Very deep, breathtaking, emotional, and occasionally, boring film. This movie doesn’t hold your hand very much. You have to pick up pretty quickly on the ways of a famine-stricken, dustbowl Earth, and then take a crash course in astrophysics, the theory of relativity, wormholes and supermassive black holes. The heart of this film is the drama of a father’s sacrifice for his daughter, and the emotional beats that come out of this relationship strike a chord. The acting of Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain and Mackenzie Foy is superb. The entire cast is solid, but these three a given the scenes with the most depth. The effects create sights that humble you and fill you with awe, while keeping everything as grounded as possible. Once the film gets going, the plot is fairly straightforward. However, closer to the end, it gets a bit muddier. There’s tension and characters racing to complete tasks before time runs out, but exactly what needs to be done is a bit unclear. The science here is sound, but like any film with a black hole, there is some somewhat-trippy speculation to how it warps reality. The ending is fairly unsatisfying, which isn’t all that unusual for a Christopher Nolan film.
*** out of *****