There are few filmmakers as widely renowned as Christopher Nolan, and even fewer who can command a nine-figure budget for an idea like a heist movie set in someone’s mind. From adaptations of beloved source material like The Dark Knight trilogy to fiercely original works like Inception, it’s rare that one of Nolan’s movies doesn’t become a phenomenon upon release.
One of the few times it hasn’t happened was earlier this year with Nolan’s spy thriller Tenet, one of the only studio tentpoles to be released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nolan has no “rotten” scores on Rotten Tomatoes, but some of his films are rated a lot higher than others.
11 Tenet (70%)
Nolan’s lowest-rated directorial effort is also his most recent. Tenet was supposed to be the movie that saved theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, but ended up being another casualty of it.
With complaints ranging from incomprehensible plot to inaudible dialogue, the simple fact of the matter is that most moviegoers didn’t think Nolan’s time-bending spy thriller was worth risking their lives, so it underperformed at the box office.
10 Interstellar (72%)
Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne initially developed Interstellar for Steven Spielberg, but he dropped out, allowing Christopher Nolan to board the project and turn it into his version of 2001.
The movie is kind of a mixed bag. Nolan’s cold, detached style didn’t gel with a sentimental story written for Spielberg. The visuals are spectacular, but the musings on the calculability of love are pretentious and boring (and really on-the-nose). And there’s plenty of inaudible dialogue buried under Hans Zimmer’s wall of sound in this one, too.
9 The Prestige (76%)
Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale star as rivaling magicians in The Prestige, a small-scale period thriller that Nolan and Bale made between the first and second Batman movies.
The story uses all the tricks in the magician’s handbook to subvert the audience’s expectations, like cinematic misdirection, and the result is a lofty movie with a doozy of a twist.
8 Following (81%)
Now that Nolan has gone on to spend blockbuster budgets on gargantuan action sequences, his debut feature Following feels like a massive step down.
But a couple of the hallmarks of a Nolan movie were there from the beginning, like a nonlinear story structure, a brooding protagonist, and a boatload of references to film noir.
7 Batman Begins (84%)
Nolan redefined blockbusters with Batman Begins, a retelling of Batman’s origin story that brought an unprecedented gritty realism to a reclusive billionaire dressing up as a bat to fight crime.
Unfortunately, Batman Begins inspired a wave of gritty superhero movies like Man of Steel, Fant4stic, and The Amazing Spider-Man that have paled in comparison (and betrayed the spirit of their respective source material in the process).
6 Inception (87%)
In the most iconic cinematic portrayal of the dreamscape since A Nightmare on Elm Street, Inception brings the basic structure of a heist movie into a human mind to steal an idea.
One of the highest-grossing original movies ever made, Inception is a quintessential Nolan movie with all his directorial trademarks and the thought-provoking themes that make his movies stand out.
5 The Dark Knight Rises (87%)
Nolan faced an impossible task with The Dark Knight Rises. He had to deliver a satisfying follow-up to The Dark Knight in the wake of Heath Ledger’s untimely passing. While the threequel is a little disjointed and often too grandiose for its own good, Nolan stuck the landing as well as anyone could’ve expected.
Bringing A Tale of Two Cities to Gotham gave the movie a suitably epic narrative backbone, while the physical threat posed by Bane was an interesting counterpoint to the psychological one posed by the Joker.
4 Insomnia (92%)
Nolan’s only remake of another director’s work is Insomnia, a serial killer thriller adapted from the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name. It’s also one of his most underrated movies.
Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, and especially Robin Williams all give terrific performances in Insomnia, while Wally Pfister’s chilly cinematography recaptures the cold terror of the original.
3 Memento (93%)
The first movie that really made Hollywood take notice of Christopher Nolan was Memento, a thriller about an amnesiac man who’s trying to piece together his own scrawled notes to solve his wife’s murder.
In classic Nolan style, Memento’s timeline is all over the place, with one story thread running in reverse and one running in chronological order before clashing at the end.
2 Dunkirk (93%)
The evacuation of Dunkirk was a unique story for a Hollywood war movie, because it was a defeat for the Allies and didn’t involve American troops, but Nolan turned that harrowing account into one of his best films.
Told from three perspectives – land, air, and sea – Dunkirk gives a powerful, rounded portrait of the titular evacuation, which Nolan effectively just restaged full-scale and pointed cameras at.
1 The Dark Knight (94%)
Possibly the greatest comic book movie ever made and definitely the best Batman movie ever made, The Dark Knight captures everything about the Caped Crusader’s mythos – the dichotomy of Bruce Wayne, the corruption in Gotham City, the Bat’s lack of an endgame etc. – with both faithfulness to the spirit of the comics and a newfound gritty realism.
Of course, the star of the show here isn’t the Dark Knight himself, as compelling as he is, but rather Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the Joker.