Movie Reviews: 'Interstellar' and 'Big Hero 6'

Family is a totem of the human story. The people (blood-related or just friends) who comprise one’s closest confidants and loved ones are the strings that hold one up during the wallow of despair and, contrastingly, celebrate during life’s cherished hallmarks. Science fiction is a genre that often reverts to the unit of the family as a conflict or coping mechanism for the protagonist to adapt to the rapid change and alienation of unknown worlds and future technologies. Two recent high-profile films, completely opposite in tone and audience, address the essential nature of the family in throes of the future uncertainty.

Christopher Nolan is the cinematic man of the moment. From his first burgeoning days as an art-house favorite with his first three unnerving portraits of personal identity and alienation (“Following," “Memento” and “Insomnia”), Nolan has always been a talented and sizable auteur to watch. But since he broke the blockbuster mold with his trilogy of Batman films (“Batman Begins, “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises”), each subsequent film has been treated as a popular cinematic event. And each non-Batman film during this time was met with equal excitement and public debate, forcing the American public to actually think about their popcorn movies. “The Prestige” and “Inception” require active and concentrated attention from viewers to navigate their labyrinthine plot — the opposite of most big-budget Hollywood movies.

And now, with “Interstellar,” Nolan’s first post-Batman film, the populist director par excellence is at his most exposed. With three of his films in IMDB’s list of the top 250 movies of all time (“The Dark Knight,” “Inception,” and now “Interstellar”), Nolan is now an integral component of the film establishment of Hollywood. His patented dark and brooding aesthetic permeates throughout all of the DC Comics movies, and if you've caught a glance of the most recent issue of “TIME” magazine, he looks like a sitting president surrounded by his cabinet officials. This universal presence has resulted, however, in one critical drawback: a widespread assumed greatness.

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“Interstellar,” Nolan’s sci-fi odyssey, has all the ingredients for cinematic immortality. The plot and setup are epic in scope. Earth, in the near future, is dying and in an unstoppable decay. Humanity's last hope of survival as a species is to send a team of astronauts and scientists toward galaxies, stars and planets lightyears away. This is all possible due to a wormhole placed near a moon of Saturn, which allows interstellar travel, crossing distances of thousands of years in mere months.

The film’s cast has all the makings to produce maximum cathartic, emotional release and audience captivation. Oscar-winners Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway lead the expedition for a new planetary home. Frequent Nolan collaborator Michael Caine is the intellectual core of the mission, spending the last years of his life searching for a theory of gravity to transport humans off the planet and prevent a slow-churning extinction. John Lithgow, Casey Affleck, Jessica Chastain and a surprise appearance late in the film round out the phenomenal ensemble.

At the heart of this whirling gargantuan background of planetary disaster, intergalactic space exodus and quantum physics race against time in the relationship between a father and daughter. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a former engineer and Air Force pilot forced to farm to provide what little food the planet can produce. After finding coordinates for NASA’s secret compound from a gravitational anomaly occurring in his daughter Murph’s (played by Mackenzie Foy and then Jessica Chastain) bedroom, NASA and Professor Brand (Michael Caine) draft him to be the pilot of the potentially decades-long expedition for a life-sustaining planet.

The crux of the movie’s emotional journey is Cooper and Murph unknowingly helping each other from galaxies away in order to save the human race, and more importantly, meet once again. It’s Nolan’s intergalactic “Grapes of Wrath” with the space crew traveling to nameless horizons for a better life for their families and the greater human race.

Nolan has a penchant for gigantic scale and spectacle. “Inception” was a mind-numbing, neverending multiverse all in the “dream within a dream” consciousness of its characters. And the “Batman” trilogy was as grandiose and operatic as its costumed comic book heroes and villains. “Interstellar” displays the vast scale and cold treachery of space probably better than any film since Stanley Kubrick’s canonical “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Ridley Scott’s “Alien.” However, Nolan gets lost in the void of endless scale, science and time in the film’s third act. The beating heart of the film, Cooper and Murph’s relationship, takes a backseat to the pressing weight of the film’s metaphorical and literal gravity. The movie focuses and embellishes so much time on how Cooper can get home that it loses sight of the why: his daughter.

“Interstellar” is one of the best films of the year, without doubt. McConaughey and Chastain give soul-shattering performances of anguish and resolve as separated father and daughter. It's a topical look at humanity’s current largesse in terms of ignoring climate change and the hubris in disregarding the warning signs of impending natural doom. And even Nolan’s depiction of the parallels between the futuristic present and the American Dust Bowl with documentary footage and interviews is stirring. Unfortunately, Nolan loses sight of the bright wonder of life and family for the expense of thought-provoking and supernatural science. It’s an awe-inducing trip, but at too high a price.

The polar opposite in tone, humor and approach to the sci-fi family story, but just as popular at the box office, is Disney’s newest animated film “Big Hero 6.” Disney Animation Studio’s first film since Disney’s acquisition of Marvel comics, the movie is an animated and kid-friendly adaption of Marvel’s fusion of Japanese manga and American comic books of a college-aged superhero group of geniuses.

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Set in a futuristic hybrid city of Tokyo and San Francisco (San Fransokyo), the movie depicts the story of parentless teenage genius and robotics enthusiast Hiro (voiced by Ryan Potter) and his overall growing pains from childhood to adulthood through the challenges of familial loss, identity crisis and self-realization all through the comic book conventions of a common super villain, a costumed transformation and the climactic battle and plot twist. After his older brother Tadashi (voiced by Daniel Henney) encourages him to abandon underground robot fighting for academia, Hiro presents his stunning new robotic design of microbots, and there's a horrible accident that severs both his family and his dream of joining his big brother Tadashi in robotics college.

In the aftermath of a horrible explosion and the death of his brother, Hiro comes out of mourning by stumbling upon his brother’s final robot project: Baymax. Designed as a healthcare/nursing robot, Baymax is the lovable heart and conscience of “Big Hero 6.” Tall, rotund, and soft to the touch with an inflatable vinyl coating, Baymax elevates the film from the superhero film fodder that has inundated cinema for the last few years. Baymax (voiced by Scott Adsit, best known for his role as Pete Hornberger on TV’s “30 Rock”) is a balloon Charlie Chaplin, offering animated and bulbous silent physical comedy. He is a precocious child, who only wants to serve and protect Hiro. And for Hiro, Baymax is his last connection to his deceased brother.

Hiro outfits Baymax, as well as his brother’s four university friends, with unique robotic armor and new tactical equipment so as to stop a mysterious and menacing Kabuki masked man, who is terrorizing San Fransokyo with Hiro’s microbots. This cool nerd collective, the titular Big Hero 6, are provide plenty of humor and excitement as they learn, trip and fall into their roles as heroes and saviors. Go Go (voiced by Jamie Chung), Wasabi (voiced by Damon Wayans Jr.), Honey Lemon (voiced by Genesis Rodriguez) and Fred (voiced by joyfully zany T. J. Miller) are an enjoyable crime-fighting team joined, not out of dangerous necessity (like the teams in “The Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy”), but because of a pre-existing friendship and mutual affection.

It’s that genuine love that this ragtag superhero team has that makes “Big Hero 6” one of the most refreshing comic book cinematic experiences. In a world were live-action Marvel films are populated by cynics and sarcasm, and a world where Superman kills his villains, the genuine, unadulterated joy and pleasure of characters stepping into their roles as superheroes and fighting for the right thing is not only entertaining but invigorating. “Big Hero 6” inserts the genuine joy and splendor of comic-book morality into the cinematic realm with Disney’s patented colorful and rarified sheen.

“Big Hero 6” is just another addition to Walt Disney Animation Studios’ recent string of animated treasures. After experiencing a creative lull during the late 1990s and for most of the first decade of the 2000s, Disney is finally recovering the magic and awe they experienced during the Diseny musical renaissance of the early 1990s. “Princess and the Frog,” “Tangled,” “Wreck-It Ralph” and the titanic “Frozen” have brought back the public’s adoration and respect they lost during Pixar’s last decade of creative domination. And with Pixar having released a series of lackluster films and unnecessary sequels (“Cars 2,” “Brave,” “Monsters University” and an announced “Toy Story 4” and “Finding Dory”), it looks like “Big Hero 6” won’t be the last entry into Disney’s resurgence. The Big Mouse seems to have gotten its mojo back.