Ranking Nolan

Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite writer-directors and is one of the last 90’s filmmaker breakouts. Among my generation, he’s undoubtedly the most famous. Perhaps it’s because he works more in the mainstream than his immediate predecessors Wes and Paul Thomas Anderson, as well as Quentin Tarantino before them; once upon a time, however, they were all auteurs with no budgets looking to announce their style to the world while honing their craft. In his career, he graduated from twisty thrillers about small-time criminals with structurally inventive scripts to redefining a comic book legend to crafting personal blockbusters to turning his eye to world history. Along the way, his budgets have grown larger, and he’s racked up box office dollars with consistent base level of critical acclaim that places him among a rarified few in film history. Despite all of this, I’ve never gotten the sense that he’s been selling out or running low on ideas in both plot and craft. In an age where most event films are sold on characters, not even movie stars, it’s a special privilege for a filmmaker’s movies to remain the events that his are.

His storytelling trademarks are plot twists, obsession with the nature of time, and his protagonists are often working through their grief by throwing themselves into trying to solve a problem and possibly gain some redemption along the way. His name is synonymous with phrases like “mind-blowing”, mostly due to the events of his stories, how they’re told, or their premises. I also believe he has the formal skills to meet his self-determined challenge, which enhances the experience – no one else could make his stories work. Because of the complexity he works in, his films demand at least one rewatch; fortunately, he’s such a great practitioner of entertainment that it’s always a treat to do so.

Like the chump I am, it’s time to rank them. And here…we…go.

11. Following (1998)

Following is Nolan’s barely-feature-length debut that got him critical buzz, several film festival wins and made his next project, Memento, worthy of financing. For being made for less than $10,000, this movie is quite strong, but you can feel the amateurism in every aspect of it. What’s most interesting about watching this movie is looking out for all the tricks that Nolan would pump into his blockbuster projects. This film jumps forwards and backwards in its very brief runtime, is packed to the gills with twists, and features an ultra-charming supporting character here to teach the protagonist the ropes of being a criminal. Nolan’s shot selection also consists of frames that he’s still using to this day. It’s both bold and self-reflective that Nolan’s first protagonist was a struggling writer who follows people to understand them and use their stories for his own gain before becoming a burglar; his interest in the obsessive side of being a creative proves a level of self-awareness that has guided every project he’s taken on since 1998.

10. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Sorry Bane, but this movie is so all over the map that it has aged the worst for me as it turns 10 this year. The film changes what it wants to be, mean, and say (if anything) several times over the course of its runtime. It’s at once another examination of what the Batman represents and why we need him, a different brand of anarchy, a nuclear/apocalyptic vision, and an epic concerned with legends, parentage, and revenge. That sounds like a lot, and it is. I don’t think Nolan effectively juggles all these balls he sends into the air, but the style with which he sends them is remarkable. Although this film works less and less with every revisit, its entertainment value hasn’t diminished. As time goes by, I most enjoy this movie’s first hour exploring a post-Batman Gotham, but I feel like Nolan used that time to lay the foundations for the more traditional blockbuster stuff to come. Despite all this, the movie has a sense of finality to it that continues to work as time goes on and we’re trapped between stories that never end or ones that end poorly.

9. Interstellar (2014)

I think this take will get me hate from my fellow late millennials, but that’s probably because they’re holding onto the highs that this movie achieves or the memory of the first time they saw it. It could also be because they haven’t seen 2001, which Nolan is paying so deep an homage to here that this movie’s identity suffers from it. It isn’t very well-paced and is clunky in the ideas it’s attempting to communicate, and yet is still highly watchable. This film’s best scenes are some of the best in Nolan’s entire filmography, and I remain blown away by Matthew McConaughey’s lead performance. I appreciate this film’s emotional slant examining fatherhood, which feels like Nolan answering for all the flack he’s gotten about his films’ refusal to emotionally engage with their characters. Unfortunately, that means this is a movie where some astronauts debate the meaning and purpose of love. Despite this, the scene in which McConaughey’s character catches up on years of missed video messages from his family is just as effective today as it was the first time that I saw it. Like I said, when this film sings it sings beautifully.

8. Insomnia (2002)

Insomnia feels like the least-discussed of all his movies, likely because none of the people I really talk to were ever aware of it and Nolan’s subsequent box office success overshadowed most of his earlier stuff. It’s also worth noting that Nolan didn’t have any writing credit on this film; he took the job to advance his career and paint on a larger canvas than his first two features. I thoroughly enjoy the two performances at the center of this movie and was impressed with how psychologically challenging Nolan lets this movie get. However, I don’t think he applies enough stylistically to help this movie escape the early 2000s and the fact that he’s working with someone else’s script really shows itself. As such, revisiting this movie is a fun way to experience where Nolan was going, rather than something revolutionary that he achieved. If you’re looking for a twisty murder mystery, this one is an easy recommendation.

7. Batman Begins (2005)

This is the moment where Nolan turned from promising indie auteur to blockbuster king, but you can feel him still finding his footing with such a large production scale to play with. His grounded approach to Batman in a realistic setting – despite some utter comic book nonsense to close out the third act – was quite revolutionary for its time and is still a model for tentpole directors to this day. The way that he structured this story has also become something of a blueprint, including extensive use of flashbacks, training sequences, and a well-crafted hero’s journey that fits in with the comic book source material. I’m a big fan of Liam Neeson’s performance and find the first act of this film, flipping between flashback and the present day to show both why and how Bruce Wayne became Batman, very strong and emotionally clear for a superhero movie. Then again, that genre label means something a lot less silly than it used to thanks to Nolan.

6. The Prestige (2006)

Nolan’s study of the lengths that obsessed men will go to for both revenge and perfection of their craft is a very gripping watch featuring some excellent performances and some excellent final twists. I also really appreciate his evocation of a bleak and grimy turn-of-the-century London that acts as a metaphor for the ugly truths that accompany the magic tricks his dual protagonists strive to perfect. Knowing how this film concludes does not bolster the re-watch experience, however, as the movie itself plays as an elaborately constructed magic trick designed to both delight and shock the viewer with its revelations. Though a few of the shortcomings in its construction become clearer every time I revisit the film, its stone-cold depiction of obsession and pure originality in its setting never loses an ounce of power.

5. Tenet (2020) More Here.

I spent most of my full writing on Tenet bemoaning what could have been if this film were embraced by wide audiences that weren’t scared away from theaters by a pandemic. While you could consider basically all of Nolan’s films as genre exercises, Tenet’s success is a direct result of its adherence to spy movie tropes. It sits on a knife’s edge of plunging into pure incomprehensibility and bites off almost too much to chew with its time inversion concept, and some would argue it’s not sitting on an edge at all. Having revisited it several times I’m amazed by Nolan’s balancing act. The film also doesn’t have much in the way of emotional catharsis, save for a b-plot involving Elizabeth Debicki and a scene-gobbling Kenneth Branagh, but that’s not what Nolan is after here; he set out to make a stone-cold action/spy/time-bending thriller, and he succeeded. I’m excited to see how this film’s reputation grows over time, since this is far from the only one on this list to be missed in its time.

4. Memento (2000)

Though it was released in 2000, this film feels like the last great twisty ‘90s crime film standing alongside the likes of Se7en and The Usual Suspects. Ingeniously structured so that the film’s ending is just the middle of the story, Nolan was not just inviting but demanding debate about what the hell happened in his movie 20 years ago and continues to invite that to this day. The rewatch value isn’t just in piecing together the plot, however. If we enter every scene understanding more than the amnesiac protagonist and begin paying attention to all the performances, the smart way the script misdirects the audience, and Nolan’s direction, this film’s true value becomes unlocked. While this phenomenon isn’t just true of this film, I’ve placed it this highly on the list because I find the emotion that it engages with quite effective, and this project’s smallness is charming.

3. Inception (2010)

Because of my age, I wasn’t super aware of Nolan’s films as they were hitting theaters – especially since he came up making R-rated thrillers – and I had missed The Prestige and didn’t pay a ton of attention to who was making these great Batman movies, so Inception was my first real taste of Nolan’s vision and creativity. It blew my mind and has aged terrifically. This movie ruled culture the summer it was released, and I’m still impressed with it today. As he does with plenty of other entries on this list, Nolan takes a reliable genre of blockbuster filmmaking (heist films), infuses it with a heady concept (the thieves are stealing ideas from their marks by breaking into their dreams), but in Inception the mission is dependent on the protagonist’s ability to come to terms with his haunted and traumatic past. It’s this balance of head and heart that some people criticize, and of course there are more powerfully wrought domestic dramas for audiences to enjoy, but I still find his stew of disparate ingredients thoroughly entertaining, compelling, and expertly directed.

2. The Dark Knight (2008) More Here.

Nolan’s entire Dark Knight Trilogy is one of the blockbuster achievements of the century, but his second entry is sublime. Its action is stellar, and its characters – while not feeling like real people, but then again when do superhero characters ever? – work effectively as archetypes, giving an operatic and Shakespearean feel to this tale of crime, corruption, morality, and society’s limitations. Using a beautifully captured modern Chicago as his Gotham, Nolan evokes an America plunging briefly into anarchy, and the sacrifices we would have to make to return order, while also giving us brilliant crackerjack entertainment rife with gripping emotion. The physical action set pieces that he’s able to bring to the screen remain jaw-dropping, and he was smartly interrogating the purpose of a superhero in the same year that the dominant MCU was born. Oh, and it features one of the screen’s most beloved, unsettling, and effective performances ever in Heath Ledger’s Joker.

1. Dunkirk (2017) More Here.

This is Nolan’s best film because he employs every single tool in his toolbox perfectly and to maximum effect. His narrative gymnastics are more than just a fun trick for the sake of shock and entertainment, they are used to convey what this experience was like for the airmen who fought for an hour, the civilians who performed as rescuers for a day, and the soldiers who survived for a week. One point he gets criticized on is a lack of deep emotional exploration in his characters; here, that lack works because the Dunkirk experience he conjures up was anonymous, and nobody has any time to discuss their home lives, let alone their names. Nolan’s skills for crafting action and tension, honed over the course of 20 years at this point, are deployed perfectly to create ingenious practical spectacle that also makes for damn fine entertainment. And when the film reaches the fever pitch of its intensity, its emotional release is so perfect as to be profound when the civilian armada arrives to bring their boys home.