Snuggled between 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises and 2017’s Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan released his quiet, sci-fi epic Interstellar in 2014.

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, this re-release, featuring its stellar cast of Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, Michael Caine and a young Timothée Chalamet, gets another opportunity to mess with the heads of its audience, on a big screen.

Earth used to be such a lovely place to live, but not anymore, thanks to blight and famine across the globe. It is now dying, and there doesn’t appear to be a lot anyone can do about it.

Joseph Cooper (McConaughey) is doing the best he can with what he has, attempting to farm the land with his family.

He has an inquisitive mind, thanks to his training as a test pilot for NASA, and when he discovers some co-ordinates, he decides to follow them. It turns out that they lead to a secret base, run by his old company NASA, and he learns of the plans they’re working on, which involve not saving the planet, but mankind.

They persuade him that he is needed for their latest mission, to travel deep into space. They have two plans: either to find a world to colonise, but if that isn’t possible, they will transport enough samples to start the human race again.

Although not keen to leave his family, Cooper agrees, but he’s not fully prepared for what he’s just signed up for.

British director Nolan isn’t the type to do things by halves, as this space epic illustrates; if he’s going to make a film in space, the fate of the world must hang on it.

It certainly fits with his other films Tenet and Inception, where the science, of which there is plenty, is likely to hurt your head unless the theories of space, gravity, black holes etc is your thang.

Thankfully he balances it with an emotional core, which is threaded throughout, involving Cooper’s love for his family. It’s his heart and passion that certainly alleviates the weight of the science-ness of it all.

That said, visually it’s a veritable wonder. His presentation of space is quite breathtaking, with what feels like a homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in places, with its blend of impressive visuals and an outstanding soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.

You can tell it’s the type of film that Nolan would geek out on, even at the expense of baffling his audience – which let’s face it, he has previous with – but it doesn’t make it any less of a journey.

He has already shown a lot of love for shooting for IMAX, and here’s no different; what is different however, is his use of it, where he cuts back and forth between IMAX footage and the wide screen format at will at some points, instead of just a passage of the film shot wholly on IMAX. It sounds as if it would be distracting to do so, but in truth it isn’t, as much of the IMAX footage is in space, so when we cut to wide screen, the black bars that accompany the screen image, almost feel part of the space as seen on screen.

Yes it’s a little self indulgent at nearly three hours long, but you trying telling any auteur out there today that there film could do with a trim.

Much like the main protagonist Cooper, the audience isn’t really sure where it’s all going, but you know you’re in safe hands with Nolan, who ties it altogether so that at least most of the audience let out a collective ‘ohhhh’ by the end of it.

It’s a film then that, compared to his other work, doesn’t quite get the love it deserves, but this re-release proves that it’s truly out of this world stuff.