It Came From The Cineplex: Dunkirk

Dunkirk was written and directed by Christopher Nolan.

Nolan's a fanboy-favorite who previously co-wrote and directed Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. He wrote and directed Interstellar. He also received "Story Credit" for Man Of Steel, for which he should be publicly flogged.
Dunkirk is an epic film, and like all of Nolan's work, it's visually stunning. He spared no expense in recreating the Battle Of Dunkirk, using practical effects and vehicles wherever possible, even going so far as to film in the actual locations!

Nolan got the idea to make the film after he and his wife Emma Thomas sailed across the English Channel, following the same route as many of the ships involved in the real evacuation of Dunkirk. He seriously considered not writing a script, planning to improvise the entire film (!). Fortunately for us, Thomas talked him out of this terrible idea, and Nolan turned in a seventy six page screenplay (about half the length of his usual scripts). 

As a result of this, Dunkirk is a very atypical Hollywood war movie. It clocks in at a brisk 106 minutes, which is unusual for a film of this scope. It's also an odd subject for a Hollywood war movie. Although many historians consider it a turning point in WWII, The Battle Of Dunkirk was not a military victory. It didn't involve America in any way (the U.S. hadn't even entered WWII at the time!), there are no frontline skirmishes, no scenes of Churchill in a war room surrounded by generals and no German soldiers are ever seen onscreen (save for a couple in the closing seconds).

The film contains surprisingly little dialogue, as the characters spend whole swaths of the movie running from place to place, simply trying to survive. This makes for a highly immersive cinematic experience, putting the audience squarely in the middle of the action. 

Despite this, Dunkirk has a very cold and hollow tone. Rather than focus on one main character, we're introduced to several, but unfortunately we never get to know anything about them. A few get names and maybe one identifying characteristic and that's it. It's a film filled with ciphers, which severely lessens its emotional impact.

So far Dunkirk's grossed $460 million worldwide against its $100 million budget, which makes it one of the bigger hits of the summer. That's surprising to me, as there's been little or no buzz surrounding the film. It's like a stealth hit.

SPOILERS FOR A MOVIE BASED ON AN HISTORICAL EVENT!

The Plot:
A word of warning: Dunkirk seems like a traditional linear narrative, but it's anything but. The film depicts three interconnected storylines that take place over wildly different time periods. The land story covers an entire week (!), the sea story a day and the air story just one hour. However, the movie freely cuts back and forth between these plots as if they're happening simultaneously, which can be confusing if you're not paying attention.

A helpful title card tells us that it's 1940, and the Germans are invading France. 400,000 Allied soldiers are forced to retreat to the seaside town of Dunkirk, France. As the Germans relentlessly close in, the soldiers desperately wait on the beach for rescue.

The Mole, aka Land (which takes place over the course of a week)
Six British soldiers are walking through the deserted streets of Dunkirk, when they're attacked by German snipers. A young private named Tommy is the only one to survive. He threads his way through the town and makes it to the beach, where he's stunned to see hundreds of thousands of troops waiting to be evacuated.

Tommy gets in the back of a huge line of soldiers and waits. He spots a soldier named Gibson, who's seemingly burying a fellow private, and helps him. Just then a pack of German Stuka dive bombers attacks the beach, killing dozens of men caught out in the open.

Tommy sees a rescue ship that's giving priority to the wounded, and gets an idea. He and Gibson grab a stretcher and carry an injured soldier to the ship. They make it onto the ship, but unfortunately they're ordered off after they deliver the wounded man. They sneak under the pier (aka The Mole), where they wait to board the next rescue ship. Suddenly the German planes attack again, sinking the ship they were just on. Hundreds of soldiers jump off, and Tommy saves a man named Alex (played by Harry Styles, of One Direction fame!) from being crushed.

Eventually the three make it onto another ship, where they can finally relax. Not so fast there, guys! This ship is then hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat, and begins sinking. Gibson saves Tommy and Alex, and they manage to grab onto a packed life boat and make it back to shore. In the first of the interconnected elements, we see the lifeboat is commanded by a man we'll soon come to know as the Shivering Soldier (played by Cillian Murphy).

Meanwhile, British officers Commander Bolton (played by Kenneth Branagh) and Colonel Winnant (played by James D'Arcy, aka Jarvis of Agent Carter) discuss the situation. Bolton says Churchill refuses to surrender and doesn't want to risk large ships in the evacuation, fearing they'll be needed to defend Britain from a potential invasion. Churchill has also decided not to help evacuate Allied French soldiers in an effort to save space (!). Bolton says in order to speed up the evacuation, the government is commandeering small civilian ships, which can get closer to the beach.

Some time later, Tommy, Gibson and Alex spot an abandoned fishing trawler on the beach, grounded by low tide. They run toward it, hoping to hide in it until high tide arrives and floats it out to sea. They're joined by a squad of Scottish soldiers who have the same idea. The soldiers all board the boat and wait in the hold.

Unfortunately the boat's in German territory, and they begin using it for target practice. The soldiers flatten themselves on the floor, desperately trying to avoid the hail of bullets. Just then the tide begins rising, and water pours through the bullet holes in the ship's side. One of the Scottish soldiers says they need to lighten the load, demanding one of the group get off the boat. They suspect Gibson of being a German spy, because he's yet to say anything. Tommy defends Gibson, who reveals he's actually French. He stole the uniform of the man he was burying when we first saw him, hoping to make it onto a British evac ship.

Just then the tide floats the boat out to sea, but unfortunately it starts sinking. The soldiers abandoned the boat, but Gibson's caught in a net and drowns. Tommy and Alex swim for a minesweeper ship, but once again it's hit and sunk by German forces. Oil pours from the sunken ship, turning the sea into an inferno. Fortunately they're finally rescued by Mr. Dawson, who we'll hear about in a minute, and pulled onto his boat.

The Sea (which takes place over a day)
In the English town of Weymouth, the Royal Navy is commandeering civilian boats to help with the Dunkirk evacuation. Mr. Dawson agrees to help, but insists on sailing his boat himself. Hhis son Peter and his friend George tagalong.

On the way they spot three Spitfires flying overhead (which we'll find out more about later). Mr. Dawson spots a British officer clinging to the wreckage of a ship destroyed by a U-boat attack, and rescues him. He turns out to be the Shivering Soldier we saw earlier. The Soldier hides silently in a corner until he sees Dawson's heading for Dunkirk, and demands he turn the boat around. Dawson calms the Shivering Soldier, and Peter locks him in a bedroom below deck.

When Dawson finds out Peter locked up the Soldier, he demands he let him out. The Soldier rushes up to the deck and tries to turn the boat around. There's a scuffle, and George is knocked backward, falling into the hold. He hits his head on the deck, severely injuring him. Peter rushes to his side, and George says he can't see. Dawson makes the decision to continue to Dunkirk.

Dawson sees a Spitfire crash into the ocean and heads for it. He rescues a pilot named Collins, who we'll meet in the next segment, seconds before he drowns. They make it to Dunkirk, where they see dozens of soldiers leaping off a sinking minesweeper that's surrounded by flames. Dawson risks his life rescuing as many soldiers as he can, including Tommy and Alex.

Peter attempts to move George to make more room, but sees he's dead. On deck, the Shivering Soldier asks if George is OK. Peter realizes the man's out of his head and lies, saying George is fine.

The Air (which takes place over an hour)
Three RAF Spitfires, piloted by Ferrier (played by Tom Hardy), Collins and "Fortis Leader," head across the English Channel to Dunkirk to protect the evacuating soldiers. They encounter a squad of German fighters and engage in a dogfight. Fortis Leader's shot down, and Ferrier assumes command of the mission.

Ferrier's fuel gauge was damaged during the skirmish, preventing him from telling how full his tank is. Collins asks if he want to abort the mission, but Ferrier insists they continue to France.

They shoot down another German plane, but Collins' Spitfire is damaged and he crashes into the English Channel (where he's later picked up by Mr. Dawson). Farrier sees another German bomber attack a minesweeper and shoots it down. Unfortunately it ignites the oil leaking out of the minesweeper, turning the sea into an inferno.

Farrier reaches Dunkirk just as his fuel runs out. He manages to glide long enough to shoot down a dive bomber, and safely lands his plane outside the Allied perimeter. He sees German soldiers approaching and sets fire to his plane to keep it out of their hands. He's captured by the Germans and taken prisoner.

The Wrap Up
Dawson's boat makes it back to Weymouth, where he's celebrated for saving so many soldiers. George's body is carried off the boat, as the Shivering Soldier looks on. Peter takes a photo of George to the local paper, which publishes an article praising him as a war hero.

The surviving soldiers are put on a train. Tommy and Alex assume the public will treat them as cowards for retreating from France, but instead they're given a heroes' welcome. Tommy reads a newspaper article in which Churchill praises the bravery of the soldiers and vows to never surrender.

Back on the beach, Commander Bolton says they expected to save 30,000 soldiers, but over 300,000 were actually evacuated. He tells Colonel Winnant he's staying behind to help evac the French soldiers as well.

Thoughts:
• Dunkirk stars several members of Christopher Nolan's little repertoire company, including Tom Hardy (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises), Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception) and of course, Michael Caine (The Prestige, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Interstellar), although his role is just a voiceover cameo.

• Tom Hardy apparently hates the bottom half of his own face. He wore a partial mask as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, his face was half covered for much of Fury Road and he spends most of Dunkirk with the lower half of his face hidden by an oxygen mask. He eventually takes if off the mask in the final seconds of the film.

C'mon, Tom! You're not that hard to look at!

• Nolan used practical effects in the film wherever possible. For example, to populate the beach during the evacuation scenes, he used over one thousand extras. These crowds were then enhanced by using numerous cardboard cutouts of soldiers (!).

He also used era-appropriate planes for the aerial scenes, along with twelve of the surviving civilian ships that participated in the actual Dunkirk evacuation back in 1940! Pretty cool!

Also, the military uniforms worn in 1940 were made from heavy wool, which was no longer produced. The producers used a factory in Pakistan to manufacture wool fabric and create thousands of historically accurate wool uniforms for the actors and extras. 

• Hans Zimmer composed the film's score, making extensive use of the Shepard Tone to generate tension in the audience. It's kind of hard to explain, but basically it consists of three overlapping, rising tones. One tone is played at a consistent volume, while a second fades out as it rises. The third tone fades in as it gets higher. When the three are played at the same time and infinitely looped, they give the illusion of a tone that seems to rise forever, even though it never actually gets any higher, which makes the listener edgy and uneasy.

Zimmer also used the sound of a ticking clock on the soundtrack, to suggest urgency I guess. The ticking was supplied by Nolan's own pocket watch.

• A big part of the Dunkirk evacuation's success lies with the fleet of civilians who used their own boats and risked their lives to rescue thousands of trapped soldiers.

That's something that could have only happened in WWII, and a feat only the British with their stiff upper lips and can-do attitudes could have pulled off. No matter how hard I try, I can't imagine current day American citizens crossing enemy lines and risking their lives to evacuate a bunch of soldiers. WWII was a different time.

• Whenever the German Stuka dive bombers, er, dive toward the beach, there's a distinctive whining sound that signals their approach. This sound came from sirens mounted on the planes' landing gear, which the Germans called the "Jericho Trumpet." 

These sirens were solely for psychological effect, meant to strike fear into the troops on the ground. They did their job well, as troops were terrified and would scatter whenever they'd hear the distinctive Stuka whine.

George Lucas supposedly used this idea for the sound of the TIE Fighters in the Star Wars movies!

• As longtime readers of Bob Canada's BlogWorld know all too well, I'm not a fan of biopics or historical dramas, as they're usually woefully inaccurate. In fact most of them outright fabricate characters and events to make their stories more cinematic.

Amazingly, Dunkirk is actually fairly historically accurate! In fact a few surviving Dunkirk survivors were invited to the film's premiere, and they all praised its realism and accuracy. One survivor did say however that the movie was louder than the battle (!).

Here are a just a few of the things Dunkirk actually got right:

The Germans really did drop propaganda material that illustrated how the British troops were surrounded, and demanded they surrender (the actual leaflets didn't look like the ones in the movie though). 

The Royal Navy really keep their destroyers and other large ships from participating in the evacuation. They did this partly because they didn't want to lose ships they'd need in a larger battle they expected, and also because the huge ships couldn't get close enough to the shallow beach to be of any help.

The Royal Air Force really did engage in dogfights with German planes over the sea, and they really were limited to just an hour of flight time by their fuel capacity.

The soldiers on Dunkirk beach really did curse the Air Force for not protecting them from German bombers. The film fails to mention though that the Royal Air Force planes actually did battle the German planes, but they did so far inland, out of sight from the beach. This led the soldiers to think the RAF had abandoned them.

The British commanders really did refuse to evacuate French soldiers at first. Churchill later insisted they be rescued along with the British troops.

None of the characters in the film are real, although a few, like Kenneth Branagh's Commander Bolton, are composites of several actual people.

Dunkirk is a visually spectacular film that's a throwback to old school war films. There's little or no dialogue, which helps immerse the audience in the action. Unfortunately there's no central character, and the ones we do meet are virtual ciphers with absolutely no depth, resulting in a cold and clinical film. It's still worth a look on the big screen though, if nothing else than for the sound. I give it a solid B.

It Came From The Cineplex: Interstellar

Interstellar was written by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, and directed by Christopher Nolan.

I was very much looking forward to this film, as the trailer promised a compelling hard sci-fi story, rather than the typical explosion-packed science fantasies that litter the cineplex these days. Something along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact. It delivers on that promise for the most part until the third act, when unfortunately it becomes bogged down with new age mumbo jumbo and outright magic to resolve the plot. Just like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact, now that I think about it.

Like most of Nolan's work, the plot is convoluted and sometimes vague, demanding multiple viewings to sort it all out. He reminds me of British pop band Duran Duran. Way back in the 1980s, they pumped out a series of baffling music videos that made little sense at first glance. When asked about the meaning of them, the band said they purposely made them enigmatic to encourage viewers to watch them over and over. I'm convinced Nolan does the exact same thing in his films (I'm lookin' at you, The Prestige and Inception). Sometimes I wonder if even he can unravel his tangled plots.

I'm generally terrible at solving mysteries and foreseeing plot twists in books and movies. Not so in Interstellar. Half an hour into it I correctly predicted every upcoming twist. You could see them all coming down the street from blocks away, like a parade. In fact I even called the "Cooper stays young while his daughter Murphy ages back on Earth" reveal just from seeing the trailer.

SPACE/TIME SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
Sometime in the near future, humanity is slowly dying as a crop blight wipes out the world's food supply. Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey) is a former NASA pilot turned farmer who apparently can't afford a first name. He's raising his teenaged son Tom and ten year old daughter Murphy. Murphy believes there's a ghost in her room that's trying to communicate with her, in what is possibly the most obvious bit of foreshadowing I've ever seen.

Using gravity and Morse code (don't ask), the "ghost" sends a series of coordinates to Cooper and Murphy, which they follow to a secret NASA base headed by Professor Brand (Michael Caine, who's apparently contractually obligated to appear in all Christopher Nolan films). 

Brand has discovered an artificial wormhole near Saturn that opens into a distant galaxy. Ten years ago his team sent several explorers on one-way trips through the wormhole, and they've identified three potentially habitable worlds on the other side. Brand wants to send a larger crew through the wormhole to discover which planet is the best choice, so the rest of humanity can follow shortly after in a giant space ark. Yep, a space ark. 

Cooper's chosen to pilot this exploratory ship, but he's reluctant to leave his children, knowing he'll be gone for years, possibly even decades. He eventually decides that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and agrees to go.

Cooper and a team of astronauts, including Dr. Brand's daughter Amelia (played by Anne Hathaway) fly through the wormhole and investigate a planet orbiting an enormous black hole they name Gargantua. The planet turns out to be uninhabitable, due to its charming thousand foot tidal waves. Because of science, when they get back to the ship they find that although just three hours passed for them, over twenty years have passed on Earth. Murphy is now a grown woman working with Professor Brand.

They try another planet and meet Matt Damon, but his planet's no good and he's crazy. He damages their ship and Cooper sends Amelia to the third planet, while he's captured by the massive gravity of Gargantua and falls into the black hole.

Because of science again, he's not crushed by the hole's immense gravitational forces, and finds himself floating in some kind of weird Inception-style tesseract world. He figures out that inside this world he can see into the past, and— you guessed it— he begins communicating with ten year old Murphy. Yep, he was the "ghost" in the room all along, in a plot twist that I'm betting Nolan thought would blow the audiences' collective mind, but which everyone figured out in the first ten minutes of the 169 minute run time.

Apparently pretty much everything in the film has been orchestrated by advanced humans in the far future, who've discovered how to manipulate time and gravity and everything else to make sure the species survives.

Cooper somehow uses Morse code to communicate the equation that will allow humanity to launch its giant space ark. Amazingly he then wakes up on the ark station near Saturn and sees that Murphy is now an old woman on her death bed. He says "Sorry about that whole missing your entire life thing," and goes off into space to find Amelia.

Thoughts:
• I'm suspicious of some of the science presented in the film, but Nolan worked closely with theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who insisted on as much accuracy as possible. Since he probably knows more about science than I do, I'll have to give him the benefit of the doubt. Thorne was also a scientific consultant on 1997's Contact.

• Kudos to Nolan for setting the film in an unspecified future year. One of my pet peeves is when a sci-fi film features incredibly advanced technology, but is set only fifteen or twenty years from now, which instantly dates it.

Keep the year of your futuristic film vague, directors.

• When Cooper's driving his kids to school, he spots an unmanned drone flying through the sky and takes off after it. He drives off the road and through his own fields in pursuit of the errant drone, completely destroying tens of thousands of corn stalks.

First of all, he covets this thing so badly because he says its solar cells could power an entire farm. That seems unlikely, as we see there are about four feet of solar cells on each of the drone's wings. Doesn't seem like they'd be able to generate all that much power. Are solar cells in the future exponentially more powerful than the ones we have today?

Secondly, this is a world on the brink of starvation. We're told that corn is one of the few crops that will still grow. So it only makes sense that Cooper would flatten several acres of this precious commodity just so he can get his hands on the drone. "Sorry we won't have enough to eat for the winter, kids, but hey, look at this bitchin' drone I found!"

• Tom teases Murphy about her name, and she tearfully asks Cooper why he named her after something bad ("Murphy's Law"). Cooper tells her that Murphy's Law doesn't mean that something bad will happen, but that "whatever can happen, will happen."

NOPE! Sorry Cooper, but you're full of crap. The official definition of Murphy's Law is indeed "anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

It's possible that Cooper knows this and he's just trying to make Murphy feel better, so I'm willing to give them this one.

• Professor Brand's headquarters also doubles as a giant space ark that will save humanity, provided he can solve the "gravity problem." He plans to load the ark with people and lift it up into space, abandoning our dying planet.

Oddly enough this ark looks more like the interior of a mall instead of a space ship, complete with giant concrete support columns. Do they really make space ships out of cement? I'm guessing no. No they do not.

• This space ark is a massive undertaking and no doubt requires a vast amount of manpower, resources and energy. 

Early in the film Cooper mentions that if they still had MRI machines, his wife's illness would have been diagnosed sooner and she'd still be alive. From his statement it's obvious that technology and resources are stretched thin. So how in the name of sanity would a society on the brink of starvation be able to engineer and construct such a station? It would be like the Irish putting a man on the moon during the Great Potato Famine.

• The Endurance spaceship consists of twelve modules on a ring, and looks a lot like a clock. I wonder if that was intentional, given the importance of time in the story?

• Kudos to Nolan for insisting on using practical special effects and as little CGI as possible. All the scenes of the Endurance and the Ranger spacecraft were filmed with models, which is pretty rare these days.

• I really liked TARS and CASE, the robots in the film. Their design was very simple— they're basically just four black rectangles stuck together— but they were amazingly emotive.

For most of the scenes the robots were large puppets manipulated by the voice actors, who were digitally removed from the scenes in post.

• Once the Endurance has lifted off from Earth, the crew beds down in their cryosleep chambers in order to doze away the two years it'll take to reach the wormhole next to Saturn.

Two years? Hmm. If you traveled at the speed of light you could get from the Earth to Saturn in about 75 minutes. The Endurance must be going very, very slowly.

• Once they go through the wormhole, the Endurance crew decides that Miller's Planet is their best shot, because they've been receiving telemetry "pings" from it for years. When they get there, they discover that due to the time dilation effect, the first exploratory ship was torn apart by massive waves just a few hours ago. The "years" of transmissions were actually just a few minutes' worth of data. 

Wait a minute... OK, this is complicated, so bear with me. I get all the relativity stuff, and how an hour on Miller's Planet equals seven years to the rest of the universe. But Professor Brand said that because communication through the wormhole is problematic, each explorer was to send out a thumbs up or thumbs down signal from their respective planet once a year. Apparently they've been receiving an annual ping from Miller's for the past ten years.

I can't figure out how that's possible. First of all I don't see why Miller would send out a thumbs up in the first place— her planet was ravaged every few minutes by thousand foot tidal waves. But even if she did send out one the instant she landed... she didn't live there for a year. She died an hour or so after landing. So how was NASA receiving pings from her for the past ten years?

Did they receive her one and only ping, and the black hole distorted it so it was one ten year long ppppiiinnnggg?

Maybe I'm missing something or I'm not as smart as I like to think, but it seems like a pretty serious error on the part of the crew. Not to mention the screenwriters.

• When the giant wave hits the Ranger on Miller's Planet, one of the Endurance scientists (Doyle) is washed away. His death was very poorly filmed. In fact I wasn't even sure he'd died for a good five minutes or so after the wave hit.

• Professor Brand says the initial expeditions can only send rudimentary data (amounting to the aforementioned annual "ping") through the wormhole. Yet Cooper receives several videos of reasonably high resolution from his rapidly aging kids back on Earth. Do transmissions through the wormhole only work one way?

• As stated before, Professor Brand is feverishly trying to solve the gravity equation so that if and when Endurance finds a suitable planet, the population of Earth can colonize it.

Does it seem odd that the survival of the entire human race is dependent on one old man? Every time we see him he's sitting alone in his office staring at his scribblings on the blackboard. All it would take is one slip in the shower and humanity is doomed.

Sure, later on Murphy begins helping him, but why isn't there a huge team of scientists and mathematicians helping him solve his equation?

• Murphy comes off as a very schizophrenic character in the film. When Cooper tells her he's going on the mission, she angrily snubs him, which is what a real ten year old girl would most likely do. 

The next time we see her she's in her thirties, and she sends a withering message to Cooper (her first ever). Believe it or not, she still resents her father for leaving her. You know, her father, the guy who had the gall to leave her in order to save the whole goddamned human race. Child Murph could get away with acting like that, but it makes Adult Murph look like a bit of an asshole.

After Asshole Murph sends the message to Cooper, we see that she's now working for Professor Brand, helping him solve his gravity equation. This is Noble Murph, and she's incredibly chummy with Brand, possibly even seeing him as the father she never had. It's obvious from these scenes that the movie now expects us to unconditionally like her. Nice try, movie.

Later when Professor Brand dies, she finds out his work was all a sham, and turns into Asshole Murph again. Then she figures out the messages that Cooper sent to her in the past, and suddenly she's Noble Murph again. 

It's almost like there are two versions of her, each coming to the forefront depending on the whims of the script.

• Play the Intersellar Drinking Game! Take a shot every time Professor Brand says, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"

You'll be dead of alcohol poisoning somewhere around the hour and a half mark.

• After the disastrous Miller expedition, the crew decides to visit Mann's Planet. They touch down on the icy world and find Dr. Mann is alive and well and in cyrostasis. They thaw him out and lo and behold, he's played by Matt Damon!

Kudos to the production team for keeping Damon's presence in the film a secret. He's not in the trailer or any of the promotional materials, and I was honestly surprised when he showed up. In these days of the internet and spoiler sites, keeping such a secret is a minor miracle.

• When Dr. Mann is brought out of stasis, why is his fluid-filled cryo-chamber steaming? Isn't it supposed to freeze him? Or does it instantly switch from cold to hot when you push the "thaw" button?

• I could have done without all the new age bushwah at the end of the film. Ameila posits that "love" is a quantifiable force like gravity, that transcends time and dimension. Um, no. Love is an internal emotion and nothing more. Is she trying to make us believe love would still exist even if there were no people to experience it?

I'm betting Kip Thorne didn't come up with that particular bit of "science."

• I was with the movie right up to the point in which Cooper falls into the black hole and then finds himself in a weird Escher universe in which he can communicate with Murphy in the past. At that point all the hard science flew right out the window, to be replaced by outright magic pulled straight out of Christopher Nolan's ass.

• It turns out that Cooper was the "ghost" that communicated with Murphy in the past, knocking books off her shelf in binary patterns and signaling her with a watch, whose second hand tapped out Morse code.

We're told that super-evolved humans from the far future constructed this artificial universe for Cooper, for the express purpose of allowing him to communicate with his daughter in the past and save the human race.

If the super humans have that much power, why not just give Cooper a microphone or something so he can tell Murph exactly what to do? Why screw around with binary and Morse code? What if she wasn't able to figure out such a convoluted message? Why risk the future of the race on such a long shot?

• Near the end of the film Cooper wakes up inside Cooper's station, named after his daughter. It appears to be an O'Neil cylinder, which is a real thing. Well, not a real thing, but a real idea for a space colony. Basically it's a large hollow tube with living space on the inner surface. The cylinder spins to simulate gravity.

As Cooper walks around inside the station, he sees lush green foliage and vegetation. That's odd. I thought the Blight had destroyed every crop on Earth except for corn. Moving off Earth wouldn't end the Blight if the seeds were already infected. I guess NASA must have squirreled away some un-Blighted seeds for safe keeping?

• Just as I predicted the first time I saw the trailer, at the end Cooper is finally reunited with Murph, who's now over a hundred years old.

Old Murph is played by Ellen Burstyn. Apologies to Ms. Burstyn, but I was honestly shocked when I saw how old she is now. I didn't realize she's 82! Seems like just yesterday I saw her in The Exorcist.

• Right before the credits roll, Cooper and a repaired TARS steal a Ranger spaceship and fly off to rescue Amelia. 

Are there cryo units in those little Rangers? I hope so, because if not, Cooper's going to be sitting in his little chair for two years while they make their way to the Saturn wormhole. His butt's going to be more tired than mine was at the end of this overlong film.

A typical convoluted Christopher Nolan tale, Interstellar starts out as a well made hard sci-fi story before degenerating into outright magic in the third act. I give it a B-.