MIT Lecture Series Committee

February 27 & 28, 2015

Rated PG-13
169 minutes

view trailer

format: 35mm

Interstellar (2014)

2014 Academy Award Nominations: Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects

A crew of astronauts embark on a mission to find a world where humanity can thrive in a future where Earth can no longer sustain human life. The story opens on Earth in the distant future, as Mother Nature is waging war on humanity. Famine is widespread, and all of mankind's resources are now dedicated to farming in a desperate fight for survival. A former NASA pilot and engineer named Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) has become a homesteader in order to support his teenage son Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and 10-year-old daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Unfortunately, even that begins to look like a futile endeavor after a sandstorm ravages their close-knit community.

Meanwhile, a seemingly supernatural mystery begins to unfold when the "ghost" that dwells in Murph's room uses the power of gravity to send her a mysterious set of coordinates -- which lead the curious father/daughter duo to a clandestine underground base housing the remnants of NASA. There, renowned physicist Professor Brand (Michael Caine) has been working with a team of astronauts and scientists to find a new planet capable of sustaining human life. Having recently lost contact with a crew who were sent to investigate a wormhole that inexplicably appeared near the rings of Saturn, Brand quickly persuades Cooper to pilot a second mission carrying the seeds of human life though that space-time rift, which will hopefully lead to another galaxy that contains potentially habitable planets.

Although the prospect of leaving his brilliant, beloved daughter for such a desperate mission is a difficult one for Cooper, he agrees; soon, he's on a space station bound for Saturn with Brand's daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) and researchers Doyle (Wes Bentley) and Romilly (David Gyasi). Upon reaching the wormhole, the crew and decommissioned military-security robot TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin) prepare to pass through. What they discover on the other side could be the key to saving all of humanity, if Cooper and his team can use their resources wisely and accomplish their mission while there's still time to save the loved ones they left behind. [www.allmovie.com]

It's an amazing achievement that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen with the best sound system possible. Nolan has crafted Interstellar as a movie theater experience. Watching it at home, no matter how good the sound system is, won't match.
      -- James Berardinelli, ReelViews. Read this review.