---
title: "Interstellar"
year: 2014
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/interstellar"
fi1m_id: "interstellar"
imdb_id: "tt0816692"
tmdb_id: 157336
wikidata_id: "Q13417189"
fi1m_score: 79
critics_score: 68
critics_reviews: 14
published: "2026-09-15"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:38:32.296564+00:00"
region: "CL"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Interstellar (2014)

Directed by Christopher Nolan · 2h 49m · CCC TE+7 · Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction

## Identity

Interstellar

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/interstellar
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** interstellar
- **IMDb ID:** tt0816692
- **TMDB ID:** 157336
- **Wikidata ID:** Q13417189
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/157336, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13417189

**Fi1m score: 79** · Critics 68 from 14 reviews

*In a sentence:* All that space, and a father and daughter still do most of the work

> Christopher Nolan’s space adventure earns its emotion through Matthew McConaughey and the pain of family separation. The explanations are overworked and the music sometimes overbearing, but the scale and feeling justify the long journey.

## Synopsis

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) faces a future in which life on Earth is becoming harder to sustain. Space travel offers a possibility beyond a damaged planet, but his bond with his daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) makes the prospect of leaving a personal problem as well as a practical one. The journey brings questions of time, distance and human survival into the family story. Anne Hathaway plays Brand and Michael Caine plays Professor Brand. Bill Irwin voices TARS in Christopher Nolan’s science-fiction adventure.

## Review

*Interstellar* is worth the time it asks for, though we occasionally wished Christopher Nolan would stop explaining why. Across 169 minutes, he attempts to make the survival of humanity and the anguish of one family equally urgent. The threatened Earth gives the space adventure a reason to happen, but the father-daughter relationship gives us a reason to care. It is an ambitious piece of popular science fiction with enough feeling to carry us through some laborious dialogue.

Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper is the essential casting decision. With a story this concerned with physics, the leading performance needs to make worry and longing understandable before the next explanation arrives, and McConaughey does. We found his distress at separation from Murph painful to watch. The distance between father and daughter becomes something a parent cannot fix, and his performance makes that helplessness matter more than the size of the journey.

Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography makes the space around the travellers feel immense and inhospitable. The images suggest how lonely such a journey could be, even before the family story supplies its own reasons for dread. Nathan Crowley’s production design is particularly valuable on Earth: this future feels inhabited, so leaving it has a cost before Nolan starts explaining the stakes. That sense of a recognisable home is essential to a film asking us to care about its possible loss.

Lee Smith’s editing gives the manoeuvres in space an urgency that the explanatory conversations struggle to match. Here we understand the immediate danger without requiring a speech about it. Hans Zimmer’s score helps make the journey feel physically overwhelming, although the volume sometimes pushes past excitement into insistence. When music competes with dialogue, listening becomes needlessly strenuous. This is a particular nuisance in a film that expects us to follow so much explanation.

Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay is the principal weakness. The dialogue too often sounds prepared for an audience taking notes, and the longer explanations interrupt our involvement with the people giving them. Anne Hathaway’s Brand suffers from the need to discuss large ideas when she might usefully reveal more of herself. Hathaway makes the earnestness credible, but the writing gives her less room than McConaughey. The talk about love is especially prone to making a feeling sound like a theory that everyone must accept.

As science fiction, however, this has a welcome appetite for difficult ideas and uncomfortable distances. Time matters to the adventure because it matters to the family; understanding that does not require a qualification in physics. Nolan is sometimes clumsy in the way he brings the two together, but he does make the journey feel consequential. We can forgive a certain amount of overstatement when a film has persuaded us that its travellers have something worth getting back to.

At this length, the heavy passages count, and the film’s need to tell us what it means will test anyone who prefers science fiction to leave a few questions alone. We recommend it to anyone who wants a space adventure with a family worth caring about. Set aside an uninterrupted evening, and bring some patience for the lectures.

*Fi1m score 79, published 15 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics respond warmly to Interstellar’s ambition and space imagery, though enthusiasm for its storytelling is less consistent. Praise centres on the scale of the visual effects, the immersive depiction of space travel and the father-daughter relationship that gives the journey personal stakes. Several reviews find the emotion unusually direct for Christopher Nolan, with McConaughey’s performance helping to ground the scientific speculation. Even some detractors admire the spectacle.

The spread is wide, with the strongest praise and sharpest objections often directed at the same material. Empire finds the family story deeply affecting; Slant Magazine considers it simplistic melodrama that weakens the visual invention. Reservations elsewhere cluster around explanatory dialogue, thin characterisation, length and a score that can overwhelm the images. The science and sentiment divide critics too: admirers accept the stranger passages as part of a demanding adventure, while sceptics find the plotting strained and the ideas less persuasive than the imagery.

## Straight answers

**Is Interstellar worth watching?**

*Interstellar* is worth watching for anyone who wants a space adventure with a family worth caring about, and we scored it 79. Matthew McConaughey's distress at leaving his daughter carries the film through 169 minutes of sometimes laborious explanation. Set aside an uninterrupted evening and bring some patience for the lectures.

**How long is Interstellar, and what is it rated?**

*Interstellar* runs 2h 49m and is rated TE+7 by the CCC in Chile. It is an adventure and drama film.

**Where can I watch Interstellar in Chile?**

*Interstellar* is streaming on HBO Max in Chile, and it is also available to rent from Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV from CLF 1.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How does Interstellar compare to Contact?**

*Interstellar* is the bigger and more physically overwhelming of the two, while [*Contact*](https://film.one/film/contact) is the more thoughtful and the more talkative. Both are long science-fiction films that lean on speeches about ideas, but Nolan's family story gives his journey an urgency that Zemeckis's arguments about belief only sometimes reach. Choose *Contact* for enquiry, *Interstellar* for scale and feeling.

**What should I watch after Interstellar?**

After *Interstellar*, try [*Contact*](https://film.one/film/contact) (1997, Fi1m 76): A space enquiry whose arguments about belief depend on recognisable human need. Then [*Arrival*](https://film.one/film/arrival) (2016, Fi1m 86): Another science-fiction story that makes time and family difficult to separate; and [*Solaris*](https://film.one/film/solaris-1972) (1972, Fi1m 87): Space exploration becomes painfully personal, with more silence and fewer explanations than Nolan allows.

### Reviews we read (20)

- **Empire**, James Dyer (5/5): Nolan delivers his most human and emotionally resonant film yet, blending spectacular visuals of space with a deeply personal father-daughter story grounded in real science and wonder. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/interstellar-review/)
- **Little White Lies**, David Ehrlich (5/5/4): Nolan’s sci-fi epic is his most ambitious film yet, if not necessarily his best; it argues that love is Darwinian while embarrassing other blockbusters but falling short of the director’s own peak. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/interstellar)
- **Time Out**, Dave Calhoun (5/5): Christopher Nolan’s overwhelming, immersive and time-bending space epic makes Gravity feel like a palate cleanser; it has it all in grand, strange and demanding form. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/interstellar)
- **Total Film** (75/100, inferred): Nolan ventures into full-tilt science fiction with an infinitely ambitious, often spectacular result that is grounded by a strong McConaughey performance despite a testing running time and occasional flights of fancy. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/interstellar-review/)
- **Vulture** (75/100, inferred): A big, long, ridiculous but hugely entertaining sci-fi opera with a clear emotional through-line in the father-daughter bond, wonky physics, mysticism, and strong performances amid its clunky mix. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2014/10/movie-review-interstellar.html)
- **The AV Club**, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (B-): An uneven space odyssey that effectively mimics the feel of hard sci-fi literature in its speculative set pieces and fatalistic adventure but devolves into dopey humanist metaphysics toward the end. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/christopher-nolan-s-interstellar-is-an-uneven-space-ody-1798181805)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Todd McCarthy (70/100, inferred): The epic is a grandly conceived response to 2001: A Space Odyssey that bulges with ideas and emotions but achieves mixed results in balancing intimate human drama with cosmic speculation; it is never less than engrossing. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/interstellar-film-review-744059/)
- **Evening Standard**, David Sexton (55/100, inferred): The film offers thrilling spectacle and impressive IMAX visuals worth experiencing on the big screen, but it is undermined by overly sentimental plotting, wooden direction of actors, and a bullying score that fails to let the images breathe. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/interstellar-film-review-blast-off-with-matthew-mcconaughey-and-christopher-nolan-9845653.html)
- **Slant Magazine**, Chris Cabin (40/100, inferred): Ambitious film hampered by counterfeit realism, false importance, and simplistic father-daughter melodrama that undercuts its visual wonders and turns invention into rigid, humorless business. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/interstellar/)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (40/100, inferred): The critic calls it Nolan’s biggest spectacle but also his biggest disappointment, a colossal sci-fi adventure in the style of Kubrick’s 2001 that lacks the subversion and real interest in a post-human future. It has strong visuals but is let down by moderate acting and poor dialogue. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/05/interstellar-review-christopher-nolan-matthew-mcconaughey)
- **The New Yorker**, David Denby (40/100, inferred): The film is an ardently incomprehensible outer-space epic designed to separate civilians from geeks, with grand talk of physics that is often hard to understand amid loud music. It features stirringly beautiful visuals and craft but feels like a spectacular, redundant puzzle that makes one feel virtuous rather than happy. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/10/love-physics)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan: Nolan’s remarkable “Interstellar” is a rare intelligent mass-audience epic that is as interested in emotional moments as immersive visuals, powered by concerns about a degraded planet Earth. It skillfully explores outer and inner spaces with a sophisticated script. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-interstellar-review-20141105-column.html)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Matt Zoller Seitz: The film is an impressive, at times astonishing movie that overwhelms with its emotional core despite familiar Nolan traits like exposition and loud scoring. It explores themes of family, loss, and human connection through ambitious sci-fi, with standout sequences emphasizing time, separation, and raw vulnerability. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/interstellar-2014)
- **Screen Daily**: An emotional powerhouse when it isn’t hokey and a stunning spectacle when it doesn’t get bogged down in plot logistics; it works best in its sweeping brio and homage to 2001 but is mitigated by a less visionary story. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/interstellar/5079032.article)
- **Sight and Sound**, Nick Pinkerton: The critic finds the film tangled in exposition and clichés despite spectacular set pieces, singling out the docking scene for praise but complaining about corn-fed sentimentality. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/review-interstellar)
- **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (Critic's Pick): Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” distills terrestrial anxieties into a potent pop parable, a sweeping adventure driven by grief and ambition that fulfills genre conventions with zeal. It offers visual dazzle and thematic scope while answering a desire for adventure and comfort. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/movies/interstellar-christopher-nolans-search-for-a-new-planet.html)
- **Polygon**, Danielle Riendeau (70/100, inferred): The review highlights the film's ambitious ideas and sense of scale and awe in space travel, but criticizes clunky dialogue, uneven character development, and some writing flaws. It ultimately values its bold vision over safer films. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/2014/11/6/7166517/interstellar-review-chistopher-nolan-matthew-McConaughey/)
- **The Wrap**, Alonso Duralde (60/100, inferred): The critic finds the film challenging, provocative, and visually gorgeous in its early acts, with a stunning depiction of space travel and a cleverly designed near-future Earth. However, the third act is faulted for feeling inorganic and wrongheaded, alongside underdeveloped female characters. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/interstellar-review-christopher-nolan-matthew-mcconaughey-anne-hathaway/)
- **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (C-): The critic finds the film visually awe-inspiring but hampered by clunky exposition, stilted dialogue, and thin characters. It praises the IMAX cinematography, score, and production design but notes it doesn't achieve escape velocity due to narrative faults. [Read](https://collider.com/interstellar-review/)
- **Den of Geek**, Don Kaye (4 out of 5): The critic praises the film's haunting mood, emotional pull, and brilliant visuals capturing the grandeur and loneliness of space, but notes issues with heavy-handedness, bloated script, and some clunky moments. Overall, the ambition and scope outweigh the flaws. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/interstellar-review/)

## Details

- **Director:** Christopher Nolan
- **Director:** Christopher Nolan
- **Writer:** Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
- **Cinematography:** Hoyte van Hoytema
- **Editor:** Lee Smith
- **Music:** Hans Zimmer
- **Production design:** Nathan Crowley
- **Costume design:** Mary Zophres
- **Producer:** Christopher Nolan, Lynda Obst, Emma Thomas
- **Cast:** Matthew McConaughey as Cooper; Anne Hathaway as Brand; Michael Caine as Professor Brand; Jessica Chastain as Murph; Casey Affleck as Tom; Wes Bentley as Doyle; Topher Grace as Getty; Mackenzie Foy as Murph (10 Yrs.)
- **Runtime:** 2h 49m
- **Certificate (CCC):** TE+7
- **Release (Chile):** 6 November 2014
- **Genres:** Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction
- **Also in:** [Films where the soundtrack is the real star](https://film.one/collections/soundtrack-is-the-star.md)
- **Budget:** $165 million
- **Box office:** $747 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY19rHKAaAg

## Where to watch in Chile

- HBO Max: streaming, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: rent CLF 1.99, uhd
- Apple TV: rent CLF 2490.00, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy CLF 8.49, uhd
- Apple TV: buy CLF 10990.00, hd

*Checked 2026-09-15.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 2015: Best Original Score (nominated); Best Production Design (nominated); Best Sound (nominated); Best Sound Editing (nominated); Best Visual Effects (won)
- Saturn Awards 2015: Best Science Fiction Film (won)

## If you liked this

- *Contact* (1997), Fi1m 76: A space enquiry whose arguments about belief depend on recognisable human need. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/contact.md)
- *Arrival* (2016), Fi1m 86: Another science-fiction story that makes time and family difficult to separate. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/arrival.md)
- *Solaris* (1972), Fi1m 87: Space exploration becomes painfully personal, with more silence and fewer explanations than Nolan allows. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/solaris-1972.md)
- *Moon* (2009), Fi1m 83: For a smaller, lonelier space story with a performance worth staying for. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/moon.md)
- *A Matter of Life and Death* (1946), Fi1m 92: A romance willing to make the universe answer questions about human attachment. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-matter-of-life-and-death.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/interstellar