As a piece of entertainment, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is a must-see. As a movie to get your head spinning, your brain thinking, and your mind blown, Interstellar is the best movie of the year. As a movie with scientific accuracy… well… Interstellar lacks.

Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, a former pilot who now runs a corn farm (like everyone else) on a dying Earth, slowly running out of food, natural gases, and, most importantly, air. He stumbles across the remains of an old air base, which is secretly housing what is left of NASA. They send him on a daring mission through a recently-discovered wormhole that leads to another galaxy in order to find a new home for humans on Earth. He leaves behind his daughter and son (later played as adults by Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck), who both leave him messages he can see while in the other galaxy. The team includes Cooper, Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) and Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) who explore three possible alternatives to Earth.

To clarify, let’s break the movie into sections. First, the acting. Interstellar features some of the best performances in 2014. McConaughey’s character is well-developed and expertly-played, giving the viewer the feeling of knowing Cooper’s pain through all the emotionally- charged scenes. I’ve always enjoyed Matt Damon’s work in film, and this movie is no exception; his character gets perhaps the least amount of screen time compared to the rest of the main cast, but every scene with him in it is jarring, thanks to his electrifying and very human performance. Anne Hathaway does not disappoint either, as a lovestruck scientist whose emotions often get in the way of the mission. Other highlights include Jessica Chastain’s performance as Cooper’s daughter, and Michael Caine’s performance as Hathaway’s father.

The visuals in this movie are unparalleled. Even in great movies like Inception and the Matrix, one can still identify the visuals as CGI. In this movie, I could not place one scene as being raw CGI, even the scenes that were impossible without special effects. The wormhole they travel through looks just as real as the farm where the movie starts.

Another standout is the soundtrack. Composed by veteran composer Hans Zimmer (the Dark Knight movies, Man of Steel, Inception), the movie makes the most tension-filled scenes even more nail-bitingly tense.

Watching the movie is an experience in itself. I won’t spoil anything, but there is a five minute long, edge-of-your-seat, heart-racing, and tense scene near the beginning of the third act that is so hard to watch but impossible to look away from. Few other movies have had me practically praying that the character wouldn’t make the stupid decision he was about to. After that scene, the rest of the movie was strengthened ten-fold.

And by gosh, the movie is an emotional rollercoaster. Not often does a stand-alone film like this bring out the emotional side of me. One particularly depressing scene is when Cooper spends too long on a planet where time moves much slower, making an hour on that planet equal to seven years on Earth. He returns to the ship to find years’ worth of video messages detailing his kids’ lives, including his son getting married and having children. These emotional moments bring out the best in McConaughey’s acting. Don’t watch this film without a box of tissues within arm’s reach.

The movie revolves around science, yes, and there are a lot of algorithms, theories, and equations used by the characters to continue the plot. But even to a science hater like me, the movie did a great job of explaining to the audience why the science worked and made sense, not to mention explaining what it was and what it meant. I’ve heard from various sources that the science in the movie is very wrong, and indeed, some scenes in the movie that make you go “really? That worked?” But I could care less as long as the movie explained itself well enough; after all, it is science fiction, and not meant to be completely accurate.

You may be thinking “Gee, is there anything you didn’t like?” Well, unfortunately, I did have a few nitpicks. For anyone that doesn’t like science fiction, Interstellar will just be weird, plain and simple. So know what you’re getting into. Sometimes the human drama and scenes that take place on Earth take away from the visually stunning experience of the space scenes, making you go “bring back the cool stuff!” Nonetheless, I felt the movie balanced the Earth scenes pretty well with the expedition scenes, so that’s only a minor complaint. Also, the last twenty minutes or so of the film feel… well, they seem to be completely implausible and, for lack of a better word, dumb. Overall, the end of the movie was good, and an excellent conclusion, but nonetheless, just felt “off” compared to the rest of the film.

Interstellar is a movie with some excellent performances, some stunning visual effects, a fair share of emotional moments evened out by edge-of-your-seat tension, and a beautiful soundtrack. In the end, I’m going to give Interstellar a heavy recommendation for science fiction geeks and casual moviegoers alike, and I’ll slap on a 4.5 out of 5 star rating.