I have just watched the movie Interstellar last night. If anyone ask me, how many stars would I rate the movie, I’d say I can confidently give it all the stars in the galaxy. A bit over the top, but I do really like the movie.

Some people may not agree with my rating, but it’s OK. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes. I might be a bit biased since I like scifi movies, especially anything involving space or robots. Plus, I have been a fan of Christopher Nolan since I first saw Memento and The Prestige. And then, he brought The Dark Knight, and then Inception!

Interstellar is a very solid movie about space travel and survival. It basically revolves around a guy named Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) a farmer and a father who joined a mission to space in search for a new home for the people of Earth. I can’t spoil too much about the movie here, as it would also spoil the fun watching the movie. But I can tell you, it involves black holes, relativity theory and lots of scientific jargons.

1. THE SCIENCE

Some smartass reviewers are bashing the movie, saying that it sucks, in terms of scientific accuracy and so on. Well, here’s a fun fact. The director/writer of the movie, Christopher Nolan has already appointed a well known theoretical physicist as the science consultant and executive producer. So who exactly is this guy?

Well, if you ever heard of Stephen Hawking, that guy is his friend.

His name is Dr. Kip Thorne. He is not just an ordinary guy. This 73-year-old scientist is already revered among peers for advancing some of Albert Einstein’s most intriguing theories about relativity and gravity fields. He is an expert on wormholes, blackholes, relativity theories and some more things regarding space and physics. In fact, for one scene, he actually provided pages of deeply sourced theoretical equations to the computer effects artists, who then wrote new CGI rendering software based on those equations to create accurate computer simulations of the gravitational lensing caused by the phenomena. For that purpose only, they used 800 terabytes of data. impressive, right? And then there’s this relativity theory, something about time difference when you travel in space. This one, is really interesting.

If the movie is still not scientifically accurate enough, we just have to accept the fact that it is still a science fiction movie. So the director still have to compromise some things, right?

2. THE CINEMATOGRAPHY

I am not a hipster, but I love film photography. Film, as in negative film (like Kodak or Fujifilm).

This Nolan guy, he shot the film using film cameras. So what you see in the movie is beautiful and genuine. If you see grain on the screen, they are genuine, not patched up later during post production. If you see sun flares, they are also genuine, not coming from random locations as in Michael Bay films. There are also lots of beautiful wide shots with fine depth of field, amazing colours and contrast, and most importantly, NO SHAKY cameraworks like the rest of hollywood movies.

Aaaaand, Hans Zimmer is writing the musical score for the film. Enough said.

3. THE EMOTION

Not many movie provokes me emotionally. Some fun movies make me cheer inside while watching (like FURY’s tank battle (awesome) and robot-punching Pacific Rim), but not so many movie can actually touch the heart. In Interstellar, it focuses on family bonds between a father and his daughter. it shows how they react, how they communicate, how they express their feelings, etc in such believable acting. There’s a scene when Cooper is watching recorded messages from his children in his space ship. That could be the saddest scene in a movie I’ve scene this year.

And the feelings you get when the story actually unfolds at later half of the movie. It made me smile on my seat. It’s called satisfaction.

So yes, Interstellar is a great movie. Not perfect, but still it is comparable to Nolan’s past works.

I cannot guarantee that everyone reading this review will like this movie. But, whatever lah.

I like it.

Best soundtrack to fit the movie would be Muse’s Sing For Absolution.

• IMDB Rating: 9.2/10