This film was written, directed, and produced by Christopher Nolan. With any Nolan film, you get hype. The Batman film sequels The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises were talked about for months before the first trailer came out. Inception was hailed as being one of the most innovative and greatest films of not only 2010 but of the past decade. So of course Interstellar came in with some baggage of what you would want as a viewer or what to expect. With this reality, you get to see a more fun, interesting, personal, and suspenseful film that is in many ways is very different than Nolan films of the past.

The film stars Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, of which in recent memory received critical acclaim for his new turn into more serious roles in True Detective, Dallas Buyers Club, Mud, Killer Joe, and his short but incredible role in The Wolf of Wall Street. Among his previous roles, Mud may be the most important for this film. Nolan wanted to have McConaughey based off of his performance as the titular character, who becomes a strange father figure in the film to two young kids who help a homeless drifter living secretly. With Interstellar, he plays a real dad to his kids Murph, played by Mackenzie Foy as a 13 year old, and Jessica Chastain as the older Murph, and Timothée Chalamet as his son Tom– who was portrayed as an adult by Casey Affleck. Other cast members include Chris Nolan regulars Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway, Ellen Burstyn, David Oyelowo, David Gyasi, and a small performance by Matt Damon.

Interstellar, like most Christopher Nolan films, tries to emphasize heart over action, and this one doesn’t differ. You get to see the life on earth, and the struggles that Cooper has with the changing ways of ditching science and discovery, and focusing on farming, as a result of a world wide drought. The beginning of the film has been compared to something out of John Steinbeck, with characters dealing with dust bowl-like situations, with the looming terror not being evicted, but having the human race die out. With this reality, the film never focuses on the aspect that the human race needs to literally move out and find another world to live on. You see how Murph is an inquisitive kid, who notices happenings in her room that she believes are “ghosts” contacting her. From the ghosts, she decodes coordinates sent to her through binary spelled out in dust on her floor after a big sand storm. Through this, Cooper finds NASA and discovers his part in his mission to relocate the population of the Earth.

When watching Interstellar, the technical aspects of the film blow you away. A lot of the film was shot in IMAX 70mm, which is expected of a Nolan film, but with the high implement of digital film making and projection in theaters, he pushed hard to get this into a film format. With 70mm, you get double the image size of the standard 35mm film. This means that watching the film on a huge screen with the 70mm filmed scenes is going to get you some of the most clear and beautiful looking images out there. Also, you’re getting sound to its maximum capacity, which makes even the biggest IMAX theaters literally shake. The almost three hour long film will be worth it to try and find an IMAX that is actually projecting the film in IMAX 70mm, so you can not only see this film in the best possible way, but you’ll be able to see one of the last movies to be projected in this type of IMAX 70mm. As much as it’s easy to go down to the cheaper, smaller, digitally projected multiplex showing this film, this is one that demands to be seen in the 70mm format.

With the heavy science involved in the film, Nolan and his brother Jonathan get to have a field day with the screenplay they both co-wrote. One of the few flaws in Nolan’s films are the dialogue. He’s guilty of having his characters talk the plot, when they can show a lot through visuals instead of explaining things too boringly. With this, it works. For every second on the ship, you need to know what’s happening and what needs to be done at the specific moment, so most of it is filled with necessary exposition which works perfectly. Other moments, the movie comes across as really cheesy. You see parts where Cooper is explaining how his wife had died, and he elaborates too heavily upon how the MRI’s (that the people no longer use) could have saved his wife. It could have been a lot more toned down in its delivery, and there are many other moments like this throughout.

With this film, you shouldn’t be expecting a masterpiece of an art film, which is why a lot of people claim to hate it and much of Nolan’s other work. You don’t go into 2001: A Space Odyssey expecting Guardians of the Galaxy. So you can’t go into the theater thinking it will change the nature of cinema entirely. Only a select few of movies have done that.

Go into the theater expecting to enjoy something, go in wanting to enjoy the incredible and visual ride that it is. Don’t go in grasping what it wasn’t going to be. Then after you’ve seen it, make your own opinion on its merit–after all, having your own opinion is what film is all about.