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Christopher Nolan (Inception, Memento) co-writes and directs this emotional sci-fi adventure about a farmer (Matthew McConaughey) who leaves his family during the last generation of human life on Earth, hoping to find a new planet for the species to call home. With the help of a secret rag-tag team of NASA scientists, he makes a two-year voyage to Saturn where a wormhole makes the quest possible. As expected, everything conspires to destroy McConaughey’s character and his team, whether it’s giant tidal waves on one of the hopeful planets, a rogue comrade, or a black hole. These things give Interstellar its actiony oomph (along with the typical ecclesiastic bombast of composer Hans Zimmer), but the relationship between McConaughey’s character and the young daughter he left behind is what gives the movie its heart. At one point in the film, the relativity of time becomes a big issue — each hour McConaughey spends near a black hole equals seven years back on Earth. If you do the math, the drama comes easily.

Will father and daughter ever see each other again? If you think Nolan won’t milk that question for all its worth, think again — and try not to cry like a little bitch when it happens. My only gripe with Interstellar reminds me of gripes I’ve had with other Nolan films. For a director who relies so much on hyper-realism (even in his rebooted Batman films), he sure likes to pull sentimental poetic gestures out of left field late in the game. Like the ferry boat sociology experiment in The Dark Knight and the icy snow base sequence in Inception, Interstellar strains my suspension of disbelief in its final third. But even though it falters a little, it’s still an engrossing movie that ends on an earnest note.

Oh, and the robots are pretty dang cool.

With Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Topher Grace, Matt Damon, Wes Bentley, John Lithgow, Casey Affleck, and Ellen Burstyn.

Academy Award: Best Visual Effects

Oscar Nominations: Best Score (Hans Zimmer), Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing