What to watch now that you've seen 'Interstellar'

I saw “Interstellar” two weeks ago and still don't know if I like it. Christopher Nolan's space adventure has big ideas and even bigger emotions — a combination that's right up my alley — but I didn't feel a connection to its characters. It is an impressive production, to be sure, and Matthew McConaughey is predictably perfect as the film's astronaut hero. The film owes much to composer Hans Zimmer, whose all-encompassing music has become integral to Nolan's style.

Whether I liked “Interstellar” or not, I must admire its ambition; it joins a legacy of thoughtful sci-fi epics that began in 1968 when Stanley Kubrick smash-cut from an ape throwing a bone to a spacecraft floating in the void.

If “Interstellar” is a launching pad, the following films are the exciting destinations:

• “2001: A Space Odyssey” — The aforementioned Kubrick classic is a clear influence on “Interstellar” and pretty much every other sci-fi film in the past 46 years. Many of us have only seen this movie on a grainy VHS tape and a small, boxy TV. Now, in this age of giant HD displays, is the perfect time to revisit and re-evaluate. (Available on Blu-ray and DVD, and digitally from iTunes, Google Play, vudu and more)

• “The Fountain” — Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan”) wrote and directed this 2006 love story that stretches across three time periods and multiple levels of reality, depending upon your reading of the piece. Hugh Jackman plays a scientist desperately trying to find a cure for what ails his wife, played by Rachel Weisz. They also play a conquistador and his queen, and a futuristic space traveler and his dead lover. The three threads eventually come together in an explosion of life, death and rebirth. (Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and vudu)

• “Sunshine” — Before he was Captain America, Chris Evans co-starred with Cillian Murphy in this 2007 film about astronauts who must reignite our sun with a nuclear weapon. Director Danny Boyle, who would catch Oscar's eye one year later with “Slumdog Millionaire,” marries astonishing visuals to a clever script by Alex Garland (“28 Days Later”) that overcomes a late detour into typical horror-movie territory. (Blu-ray and DVD, Google Play and vudu)

• “Cloud Atlas” — Chicago's Wachowski siblings (“The Matrix”) teamed up with “Run Lola Run” director Tom Tykwer in 2012 to adapt David Mitchell's novel into a sprawling, three-hour epic that intercuts between six stories about imprisonment, slavery, retribution and redemption. The cast includes Tom Hanks, a never-better Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving appearing as different characters in each story — and often as a character of a different gender or race. Some find the film to be an expensive, experimental folly; I find it endlessly fascinating and surprisingly entertaining. (Blu-ray and DVD; iTunes, Google Play, vudu)

• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald copy editor and a tireless consumer of pop culture. He would have put Steven Spielberg's “A.I.” on this list, but a movie that great deserves an entire column of its own. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.