For 25 years, Christopher Nolan has been in movie lovers lives creating films that feel like events. Being identified as a director known for big production value and using nonlinear storytelling by bending time or presenting scenes in whatever order he sees fit, Nolan has proven to be versatile behind the camera by having major successes in multiple genres including psychological thrillers, historical dramas, and comic book adaptations. These are the film rankings of a great filmmaker who is seemingly obsessed with time, space, history, Batman, and of course, a great Michael Caine monologue.
12) Tenet (2020)
“Don’t try to understand it” is a quote by one of the minor characters in the early parts of Nolan’s science fiction action thriller when referring to the reverse entropy of a bullet. For many, they could’ve taken that same advice for the 150 minute movie and stopped watching right there. Released in the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Tenet was dropped on home streaming and became a divisive movie for many. That divisiveness is derived from the film’s confusing ideas and the relentless pace it keeps up. Tenet is more of an experience than a plot driven film. No doubt, there is a story there and an explanation for the reverse time travel madness, but Nolan doesn’t let the viewer catch enough of their breath to fully capture that understanding in a first viewing. John David Washington and Robert Pattinson are great in their roles, the forward and reverse action scenes are impressive, and there is benefit to watching Nolan’s most cerebral film multiple times, but it feels more brain exercise mixed with film as opposed to those roles being reversed like many of his other films. Tenet has its own hive of fans that will defend the “temporal pincer movement”, but most of us don’t want to have to watch a film three times or resort to reddit forums and YouTube videos before we understand what the hell we just watched.
11) Insomnia (2002)
This psychological thriller based in Alaska feels like the step child of the Nolan filmography. Starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hillary Swank, Insomnia follows two Los Angeles homicide detectives who investigate a murder of a teenage girl. After accidentally killing his partner to no witnesses except that of the murderer, Will Dormer (Pacino) becomes a pawn in the murder case he is attempting to solve while struggling to sleep with the constant daylight of Alaska and the stress of his secret. Williams gives an eerie performance that earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Support Actor and leaves you wishing he had done more dark roles in a life that was cut short. Pacino is much more tame than many of his other roles, but he does get to drop a classic “Angry Pacino Soundboard” line when he drives the victim’s friend to a garbage dump to show her where her dead friend was found in an effort to make her share information. I could seriously listen to Pacino yell “WRAPPED UP… in GARBAGE BAGS” for days. While Pacino’s world class yell is a highlight, Insomnia uses the classic movie trope of using a whole element, in this case lack of sleep or insomnia, for just one big payoff line that comes in the form of Swank’s “A good cop can’t sleep because he’s missing a piece of the puzzle and a bad cop can’t sleep because his conscience won’t let him”. Overall, this thriller is still a solid viewing that doesn’t leave much for memorable moments like many of Nolan’s later films.
10) Following (1998)
Christopher Nolan’s directorial debut and least discussed movie feels like watching a YouTube video of an established NBA star’s high school highlights. You can see the talent and the moves Nolan has in his bag, they just aren’t completely developed or he hasn’t been given the big stage opportunities to show them off. No disrespect to the other people involved in Following, but Nolan is essentially the star player on the team before he is teamed up with other stars like Matthew McConaughey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hans Zimmer, and Christian Bale. The 70 minute, black and white Neo-noir film follows a young writer who gets drawn into a life a thievery and slowly gets far too close to the sun. Nolan uses multiple timelines to disorient the viewer, a staple that he would use for many films to come. At times, Following feels like a rough draft, low budget Memento. That may seem like a back handed compliment, but it really isn’t. Fans of Christopher Nolan and his style should make sure they don’t skip the one that started it all for him.
9) Memento (2000)
Memento being this low on the list may surprise many, but this shouldn’t be taken as a slight. After all, this is probably Nolan’s most important film, the one that put him on the map for movie lovers, and built the foundation for his creativity to use different timelines to keep viewers in the dark. Memento essentially takes some of the structure and ideas of Following, but uses is it on a more grand and finely polished scale thanks to a larger budget and a cast that includes Guy Pearce (as Leonard, in what is likely his most well known role), Carrie-Anne Moss, and Joe Pantoliano. The first time you watch Memento and it’s clip cutting/multiple timeline structure, it’s impossible to know what is going on. Unlike Tenet though, this film leaves the viewer satisfied with little to no questions by its conclusion. The scene fragments become whole scenes by the conclusion of the film as the audience is able to piece them together and gain a true understanding about what is happening. That genius of Memento is putting the audience in the point of view of Leonard as you try to piece the story of his wife’s murder together with the use of his pictures and tattoos. The biggest difference is that Leonard doesn’t have the ability to remember the things that happened in the past where the audience can recall previous scenes. Memento is a truly amazing film by a director that has many of them. Maybe its biggest fault is that it is the biggest victim in the entire Nolan filmography of losing the feeling you get when you see it the first time. If only we could have Leonard’s condition in regards to just revisiting Memento.
8) Interstellar (2014)
Nolan’s 2014 sci-fi epic is arguably his biggest and boldest vision, traveling the vastness of this galaxy, wormholes to other galaxies, and blackholes. Interstellar may also have the widest margin of people who have disdain for it to those who believe it is a masterpiece. In my eyes, it falls right in the middle of that grand scale. For about 130 minutes of its 169 minute runtime, this quest to save human existence feels like a masterclass in science fiction and I often ask myself “Is this Nolan’s best film?”, but inevitably the divisive conclusion takes place. For some it is brilliant, but after hours of my time and years, even decades, for some of the characters in this movie, the whole “love being the one thing to transcend time and space” thing leaves a bit of an empty handed feeling. In the end, it just doesn’t feel like Nolan stuck the landing and needed to have the characters walk the audience through an explanation of what happened try holding their hand. This is still a slow burn, but at the highest level and no matter how you feel about the ending, most would agree the world building and performances still make this worthy of being declared a great film. I mean seriously, we have Matthew McConaughey in arguably his best performance (and one all time meme), plus Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine, a surprise Matt Damon appearance, and a pre-household name Timotheé Chalamet in this movie. Hans Zimmer, a frequent Nolan collaborator, also provides an amazing score. Interstellar is still excellent and that’s what makes this also my most frustrating Nolan film. It just feels this it could’ve been undisputedly so much more.
7) The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Is this the most flawed of Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy? Of course. That doesn’t mean this final chapter isn’t still wildly entertaining and better than 90% of comic book media released in the past decade or more. Nolan continued to use a stacked ensemble cast of Oscar winners and this time added Anne Hathaway to that mix as Selina Kyle/Catwoman. When you think about it, it’s truly incredible that Morgan Freeman bought into being Lucious Fox, a relatively minor character in the universe, for the entire trilogy. The Hathaway casting was controversial, but she is quite good as the jewel thief and if anything, her performance has aged better as years have gone by. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was also added to the Gotham Universe on the heels of his notable performance in Inception. However, the biggest (literally) addition was that of Tom Hardy as Bane, who was tasked with following in the villain footsteps of Heath Ledger’s award winning Joker performance. The accent Hardy uses had it’s own balance of lovers and haters, but he does give a great physical performance as the overpowering new leader of the League of Shadows. No doubt, there are questionable decisions by Nolan in this film. Miranda Tate and Bruce Wayne’s romantic relationship seems strangely sudden, the aforementioned League of Shadows motivations to destroy a much more crime cleansed city of Gotham is questionable, and the whole prison pit legend seems like strange folklore compared to the other films. The biggest issue with The Dark Knight Rises though is that there really isn’t much Batman in the nearly three hour movie. This is a cop movie with Gary Oldman and Gordon-Levitt being the featured performers for a large portion, sprinkled with the Bruce Wayne finding reason to return to the cape and cowl. That being said, once Bruce Wayne rises from the prison pit and returns as the Dark Knight, the final hour and defense of Gotham is legitimate, fun action cinema. There has been enough negative feedback over the years about this film to the point that it seems underrated now, but it really is just a victim of circumstance after following behind two nearly perfect Batman movies.
6) Dunkirk (2017)
With some of the best cinematography in any of Nolan’s movies, Dunkirk is not your traditional action filled and bloodied war film. Based on the true World War II story of the evacuation at Dunkirk in which over 300,000 British, Belgian, and French soldiers were surrounded on the beaches of France by enemy German soldiers, Nolan used little dialogue and relied heavily on visuals and sound to express the terror those stranded soldiers must’ve felt. At times, Dunkirk feels like a horror movie with the feeling of impending doom as German bomber planes fly over the beach. In one of Nolan’s greatest visual scenes, he uses practical effects on a still frame shot to mimic one of these planes dropping bomb after bomb in a row right towards a British solider before falling just short of him. In typical fashion, Nolan didn’t let the subject manner prevent him from using multiple story lines and timelines. The film breaks down to three different timeline themes (a week on land, day at sea, and hour in the air) that all intersect at the conclusion. Despite the minimal use of dialogue, both Tom Hardy as a British Spitfire pilot and Mark Rylance as a British sailer attempting rescue the soldiers give memorable performances. Maybe the greatest accomplishment of Dunkirk is that Nolan was able to create arguably his most beautifully visual film in a war setting. Whether it’s an opening scene with floating paper warnings of “We Surround You”, the views of the ocean from the beach, or the peacefulness of watching a Spitfire fly through an orange horizon, this sometimes feels more like a Planet Earth documentary than a World War II story.
5) Inception (2010)
After a little movie called The Dark Knight and having movie fans in the palm of his hand, Christopher Nolan released Inception, a psychological sci-fi action thriller about a man named Cobb (played by Leonard DiCaprio) and his team of “extractors”, who are hired to use technology to enter people’s dreams and extract information from their subconscious. Cobb’s team is hired by a man who wants them to infiltrate the son of his biggest competitor and plant the idea to dissolve the company, promising Cobb to clear his name as a criminal so he can finally be with his children. Got it? One of the underrated parts about Nolan movies is how funny it sounds trying to explain what one is about. The lore of extracting or in this mission’s case, “incepting” dreams, gets more and more expansive with people who build the dreams, the team entering dreams within dreams, and safely being able to exit dreams by having a “kick” between all dreams in which each dreamer feels the sensation of falling simultaneously and waking up. This brilliant idea, although difficult to fully grasp in some areas, still makes for amazing psychological thriller elements years later. Maybe not as big of a production for its action sequences as Tenet, Inception has the better balance of mindfuckery and action scenes, most notably when Joseph Gordon-Levitt is battling dream projections in an upside down hallway due to the him dreaming in a rolling vehicle. One of Nolan’s many loaded cast ensembles includes DiCaprio, Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Elliot Paige (known as Ellen Paige at time of release), and Marion Cotillard playing Cobb’s late wife who reappears as a projection in his dreams attempting to sabotage them. Additionally, this was the mainstream introduction to Tom Hardy for many as he gives a memorable supporting role with fun action moments that could convince you he could eventually play James Bond, while also having some memorable word battles with Gordon-Levitt’s character, Arthur. Inception also gave us Hans Zimmer’s “Time”, which is one of the most memorable pieces of the past 20 years. Inception’s biggest fault has become the heavily debated final scene in which Cobb’s “totem”, a top he spins to determine whether he is still in the dream or real world, appears to wobble but continue spinning when he meets his children again. Where it seems like it’s left in the viewers mind to decide whether Cobb is truly reunited with his family or it doesn’t really matter due to him being oblivious, many people felt the ending came across lazy and wanted a definitive closure to Cobb’s story. In Inception’s case, the journey to that final scene is so original and entertaining that the ending is only a minor crack in this dreamfilied movie.
Chances are you’ve heard of or seen Inception, but if not, don’t let the ridiculousness of its plot turn you away. This is one of Nolan’s best.
4) The Prestige (2006)
Immediately after releasing the acclaimed Batman Begins, Nolan released The Prestige and returned to using his skill of misdirection. Following two rival magicians (Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman) in late 1800s London, this world of magic where misdirection is a key component seemed like a perfect place for Nolan to work in. Bale and Jackman’s characters animosity builds and builds to a point where it goes beyond attempting to outdo one another on the stage to more sinister measures of truly trying to ruin each other’s life. The greatness of The Prestige is putting the audience in a position where they are attempting to reason with which magician is right or even just less wrong, often times using Michael Caine who plays a magician mentor as a form of moral compass. Caine would also provide some of his classic advice monologues that can be found in many of Nolan’s films including Interstellar, Inception, Tenet, and throughout The Dark Knight trilogy (seriously, watch through these movies and the Caine speeches just start to blend together as if the world stops moving when he speaks). As the main characters rivalry grows, the methods go beyond magic and into a world of science with themes of honoring code, obsession, and what consumed obsession can cost a person. Bonus points for that David Bowie supporting role. The Prestige doesn’t get enough love for being one of Nolan’s best and re-watchable movies.
3) Batman Begins (2005)
Eight years after that the notoriously bad Batman & Robin, Nolan resurrected the comic book hero with arguably the greatest comic book origin movie of all time. With a stellar cast that included two previous Academy Award winners (Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine) and two future winners (Christian Bale and Gary Oldman), Nolan wiped Gotham clean of the neon colors and bad ice puns of the Joel Schumacher films and returned it to its dark roots in the form of high level crime movie. Casting Bale, who was already a highly praised actor, as Batman staked his claim as an A+ actor without being viewed as a “superhero actor” like many of Marvel’s biggest stars due to the quality of the film and not just feeling like your run-of-the-mill superhero movie. Much of that had to do with the film’s attention to detail. Where many moviegoers could poke holes in wondering how other superheroes hide their identity in films, Batman Begins gave explanations in the form of Alfred recommending Bruce Wayne be more visible with a lavish social life so people don’t suspect him of being up to something else, or Batman telling Alfred he didn’t have time to follow the rules of the road when laying destruction to endless police cars and infrastructure in order to save Rachel (Katie Holmes) from the Scarecrow’s poison. Cillian Murphy (Scarecrow) and a pre-“I will find you and I will kill you” Liam Neeson (Ra’s al Ghul) also give great, but less mainstream and less distracting villain performances in the introductory film of one of the great trilogies of the 21st century. Batman Begins may not be the highest Batman film on this list, but it is still a borderline masterpiece and brought DC’s most famous hero back from the cinema graveyard.
2) The Dark Knight (2008)
Once could argue that the Batman Begins sequel is Nolan’s greatest film and they wouldn’t get an argument here. Admittedly, it is his most entertaining movie, much due to Heath Ledger’s Oscar winning performance as the Joker. Ledger’s performance is still legitimately scene stealing 15 years later and on the short list of most memorable performances/characters this century. Ledger elevates this Batman movie to new heights, but that is not the sole reason for this movie being so great. More than just the greatest Batman movie of all-time, Nolan created one of the best action movies in recent memory with big car chases, one of the great opening scenes/villian introductions, and massive set pieces. The Joker is also the perfect vessel to implement his “Chaos Theory” and push Batman to question his existence by forcing him to break his own code of ethics. The unbelievable cast of Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman return with additions of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhardt, who plays the conflicted Harvey Dent/Two-Face. Once again, Hans Zimmer leaves a powerful score in another collaboration with Nolan. The biggest question about The Dark Knight is what could’ve followed had Ledger not passed shortly before the releasing of the movie, both in the Gotham Universe and in what would’ve been Ledger’s inevitably impressive career. Instead we will just have to settle with the greatest comic book film and greatest comic book performance of all-time. With the current state of comic book movie adaptations, it doesn’t appear that Nolan or Ledger will need to worry about losing those titles anytime soon.
1) Oppenheimer (2023)
Nolan’s most recent release is a masterclass in picture, sound, score and dialogue while being supported by an endless number of great performances. This captivating, yet grim biographic thriller follows the great rise and fall of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear bomb. This is a three hour film that never slows down with a heart pounding score by Ludwig Göransson that may not quite have a piece as powerful as Hans Zimmer’s “Time”, but is arguably the greatest cumulative score in a Nolan film and rapid dialogue that would have you believe Aaron Sorkin was involved with the script. Using real explosives to recreate the Trinity test, Nolan accomplished showing how things like sound, score, and practical effects can take a movie to new lengths. In addition to the technical achievements, Oppenheimer’s is built upon the collaboration of a myriad of great performances, not much different than the amount of great minds that were involved in the Manhattan Project. This is truly one of the greatest cast ensembles of the 21st century, a dream team of household names and recognizable actors/actresses. I mean, look at just a sample of some of the many names: Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Gary Oldman, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, and Rami Malek. Every person in this movie, no matter how big or small, nails their role. Murphy as the titular character, Downey Jr., and Blunt are especially great with standout performances that will likely earn them award nominations. This may not have quite the leisurely viewing value of Nolan’s comic adaptations or psychological thrillers, but after 25 years this is the most flawless film from beginning to end in his filmography and feels like a true Best Picture contender, if not the favorite.