movie review about interstellar

Interstellar

Christopher Nolan’s  “Interstellar ,” about astronauts traveling to the other end of the galaxy to find a new home to replace humanity’s despoiled home-world, is frantically busy and earsplittingly loud. It uses booming music to jack up the excitement level of scenes that might not otherwise excite. It features characters shoveling exposition at each other for almost three hours, and a few of those characters have no character to speak of: they’re mouthpieces for techno-babble and philosophical debate. And for all of the director’s activism on behalf of shooting on film, the tactile beauty of the movie’s 35mm and 65mm textures isn’t matched by a sense of composition. The camera rarely tells the story in Nolan’s movies. More often it illustrates the screenplay, and there are points in this one where I felt as if I was watching the most expensive NBC pilot ever made.

And yet “Interstellar” is still an impressive, at times astonishing movie that overwhelmed me to the point where my usual objections to Nolan’s work melted away. I’ve packed the first paragraph of this review with those objections (they could apply to any Nolan picture post “Batman Begins”; he is who he is) so that people know that he’s still doing the things that Nolan always does. Whether you find those things endearing or irritating will depend on your affinity for Nolan’s style. 

In any case, t here’s something pure and powerful about this movie. I can’t recall a science fiction film hard-sold to a director’s fans as multiplex-“awesome” in which so many major characters wept openly in close-up, voices breaking, tears streaming down  their  cheeks. Matthew McConaughey ’s widowed astronaut Cooper and his colleague Amelia Brand ( Anne Hathaway ) pour on the waterworks in multiple scenes, with justification: like everyone on the crew of the Endurance , the starship sent to a black hole near Jupiter that will slingshot the heroes towards colonize-able worlds, they’re separated from everything that defines them: their loved ones, their personal histories, their culture, the planet itself. Other characters—including Amelia’s father, an astrophysicist played by Michael Caine , and a space explorer (played by an  un-billed  guest actor) who’s holed up on a forbidding arctic world—express a vulnerability to loneliness and doubt that’s quite raw for this director. The film’s central family (headed by Cooper, grounded after the  dismantling  of NASA) lives on a  corn  farm, for goodness’ sake, like the gentle Iowans in “ Field of Dreams ” (a film whose daddy-issues-laden story syncs up nicely with the narrative of  “ Interstellar”). Granted, they’re growing the crop to feed the human race, which is whiling away its twilight hours on a planet so ecologically devastated that at first you mistake it for the American Dust Bowl circa 1930 or so; but there’s still something amusingly cheeky about the notion of corn as sustenance, especially in a survival story in which the future of humanity is at stake. ( Ellen Burstyn plays one of many witnesses in a documentary first glimpsed in the movie’s opening scene—and which, in classic Nolan style, is a setup for at least two twists.)

The state-of-the-art sci-fi landscapes are deployed in service of Hallmark card homilies about how people should live, and what’s really important. (“We love people who have died—what’s the social utility in that?” “Accident is the first step in evolution.”) After a certain point it sinks in, or should sink in, that Nolan and his co-screenwriter, brother Jonathan Nolan , aren’t trying to one-up the spectacular rationalism of “2001.” The movie’s science fiction trappings are just a wrapping for a spiritual/emotional dream about basic human desires (for home, for family, for continuity of bloodline and culture), as well as for a horror film of sorts—one that treats the star voyagers’ and their earthbound loved ones’ separation as spectacular metaphors for what happens when the people we value are taken from us by death, illness, or unbridgeable distance. (“Pray you never learn just how good it can be to see another face,” another astronaut says, after years alone in an interstellar wilderness.) 

While “Interstellar” never entirely commits to the idea of a non-rational, uncanny world, it nevertheless has a mystical strain, one that’s unusually pronounced for a director whose storytelling has the right-brained sensibility of an engineer, logician, or accountant. There’s a ghost in this film, writing out messages to the living in dust. Characters strain to interpret distant radio messages as if they were ancient texts written in a dead language, and stare through red-rimmed eyes at video messages sent years ago, by people on the other side of the cosmos. “Interstellar” features a family haunted by the memory of a dead mother and then an absent father; a woman haunted by the memory of a missing father, and another woman who’s separated from her own dad (and mentor), and driven to reunite with a lover separated from her by so many millions of miles that he might as well be dead. 

With the possible exception of the last act of “ Memento”  and the pit sequence in “The Dark Knight Rises”—a knife-twisting hour that was all about suffering and transcendence—I can’t think of a Nolan film that ladles on  misery and  valorizes  gut feeling (faith)  the way this one does; not from start to finish, anyway.  T he  most stirring sequences are less about driving the plot forward than contemplating what the characters’ actions mean to them, and to us. The  best of these is the lift-off sequence, which starts with a countdown heard over images of Cooper leaving his family. It continues in space, with Caine reading passages from Dylan Thomas’s villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night”: “Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” (If it wasn’t already obvious, this sequence certifies Nolan as the most death-and-control obsessed major American filmmaker, along with Wes Anderson .)

The film’s widescreen panoramas feature harsh interplanetary landscapes, shot in cruel Earth locales; some of the largest and most detailed starship miniatures ever built, and space sequences presented in scientifically accurate silence, a la “2001.” But for all its high-tech glitz, “Interstellar” has a defiantly old-movie feeling. It’s not afraid to switch, even lurch, between modes. At times, the movie’s one-stop-shopping storytelling evokes the tough-tender spirit of a John Ford picture, or a Steven Spielberg film made in the spirit of a Ford picture: a movie that would rather try to be eight or nine things than just one. Bruising outer-space action sequences, with astronauts tumbling in zero gravity and striding across forbidding landscapes, give way to snappy comic patter (mostly between Cooper and the ship’s robot, TARS, designed in Minecraft-style, pixel-ish boxes, and voiced by Bill Irwin ). There are long explanatory sequences, done with and without dry erase boards, dazzling vistas that are less spaces than mind-spaces, and tearful separations and reconciliations that might as well be played silent, in tinted black-and-white, and scored with a saloon piano. (Spielberg originated “Interstellar” in 2006, but dropped out to direct other projects.)

McConaughey, a super-intense actor who wholeheartedly commits to every line and moment he’s given, is the right leading man for this kind of film. Cooper proudly identifies himself as an engineer as well as an astronaut and farmer, but he has the soul of a goofball poet; when he stares at intergalactic vistas, he grins like a kid at an amusement park waiting to ride a new roller coaster. Cooper’s farewell to his daughter Murph—who’s played by McKenzie Foy as a young girl—is shot very close-in, and lit in warm, cradling tones; it has some of the tenderness of the porch swing scene in “ To Kill a Mockingbird .” When Murph grows up into Jessica Chastain —a key member of Caine’s NASA crew, and a surrogate for the daughter that the elder Brand “lost’ to the Endurance ‘s mission—we keep thinking about that goodbye scene, and how its anguish drives everything that Murph and Cooper are trying to do, while also realizing that similar feelings drive the other characters—indeed, the rest of the species. (One suspects this is a deeply personal film for Nolan: it’s about a man who feels he has been “called” to a particular job, and whose work requires him to spend long periods away from his family.)

The movie’s storytelling masterstroke comes from adherence to principles of relativity: the astronauts perceive time differently depending on where Endurance is, which means that when they go down onto a prospective habitable world, a few minutes there equal weeks or months back on the ship. Meanwhile, on Earth, everyone is aging and losing hope. Under such circumstances, even tedious housekeeping-type exchanges become momentous: one has to think twice before arguing about what to do next, because while the argument is happening, people elsewhere are going grey, or suffering depression from being alone, or withering and dying. Here, more so than in any other Nolan film (and that’s saying a lot), time is everything. “I’m an old physicist,” Brand tells Cooper early in the film. “I’m afraid of time.” Time is something we all fear. There’s a ticking clock governing every aspect of existence, from the global to the familial. Every act by every character is an act of defiance, born of a wish to not go gently.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

• Mackenzie Foy as Young Murph
• William Devane as Old Tom
• Matthew McConaughey as Cooper
• Jessica Chastain as Murph
• Michael Caine as Dr. Brand
• Topher Grace as
• Anne Hathaway as Brand
• John Lithgow as Donald
• Casey Affleck as Tom
• Collette Wolfe as Ms. Kelly
• Ellen Burstyn as Old Murph
• Bill Irwin as TARS (voice)
• Wes Bentley as Doyle
• David Oyelowo as Principal
• Christopher Nolan
• Jonathan Nolan

Original Music Composer

• Hans Zimmer

Director of Photography

• Hoyte van Hoytema

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Movie Review

Off to the Stars, With Grief, Dread and Regret

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Anatomy of a Scene | ‘Interstellar’

Christopher nolan discusses a sequence from his film..

By A.O. Scott

• Nov. 4, 2014

Like the great space epics of the past, Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” distills terrestrial anxieties and aspirations into a potent pop parable, a mirror of the mood down here on Earth. Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” blended the technological awe of the Apollo era with the trippy hopes and terrors of the Age of Aquarius. George Lucas’s first “Star Wars” trilogy, set not in the speculative future but in the imaginary past, answered the malaise of the ’70s with swashbuckling nostalgia. “Interstellar,” full of visual dazzle, thematic ambition, geek bait and corn (including the literal kind), is a sweeping, futuristic adventure driven by grief, dread and regret.

Trying to jot down notes by the light of the Imax screen, where lustrous images (shot by Hoyte van Hoytema and projected from real 70-millimeter film) flickered, I lost count of how many times the phrase “I’m sorry” was uttered — by parents to children, children to parents, sisters to brothers, scientists to astronauts and astronauts to one another. The whole movie can be seen as a plea for forgiveness on behalf of our foolish, dreamy species. We messed everything up, and we feel really bad about it. Can you please give us another chance?

The possibility that such a “you” might be out there, in a position to grant clemency, is one of the movie’s tantalizing puzzles. Some kind of message seems to be coming across the emptiness of space and along the kinks in the fabric of time, offering a twinkle of hope amid humanity’s rapidly darkening prospects. For most of “Interstellar,” the working hypothesis is that a benevolent alien race, dwelling somewhere on the far side of a wormhole near one of the moons of Saturn, is sending data across the universe, encrypted advice that just may save us if we can decode it fast enough.

Movie Review: ‘Interstellar’

The times critic a. o. scott reviews “interstellar.”.

What our planet and species need saving from is a slow-motion environmental catastrophe. Rather than explain how this bleak future arrived through the usual montages of mayhem, Mr. Nolan (who wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan) drops us quietly into what looks like a fairly ordinary reality. We are in a rural stretch of North America, a land of battered pickup trucks, dusty bluejeans and wind-burned farmers scanning the horizon for signs of a storm. Talking-head testimony from old-timers chronicles what sounds like the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, until we spot a laptop on the table being set for family dinner.

The head of the family in question is Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a widower who lives with his two children and his father-in-law (John Lithgow). Once a NASA pilot, Cooper now grows corn, the only thing that will grow after a blight has wiped out most of the planet’s other crops. The human population has shrunk to a desperate remnant, but the survivors cling to the habits and rituals of normal life. For now, there is plenty of candy and soda and beer (thanks to all that corn); there are parent-teacher conferences after school; and Cooper’s farmhouse is full of books and toys. But the blight is spreading, the dust storms are growing worse, and the sense of an ending is palpable.

The Nolans cleverly conflate scientific denialism with technophobia, imagining a fatalistic society that has traded large ambition for small-scale problem solving and ultimate resignation. But Christopher Nolan , even in his earlier, more modestly budgeted films, has never been content with the small scale. His imagination is large; his eye seeks out wide, sweeping vistas; and if he believes in anything, it is ambition. As it celebrates the resistance to extinction — taking as its touchstone Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” with its repeated invocation of “rage against the dying of the light” — “Interstellar” becomes an allegory of its own aspirations, an argument for grandeur, scale and risk, on screen and off.

Dick Cavett , a son of Nebraska, used to ask (quoting Abe Burrows), “How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen the farm?” Cooper and “Interstellar” are clearly marked for something other than agrarian pursuits, but the first section of the movie is the richest and most haunting, establishing a delicately emotional tone and clear moral and dramatic stakes for the planet-hopping to follow. Cooper is devoted to his children, in particular his daughter, Murph, played as a young girl by the preternaturally alert and skeptical Mackenzie Foy and as an adult by Jessica Chastain. When her father is recruited for a secret NASA mission to search for a habitable new planet, Murph is devastated by his departure. Her subsequent scientific career is both a tribute to his memory and a way of getting even.

The Nolans are fond of doubled characters and mirrored plots, and so “Interstellar” is built around twinned father-daughter stories. Among Cooper’s colleagues on board the spaceship is Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway), whose father, also called Dr. Brand (Michael Caine), has developed the theories behind their quest. He and Murph remain on the ground, crunching the numbers and growing older in the usual earthly way, while Cooper and the younger Brand, thanks to relativity, stay pretty much the same age. (Cooper’s son, Tom, played by Timothée Chalamet as a boy, matures into Casey Affleck). The two pairs of daughters and dads perform variations on the theme of paternal and filial love, finding delicate and moving passages of loyalty, rebellion, disillusionment and acceptance.

A lot of other stuff happens, too, as it tends to out in space. A cynical critic might suppose that the last two hours of “Interstellar” were composed in a fit of spoiler hysteria. Nondisclosure pleas from the studio have been unusually specific. Forget about telling you what happens: I’m not even supposed to tell you who’s in the thing, aside from the people you’ve seen on magazine covers. I guess I can disclose that Cooper and Brand are accompanied by two other astronauts, played by a witty, scene-stealing David Gyasi and a deadpan Wes Bentley, and also by a wry robot who speaks in the voice of Bill Irwin.

The touches of humor those characters supply are welcome, if also somewhat stingily rationed. Nobody goes to a Christopher Nolan movie for laughs. But it is hard to imagine that his fans — who represent a fairly large segment of the world’s population — will be disappointed by “Interstellar.” I haven’t always been one of them, but I’ve always thought that his skill and ingenuity were undeniable. He does not so much transcend genre conventions as fulfill them with the zeal of a true believer. It may be enough to say that “Interstellar” is a terrifically entertaining science-fiction movie, giving fresh life to scenes and situations we’ve seen a hundred times before, and occasionally stumbling over pompous dialogue or overly portentous music. (In general, the score, by Hans Zimmer, is exactly as portentous as it needs to be.)

Of course, the film is more than that. It is in the nature of science fiction to aspire to more, to ascend fearlessly toward the sublime. You could think of “Interstellar,” which has a lot to say about gravity, as the anti-"Gravity.” That movie, which would fit inside this one twice, stripped away the usual sci-fi metaphysics, presenting space travel as an occasion for quiet wonder and noisy crisis management. Mr. Nolan takes the universe and eternity itself as his subject and his canvas, brilliantly exploiting cinema’s ability to shift backward and sideways in time (through flashbacks and cross cuts), even as it moves relentlessly forward.

But “Gravity” and “Interstellar” are both ultimately about the longing for home, about voyages into the unknown that become odysseys of return. And “Interstellar” may take its place in the pantheon of space movies because it answers an acute earthly need, a desire not only for adventure and novelty but also, in the end, for comfort.

“Interstellar” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). A few expletives, a lot of peril.

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Film Review: ‘Interstellar’

Christopher Nolan hopscotches across space and time in a visionary sci-fi trip that stirs the head and the heart in equal measure.

By Scott Foundas

Scott Foundas

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We begin somewhere in the American farm belt, which Nolan evokes for its full mythic grandeur — blazing sunlight, towering corn stalks, whirring combines. But it soon becomes clear that this would-be field of dreams is something closer to a nightmare. The date is an unspecified point in the near future, close enough to look and feel like tomorrow, yet far enough for a number of radical changes to have taken hold in society. A decade on from a period of widespread famine, the world’s armies have been disbanded and the cutting-edge technocracies of the early 21st century have regressed into more utilitarian, farm-based economies.

“We’re a caretaker generation,” notes one such homesteader (John Lithgow) to his widower son-in-law, Cooper ( Matthew McConaughey ), a former NASA test pilot who hasn’t stopped dreaming of flight, for himself and for his children: 15-year-old son Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and 10-year-old daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy), the latter a precocious tot first seen getting suspended from school for daring to suggest that the Apollo space missions actually happened. “We used to look up in the sky and wonder about our place in the stars,” Cooper muses. “Now we just look down and wonder about our place in the dirt.”

But all hope is not lost. NASA (whose massive real-life budget cuts lend the movie added immediacy) still exists in this agrarian dystopia, but it’s gone off the grid, far from the microscope of public opinion. There, the brilliant physicist Professor Brand (Michael Caine, forever the face of avuncular wisdom in Nolan’s films) and his dedicated team have devised two scenarios for saving mankind. Both plans involve abandoning Earth and starting over on a new, life-sustaining planet, but only one includes taking Earth’s current 6-billion-plus population along for the ride. Doing the latter, it seems, depends on Brand’s ability to solve an epic math problem that would explain how such a large-capacity vessel could surmount Earth’s gravitational forces. (Never discussed in this egalitarian society: a scenario in which only the privileged few could escape, a la the decadent bourgeoisie of Neill Blomkamp’s “Elysium.”)

Many years earlier, Brand informs, a mysterious space-time rift (or wormhole) appeared in the vicinity of Saturn, seemingly placed there, like the monoliths of “2001,” by some higher intelligence. On the other side: another galaxy containing a dozen planets that might be fit for human habitation. In the wake of the food wars, a team of intrepid NASA scientists traveled there in search of solutions. Now, a decade later (in Earth years, that is), Brand has organized another mission to check up on the three planets that seem the most promising for human settlement. And to pilot the ship, he needs Cooper, an instinctive flight jockey in the Chuck Yeager mode, much as McConaughey’s laconic, effortlessly self-assured performance recalls Sam Shepard’s as Yeager in “The Right Stuff” (another obvious “Interstellar” touchstone).

Already by this point — and we have not yet left the Earth’s surface — “Interstellar” (which Nolan co-wrote with his brother and frequent collaborator, Jonathan) has hurled a fair amount of theoretical physics at the audience, including discussions of black holes, gravitational singularities and the possibility of extra-dimensional space. And, as with the twisty chronologies and unreliable narrators of his earlier films, Nolan trusts in the audience’s ability to get the gist and follow along, even if it doesn’t glean every last nuance on a first viewing. It’s hard to think of a mainstream Hollywood film that has so successfully translated complex mathematical and scientific ideas to a lay audience (though Shane Carruth’s ingenious 2004 Sundance winner “Primer” — another movie concerned with overcoming the problem of gravity — tried something similar on a micro-budget indie scale), or done so in more vivid, immediate human terms. (Some credit for this is doubtless owed to the veteran CalTech physicist Kip Thorne, who consulted with the Nolans on the script and receives an executive producer credit.)

It gives nothing away, however, to say that Nolan maps his infinite celestial landscape as majestically as he did the continent-hopping earthbound ones of “The Prestige” and “Batman Begins,” or the multi-tiered memory maze of “Inception.” The imagery, modeled by Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema on Imax documentaries like “Space Station” and “Hubble 3D,” suggests a boundless inky blackness punctuated by ravishing bursts of light, the tiny spaceship Endurance gleaming like a diamond against Saturn’s great, gaseous rings, then ricocheting like a pinball through the wormhole’s shimmering plasmic vortex.

With each stop the Endurance makes, Nolan envisions yet another new world: one planet a watery expanse with waves that make Waimea Bay look like a giant bathtub; another an ice climber’s playground of frozen tundra and sheer-faced descents. Moreover, outer space allows Nolan to bend and twist his favorite subject — time — into remarkable new permutations. Where most prior Nolan protagonists were forever grasping at an irretrievable past, the crew of the Endurance races against a ticking clock that happens to tick differently depending on your particular vantage. New worlds mean new gravitational forces, so that for every hour spent on a given planet’s surface, years or even entire decades may be passing back on Earth. (Time as a flat circle, indeed.)

This leads to an extraordinary mid-film emotional climax in which Cooper and Brand return from one such expedition to discover that 23 earth years have passed in the blink of an eye, represented by two decades’ worth of stockpiled video messages from loved ones, including the now-adult Tom (a bearded, brooding Casey Affleck) and Murphy (Jessica Chastain in dogged, persistent “Zero Dark Thirty” mode). It’s a scene Nolan stages mostly in closeup on McConaughey, and the actor plays it beautifully, his face a quicksilver mask of joy, regret and unbearable grief.

That moment signals a shift in “Interstellar” itself from the relatively euphoric, adventurous tone of the first half toward darker, more ambiguous terrain — the human shadow areas, if you will, that are as difficult to fully glimpse as the inside of a black hole. Nolan, who has always excelled at the slow reveal, catches even the attentive viewer off guard more than once here, but never in a way that feels cheap or compromises the complex motivations of the characters.

Nolan stages one thrilling setpiece after another, including several hairsbreadth escapes and a dazzling space-docking sequence in which the entire theater seems to become one large centrifuge; the nearly three-hour running time passes unnoticed. Even more thrilling is the movie’s ultimate vision of a universe in which the face of extraterrestrial life bears a surprisingly familiar countenance. “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” harks the good Professor Brand at the start of the Endurance’s journey, quoting the melancholic Welshman Dylan Thomas. And yet “Interstellar” is finally a film suffused with light and boundless possibilities — those of the universe itself, of the wonder in a child’s twinkling eyes, and of movies to translate all that into spectacular picture shows like this one.

It’s hardly surprising that “Interstellar” reps the very best big-budget Hollywood craftsmanship at every level, from veteran Nolan collaborators like production designer Nathan Crowley (who built the film’s lyrical vision of the big-sky American heartland on location in Alberta) and sound designer/editor Richard King, who makes wonderfully dissonant contrasts between the movie’s interior spaces and the airless silence of space itself. Vfx supervisor Paul Franklin (an Oscar winner for his work on “Inception”) again brings a vivid tactility to all of the film’s effects, especially the robotic TARS, who seamlessly inhabits the same physical spaces as the human actors. Hans Zimmer contributes one of his most richly imagined and inventive scores, which ranges from a gentle electronic keyboard melody to brassy, Strauss-ian crescendos. Shot and post-produced by Nolan entirely on celluloid (in a mix of 35mm and 70mm stocks), “Interstellar” begs to be seen on the large-format Imax screen, where its dense, inimitably filmic textures and multiple aspect ratios can be experienced to their fullest effect.

Reviewed at TCL Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, Oct. 23, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 165 MIN.

• Production: A Paramount (in North America)/Warner Bros. (international) release and presentation in association with Legendary Pictures of a Syncopy/Lynda Obst Prods. production. Produced by Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan, Obst. Executive producers, Jordan Goldberg, Jake Myers, Kip Thorne, Thomas Tull.
• Crew: Directed by Christopher Nolan. Screenplay, Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan. Camera (Fotokem color and prints, partial widescreen, 35mm/70mm Imax), Hoyte Van Hoytema; editor, Lee Smith; music Hans Zimmer; production designer, Nathan Crowley; supervising art director, Dean Wolcott; art directors, Joshua Lusby, Eric David Sundahl; set decorator, Gary Fettis; set designers, Noelle King, Sally Thornton, Andrew Birdzell, Mark Hitchler, Martha Johnston, Paul Sonski, Robert Woodruff; costume designer, Mary Zophres; sound (Datasat/Dolby Digital), Mark Weingarten; sound designer/supervising sound editor, Richard King; re-recording mixers, Gary A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker; visual effects supervisor, Paul Franklin; visual effects producer, Kevin Elam; visual effects, Double Negative, New Deal Studios; special effects supervisor, Scott Fisher; stunt coordinator, George Cottle; assistant director, Nilo Otero; casting, John Papsidera.
• With: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Bill Irwin, Mackenzie Foy, Topher Grace, David Gyasi, Timothee Chalamet, David Oyelowo, William Devane, Matt Damon.

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• Review: <i>Interstellar</i> Shows the Wonder of Worlds Beyond

Review: Interstellar Shows the Wonder of Worlds Beyond

“We’ve forgotten who we are,” says Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper. “Explorers, pioneers — not caretakers.” That could be Christopher Nolan speaking about movies in this timid age of old genres endlessly recycled and coarsened. He’s the rare filmmaker with the ambition to make great statements on a grand scale, and the vision and guts to realize them.

Nolan is also a consummate conjuror. Memento, his amnesiac movie, ran its scenes in reverse order. In The Prestige, magicians devised killer tricks for each other and the audience. Inception played its mind games inside a sleeper’s head, and the Dark Knight trilogy raised comic-book fantasy to Mensa level. But those were the merest études for Nolan’s biggest, boldest project. Interstellar contemplates nothing less than our planet’s place and fate in the vast cosmos. Trying to reconcile the infinite and the intimate, it channels matters of theoretical physics — the universe’s ever-expanding story as science fact or fiction — through a daddy-daughter love story. Double-domed and defiantly serious, Interstellar is a must-take ride with a few narrative bumps.

In the near future, a crop disease called “the blight” has pushed the Earth from the 21st century back to the agrarian 1930s: the world’s a dust bowl, and we’re all Okies. In this wayback culture, schools teach that the Apollo moon landings were frauds, as if America must erase its old achievements in order to keep people from dreaming of new ones.

Farmer Coop, once an astronaut, needs to slip this straitjacket and do something. So does his daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy); she’s getting “poltergeist” signals from her bookshelves. A strange force leads them to a nearby hideout for NASA, whose boss, Dr. Brand (Michael Caine), drafts Coop to pilot a mission to deep space. With Brand’s daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) and two others as his crew, Coop is to find a wormhole near Saturn that may provide an escape route for humanity. “We’re not meant to save the world,” Brand says. “We’re meant to leave it.”

Coop, a widower, wasn’t meant to leave his children. Son Tom (Timothée Chalamet) can manage; but the precocious Murph sees abandonment and betrayal in Dad’s journey to save billions of humans. Coop, who thinks a parent’s main role is to be “the ghosts of our children’s future,” shares Murph’s ache. He needs her. He goes out so he can come back.

What’s out there? New worlds of terror and beauty. Transported by the celestial Ferris wheel of their shuttle, Coop and the crew find the wormhole: a snow globe, glowing blue. One planet it spins them towards has a giant wall of water that turns their spacecraft into an imperiled surfboard. Another planet, where treachery looms, is icy and as caked with snow granules as Earth was with dust. Interstellar may never equal the blast of scientific speculation and cinematic revelation that was Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but its un-Earthly vistas are spectral and spectacular.

Someone on the icy planet says, “Our world is cold, stark but undeniably beautiful.” Shuttling between the grad-school blackboard and the family hearth, this undeniably beautiful film blows cold and hot, stark and sentimental by turns. Taking the visual wow factor as a given, you may feel two kinds of wonder: a child’s astonishment at the effects and a bafflement that asks, “I wonder why that’s happening.”

It’s not just that the rules of advanced physics, as tossed out every 15 minutes or so, are beyond the ken of most movie-goers. It’s also that some scenes border on the risible — a wrestling match in space suits — and some characters, like Amelia, are short on charm and plausibility. In story terms, her connection with Coop is stronger than that of the two astronauts in Gravity. But Sandra Bullock and George Clooney gave their roles emotional heft, in a film more approachable and affecting than this one.

If the heart of Interstellar is Coop’s bond with Murph, its soul is McConaughey’s performance as a strong, tender hero; in the film’s simplest, most potent scene, he sheds tears of love and despair while watching remote video messages from his kids. He is the conduit to the feelings that Nolan wants viewers to bathe in: empathy for a space and time traveler who is, above all, a father.

With Interstellar, Nolan’s reach occasionally exceeds his grasp. That’s fine: These days, few other filmmakers dare reach so high to stretch our minds so wide. And our senses, all of them. At times, dispensing with Hans Zimmer’s pounding organ score, Nolan shows a panorama of the spacecraft in the heavens — to the music of utter silence. At these moments, viewers can hear their hearts beating to the sound of awe.

Go Behind the Scenes of Interstellar

Read next: Watch an Exclusive Interstellar Clip With Matthew McConaughey

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• Movie Review

'Interstellar' review

• By Josh Dzieza
• on October 27, 2014 12:07 pm
• @joshdzieza

From the opening scenes of sprawling cornfields accompanied by a revelrie-like brass note, it’s clear that Interstellar is working in the tradition of 2001: A Space Odyssey . It has the grand scope of Kubrick’s classic, promising to take us from humanity’s past to its distant future, and proceeds with the same stately pace that encourages you to ponder the themes it offers along the way. It throws out plenty to think about — the nature of time and space, the place of humanity in the universe — but somewhat unexpectedly for this type of film, and for Christopher Nolan, whose work tends toward the cerebral, it explores these ideas in human terms. Interstellar is as interested in how general relativity would affect your family life, for example, as it is in the theory itself.

Before you proceed: this review has a few spoilers, but nothing beyond what you’d glean from the preview and the first ten minutes or so of film. Turn back now if you care about that sort of thing.

Directed by Christopher Nolan ( Memento , Inception , the most recent Batman trilogy) and written with his brother and frequent collaborator Jonathan, Interstellar takes place in a near future that harkens back to the recent past — like the 1950s Midwest or maybe the Dust Bowl, but with laptops and drones. There’s very little exposition; through telling details and offhand comments, you get the sense that there’s been an environmental disaster followed by a famine, and that humanity has scaled back its ambitions to bare subsistence. People farm corn — the one crop left unravaged by blight — watch baseball games in half-empty stands, and flee towering haboob dust storms announced by air raid sirens.

Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a NASA pilot who has turned to farming — like everyone else at the time, an odd cut to faux-documentary footage informs us. He lives in a ramshackle house, complaining to his father (John Lithgow) about humanity’s diminished horizons and doting on his daughter Murph, played by Mackenzie Foy with a believably teenage mix of mischief and exasperation.

McConaughey eventually leaves Foy and Earth behind to scout out a new home for for the human race, but it’s their relationship that grounds the movie. As action-filled as Nolan’s films are, they can sometimes feel abstract, like symbolic sublimations of some offscreen mental trauma. So many of his characters get their motivation from some prior loss — the dead wives from Memento and Inception, the dead parents of Batman — that they then work through according to the game-like rules Nolan excels at, whether those rules are imposed by amnesia, consciousness, or a supervillain. But Foy is an actual character, not a cipher, and the relationship between her and McConaughey gives the film an emotional heft that Nolan’s other work sometimes lacks.

Interstellar features some of the most beautiful images of space I’ve seen on film. Space feels vast, with the spinning white vessel often relegated to a corner of the screen or lost against the rings of Saturn. The depiction of a wormhole accomplishes the seemingly impossible and makes, well, nothingness look dazzling, as light slides and warps around it like water off a bubble of oil. The black hole is even more amazing. Present throughout the movie, it’s in these lingering shots of a tiny spacecraft floating through the galaxy that the influence of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey is most clearly felt.

Some of the most beautiful images of space I've seen on film

Not that it’s all languorous drifting through the galaxy. Nolan has a genius for landscape-scale action sequences, and the planets, with their alien weather and gravity, give him ample opportunity to stage them. The camera races and plunges and, especially in IMAX, creates classic theme-park pit-of-your-stomach thrills. There are gigantic waves, frozen clouds, and other dangers that feel threatening despite looking totally surreal.

The biggest danger the shuttle crew faces, however, is time. Time isn't just running out — it's compressing and stretching as they travel through space. The Nolans use relativity to create some original and urgent crises as the shuttle crew figures out how to best spend their shifting time. Time is a resource, like food or water, Hathaway warns. The time differential between the crew and those they left behind also gives rise to the movie’s most melancholy scenes. In this respect it feels less like Space Odyssey and more like Homer’s Odyssey , with McConaughey getting detained and delayed as time passes and things go wrong back home.

As in 2001 , things get trippy toward the end. Without revealing too much, I can say that after a series of mostly comprehensible events, it swerves into either deeply theoretical physics or sentimental spirituality. Possibly both. The shift is jarring, but also visually interesting enough that I mostly went with it.

There’s always the question with Nolan of what it all means. His movies tempt you to demand a thesis, partly because his characters always seem to be grasping for one. They talk almost aphoristically about the human condition, ghosts, time, evil, love, and other heavy but abstract things, and they quote Dylan Thomas a few too many times. Fortunately, McConaughey brings some wry levity to the role, as does the robot TARS, a toppling metal block with adjustable honesty and humor settings, voiced by Bill Irwin. Ultimately I took the grander bits of dialogue as thematic signposts, telling you to keep your head at the level of death and humanity and time but not meaning much in themselves.

Which is fine. The movie is most powerful when it’s at its least abstract — when it’s working through the messy decisions and sacrifices that actual interstellar travel would entail, finding dramatic potential in the laws of physics. Interstellar is sometimes confusing, melodramatic, and self-serious, but Nolan managed to make a space epic on a human scale.

Interstellar opens November 5th.

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Interstellar Reviews

[A] gorgeous, heartbreaking epic.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 27, 2024

Humbling and epic in scope, designed and conceptualised brilliantly, but a tad too stand-off-ish emotionally. While the father-daughter dynamic works in parts, the Cooper–Brand relationship is never given the right treatment and collapses.

Full Review | Oct 17, 2023

This is a film where complex concepts of quantum physics and powerful human emotions are inextricably intertwined and the ghost that haunts the farmhouse has both a scientific explanation and a sense of supernatural power.

Full Review | Sep 9, 2023

"Interstellar" pushes the limits for personal interpretation of both science and fiction. Both elements are wildly heightened to a bold scale to address the internal opposites between logic and spectacle, science and sentiment, and brains and emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 4, 2023

…uses sci-fi to go beyond into the philosophical and spiritual beyond that few other epics can reach….

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 27, 2023

Nolan’s most openly emotional film, he fully lived up to his “Stanley Kubrick’s eye and Steven Spielberg’s heart” identity with this grand sci-fi epic about the sheer force of will that we have for those we love.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2023

Interstellar utilizes science in a way that strives for authenticity in a science-fiction thriller and it's why we're still discussing the Christopher Nolan film today.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 18, 2023

As Robert Bresson once said, “I’d rather people feel a film before understanding it.” Interstellar moved me, and I didn’t find myself fact checking the science so I could complain on Twitter.

Full Review | Jun 23, 2023

Staggeringly beautiful, bafflingly complex, this is proper event cinema.

Full Review | Apr 4, 2023

The film demands quite a bit of time from its viewers too, but its big ideas and wondrous sights are ample reward.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2023

When Mann appears to explain man, it collapses under the weight of a repeated thesis that doesn’t merit such explicit, redundant reiteration.

Full Review | Jan 24, 2023

It’s a contemplative adventure and an emotional exploration that captivated me from its opening moments.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 22, 2022

Rarely do epics of this scope and intelligence reach theaters anymore; such serious commercial filmmaking seems like a market almost exclusively maintained by Christopher Nolan.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 30, 2022

While not all-together perfect, the film represents a monumental cinematic achievement that deserves to be placed high within the caliber of Nolan’s filmography.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | May 27, 2022

The inherent message of the film brings hope, but it can definitely get waterlogged by intellectual speak and long-winded scenes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 9, 2021

The film is indeed a sight to behold -- and one that demands to be seen on the biggest possible screen.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 10, 2021

Nolan reaches for the stars with beautifully composed shots and some mind-bending special effects, but the dime store philosophy of the story never achieves lift off.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2021

Audiences are sure to lose their suspensions of disbelief over the nearly impenetrable climax.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Dec 4, 2020

...an often insanely ambitious science fiction epic that that remains mesmerizing for most of its (admittedly overlong) running time...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 20, 2020

Scientists will debate, theologians will contemplate, philosophers will wonder, and cinema lovers will bask in the glory of another remarkable Christopher Nolan achievement.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 12, 2020

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Menendez brothers resentencing supported by l.a. district attorney george gascón, ‘interstellar’: what the critics are saying.

Christopher Nolan's space-set epic stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, Michael Caine and Casey Affleck

By Ashley Lee

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Interstellar , out Wednesday in Imax and Friday nationwide, is the space-set epic that searches for a suitable home for humans in another dimension, yet is grounded in a story about love and family . Directed by Christopher Nolan , the super-secret drama stars  Matthew McConaughey , Anne Hathaway , Jessica Chastain , Ellen Burstyn , John Lithgow , Michael Caine , Casey Affleck , Wes Bentley and Mackenzie Foy .

Read more THR Cover: Interstellar’s’ Christopher Nolan, Stars Gather to Reveal Secrets of the Year’s Most Mysterious Film

See what top critics are saying about Interstellar :

The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy  warns, “ Interstellar so bulges with ideas, ambitions, theories, melodrama, technical wizardry, wondrous imagery and core emotions that it was almost inevitable that some of it would stick while other stuff would fall to the floor. … This grandly conceived and executed epic tries to give equal weight to intimate human emotions and speculation about the cosmos, with mixed results, but is never less than engrossing, and sometimes more than that. … For all its adventurous and far-seeing aspects, Interstellar remains rather too rooted in earthly emotions and scientific reality to truly soar and venture into the unknown, the truly dangerous.” Hans Zimmer ‘s compositions add up to an “often soaring, sometimes domineering and unconventionally orchestrated wall-of-sound score.”

The theme of the parent-child bond “is overstressed in a narrow manner. Murph’s [Chastain] persistent anger at her father is essentially her only character trait and becomes tiresome; she’s a closed-off character. Her brother [Affleck] remains too thinly developed to offer a substantial contrast to her attitude.” Additionally, “what goes on among the astronauts is not especially interesting and Amelia [Hathaway], in particular, remains an annoyingly vague and unpersuasive character in contrast to McConaughey’s exuberant, if regret-laden, mission leader, a role the actor invests with vigor and palpable feeling.”

See more ‘Interstellar’ Premiere: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Christopher Nolan Hit Hollywood

The New Yorker ‘s David Denby says the film “is ardently, even fervently incomprehensible, a movie designed to separate the civilians from the geeks, with the geeks apparently the target audience. … There’s a problem, however. Delivered in rushed colloquial style, much of this fabulous arcana, central to the plot, is hard to understand, and some of it is hard to hear. The composer Zimmer produces monstrous swells of organ music that occasionally smother the words like lava. The actors seem overmatched by the production.” Visually, the film’s “basic color scheme of the space-travel segments is white and silver-gray on black, and much of it is stirringly beautiful. There’s no doubting Nolan’s craft. … But, over all, Interstellar , a spectacular, redundant puzzle, a hundred and sixty-seven minutes long, makes you feel virtuous for having sat through it rather than happy that you saw it.”

USA Today ‘s  Claudia Puig  gives the film three out of four stars. Among impressive special effects are “minimalist exchanges between McConaughey and Hathaway, whose chemistry as space-exploring partners is lacking. Hathaway’s character is not given much dimension. Other members of the space team are even less well-drawn, so it’s hard to care what befalls them.” Also, “what is meant as a climactic humanistic ending seems to tie things up far too neatly for a film about the complex messiness that comes with a world that has taken dramatic wrong turns.”

See more ‘Interstellar’: Inside THR’s Roundtable With Christopher Nolan and Matthew McConaughey

Time ‘s  Richard Corliss  calls it “a must-take ride with a few narrative bumps. …  Interstellar  may never equal the blast of scientific speculation and cinematic revelation that was  Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey , but its un-Earthly vistas are spectral and spectacular.” In comparison to  Gravity , “ Sandra Bullock  and  George Clooney  gave their roles emotional heft, in a film more approachable and affecting than this one.” Still, “McConaughey’s performance as a strong, tender hero is notable.”

The Guardian ‘s Henry Barnes writes, “ Interstellar only really gets going once it’s up in the air. … It saves its beauty for the cosmos and its humanity for the machines. The actors — even those of the calibre of McConaughey and Hathaway — are script-delivering modules, there to output exposition and process emotional data. The best lines, those that seem truly spontaneous and responsive, go to TARS, the crew’s AI assistant.”

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Interstellar review: Christopher Nolan boldly goes to infinity and beyond

The movie isn't just for genre fans, it still has considerable emotional kick, article bookmarked.

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Christopher Nolan makes films for the big screen. In an era in which many other directors have lowered their ambitions and the argument is frequently made that the best filmed drama is to be found on Netflix or HBO, he retains a child-like faith in cinema as spectacle. Nolan shares the desire of early movie pioneers such as Georges Méliès or DW Griffith to astound and entrance audiences.

His movies invariably have moments of bathos and pretentiousness. In their lesser moments, they can seem silly but they also induce a sense of wonder.

He is no Michael Bay, letting off explosions and making noise for the sake of it. His blockbusters always pay as much attention to character and ideas as they do to special effects. They explore questions of family and identity, love and loss.

Interstellar, his new $160m sci-fi epic, is the quintessential Nolan movie. Made under the supervision of leading theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, it launches a twin-pronged attack on our emotions and on our intellects. It bombards us with abstruse ideas about gravity, matter and time while also offering old-fashioned, hyper-charged family melodrama. With a running time of almost three hours and special effects that trump those in Gravity (which seems like a chamber piece by comparison), this is a true epic – one whose thrilling ambition is only partially undermined by its sudden final-reel nose dive into bathos and absurdity. Nolan aims very high indeed. In the process, he has delivered a cerebral and original blockbuster.

This is a story of deliberate contrasts. The narrative begins not in space but in the dusty midwest. The crops are failing and food is scarce. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a rugged farmer who looks as if he has stepped out of a John Steinbeck novel. In a post-apocalyptic world where families are struggling to put food on the table, the idea of space travel seems absurd. Cooper is told by his kids’ Luddite-like school teachers that he is part of a “caretaker generation,” one whose only goal is survival.

These teachers warn Cooper that his son, Tom (Timothée Chalamet), has little chance of going to college. There is no call for explorers or pioneers. His destiny is to stay home and tend the crops, which are dying anyway. As for space travel, no one takes that seriously. The received wisdom in the brave new America in which Cooper and his family are eking out an existence is that the Apollo missions were “faked to bankrupt the Soviet Union”. There were no lunar landings – it was all masquerade and propaganda.

The screenplay (co-written by Nolan and his brother, Jonathan Nolan) has certain elements that would barely have passed muster in a creaky old episode of The Twilight Zone. We learn that Cooper, in spite of his Tom Joad-like appearance, is, in fact, a Flash Gordon-like former test pilot and engineer. After seeing strange signs in the farmhouse, he and his 10-year-old daughter head off across country and stumble on a secret Nasa base in the desert. Here, he is signed up by his old professor (Michael Caine) to join a space voyage in search of new habitations for humanity. Among the astronauts is the professor’s daughter Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway). The hitch is that he may never see his own children again – and, if he does, they may be very much older than he is by the time he returns. (Cooper is heading toward planets on which every hour that passes counts for seven years back on earth.)

Nolan is very sly in the way he interweaves sci-fi and family drama elements. There are continual references to “love” and family ties as key drivers in humanity’s fight for survival. The reason the scientists can push themselves so hard is precisely because they are fighting to protect those closest to them. At the same time, Cooper is at least partially motivated by his own selfish desire to escape his own backwater existence. He yearns for the adventure.

McConaughey’s performance is almost as strong as his Oscar-winning turn in Dallas Buyers Club. He conveys both Cooper’s bravado and pioneer spirit, and his yearning for the children he left behind. Nolan isn’t afraid to squeeze out pathos from the scenes in which he cries his eyes out watching video messages relayed from his family. Hathaway is likewise affecting as the scientist torn between her professional responsibilities and her feelings. Back on earth, Jessica Chastain shows her familiar steely drive as the physicist who looks to the most emotional events of her childhood to solve the scientific problems that have dogged her colleagues for decades. In a cameo, Matt Damon makes one of the great screen entrances of recent times. Caine reprises the wise, old grandfatherly type that he always seems to play in Nolan movies.

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The film-makers give a very far-fetched story an air of verisimilitude by featuring interview footage with various old-timers (including one played by Ellen Burstyn), incorporated to reminisce about the events we are seeing as if this is a documentary.

As in Gravity, the film-makers use the silence of space to accentuate the eeriness. Hans Zimmer’s music, heavy on organs, has a sacred feel. The film combines lengthy passages of the vessel gliding through galaxies as the astronauts discuss their strategies for saving humanity with exhilarating set-pieces in which they are dragged through wormholes in time.

This is a film that will provide plenty of grist for sci-fi enthusiasts. It boasts its own HAL-like computers/robots – including the very sardonic TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin). It features lots of hardware, plenty of explosions and large amounts of jargon-filled dialogue. Non-physicists will have to take the information about time travel on trust. Humour isn’t Nolan’s strong point, something underlined by the fact that the robot gets the funniest lines. Interstellar, though, isn’t just a movie for geekish genre fans. It’s a weepie as well, one that verges on the preposterous at times but that still has a considerable emotional kick.

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Metacritic reviews

Interstellar.

• 100 Variety Scott Foundas Variety Scott Foundas An exhilarating slalom through the wormholes of Christopher Nolan’s vast imagination that is at once a science-geek fever dream and a formidable consideration of what makes us human.
• 100 Time Out London Dave Calhoun Time Out London Dave Calhoun It’s a bold, beautiful cosmic adventure story with a touch of the surreal and the dreamlike, and yet it always feels grounded in its own deadly serious reality.
• 100 The Telegraph Robbie Collin The Telegraph Robbie Collin Interstellar is Nolan’s best and most brazenly ambitious film to date.
• 83 IndieWire Eric Kohn IndieWire Eric Kohn Brainy and exciting at the same time, Interstellar invalidates the need for mindless Hollywood product. No matter its shortcomings, the movie achieves an impressive balancing act. It turns the mysteries of the universe into a cinematic playground, but for every profound or visually arresting moment, it also encourages you to to think.
• 83 Hitfix Drew McWeeny Hitfix Drew McWeeny I was moved by Interstellar, and there are stretches where it is as good and as pure as anything Nolan's made. You can feel just how important all of it is to him in every frame of the thing. I don't love all of the film's dramatic choices, though.
• 80 The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy This grandly conceived and executed epic tries to give equal weight to intimate human emotions and speculation about the cosmos, with mixed results, but is never less than engrossing, and sometimes more than that.
• 80 Total Film Total Film Nolan reaches for the stars in spectacular fashion, delivering a mesmerising sci-fi epic that, despite a testing running time and few too many flights of fancy, is grounded by an on-form McConaughey.
• 60 The Guardian Henry Barnes The Guardian Henry Barnes It’s a glorious spectacle, but a slight drama, with few characters and too-rare flashes of humour. It wants to awe us into submission, to concede our insignificance in the face of such grand-scale art. It achieves that with ease. Yet on his way to making an epic, Nolan forgot to let us have fun.
• 50 TheWrap Alonso Duralde TheWrap Alonso Duralde For much of the film, Nolan (who co-wrote with his brother Jonathan) seems to be unafraid to allow this big-budget extravaganza to tell a story that's about pain and loss and melancholy and sacrifice. Until it's not that anymore, and Interstellar becomes thuddingly prosaic.
• 25 The Playlist James Rocchi The Playlist James Rocchi Promising outer-space majesty and deep-thought topics like some modern variation on Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Interstellar instead plays like a confused mix of daringly unique space-travel footage like you’ve never seen and droningly familiar emotional and plot beats that you’ve seen all too many times before.
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Interstellar Review

07 Nov 2014

166 minutes

Interstellar

Warning: this review contains mild spoilers

Christopher Nolan is a director whose name has, quite literally, become synonymous with realism. The Nolanisation of cinema, which made the gloomy streets of Gotham a bridge between the fantastical and the commonplace, now grounds countless fancies within the mud of our reality. With Interstellar, arguably his first ‘true’ science-fiction project, Nolan inverts expectation once again, with a film rooted in the mundanity of maths homework but spliced with the fantastic.

Born a year after the Apollo landing, Nolan grew up in the aftermath of the space race, when young eyes still turned upwards in wonder. Decades later, with the Space Shuttle decommissioned and children staring blearily down at the glow of their smartphones, it’s his disappointment at NASA’s broken promise that forms the driving force behind Interstellar.

Opening, tellingly, on a dusty model of the shuttle Atlantis, the film’s near-future setting sees humanity starving, squalid and devoid of hope. Eking out an existence in a post-millennial Dust Bowl, Matthew McConaughey ’s Cooper and his two children — ten year-old daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) and her older brother Tom (Timothée Chalamet) — lead a life of agrarian survivalism (while, hearteningly, still reading a great many books). But in Cooper we find a new man cut from old cloth: an all-American hero pulled straight from Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff. Played with a drawling, Texan swagger underpinned by startling emotional depth, he is Nolan’s most traditional lead to date, embodying the wide-eyed wonder of the director’s youth; a man for whom we are “explorers and pioneers, not caretakers”, who casts his lot among the stars as the human race’s last, best hope.

With the ailing Blue Planet left behind, Interstellar shifts smoothly into second gear. The black abyss rolls out like Magellan’s Pacific; an unknowable frontier, final in a way that Roddenberry’s never was. According to über-boffin co-producer Kip Thorne, the spherical wormhole (it’s three-dimensional, obviously) and the spinning event horizon of the film’s black hole (named Gargantua) are mathematically modelled and true to life. Sitting before a 100-foot screen, though, you won’t give a toss about equations because Nolan’s starscape is the most mesmerising visual of the year. Gargantua is as captivating as it is terrible: an undulating maelstrom of darkness and light. Like the Hubble telescope on an all-night bender, this is space imagined with a dizzying immensity that would make Georges Méliès lose his shit.

The planets themselves are no less spectacular. Let The Right One In cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (replacing Nolan regular Wally Pfister) captures the bleak expanse of southern Iceland as both a watery hell with thousand-foot waves and an icy expanse where even the clouds freeze solid. With more than an hour of footage shot in 70mm IMAX, you’ll want to park your arse in front of the biggest screen available to fully appreciate the spectacle.

In contrast to the grandeur of space, the ship itself is a scrapyard mutt. Modular and boxy, the Endurance looks like an A-Level CDT workshop, with no hint of aesthetic flourish or extraneous design. Ever the practical filmmaker, Nolan has constructed a functional, utilitarian vessel. Its robotic crew-members, TARS and CASE, are ’60s-inspired slabs of chrome; AI encased in LEGO bricks that twist and rearrange (manually operated by Bill Irwin — there’s no CG trickery here) to perform complex tasks with minimalist efficiency.

Beneath Interstellar’s flawless skin, the meat is bloodier and harder to chew. The science comes hard and fast, though Nolans Christopher and Jonah shore up the quantum mechanics with generous expository hand-holding. Astrophysics is the vehicle not the destination, however, and Interstellar’s gravitational centre is far more down to Earth. Embodied by Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (quoted in the film at several points), this is a defiant paean to the human spirit that first took man to the stars. But far more than Thomas’ villanelle, Interstellar scales the heights and plumbs the depths of humanity, pitting the selfish against the selfless, higher morality against survival instinct. As Cooper, scientist Brand (Anne Hathaway) and crew draw closer to their destination, complications require tough decisions; the sanctity of the mission wars with the hope of a return trip. That the undertaking isn’t quite as advertised doesn’t come as a shock, but the cruelty of the deception lands like a body blow. Nature isn’t evil, muses Brand (played with soulful nuance by Hathaway). The only evil in space is what we bring with us.

When Interstellar began life back in 2006, Steven Spielberg, not Nolan, was the man in the cockpit; a presence still felt in the relationship between Cooper and Murph. The betrayal of a child abandoned is potent from the outset but the guilt is magnified tenfold when the Endurance’s first stop, within the influence of the black hole, means that a few hours stranded planet-side result in two decades passing back on Earth. Cooper’s tortured face as he watches his family unspool through 20 years of unanswered video missives is agony, raw and unadorned. Beneath everything else, this is a story about a father and his daughter, the ten-year-old giving way to Jessica Chastain ’s adult in the blink of a tear-filled eye.

With the endless pints of physics chased by shots of moral philosophy, Interstellar can at times feel like a three-year undergraduate course crammed into a three-hour movie. Or, to put it another way, what dinner and a movie with Professor Brian Cox might feel like. The final act compounds the issue, descending into a morass of tesseracts, five-dimensional space and gravitational telephony. It’s a dizzying leap from the grounded to the brain-bending that will baffle as many viewers as it inspires. More than the monolithic robot and his sarcastic, HAL-nodding asides (“I’ll blow you out of the airlock!”), it’s the psychedelic, transcendental climax that feels most indebted to Kubrick’s 2001; something that will undoubtedly prompt some to accuse Nolan of disappearing up his own black hole.

Inception posed questions without clear answers. Interstellar provides all the answers — you just might not understand the question. This is Nolan at his highest-functioning but also his least accessible; a film that eschews conflict for exploration, action for meditation and reflection. This isn’t the outer to Inception’s inner space (his dreams-within-dreams are airy popcorn-fodder by comparison), but it does wear its smarts just as proudly. Yet for the first time, here Nolan opens his heart as well as his mind. Never a comfortably emotional filmmaker, here he demonstrates a depth of feeling not present in his earlier work. It’s no coincidence that the film’s shooting pseudonym was Flora’s Letter, after Nolan’s own daughter. Interstellar is a missive from father to child; a wish to re-instil the wonder of the heavens in a generation for whom the only space is cyber. Anchored in the bottomless depths of paternal love, it’s a story about feeling as much as thinking. And if the emotional core is clumsily articulated at times (Brand’s “love transcends space and time” monologue being the worst offender), it’s no less powerful for it.

As a light-year-spanning quest to save the human race, this is the director’s broadest canvas by far, but also his most intimate. And against the alien backdrop of black holes, wormholes and strange new worlds, Interstellar stands as Nolan’s most human film to date.

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Parents' guide to, interstellar.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 46 Reviews
• Kids Say 191 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Ambitious intergalactic drama focuses on a father's promise.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Interstellar is a sci-fi thriller/family drama directed by Christopher Nolan starring Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, and Anne Hathaway. There are intense, life-threatening sequences, plus character deaths (which aren't bloody). Language is strong but sparse, with one use of …

Why Age 11+?

Several scenes of intense peril—particularly the parts of the movie that take pl

Strong language is infrequent but includes one use of "f---ing," plus "bulls--t,

Characters use a Dell Latitude computer. Several close-ups of a Hamilton watch.

Two adults kiss in celebration. Characters get married and have kids, but romanc

Any Positive Content?

This is a story about the fierce love between a parent and his children. It also

Cooper is an attentive, responsive father who talks things through with his kids

Female characters such as lead Murphy and supporting character Dr. Brand are por

Violence & Scariness

Several scenes of intense peril—particularly the parts of the movie that take place in space. Characters die, usually killed by a hostile environment, but one dies of natural causes. Deaths aren't bloody. Two important characters grapple and fight on a hostile planet; one of their helmets cracks, and oxygen quickly depletes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language is infrequent but includes one use of "f---ing," plus "bulls--t," "son of a bitch," and a few uses of "a--hole" and "dumbass."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Characters use a Dell Latitude computer. Several close-ups of a Hamilton watch. NASA plays a prominent role, with main characters joining the organization in order to save humanity.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two adults kiss in celebration. Characters get married and have kids, but romance isn't a central theme.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

This is a story about the fierce love between a parent and his children. It also explores the mysterious power of love, individualism vs. collectivism, and the certainty that there's more in the universe than we can possibly understand. The opening lines from Dylan Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" are repeated again and again as a reminder to not be complacent or accept death when there's a possible solution that could save your life.

Positive Role Models

Cooper is an attentive, responsive father who talks things through with his kids and always answers their questions. He sacrifices time with them in order to help the entire population of Earth, but he never forgets his promise to return to them. Amelia and her father believe in the virtue of sacrificing yourself for the good of the mission. Murphy never stops looking for a way to explain her father's absence or to rescue the people of Earth. On a more neutral note, rule-breaking mavericks like Cooper (who leaves his children for decades) and Murphy (who sets her brother's crops on fire) are rewarded, while pragmatists and rule followers, such as Cooper's son, are portrayed as unintelligent and in the wrong.

Diverse Representations

Female characters such as lead Murphy and supporting character Dr. Brand are portrayed as intelligent STEM workers, but they also fall into clich és as women with near-supernatural levels of emotional intuition. The cast is almost all White, and women of color are entirely absent. ( Spoiler alert! ) The only significant character of color, an astronaut played by British Ghanaian actor David Gyasi, dies in an explosion. His death is treated with less attention than that of a robot.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Interstellar is a sci-fi thriller/family drama directed by Christopher Nolan starring Matthew McConaughey , Jessica Chastain , and Anne Hathaway . There are intense, life-threatening sequences, plus character deaths (which aren't bloody). Language is strong but sparse, with one use of "f---ing," plus "bulls--t," "son of a bitch," etc. Adults kiss once in celebration, but romantic relationships aren't a focus. The cast is almost all White, and women of color are entirely absent. White female characters have important roles as intelligent STEM workers. The movie's layered themes, intergalactic peril, and references to astrophysics may prove too dark and complicated for younger viewers; middle schoolers and up might be drawn in by the science and the parent-child bond that guides the central characters to keep searching for a way to reunite. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (46)
• Kids say (191)

Based on 46 parent reviews

Awesome movie. Kids will love it for different reasons as they grow up.

The best movie ever, what's the story.

Director Christopher Nolan 's INTERSTELLAR takes place in a future in which severe drought has killed most of the world's crops, and humans are dying of starvation and disease on a doomed, dust-covered Earth. Cooper ( Matthew McConaughey ) is a former pilot and engineer who, like the majority of Americans, has had to trade in his defunct career to work as a farmer. Coop's love of science is evident in his 10-year-old daughter, Murphy ( Mackenzie Foy ), who swears there's a ghost in her bedroom leaving her messages in code. Coop is unbelieving at first but then helps Murph decipher one of the codes, leading them to a secret lab run by Professor Brand ( Michael Caine ), who heads what's left of NASA. Brand convinces Coop to pilot a life-and-death mission, with the understanding that his time spent in outer space could mean missing many years on Earth, years that he'd be away from his children. As the team tries to survive unthinkable odds, back on Earth, Murph grows into a brilliant scientist ( Jessica Chastain ) who's obsessed with finding her lost-in-space father.

Is It Any Good?

Unless you're well-versed in the physics of wormholes, don't expect to understand the intricacies of this film's science. Interstellar might deliver unbelievable-sounding scenarios, but it gets the story where Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who co-wrote the film) need it to go—from the dust-smothered and scorched Earth to the dangerous outer reaches of space. The visuals are gorgeous, and not just in space, where Coop and his fellow astronauts—Amelia ( Anne Hathaway ), Doyle ( Wes Bentley ), Romilly ( David Gyasi ), and the wise-cracking militarized robot, TARS, voiced by Bill Irwin —travel from planet to planet, but also back on Earth, where time is passing so quickly that Coop's now-grown children have all but lost faith that they'll see him again.

Occasionally, the time-bending storyline starts to feel like it's stretching time for viewers as well, but somehow the missions—both the one to save humankind and Coop's personal one to see his kids—are compelling enough to keep audiences interested. McConaughey balances the line between dead serious, sarcastic, and heartfelt, and he plays well off of his co-stars (particularly his space team). Both the young and adult versions of Murphy are perfectly cast, and Caine provides elder-statesman gravitas as he did in Nolan's Batman films. As Hathaway's character explains, love is a force that transcends time and space, so if you feel invested in Coop's promise to Murphy (and, to a lesser degree, his son, who grows up to be played by Casey Affleck ), you'll forgive some of the confusing and convenient plot loops and concentrate on the possibility that at some point, this father will embrace his children again.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Interstellar is similar to and different from other thoughtful space movies—like Gravity , Contact , and 2001: A Space Odyssey . How would you describe it to friends: as a sci-fi movie, a thriller, or a family drama? Which aspect of the film did you enjoy the most?

Does the violence in the movie seem less upsetting when it's human vs. nature instead of human vs. human? Why do you think Professor Brand keeps quoting Dylan Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"? What does the poem mean?

Director Christopher Nolan is known for movies with psychological themes that play with time, space, memory, etc. How is Interstellar like his other films? How is it a departure?

How would you describe the parent-child relationships in this movie? Are they realistic? Relatable?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 5, 2014
• On DVD or streaming : March 31, 2015
• Cast : Matthew McConaughey , Anne Hathaway , Jessica Chastain
• Director : Christopher Nolan
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Topics : Space and Aliens
• Run time : 169 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some intense perilous action and brief strong language
• Awards : Academy Award - Other Category Winner , Academy Award - Other Category Nominee , BAFTA - BAFTA Winner , BAFTA - BAFTA Nominee , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Nominee
• Last updated : August 30, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Interstellar Review

Director Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited sci-fi epic Interstellar arrives. Read our review!

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“Haunting” is the word that keeps lingering as I reflect on Christopher Nolan’s new movie, Interstellar , over and over again in my mind. There is a somber tone to the film, an elegiac mood that is one of its most powerful assets. We feel the shroud of despair and apathy surrounding the people of Earth as it becomes clear that the planet is essentially turning against us, and we also experience the intense loneliness and isolation of the small crew of astronauts who travel an unimaginable distance on a last-chance mission to save the human race from extinction.

When Interstellar is at its best — which is frequent, but not constant — that mood has an emotional pull to it that bolsters the other plot elements which are designed to tug at your heart. It also suffuses the film’s often brilliant visuals, which effectively capture the grandeur of traveling across the universe while simultaneously detailing just how unimaginably small and alone we are against that vast and seemingly endless darkness. Nolan throws a lot of ideas — and a lot of movie — at us for Interstellar ’s nearly three-hour running time.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Cooper, a former NASA test pilot and widower who now runs a farm where he lives with his children Murph (Mackenzie Foy) and Tom (Timothee Chalamet), as well as his father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow). It’s the near future and an agricultural blight has descended upon the planet, destroying every crop but corn. There are hints that traditional institutions of society have been or are being dismantled as survival becomes the prime objective, but it’s undeniable that even that goal may elude humankind’s grasp.

The key to keeping the human race alive comes in the shape of a reconfigured remnant of NASA, to which Cooper and Murph are led to by a series of what must be described for now as inexplicable events. There they find a small team led by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) who have detected the appearance of a wormhole near Saturn. Its origin is unknown, yet it was apparently meant to be found: it tunnels through time and space to a distant galaxy where planets exist that could support human life.

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Previous probes through the wormhole by solo explorers have returned ambiguous messages and data at best. Cooper is reluctantly persuaded by the Brands to pilot a new and perhaps final four-person mission, knowing that the titanic distances they travel will bend time in a way that decades may pass on Earth and Cooper may very well never see his children again. But the death of humanity is almost assured if a habitable planet — and a way to somehow transport our species there — is not found soon.

To delve much deeper into the plot (the script was co-written by Nolan and his brother and frequent collaborator Jonathan) would demand the revelation of spoilers that I’m not prepared to give away. But what happens throughout the rest of the film is a balancing act between the personal, emotional, and intimate story of Cooper and his family, and the larger canvas of what is easily the most complex “hard sci-fi” film in a long time. Cooper and his crew — Amelia plus scientists Romilly (David Gyasi) and Doyle (Wes Bentley) — venture to other worlds, grapple with the effects of relativity and even tangle with a black hole, while back home characters age, some die, and others strive to find their own answers to the same questions the crew of the Endurance are trying to solve untold light years from home.

Like many of Nolan’s films before this one — including The Dark Knight , Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises — the filmmaker’s desire to tell us as much story as he possibly can occasionally gets tripped up by both his own heavy-handedness, as well as leaps in logic or story structure that can test one’s suspension of disbelief. The Nolans’ script is big and ragged and feels bloated in some ways: there are scenes — most of them on Earth — that could be compressed or dismissed altogether with a cleverly thought-out image or perhaps a bit of exposition, although this is already an exposition-heavy movie. The director’s propensity for stacking up climaxes or set-pieces and then cross-cutting between them actually works to his detriment here (unlike, say, in Inception ), because it lessens the impact of what is happening in his main story, with Cooper and the crew (I hate to imagine a scenario where an actress like Jessica Chastain could have her role diminished considerably in a film, but that’s kind of the case here).

And yet despite those issues and a penchant for repetition when it comes to his key themes (by the fourth time we hear the main verse from Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” I found myself thinking, “Okay, we get it.”) I can’t help but be dazzled, occasionally moved by, and haunted (that word again) by Nolan’s galactic adventure. I ultimately have the same relationship with this movie that I have with most of his previous ones, especially the Batman blockbusters and Inception : their sheer ambition, production value, scope, and earnestness outweigh their flaws in the end.

Nolan to me is really a darker, more serious-minded and adult-oriented version of Steven Spielberg when he’s working in genre, only with two or three endings in his films instead of one contrived happy one that is grafted onto the story like a reverse appendectomy. He shares the same desire to go as big as possible and show the audience sights they’ve never seen before, and he believes in the story he’s telling and the theme he’s trying to get across, even if he lacks some of the skills necessary to transmit them as effectively as possible. And yet he is also still capable of a quietly devastating moment like the one in which the crew of the Endurance find out just how much of an effect the theory of relativity and the distortion of time has on one short trip to a planet’s surface (it all comes down to just two words of dialogue and nothing else).

There are some big ideas in the movie, and their visual components are handled brilliantly from start to finish. On a pure filmmaking level,  Interstellar is jaw-dropping and almost demands to be seen in IMAX. The film is so immersive that you will feel like you’re flying through that wormhole or plunging into that black hole. Cinematographer Hotye van Hoytema ( Her ) and production designer Nathan Crowley ( The Dark Knight Rises ) do a splendid job in creating and filming our blighted future Earth, the mysterious expanses of space and the surfaces of the planets that the Endurance visits. Nolan’s trademark requirement that everything be grounded and functional has led to a hybrid of miniatures, fully constructed sets, and CG that is pretty much seamless.

Once again, he has also surrounded himself with a strong cast who make the most out of roles that are, to some degree, more archetypal in nature. McConaughey shines as Cooper, playing a character who seems closer to the actor himself that some of his other recent work, and centering the film with his innate decency and everyman worldview. Hathaway is striking as Amelia Brand, whose icy, guarded exterior hides a vulnerable core. The scene-stealer of the lot is actor-comedian Bill Irwin, who controls the movement of the crew’s two robot companions, TARS and CASE, and voices TARS with a delightful blend of dry humor and matter-of-fact observational wit (CASE, who is the more reserved personality, is voiced by Josh Stewart).

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Credit also to composer Hans Zimmer, who likewise goes very big in his scores — especially for Nolan — and whose trademark style on the  Dark Knight   films has been aped and parodied for the past few years. The score here is just as grandiose, but he employs as his main instrument the organ, which provides the perfect musical equivalent for the film’s tone and can embody both the finality of death and the infinite mysteries of the heavens at the same time. I loved his work here — I’m a huge fan of the organ — even if the music and some of the sound effects frankly drowned out large swaths of dialogue at the screening I attended (although I understand that this was most likely an issue with the theater itself — the TCL Chinese in Hollywood — than the film).

Interstellar is a huge film and strives to do what science fiction does at its best: show us some truth about the human condition through the filter of scientific discovery or theory. It doesn’t succeed as well as it could; its worst moments are clunky and disjointed, but its finest moments are extraordinary. This is top-notch filmmaking by a director who wants to make the most ambitious film he can in whatever genre he’s working in. Interstellar may not be as mind-blowing as many of us hoped, and may be too manipulative for others, but Christopher Nolan reaches for the stars with this one, and his journey is just rich enough to keep us along for the ride.

Interstellar opens on IMAX screens on Wednesday, November 5 and in theaters everywhere on Friday, Nov. 7th.

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Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

Interstellar

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

It’s damn near three hours long. There’s that. Also, Interstellar is a space odyssey with no UFOs, no blue-skinned creatures from another planet, no alien bursting from the chest of star Matthew McConaughey . It reveals a hopeful side of filmmaker Christopher Nolan that will piss off Dark Knight doomsayers. And, hey, didn’t Alfonso Cuarón just win an Oscar for directing Gravity ? How long are audiences expected to get high on rocket fumes?

Blah, blah, blah. Bitch, bitch, bitch. What the neg-heads are missing about Interstellar is how enthralling it is, how gracefully it blends the cosmic and the intimate, how deftly it explores the infinite in the smallest human details.

Of course, Nolan has never been the cold technician of his reputation. Watch  Memento again, or The Prestige , or the undervalued Insomnia . The sticking point here is that Interstellar finds Nolan wearing his heart on his sleeve. Nothing like emotion to hold a cool dude up to ridicule. But even when Nolan strains to verbalize feelings, and the script he wrote with his brother Jonathan turns clunky, it’s hard not to root for a visionary who’s reaching for the stars.

Which brings us to a plot full of deepening surprises I’m not going to spoil. The poster for Interstellar presents McConaughey surveying a wasteland. It’s meant to be Saturn, but it could just as well be Earth, where environmental recklessness has morphed the planet into a Dirt Bowl starving and choking its citizens.

Nolan spends the first third of the film in the American farm belt of the near future, introducing us to widower Cooper (McConaughey), a former test pilot, who depends on his father-in-law (John Lithgow) to help him raise 15-year-old son Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and 10-year-old daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy, superb). Like her dad, Murph is a rebel who refuses to buy into her school’s official dictum that the Apollo space program was a lie.

It’s when dad and daughter find the remnants of NASA, headed up by Cooper’s old boss Professor Brand (Michael Caine), that the story gains momentum. Cooper heads into space to find a new world to colonize, leaving behind two kids who may never forgive him.

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The physics lessons (Cal-tech’s Kip Thorne consulted) kick in when Coop captains the Endurance mother ship with a science team made up of Amelia ( Anne Hathaway ), Brand’s daughter; Romilly (David Gyasi); and Doyle (Wes Bentley). And don’t forget R2-D2 and C-3PO. Not really. The ex-military robots of Interstellar are called CASE and TARS. The great Bill Irwin voices TARS, a chatty monolith that looks like something out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and sounds like that film’s HAL. (Note to viewers: Kubrick’s 1968 landmark and George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise are part of Nolan’s DNA. React accordingly.)

Next comes the wow factor that makes Interstellar nirvana for movie lovers. A high-tension docking maneuver. A surprise visitor. A battle on the frozen tundra. A tidal wave the size of a mountain. Cheers to Nolan and his team, led by cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema and VFX supervisor Paul J. Franklin ( Inception ). See Interstellar in IMAX, with the thrilling images oomphed by Hans Zimmer’s score, and you’ll get the meaning of “rock the house.”

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And yet it’s the final, quieter hour of Interstellar that gives the film resonance and lasting value. All the talk of black holes, wormholes and the space-time continuum take root in Coop when he realizes his two years in space have occupied 23 years on Earth. His children, the now-adult Tom (Casey Affleck) and Murphy ( Jessica Chastain ), spill out decades of joys and resentments in video messages that Coop watches in stunned silence. McConaughey nails every nuance without underlining a single one of them. He’s a virtuoso, his face a road map to the life he’s missed as his children bombard him with a Rorschach test of emotions.

In case you haven’t noticed, McConaughey is on a roll. And he partners beautifully with the sublime Chastain, who infuses Murph with amazing grit and grace. Familial love is the topic here, not the romantic or sexual kind. How does that figure into space exploration? Nolan gives Hathaway a monologue about it. But dialogue is no match for the flinty eloquence shining from the eyes of McConaughey and Chastain. They are the bruised heart of Interstellar, a film that trips up only when it tries to make love a science with rules to be applied. In 2001, Kubrick saw a future that was out of our hands. For Nolan, our reliance on one another is all we’ve got. That’s more the stuff of provocation than a Hallmark e-card. Nolan believes it’s better to think through a movie than to just sit through it. If that makes him a white knight, Godspeed.

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Interstellar (United States/United Kingdom, 2014)

Christopher Nolan has never shied away from a challenge and the one he has taken on with Interstellar may be his most prodigious thus far - bigger than delivering an end-to-start chronology in Memento , more impressive than the mind-bending contortions of Inception , and more daunting than re-imagining Batman into the most unique superhero franchise of the 21st century. Interstellar is simultaneously a big-budget science fiction endeavor and a very simple tale of love and sacrifice. It is by turns edgy, breathtaking, hopeful, and heartbreaking. It's an amazing achievement that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen with the best sound system possible. Nolan has crafted Interstellar as a movie theater experience. Watching it at home, no matter how good the sound system is, won't match. This is one time when the IMAX surcharge is worth it.

Interstellar is science fiction . It's not space opera. It's not futuristic fantasy. It's what the term "science fiction" was coined to represent. It presents a viable future in which space travel, while possible, is dangerous and uncertain. Starships aren't zipping from planet to planet. Space craft aren't firing lasers, phasers, or photon torpedoes. Travel across long distances uses the dangerous and unpredictable method of entering a wormhole, not engaging Warp One or making the jump to hyperspace. Time dilation comes into effect in the presence of a black hole and there's even a little bit about the relationship between quantum mechanics and relativity. This isn't Star Wars , Star Trek , or Guardians of the Galaxy , and anyone who approaches it with such expectations will be disappointed. It's more along the lines of recent movies like Contact (which also starred Matthew McConaughey) and Gravity in that it acknowledges science rather than ignoring the rules of reality as we understand them.

It will be difficult to find a review of Interstellar that doesn't reference 2001: A Space Odyssey and there's a valid reason for that. Nolan at times uses Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece as a template, especially during moments of grandeur. Hans Zimmer's score is no less crucial to Interstellar than "Also Sprach Zarathustra" was to 2001 . Yet, this is no mere copy of Kubrick's film; in fact, it goes far afield. There's heroism, a la The Right Stuff . It's also a warmer, more emotional experience - less stately and abstruse. In fact, found at the core of this big budget adventure is the most relatable thing imaginable: the feelings of love and trust that bind father and daughter. It's almost a fusion of Kubrick and Spielberg.

Interstellar opens at an unspecified future date in America's farm belt. Although the film is careful not to identify a year, it's probably around 2050. The world has fallen victim to famine caused by overpopulation and a blight that is killing crops and creating massive dust storms. With nitrogen on the rise in the atmosphere, total asphyxiation is the inevitable endgame. Earth as a bastion of humanity is doomed. Former NASA engineer and test pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) owns acres of corn that he farms along with his family: son Tom, daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy), and father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow). Drawn by almost supernatural means to a chain-link fence around a super-secret location, Cooper finds himself face-to-face with what remains of his former employer: an underground think-tank dedicated to saving the human race. Led by Professor Brand (Michael Caine), NASA has developed two plans. The first involves creating a massive space vehicle to transport as many humans as possible into outer space. The second involves using frozen embryos to colonize a distant world. There are problems with Plan A - namely, overcoming gravity to launch the massive space ship - but Brand is convinced he can solve the necessary equations that will make this possible.

Cooper learns that a wormhole has appeared in space near Saturn, presumably placed there by (alien) entities of great intelligence intent upon giving humanity a path of survival. Ten years ago, astronauts were sent through to scout the dozen potentially habitable planets on the other side. Now another craft must make the journey to determine humankind's final destination. Mindful that his children's future is at stake, Cooper agrees to pilot the craft. He is accompanied by a small crew of four: Brand's daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway); scientists Doyle (Wes Bentley) and Romilly (David Gyasi); and the sardonic robot TARS (Bill Irwin), who recalls HAL 9000. Murph is resentful of her father for abandoning her - an anger she nurses into adulthood, when (now played by Jessica Chastain), she becomes Brand's second-in-charge working for the same entity that took her father away from her.

Like Contact , Interstellar displays an uncanny knack for making complex physics accessible to laymen (partial credit to Executive Producer and CalTech physicist Kip Thorne). Yes, there are times when the dialogue is dense but it never becomes impenetrable (although there are some odd passages, such as one in which Cooper and Amelia discuss the meaning of "love"). Does the movie occasionally fudge? Of course, but it sticks closer to Einstein's laws than most space-faring movies and when it speculates, it does so in a believable manner.

The movie remains Earthbound for its first 45 minutes, establishing a dire scenario for the planet and depicting the day-to-day struggles of those who survive in this blasted, inhospitable future. Most importantly, however, this part of the film establishes the closeness of the relationship between Cooper and Murph and introduces the mystery of "them" - the mysterious "ghosts" who will play a part on the periphery for the rest of the movie. In the end, Cooper must embrace the philosophy that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." He promises to Murph that he will return, knowing he may not be able to keep that promise.

Once in space, the white knuckle moments begin. Limiting the use of CGI, Nolan relies on practical effects to craft a movie that feels more like a real journey than a video game. There are some tremendous action set pieces and the narrative is wonderfully unpredictable. The movie takes some chances with its endgame, which resolves a lot of plot points but at times seems rushed. Interstellar is at its most complex during its final 20 minutes and even those who pay rapt attention may leave the theater with some unanswered questions.

The film is nearly three hours but there's enough story here for something a lot longer. In condensing it, Nolan has made something 169 minutes in length that breezes by faster than many productions half its length. He accomplishes this by establishing a blistering pace during Interstellar 's meatier sections, including expert cross-cutting between Earth and space during a powerful "fire and ice" sequence.

Visually, Interstellar looks great. Nolan understands all the facets of special effects technology (except, perhaps, old age makeup) and uses them to their best. Hans Zimmer delivers an operatic score that, although occasionally drowning out dialogue (more a mixing issue than a scoring one), adds to the overall experience. Sound is important to Interstellar - when the rocket lifts off around the 45-minute mark, the bass shakes the entire theater.

It has been a tremendous year for McConaughey. From Dallas Buyers Club to True Detective to Interstellar , he has won a Golden Globe and an Oscar and been nominated for an Emmy. Interstellar will give him another opportunity for Academy recognition: he's the glue that holds everything together. He's the human factor in a vast universe. His love for his daughter and his pain when he acknowledges her despair invests this movie with a warmth and feeling that no previous Nolan movie can boast. The supporting cast, which includes Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine, is strong, but McConaughey represents the heart and soul of Interstellar .

For those who appreciate the Mobius strip approach Nolan is known for, Interstellar offers a little of that. There are some twists and non-chronological jumps, although not so many that the story becomes confusing or unintelligible. Time dilation (the slowing down of time for those in close proximity to a dense gravitational source) isn't just a convenient plot device; it's an integral element of the narrative. Like nearly everything else in Interstellar , it is used effectively.

For anyone with a hunger for real science fiction rather than the crowd-pleasing, watered-down version Hollywood typically offers (and that I often enjoy immensely), Interstellar is a satisfying entrée. I'd rank this alongside Memento and The Dark Knight as the best Nolan has done, and it's an immediate contender for one of 2014's best. The film deserves the label of an "experience" and the bigger the venue, the more immersive it will be. As event movies go, this is one of the most unique and mesmerizing.

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The Best Movies Like Interstellar to Watch Next

I t has almost been a decade since Interstellar hit theaters. The sci-fi epic has been remembered as one of director Christopher Nolan's best works, among an impressive filmography that includes The Dark Knight and Oppenheimer . Much like Inception and Tenet , Interstellar explored the concept of time , which Nolan has described as "the most fundamental part of our human experience."

Interstellar has remained the only Christopher Nolan film to feature space travel. Set in the not-so-distant future, farmer and NASA pilot Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) travels through a wormhole in search of a new home for humankind. Cooper's journey was thought-provoking, intense, and emotional, transporting audiences to another world and showcasing the power of film. If you enjoyed Interstellar , here are 15 movies to add to your watch list.

Updated October 12, 2024: This list has been updated to include even more movies to watch when you're in the Interstellar mood.

Moon (2009)

Release Date June 12, 2009

Director Duncan Jones

Cast Adrienne Shaw, Rosie Shaw, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Kaya Scodelario, Dominique McElligott

Main Genre Drama

Writers Nathan Parker, Duncan Jones

2009's Moon used the backdrop of outer space to explore themes of isolation and identity. Sam Rockwell starred as Sam Bell, a man nearing completion of a contract that had him work alone on a space station for three years. Unfortunately for Sam, he experienced sudden health issues before he could return home to his wife.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream (or Cry)

It was a hidden gem that made the most of its modest budget, presenting the audience with many twists and turns. Moon deserved more attention than it got, and it was never going to be a blockbuster, but it was destined for low-budget sci-fi greatness. It resembles Interstellar in its exploration of existentialism-related themes.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001: a space odyssey.

Release Date April 2, 1968

Director Stanley Kubrick

Cast Margaret Tyzack, Leonard Rossiter, Daniel Richter, William Sylvester, Gary Lockwood, Keir Dullea

Main Genre Adventure

Runtime 141

Writers Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley Kubrick

This list would not be complete without 2001: A Space Odyssey . The 1968 film was Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece and has been hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. In the film, humankind faces several challenges throughout its evolution, represented by the rise of what can only be described as alien intelligence.

The Most Important Science Fiction Film of All Time

Despite being released in the late '60s, the film had plenty to say about AI, technology, extraterrestrial life, and human evolution. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a visual marvel, masterfully using color, featuring groundbreaking visual effects, and utilizing many incredible camera techniques. It's safe to say that Nolan took things from 2001 and put them in Interstellar (for example, that creepy robot thing is reminiscent of HAL).

The Martian (2015)

The martian.

Release Date September 30, 2015

Director Ridley Scott

Rating PG-13

Cast Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Sean Bean, Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Jessica Chastain

Main Genre Sci-Fi

Runtime 130

Writers Andy Weir, Drew Goddard

The Martian was released a year after Interstellar and, like Nolan's film, featured Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain in key roles. Set in the year 2035, The Martian followed astronaut Mark Watney after surviving a dust storm on Mars. Mark is presumed dead and left behind by his crew. But upon learning of his survival, NASA launches a mission to bring him back home.

Science Fiction Gets Realistic. Well, Sort Of

The 2015 film was a survival story focused on perseverance and the need for connection. It also established itself as one of the more scientifically accurate sci-fi films in Hollywood. While they are two different films, if a space version of Tom Hanks' Cast Away interests you (which is also a variation of Interstellar 's "lonely dude gets stranded" theme), then The Martian might be what you're looking for.

Solaris (1972)

Release Date September 26, 1972

Director Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast Vladislav Dvorzhetskiy, Jri Jrvet, Donatas Banionis, Natalya Bondarchuk

Runtime 2hr 47min

Writers Fridrikh Gorenshteyn, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanislaw Lem

In Solaris , a psychologist by the name of Kris Kelvin is sent to outer space to explore a space station whose residents have decided to stop communicating. Kelvin arrives at the desolate ship, and while there are strangely behaving survivors, one of his friends has committed suicide. When he starts seeing impossible things, he realizes it may have to do with the planet that the station is orbiting around: Solaris.

Tarkovsky's Concept of Space

Andrei Tarkovsky's brilliant science fiction film is an unforgettable piece that explores human themes with a backdrop of space, technology, and infinite possibilities. It's the Soviet director's response to Hollywood and films like 2001 . The theme of humankind's role in the universe was further explored in his other sci-fi epic, Stalker .

Arrival (2016)

Release Date November 10, 2016

Director Denis Villeneuve

Cast Michael Stuhlbarg, Jeremy Renner, Amy Adams, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien, Forest Whitaker

Runtime 116

Writers Ted Chiang, Eric Heisserer

Before Dune and Blade Runner 2049 , Denis Villeneuve directed the fantastic sci-fi drama Arrival . Amy Adams starred as Louise Banks, a linguistics expert tasked with finding a way to communicate with a mysterious alien race. While the aliens remain a bit cryptic, it's revealed they have arrived for a very honorable reason.

They Really Do Come in Peace

Arrival moved away from the conventions of the standard alien invasion film , attracting a different audience than that of a film such as Independence Day: Resurgence . Arrival and Interstellar shared thematic similarities in their exploration of the human concept of time. Like Villeneuve's other films, this one asked deeper questions and left audiences with a lot to think about following the end of its two-hour runtime.

10 Great Sci-Fi Movies That Dont Rely on Special Effects

Science fiction has always been associated with special effects. But in the case of these movies, they weren't necessary.

High Life (2018)

Release Date September 26, 2018

Director Claire Denis

Cast Lars Eidinger, Agata Buzek, Andre Benjamin, Robert Pattinson, Mia Goth, Juliette Binoche

Runtime 110

Writers Nick Laird, Geoff Cox, Jean-Pol Fargeau, Claire Denis

High Life follows a group of astronauts who aren't exactly seen as the fancy innovators of our species. Instead, they're criminals, sent to outer space to extract energy from a black hole. Dibs, a scientist aboard, performs all kinds of experiments in the crew, and her goal is to make humans reproduce in the vastness of space, in a ship where sexual contact is forbidden.

Instinct Is Primal

Claire Denis' riveting sci-fi thriller stars Mia Goth, Juliette Binoche, and Robert Pattinson in one of his best roles . The existentialist themes that are present in the film are no match for Denis' capacity to design what can only be described as an organic nightmare that will flood your senses halfway through. Like Interstellar , it's one of the essential sci-fi films you must see at some point.

Stream High Life on Max.

Looper (2012)

Release Date September 26, 2012

Director Rian Johnson

Cast Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Piper Perabo, Paul Dano, Noah Segan

Main Genre Action

Runtime 118

Writers Rian Johnson

A sci-fi action thriller, Looper was directed by Rian Johnson before he worked on Star Wars and the Knives Out franchise. In the 2070s, crime syndicates send people into the past , where they are killed by "Loopers." This allows the syndicates to avoid being traced and get someone else to do their dirty work. A young Looper named Joe executes his targets without hesitation until he realizes his latest target is a future version of himself.

A Complex Yet Fun Action Sci-fi Movie

Looper was not a space-based film like Interstellar , but it was driven by its examination of the relationship between the past, present, and future. An intriguing premise, strong performances from Levitt, Willis, and Emily Blunt, and stylish action sequences made Looper a film to remember. It's a bit complex, and it may require a rewatch, but at least, it makes you think.

The Fountain (2006)

The fountain.

Release Date November 22, 2006

Director Darren Aronofsky

Cast Fernando Hernandez, Mark Margolis, Rachel Weisz, Hugh Jackman, Stephen McHattie, Ellen Burstyn

Writers Ari Handel, Darren Aronofsky

In The Fountain , a man and a woman are represented by three different characters in three periods of time. The film goes from New Spain (16th century) to what can only be defined as a distant future. Both the man and the woman, played by the same actors, navigate their lives without the knowledge that their fates may be part of something greater.

An Extremely Underrated Sci-Fi Approach

Directed by Darren Aronofsky , The Fountain was a complicated film that not many people liked when it was released in theaters. It was just too darn complex for mainstream audiences who thought they would be having a fun time at the movies, and the film isn't exactly conventional. Its study about human mortality and the transcendence of love is only clear after you see it.

Stalker (1979)

Release Date April 17, 1980

Rating Not Rated

Cast Nikolay Grinko, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Alisa Freyndlikh

In Stalker , two men seek the help of another one who will lead them on a journey to the Zone. The "stalker" has the ability to lead them through a vast territory where the human mind may fall prey to its fragility. Ultimately, the man leads the writer and the professor to the area where extraterrestrials have landed in the past, and where they left a room that makes all their wishes come true.

No Sci-Fi List Would Be Complete Without Tarkovsky's Classic

Based on the novel from 1972, Roadside Picnic, Stalker doesn't need the fancy Hollywood elements to make its story pretty relevant and its characters quite compelling. You won't find any fancy visual effects in this film, as most of the story revolves around the men contemplating ideas that aren't necessarily true. It's quite possibly the best sci-fi film of all time , and the way it explores human philosophy is simply fascinating.

Contact (1997)

Release Date July 11, 1997

Director Robert Zemeckis

Cast David Morse, John Hurt, Matthew McConaughey, William Fichtner, Jena Malone, Tom Skerritt, Jodie Foster

Runtime 2hr 30min

Writers Michael Goldenberg, James V. Hart, Carl Sagan

Contact was based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Back to the Future co-creator Rob Zemeckis. In the film, a brilliant scientist (Jodie Foster) finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. Contact did not portray the discovery as having a warm reception, suggesting that such an event would dramatically heighten conflicts between religion and science.

A Divisive but Friendly Sci-Fi Film

While some critics have considered this great 1990s sci-fi film to be "anti-religion," others have viewed it as a story about finding faith. However, Zemeckis revealed that the intended message was that science and religion can coexist. Contact has been one of the few films to explore both the relationship between science and religion as well as the social implications of discovering extraterrestrial life. It's not as directly related to Interstellar , but Cooper does rely on faith at some point.

Gravity (2013)

Release Date October 3, 2013

Director Alfonso Cuarn

Cast Amy Warren, Paul Sharma, Orto Ignatiussen, Ed Harris, Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

Writers Jons Cuarn, Alfonso Cuarn, George Clooney

No modern film has captured the vast, isolating emptiness of deep space, like 2013's Gravity . With their shuttle destroyed, Dr. Ryan Stone and Matt Kowalski are left stranded in space with no chance of rescue due to space debris obliterating their ship. The odds are definitely not in her favor, but Stone summons all her inner strength to find a way back to Earth.

A "Before and After" of Movies Set in Space

Although there were some scientific inaccuracies, Gravity received critical acclaim for its direction (it won an Academy Award for Best Director, as well as six others), score, cinematography, and Bullock's performance. The film was released before Interstellar and strengthened audiences' appetite for space-based films that were no longer the same after Gravity . It was amazing what the film achieved with a single character during most of its runtime.

Sunshine (2007)

Release Date April 5, 2007

Director Danny Boyle

Cast Chipo Chung, Cliff Curtis, Cillian Murphy, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh

Runtime 108

Writers Alex Garland

In Sunshine , a group of brave astronauts head into outer space in order to save the species: the Sun is dying, and if humankind doesn't do something about it, then Earth will freeze. The team of astronauts tries to use a massive bomb in order to basically reset the dying star, but soon they find out why the first iteration of the mission failed.

Humankind Depends on a Fragile State of Mind

Danny Boyle's masterful execution of the Alex Garland script is an incredibly underrated sci-fi epic that takes a turn into a psychological thriller that you won't ever forget. The film, a box office bomb with a decent score of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, is supported by an implausible plot, but its great ensemble cast will make you stay: Chris Evans, Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Benedict Wong, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Mark Strong, among others.

Inception (2010)

Release Date July 15, 2010

Director Christopher Nolan

Cast Ken Watanabe, Elliot Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy

Runtime 148

Writers Christopher Nolan

Aside from The Dark Knight , The Dark Knight Rises , and Oppenheimer , Inception was Nolan's most popular film. Inception obviously did not center on a group of astronauts, but like Interstellar , featured time as one of its central themes. Leonardo DiCaprio played Dom Cobb, a thief with the ability to infiltrate people's dreams and obtain secrets from their subconscious. Cobb is given the seemingly impossible challenge of planting an idea in someone's mind and executing a heist .

A Fan Favorite Nolan Movie

From the breathtaking visuals to the music by Hans Zimmer, Inception succeeded on virtually every front. The film further proved that modern action movies can be smart and tell a compelling story. four Academy Awards were proof that Inception is one of Nolan's best films, but he wasn't mentioned in the Best Director for some reason. It's a great example of sci-fi cleverly blending with several other genres.

Ad Astra (2019)

Release Date September 17, 2019

Director James Gray

Cast Kimmy Shields, Ruth Negga, Tommy Lee Jones, Greg Bryk, Brad Pitt, Donald Sutherland

Runtime 124

Writers Ethan Gross, James Gray

In Ad Astra , Clifford McBride ventures into deep space and goes missing during his search for extraterrestrial life. His son Roy grows up to become an astronaut, tasked with investigating mysterious power surges linked to Clifford's crew. The investigation takes Roy to Neptune, where he learns some secrets about his dad and his vanishing.

A Beautiful-Looking and Relevant Modern Sci-Fi Film

Space was depicted in Ad Astra as a hostile environment that wreaked havoc on the human psyche. And while the film does take its time to deliver the truth about its premise, it's still an entertaining and often contemplative film about human relationships in dire circumstances. Ad Astra featured cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema, who collaborated with Nolan on Interstellar , Dunkirk , Tenet , and Oppenheimer .

First Man (2018)

Release Date October 12, 2018

Director Damien Chazelle

Cast Jon Bernthal, Pablo Schreiber, Cory Michael Smith, Corey Stoll, Shea Whigham, Patrick Fugit, Brian D'Arcy James, Christopher Abbott, Ryan Gosling, Lukas Haas, Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke, Claire Foy

Runtime 141 Minutes

Writers Josh Singer

From the director of Whiplash and La La Land came First Man , a biopic that showed how Neil Armstrong came to be the first man to walk on the moon. The film began in the early 1960s, covering the astronaut's test flights, family life, and intensive astronaut training. Eventually, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon, but at what cost?

A Solid Adaptation of the True Story

Armstrong's story was a natural fit for the big screen, with the film building toward an incredible moon landing sequence. Gosling brought a quiet stoicism to Armstrong and delivered one of the finest performances of his entire career. First Man underperformed at the box office, but, of course, its commercial performance was not indicative of the film's quality .

Oblivion (2013)

Release Date April 10, 2013

Director Joseph Kosinski

Cast Andrea Riseborough, Morgan Freeman, Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Melissa Leo

Runtime 125

Writers Arvid Nelson, Joseph Kosinski, Karl Gajdusek, Michael Arndt

Oblivion was the first film collaboration between Tom Cruise and Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski. In the world of Oblivion , Earth is left devastated following decades of war between humans and a mysterious group of scavengers. The planet is mostly abandoned, leaving Jack completely alone to repair combat drones for five years. As he approaches the end of his work term, Jack uncovers the secret truth behind his mission.

An Underrated Tom Cruise Film

The 2013 sci-fi adventure film shared Interstellar 's themes of love, exploration, and sacrifice. Oblivion , like Kosinski's Tron: Legacy and Top Gun: Maverick , was beautifully shot and constantly kept viewers on the edge of their seats. The film has relatively been overlooked despite being one of the best sci-fi films of the early 2010s .

Annihilation (2018)

Annihilation.

Release Date February 22, 2018

Director Alex Garland

Cast Tessa Thompson, Sonoya Mizuno, Oscar Isaac, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez

Runtime 115

Writers Jeff VanderMeer, Alex Garland

"The Shimmer" in Annihilation is a mysterious, quarantined zone that only Kane enters one day. Kane's time in the zone dramatically changes him, returning home to his wife Lena, a very different man. Lena, a cellular biology professor and former soldier, joins a scientific expedition to discover the Shimmer's secrets and what happened to her husband.

A Perfect Mix of Horror and Sci-Fi

Annihilation crafted an unsettling atmosphere that firmly planted the underrated film in the genre of psychological horror. The visual imagery was designed to convey a sense of dread in addition to something distinctly alien. It has always been difficult to discuss Annihilation without veering into spoiler territory, but the film provided a thoughtful reflection on the human capacity for self-destruction.

The 15 Best Hard Sci-Fi Movies That Define the Genre

There are no limits when it comes to hard sci-fi. The following movies are proof of the essence of the genre, which allows us to see the inexplicable.

Aniara (2018)

Release Date February 1, 2019

Director Hugo Lilja, Pella Kagerman

Cast Emma Broom, Jennie Silfverhjelm, Anneli Martini, Arvin Kananian, Bianca Cruzeiro, Emilie Jonsson

Runtime 106

Writers Harry Martinson, Hugo Lilja, Pella Kagerman

Aniara is a late 2010s Swedish-Danish film set in a dystopian future where humans flee an uninhabitable Earth. Aniara centers on a large spacecraft headed for Mars, whose interior was designed to resemble a cruise ship. An incident knocks the Aniara off-course, leaving the passengers stranded in space with no fuel.

An Overlooked Sci-Fi Gem

The straightforward premise of Aniara made it fairly accessible to viewers usually alienated by complex sci-fi. With that being said, the film had plenty for audiences to chew on, encouraging them to ponder humanity's place in the universe. Aniara is strongly recommended for those gravitating toward the more existential aspects of space-based films . You can stream Aniara on Tubi or Hulu.

Tenet (2020)

Release Date August 22, 2020

Cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Clemence Poesy, Robert Pattinson

Runtime 195

Nolan made another film exploring the concept of time with Tenet , which has arguably been his most confusing film to date. John David Washington portrays a CIA agent known as the "Protagonist" who becomes involved with the mysterious phenomenon of time inversion. The Protagonist joins forces with Neil to save the entire world by using time to their advantage.

Nolan's Most Confusing and Divisive Film

Tenet was an ambitious film that refrained from leaning into traditional time travel. The time inversion in the film positioned it as arguably the most confusing Nolan film to date. In fact, both leads have said that even they do not fully understand the film. As such, Tenet did not work for everyone, considered to be needlessly convoluted by many critics. Others, however, were pleased with the multilayered plot and Nolan's creative time-bending.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Edge of tomorrow.

Release Date June 6, 2014

Director Doug Liman

Cast Masayoshi Haneda, Noah Taylor, Franz Drameh, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson, Emily Blunt, Tony Way, Jonas Armstrong, Kick Gurry, Dragomir Mrsic, Tom Cruise, Charlotte Riley

Runtime 1h 53m

Writers John-Henry Butterworth, Jez Butterworth, Christopher McQuarrie

Somewhat forgotten and still woefully underrated, Edge of Tomorrow was the perfect summer action blockbuster. A mix of Groundhog Day and an alien invasion film, William Cage restarted his day each time he died. He starts as a coward and is transformed into an efficient leader after several iterations. The time loop united him with war hero Rita Vrataski, giving him a chance to defeat the alien enemies.

A Change of Tone Never Hurts

To the surprise of many viewers, Edge of Tomorrow found a balance between world-ending stakes and humor. The humor never stopped the film in its tracks to dip into the meta-comedy that has been commonplace in modern superhero films. Edge of Tomorrow succeeded in conveying the importance of holding on to hope in a world where all hope was seemingly lost . Now, where's that sequel?