When I went to the Los Angeles Film Festival back in June I didn’t really know what to expect. It was my first fest experience, and it ended up being a good way to start; the films were all very small – and I hadn’t heard of any of them beforehand – but I still saw some great stuff. You can catch up with all of those reviews here, but now it’s time for a completely different experience. AFI Fest began tonight, and my excitement is reaching another level entirely.
A very wise man once said, “The power of love is a curious thing. Makes one man weep, makes another man sing. Changes a hawk into a lily-white dove. More than a feeling: that’s the power of love.” Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker who would agree with this philosopher. As early as 2000’s Memento, Nolan’s films have featured main characters driven by a love that has been lost. Whether it is Bruce Wayne’s deceased parents in Batman Begins, Robert Angier’s deceased wife in The Prestige, or Bruce Wayne’s deceased girlfriend in The Dark Knight Rises – these men are driven by their love. In his new film Interstellar Nolan examines the power of an extant love.
When first-time director Ned Benson debuted his two-picture film experience, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, it made a lot of waves for being a unique and encompassing look at the well-worn relationship drama genre. The movie is actually two features – Him and Her – examining the complicated relationship between a man (James McAvoy) and a woman (Jessica Chastain) from each individual’s personal perspective. It is a super ambitious project to pull off, but The Weinstein Company – Eleanor Rigby’s distributor – has never seen a movie it didn’t want to cut, so before the film comes out the way Benson intended, we are first getting a more objective mash-up, known as Them.
Steven Cohen's 365 Days of Reviews 