Friday, March 29Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

Interstellar – Good enough to be reviewed twice.

WARNING: This entire article may be biased. Why? Because Christopher Nolan. Because Matthew McConaughey. The greatest director of our time paired with, currently, an actor at the very top of his game. Interstellar promised so much for film fans: legit scientific concepts of space and time, special effects beyond your wildest dreams… essentially, most people anticipated the best film of all time.

Without giving too much away, the world’s food supplies are dwindling, and dust storms threaten humanities existence – the only way is to find another planet to inhabit. Farmer and former test-pilot Cooper (McConaughey) stumbles across NASA’s secret lab and joins the crew, making a promise to meet his daughter Murphy again. The film is captured in an oh-so-very Nolan-esque way. The vast range of techniques used is astounding: from the brief intermissions of pseudo-documentary at the beginning to the spacecraft passing Saturn to the sound of rain is pure artistry. As far as flaws go, there are one or two plot loopholes you may pick up on; a few annoying edits that jump through time quick too; but even these still seem to make sense to the trained moviegoer. It’s the science that’ll boggle you, but that’s what films are about, making you think, ponder and then actually research what the hell just happened.

The team actually used a mathematical formula for the software that designed the black hole sequence to produce a never-before-seen visual interpretation of what worm holes are like to travel through (based on theories by Stephen Hawking’s longtime friend Kip Thorne, to be exact). Papers are still being prepared for a scientific journal. The production team even recreated an actual dust storm for the Earth scenes, as another example. It’s the incredible attention to detail which makes Nolan films so special – it’s pure Realism. However, you don’t have to understand it – trust me, I went with a group of friends and half of them didn’t grasp the concepts involved but loved it and knew that they’d watched something special.

Try not using ‘brilliant’, ‘fantastic’, or any other orthodox superlative. Heck, bring a thesaurus to the cinema – it’ll save your friends from the repetitive boredom of ‘it was awesome!’ It made my spine tingle from start to finish. Three hours felt like one – I wanted it to go on forever. This has done for sci-fi what the original Star Wars did and, dare I say it, even 2001: A Space Odyssey. A cheeky peak at IMDB shows that it’s already in the Top 15, which is exceptional considering it only came out on the 7th November. Oscars beckon – surely the Special Effects Award is in the bag. Hopefully, if justice prevails, it will win Best Film (save for a few challengers… I’m looking at you Foxcatcher). Nolan just went from cinematic demi-God to full blown Deity with this masterpiece. Forgive me for the long conclusion, but just get the hint: watch it. Go. I insist. Run if you have to. GET TO THE CINEMA AND WATCH THIS.

(*****) 5 STARS – IT’S AN INSTANT CLASSIC