Nolan's my new Spielberg

Rating: 9/10 (10 November 2014)

And so INTERSTELLAR arrived, after spending six years on my IMDb Watchlist, back since it was a Spielberg project.
I'd managed to avoid the spoilers. My sci-fi-immune wife Marie and I went in cold, just like we'd done back when INCEPTION came out. We left that one on a high, practically high-fiving, and wouldn't you know it, the same thing happened again. Marie was silent beside me for most of the film, until ** SPOILER ALERT ** the mind-bending scene with the time-distorted, infinite bookshelves ** END SPOILER **. Then she burst out "That's SO clever!!" and I knew she was along for the whole ride.
Emotionally, it got to me, as I have a young daughter. My man-stare cracked a little at the end, I'll admit. Several times during the film, I thought to myself, hang on, this is actually horrific. Given how I feel about my own daughter, would I do the same? And having done it, how strongly would I want to retrace my steps and scream out no, no, no, no, I didn't mean it??? I felt Cooper's gigantic emotions, and importantly I understood WHY.
INTERSTELLAR, like INCEPTION, is an engage-brain movie. If you've avoided the spoilers you will NOT know where it is going, or how - if at all - it is ever going to bring you back. Yes it is spectacular, yes it is a proper science-fiction film which attempts to put hard sci- fi on screen in a way that has almost never been attempted before. Many draw parallels with 2001 of course, but don't forget CONTACT, which also took you through the wormhole to.... somewhere I found entirely magical. INTERSTELLAR doesn't top CONTACT, for me, at least not on first watch. I still think Zemeckis nailed absolutely every heartbeat of CONTACT, and Jodie Foster's impeccable performance in that film aces McConaughey's nevertheless excellent performance in this (and certainly Hathaway's, who I always find a little lightweight and actorly). Ironically, McConaughey's in CONTACT too...
I ramble. So does INTERSTELLAR. Its pacing is weird, staccato, jumpy. Don't look for plot holes - there are plenty there, but like with all great movies, I rode over the bumps in Nolan's slipstream, happy to allow more or less anything while I hung on for the hoped- for ending. Did I get it? You'll have to decide for yourself, but it has an ending which I liked.
Will it penetrate my top 100? Certainly. It doesn't top Nolan's own THE PRESTIGE, or CONTACT, or SILENT RUNNING, ALIEN, THE ABYSS or CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, among my favourite sci fi movies. but I'm expecting this to settle well inside my Top 100 once I've had time to process it all.
It's up there with INCEPTION - it's cerebral, demanding and thoughtful yet not impenetrable. We both followed it, literally, to another place in the universe. Wonderful ambition, wonderful execution, and staggering to imagine how one might conceive of, and - harder still - execute a movie of this colossal scale. Proof that intelligent life does exist in Hollywood.
In around six years, I hope that we get another imaginative, original, stellar Christopher Nolan blockbuster, just like this one. He's still young, and he's my new Spielberg.