Interstellar

Visionary filmmaker Christopher Nolan's speculative, mind-bending sci-fi adventure is set sometime in the future as Earth is dying. Famine is rampant, yet science is so derided that rewritten history books claim the Apollo missions were a hoax meant to force the Soviets into a bankrupting space race. Aeronautical-engineer-turned-farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is secretly recruited by his physics professor (Michael Caine) to pilot a NASA spacecraft through a mysterious deep space wormhole in order to choose a suitable planet for humans to colonize. But widower Coop's heart belongs with his family, particularly his precocious 10-year-old daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Coop is well aware that Murph could be his age when and if he ever returns. Nevertheless, Coop and his crew (Anne Hathaway, Wes Bentley, David Gyasi), along with the robot TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin), embark on a spectacular thrill ride in which they will witness incomparable beauty and inconceivable terror. As the years pass, now-grown Murph (Jessica Chastain) comes to realize that in order to see her father again, she must solve an essential equation involving time, gravity, and space. Much like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, this ambitious film also eventually serves up somewhat bewildering metaphysics, but the journey itself is most entertaining. Highly recommended. [Note: Blu-ray extras include “The Science of Interstellar” featurette with star Matthew McConaughey (51 min.), the production featurettes “Celestial Landmarks” (14 min.), “Shooting in Iceland: Miller's Planet/Mann's Planet” (13 min.), “The Ranger and the Lander” (13 min.), “Life on Cooper's Farm” (10 min.), “The Endurance” (10 min.), “TARS and CASE” (10 min.), “Across All Dimensions in Time” (9 min.), “Plotting an Interstellar Journey” (8 min.), “Miniatures in Space” (6 min.), “The Simulation of Zero-G” (6 min.), “Final Thoughts” (6 min.), “The Space Suits” (5 min.), “The Dust” (3 min.), and “The Cosmic Sounds of Interstellar” (2 min.), trailers, and bonus DVD, digital, and UltraViolet copies of the film. Bottom line: a fine Blu-ray extras package for this Oscar winner for visual effects.] (S. Granger)