Interstellar

As humanity faces an existential crisis, farmer "Cooper" (Matthew McConaughey) and his family are fighting a losing battle against an environment determined to destroy what is left of their corn crop. Mystery arrives after a sand storm leaves some magnetic clues to a secret location inhabited by NASA scientists led by "Brand" (Sir Michael Caine) who manage to convince former pilot "Coop" to join a mission to go into space and, using a recently detected wormhole that he believes may have been deliberately sent to help mankind rescue itself, set off to find another home for us all. Leaving a seriously narked daughter behind, he accepts the mission and together with the daughter of "Brand" (Anne Hathaway) their perilous trek begins. This is a more solid sci-fi adventure from Christopher Nolan. Though it features doses of his usual time bending scenarios, for the most part it is an exciting action film with mishaps a-plenty as their mission sees danger at just about every junction. There is a decent chemistry between Hathaway and McConaughey allowing the characters to develop with some depth that helps to draw us into to their efforts. The visual effects are superb, it has TARS - a rather clunkily designed robot that proves a whizz when running and rescuing, and the ending has something of the Escher drawing to it. The narrative can be thought provoking offering quite an interesting series of choices, especially when Matt Damon ("Mann") joins the story and begins to challenge their approach to just what "humanity" might actually be! A host of celebrated co-stars prop it up well. John Lithgow is effective as the patriarch of the family and Casey Affleck and Wes Bentley help diffuse the intensity of the principal relationship as the space-bound menace gradually accumulates. It's all but three hours long, and there is no denying that it hits a barren spell at times during the middle hour, but for my money this is a Nolan film that does not over-complicate itself and is as good a science fiction thriller as I've seen in many a year.