interstellar transcendence

You can't go wrong having a corn field somewhere in a science fiction movie. Come to think of it, the big chord from the intro to Also Sprach Zarathustra is another goody.

Without giving anything away, the new Christopher Nolan movie manages both in the first minute or so of screen time.

Interstellar is more my kind of space movie than, say, the upcoming Jupiter Rising, which appears to have CGI overtly plastered throughout the film.

By contrast, Interstellar uses mainly practical filming, with real sets and real atmospherics, best viewed on the largest available screen.

And, although a space film, there's a clear grounded quality alongside the movie's big ideas, making something altogether more thought-provoking than the arcade shoot-em-ups of many comic book movies.

There's a few places where a character has to give a plausible-sounding science explanations, and Nolan uses one of his fascinations, expecting the audience to track various timelines (think of Memento and Inception).

Science folk will no doubt pick on some of the paradoxes and questions raised but I'll take that as a Nolan victory that people are puzzling it through.

But I don't really want to say too much about the story and characters, so I guess I'll just have to say it's a movie I'll see on a big screen again.