With Christopher Nolan releasing his latest feature “Oppenheimer” in cinemas, it felt appropriate to rank his movies from his debut feature to his latest one.
12. Dunkirk
Yes, I’m one of the few weirdos that found Christopher Nolan’s World War II movie to be his weakest film to date.
I can praise Dunkirk for a few things. The performances were solid, especially from Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance and surprisingly, Harry Styles. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography was breath-taking, particularly in the aerial dogfight scenes. That’s all the praise I have.
For a war movie, Dunkirk felt so sanitized and void of danger. Sure, Hans Zimmer’s bombastic score was there to remind that the soldiers were in danger, but it was less of a reminder and more of an annoyance. I think it was this movie that I fully recognized Nolan’s biggest weakness. The man isn’t particularly great at emotional storytelling.
For a war movie depicting soldiers in danger, there needs to be some sort of emotion. This is something Dunkirk sorely lacks.
11. Insomnia
Most people consider Insomnia to be one of Nolan’s worst. It isn’t bad, but it’s not engaging.
This was Nolan in his early years, so I would love to see how he’d pull off a straight-forward investigative thriller now. The performances were pretty solid. Al Pacino wasn’t shouting his ears off, so that’s always a plus. The movie was fine. But movies like these need to be more than fine. This is the kind of movie that a Denis Villeneuve or a David Fincher would have pulled off to a much better degree.
Insomnia gets to be a place above Dunkirk solely for the casting of Robin Williams as a psychopath. Now that’s the kind of deranged casting I want to see.
10. The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Knight was always going to be a tough act to follow.
The climax is cathartic for long time Batman fans. The airplane heist still remains a jaw dropping set piece to this day. The cast does a great job, including new additions Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon Levitt.
All that said, the villains were always going to be a tough act to follow. While Marion Cotillard’s Talia was a damp squib, Tom Hardy’s Bane was impressive enough to wipe out all memories of the abomination that appeared in Batman & Robin.
What kills Rises is the weirdly paced screenplay. While Begins had a gradual ramp-up and TDK was screaming like a bat out of hell from the word go, Rises screenplay starts and stops to middling results. Any time the movie tries to achieve momentum, it’s brought to a dead stop.
Rises isn’t a bad movie per se, but a few clean ups here and there would have made it into a worthy send off for The Dark Knight trilogy.
9. Tenet
As much as people love to complain that Christopher Nolan’s movies are convoluted, they always had a clear explanation of the mechanics. Sure, you can find plot-holes here and there, but they won’t be immediately apparent.
Then, there’s Tenet which has the dialogue “Don’t try to understand it, feel it.”
Tenet’s biggest problem is that the time travel mechanics aren’t fleshed out properly. It does feel like Nolan had a faint idea for some set-pieces involving spies from the past & present timestreams and didn’t bother to make sense of it. The entire movie suffers as a result of that. You’ll be finding plot holes left and right in this movie.
Kenneth Branagh’s villain isn’t fun or menacing enough like the Bond villains Nolan took inspiration from. To make matters worse, the sound mixing for this movie is absolute garbage, drowning any important plot related dialogue.
Even with those flaws, Tenet is still a worthy watch for its action sequences alone. They might be confusing at times, but they are jaw dropping to look at, Ludwig Goransson (Black Panther) delivered an electric score and JD Washington & Robert Pattinson do a great job with their roles.
8. Following
I wouldn’t have included this movie. But this is still a full length movie, so here.
While most people would consider Oppenheimer or The Prestige to be his first character drama, that honor goes to Following.
I’ll cut this movie a bit of slack. It was Nolan’s first stab at a full length feature when he was a student. As such, there is a bit of amateur filmmaking that plagues this movie. But even here, you can catch glimpses of the Christopher Nolan that would go on to capture the cinematic zeitgeist. The meditations on identity and guilt that you would find in The Prestige, the twist endings you would find in Memento.
Following was Christopher Nolan announcing to the world that a talented filmmaker was born.
7. Batman Begins
After the stupendous flop that was Batman & Robin, a lot of people wrote off Batman. It took a British director to revive the fortunes of the character.
A reboot of the franchise, Batman Begins was grounded than any superhero movie that came before it. From the gadgets to the suit to even the villains, Nolan re-imagined every aspect of Batman as if he was in the real world (well, about as real as it gets). The Batmobile wasn’t a sleek, long supercar, but rather a brutal, rooftop-hopping tank. Ra’s Al Ghul wasn’t immortal, but rather fed a myth that he was.
The casting was solid, the action was great (even if the hand to hand combat sucked). Nolan was successful in making Batman a respectable entity in the eyes of Hollywood.
6. Memento
While most people know him from Batman or Inception, it was Memento that put Christopher Nolan on Hollywood’s radar as a promising filmmaker to watch out for.
By using a non-linear narrative as a storytelling device, Christopher Nolan turned what would have been a by-the-numbers thriller into a juicy thriller about a man who suffers from short term memory loss and tries to find his wife’s murderer with a Polaroid camera. That non-linear narrative also helped in pulling off the ending successfully.
The movie became popular enough that there have been successful remakes in different languages in India.
5. Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer is not a movie a lot of people, even Nolan fans, will love.
It’s a three-hour character drama/biopic that shifts between the past and present to offer a comprehensive picture of the father of the atomic bomb, from his ascension to his disgrace. That’s not the kind of movie most Nolan fans like or care for.
For people willing to give it a chance, you will find a rock solid movie with stupendous performances, particularly from Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr, stellar production values, a racy screenplay (for a biopic anyways) and Nolan’s deft direction, all accentuated by Ludwig Gorannson’s haunting score.
Sure, the whole Strauss subplot can be considered an unnecessary addition. But even with that, Oppenheimer still stands as a testament to the years of polish that Nolan has applied to his filmmaking skills.
4. Interstellar
My friends will kill me for putting Interstellar in this position. Actually, a lot of people will kill me for this.
Don’t get me wrong, Interstellar is a great movie. There aren’t too many sci-fi movies like this nowadays. The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, the movie does a great job of adhering to actual science under the guidance of physicist Kip Thorne, Hans Zimmer delivers his best work in ages and all of this is bolstered by stellar performances from McConaughey, Hathaway and Chastain.
Where Interstellar falls apart for me is the final act. Christopher Nolan was heavily inspired by Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for this movie. While I’m not a big fan of that movie, I’d much prefer that movie’s psychedelic final act compared to Interstellar’s which tries (and fails) to land the emotional impact it was striving for. That’s about my only complaint with this otherwise wonderfully crafted movie.
3. The Prestige
It’s criminal that The Prestige remains Christopher Nolan’s most underrated work to this day.
While The Prestige wasn’t a pure character study, Nolan managed to delve into the theme of obsession and its destructive effects around our loved ones.
The Prestige also opened my eyes to Hugh Jackman. Up until that point, I had only known him as the guy that played Wolverine. This movie showed me a performer that can stand toe to toe with giants. As the vengeful magician hellbent on one-upping Christian Bale, Jackman brought a bitter, manic intensity to the role that made his journey to find the perfect trick compelling. It also contrasted nicely with Christian Bale’s calm, measured performance.
It might lack the bombast of the Dark Knight movies and the complexity of Inception, but The Prestige more than makes up for those with a razor sharp screenplay and some razor-sharp performances from Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.
2. The Dark Knight
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For better or worse, The Dark Knight changed blockbusters. For some time at least.
While superhero movies were gaining a bit of respect due to the efforts of Sam Raimi, Bryan Singer and Nolan himself, The Dark Knight (along with 2008’s Iron Man) catapulted them from a niche genre for nerds to acceptable mainstream entertainment. It was so popular that people revolted when the Oscars didn’t nominate it for Best Picture.
While every part of The Dark Knight was a 10/10, Zimmer’s menacing score, Nolan’s great direction, a blazing fast screenplay, a cast at their A-game, it was the late Heath Ledger’s iconic Joker that made TDK into the icon it is today. Even comic book fans were not prepared for Ledger’s interpretation of the Clown Prince of Crime. To this day, The Joker serves as the gold standard for every superhero movie antagonist. (I do feel bad that Aaron Eckhart’s smoldering performance as Two-Face gets overshadowed by Ledger)
For all the MCU and DCEU movies that have come after it, The Dark Knight is still the gold standard for superhero movies.
1. Inception
And of course, the best movie of them all.
While The Dark Knight trilogy netted Christopher Nolan a lot of fans, it was Inception that solidified Nolan’s place as one of the best directors of all time. A lot of people found the movie confusing, but they wanted to watch it another time because Nolan had delivered a sci-fi movie like no other in a long time.
The eagle eyed might say that the “original” plot was inspired by Satoshi Kon’s colorful mindfuck that is Paprika. If that was the case, then Christopher and Jonathan Nolan smartly packaged Paprika’s concept of travelling within dreams into a heist movie. I guess that does explain why Inception feels like a live action anime adaptation to me at times.
This movie was firing on all cylinders. Nolan’s direction was masterful and the cast was solid as hell. Hans Zimmer provided some of his best work for this movie. The dialogue was whip-smart. The editing was crisp. The screenplay was well paced. While people go gaga over Tom Cruise’s stunt work nowadays, Nolan’s been doing that stuff for years. That zero gravity rotating corridor fight was an ingenious feat to pull off.
For me, Inception will always be Nolan’s best.