Every man and his dog has done a review for this movie, so here’s a few movies that you may want to check out if there’s not an IMAX cinema nearby.
Gravity:
The comparisons are inevitable in that it’s pretty recent and set in space. That’s about it. But if you’re looking for a truly immersive space experience then this is the movie. It has dialogue so cheesy and out of date it has fungus growing on it, and there’s little by way of compelling plot, but the film serves it’s purpose adequately. An art installation more than a movie, it achieves what every film should set out to do – it kills George Clooney.
2001 – Space Odyssey
We wouldn’t have Interstellar without Kubrick’s seminal masterpiece. TARS (That strange rectangular Transformer if you haven’t seen it), is a clear combination of HAL and the monolith from 2001. The orchestral score as their ship floats across the galaxy is another, the whole film can be viewed as love letter to Kubrick’s magnum opus. Interstellar hails the impact of 2001 without ever trying to better it – and so it should be. Fair enough, Nolan’s latest offering may offer more realistic visual effects and what not, but if you want to be hypnotized and then left bedazzled at how significant a black rectangle can be, watch 2001.
Contact:
This one shares more with Interstellar than any other movie here in terms of plot, so any parallels that get drawn between them are essentially spoilers. But they are similar. Matthew McConaughey is even in it! Based on Carl Sagan’s book of the same name, the film attempts to wrestle some reason from the conflict of science and religion and winds up doing a decent job of it. The films acts as great vestibule of our understanding of the expanse beyond our world, ahead of its time and outdated all at once. One of the more forgotten movies about space travel, definitely should get watched.
Event Horizon:
This is a shit film. Make no mistake about it. Out of all of the movies on this list, this is the only one that’s just unequivocally crap. But, for all Event Horizon’s failings, its worth noticing that Interstellar actually rips off an entire scene from it. The layman explanation of a black hole, the old bending of a piece of paper to create a short cut between two points, is recycled in Interstellar in one of its more contrived moments. The difference being that, where Interstellar uses a page from a NASA notebook to make it seem legitimate, good old Sam Neil (the Dad in Jurassic Park) uses a picture of a half naked model. And guess where he punches those holes. Nice.
The Prestige:
Nothing about intergalactic travel here. Nothing in common with Interstellar at all actually, except for the fact that it shares a director. If Interstellar mystified and angered you with all it’s scientific mumbo-jumbo, The Prestige simply blows your mind with each enigma wrapped in a…it’s a twisty one this. Sure, at times it gets a bit silly, but why shouldn’t it. It’s Magic, and only Christopher Nolan is adept enough at storytelling to make magic seem real. And Batman for that matter, but that’s a different movie. Watch those ones as well, like you haven’t already.