an enigma for our times: a completely sincere person. It would seem her love of people is surpassed only by her love of god. Her desire to spread a message of acceptance and understanding (through Christian faith) runs up against the money- and power-hungry men in her life, including her husband. It is a fascinating story in a film that could have been better, but what is not in question is Chastain’s commitment to the role and passion for bringing it to life.

Though she had been around for a while before, Chastain broke onto the scene in a big way in 2011, when five films in which she had a role were released. Most importantly, she starred in the Palme d’Or winning The Tree of Life, the critically acclaimed Take Shelter, and the popular hit The Help, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination. She is a remarkable performer who brings intensity and drive to everything she does, and here, she applies that intensity and drive to a role that requires every ounce of her talents. She proves more than up to the task.

Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers – A four-time nominee who previously won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Cruz has never been better than she is in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film. She plays Janis, a single pregnant woman who befriends a younger unwed mother-to-be. I will not reveal more than that since the movie’s secrets are among its great pleasures, but suffice it to say, Janis is presented with a moral dilemma no one should ever have to face.

Cruz plays this conflict wonderfully, showing the depths of Janis’ moral questioning with little more than a shift in her tremendously expressive eyes. One thing that has defined some of Cruz’s most memorable characters has been the sense of energy and motion the actress imbues them with, particularly in her previous Oscar-winning role. For Almodóvar, she drops all artifice and affectation, utilizing stillness and silence in ways we are not used to seeing from Cruz. In this silence, however, Cruz is able to speak volumes.

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter – Colman delivered one of the most memorable and rewatchable Oscar acceptance speeches in recent times when she won Best Actress for The Favourite in 2018. Among the standout lines from that speech was when she addressed her children watching at home, saying “This is not gonna happen again.” Little did she know. Now, after a Supporting Actress nomination last year and another leading nomination here, it seems almost inevitable that it will happen again, if not this year, then someday.

For my money, her work in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s stunning directorial debut is the best of the nominated bunch. She plays a woman on holiday, haunted by her past and beset by dread of the nefarious characters around her. She is not without sin, and there is never a moment in Colman’s performance that belies that fact. She is wounded but also capable of wounding. While her actions may on the surface seem inexplicable, Colman makes us understand what could drive this woman to do the things she does and hurt the people she hurts.

Kristen Stewart for Spencer – What a wild ride this awards season has been for Stewart, who after getting close on a couple of occasions, now has her first Academy Award nomination. As we talked about with Will Smith in King Richard, sometimes a performer and a part just seem to add up to an Oscar. That was the feeling around Stewart playing Princess Diana when the first trailer for Spencer dropped. Then, she won handfuls of critics awards, and the buzz would not die down. That was until she missed out on a SAG nomination and a BAFTA nomination. After that, it was an open question of whether she would even be Oscar nominated, let alone in line for the win. Now, here we are.

To her credit, Stewart has remained mostly nonchalant about the whole thing, blasé when it seemed she might miss out but humble and grateful when she made the final list. Her work in the film is sometimes uneven, but the longer you watch, the more she forces you to get on her wavelength. This is not the Princess Diana we all knew from the papers and the pictures, but rather a private Diana, dealing with demons and devils all around her. For bringing us into the world of the unseen Diana, Stewart deserves this recognition. 

Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos – If you enjoyed Being the Ricardos, I am sorry if it seems like I am down on the film. The truth is I really feel nothing about it one way or the other. The film is not engaging enough to have strong feelings about, which is a fatal flaw of a different kind. It seems Kidman was always going to be nominated for this performance, which has the patina of something like Renée Zellweger’s recent Oscar-winning turn in Judy. Like that performance, this is a serviceable imitation of life, but it never really goes deeper than that.

The biggest problem, though, is that it just isn’t funny, and Kidman does not have the comedy chops to make the material funny. Lucille Ball is famously one of the funniest people in the history of television, so casting a talented dramatic actress in a bland day-in-the-life story does no one any favors, least of all Lucille Ball. Kidman is too cerebral, and to some degree, that is what the movie asks her to be, but it is wrong for the character and frustrating to watch.

The final analysis

I try not to read too many other sites when I am writing my pieces and making my predictions. Just enough to stay informed but not enough to be influenced. I confess, however, that I have read a lot about this Best Actress race, and what I have read has left me more confused than when I started. So, let’s reason this out together.

Who won what? Kidman won the Golden Globe, which was meaningless this year. Colman and Stewart each won a handful of minor critics awards, while Cruz won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award and the National Society of Film Critics award, two of the biggest around. Then, there is Chastain, who as mentioned, has won the SAG award and the Critics’ Choice. The signal is all over the place.

It would be foolish to discount how helpful making a big, televised speech can be, which tips things in Chastain’s favor. Stewart is probably too young for the Academy to go that direction, and she will have other chances. The only arguments I am seeing for Cruz and Colman – other than the obvious quality of the work – is that they are both well liked by a broad selection of Academy members. But, perhaps the similarity of their narratives works to cancel them both out, which brings us back to Chastain.

With everything I have witnessed this season, I just don’t see a compelling enough argument in any other direction, and some of the buzz around the other performances could really just be boredom with the frontrunners leading to wild second guessing. I will be okay if I get this wrong, but for now, I am sticking with Chastain.

Will win: Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Should win: Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter

Should have been here: Rachel Sennott for Shiva Baby

Next time: Best Director

New movie review: Crimson Peak

Mia Wasikowska stars in director Guillermo del Toro's excellent Gothic romance Crimson Peak.

Most great directors are students of film history, and their movies are littered with references to cinema of the past. Others take it a step further and create whole-film homages to a style or genre. These are the movies really made for cinephiles and obsessives, for people with a deep knowledge of film history and a passion for the medium. They are films such as Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven, Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German, or Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist.

These are all rich, textured works with a deep understanding and abiding love of their forebears, and viewers with that same understanding and love will get much more from these films than the average movie-goer. This is not to say you must be intimately familiar with the melodramas of Douglas Sirk to enjoy Far From Heaven or immersed in the cinematic language of 1940s film noir to get The Good German, but it helps.

I thought about this a lot while watching writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s lush, moody gothic romance Crimson Peak. Both in story and style, it is a film steeped in the past and reverential toward the foundation on which its creepy, haunted-house tale is figuratively built. The movie is riddled with nods to the work of Italian horror masters Mario Bava and Dario Argento, as well as to classic films such as The Haunting (1963) and The Innocents.

The horror genre is clearly a part of del Toro’s DNA, and Crimson Peak will appeal to similarly engaged terror aficionados. I wonder, however, how this faithful tribute to the high-style horror of the 1960s will play for the uninitiated. The numbers so far suggest it is not playing well. It will make back its money worldwide, but no one is going to be happy about $22 million domestic in nearly three weeks of release. If I were to guess, it is not succeeding because most people do not know what it is.

This is a film made for another time. It seems modern horror franchises – and they are all franchises now – are about scary dolls or scary kids or some combination of the two. Consider the Insidious movies, The Conjuring and its spinoff Annabelle, and the Paranormal Activity series. Much as these are enjoyable movies in their own right, they are also cheap, shock-fests. They are about the jump scares and the promise of mayhem.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with thrills-first moviemaking if the movies are good. This is simply the current state of horror. Audiences want the adrenaline rush of fear and the nausea of disgust, and why not? It can be a hell of a lot of fun, but it is not the environment into which a studio can launch a throwback like Crimson Peak.

I saw the movie on opening night in a three-quarters-full IMAX theater, and I can say firsthand the vast majority of the audience could make neither heads nor tales of the film. It is not a story issue but a tone issue. Modern viewers are primed for sarcasm and meta-humor and for the kind of movies that wink at the camera and say, “Hey, isn’t this silly but also a lot of fun?” There may not be a market for a somber, serious romance that prefers to make you shiver rather than shriek.

It is a shame, too, because Crimson Peak is a stunning film. It is absolutely gorgeous to look at, the acting is magnificent, and del Toro strikes a perfect balance between florid direction and straightforward writing. The premise concocted by del Toro and co-writer Matthew Robbins is simple and classical, which leaves plenty of room for del Toro to explore the world of the story.

Jessica Chastain in Crimson Peak.

Edith (Mia Wasikowska) is the daughter of a wealthy American businessman. Thomas (Tom Hiddleston) comes to the U.S. with his sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain), in search of investors in his clay mining operation. Thomas woos Edith, and after her father dies under mysterious circumstances, she is whisked away to England to live with Thomas and Lucille in their family’s decrepit estate, nicknamed Crimson Peak for the red clay soil on which it sits. The mansion is haunted, and the siblings clearly have some nefarious plot they are playing out, so Edith must survive threats from both the living and the dead.

The film opens with Edith speaking in voiceover: “Ghosts are real. That much I know. I’ve seen them all my life.” The first scene is of a young Edith being visited by the spirit of her dead mother, who tells her, “Beware of Crimson Peak.” The effects work on the ghosts is gorgeous in as much as the ghosts are convincingly ghoulish and frightening, but this is just their appearance. Their function in the story is less clear-cut. They are tormented souls, no doubt, but they are not malevolent. Ultimately, they seem to want what Edith wants: release from the pain caused to them by Crimson Peak.

Wasikowska continues to show tremendous range as an actress, and as Edith, she projects the perfect mix of strength and naïveté. Throughout the film, Lucille speaks of Edith’s fragility and youth, which Wasikowska easily taps into, but what makes Edith a great heroine is that her tormentors underestimate the fierceness of her will. Wasikowska is expert at channeling this determination and showing us Edith’s fight, even when she is confined to bed by illness or hobbled by a broken leg.

Chastain and Hiddleston play off each other beautifully as two people at different points on the same path. They are scam artists, of a sort, but Lucille is older and more embittered, while Thomas is slightly younger and more open to other possibilities in life. This is what makes Edith so threatening to Lucille – her youth. Chastain sulks and glowers and spits and injects a degree of humanity into a villain role that would be over the top in less sure hands.

The same could be said for the film as a whole. In less sure hands than del Toro’s or those of his incredible cast, Crimson Peak could be a Grand Guignol exercise in extravagance and eccentricity. It is not because everyone plays it straight with love of the craft and devotion to del Toro’s vision. Most audiences will not share that vision, but for those of us who do, we can be thankful there is a director like del Toro to put it on screen.

See it? Yes.

New movie review: The Martian

Matt Damon plays an astronaut stranded on Mars in director Ridley Scott's The Martian.

There is nothing quite as satisfying as seeing a talented person work. It really does not matter the craft. Watching a skilled carpenter build a table can be as pleasing as watching a concert pianist perform or a top chef prepare a delicious meal. It should not be terribly revolutionary to suggest competence is appealing. It is one of the reasons the spy genre is so durable. Spies are ceaselessly competent. They accomplish with ease tasks that would confound us mere mortals, and that is why they are so damned fun to watch.

There are no spies in The Martian, but there is competence to spare, and as a result, the film is a joyous exercise in smart, big-budget moviemaking. From director Ridley Scott and writer Drew Goddard, based on the novel by Andy Weir, The Martian is the story of astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon), who is marooned on Mars after a storm forces a speedy evacuation by the crew of the Ares III mission. Thinking Watney has died in the storm, the rest of the crew takes off and heads back to Earth.

When their error is discovered by mission control, an all-out rescue effort begins, and the film cuts back and forth between the frantic attempts by NASA to reach the stranded astronaut and Watney’s pragmatic, life-extending measures. The film settles into a rhythm early. Problems arise, and intelligent people solve them. Another problem demands another solution, and so on until either Watney is saved or a problem comes up that cannot be solved.

Mercifully, there is no villain in the film – no aliens, no shadowy government agencies, no one working at cross-purposes to the characters. The enemies are time and space. Watney has limited resources and infinite space. He must survive on his own long enough to allow the rescue mission to reach him. A botanist, he devises a way to farm potatoes on the once-barren planet. This will buy him some time. It is up to mission control back home to solve the space problem, which is that they have a lot of space to cover to get to Watney.

Kristen Wiig and Chiwetel Ejiofor in The Martian.

Populated by an appealingly eclectic and talented cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover, and Kristen Wiig, the ground team at NASA gets to work. Under incredible pressure and with no margin for error, they propose to send an unmanned probe to Mars with supplies to keep Watney alive until the next planned manned mission arrives. When this fails, it falls to the crew of the Ares III, still on their way back to Earth, to decide if they will risk their lives to attempt a rescue of the man they left behind.

Perhaps surprisingly for someone who made his name writing intricate, puzzle-box-type stories such as Cabin in the Woods and the television show Lost, Goddard’s screenplay is straightforward and workmanlike. More Apollo 13 than 2001: A Space Odyssey, the script is less interested in the meaning of life than in the extension of it. For The Martian, the former approach works, and Goddard and Scott smartly give all the action set pieces and narrative developments room to breathe rather than overstuffing the spaces between with needless philosophizing.

Movies like this work best when allowed to bask in silence, and on Mars, silence is the one thing not in short supply. While the top-flight cast also includes Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, and Kate Mara, among others, the film lives and dies with the lonely, life-and-death struggle of Watney and with Damon’s portrayal of the stranded astronaut. Long stretches of the film are inhabited by just Watney and the video diary he keeps, partially for the record and partially for his sanity. In these moments of quiet solitude, the audience is allowed to feel his grief and isolation but also his hope.

Recent comments in the press aside, Damon has a charming, everyman-like quality about him that makes you want to root for him. The character is witty and affable – two traits Damon has excelled at displaying in nearly all his roles – but the dire nature of his situation is never once out of mind. Damon’s well calibrated performance is a perfect balance of light and dark, playful and practical, which is the same tightrope the film itself walks so well.

Scott has fallen out of critical favor as a director in recent years, releasing a string of indifferently received films (A Good Year; American Gangster; Body of Lies; Robin Hood) followed by three highly divisive ones (Prometheus; The Counselor; Exodus: Gods and Kings). There was nothing necessarily wrong with these works – I happen to love Prometheus – but something was missing from most of them. With The Martian, Scott proves he is the same talented director who long ago brought us Alien and Blade Runner, as well as the relatively more recent Gladiator.

Here, Scott provides the same sense of awe-inspiring wonder that has marked his best work, but it is buoyed by an inspiring story of genuine human accomplishment. The Martian vistas are the kind of breathtaking visual achievement Scott can conjure on a whim, and this movie is full of beautiful images, but its greatest success is its people.

Working from Goddard’s script and Weir’s story, Scott astonishes with more than just visuals. Think how rare that is to see a big, effects-driven movie, which this clearly is, and to be amazed by something more than how pretty everything is. In The Martian, we are amazed simply to watch smart people confront impossible odds with determination and hope.

See it? Yes.

Scattered in the ashes: A Most Violent Year and the memories of a dream

The man with a plan, Abel Morales, played by Oscar Isaac, goes after what he wants with the help of his wife, Anna, played by Jessica Chastain, in A Most Violent Year.

The American Dream is dead and buried. Its final resting place: New York City. And, on its bones, we built a metropolis. Though the skyscrapers were founded on the sweat, blood, and tears of the many, the rooms at the top had room for only a few. That inequality bred resentment. Resentment bred anger, and that anger gave birth to violence. The town of “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” quickly became the town of “Make it here and move anywhere else.” After all, who wants to live in a graveyard?

This is the world of A Most Violent Year, the third feature from the brilliant writer-director JC Chandor. The film had its New York premiere in front of a packed house Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art, which kicked off its Contenders series with the screening and a question-and-answer session with Chandor. An homage to and subversion of gangster movie tropes, the film is a stirring depiction of the compromises we make to achieve our goals and the toll that can take on our humanity.

“He’s the optimistic one,” said Chandor of his main character, played by Oscar Isaac. “He’s the one buying property when everyone else is running out of town. That’s part of the optimism here, and it’s not fun to watch it happen because it’s never clean. It’s never perfect. You don’t get to where this guy’s gotten in life without making some compromises. … It’s not a straight line that you’re going to walk.”

Isaac plays Abel Morales, the immigrant owner of a small fuel company who sees a chance to make it big and puts everything on the line for it. As the film opens, Abel is purchasing a large piece of land he can barely afford, his tanker trucks are being hijacked, possibly by one of his competitors, and his company is under investigation. At the start, Abel is above reproach, a testament to the model of hard work and ingenuity so often praised in this country but rarely followed, but as each new complication tightens the noose around his neck, he must decide how far he is willing to go to protect what he has built.

To use the terminology of the mobster movies A Most Violent Year is so fond of evoking, if Abel is the head of the family, his wife, Anna, is consigliere. Jessica Chastain is perfect as the hard-nosed pragmatist, willing to get her hands dirty when her husband wants to play clean. She comes from a mob family and mentions her gangster father on more than one occasion. It is a connection that once drawn, creates a looming threat of extreme violence, the possibility that the situation could get even darker, even bloodier than it already is.

Violence lurks in every corner of the picture, rarely manifesting itself in a tangible way. Instead, we hear radio broadcasts about shootings and stabbings and robberies. We see the characters pass by dilapidated buildings and the poor, broken residents of the city. Nothing is sacred, and nothing is safe from the blight on the periphery of the characters’ lives, which is what makes the true acts of violence that much more effective. The audience always is on edge because the world of the film is so chaotic, and though the characters hide away from it all, no one can stay hidden forever.

Writer-director JC Chandor (left) answers a question during a talk at the Museum of Modern Art after the New York premiere of his new film, A Most Violent Year.

“An act of violence has horrible repercussions for those around it when it goes on,” said Chandor. “There’s this vibration that comes out from it – the people that see it, the people that are directly affected by it, and the people that know those people – but the broader destruction that happens is when society as a whole, everyone here, starts to choose a totally different path for how you got here and how you’re going to get home tonight.

“That’s not based on anything that happened directly in your life. It’s based on fear, whether it be realistic or whether it be legitimate or not. You may be right to fear walking across the street in many parts of the world, but it’s about the repercussions and the way entire civilizations can change because of the reaction to that.”

A Most Violent Year is a film about actions and reactions. In nearly every scene, someone has acted to push someone else into a corner. The tension comes from not knowing how the other person will react with his back against the wall. As such, power becomes a very nebulous thing throughout the movie. Everyone has a little, but no one has as much as he needs or wants. How much power do they need? Enough to knock the other guy out of the game because as long as all the pieces are on the board, any move is possible.

Isaac is stunning in the role of Abel. Much of the character’s struggle is internal – a conflict between what he believes is right and what he knows must be done. Isaac uses small gestures, slight changes in posture and facial expression, and impossibly precise line readings to convey the world of a man whose life is hurtling down a path he can no longer control, only navigate. Even as his dreams seem to come crashing down around him, Abel never blinks. He never strays from his path because for him, the only option, the only move, is to win.

“There are always these moments where you make real decisions about what the rest of your life is going to be,” said Chandor. “The one element of this film that I found that I didn’t know until you really see it is: They’ve knocked it out of the park when the movie starts. They’re driving around in their fancy cars, they’ve got enough money to send their kids to good schools, and they’re moving out to this big, fancy house, running away from the violence of New York City and moving to the suburbs.

“They are very comfortable, and things are going pretty well, but it’s at that moment that he realizes there’s an opportunity. In a normal environment, he probably would not be able to afford that place that he’s putting that deposit down on, but because of all these horrible things that are going on, obviously the prices are being depressed. So, he’s a person who sees that as a huge opportunity, which it is, but it’s also a tremendous risk.”

It is that “nothing ventured, nothing gained” attitude that determines Abel’s actions as he moves forward. The interesting subversion that takes place in this film is what “risk” ultimately means. The pragmatic view, the view Anna takes, is seeing the path of least resistance in responding to violence with violence and to aggression with aggression. In a traditional gangster picture, this would be the lens through which Abel sees the world, but this is not a traditional picture.

“The film is structured like the memory of a gangster movie,” said Chandor. “I’m better at making the movies than watching them, but I have these memories of what these types of films are. In a way, I’m playing on these sort of tropes but, in the end, hopefully playing against them by saying this is actually how success in this country is gained.”

Abel’s risk is to walk the line as long as he can. He stays on the straight and narrow until outside forces knock him off that path. Once they do, however, all bets are off because the risk-taker in Abel is always capable of doing something unexpected. That is what makes him such a dangerous adversary, the kind of person of whom those entrenched in his business would want to rid themselves.

As the story progresses, we meet many of Abel’s competitors, and the one thing they all have in common is that they received their businesses from their families. Not one person besides Abel is responsible for his own success. What they are protecting, then, is not just a way of business but a way of life. The industry is oil, but the subtext is revolution. They are the royal families with a tenuous grasp on their inherited power, and Abel is the outsider who has come to declare his independence.

His competitors have profited off the illusion of the American Dream. They killed it long ago but kept its ghost alive to haunt the dreams of those who seek to achieve what they have. Abel does not scare so easily, and if the specter of the dream is all that is left, he will make that enough. He will resurrect it as their nightmare, and no matter how high they build their walls, in the end, the bricks will tumble down, turn to dust, and join the ashes of a past they tried to bury.

New movie review: Interstellar

Matthew McConaughey explores the nothing in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.

The vast emptiness of space is an ideal setting for a contemplative exploration of humanity, loneliness, and the need for love and community. At the same time, the chaotic machinations of the universe mean there are galaxies full of stars and planets around which to base an epic science-fiction action-adventure movie. It is possible Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar would have been a good film if it had told a story about any of that. Alas, it is neither a good film nor very interested in storytelling.

Bloated, empty, and incoherent, Interstellar shows up at the theater with a bag full of tricks amounting to nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Having never been a convert to the cult of Nolan, maybe I am not the target audience for this film, but it is hard to imagine who would be. This is classic big-budget gimmickry, which wants so badly to pluck our heart strings, engage our minds, and overwhelm our senses but succeeds only in being cloying, pontificating, and very loud, often all at the same time.

Emotionally manipulative to its core, the film might have had a chance at drawing tears and inspiring empathy if we knew who any of these people were. Instead, Nolan looks down on his creation as a god might and observes the little ants running around on their corn farms and the wastelands of uncolonized planets. The question becomes: Why should any of us in the audience take a different view?

Late in the film, this thesis becomes clear when two characters – one of whom we have only just met – engage in a fistfight and roll around on the ground. Nolan pulls back to reveal the scope of the icy landscape on which they stand. The intent is to frame these petty people as small when compared to the backdrop of the universe and the scale of the problem they are trying to solve – to save the human race.

It almost works, except that we are meant to care about who wins the fight. By forcing us to want the “good guy” to win, the movie undercuts its message of human pettiness and frailty and encourages the audience to join in the squabbling. This is just one among many examples of the movie trying to have its philosophical cake and eat it, too.

Humanity is dying. A vaguely discussed famine has gripped the world, and as food supplies dwindle and dust storms rage, a small governmental organization – NASA – believes it has the answer. We will leave the planet. Missions are sent to explore the universe and find habitable worlds for us, while back on Earth, the destruction continues unabated.

The movie is at odds with itself almost from the very beginning. It wants the sci-fi spectacle of so many outer-space actioners, but it also wants the human emotion of a low-key drama. It delivers only one of these – the one with explosions. Splitting the film between an environmental disaster drama on Earth and the action of space exploration, Nolan and editor Lee Smith seem at loss for how to connect the two threads. Too often, they build to incredible climaxes at one location only to cut away to the other, but rather than build tension, these cuts destroy any momentum the story may have gathered.

None of this would be as problematic if the characters existed as anything beyond broad sketches, but somehow, in a nearly three-hour movie, the script forgets to give any of the characters even rudimentary reasons for their often-baffling decisions. Quite clearly, they are movie characters making choices that benefit no one and nothing but the plot.

As Nolan films are wont to do, Interstellar draws a superb cast for even its smallest roles. Leading the way are Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain, supported by Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, David Gyasi, Matt Damon, John Lithgow, and Nolan regular Michael Caine. They all give fine performances, taking into account the material with which they have to work, but apart from one or two strong moments from McConaughey, they are lost in the morass of sentiment and barrage of spectacle to which the film has committed.

The most ready comparison is to Nolan’s own Inception, with its puzzle-box plotting, lecture-hall pedantry, and larger-than-life visuals. Without wanting to start a debate on the merits of Inception, I hope we can agree the dream worlds of the film were somewhat lacking in imagination. In his latest, Nolan doubles down on beyond-the-stars blandness and delivers some of the least intriguing intergalactic worlds this side of an Arizona desert.

With infinite resources at their disposal, the filmmakers give us one planet that appears to be all shallow water and one that appears to be all ice. I have no doubt worlds such as these exist in one form or another, but to set a movie there seems a dubious prospect at best. In Interstellar, we visit both and find little of interest on either.

If you insist on seeing this movie, I would urge you to pay the IMAX surcharge – assuming you can find true IMAX in your area – as there are two bravura space-travel scenes worth the added price of admission. Even these are comparatively staid against something such as Stanley Kubrick’s “Beyond the Infinite” sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but they are the only moments where you might feel anything but bored while sitting in the theater.

This is the final and most egregious sin of Interstellar. As much as it wants us to think about our place in the universe, the way we treat our planet, and the connections we form with others, it simply fails to foster any interest in its ideas. By the third or fourth time a character advises others to “rage against the dying of the light,” it becomes clear this movie has no new ideas. The script is comprised only of shopworn pseudo-philosophies that might look good on a dorm-room poster, which is just as well, since a lot of college freshmen are going to be hanging this one on their walls.

Were one to look too closely – and I would discourage anyone from doing so – the only things to be found are dangerously destructive ideologies that espouse the supremacy of humanity and the human race’s right to seek and destroy. It is a literal scorched-earth policy writ large on the big screen and passed off as an intelligent take on our special place in existence. If this movie is correct and the universe is empty but for us, so much the better, and we have gotten what we earned. We are kings of nothing.

See it? No.