There have been some early screenings across the country for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and they are pretty much split down the middle. Critics have called the movie amazing in scope and something that people need to see on a big screen. However, the critics who knocked it said that, despite how amazing the film looked, it was the story that held it back. Those critics made it sound like Gravity.

However, what about someone who isn’t paid to write movie criticism? What about someone who knows just as much – if not more – about film history and theory than many critics, but has no reason to praise or dismiss any movie except if it really touched that person? What about director Quentin Tarantino?

“It’s been a while since somebody has come out with such a big vision to things,” Tarantino told The Guardian. “Even the elements, the fact that dust is everywhere, and they’re living in this dust bowl that is just completely enveloping this area of the world. That’s almost something you expect from [Andrei] Tarkovsky or [Terrence] Malick, not a science fiction adventure movie.”

Wow – Tarkovsky and Malick.

Quentin Tarantino just compared Christopher Nolan to the men who directed such masterpieces as Solaris, Ivan’s Childhood, Badlands and Days of Heaven. That is high praise, but if you look at Nolan’s career, he has always been one of the brightest filmmakers working, with blockbusters like The Dark Knight Trilogy to indies like Memento to sci-fi masterpieces like Inception.

There are some people who only really know Nolan from his Batman movies, but he shares just as much with Tarkovsky and Malick in the way of cerebral filmmaking as he does with Steven Spielberg and blockbusters. As a matter of fact, Nolan has always been more about intelligent stories than about spectacle. Luckily, he also knows how to make a giant blockbuster, so it’s really the best of both worlds for Nolan fans.

Nolan is also pretty pretentious on occasions, but that has allowed him to fight for the survival of film stock, much like fellow wunderkind Paul Thomas Anderson. Both of those men are creating some of today’s best films – not movies, but films. With that said, Anderson saw Interstellar and called it “a beautiful film,” saying that he wanted to help get the word out. “Go see it in IMAX,” Anderson said. “Brave the line, Do it, bite the bullet.”

Quentin Tarantino also touched on the fact that Nolan is really a throwback director – someone who isn’t just “that Batman director.”

“It’s not just a dollars and cents thing,” Tarantino said. “Christopher Nolan would be just as good of a filmmaker as he is, just as a potent filmmaker as he is if he was making movies in 1975. Or, if he was making movies in 1965. I’d like to see Chris Nolan’s version of The Battle of Bulge. That would be fucking awesome.”

With that said, no matter how polarizing the early reviews might be, Quentin Tarantino has me wanting to see Interstellar as soon as possible. While there were no press screenings here, however the studio has offered to let us see it on their dime, so expect our review as soon as it hits theaters this weekend.

In the meantime, here are two of my favorite filmmakers leaving a tweet with their opinions on the movie.