The thing that makes me always come back to Nolan films despite their awfulness is the mystery of how someone can be so obsessed with so many things that interest me and come up with an experience that speaks so little to what makes them worthwhile. Interstellar despite its unevenness, length, stops and starts (it plays more like a collection of stock classic sci fi scenarios than a coherent narrative) and some truly laughable parts is one of his more credible films (I’d argue it is there with Memento and The Dark Knight). Nolan’s dorkiness is put to good use and the film’s best parts do suggest old school hard sci fi novels it is trying so hard to emulate, the visual palate is a bit more vivid and before collapsing under his usual overexplanation some of its scenarios are more intriguing than dour. What escapes Nolan is that what makes something like Randezvous with Rama resonate is not those length scientific explanations and interchangeable overcompetent space professionals but that there is the unknown and the excitement of meeting it for the first time. Interstellar pays lip service to science explorer spirit but like all Nolan films it has no curiosity or imagination, it moves not toward an expansion of the gaze but its entrapment (as every other Nolan film men ultimately is in a trap of his own making even if a more benign one). Nolan's cinema is never about the possibilities of the unknown but about striping it of them.