One of the benefits of Oppenheimer's huge cultural profile since its release has been people discussing Christopher Nolan's other works, and in particular how many have come around to Interstellar being a masterpiece. The space odyssey movie is an audiovisual seven-course meal, and has a fantastic balance of huge-scale events and very personal stakes that make it absolutely gripping – and you can find it among the best Prime Video movies.
Interstellar centers around Coop (Matthew McConaughey), a farmer and former NASA test pilot, who's trying to eke out a living with his remaining family members in a future where an unstoppable blight is destroying all crops on Earth over time. One day, he discovers a gravity anomaly in his house that leads him to a secret location, where NASA is putting together a Hail Mary mission to save humankind. NASA enlists Coop to fly a ship to investigate habitable planets that have recently been brought within traveling distance of Earth thanks to a wormhole that appeared near Jupiter.
If that all sounds a bit convenient – well, the characters in the movie think so too. Wormholes don't exist in nature, so who put it there, and is it really a coincidence that Coop ended up finding NASA's mission? There's only one way to find out, and hopefully save humanity at the same time.
But that barely scratches the surface of the movie – on this mission, Coop and his crew (including Anna Hathaway's Dr. Brant) find beautiful but absolutely terrifying planets, with the whole sequence on the first planet being maybe my favorite scenes in any Nolan movie.
The action in this movie is absolutely thrilling, aided by an all-time great Hans Zimmer score, but what brings me back to this movie time and time again are the more personal relationships it never lets go of. Coop leaves his kids behind to take on this mission, and becomes more disconnected from them over time – but his goal to make it back and fulfill a promise to his daughter is a driving force, and a dilemma, across his whole mission. Brant is having to deal with leaving her father back home as the lead of NASA's goal to find a way to evacuate people from the planet, and with revelations that will come to light about the history of what they're doing.
It's such a multi-layered movie, about how the connection between just a couple of people can be the vital ingredient to make changes that affect a whole civilization. A connection that reaches across infinite distance and time. If you've never seen it and you're looking for something on Prime Video, come and join those of us who put it top among the Christopher Nolan movies ranked list.
