Interstellar, 2014

Very few movies on this list made me cry quite like Interstellar. Christopher Nolan’s time-bending sci-fi flick follows the story of Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former NASA pilot turned farmer after a global blight careens the human race toward extinction and space travel is deemed frivolous. When Cooper and his two children discover strange patterns in falling dust particles, they decipher the binary code and trace it to a secret NASA facility that has been toiling away at figuring out how to transport humanity to other hospitable planets. Cooper agrees to man the flight, but faces immense odds, including time dilation (an hour spent on one potential planet is seven years on Earth), a mad scientist determined to get back home no matter the cost, and the consequences of leaving your young children behind to embark on what very may well be a fruitless endeavor.

Though Interstellar plays with some pretty involved scientific conceits, at its core it’s a story about the power of love and its ability to transcend time. An absolute fucking tear jerker that’s brilliantly paced and well-acted by McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine. — Alyssa Mercante