CHRISTOPHER NOLAN RANKED
A deep dive on one of my favorite directors ever.
A director known for headache-inducing concepts, extravagant productions, bombastic scores, nonlinear storytelling, Michael Caine, and lots of dead wives: Today we’re talking Christopher Nolan.
One of today’s most talented directors, every movie he makes pushes the boundaries of filmmaking further than ever. He also hasn’t made a bad film yet. He’s the director who got me into movies, so today, I’m ranking my top 10 of his feature-length films.
10: Insomnia (2002)
A good cop can't sleep at night because he's missing a piece of the puzzle. And a bad cop can't sleep because his conscience won't let him.
INSOMNIA depicts an aging detective sent to a remote Alaskan town to investigate a murder. Following Memento’s roaring success, this follow-up psychological thriller was Nolan’s proof that he could handle a bigger budget with A-list actors. Insomnia is by no means bad, but Nolan is clearly still finding his footing behind the camera.
9: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
"No one cared who I was until I put on the mask."
The final installment in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises presents a broken Batman forced to leave exile to save Gotham City. The Dark Knight Rises is certainly the weakest of the Nolan Batman trilogy, burdened by a convoluted plot and too many characters. Despite this, this movie is grand and is made possible by strong performances from Tom Hardy (!!!), Christian Bale, and Michael Caine.
8: Batman Begins (2005)
"Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up."
One of the best superhero origin movies of all time, Batman Begins brought new life to the beloved superhero, telling the story of Bruce Wayne’s transformation into the Batman. Nolan rewrote the rules of the superhero genre for this movie and laid the groundwork for the revolution that swept us afterwards. His gritty take on the character grounds Batman in the real world, made possible by Christian Bale’s performance.
7: TENET (2020)
"Don't try to understand it. Feel it."
TENET tells the story of a Protagonist on a time-bending mission to save the world. This is the most Nolan movie to ever Nolan, pushing the envelope on complex plots, bizarre time travel, and extremely grandiose production. Does it suffer from cumbersome exposition, flat characters, and incomprehensible dialogue? Sure. Is it still a 2 hour long roller-coaster filled with action and ideas you’ve never seen on screen before? You bet. Possibly my biggest guilty pleasure movie.
6: Memento (2000)
“I can't remember to forget you.”
The movie that put Nolan on the map, Memento chronicles an ex-insurance investigator with memory loss as he attempts to find his wife’s murderer. One storyline moves forward in time while the other moves backwards. You can see a lot of the seeds of Nolan’s style here: snappy editing, sharp dialogue, and a plot that’s not afraid to play with linear storytelling. It’s an interesting experience to see Nolan, known for his grand blockbusters, create on this small of a scale, but it really works.
5: Dunkirk (2017)
“All we did is survive.” “That’s enough.”
Dunkirk is one of the most unique war movies I’ve ever seen, telling three concurrent stories about the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War 2. A departure from Nolan’s usual sci-fi beat, it’s refreshing to see how his style translates to other genres. Dunkirk portrays war as a series of contradictions: it’s eerily quiet yet bombastically loud, it’s packed with people yet painfully lonely. The score, the awe-inspiring wide-shots, and the performances, all cement this as one of Nolan’s best.
4: The Dark Knight (2008)
“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
The best superhero movie of all time, featuring one of the best performances of the 21st century: The Dark Knight shows Batman taking on the terrorist, the Joker. There’s nothing I can say about this movie that hasn’t already been said. You can’t overstate its significance: every action movie that came after has roots in The Dark Knight.
3: The Prestige (2006)
“They'll beg you and they'll flatter you for the secret, but as soon as you give it up, you'll be nothing to them.”
Nolan’s most underrated movie tells the story of two stage magicians in 1890s London who battle to create the ultimate illusion. Seeing Nolan take on a period-piece sci-fi movie is everything I could ever ask for. The Prestige features Nolan’s most nuanced characters ever, with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, and Michael Caine giving career-high performances. I still think about this movie’s ending from time to time.
2: Inception (2010)
“An idea is like a virus.”
We seldom remember how revolutionary Inception was when it came out: A heist story of a thief given the inverse task of planting an idea through dream-sharing technology. Inception rewrote the rules of blockbusters. Nothing like it had ever been done — a movie this grand in scope, this visually inventive, with a plot so bizarre that it should not have succeeded. But it did. On rewatch, it’s still unbelievable how fresh this feels, and how Nolan was able to pull this off.
1: Interstellar (2014)
“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
My favorite movie ever: Interstellar tells the story of a team of explorers who travel through a wormhole in space to ensure humanity's survival.
Despite Nolan’s love for hard science and technology, despite this movie’s nebula-spanning reach, despite all the mind-bending sci-fi, this movie is his most human yet. Interstellar is a lonely and emotionally-charged story, one that will make your heart soar one minute and crush it the next. It’s one of those movies that transports you to a whole new world and instills you with a wonder about what’s beyond. One day I’ll write a full review. For now, though, this is a perfect work of art and cements Nolan as one of the greatest to do it.
TBD: OPPENHEIMER (2023)
Christopher Nolan’s next movie, coming out in July 2023, is a biopic of Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project to produce the atomic bomb. We know next to nothing about this movie other than its extremely-stacked cast. I can’t wait.
Weekend Streaming Recommendation:
Most of these movies are streaming on HBO Max, Netflix, or Amazon Prime — all of them are worth a watch!
That’s all for today! See you all again next week. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.
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