I am a big Christopher Nolan fan. He is considered to be in the top 10 movie directors of the 21st century.
Following (1998)
Memento (2000)
Insomnia (2002)
Batman Begins (2005)
The Prestige (2006)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Inception (2010)
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Interstellar (2014)
Dunkirk (2017)
Tenet (2020)
0voters
His recently finished Oppenheimer hits theaters this summer (July 21st). He is one of the few directors whose movies I have to pay very close attention, and usually benefit from seeing them more than once. I refer to his films as “thinking man” films. Nolan has a habit of using the same actors in many of his films.
My favorites in order are:
Inception
The Prestige
The Dark Knight
Memento
Tenet
Interstellar
I’m hoping that Oppenheimer is on par with the quality I expect from a Nolan film.
So apparently I’m not a Nolan fan. The Batman movies I think are dreary.
Interstellar terrible. I don’t love Inception the way many do. The only highlight of The Prestige was Bowie as Tesla.
While I know it won’t be the one for which he’s remembered, I think The Prestige is one of those quietly brilliant and perfect small movies that sneaks through the cracks once and a while. I also really love Tenet. And I’m one of a small contingent of defenders of the third Dark Knight movie: it’s a structural mess, but I love Ann Hathaway’s Catwoman, and the whole movie was a step up for me from the epically muddled second Batflick.
Memento, no question: the gimmick should swallow up the story and the characterization and the acting and all of that, but it — doesn’t? It just winds up showcasing everything else.
That’s a really tough choice as there’s a lot of good films there. I went with Interstellar but the Batman movies, Inception and Dunkirk are all exceptional film making. Tenet is also really good but a hair less than his best, in my opinion.
There are two Nolans, Christopher and Jonathan (aka Jonah).
The latter is the big thinker, for sure. It’s less clear to what extent Christopher follows suit. He might mostly be into the visuals, might be influenced by his brother on films that weren’t written by Jonathan, or might be pretty bright in his own right but not quite at the same level.
On Jonathan’s side, you would need to throw in Person of Interest and Westworld.
It’s a toss-up between Interstellar and The Prestige. David Bowie was surprisingly good in the former, imho. Like WE, the appeal of the Batman films is a mystery to me. Yawners. Memento and Insomnia were both quite good, as well.
Jonathan Nolan was never credited as director of any feature films, primarily as screenwriter, and only on 5 of the feature films that his brother is credited as director.
I suppose there are different definitions of “best”, but I voted Interstellar because I found the subject matter the most entertaining, and the film is spectacular in IMAX. The minor plot weaknesses didn’t really bother me. I particularly like the way Nolan brought in the renowned theoretical physicist Kip Thorne – as executive producer, no less – to allow the film to push the boundaries of science without venturing into the provably impossible. Nolan wanted the ship to travel faster than light, for example. In the interests of scientific plausibility Thorpe adamantly refused, which led to a brief impasse that ended when Nolan finally backed down and changed the script. Thorne later write a book, The Science of Interstellar, where he explained how some of the film’s more outlandish premises might be physically possible.
Let me be another person who would like a “None of these” option. I have seen a number of these films, and none of them really stand out as being outstanding.
Of the 6 or so I’ve seen in the list, I went with Inception. The Batman movies are fun, but nothing I hadn’t seen in various comics a dozen times over, and often better.
Interstellar is a fine movie, and beautiful, but not moving or entertaining (to me that is), and really tends to drag.
Inception, while far from perfect, felt more original than most, and while I didn’t agree with the actions taken frequently, made me feel the desperation of the characters. And it had a wonderful soundtrack. So, arbitrary I guess, but it gets my vote.
That’s true…but I’m not sure what it has to do with what I said?
For example, if you said that Charles Pickering was the pre-eminent astronomer of his time but I pointed out that a lot of his discoveries came from the work and ideas of Henrietta Leavitt, then pointing out that Pickering was the head of the observatory - while true - doesn’t conflict in any way with my statement. It just seems like a non sequitor.
Following was a really good movie. I’m surprised at how far under the radar it’s flown. It came out only two years before Memento and it was another 5-6 years before Batman Begins and The Prestige, so people had plenty of time to watch his only previous feature length movie.
I’m not one to rewatch movies over and over so I’ve only bought, literally, like 10 DVDs (but I rented a lot over the years). The Following is one of the few I own, and I made a lot of my friends sit through it.
I wonder how much of that was due to it being black and white. I know a lot of people that will automatically dismiss a movie for that reason. And the friends I got to watch it, took a lot of convincing, but they all appeared to be glad they watched it.
Inception was the only one that I actually found fun; so it gets my nod. Dunkirk and The Prestige were okay, but the rest I’ve seen (especially the Batman films) take themselves too seriously for what they are. I have a hard time enjoying a serious film built on a gimmick. Just because it makes me think; doesn’t make it good.