With the release of his latest film now seems as good a time as any to look back at Sir Christopher Nolan’s back catalogue of films that have gone from small low key independent features to massive blockbusters. So here are Christopher Nolan films rated ….do let us know if you agree or disagree!
Here’s those Christopher Nolan films rated…..
- Insomnia (2002)
This at present remains the directors only remake and is based on a 1997 Scandanavian film. It was Nolan’s first move into working with major stars and here it was Al Pacino and Robin Williams as detective and suspect respectively in a remote Alaskan town. It remains something of an anomaly for the director as it’s his only film that he has not been involved in writing. The real interest is with Williams playing a killer and was an uncharacteristically extremely dark role for the late actor and was the third such consecutive role after ‘One Hour Photo’ and ‘Death to Smoochy’. Despite it being bottom of the list Insomnia is still a good film.
- Following (1998)
Having made a few short films Nolan got the money together to make his first feature film, ‘Following’. Shot in black & white the film is the story of a young writer who follows strangers for ideas and inspiration in the course of which he meets a thief who takes him under his wing. It’s thought provoking with striking cinematography and is the start of Nolan’s interest in fractured time lines. It’s not perfect with performances by a largely amateur cast but it’s well worth a look and a first hint at his experimentation with time lines in later films.
- Tenet (2020)
So if Following was the start of Nolan’s experimentation with timelines then Tenet is the culmination with a film that goes back and fore in time often within the same scene to dizzying and for the majority of audiences confusing effect. Set in a world of espionage its lead character is the somewhat pretentiously titled The Protagonist played by John David Washington battling to save the world. It had several stunning big budget set pieces that saw him see him a passenger plane career into a hanger,and a car chase with speeding cars going backwards and forwards . Tenet was the film that was released just as the World was tentatively edging out of lockdown and suffered from cinemas blocked from selling every seat due to keep your distance restrictions. Tenet looked terrific on an IMAX screen but its plot remains baffling regardless of how many times its seen.
- Oppenheimer (2023)
By now Nolan had an immense reputation both critically and commercially but an epic three hour biopic about a scientist seemed unlikely to have any audience pull. Having left Warner brothers due to how he perceived how the studio had handled the release of Tenet this film was the first he made for Universal who bent over backwards to accommodate their star signing and it was heavily promoted which led to huge box office success earning just under a billion dollars and the film, and Nolan himself, would win Oscars. Revisiting the film its arguably a little long and perhaps its real box office success was partly due to the remarkable ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon that saw audiences encouraged to buy tickets for the equally successful Barbie.
- Interstellar (2014)
By 2014 Nolan’s reputation was established as a safe and reliable pair of hands and a box office guaranteed hit maker and Interstellar can be looked on as his, ‘2001’. Set in a dystopian future where Earth is near uninhabitable it sees Matthew McConaughey in a team of astronauts on a space mission to find somewhere new for humanity to live and now seems a remarkably prescient predication of Elon Musk’s space objectives. It was Nolan’s penultimate film that played with time before it came to a conclusion with Tenet. Like 2001, Interstellar remains open to interpretation but has some emotional scenes notably McConaighey driving away from his daughter to go on the space exploration that would, due to the conceit of time expanding and contracting, see him return home to his daughter who would now be an elderly woman at deaths door. For any parent it’s an upsetting concept making it a deeply affecting scene. But we place this one lower down the list purely because its structure, like Tenet, though based on Nolan’s extensive research makes it not as readily accessible as some of his other films. Nonetheless the film still made an impressive $764m off a $165m budget.
- Batman Begins (2005)
The Batman franchise had come to a grinding halt with the failure of Batman & Robin (1997) that had been met with derision but the dark knight was always going to get rebooted and it’s a stretch to see just how Nolan got the gig when there was nothing five previous films to suggest that be was the man for the job. In the end it was inspired with Christian Bale cast as the superhero and a slew of big names that included Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and future Oscar winner Cillian Murphy. It was also the directors first really big budget film ( a reported $150m but made a not wholly impressive $375m). But the film garnered respectable reviews meaning that Nolan would get the chance to make a sequel
- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The third in Nolan’s Batman trilogy and we place this one slightly higher than the first film because of Tom Hardy as Bale and the way that Nolan drew a satisfactory close to his spin on the superhero. Its only downside was that audiences began to criticize muffled and incomprehensible dialogue that became a regular complaint surprisingly so for a director so fastidious about technical detail. Yet the still made over $1billion.
- Dunkirk (2017)
Inspired by a trip Nolan had with his producer wife across the English channel the film recounts the true story of Allied soldiers on the French coast surrounded by an advancing German army. Desperate to be evacuated, every asset available was used to rescue them and Nolan’s film brilliantly cuts between the doomed soldiers, a flotilla of boats and a lone RAF pilot. It works quite brilliantly and Nolan’s use of sound along with an excellent score by Hans Zimmer saw the film become a modest hit earning $539m – modest by Nolan’s standards when previous films were heading near to $1billion
- Memento (2000)
Only his second film and yet his interest in dismantling linear narrative hit its peak here with a story that followed a former insurance investigator who now suffers from anterograde amnesia and uses notes and tattoos to hunt down his wife’s murderer. It’s a film that rewarded and demanded complete concentration as it played with time. That the film when released for Home entertainment had a version of the film to play in order is just as satisfying to watch and was clear sign that here was director with ability to match his ambition.
- The Prestige ((2006)
Nolan was really hitting his stride when he made this and its story of two magicians doing their best to outdo one another with their illusions at any cost in Victorian London. It’s terrifically entertaining and is perhaps the film that gets unfairly overlooked in favour of his blockbusters but as part of our Christopher Nolan films rated this deserves such a high position
- Inception (2010)
This is arguably the film that really put him on the map for box office blockbusters. Extraordinary visuals serviced another story that played with time and was at this point in his career was his biggest budgeted film to date at $160m but the money is all on the screen. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio along with Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon Levitt and the Ellen Page its story of a thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is pure sci-fi but he is then given the task of planting an idea in the mind of a CEO that is fraught with personal danger that could ruin the mission to catastrophic effect for him and his team.
Hugely influenced by the Bond films at its centre is an extraordinary sequence within a sequence within a sequence and the film ends on a shot that has had audiences debating ever since. It’s a phenomenal piece of film making with spectacle and intelligence and arguably his best film if it were not for…..
1 The Dark Knight (2008)
This was the film that set the bench mark for every superhero film to follow. Inspired by the crime thriller ‘Heat’ it saw a barnstorming turn from the late Heath Ledger as the Joker that rightly saw him win a posthumous Oscar for the role. Every department working at the top of their game saw audiences lap it up and it became Nolan’s first film to break $1billion and remains his most financially successful film to date. It is arguably the greatest superhero film ever made.
…….and those are the Christopher Nolan films rated!
related feature : Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer pay day ……
related feature: Insomnia – 4K UHD / BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION
related feature : Chuck Russell on making ‘Eraser’ : Behind the scenes of the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic
