When I was a kid, my favorite activity was to look at the stars.  I remember thinking they were like pin pricks in a black tarp.  Every year I would learn more about our universe–how it takes light years to travel from some of those stars, so each time we’re looking up we’re literally looking into the past; how the dimensions of space and time are just now being understood; how the universe is mostly unknown, the earth a pale blue dot among millions of stars, worlds, and galaxies.  There’s something significant about beginning to understand space and our place in it.

So it really shouldn’t be surprising that one of my all-time favorite movies is Interstellar, a 2014 Matthew McConaughey film that asks more questions about our universe.  McConaughey plays Cooper, a dad and astronaut who risks his life to enter a wormhole in search of a new home planet for mankind.  Travelling through space is an adventure of itself; travelling through the fabric of time, though, shows its own relativity.  Go through a mere second on the other side of the wormhole, and years may have passed on Earth. Imagine leaving your family, home, and species, completely unsure how, where, when, and if you’ll see them again.

I saw this movie at a drive-in theatre when it first came out; I remember annoying the guy I was with because I kept grabbing his arm going, “Wait, what?  Whoa!”  Physics, astronomy, time–it’s all bent, manipulated, and explored through every second of this film.

The word interstellar means “occurring or situated between stars,” and this film absolutely deserves five of them.  If you have any interest at all in our universe, pick up a DVD or Blu-ray copy today.

Thanks for reading. –Autumn

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