Every Christopher Nolan movie, ranked

Nolan’s feature directorial debut might seem a bit simplistic compared to the genre epics he would later weave, but there’s no denying that Following shows us from the very beginning that we’re dealing with a natural filmmaker. Shot on a shoestring budget on weekends over the course of a year, Nolan’s story of a writer who begins following random strangers to get story ideas only to find himself sucked into the life of a criminal is tense, clever, and brimming with stylish choices. It might be slightly jarring if you only know Nolan from Batman movies, but Following is still a very good film in its own right, and proof that Nolan’s gifts were there from the start.

Love it or hate it, you can’t deny the sheer force of The Dark Knight Rises’ scope. To follow-up the near-perfect The Dark Knight, Nolan envisioned a Gotham City plunged into isolated chaos under the watchful eyes of Bane (Tom Hardy), an absent Batman (Christian Bale) nursing a broken back, and a world waiting for the Caped Crusader’s resurrection. It’s a lot to take in, even when you consider the prodigious runtime, and for some fans it just never sat right. Looking back now, though, while it might be the weakest of Nolan’s Bat-films, there is undeniable power in The Dark Knight Rises, from the scale of its filmmaking to the emotional force of its story.

For many moviegoers, Tenet was overshadowed by its pandemic lockdown-era release, and Nolan’s own personal displeasure with how Warner Bros. handled the film. That’s a shame, because while it might be among his most emotionally detached efforts, on a technical level Tenet is a stunning achievement. Nolan’s ability to weave together not just individual character arcs, but characters moving backwards and forwards in time into the same sequence, makes it a joy to watch, even if you have to go back to sync everything up in your head. It’s not Nolan’s best action epic, but it’s a dazzler all the same.

The only film in Nolan’s filmography for which he does not have some kind of writing credit, it’s easy to dismiss Insomnia as a kind of stepping stone film, a bridge between Memento and Batman Begins that helped Nolan reach blockbuster director status. But to write off Insomnia is to write off a very good mystery film featuring two of the best performances Nolan has ever gotten out of his actors, courtesy of determined cop Al Pacino and clever killer Robin Williams. Sure it’s not packed with the high-concept narrative flourishes for which Nolan’s became so well known, but Insomnia is proof that the filmmaker can still deliver conventional fare, and deliver it with style.

Nolan’s breakthrough film, co-written with his brother Jonathan, remains an exhilarating experience years after its signature gimmick has become common knowledge even among people who’ve never seen it. All the noir tonal influence Nolan brought to Following is on full display in this tale of a man on a desperate, unconventional search to avenge his wife’s death. But there’s an added depth to Memento that makes it a Nolan essential. Many of his future hallmarks—obsession, nonlinear storytelling, twists hiding in plain sight—are already on display here and, as with Following, there’s a stylish edge, and a confidence, that reveals a future cinematic powerhouse already delivering great work.

Nolan’s first full-on blockbuster remains one of the best superhero origin stories we’ve ever seen (and we’ve seen quite a few at this point), but Batman Begins is about more than Batman, well, beginning. It’s the film in which Nolan establishes the kind of heightened action movie reality that’s come to encapsulate much of his style over the last nearly 20 years. It’s a style he developed to inject a sense of verisimilitude into the tale of Bruce Wayne (a wonderful Christian Bale) choosing to dress up as a bat-themed vigilante, but he’s applied it to nearly every film he’s made since. Plus, looking at the movie all these years later, it’s remarkable how thematically well developed it is, something else that would serve Nolan in his follow-ups.

Christopher Nolan has often been compared to Stanley Kubrick in terms of both technical prowess and a perceived emotional detachment from his characters and stories. But both Nolan and Kubrick’s films are brimming with emotion if you know where to look. So it’s perhaps fitting that Interstellar—Nolan’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—is the clearest example of that emotion in his filmography so far. For all its dazzling visuals and ambitious exploration of scientific conceptualization, it’s ultimately the story of a small group of people battling the primal forces of the universe, and finding that one primal force–love–just might save them all.

Nolan’s tale of dueling Victorian magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) on a quest to master the perfect illusion may not have the blockbuster flash of the films on either side of his filmography, but the intimacy of The Prestige works in its favor. There’s still plenty of flash to be had, particularly when it comes to the gorgeous Tesla sequences, but more importantly this film might be the purest possible distillation of Nolan’s own cinematic philosophy. He is, in his own way, a magician always on the hunt for the absolute perfect trick, and The Prestige neatly lays out how deception, compromise, and even underhanded tactics all play a role in achieving that goal. The question is always how far the magician is willing to go, and the intimacy and intensity with which Nolan interrogates that idea makes this movie one of his best.

Nolan’s first attempt at pure historical drama (Oppenheimer marks his second) is an absolute stunner, the story of one of the most famous retreats in the history of warfare rendered with sensitivity, attention to detail, and an almost awe-inspiring sense of sustained tension. There is so much for Nolan to harness here, from the nonlinear narrative approach to the all-star cast to Hans Zimmer’s pulse-pounding score, and he handles it all with the calm, assured hands of a master. There are plenty of blockbuster trappings to be had in Dunkirk, but it’s the way Nolan shoots the human moments, from a near-drowning sequence to the pure panic of a dive-bomber attack, that makes the film one of his masterpieces.

Enough time has passed since The Dark Knight’s blockbuster rollout in 2008 that cinephiles and cynics alike have all tried their hand at poking holes in what many consider to be one of the best superhero movies ever. But despite all the beatings it’s taken in the intervening years, The Dark Knight still just works. Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning Joker and Christian Bale’s ever-more-driven Batman are big reasons why, of course, but Nolan’s achievement as director and co-writer is what holds it all together. When Nolan movies aren’t working, it’s often because his reach exceeds his grasp, in terms of craft or theme or even emotional depth. With The Dark Knight, the film just keeps reaching, but it always grasps what it’s after, and that makes it a modern classic.

In a career that now spans 25 years, Christopher Nolan has made big films and small films, adaptations and original ideas, intimate dramas and sweeping epics, but if you’re looking for the purest distillation of a “Christopher Nolan Movie,” look no further than Inception. The story of a group of dream thieves who set out to pull off a reverse sci-fi heist, it’s got everything you could ever want from a Nolan film. There’s an all-star cast, there’s a tense emotional hook that slowly reveals itself over the course of two hours, there’s action underscored by beautiful practical effects, there’s perfectly choreographed cinematography, and of course there’s an unconventional nesting doll narrative to keep you hooked. As is usually the case with Nolan’s blockbusters, it’s a lot for any filmmaker to handle, and yet it all comes together perfectly for what might be the seminal film in his entire body of work.

Inception might be the Most Christopher Nolan of Christopher Nolan’s films so far, but Oppenheimer manages to surpass it in terms of sheer force of craft, emotional heft, and pure ambition. Nolan’s tale of the life and times of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, with a particular focus on his role in creating the first atomic bomb, is a searing portrait of America at a crossroads, a showcase for a staggering ensemble cast led by Cillian Murphy in the title role, and home to some of the most beautiful visuals in Nolan’s career. It’s a stunner through and through, but even beyond its well-appointed craftsmanship, it feels like a film that really lets us see its creator growing and evolving into something even more impressive. It might not be his best movie forever, but it’s the best he’s given us yet.