After months and months of speculation, the first previews have finally been held for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, only a few days before opening, such is Nolan’s tradition of keeping everything extremely close to his chest until the very last minute, and the general early critical opinion is that this 169 minute pic isn’t quite the masterpiece some had predicted, comparing it to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey despite very little being known, but most also saying that the film fails on some fronts purely because of the sheer scale of its’ ambition, wanting to do a epic amount within that limited time frame, some critics noting that it would be the perfect material for a long-form mini-series. Interestingly some have noted that the film has a definite three-act structure, - the first detailing how the Earth is dying, food crops failing due to an agricultural parasite called The Blight, and former astronaut Cooper (Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey - Magic Mike / The Dallas Buyers Club) finding out from his mentor, Dr. Brand (Nolan fixture Michael Caine), NASA having essentially been closed down and all space related activities having been shut down due to the lack of commercial investment, that there has been a secret project, the Endurance, for such an eventuality, and Cooper is going to have to be the man to lead the team, comprising his daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway- Les Miserables), Romily (David Gyasi - Cloud Atlas) and Doyle (Wes Bentley - American Beauty), to find a new planet for humans to colonise. The second is the detailed and tech-heavy exploration scenes, the mission having to travel to another galaxy through a ‘wormhole’, with location shooting having been done in Iceland, while the third is more nebulous, dealing with the relationship between Cooper and his daughter, Murph, a child when he left Earth but due to the time-space physics, while he has barely aged, she is now played by Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), now a scientist herself, and the contact between them as the second stage of the operation goes into effect. Early reviews have been at times truly stunned by the visuals, while having problems with the blending of such scientifically complex concepts, much of the central idea coming from theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, with the long distance father / daughter relationship, noting that Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan, has packed the film with so many ideas and aspects that even at two-and-three-quarter hours, it seems cramped, Nolan, a fan of celluloid over digital, as seen by his passionate defence of the format in the documentary Side By Side, also managed to pull off a couple of remarkable little touches only a director of his stature can demand, firstly by insisting that Paramount, who distribute the pic in the US and had previously announced that they would be distributing on digital only from mid-2014, to strike 35mm and 70mm prints of Interstellar for those cinemas which could still project them, and as an extra bonus, having the film open two days early in such cinemas, the celluloid prints opening on the 5th whereas the digital prints would wait until the 7th. Interestingly this will be the first major feature Nolan has made without his trusted DoP Wally Pfister, who passed in order to make his directorial debut, the largely derided Transcendence, which may not have been the best decision he’s ever made, instead employing Swiss cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, responsible for Let The Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, as well as being signed up for the upcoming Bond 24. Nolan also shows how he can assemble a truly fine cast, with support from younger actors such as Topher Grace (Spider-Man 3) and Casey Affleck (The Killer Inside Me), as well as superb veterans Ellen Burstyn (The Exorcist), John Lithgow (aptly the star of TV’s 3rd Rock From The Sun) and William Devane (TV’s 24), as well as a surprisingly small almost cameo role for Matt Damon, returning to the sci-fi genre after Elysium. Interstellar may not quite be the film some had expected, and with the weight of expectation upon it how could it be, but seems to prove that Nolan is one of the most important and thrilling directors working in films today, and one who has the sort of power within the film world which many could only dream of.