Interstellar

Christopher Nolan knows what he's doing. In Interstellar, he's taken his love of complex storytelling, and brought it to the vast arena of space-time. The Earth has suffered terrible from humanities hubris, and now a team must ensure the survival of the human race. Two plans are established, and now it's all about seeing what can happen, and who survives the attempts to implement them. The really impressive thing about Interstellar is the way the actors are in several different movies at the same time. Anne Hathaway, at her most impressive, is in a straight-ahead science fiction film, rushing to save mankind.  Jessica Chastain, in perhaps her best genre role, is in an emotional science fiction film that touches on elements of the supernatural. Matthew McConaughey is in a straight-up Philip K. Dick story. They all mesh, somehow, to produce a film that looks at all the angles of what it will take to save human kind after Earth, and more importantly, how we'll finally manage to get there. Add to that the typical Nolan look and the amazing score, and you'll see why this all works. Why it's on the list: A very smart, twisting, and sprawling film