In the near future, things are going to get a bit grim for us humans on planet Earth.
We face an apocalypse of starvation thanks to the combined threats of crop blight and massive dust storms, which are robbing us of renewable agriculture and a viable future.
Our last chance is to reach to the stars – to find a new planet that can support life and then somehow get us there. It’s a big ask. But step forward widower Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), NASA test pilot and engineer turned farmer, who is trying to make a living with his small family in Interstellar.
Cooper lives with his father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow), son Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and young daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy), who he calls ‘Murph’. There is also the possibility that their farmhouse is haunted by a ‘ghost’, which seems to be trying to communicate with them somehow through gravitational pull.
Don’t worry too much about the plot though. Director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan, who co-writes, go large on the sci-fi mind-bending metaphysics. Sure there’s Gravity-like space peril and a pulse -pounding race against time, but Interstellar goes above (literally) and beyond in all directions.
Nolan boldly goes where film-makers like Ridley Scott, Stanley Kubrick and James Cameron have gone before, bringing his own genius to the final frontier. He’s aided by a ‘stellar’ cast, which includes not just great work by McConaughey but also Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine.
The human elements are core to the story, but the real ‘stars’ of the show are the stars themselves. Well, stars, planets, space vistas and black hole event horizons. The visuals conjured up here are some of the most impressive ever to hit the big screen – and should be seen at the largest (IMAX if possible) cinema you can find.
And it wouldn’t be right not to mention my favourite character – TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin), a marine robot packing lots of handy functions.