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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.

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Film credits.

Interstellar (2014)

Rated PG-13 for some intense perilous action and brief strong language

169 minutes

Matthew McConaughey as Cooper

Wes Bentley as Doyle

Anne Hathaway as Brand

Jessica Chastain as Murph

Michael Caine as Dr. Brand

John Lithgow as Donald

Topher Grace

Casey Affleck as Tom

Mackenzie Foy as Young Murph

Ellen Burstyn as Old Murph

Bill Irwin as TARS (voice)

Collette Wolfe as Ms. Kelly

David Oyelowo as Principal

William Devane as Old Tom

Christopher Nolan
Jonathan Nolan

Director of Photography

Hoyte van Hoytema

Original Music Composer

Hans Zimmer

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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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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’: film review.

Christopher Nolan aims for the stars in this brainy and gargantuan sci-fi epic

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Interstellar

Preoccupied with nothing less than the notion that humankind will one day need to migrate from Earth to some other planet we can call home, 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. Feeling very much like Christopher Nolan ‘s personal response to his favorite film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 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.

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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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Interstellar Reviews

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

A big-budget reprise of ideas Nolan has been exploring since the beginning of his career. Not only is it a film about the passage of time, it's also a film about memory.

Full Review | Sep 3, 2020

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Entertainment
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.

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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‘Interstellar’: The Cinema of Physicists

By Dennis Overbye

Nov. 17, 2014

The Earth is a dying dust bowl where a blight is destroying all the crops and oxygen. Schoolchildren are being taught that the moon landings were faked to bankrupt the Russians, and NASA is a secret agency consisting of a dozen scientists huddling underground. The Yankees are a barnstorming troupe who play games in cornfields and let ground balls go through their legs.

This is the world of “Interstellar,” the space thriller directed by Christopher Nolan, of “Inception” and “The Dark Knight” fame, and written by him and his brother Jonathan, that hit theaters in a tsunami of publicity this month.

I’ve been looking forward to “ Interstellar ” ever since I first heard back in 2006 that physicists led by the celebrated gravitational theorist and Caltech professor Kip Thorne had held a workshop to brainstorm a science-fiction movie. This would be the movie that finally got things right.

The movie stars Matthew McConaughey as an astronaut named Cooper, who leads an expedition to another galaxy in search of a new home for humanity, and, stars among others, Mackenzie Foy, who grows up into Jessica Chastain, as his daughter, Murph (named after the law), who is mad that he left. On one level, it is a heroically realistic tale of space exploration. On another level, it’s a story about father-daughter relationships, as well as a meditation on the human spirit and what happens when humans take their eyes off the stars. But it’s also about quantum gravity and the mysteries of the fifth dimension, and even an astronaut who was at a screening with me confessed that he was confused.

The first time I saw it, I too was confused, and disappointed. Aside from a wonderful view of Cooper’s spacecraft dwarfed by lonely blackness down at the corner of the Imax screen as it passed by a magnificently glowing Saturn, and tense docking sequences similar to certain scenes in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” it was short on the magic and the delicious storytelling twists I expect from the Nolan brothers.

The second time I saw the movie, clued in by Dr. Thorne’s new book, “The Science of Interstellar,” I enjoyed it more, and I could appreciate that a lot of hard-core 20th- and 21st-century physics, especially string theory, was buried in the story — and that there was a decipherable, if abstruse, logic to the ending. But I wonder if a movie that requires a 324-page book to explicate it can be considered a totally successful work of art. The movie’s pedigree goes back to Carl Sagan, a Cornell astronomer and author.

In 1980, he arranged a blind date between Dr. Thorne and Lynda Obst, a good friend and self-admitted “science geek” who later produced “Contact” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” among other films.

They dated briefly and then became good friends. In 2006, they wrote an eight-page treatment for a film about a crew of astronauts, including Stephen Hawking and a romantically attached assistant, who travel through the universe and slightly backward in time by way of wormholes. Out there, they encounter a race of advanced five-dimensional beings who live outside of our own space-time and communicate with it and us only by gravity.

After the Caltech workshop, Jonathan Nolan rewrote the story, and Christopher Nolan rewrote it again after he took over from Steven Spielberg as the director. As a result, Dr. Thorne said, the final screenplay bears little resemblance to the original story he and Ms. Obst wrote.

In the movie, a wormhole, presumably built by some advanced alien race about which we know nothing, has opened up in space out near Saturn. It goes to another galaxy where scouting expeditions have identified three promising planets orbiting a giant supermassive black hole. It is Cooper’s job to check out those planets.

As executive producer, Dr. Thorne had the job of keeping the moviemakers from violating any known laws of physics, his criterion for acceptance being “something serious physicists would at least discuss over beer,” as he put it in an interview.

His book, he stressed, represents his interpretation, and not necessarily the director’s, of what happens or could have happened in the movie, a sort of scientific back story. “A large fraction is stuff I discussed with Chris,” he said.

Dr. Thorne said he had almost always been able to find a way to accommodate Mr. Nolan’s ideas. Luckily, as he said, “There is a lot of leeway beyond the frontier.” At one point, director Nolan asked for a planet on which the dilation of time because of immensely powerful gravity was so severe that one hour there would correspond to seven years on Earth — an Einsteinian effect that plays a big role in the plot. Dr. Thorne’s first reaction was “no way.” But after thinking about it, he says he found a way, which would require the planet to be very close to a massive black hole spinning at nearly its maximum rate. The hole would spin space around with it, like a mixer swirling thick dough.

The planet could get its heat and light from the disk of heated material swirling around the hole, Dr. Thorne calculated, as long as the hole was not feeding too strongly — a rather carefully tuned but not impossible situation. The black hole itself sprang directly from Dr. Thorne’s equations, and its renderings by the movie’s visual effects supervisor, Paul Franklin, showed details that Dr. Thorne plans to write papers about.

Wormholes are another thing that easily pass the beer test. Einstein himself pointed out that such shortcuts through space-time were at least allowed by his equations, but nobody knows how to make one or to keep it from collapsing, or how to install one near Saturn without its gravitational field’s disrupting the entire solar system.

Ditto the fifth dimension, a logical consequence of various brands of string theory.

But not everyone drinks the same beer. So some scientists and science writers — not all of whom have had the advantage of reading Dr. Thorne’s elaborate explanations — have paid the movie the ultimate compliment: taking it seriously enough to subject it to a kind of public peer review. The blogs and other forms of science media have bloomed with criticisms.

“Some might say, ‘Why quibble? It’s just a movie'” said David H. Grinspoon of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., and a participant in the 2006 workshop, who complained of sloppy planetary science in the movie. Even with a voracious blight, he said, it would take millions of years to draw down Earth’s oxygen.

“So why did they take care with relativity but not even bother with planetary science?” he went on. “Arthur C. Clarke is spinning in his stargate!”

As a moviegoer, I have a high tolerance for artistic license and wild ideas. As long as it was in space in this universe, the movie worked for me. It was on either end, on Earth and in the fifth dimension, that “Interstellar” goes off the rails.

It is hard for me to imagine, for example, a discredited and underground NASA able to launch rockets to another galaxy, scouting expeditions through the wormhole, spending trillions of dollars without anyone knowing. This crew should give secret-keeping lessons to the N.S.A.

Nor does it seem plausible to me that there seems to be about one theoretical physicist left in the world, who happens to be Professor Brand (Michael Caine), Cooper’s old teacher and NASA’s leader. All the hundreds of string theorists now filling college chairs have gone away despite the discovery of that wormhole and the fifth dimension, confirming the wildest ideas of string theory, which would be worth a handful of Nobel Prizes — unless they too, have gone underground.

As for the fifth dimension, too much of the critical action happens there, where none of us have ever been, at the behest of those mysterious “bulk beings” who built the wormhole, presumably to save mankind. Who are they? Cooper speculates that they are humans who have evolved, but it doesn’t matter. We never see them. For the purposes of the movie, they could be Norse gods, angels, Superman or whoever made the monoliths in “2001,” a wild card the Nolans can play at will, a deus ex machina, in other words. That’s cheating.

If they’re so powerful, why don’t they stop the blight? Or fix up a planet in our own solar system? Nor are the planets in that other galaxy all that impressive. One of them has tsunamis a mile high, the other has clouds of solid ice (Dr. Thorne has admitted wincing when he sees that). And who really wants to live next to a hungry black hole? Compared with this, Mars looks pretty good.

After traveling the universe of “Interstellar,” I’d rather stay home.

The Out There column on Tuesday, about the movie “Interstellar,” misidentified the city and state in which the Planetary Science Institute is located. It is in Tucson, Ariz., not in Boulder, Colo.

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Interstellar, common sense media reviewers.

Ambitious intergalactic drama focuses on a father's promise.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Ultimately this is a story about the fierce love b

Cooper is an attentive, responsive father who talk

Several scenes of intense, impending peril -- part

Two adults kiss in celebration.

Strong language is infrequent but includes one or

Dell Latitude computer, several close-ups of a Ham

Positive Messages

Ultimately this is a story about the fierce love between a parent and his children. It explores the power of the intangible, unquantifiable feeling of love; the good of the man versus the good of mankind; 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. Cooper encourages his children to look hard for the answers to their questions.

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, but in the end, Amelia also understands that love needs to be taken into account, not just hard science. Murphy never stops looking for a way to explain her father's absence or to rescue the people of Earth.

Violence & Scariness

Several scenes of intense, impending peril -- particularly the parts of the movie that take place in space. Several characters die -- mostly in space, but one on Earth as well. Characters are usually killed by a hostile environment, but one dies of natural causes. Two men get into a dangerous physical confrontation in space.

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

Sex, Romance & Nudity

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

Strong language is infrequent but includes one or two uses of "s--t," "a--hole," "son of a bitch," "dumb ass," and "f--king."

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

Products & Purchases

Dell Latitude computer, several close-ups of a Hamilton watch.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Interstellar is a compelling sci-fi thriller/poignant family drama directed by Christopher Nolan ( The Dark Knight ) and starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway . As in Gravity , there are nail-bitingly intense (and life-threatening) sequences that take place in space, but this is more than a survival tale: It's a relationship story about a father who has made a promise to his children to return to them, no matter what. The layered themes, intergalactic peril, and references to astrophysics may prove too dark and complicated for elementary school-aged tweens, but middle-schoolers and up will be drawn in by both the science and the parent-child bond that guides the central characters to keep searching for a way to reunite. Characters do die (both in space and on Earth), and there's some language ("s--t," one "f--king," etc.). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (43)
Kids say (182)

Based on 43 parent reviews

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

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/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 young 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 reveals that they sent a group of scientists through a wormhole leading to another galaxy -- and that now a small group of brave souls must embark on a mission to see whether any of those scientists found an inhabitable planet. Brand convinces Coop to be the life-and-death mission's pilot, with the understanding that his time spent in outer space could mean missing many years on Earth (one hour on one planet equals seven 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 ) 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 Interstellar' s science. And there's a lot of science, most of which sounds unbelievable, 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 mankind 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 -- whose professor has a penchant for quoting Dylan Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" -- 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 serious/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, a family drama, or what?

Does the violence in the movie seem less upsetting when it's man vs. nature instead of man vs. man? 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 previous 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
Last updated : May 25, 2023

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Interstellar (2014)

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Love and Physics

By David Denby

Through a wormhole Matthew McConaughey leads a mission to another galaxy in Christopher Nolans “Interstellar.”

“Interstellar,” an outer-space survivalist epic created by the director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan, with whom he co-wrote the screenplay, is ardently, even fervently incomprehensible, a movie designed to separate the civilians from the geeks, with the geeks apparently the target audience. Nolan’s 2010 movie, “Inception,” offered layers of dreaming consciousness, each outfitted with its own style of action. The film was stunning but meaningless—a postmodern machine, with many moving parts, dedicated to its own workings and little else. In “Interstellar,” however, Nolan goes for a master narrative. Like so many recent big movies, “Interstellar” begins when the earth has had it. The amount of nitrogen in the air is increasing, the oxygen is decreasing, and, after a worldwide crop failure, dust storms coat the Midwest, drying out the corn, the only grain that is still growing. But all is not lost. God or Fortune or a Higher Intelligence (take your pick) has entered the game, and has placed near Saturn a traversable wormhole, a tunnel in space-time, providing an expressway out of the galaxy and on to the countless stars and planets beyond.

The commander of an underground nasa outpost, Professor Brand (Michael Caine), sends a favored pilot, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), on a mission: Cooper and his crew, including Brand’s daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway), are to retrace the flights of three astronauts who a decade earlier were sent to planets thought to be capable of sustaining human life. Are the explorers alive? What did they find? Can the earth’s billions be moved through the wormhole? As the crew members enter the distant passage, with its altered space-time continuum, they testily debate one another, referring, in passing, to theories advanced by Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Kip Thorne. (Thorne, a theoretical physicist and a longtime friend of Hawking’s, served as an adviser and an executive producer on the film.) Black holes, relativity, singularity, the fifth dimension! The talk is grand. 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 Hans Zimmer produces monstrous swells of organ music that occasionally smother the words like lava. The actors seem overmatched by the production.

Nolan, who made the recent trilogy of night-city Batman movies, must love the dark. In “Interstellar,” he and the designer, Nathan Crowley, and the cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, send Cooper’s ship, the Endurance, hurtling through the star-dotted atmosphere, or whirling past seething and shimmering clouds of intergalactic stuff. The 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. Throughout “Interstellar,” the camera remains active, pursuing a truck across a cornfield or barrelling through sections of the Endurance. All this buffeting—in particular, the crew’s rough-ride stress—is exciting from moment to moment, 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. The Nolans provide a pair of querulous robots, the more amusing of which is voiced by Bill Irwin, but George Lucas’s boffo jokiness and Stanley Kubrick’s impish metaphysical wit live in a galaxy far, far away. ****

Cooper has two children back on Earth and, like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb, in “Inception,” he longs to return to his family. That leads to fights with Amelia, who wants to journey on to the planet where her lover, one of the astronauts on the earlier mission, was sent, in the hope of reuniting with him. McConaughey does his stylized, hyper-relaxed drawl, and Hathaway, with short Ph.D. hair, is crisp but also angry and passionate, and the two stars clash with professional skill. Cooper’s side of the argument sets up the movie’s finest scene. After paying a quick visit to a planet in another galaxy, the crew returns to the ship and discovers that on Earth more than twenty years has passed. Cooper watches video messages from his family, including his daughter, Murph, who was a young girl when he left but has grown up to be Jessica Chastain. Through her tears, she lashes out at him, as only Jessica Chastain can lash out, for leaving her. The Nolans take us into the farthest mysteries of space-time, where, they assure us, love joins gravity as a force that operates across interstellar distances. The Earth may die, but love will triumph. For all his dark scenarios, Christopher Nolan turns out to be a softie.

The belief that love, as much as gravity, holds galaxies together, may have held some interest for Stephen Hawking, but in a more attainable setting than on a planet beyond the Milky Way. “The Theory of Everything” tells the story of Hawking and his first wife, Jane Wilde Hawking. The film begins in 1963, when Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is a graduate student in cosmology at Cambridge University. At a party, he meets Jane (Felicity Jones), who is studying “arts,” as she says, and they begin a charmingly awkward courtship in which she jollies him along as he confesses his modest desire to create “one single unified equation that explains everything in the universe.” But an earlier scene, in which he races a friend around a field, shows something odd about his gait. It is the first sign of motor-neuron disease. As the illness progresses, Hawking takes a bad fall in front of his residence hall, after which he retreats to his room, listening over and over to Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” an opera in which goddesses ride stallions through the air. He is expected to live no more than two years, but Jane, tougher than a British Army officer, marries him and keeps him going.

The couple went on to have three children. In one scene, a male friend at Cambridge carries Hawking up some stone steps and asks him, “Does your disease affect, you know, everything?” Hawking, who is still able to speak a little, says, “Different system.” The film, at its best, doesn’t mince words or scenes about Hawking’s disability. It’s also a revelatory portrait of his strength, including his surprising gaiety, the jokes and the ironies that he drew from God knows what reserves of energy. In this movie, his illness and his productivity are intimately linked.

The film is based on Jane Wilde Hawking’s 2007 memoir, “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen,” which the screenwriter, Anthony McCarten, and the director, James Marsh, have made into a physically detailed and touching but, all in all, rather conventional against-all-odds bio-pic. Some of the scenes are predictable: The hero commits prodigious feats of casual English genius, such as solving a difficult mathematical problem on the back of a railway timetable. He is wheeled before Cambridge dons and distinguished scientists, many of whom are amazed that the shrunken man at the front of the room, barely able to speak, has a remarkable talent for theoretical speculation. (It isn’t made clear, though, how Hawking does his calculations—his work can’t be all speculation.)

Eddie Redmayne’s performance is astonishing, as eloquent, though in a different way, as Daniel Day-Lewis’s work in “My Left Foot.” Day-Lewis, playing the Irish artist Christy Brown, a man whose mobility is reduced to a single limb, deployed his left foot, a bushy black beard, and minimal, mangled speech to create a ferociously willful and sexually miserable man. Redmayne is a gentler actor; he was the noble youth in “Les Misérables” who sang, in a fine light tenor, the tear-stained but upbeat “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.” Tall and slender, with freckles and a flattened upper lip, he wears his brown hair in a heavy mop that in this film falls across his forehead to meet enormous black-framed glasses. With his narrow shoulders, he initially looks like an abashed scarecrow. Redmayne uses his eyebrows, his mouth, a few facial muscles, and the fingers of one hand to suggest not only Hawking’s intellect and his humor but also the calculating vanity of a great man entirely conscious of his effect on the world.

Hawking doesn’t discover a unified equation, but he settles for black holes and a comprehensive and remarkably lucrative obsession with time. (“A Brief History of Time” has sold more than ten million copies worldwide.) The movie is a love story and a success story, ending with Hawking’s refusal of a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth, for reasons that aren’t explained. His relationships with women in general here are baffling. We’re puzzled by the black hole in his character that causes him, after twenty-five years of loving marriage, to leave the devoted, accomplished, and beautiful Jane for a young nurse (Maxine Peake) who treats him like a baby, and dominates him. After one brief outburst, Jane doesn’t protest but happily escapes into the arms of a strapping but gentle choirmaster (Charlie Cox). So we have to do a little speculating ourselves: Did Jane want to get out of the marriage? Or did she suppress an entirely understandable rage in order to keep the portrait of the marriage as pleasant (and salable) as possible? “The Theory of Everything” makes a pass at the complexities of love, but what’s onscreen requires a bit more investigation. ♦

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By Katy Waldman

By Patricia Marx

Screen Rant

The science of interstellar: how accurate is christopher nolan's movie.

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Cillian Murphy’s Interstellar Casting Would’ve Changed Nolan’s Movie (For The Worse)

Interstellar theory claims cooper’s tesseract fall caused every anomaly, interstellar’s original murph plan would've ruined the character (& ending).

Interstellar is a timeless, emotional space epic that combines science-heavy themes with a father-daughter narrative, earning its place among the finest works of philosophical sci-fi.
The film's emphasis on scientific accuracy, guided by renowned physicist Kip Thorne, has garnered respect from both critics and the scientific community, including astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Interstellar 's depiction of black holes and their surrounding features closely resemble real photographs procured by the Event Horizon Telescope years later, although its color tone differs slightly from reality for aesthetic reasons.

Before Christopher Nolan dabbled in atomic physics for Oppenheimer , he tapped into the depths of black holes and astrophysics for Interstellar . Nolan’s timeless space epic delves into a space crew’s efforts at finding a new planet as Earth becomes uninhabitable. Interstellar doesn’t shy away from its science-heavy themes, but the narrative also makes room for a genuinely emotional tale between a father-daughter duo separated by the fabric of space and time. With Matthew McConaughey’s teary-eyed monologues and Hans Zimmer’s atmospheric score, Interstellar is rightly regarded among the finest works of philosophical sci-fi alongside classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris .

While a few critics were initially put off by the movie’s primary emphasis on scientific accuracy, Interstellar ’s acclaim has only increased in the years since its 2014 release. The importance given to real-life theoretical physics doesn’t just stem from Nolan’s own fascination with the subject but also the educational qualifications of his collaborators, ranging from scientific consultant Kip Thorne and his brother and Interstellar co-screenwriter Jonathan Nolan. The movie garnered such a respectable status among the scientific community that even physicist and television personality Neil deGrasse Tyson has been in total awe of Nolan’s vision. A space movie indeed never felt this realistic before.

Cillian Murphy wishes he was cast in Interstellar, but him replacing Matthew McConaughey as Cooper would've made Christopher Nolan's movie worse.

Theoretical Physicist Kip Thorne Consulted On The Science Of Interstellar

Considering how ominous black holes continue to be within the cosmos, a lot of Interstellar ’s science is grounded in theoretical physics. Guiding Christopher Nolan was Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who served as the filmmaker's official science consultant and an executive producer on the movie. A longtime friend of fellow greats like the late Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, Thorne is a respected voice of reason when it comes to astrophysics, having since earned the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics for his research on gravitational waves. According to Wired , Interstellar was actually conceived by Thorne and producer Lynda Obst in the 2000s long before Nolan got on board.

Considering how much Christopher Nolan is obsessed with time , he relied on Thorne’s research to figure out changes in the space-time continuum for Interstellar . Detailing his research for the movie in the book The Science of Interstellar , the physicist wrote about how his theories helped in visualizing the black holes depicted in the movie and explaining their time-changing abilities. In the movie, the spaceship Endurance heads out to a fictional black hole named Gargantua, which is depicted to be 100 million times larger than the Sun. A notable visual element of the dying star — the super-massive black hole — is a disc of matter that revolves around it.

Cooper learned to manipulate the Tesseract to communicate with Murph, but a theory suggests that his fall accidentally caused every original anomaly.

This accretion disk, as it is formally called, is formed due to the influence of high gravity. Thorne adds that Gargantua’s disc contains matter like gas and dust and ultimately offers light and heat to all the planets and entities within the dying star system. With the disc creating such a high gravitational field, it becomes apparent why the protagonist, Cooper's aging slows down by the ending of Interstellar . It was Albert Einstein who, through his thorough equations on general relativity, suggested that time moves slower in higher gravity fields. With Endurance orbiting so close to the black hole, it is obvious that Cooper’s clock will tick slower.

Interstellar Accurately Depicted Black Holes 5 Years Before The First Real Proof Of How They Look

Black holes and their high-gravity disks were mostly recreated through theoretical sketches up to the five years following Interstellar ’s release. Instead of showcasing them as just two-dimensional holes, the distorted variations of a high gravitational field were achieved with a more three-dimensional spherical look. Visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin and his team pulled off their depiction of black holes so well that it resembled real photographs procured by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019 — five years after the movie's release. These photos rightly showed how close Christopher Nolan’s movie came to accurately visualizing a black hole and the surrounding boundary, aka event horizon.

Interstellar was lauded for presenting a picture of a black hole that came the closest to this photo, right from the black, empty center to the rotating accretion disk. However, as the Event Horizon Telescope ’s official website points out, the science of Interstellar slightly falters away from reality for aesthetic reasons. The main difference was that the movie’s version of a black hole appears to have reversed the brightness in the approaching and receding side of the disks. While the approaching side appears brighter, the receding side is much dimmer. Interstellar , however, didn’t stick to this color tone even though it otherwise came very close to predicting the real thing.

Physicist Gerard O'Neill's Theories Inspired The Movie's Space Habitats

It was the late theoretical physicist Gerard O’Neill who came up with a kind of new-age Noah’s Ark to transport all of humanity to another planet, much like what the scientists and astronauts of Interstellar were planning to do. Aptly titled O’Neill cylinders, these conceptual space settlements were faithfully recreated by the Interstellar special effects team as a means of space colonization. The O'Neill cylinders are supposed to have two cylinders that rotate opposite to each other, a method to create artificial gravity in the planet to be inhabited. Interestingly, Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos proposed building such gigantic O’Neill cylinders in 2019 (via Popular Mechanics ).

Interstellar's original script featured a very different version of Murph, which would have ruined the character's emotional stakes and ending.

Interstellar Writer Jonathan Nolan Studied Relativity At The California Institute of Technology

Jonathan Nolan has collaborated with his brother Christopher Nolan on several projects, going all the way back to Memento . While the 2000 neo-noir was based on Jonathan Nolan's short story, Interstellar proved to be an equally personal project for him considering that he had spent four years at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to study relativity to come up with the science of Interstellar . He revealed this behind-the-scenes tidbit in an interview on Larry King Now . Caltech was, of course, beneficial to the making of the movie considering that Kip Thorne had also been a long-serving researcher and lecturer at the university.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Praises Interstellar Over 2001

Stanley Kubrick’s profound saga 2001: A Space Odyssey still holds up today for its prophetic commentary on space travel and artificial intelligence, among other concepts. Upon its release, Interstellar drew comparisons to 2001 for its philosophical approach to space colonization in the future and specific robotic technologies. Yet scientific thinker, author, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says the science of Interstellar holds up even more than 2001 , particularly for its representation of black holes. On social media and in an interview with NBC , Tyson had words of praise for Interstellar ’s accurate exploration of concepts like Einstein’s theories of relativity and the curvature of space.

What stood out for Tyson was the way Interstellar ’s version of a black hole reflected the distorting space in its vicinity. With the surrounding imagery around the black hole being more distorted, the science of Interstellar only came out to look more realistic for the revered physicist. Tyson did agree that back when Kubrick worked on 2001 the mathematical calculations weren’t detailed enough to predict the exact surroundings of a black hole or a wormhole system. So, Kubrick couldn’t really tap into the nitty-gritty of space exploration as much as Christopher Nolan could achieve, despite Interstellar having been clearly influenced by 2001 .

interstellar (2014)

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Interstellar review – if it’s spectacle you want, this delivers

Despite a plot full of holes of various kinds, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic remains enthralling and amazing

Christopher Nolan: the man who rebooted the blockbuster

T he title of Christopher Nolan’s behemoth space epic says it all – a grandiloquent declaration of scale that smacks simultaneously of ambition and hubris – like Titanic, both the ship and the film. The good news is that this flawed but frequently awe-inspiring movie about wormholes and black holes does not implode into a dark star of disappointment; if it’s spectacle you want, then Interstellar delivers, particularly when viewed in Nolan’s preferred 70mm Imax format.

Yet while the film’s massive gravitational pull guarantees astronomical box-office returns, fans of Nolan’s finest works ( Memento , The Prestige , Batman Begins , Inception ) will long for more narrative rigour as raw science, rich sentimentality and rank silliness battle for the heart and soul of this very personal project. As a diehard Nolanoid, I found myself largely enthralled, often amazed and occasionally aghast.

Seamlessly amalgamating his own semi-formed stories about space travel with a script that his brother Jonathan (“Jonah”) had been developing for Steven Spielberg, Nolan’s long-gestating magnum opus is a futuristic fable firmly rooted in the age-old traditions of sci-fi. We open in a dust-bowl dystopian future where blighted food supplies are dwindling and inhabitable Earth is dying. Harking back to Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie’s 1933 novel When Worlds Collide (a Depression-era text brought to the screen by producer George Pal in the 1950s), Nasa builds a “space ark” – a giant ship that will take mankind to a new home in the stars, provided the “problem of gravity” can be solved by avuncular Professor Brand (Michael Caine).

Meanwhile, Right Stuff -style pilot-turned-farmer Cooper ( Matthew McConaughey ) is prompted by ghostly forces to lead an exploratory mission through a wormhole beyond the rings of Saturn, abandoning his family in search of a future for all humanity. What follows is a dizzying mash-up of The Haunting , Slaughterhouse-Five , Silent Running , Event Horizon and the director’s cut of Aliens , with the inverted time shifts of Inception (an hour on a distant planet equals lost years back on Earth) thrown in for extra emotional heft.

While it’s temptingly easy to cite 2001 (anything invoking a dimensional “star gate” triggers rarely positive Kubrick comparisons), the movie that hangs over Interstellar like the dust cloud atmospherically engulfing its earthbound scenes is Contact , with which it shares much more than just leading man McConaughey. Adapted from a novel by Carl Sagan (with signature input from Interstellar ’s theoretical physicist Kip Thorne), Robert Zemeckis’s 1997 epic similarly centred on a daughter crying out to a lost father whose soul seems to abide somewhere across the universe.

In both movies, it is these daughters who detect the first stirrings of an “alien” encounter: Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) identifying recurrent sequences in the white noise of interstellar radiation in Contact ; Murph (very affectingly played in her younger years by Mackenzie Foy) spying morse code in poltergeist disturbances in Interstellar . From such discoveries are missions launched, voyaging across time and space at the apparent instruction of a superior intelligence offering cryptic hands across the universe.

Intergalactic portals are breached, timescales bifurcated, science and faith reconciled. Crucially, for all their astro-maths exposition, the constant in both stories is neither time, space, nor gravity, but love. More than once I was reminded of Contact ’s Ellie striking the outer limits of the universe and breathlessly declaring: “They should have sent a poet.” In dispatching Nolan beyond the stars, that’s exactly what they’ve done.

Despite the clunkiness of its dialogue (would an astronaut really need to have wormholes explained to him just as he approached one?) and ludicrousness of its plot (I can only accept the final 15 minutes if it’s all an illusion – which I suspect it isn’t), Interstellar is the work of someone who dreams with their eyes wide open. There is no one working in cinema today who has as much faith in the overwhelming power of the image as Nolan and who trusts their audience to be similarly awestruck. Like visionary film-maker Douglas Trumbull (who conjured 2001 ’s most memorable effects), Nolan’s primary register is light, and one can legitimately trace his love of celluloid back to the earliest experiments of Georges Méliès, who first used movies to send us on A Trip to the Moon in 1902. Watching Insterstellar , I felt connected to a century of mind-boggling spectacular cinema – to films such as The Ten Commandments , The Robe and Ben-Hur, which made you catch your breath at the sheer scope and intensity of the imagery. As Roy Batty says in Blade Runner : “I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe...”

Whether such ocular delights are enough to assuage any anxieties about the plot remains a moot point. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at Transcendence , the directorial debut from Nolan’s long-time director of photography Wally Pfister (here replaced by keen-eyed Hoyte van Hoytema) which was sneeringly dismissed by many as “ Inception -lite”. Yet there is nothing in Pfister’s nostalgically ambitious directorial debut that is any more foolish than the heavily signposted twists and turns of Nolan’s latest.

Similarly, Gravity may have seemed philosophically flimsier, but it made more sense (and arguably pushed the visual effects envelope further) than Interstellar . Nolan’s regular composer Hans Zimmer has the measure of the madness, cooking up an eerie score that swerves from the creaky Goblin-esque horrors of mid-period Dario Argento to the imposing hallelujahs of what sounds like a massive church organ.

While the end result may not represent the pinnacle of Nolan’s extraordinary career, it nevertheless reaffirms him as cinema’s leading blockbuster auteur, a director who can stamp his singular vision on to every frame of a gargantuan team effort in the manner of Spielberg, Cameron and Kubrick. “Whose subconscious are we in?” asked Ellen Page in Inception . The answer here, as always, is unmistakably Nolan’s.

Interstellar
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10 best IMAX movies ever, ranked

Not too long ago, IMAX movies were seemingly reserved for documentary and nature films at museums and science centers with giant dome movie screens that dwarfed anything available in local theaters. But in the last two decades, filmmakers have gravitated towards using IMAX cameras for even greater images, while moviegoers have shifted to watching mainstream releases in IMAX theaters around the world.

10: Tron: Legacy (2010)

9. avatar: the way of water (2022), 8. dunkirk (2017), 7. avengers: infinity war (2018), 6: gravity (2013), 5. avengers: endgame (2019).

4. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

3. The Dark Knight (2008)

2. interstellar (2014), 1. oppenheimer (2023).

Last month, Dune: Part Two hit theaters, and the critical consensus of the sequel is that it’s best enjoyed on the biggest screens possible. Before you make plans to see the hit sci-fi sequel in IMAX for the second or fifth time, we’re taking a look back at the 10 best IMAX movies ever.

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Unlike many of the films on this list, Tron: Legacy was not filmed with IMAX cameras. But it was converted into an IMAX release, and the visuals of the Grid really lend themselves well to the larger format. Despite the disappointing box office returns of Legacy , director Joseph Kosinski established himself as a top filmmaker. His experience with this movie surely helped guide him on his later films, including Oblivion and Top Gun: Maverick .

Legacy is a sequel to the original Tron from 1982. Garrett Hedlund plays Sam Flynn, the son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who disappeared into the Grid decades earlier. After unexpectedly following his father into the living computer world that he created, Sam encounters Quorra (Olivia Wilde, director of Don’t Worry Darling ), a sentient isomorphic algorithm. Sam also discovers that Clu (Bridges), an evil duplicate of his father, has taken over the Grid and transformed it in his image.

Watch Tron: Legacy on Disney+ .

The original Avatar was shown in IMAX during its initial 2009 release, but James Cameron went several steps further with the sequel. Avatar: The Way of Water was filmed entirely with IMAX cameras. That made a huge difference when creating a larger canvas for the visuals of Pandora and the expanded scope of the story. One of the reasons why The Way of Water earned $2.320 billion worldwide is that audiences flocked to see it in both IMAX and 3D.

Avatar: The Way of Water picks up a few years after the original, as Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) start a family, including their adoptive daughter, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who is more than an ordinary Na’vi or an avatar. When humanity reinvades Pandora, Jake discovers that the armed forces are led by an avatar clone of his old nemesis, Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). To protect his family, Jake relocates them from the forest and joins a water tribe of Na’vi.

Watch Avatar: The Way of Water on Disney+ .

You’re going to see Christopher Nolan ‘s name come up a lot on this list, and that’s because few filmmakers have so thoroughly embraced IMAX as he has. Nolan’s World War II epic, Dunkirk , was filmed almost entirely in IMAX. In addition to using IMAX cameras to film vintage aircraft and boats, Nolan was also the first theatrical director to utilize handheld IMAX cameras in a mainstream movie.

Dunkirk is based on the true story of what could have been the premature end of World War II. After British and French forces lost the Battle of France, they were pinned down on the shores of Dunkirk by the enemy. It took an extraordinary effort, including British civilian ships, to rescue the troops and allow them to fight another day.

Watch Dunkirk on Peacock .

Almost every superhero movie gets an IMAX release, but Avengers: Infinity War and its sequel, Avengers: Endgame , have the distinction of being the first major studio movies to be entirely filmed with IMAX digital cameras. Anthony and Joe Russo not only had a larger canvas to fill the screen, they also had the narrative momentum of almost every previous Marvel Studios film to date leading to this crossover event.

Several parts of this movie seem like they were designed to make the audience cheer, especially when Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and the Guardians of the Galaxy show up. But this story belongs to Thanos (Josh Brolin), and his triumph gave the film a truly shocking cliffhanger.

Watch Avengers: Infinity War on Disney+ .

Alfonso Cuarón won an Oscar for Best Director, thanks in no small part to his brilliantly executed use of the IMAX format. Sandra Bullock isn’t actually floating above the Earth during this movie, but Cuarón specifically decided to film Gravity like a documentary so that audiences could buy the illusion of space.

Bullock spends most of the movie onscreen by herself because her character, Ryan Stone, is the only survivor after her space shuttle is destroyed in orbit. And without that ship, Ryan’s chances of survival or rescue are slim to none.

Watch Gravity on Netflix .

How do you top the sheer spectacle of Avengers: Infinity War ? For Avengers: Endgame , the Russo brothers started small as the team was forced to deal with their devastating defeat in the previous film. They also had to dwell on their personal losses as well. With three hours of screen time to play with, there was enough room for those character beats before the Avengers literally dived back into their earlier films for a time heist.

Both Infinity War and Endgame are available to stream on Disney+ in the IMAX ratio. The two films are pretty close in terms of quality, but Endgame gets the edge with its more crowd-pleasing moments and an epic battle between an army of Avengers and Thanos’ forces.

Watch Avengers: Endgame on Disney+ .

4. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

The Mission: Impossible movies have been so successful that it’s easy to forget that the franchise was essentially done after Mission: Impossible III in 2006. It took another five years before The Incredibles director Brad Bird made his live-action directorial debut with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol . That film revitalized the franchise. And for his first time in the big chair, Bird insisted on using IMAX cameras for key parts of the movie, including a sequence where Tom Cruise climbs the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, on location in Dubai.

Ghost Protocol finds Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in hot water with both the American government and the Russians after he’s blamed for a terrorist attack in Moscow. That’s why Ethan and his entire IMF team, William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), and Jane Carter (Paula Patton), have to go rogue to clear their names and save the day.

Watch Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol on Paramount+ .

Nolan’s IMAX journey began in The Dark Knight , which was also the first big Hollywood production to utilize IMAX cameras. Only a few of the film’s sequences were filmed in IMAX, including the opening bank robbery and the thrilling detour to Hong Kong which proved that “Batman has no jurisdiction.” He goes where he wants to go.

The third film, The Dark Knight Rises , featured more IMAX camera work than The Dark Knight . But The Dark Knight earns its place on this list for being one of the all-time great superhero movies, if not the greatest. Batman (Christian Bale) finally met his match in The Joker (Heath Ledger), and the bar was set high for all future cinematic trips to Gotham City.

Watch The Dark Knight on Max .

Nolan significantly ramped up his use of IMAX cameras for Interstellar , his first real venture into science fiction. Space has rarely seemed larger than in this movie or more foreboding. Additionally, Nolan’s preference for practical effects and sets made both the space shuttle interiors and exterior planet shots seem more real.

Matthew McConaughey plays Joseph Cooper, a former NASA pilot who is recruited to join Dr. Amelia Brand ( Anne Hathaway ) and others on a long-term mission in space to find a new home for humanity before Earth becomes unlivable. The price for that journey is that Cooper misses the lives of his children, including his now adult daughter, Murph (Jessica Chastain), who in turn has to figure out a way to get humanity off-world. Late in this film, there’s a sequence where Cooper’s emotional turmoil is joined with spectacular visuals as the solution presents itself.

Watch Interstellar on Paramount+ .

It wasn’t a surprise that Oppenheimer won the Oscar for Best Picture as it was a critical hit and a surprising success at the box office, the latter was driven by the collective need to see it in IMAX. Nolan’s latest film once again extensively uses IMAX cameras. Unlike The Dark Knight , Dunkirk , or Interstellar , the story isn’t driven by action or effects. Instead, it’s about the race to build the atomic bomb, as well as more intimate dramatic scenes like senate confirmation and security hearings that don’t often make for riveting viewing. In this film, they are.

Nolan used black-and-white IMAX film during a few sequences in Oppenheimer , which doesn’t unfold in a typically linear fashion. Instead, the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ) is shown before, during, and after his part in The Manhattan Project, as well as flash forwards to a disastrous security hearing that was meant to destroy his reputation. Meanwhile, a separate part of the narrative belongs to Lewis Strauss ( Robert Downey Jr. ) as he pays the price for his efforts to strike back at Oppenheimer. It’s a fantastic movie from start to finish and also the pinnacle of IMAX filmmaking to date.

Watch Oppenheimer on Peacock .

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Heading into summer, Netflix's fantasy lineup could really use a touch of magic. When the 2021 remake of Mortal Kombat is one of the top suggestions in fantasy, then Netflix has a real problem on its hands with this category. The latest fantasy additions, The Great Wall, Hellboy, and Conan the Destroyer, aren't masterpieces themselves. But they're better than nothing.

Aside from a handful of originals like Damsel and The School for Good and Evil, fantasy is just not getting a lot of love from Netflix. We really want to see this genre flourish on Netflix, but that's going to require a lot more effort from the streamer. In the meantime, these are the best fantasy movies on Netflix right now.

The final couple of months of the school year can be a slog for kids and adults alike, but the best kids' movies on Netflix right now can help. When the kids need a distraction (and you need a break), you can turn to Netflix's extensive collection of kid-friendly movies, including recent hits, fun originals, and even some exclusive choose-your-own-adventure stories.

You want to make sure your kids are watching movies that are age-appropriate, but you don't want to scroll endlessly to find something you both can agree on. So, we've done the scrolling and made this list for you. We update it every month with all the best kids' movies on Netflix, including new additions Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Smurfs: The Lost Village.

May is a big month for sci-fi on Netflix thanks to the arrival of Atlas, Brad Peyton's first directed film since 2018's Rampage. The sci-fi action thriller stars Jennifer Lopez as Atlas Shepherd, an intelligent data analyst forced to make an uneasy alliance with AI to save humanity. Besides Lopez, Atlas' ensemble includes Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, and Mark Strong.

Atlas comes to Netflix on May 24. Until then, many sci-fi films are in the streamer's library, from thrillers and anime to action and dystopian. Below are five sci-fi movies available to stream this month, including the sequel to an original space opera, a brilliant satire, and an innovative action thriller. Rebel Moon -- Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)

A Neil deGrasse Tyson-approved list of the best sci-fi movies

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Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has never been shy about expressing his opinion about movies on X/Twitter — and, specifically, weighing in as to whether they got the scientific elements right or not. On a recent episode of his show StarTalk , meanwhile, he decided to actually share a detailed list of the sci-fi movies that he thinks are the best of the best, detailing what they got right, what they missed the mark on, and why some of them are so good that they deserve a “hall pass” for any errors.

At any rate, the list below includes all the movies that Tyson ranks as the best sci-fi gems, and it adds some color from him here and there as to why he’s included these specific picks. And we’ll start with his single favorite movie of all time.

The Matrix (1999) : “You gotta love The Matrix and how deeply thought through those plot lines are,” Tyson says. One plot point he does quibble with: The humans are used by the machines as a source of power, but the humans still need to be fed in order to be kept alive. Tyson mused that the machines could actually derive sufficient energy from what the humans were being fed with, cutting out the middleman entirely.

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The Blob (1958) : Reaching deep into the past for this one, Tyson gives this old-school creature feature high marks because of the way it imagines aliens looking amoeba-like — totally different, in other words, from almost every other movie in which you see an alien depicted as something like a little green man.

Interstellar (2014) : Tyson has made no secret that he’s basically a Christopher Nolan fanboy. This one is many people’s favorite movie from the director (I’m one of the weirdos who loves Tenet the most, but that’s neither here nor there). Interstellar — in which a team of NASA scientists, engineers, and pilots traverses the universe to find a new home for humanity — earns a spot on Tyson’s list for having “the most authentic physics” compared to any other movie ever made.

Back to the Future (1985) : Gee, I wonder why this all-time classic starring Michael J. Fox is on this list of the best sci-fi movies? Obviously, in Tyson’s words, it’s the best time-travel movie ever made, hands down.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) : “No, there’s no weird aliens,” Tyson points out here. No violence, and no blood. “It’s just a suspenseful drama of how we might react, learning that aliens have come to visit.” Watch it, he urges, for how much thought and care was put into the film and the story.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) : Last but not least, we come to director Stanley Kubrick’s classic that’s adapted from a story by Arthur C. Clarke. Tyson puts this one all the way at the very top of his list of the best sci-fi movies. “Yes, it gets weird,” he acknowledges. “What matters is how much influence this film had on everything .”

Check out Tyson’s full remarks in the clip below, in which he not only explains his favorite sci-fi movies but the ones that he thinks are the worst — like Armageddon , which he blasts for “violating more laws of physics per minute” than almost any movie ever made, despite being another entertaining romp in which Bruce Willis gets to save the day.

This article talks about:

Andy Meek is a reporter based in Memphis who has covered media, entertainment, and culture for over 20 years. His work has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Forbes, and The Financial Times, and he’s written for BGR since 2015. Andy's coverage includes technology and entertainment, and he has a particular interest in all things streaming.

Over the years, he’s interviewed legendary figures in entertainment and tech that range from Stan Lee to John McAfee, Peter Thiel, and Reed Hastings.

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The best films and documentaries about space exploration

O ur knowledge of space is both limited and constantly expanding. For decades, space exploration has been the inquisitive center of several features on the silver screen. Some have been mind-altering science fiction stories; others have been "how is this real?" documentaries. Exploring the cosmos has never been easier—or more effortless.

'2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968)

A classic of the space-movie genre, Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" has left its mark. "Audiences who came to '2001' expecting a sci-fi movie got, instead, an essay on time," said The New Yorker . The movie follows a spacecraft manned by two men and a supercomputer on its journey to Jupiter to study the origins of a lunar artifact. "2001" made history, "encompassing everything from the dawn of man, the space race, artificial intelligence, space exploration and trans-dimensional travel," said New Scientist .

Where to watch: Max

'When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions' (2008)

"When We Left Earth" is a documentary series by the Discovery Channel that chronicles the first fifty years of space travel through accounts by the people who made it happen. The series "captures the excitement and danger inherent in the quest to explore the cosmos," said Peptalk Radio . The series uses archival footage and expert testimonies to paint a picture of the journey into space. "Indeed, you'll find yourself not wanting to leave the TV, let alone the planet," said Robert Pearlman in a review for The Space Review .

Where to watch: Hulu, Philo

'The Martian' (2015)

When "The Martian" was released in 2015, everyone yammered about it and for good reason. The sci-fi film follows the journey of an astronaut (Matt Damon) who is stranded on Mars and his subsequent journey to return home. While exaggerated scientifically, the movie is a "bracing survivalist yarn with a reliable charm," said TimeOut . "The Martian" is a "trip that takes you into that immensity called the universe and deep into the equally vast landscape of a single consciousness," Manohla Dargis said in a review for The New York Times . "It's unambiguously on the side of science and rationalism."

Where to watch: Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play Movies

'Expedition Mars' (2016)

The documentary "Expedition Mars" details the journey of putting the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on the surface of Mars. The film "brings all the drama to life with never-before-seen footage from the archives of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, first-person recollections by mission scientists and engineers, and vivid, realistic animation of the rovers in the actual terrain they explored on Mars," said National Geographic . The documentary shows real space-flight footage and conveys the difficulties of getting equipment and people to Mars. "Alongside the drama, Expedition Mars outlines real tech being developed for future Mars exploration, like advanced rockets, habitats and rovers," said Peptalk Radio.

Where to watch: Disney+

'Interstellar' (2014)

Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" is an epic science fiction tale following an astronaut (Matthew McConaughey) and crew through their journey across space in an attempt to find a suitable planet to relocate the people of a dying planet Earth. "Interstellar" also presents dazzling visuals. The film spans space and time and might enter 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," said A.O. Scott in a review for the Times .

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video

'Cosmos: Possible Worlds' (2020)

"Cosmos: Possible Worlds," hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson, is a documentary series that takes "audiences on a series of spiritual voyages of exploration," said National Geographic . "The show reveals previously uncharted realms, including lost worlds, worlds yet to come and the worlds that humans may one day inhabit." The series discusses the human pursuit of deep-space exploration, the potential of extraterrestrial life and "presents both the wonders that could await and the consequences of neglecting our duties to each other and the world we currently inhabit," said a review in IndieWire . "Cosmos: Possible Worlds" aims to chart the "connections between outer space and the shared history of our civilization," said Peptalk Radio.

Where to watch: Google Play Movies, Tubi

Outer space can be explored through the silver screen

‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Ending Explained: “I Can Feel It. My Mind Is Going.”

Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece '2001: A Space Odyssey' remains one of his most confounding films, so let's explore what the ending means.

The Big Picture

2001: A Space Odyssey is a multi-genre film that explores dichotomies between humans and machines, humans and space, and the self.
The monolith in the film represents a stage in evolution, with artificial intelligence realizing that eliminating humans is the best path to success.
The film's ending, with Dr. Bowman aging and transforming into a fetus, suggests that he is being studied by god-like entities and ultimately transformed into a superhuman being.

2001: A Space Odyssey , directed by Stanley Kubrick , is a sci-fi film, a thriller, an interpersonal drama, an origin narrative, and a horror story. The dichotomies at play in the film are varied: between human and machine, human and space, human and human, and the self and the self. For over half a century, Kubrick's film has been discussed, explored, and a frequent subject of conversation for cinephiles. But how does 2001: A Space Odyssey end?

2001: A Space Odyssey

After uncovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, a spacecraft is sent to Jupiter to find its origins: a spacecraft manned by two men and the supercomputer HAL 9000.

What Is '2001: A Space Odyssey' About?

2001: A Space Odyssey opens with a group of hominids four million years ago as they discover weaponry in the form of a bone, and through this new tool, seem to discover competition and violence. In these early sequences, a monolith appears, an ominous, large structure, which confounds the hominids, appearing almost to signal the next step of evolution.

After this opening with the hominids, the film jumps forward in time to a group of astronauts who are sent to investigate a monolith that has been found in space. The computer system, HAL , guiding the spaceship, turns against the astronauts. HAL is successful at killing off most of the team, but astronaut Dr. David Bowman ( Keir Dullea ) survives and disconnects HAL to take control of the ship from the A.I.

What Does the Monolith in '2001: A Space Odyssey' Represent?

The reappearing monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey represents yet another stage in evolution, as artificial intelligence questions what is best for mankind, and realizes that the best tactic for success is simply to wipe out the human component of the mission. Once Dr. Bowman takes solitary control over the spaceship after unplugging HAL, he discovers another monolith in space. Before he can investigate it, he gets pulled into a galactic tunnel, which leads to a dizzying, lengthy scene of refracted light, and special effects that feel ahead of their time.

What Happens at the End of '2001: A Space Odyssey'?

At the end of this journey, Dr. Bowman appears in an ornate bedroom, as he rapidly ages with each cut, turning Bowman from a young man to an old man on his deathbed. Eventually, when he seems close to dying, another monolith appears at the end of his bed. When he tries to touch it, his body turns into a fetus, and, switching back to space, we see the giant fetus floating next to Earth. What are we to make of this ambiguous ending ?

What Does '2001: A Space Odyssey's Ending Mean?

In a 1980 interview with Jun ' ichi Yaoi , Kubrick offers his interpretation of the film’s ending:

I try to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it, but I'll try. The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film. They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn’t quite sure. Just as we’re not quite sure what do in zoos with animals to try to give them what we think is their natural environment. Anyway, when they get finished with him, as happens in so many myths of all cultures in the world, he is transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to Earth, transformed and made into some sort of superman. We have to only guess what happens when he goes back. It is the pattern of a great deal of mythology, and that is what we were trying to suggest.

Let’s start at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s interview. We learn as soon as we see Dr. Bowman in the bedroom that we are in the POV of the creatures who placed him there. We are observing Dr. Bowman in his personal zoo, just as those shapeless, formless forces are. The shifting time isn't just confusing to the audience, it's confounding to Dr. Bowman as well. Is he moving at supernatural speeds towards the end of his life? Does he imagine he is moving faster, or slower than he actually is? He doesn’t have a solid sense of time, so it makes sense that neither do we.

How Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey’ Influenced ’The Creator’s Runtime

The idea of the French-style furniture being an inaccurate replica itself, as well as a potentially inaccurate representation of what Dr. Bowman would like from the perspective of the amorphous creatures, is interesting. It creates a sense of multiplying dizziness, one that disorients Dr. Bowman, dislodging him from his surroundings. To Kubrick’s point about the zoo, whether animals’ spaces are created with intention, they are nonetheless imprisoned; so, too, is Dr. Bowman imprisoned, even amongst his bedroom’s material “comforts.”

Ultimately, the hominid sequence, the consistent monoliths, the rise and death of HAL, and the perturbing death and regeneration of Dr. Bowman indicate evolution, as a process, is much smarter and more persistent than any of the individual spirits, structures, or circumstances that function within it. That said, each of these sections in the film could exist independently, so there is a deep possibility for evaluation here. Kubrick’s creativity - and insistence to pose questions, not supply answers - make the film a diehard cinematic art that continues to challenge, perplex, and fascinate audiences over fifty years later.

2001: A Space Odyssey is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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A Groundbreaking Scientific Discovery Just Created the Instruction Manual for Light-Speed Travel

In a first for warp drives, this research actually obeys the laws of physics.

If a superluminal—meaning faster than the speed of light—warp drive like Alcubierre’s worked, it would revolutionize humanity’s endeavors across the universe , allowing us, perhaps, to reach Alpha Centauri, our closest star system, in days or weeks even though it’s four light years away.

The clip above from the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond showcases the effect of a starship zipping through space inside a faster-than-light warp bubble. You can see the imagined but hypothetically accurate warping of spacetime.

However, the Alcubierre drive has a glaring problem: the force behind its operation, called “negative energy,” involves exotic particles—hypothetical matter that, as far as we know, doesn’t exist in our universe. Described only in mathematical terms, exotic particles act in unexpected ways, like having negative mass and working in opposition to gravity (in fact, it has “anti-gravity”). For the past 30 years, scientists have been publishing research that chips away at the inherent hurdles to light speed revealed in Alcubierre’s foundational 1994 article published in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity .

Now, researchers at the New York City-based think tank Applied Physics believe they’ve found a creative new approach to solving the warp drive’s fundamental roadblock. Along with colleagues from other institutions, the team envisioned a “positive energy” system that doesn’t violate the known laws of physics . It’s a game-changer, say two of the study’s authors: Gianni Martire, CEO of Applied Physics, and Jared Fuchs, Ph.D., a senior scientist there. Their work, also published in Classical and Quantum Gravity in late April, could be the first chapter in the manual for interstellar spaceflight.

Positive energy makes all the difference. Imagine you are an astronaut in space, pushing a tennis ball away from you. Instead of moving away, the ball pushes back, to the point that it would “take your hand off” if you applied enough pushing force, Martire tells Popular Mechanics . That’s a sign of negative energy, and, though the Alcubierre drive design requires it, there’s no way to harness it.

Instead, regular old positive energy is more feasible for constructing the “ warp bubble .” As its name suggests, it’s a spherical structure that surrounds and encloses space for a passenger ship using a shell of regular—but incredibly dense—matter. The bubble propels the spaceship using the powerful gravity of the shell, but without causing the passengers to feel any acceleration. “An elevator ride would be more eventful,” Martire says.

That’s because the density of the shell, as well as the pressure it exerts on the interior, is controlled carefully, Fuchs tells Popular Mechanics . Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, according to the gravity-bound principles of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity . So the bubble is designed such that observers within their local spacetime environment—inside the bubble—experience normal movement in time. Simultaneously, the bubble itself compresses the spacetime in front of the ship and expands it behind the ship, ferrying itself and the contained craft incredibly fast. The walls of the bubble generate the necessary momentum, akin to the momentum of balls rolling, Fuchs explains. “It’s the movement of the matter in the walls that actually creates the effect for passengers on the inside.”

Building on its 2021 paper published in Classical and Quantum Gravity —which details the same researchers’ earlier work on physical warp drives—the team was able to model the complexity of the system using its own computational program, Warp Factory. This toolkit for modeling warp drive spacetimes allows researchers to evaluate Einstein’s field equations and compute the energy conditions required for various warp drive geometries. Anyone can download and use it for free . These experiments led to what Fuchs calls a mini model, the first general model of a positive-energy warp drive. Their past work also demonstrated that the amount of energy a warp bubble requires depends on the shape of the bubble; for example, the flatter the bubble in the direction of travel, the less energy it needs.

☄️ DID YOU KNOW? People have been imagining traveling as fast as light for nearly a century, if not longer. The 1931 novel Islands of Space by John W. Campbell mentions a “warp” method in the context of superluminal space travel.

This latest advancement suggests fresh possibilities for studying warp travel design, Erik Lentz, Ph.D., tells Popular Mechanics . In his current position as a staff physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, Lentz contributes to research on dark matter detection and quantum information science research. His independent research in warp drive theory also aims to be grounded in conventional physics while reimagining the shape of warped space. The topic needs to overcome many practical hurdles, he says.

Controlling warp bubbles requires a great deal of coordination because they involve enormous amounts of matter and energy to keep the passengers safe and with a similar passage of time as the destination. “We could just as well engineer spacetime where time passes much differently inside [the passenger compartment] than outside. We could miss our appointment at Proxima Centauri if we aren’t careful,” Lentz says. “That is still a risk if we are traveling less than the speed of light.” Communication between people inside the bubble and outside could also become distorted as it passes through the curvature of warped space, he adds.

While Applied Physics’ current solution requires a warp drive that travels below the speed of light, the model still needs to plug in a mass equivalent to about two Jupiters. Otherwise, it will never achieve the gravitational force and momentum high enough to cause a meaningful warp effect. But no one knows what the source of this mass could be—not yet, at least. Some research suggests that if we could somehow harness dark matter , we could use it for light-speed travel, but Fuchs and Martire are doubtful, since it’s currently a big mystery (and an exotic particle).

Despite the many problems scientists still need to solve to build a working warp drive, the Applied Physics team claims its model should eventually get closer to light speed. And even if a feasible model remains below the speed of light, it’s a vast improvement over today’s technology. For example, traveling at even half the speed of light to Alpha Centauri would take nine years. In stark contrast, our fastest spacecraft, Voyager 1—currently traveling at 38,000 miles per hour—would take 75,000 years to reach our closest neighboring star system.

Of course, as you approach the actual speed of light, things get truly weird, according to the principles of Einstein’s special relativity . The mass of an object moving faster and faster would increase infinitely, eventually requiring an infinite amount of energy to maintain its speed.

“That’s the chief limitation and key challenge we have to overcome—how can we have all this matter in our [bubble], but not at such a scale that we can never even put it together?” Martire says. It’s possible the answer lies in condensed matter physics, he adds. This branch of physics deals particularly with the forces between atoms and electrons in matter. It has already proven fundamental to several of our current technologies, such as transistors, solid-state lasers, and magnetic storage media.

The other big issue is that current models allow a stable warp bubble, but only for a constant velocity. Scientists still need to figure out how to design an initial acceleration. On the other end of the journey, how will the ship slow down and stop? “It’s like trying to grasp the automobile for the first time,” Martire says. “We don’t have an engine just yet, but we see the light at the end of the tunnel.” Warp drive technology is at the stage of 1882 car technology, he says: when automobile travel was possible, but it still looked like a hard, hard problem.

The Applied Physics team believes future innovations in warp travel are inevitable. The general positive energy model is a first step. Besides, you don’t need to zoom at light speed to achieve distances that today are just a dream, Martire says. “Humanity is officially, mathematically, on an interstellar track.”

Before joining Popular Mechanics , Manasee Wagh worked as a newspaper reporter, a science journalist, a tech writer, and a computer engineer. She’s always looking for ways to combine the three greatest joys in her life: science, travel, and food.

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Everything we know about Marvel’s Fantastic Four movie

Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm, and Johnny Storm are officially joining the MCU in 2025.

Devan Coggan (rhymes with seven slogan) is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. Most of her personality is just John Mulaney quotes and Lord of the Rings references.

Marvel’s First Family is returning to theaters.

After three previous film attempts, a new Fantastic Four movie is hitting the screen, this time as part of the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe . Marvel and Disney first announced plans to reboot the iconic superhero team back in 2019 , and now, those plans have become a reality, with WandaVision’s Matt Shakman helming a new take on the iconic quartet.

Before the new Fantastic Four hits theaters in 2025, read on for everything we know about the new film.

Phillip Faraone/Getty; Karwai Tang/WireImage; Presley Ann/Getty; Todd Owyoung/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

Why a Fantastic Four reboot?

The Fantastic Four has long been a staple of Marvel comics: Marvel legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first introduced the unconventional family in 1961, following four scientists as they gained powers after being exposed to cosmic radiation. The core four became one of Marvel’s most beloved superhero teams: Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Ben Grimm/The Thing, and Johnny Storm/The Human Torch.

Back in the 1980s, Marvel sold the film rights to all things Fantastic Four, and there was a low-budget attempt at a film in the ‘90s . (It was ultimately never released.) In 2005, Fox released the first big-screen Fantastic Four, directed by Tim Story and starring Ioan Gruffudd , Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis , and future Captain America, Chris Evans . (They returned in 2007 for a sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer .) Then, in 2015, Josh Trank directed another reboot attempt for Fox , this time starring Miles Teller , Kate Mara , Jamie Bell , and Michael B. Jordan .

Despite the quartet’s popularity in the comics, the film adaptations were, well… less than enthusiastically received . But in 2017, Disney announced plans to acquire rival studio Fox , regaining the rights to classic Marvel characters like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Soon after the deal was finalized in 2019, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige officially teased a new Fantastic Four movie at San Diego Comic-Con that year, formally bringing Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny into the broader MCU.

Who’s in the cast?

After months of speculation, Marvel finally revealed the new Fantastic Four cast on Valentine’s Day 2024. The Last of Us and Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal was confirmed to play Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, while The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby was announced as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman. Meanwhile, Stranger Things breakout Joseph Quinn will play Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, and The Bear Emmy winner Ebon Moss-Bachrach is starring as Ben Grimm/The Thing. Marvel also shared an illustrated first look at the film’s cast, a 1960s-inspired drawing showcasing the group’s iconic blue outfits from the comics.

After his casting was announced, Quinn told Entertainment Weekly that he was particularly excited about the opportunity to work with Pascal, Kirby, and Moss-Bachrach, adding that he and his costars “want to get this right.”

"Working with Vanessa, Pedro, Ebon — they're really consummate pros and brilliant in everything they're in," Quinn said. "So I'm really looking forward to establishing this familial dynamic with them and with Matt Shakman's guidance."

Since then, Marvel has also revealed that John Malkovich , Paul Walter Hauser, and Natasha Lyonne have all joined the cast in undisclosed roles. Fingers crossed that one of them might be playing H.E.R.B.I.E., the Fantastic Four’s longtime robot companion from the comics.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic; Marvel

Who’s the villain?

Marvel has mostly kept mum about the film’s plot, but the studio has revealed that Game of Thrones alum Ralph Ineson will be playing Galactus , the legendary planet-eating villain from the comics. The towering, purple-helmet-wearing baddie is one of the Fantastic Four’s most notorious foes, and he briefly appeared in 2007’s Rise of the Silver Surfer . (After his casting was announced, Ineson confirmed the news on social media, writing , “World devouring cosmic villain is it? I’ll see what I can do.”)

Galactus is often accompanied by his interstellar herald, the Silver Surfer, and Marvel has confirmed that Ozark star Julia Garner will play the role in the new film. Instead of playing Norrin Radd, the original Silver Surfer, Garner is set to star as Shalla-Bal , a female version of the Surfer from the original comics.

Who’s directing?

Originally, Jon Watts was set to helm the new Fantastic Four after directing all three of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies . But after he left the project in April 2022 , Marvel tapped WandaVision director Matt Shakman to step in. Shakman previously directed the 2014 thriller Cut Bank, but he’s best known for his prolific work as a television director, helming episodes of Succession, The Boys, Game of Thrones, Fargo, Mad Men, New Girl, House, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly 's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

How will this connect to the rest of the MCU?

Good question! Disney has wanted to bring the Fantastic Four into the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a long, long time. When the Fox deal was announced way back in 2017, a press release touted how the deal “provides Disney with the opportunity to reunite the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool with the Marvel family under one roof and create richer, more complex worlds of interrelated characters and stories."

Since then, a version of Reed Richards has already popped up in the MCU. John Krasinski appeared as an alternate-universe version of Reed in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a winking nod to how the former Office star was a popular fan choice to play the role. But Krasinski’s cameo was just a one-off, and when the new Fantastic Four hits theaters in 2025, it’ll mark the team’s official induction into the MCU.

It remains to be seen how the new Fantastic Four will connect to other Marvel projects — and whether we’ll see Reed, Sue, Ben, or Johnny team up with established Marvel heroes like the Avengers. (Rumors are already swirling that the movie will be set in the 1960s.) But we do know that Marvel already has big plans for the Fantastic Four: In 2023, Feige told Entertainment Weekly that he wants the team to be a “ big pillar of the MCU going forward , just the way they’ve been in the comics for 50 or 60 years.”

"Fantastic Four is the foundation for everything that came after in the comics," Feige said in 2023 . "There's certainly been versions of it [on screen], but never inhabiting the storytelling of the MCU. And that's something that is really exciting for us."

When does it come out?

Fantastic Four is expected to begin filming in summer 2024, with plans to hit theaters July 24, 2025.

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Cosmic butterfly or interstellar burger? This planet-forming disk is the largest ever seen

The largest planetary construction site ever seen, spanning hundreds of billions of miles in size, may very well be cast in an enormous shadow that accentuates its bizarre appearance. In short, it looks like a cosmic butterfly — and, for years, it was ignored.

The object, known as IRAS 23077+6707, was originally cataloged as a source of infrared emission by the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) in the 1980s. Then in 2016, while conducting a survey of active galaxies in the region of the constellation of Cepheus, astronomer Ciprian Berghea of the U.S. Naval Observatory serendipitously rediscovered it with the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS).

Berghea didn't know for sure what it was, but it appeared to have two parallel lobes with a dark lane between them — typical of an edge-on planet-forming disk. Bright parts in such an object represent dust-scattered light in the upper echelons of the disk, while the dark lane is the equivalent of our solar system 's ecliptic plane, where most of the material is concentrated. It is this dense section of material that blocks and absorbs the light of a system's central star. Upper and lower planes of the disk disperse gradually rather than exhibit a sharp edge, while two filaments trace those flared portions, which are also flared. Because of all this, the arrangement looks uncannily like a butterfly — but, in a way, those bright regions split by a dark lane also gives the impression of a hamburger. So, as per his Romanian heritage growing up near Transylvania, Berghea nicknamed IRAS 23077+6707 Dracula’s Chivito," a chivito being a hamburger-like sandwich from his native country.

Related: Cosmic 'sandwich' theory could explain how smaller planets are formed

Now, thanks to observations with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii, astronomers including Berghea have confirmed that this particular chivito is indeed a planet-forming disk seen from the edge, but it's no ordinary disk. It's the most immense planet-forming disk ever seen.

"What we found was incredible — evidence that this was the largest planet-forming disk ever discovered. It is extremely rich in dust and gas, which we know are the building blocks of planets," said Kristina Monsch, an astronomer with the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in a statement . Monch is the lead author of one of two new papers describing the disk.

To give a sense of the scale of this particular world-building yard, astronomers assume that it sits somewhere between 800 to 1,000 light-years away based on the fact that it is positioned in the sky close to the Cepheus star-forming region. If correct, then the angular size of the disk in our sky corresponds to the disk's radius being thousands of astronomical units (AU). To provide further context, one AU is defined as the average distance between Earth and the sun , or 149.6 million kilometers (93 million miles), while the outermost known planet, Neptune , is 30 AU from our sun.

"From the SMA data we can also weigh the dust and gas in this planetary nursery, which we found has enough material to form many giant planets — and out to distances over 300 times farther out than the distance between the sun and Jupiter !" said Monsch.

What's more, the disk is rotating. The SMA measured radio waves emitted from carbon monoxide gas within the disk, and some of these radio waves were redshifted , indicating that they are emitted by clouds of gas moving away from us; meanwhile, the submillimeter radio waves from carbon monoxide in other parts of the disk were blueshifted, meaning that they are moving toward us. This behavior is the hallmark of a rotating system.

"The data from the SMA offer us the smoking-gun evidence that … it is rotating around a star likely two to four times more massive than our own sun,” said Monsch. It's possible that this star is still growing as material from the disk falls inwards and accretes onto it.

Besides the disk's gargantuan size, another peculiar aspect is that the western lobe of the disk is noticeably dimmer than the other lobe by a factor of six. Monsch, Berghea and their colleagues are not sure why that is, but there are some possibilities being considered. One strong candidate is that it is just an illusion that the two halves are uneven in brightness, a geometric effect caused by the disk not being perfectly edge-on to us such that we can see a little more of the eastern half than the western half.

But there's another explanation too, which is that half of the disk lies in shadow.

This assumes that the disk, rather than being pregnant with planetary potential, has already given birth and that a giant planet is now plowing through the disk. This planet may be sweeping up raw material as it grows, carving a ringed path, or gap, in the disk in the process.

Such a gap would effectively bisect the disk, resulting in instabilities that'd cause the inner disk to become warped like a vinyl record that has been bent too much. This misalignment would block some of the light from the central young star, resulting in the inner disk casting a shadow onto the outer disk. Therefore, the asymmetry in the brightness of the studied disk could be indirect evidence for the presence of a giant planet. It's fitting that IRAS 23077+6707 has some resemblance to the shape of a butterfly; like a caterpillar enters a chrysalis and emerges as a butterfly, the chrysalis of a protoplanetary disk can enable gas and dust — the remains of ancient generations of stars — to reform and blossom into the cosmic butterflies of new planets.

Unlike the Fitbit, this popular smartwatch tracks your blood pressure — and it's down to $25

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Nissan gets it on with the loud "Karaok-e" van concept

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Is the Toronto Blue Jays' window to contend officially closing?

Sitting last in the AL East with regression throughout the lineup, the Blue Jays will soon have to face the reality of being sellers at this year's trade deadline.

Valve’s next game appears to be Deadlock, a MOBA hero shooter

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The OpenAI team tasked with protecting humanity is no more

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Apple is said to be working on a 'significantly thinner' iPhone

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OpenAI created a team to control 'superintelligent' AI — then let it wither, source says

OpenAI's Superalignment team, responsible for developing ways to govern and steer "superintelligent" AI systems, was promised 20% of the company's compute resources, according to a person from that team. It had the ambitious goal of solving the core technical challenges of controlling superintelligent AI in the next four years.

90th Anniversary Edition signals end of Jaguar F-Pace in Europe

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Damaging storms move across South, House votes to reverse Biden’s pause on weapons to Israel and Billie Eilish releases new album

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Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. After leaving the army, he decided to combine his two passions: Mor noticed that many real estate investors do not have a dedicated system for keeping track of various back-office processes such as managing cash collected from rent, calculating and distributing proceeds to their LPs and many other administrative functions. Mor said that when he was initially fundraising, he told investors he was building Carta for real estate.

Spoor uses AI to save birds from wind turbines

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COMMENTS

Interstellar movie review & film summary (2014)
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.
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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 ...
Film Review: 'Interstellar'
Film Review: 'Interstellar' 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 ...
Interstellar
Interstellar is a sci-fi masterpiece that explores the fate of humanity and the mysteries of the cosmos. With a stellar cast, stunning visuals, and a mind-blowing plot, this film will take you on ...
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The Guardian Film Show: Interstellar, Leviathan, Say When and The Possibilities are Endless - video reviews. 7 Nov 2014. Interstellar review - if it's spectacle you want, this delivers.
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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 ...
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'Interstellar': Film Review. Christopher Nolan aims for the stars in this brainy and gargantuan sci-fi epic ... the landmark sci-fi film that Interstellar intriguingly echoes is the 1956 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
Interstellar (2014)
Interstellar: Directed by Christopher Nolan. With Ellen Burstyn, Matthew McConaughey, Mackenzie Foy, John Lithgow. When Earth becomes uninhabitable in the future, a farmer and ex-NASA pilot, Joseph Cooper, is tasked to pilot a spacecraft, along with a team of researchers, to find a new planet for humans.
Interstellar
Generally Favorable Based on 46 Critic Reviews. 74. 76% Positive 35 Reviews. 22% Mixed 10 Reviews. 2% Negative 1 Review. ... Interstellar is simultaneously a big-budget science fiction endeavor and a very simple tale of love and sacrifice. ... Simply put, this is one of the best if not the best film ever made. "Love is the one thing we know of ...
'Interstellar' review
Interstellar is sometimes confusing, melodramatic, and self-serious, but Nolan managed to make a space epic on a human scale. opens November 5th. It has the grand scope of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 ...
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Interstellar Review ... Yet, it is the simple story of a father's love for his daughter and hers for him that drives the film. Ultimately, Interstellar is an entertaining, if wonky, science ...
Interstellar Review
166 minutes. Certificate: 12A. Original Title: Interstellar. Warning: this review contains mild spoilers. Christopher Nolan is a director whose name has, quite literally, become synonymous with ...
Interstellar review: McConaughey v the whole wide world
Interstellar, a near three-hour whopper of a picture, powers through its plot holes and barrels through the corn. It's a glorious spectacle, but a slight drama, with few characters and too-rare ...
'Interstellar' Review
Interstellar is an imaginative movie, but a heavy-handed mix of personal sacrifice and theoretical physics doesn't leave much room for subtle storytelling.. In the not-too-distant future of Interstellar, Earth has been ravaged by an environmental disaster known as the Blight - forcing humanity to abandon technology and the dreams of discovery, in order to focus on basic survival.
'Interstellar': The Cinema of Physicists
The second time I saw the movie, clued in by Dr. Thorne's new book, "The Science of Interstellar," I enjoyed it more, and I could appreciate that a lot of hard-core 20th- and 21st-century ...
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Parents need to know that Interstellar is a compelling sci-fi thriller/poignant family drama directed by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) and starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway.As in Gravity, there are nail-bitingly intense (and life-threatening) sequences that take place in space, but this is more than a survival tale: It's a relationship story about a father who has made a ...
Interstellar (film)
Interstellar is a 2014 epic science fiction drama film directed, written, and produced by Christopher Nolan and starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, and Matt Damon.Set in a dystopian future where humanity is embroiled in a catastrophic blight and famine, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near ...
Interstellar (2014)
Gordon-11 6 November 2014. This film tells the story of an ex-pilot in a world full of dust storms. He is chosen to travel to the uncharted parts of the space in search for a new habitable planet. "Interstellar" is a long film, and the first two hours of it does not seem like a typical Christopher Nolan film.
"Interstellar" and "The Theory of Everything" Reviews
Nolan's 2010 movie, "Inception," offered layers of dreaming consciousness, each outfitted with its own style of action. The film was stunning but meaningless—a postmodern machine, with ...
The Science Of Interstellar: How Accurate Is Christopher Nolan's Movie?
Interstellar is a timeless, emotional space epic that combines science-heavy themes with a father-daughter narrative, earning its place among the finest works of philosophical sci-fi.; The film's emphasis on scientific accuracy, guided by renowned physicist Kip Thorne, has garnered respect from both critics and the scientific community, including astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
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2. Interstellar (2014) Paramount Pictures. Nolan significantly ramped up his use of IMAX cameras for Interstellar, his first real venture into science fiction. Space has rarely seemed larger than ...
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Interstellar (2014): Tyson has made no secret that he's basically a Christopher Nolan fanboy.This one is many people's favorite movie from the director (I'm one of the weirdos who loves ...
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The movie follows a spacecraft manned by two men and a supercomputer on its journey to Jupiter to study the origins of a lunar artifact. "2001" made history, "encompassing everything from the dawn ...
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Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. ... This sci-fi mode of practical interstellar travel, which television audiences first saw in ...
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Cosmic butterfly or interstellar burger? This planet-forming disk is
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