Excellently crafted and inspiring story. Only slightly lacking in character.

Rating: 9/10 (28 September 2015)

Do not go gentle into this movie. I know that sounded cheesy but it's true. You need to pay close attention to everything while watching this, particularly at the beginning. It's not as bad as Inception or Primer in terms of how much technical information you need to absorb to follow the ending, but you can't miss much and hope to have a full grasp. I had a pretty good handle Interstellar after only one very intent viewing, but I still had to do some research to clarify a few points.
At it's core, the film is about the incredible will and capability of the human race, as we see with the characters making sacrifices for their families and all of humanity, as all of us do on a smaller scale each day. But subliminally it's a warning to us all that we are slipping into that fallen state of humanity where we can no longer advance, only survive. Murph's teacher says that somewhere in our near future there was an extreme famine due to bad prioritizing by all of humanity. So despite the themes of how much humanity is capable of, I think Nolan is also suggesting that we really aren't living up to that right now.
Our main plot line follows Cooper, a retired pilot who holds on to his idealized views of the past while still recognizing the plights of the present. If you've seen the trailers, you likely already know the basic plot line: Cooper goes on a space mission to find new planets for humanity to inhabit. However, the plot is much more complex than that and involves a decent amount of science with the black hole slowing down time and Professor Brand's (Michael Caine) need to find a way to harness the five dimensions. In a lot of sci-fi movies, you can just accept the supernatural rules of the given fictional universe and not worry too much about the technical bits of it, but that's not the case here. Every detail of the mission that is explained is just as important for the audience to know as it is for the characters. The secondary plot line shows Cooper's daughter Murph helping Prof. Brand make Plan A, the salvation of humanity still on earth, possible through failed scientific equations. There are some emotional subplots as well like Cooper trying to see his family again by making Plan A work, Brand (Anne Hathaway) believing that love can be a logical means of decision-making, Prof. Brand's knowledge of the futility of Plan A, and Mann trying to kill Cooper and take control of the Endurance. One thing I really loved about the overall plot was that there was a very definite ticking clock at all times, but it wasn't like the overused time-bomb clock that we usually see to where the world is saved from spontaneous destruction at the very last second.
Our protagonist, Cooper goes through a lot of emotional struggle that pretty much everyone in the audience can relate to somehow. You're meant to agree and sympathize with him at pretty much every point, which you might not like if you prefer more realistic heroes that choose to do the wrong thing sometimes. But in defense of Coop's humanity, he doesn't really make moral choices so much as he chooses certain philosophies to follow that others around him disagree with. Murph is our C-line protagonist, and also experiences a lot of emotion, mostly anger at NASA and her dad. We only see clips of her life, but it's clear that she, like Brand's daughter and Cooper, is motivated by emotion as well as science, logic, and intelligence. Professor Brand is a typical Michael Caine/Nolan movie role as the mentor of a much younger protagonist, though here he is not quite as infallible as usual. His daughter Amelia serves as a check for Cooper's emotion, though her own internal conflict isn't given much prominence. Mann (Matt Damon) has only a little screen time, but is our main antagonist. The minor characters consist of Romily, Doyle, Coop's son, and I guess TARS and CASE count as characters. None of them are developed that well, which is too bad, but there's only so much depth you can put into so many characters.
The film is very visually appealing with the magnificent settings, which I've heard were mostly filmed in physical locations. There isn't really any action to speak of, but there are a lot of intense scenes that feel a bit like action sequences. The science is thorough enough that you buy it, but there are a few things that are more fiction than science (e.g. the 5 dimensional black hole at the end). For people who are sticklers to realism, I would please ask that you just deal with the more far-fetched elements. Nit-picking the factual problems is missing the point of the movie, and there's a pretty impressive amount of realism all things considered. The acting wasn't spectacular, but it was fine for the most part, though I thought Murph's child actress was much better than her adult one.
I would say that this is worth spending money on and should definitely be watched in a quiet setting. I watched it in two sittings and found it helpful to look up a few of the scientific technicalities in between to help clarify some confusion. If you're a Nolan fan, go ahead and buy this straight away if you're tempted to. If not, rent it anyway. A last note: I've heard that this has a lot of similarities to 2001 A Space Oddesey. While I haven't seen it, I can say with certainty that it is not the same story. The same goes for Star Wars and Star Trek. Every sci-fi plot basis is going to be repeated, but that doesn't mean that the movies are the same. Overall Rating: 9.1/10.