If Interstellar had not been directed by one of the movie gods, what would its reception have been? Its been a while since I've seen a more glaring example of a vanity project, where the director was able to literally relax and phone it in through most of the movie. The acting is an exercise in minimalism, which is fine if you're in The Shining or A Clockwork Orange or 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was about to dismiss this as a tragic wanna be mess of existentialist nonsenseuntil I saw the ending.

Aside from Hathaway's face, and McConaughey's increasingly compelling overall presence as an actor, the movie does raise some interesting philosophical questions. Are we better off just coming together here, dying together here? Or scuffling around pointlessly among the stars, trying to start all over somewhere else? Building something that won't be any better than what we have here, because of what lies in the hearts of men? Everywhere we go, we carry with us the tragedy of human existence: our fallen nature, the evil that lives inside the human heart.

By the end of the movie, I had to conclude that in his own hyperintellectual, roundabout way, Nolan has managed to relay the same disturbing, tragic message that all good fiction seems to do. That ultimately, mankind's time on earth is finite and doomed, and the only things that will save us are our reliance on a higher power for guidance, and the love that we have for each other. This ain't Kubrik, or even Zemeckis for that matter. But at least, it is Christopher Nolan.