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Most movies are just not very good. Lots of money goes into turning out boring repetitive garbage. You watch it and then dispose of it and make room for the next thing. There are some who do more, but the more you do, the greater the risk. Most filmmakers are not given the freedom to take really big risks, but someone who has been given the opportunity to take the big risk is Christopher Nolan. Interstellar is $165,000,000 gamble shooting for the moon.  Actually Nolan is shooting for something way past the moon. He wants to take us to another galaxy. There is so much speculative science in this film that it is mind-boggling. The cutting edge of real science is, frankly, getting crazier and crazier. The average person really has no idea how crazy, but Interstellar is going to try to show us just how crazy. The true nature of some of the elements of the theory of relativity and other related theories is that they defy all logic.

One of the most important things in Interstellar is its attempts to deal with some of the properties of time. The laws of physics tell us time acts differently in different situations. In this movie time rules everything in people's lives, but the main character is given the power to do something with time that most of us don't even imagine. It's important to know some of these situations are described in actual scientific theory. In fact, real science is getting closer and closer to God all the time. Most people who don't believe in God don't expect science to contradict that way of thinking. Interstellar doesn't talk about God, but it comes close to doing something similar. It is science's contention to state statistically there are millions of planets with intelligent life out there. Some of those intelligence forces will seem like God to us. This is simple science, but people have such a wide range of beliefs that no one will ever agree on what is the truth. The reason we don't agree is because mankind is just not smart enough to have real answers.

Whiplash has gotten so many raves that I want to make sure I address the things that are bad as well as the things that are good about the film. First thing I will say is that the movie is implausible, and I had a hard time to totally buy into it for different reasons. The film is about a young jazz drummer at a prestigious music academy who gets to play in the band of the top instructor at the school. It becomes apparent early on that the instructor is crazy. He browbeats and actually beats his students into compliance without a hint of mercy. That a teacher of anything aside from martial arts could physically and psychologically brutalize students to this degree is a reverse fantasy projecting deep-seated angst toward authority figures.

Fine, then the film is a fantasy or allegory, because I did not for one minute think  it could exist in the real world. Even a drill sergeant at a military boot camp is bound to show more restraint. What is also obvious is that the music instructor shows obvious signs of mental illness with volatile and extreme swings in behavior. That might indicate that he is adept at hiding his behavior in the right company, but, in the real world, it wouldn't fly. The large ensemble have all fallen in line, which allows him to pick on the new kid. The band leader's rationale is that Charlie Parker had a symbol thrown at his head which then forced him to practice much harder and subsequently achieve greatness. But that story is not accurate, because the symbol was thrown at his feet as a mild rebuke, not an act of war. It is also unlikely that he played so hard that his hands were constantly bleeding. It is true that musicians and artists in general can be a crazy lot, but not in an academic setting. There are rules. On some level, the students are a little crazy themselves for pursuing serious jazz when it is so much more difficult and produces less rewards monetarily than other forms in this day and age. Moreover, the young jazz drummer basically loses his mind in an attempt to match the master and beat him at his own game.

Wow! OMG! WTH! This is a towering achievement in every way. It is staggering. It is literally staggering; you will leave the theater drained because all your adrenaline will have been used up. Fragmentary, flowing, electric, and it shows the disintegrating of a man's mind in a vibrant phantasmagoria. Any director in the world who sees this will slap himself in the face and say, “Why didn't I do this!” It is a technical tour de force, and everyone in it delivers at full throttle. It is breathless and exhilarating and your mind will be blown. It's a waste of time to compare this to anything else, since this is incomparable. There is nothing to compare it to. It stands alone. Sure, it's a comedy. Yeah, it's a drama, but what it really is is a whirlwind, a tornado, a cyclone, a tsunami of insanity. Everyone involved is fantastic, but Michael Keaton is front and center. Let me say, Batman is back! Wait, I mean Birdman.

Birdman is about an aging actor who refuses to reprise his big blockbuster franchise by making Birdman 4. Instead he has gone for broke and bet everything on a Broadway show that he has written, directs and stars in. It is based on a Raymond Carver short story, and nothing could be farther away from blockbuster. It is about integrity, but is he in over his head? He's a movie star, and he has never done Broadway. He's going to have to refinance the Malibu house even though his franchise has made billions. There are direct references to Iron Man and The Avengers as real world competition on entertainment news shows. Everyone is circling around him: mistress, girlfriend, ex-wife and daughter. None of them has every really connected with him, or he failed them all in some way. If one were to try and compare it to something it would be All That Jazz and Nine (or 8 ½ if you prefer the black and white non-musical). The difference is that the style of this movie is a new industry standard. It plays out as one handheld shot from beginning to end. It should be noted that it does not actually take place in real time, but the transitions are so seamless that you barely notice.

The internet is destroying everything. It seems crazy, but it's true, and most people know it. I mean that so many businesses have been destroyed by the tumorous growth of the internet and its insidious and unchecked influence. The newspaper business, music business, broadcast business and probably the movie business have been fundamentally and permanently altered. Men,Women and Children addresses how it affects each and every one of us on a daily basis. We're all aware of this. It's our lives now, and it wasn't 10 years ago. Texting on iPhones is so addictive with some people that they are oblivious to how obnoxious it is. Most of us are aware, on some level, how much computers and phones are sucking away what used to be our lives. We know it, but the die is cast. That's the problem with Men, Women and Children. We know everything already, and this movie shoves it down our throat. The subject is definitely timely, but too much of what happens in this movie is like a parade of cliches.

Jason Reitman (Juno, Up In The Air, Thank You For Smoking) is a good director, but he has been losing his touch, citing films like Labor Day and Young Adult. This film is packed with good actors, but they all seem wasted, even Adam Sandler. Sandler is the big star here, making another stretch into dramatic territory. Sandler has done very good work in other people's movies before like Punch Drunk Love, Reign On Me and Spanglish, but not here. Here he is a limp, washed-out nothing, which is what the character demands but still is not a good thing to see. Most of the other good actors like Rosemarie DeWitt, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, J.K. Simmons,Dean Norris, Ansel Elgort, Dennis Haysbert and Emma Thompson here seem wasted with predicable and dreary functions in aid of a boring puzzle.