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HaiisamAshraf
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Interstellar (2014)
Interstellar
With our time on Earth coming to an end, a team of explorers undertakes the most important mission in human history; traveling beyond this galaxy to discover whether mankind has a future among the stars.
Christopher Nolan's latest film opened this weekend, offering theater-goers the kind of beautiful, hyper-realistic view of outer space made possible by the best special effects available coupled with a compelling story paced along the lines of more recent science fiction offerings like Moon and The Europa Report.
Though anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of science will cringe at my description of Interstellar as realistic science fiction, I do so to differentiate this film from those that are more action/adventure oriented, like Star Trek.
At two hours and forty-nine minutes, Nolan gives those paying movie theater prices their money's worth, and I for one was riveted to the (BIG) screen for every minute.
Divergent (2014)
Divergent
Divergent" is all about identity—about searching your soul and determining who you are and how you fit in as you emerge from adolescence to adulthood. So it's all too appropriate that the film version of the wildly popular young adult novel struggles a bit to assert itself as it seeks to appeal to the widest possible audience.
It's the conundrum so many of these types of books face as they become pop-culture juggernauts and film franchises: which elements to keep to please the fervent fans and which to toss in the name of maintaining a lean, speedy narrative? The "Harry Potter" and "Hunger Games" movies—which "Divergent" resembles in myriad ways—were mostly successful in finding that balance.
In bringing the first novel of Veronica Roth's best-selling trilogy to the screen, director Neil Burger ("Limitless") and screenwriters Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor have included key moments and images but tweaked others to streamline the mythology and move the story along. The results can be thrilling but the film as a whole feels simultaneously overlong and emotionally truncated.