Interstellar is obviously Christopher Nolan's response to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. And on that level, it's a breathtaking thing to behold. Nolan uses the full canvas of the movie screen for everything it's worth—yes, you should see Interstellar on film, as Nolan intended, and yes, you should see it on the most gigantic screen available to you. It's filled with beautiful effects you have never seen before, illustrating scientific phenomena that have up until now only appeared in the nerdiest of science fiction novels. Some later sequences illustrate concepts I honestly never believed I would be able to see in a film. Clearly, as a work of visual art alone, Interstellar is worth the price of admission. But when you move past the visual splendor, you realize that Nolan also engages Kubrick on maybe the dullest of levels. While 2001 was admittedly bloodless, Interstellar demands you to acknowledge it has a beating, human heart at its core. In fact, the movie practically beats you over the head with its themes, right from the very beginning. "It's like we've forgotten who we are," Coop says early in the film, seconds before clarifying: We're "explorers, pioneers" and not "caretakers," a word he practically spits out. (And yes, Interstellar continues Nolan's creepy trend of subliminal conservative themes, in the form of a socialistic government that indoctrinates children into sacrificing their sense of wonder for the sake of the greater good, a pedagogy that Coop heroically shuns.) Like Kubrick, Nolan has often been referred to as a chilly filmmaker, one who shuns human emotion in exchange for intellectual delights. But Nolan has chafed at that description in recent interviews, and several characters in the film let fly with hoary speeches about love and family that seem programmed to challenge those charges. Steven Spielberg circled Interstellar a few years ago, and the elements that attracted Spielberg to the earlier drafts are still in the film—yes, another reaffirmation of the power of family—though Nolan handles those themes with all the subtlety of a paddle to the ass. by Paul Constant