10th Anniversary TLDR: Interstellar (2014)

Once you're a parent, you're the ghost of your children's future.

Plot: The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.

Direction & Screenplay: Chris Nolan is truly the dumbest smart guy we know. Though we saw glimpses of it before, this is where Nolan reaches the point of no return when it comes to his space and time nonsense. It is also, not coincidentally, the best it has ever worked for him. There's a lot of science gobbledygook (I just take his word for it) after science gobbledygook, but the scene where Cooper watches the transmissions shows how he (and co-writer and co-brother Jonathan Nolan - I watched the first season of Westworld and thought, "No, I'm good, I think I got it," and stopped watching) can ride the line between the clinical and the emotional.

Performances: Matthew McConaughey is one of our very best and I'm not sure he'll ever get that credit. Anne Hathaway is unfortunately so blah to me. It's so obvious that the little girl is going to grow up to be Jessica Chastain, but let me tell you that it was a shock to me on this rewatch when Timothée Chalamet grew up to be Casey Affleck. Not nearly enough John Lithgow.

Cinematography: Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (who has a name that's really fun to type out) became Nolan's go-to guy after this movie, winning the Oscar for his work on Dunkirk and Oppenheimer. Not even a nomination for this one, probably because Roger Deakins had to get his obligatory nomination.

Best Moment: The letters from home, of course.

Fun Fact: Elyes Gabel had the best year of his life in 2014, I'm assuming. He got to be in Interstellar for three minutes and his tv show Scorpion premiered, his biggest career leading-role success running for four seasons and 93 episodes.

Imaginary Accolade: Best Movie for IMAX in 2024.

Everything is too long! Is it too long? Normally, I would balk at 169 minutes, but this one totally earns it.

Rating: It's kind of amazing that this is only Nolan's third-best movie. What the hell happened with Tenet?

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Credit: Plot synopsis from Letterboxd via TMDb.