The Earth is slowly dying, and it needs astronauts to go out into an entirely different galaxy in order to find a planet that can be used and colonized by humans. An ex-NASA pilot named Cooper is living on a farm with his family when he is given the task of piloting the mission to save mankind. With this, he leaves his family behind, risking time being with them as time moves differently once you get through the wormhole and into another galaxy.

Interstellar is by far one of Christopher Nolan’s most emotionally poignant films, at least that I’ve seen so far. It starts off with a rather slow, but incredibly powerful first act that gets you hooked pretty much from the start. Nolan found a way to quickly get you to care about this father and his two children so much that when he had to leave them, and specifically the manner in which he ended up leaving them, it was so heartbreaking and powerful that it set the course for the entire rest of the film. It might just be one of the best story introductions of all time.

Speaking of emotion, I absolutely can’t not talk about Matthew McConaughey’s performance. There are several scenes in this film in which the camera is on him for long periods of time, and just the both subtle and not-so-subtle emotional reactions that you see on his face are ridiculously impressive and make for some of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the entire movie. He also gets a number of scenes where he just completely loses it, understandably so, with simply just the thought of losing time with his kids, that it is almost a little bit scary how realistic his reactions are. I think it’s a shame he didn’t get nominated for best actor for playing this role.

Obviously, there are the visual and visual effects as well. What’s so interesting about Interstellar is that it is such a grounded take for this type of story, that everything looks and feels both believable and real conceptually, while also feeling unbelievable in the sense of how amazing it all really is. And it doesn’t just look and feel real conceptually, it looks real in the finished film as well. Nolan is known for having pretty much flawless visuals in his films, and he pretty much always uses CGI to the least possible amount that he can, but obviously, Interstellar, being a science fiction space movie, needed quite a bit of it so that the film could, well, look real. What’s even more impressive, however, is that quite a lot of the space sequences were shot practically; it was just sort of enhanced using digital effects.

Not only is Interstellar one of Nolan’s most emotional films, but it’s also one of his most intense. Throughout the almost three-hour runtime (which flies by for the most part, by the way), there is a sense of tension during pretty much the whole thing, starting off straight away in the first act. You feel the tension between him and his family, and particularly his daughter, and what Cooper feels he has to do, and it’s part of the reason why the first act is so impactful. Even aside from that, though, once you actually get to space, there are so many jaw-dropping sequences that have you on the edge of your seat in the most dramatic way possible. There’s a sense of danger to pretty much every maneuver that the crew, and mainly Cooper, tries to pull off, and you feel every bit of it. This leads to some of the most unforgettable scenes, being, and not to be specific, the “mountains” scene and the “No Time for Caution” scene.

This is easily a top-five score from Hans Zimmer as well. It’s definitely one of his louder and less-subtle scores, but also one of his most impactful, which is really saying something for someone who has composed some of my favorite films and film scores of all time (Dune, Gladiator, The Dark Knight), and is one of the most widely praised and celebrated film composers, if not in second place behind John Williams. Even for films with really great scores, I usually tend not to mention them just because I feel like I will say the same thing pretty much every time. However, with Interstellar, I really feel like it is worth mentioning as the score elevates the tension and drama so much that once you get done watching it, it’s one of the things that sticks with you, even above a lot of other things.

Now, for as much as Interstellar gets right, I was quite disappointed this time around on this watch and found a lot more issues with it. I like to rank all of the movies I log on Letterboxd, and this was previously in my top fifteen, but dropped this watch drastically. I think the main reason this film felt a little bit underwhelming for me was that it peaks so much in the first act, at least for me, that the rest of the film never quite lives up to it, at least not in an emotional sense. Don’t get me wrong, it’s full of some of the most incredible and intense sequences out there, but as a whole, I don’t connect with the story nearly as much as I want to.

I think one of the big players in this is the sideplot on Earth, where the humans, specifically NASA, are trying to solve this gravity equation in order to safely transit the people of Earth to a new home. I don’t know any other way to put it, but it just feels so much “lesser” than any of the material with Cooper and his crew in space, that it kind of ends up feeling a bit redundant, even though it’s not, and the story does drag down the pacing a little whenever it goes back to Earth. That’s why I said the movie flies by “for the most part.”

I’ve also had a bit of an up-and-down relationship with the ending, specifically with the climax ending. When I first watched Interstellar, I honestly wasn’t a huge fan of it because the ending was so “out there” to me that it kind of took me out of the whole experience. The last time I watched it, however, it absolutely worked for me, because of how well it worked from a strictly emotional standpoint. It still definitely works emotionally, but unfortunately, I find it also works largely at the expense of actual logic. It feels a little bit forced and contrived to a degree that it frustrated me this time around, where it didn’t before because of how “lost” I was in the emotional experience of it all. It’s not a terrible way to end the climax, but also not one that I completely feel on board with.

Overall, though, Interstellar is pure spectacle from start to finish and is one of Nolan’s most powerful and poignant works. If this ever gets a big-screen rerelease, I’ll be there day one.