We all know exactly what will happen in Neill Blomkamp‘s Chappie, which is about a “kidnapped robot who ends up being raised in a dysfunctional family.” And who learns about life on the planet earth the way a dog would. And who learns to talk and feel and relate and all that good stuff. And who gets abused and taken advantage of by bad guys. Blomkamp buddy Sharlto Copley collects a paycheck for voicing Chappie and doing the motion-capture performing. Costarring Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel, Sigourney Weaver. Columbia will release Chappie on 3.6.15.

Some professional journalists play it cool when chatting with big-name actors, and some don’t. Hotel interviews, party chit-chat…all in a day’s work. You have to be a little pushy at parties, and you can’t hang back too much, like I sometimes do. If you want a word or two you have to nudge your way in to their immediate realm and wait, oh, five minutes or sometimes longer for a brief opening and then wham, you pounce like a cheetah. But once you have their ear you have to be mild-mannered. Don’t stare a hole and for God’s sake don’t laugh too hard or do the old David Poland alpha-chuckle.

Celebrities are used to people beaming at them like idiots and laughing at every half-assed observation or mildly amusing witticism they might share. I sometimes gaze at journalists as they chat with movie stars, and it’s pathetic when they start in with the goo-goo eyes. I’ll sometimes telepathically say to them, “If you only knew how how anxious and desperate you look…wow.”

I not only sat through Interstellar again last night, but in the same theatre (TCL Chinese) and almost in the same seat I sat in when I saw it nearly two weeks ago, on Thursday, October 23rd. I’m still of the opinion that this earnestly oppressive, partly breathtaking, level-11 space epic deserves points for reaching out and dreaming big and breaking “bahhriers,” but it’s too confounding and exposition-heavy and generally exhausting, and the dialogue is too often buried under the heavy sauce of Hans Zimmer‘s organ score and is basically too damn hard to hear. I did, however, understand a few more particulars last night, possibly because some Nolan techie tweaked the TCL Chinese sound system in the wake of that disastrous 10.23 screening.

I know now that I have given Interstellar my all, and that I don’t have to ever see it again. Two times = almost six hours = more than enough for the rest of my life. But I’m also glad I did round 2 because now I understand the feelings of those who are basically saying “it’s a mess but a good mess” or “it’s laughable but great for that” or “it’s typically cold and at the same time overly emotional, but in a cool way” because they’re all basically saying “look, it’s not perfect but at least it’s crazy and ‘out there’ in its own deranged way and isn’t that a good thing?”

They’re reacting largely to the film, of course, but also, I suspect, to the first wave of naysayers, some of whom focused on the film’s apparently dashed Best Picture hopes. They want the world to know that they’re more sensitive and perceptive than guys like Scott Feinberg or Tom O’Neil or whomever. Or me.

If, as one or two HE commenters have written, the first wave of internet malcontents went into that 10.23 screening looking to take Interstellar down (an absurd hypothesis — serious online movie hounds always want movies directed by big-name auteurs to succeed), last night’s second wave went into it determined to push back against the first wave. “We hear you, Chris,” many of them were saying last night on Twitter. “We get what you’re going for or at least we get that you went for Something Big, and we’re giving you a pass for laying it on the line and swinging for the fences and wearing your heart on your sleeve. Fuck those shallow Oscar-handicappers…we are in touch with our souls, Chris, and particularly with the soul of your movie, which is emotional and celestial and a little bit cuckoo, which is fine by us.”