Like most successful filmmakers working today Christopher Nolan seems to be making his films bigger, and bigger. The scope of his films seem to be in a non-stopping trajectory to something uncharted… yet with big epicness comes big emptiness. Big, ambitious, emotionally compelling at times, Interstellar is a love letter to 2001: A Space Odyssey… the problem? It's not as near as good as Kubrick’s masterpiece… BUT, what movie could achieve that anyway?

Let’s examine the film with the words of Michael Caine’s ‘Cutter’ in The Prestige (Our favorite Nolan film). “Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". Ok, here is Interstellar’s “The Pledge”: A global food crisis has turned America into a coast-to-coast dustbowl of unproductive emergency farmland. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a retired NASA pilot who, like every other adult, has had to turn to the soil: he is a widower living with two tricky kids, Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and Murph (Mackenzie Foy), and his grumpy father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow). He now faces the chance to save the world by finding a place for humans to relocate as a species or stay and see his kids grow and perish in a dying planet. Now that’s a call to action!

The main problem with the film relies in the execution of “The Pledge”. This great setup you just read could’ve been told in 20-30 minutes. But it’s full of technical mumbo jumbo than even a friend of mine who works for a NASA contractor btw, said to me after watching the movie, “I’ll need to read a few more Physic books to understand that setup”. Full of coincidences and gratuitous exposition, the first act exposes Nolan’s greatest weakness. The rest of the film? Exposes Nolan’s greatness.

“The Turn”, without getting too spoilery Cooper does get to visit some nice locals and this is where the movie really starts. Shot mostly using IMAX cameras (Please watch it in this format, let me rephrase that, you should ONLY watch it in this format), the rest of the film really explores the nature of the unknown and has a specific sense of wonder barely any film these days do. Everything seems tactile, and that’s expected since Nolan barely uses CG in his movies.

As a side note, Nolan’s crew built the interior of a space shuttle for some scenes, and placed actual images outside the windows so that the actors could see what their characters would see.

Nolan said at a recent press conference, “I want to capture as much in camera as possible. It’s a much higher quality than if you shoot on a green screen.”

From the moment the rocket takes off the movie gets to be highly entertaining while contemplating great arguments about life and our place in the cosmos, but never forgetting its most compelling aspect: The father and daughter relationship between Cooper (all right-all right-all right) and his daughter. It is THIS aspect of the film that made a stamp in my experience more than anything else while watching it (that, and that IMAX thing). Nolan has been scrutinized in the past because his films tend to be lacking in emotion. I’m sure we are not the only ones, but let me call this now, this is Nolan’s most emotional film to date.

The drama between father and daughter is perfectly rendered and brings the perfect backbone to the film. Saying goodbye without a known return date is epic in sentimentality but it felt as real as any of the special on camera/non CG effects. Apparently this element has a close perspective in the making of the film. While McConaughey has a daughter and could easily relate to his character, he mentioned that Nolan probably injected some of that dynamic from his private experience into the film. McConaughey said, “Chris has a daughter. It was apparent to me that this movie wasn’t about family, this was about parents and children. I think that is obviously the aorta of the film sits. Even if you aren’t parents, you have parents, and you’ve been in those situations where there’s a certain kind of good-bye. Nothing extreme as this, but I think that’s where everyone lynches into – the common denominator that everyone understands.”

“The Prestige”, well we can’t really spoil the third act. So we’ll just say this: This might not be our Generation’s “2001” but where people are STILL debating Kubrick’s film last few minutes 40 years later, you will get everything you came for right then and there with Interstellar. Nolan’s most heartfelt film comes to an end which will leave you excited, semi-teary eyed and partially deaf… did we mention you should watch it in IMAX?

We can argue all day how heavy handed and not so emotional (except in this film) Nolan can be, but you can’t argue that his tactile techniques and big scope in his plotting make for some greatly entertaining films. At the end of the day he still hasn’t made a bad film, not even near a bad film. But we hold today’s greatest “scope” director with high expectation. “Every new film he makes should be better than the last one” is an almost impossible sentiment at this level. But the reality is that no one else in Hollywood is making big provocative films like this, not Spielberg, not Cameron.

There are no spinning totems at the end of this film but when everything is set and done, it takes you to infinity and beyond unlike any film in recent memory… and for a non-sequel, non-reboot, not based on a comic book film at this production scale it's refreshing and almost imperative to at least enjoy the film. You can’t help it. Just wished it had a leaner and more co-hesive “Pledge”.

Interstellar is now playing in theaters everywhere.