There are very few directors working today whose new films are events simply because they made them, and no such list would be complete without the inclusion of Christopher Nolan.
The British filmmaker has earned his reputation for making cerebral blockbusters many times over, and while some of his efforts may be divisive, you can never fault him for lack of ambition. Even when he's making his version of a Bond movie, as with Tenet, he can't help but include ground-breaking scenes where people travelling forwards in time fight people travelling backwards in time.
With Oppenheimer about to hit theaters, it's a great time to revisit his movies, ready for his longest and most IMAX-y epic so far. I'm sure lots of people will disagree with parts of this list, but it's one sign of what an impactful filmmaker he is that there are about five different movies that could easily be someone's favorite, and it's hard to argue with any of them.
Fortunately, you can watch lots of them on Max – they absolutely rank among the best Max movies.
11. Following
Nolan’s black and white debut is both his shortest movie – it’s just 69 minutes long – and a blueprint of sorts for the tropes that would go on to become hallmarks in his latter movies. Starring Jeremy Theobald as a young, unemployed writer who finds himself partnering up with Alex Haw's slick thief, it features a fractured narrative, a big twist, and an intense score by David Julyan, Nolan’s go-to composer pre-Hans Zimmer. Along with an easy-to-spot Batman Easter egg, these were early signs that the fledgling filmmaker was destined for great things.
10. The Dark Knight Rises
I actually love a lot of what's in this movie – Tom Hardy's Bane is imperious ("Do you feel in control"), Anne Hathaway's Catwoman is the perfect version of the character for these movies, and everything it does with Bruce Wayne and Alfred's relationship makes for a satisfying end to the story.
The story of Bane coming to Gotham City to tear it down by separating it from the world is… odd, though. It's perfectly fine to propel the action forward, but it lacks the spark and cohesive feeling of the other Batman movies here.
9. Tenet
Nolan goes Bond for the second time, with a time-bending concept – but this isn't mean to be a clockwork timeline puzzle that will come together in the final act, like movies further down up this list. Here, time goes backwards and forwards just because it's fun, and Nolan has a character specifically say, pretty much straight to the audience, that you shouldn't think about how backwards time works, you just need to feel it.
The plot involves John David Washington being recruited into a shadowy organization that has access to a machine that can "invert" the flow of time for a person or an object, meaning that it starts moving backwards through time. He's tasked with stopping Kenneth Branagh from putting together a doomsday device that was developed in the future, but hidden in the past… look, you gotta feel it. It's not about the plot, it's about super-charming Robert Pattinson cheekily crashing a plane into an art warehouse, or Aaron Taylor-Johnson getting you excited for a huge battle by yelling "temPORal pincer movement!". It's great fun, but it's slight on substance.
8. Insomnia
In most director's filmographies, a great thriller like that would be near the top. In Nolan's list, it's further mostly down because there's a queue of modern classics in front of it. Al Pacino gets drafted in to solve a murder in a northern town where the sun doesn't set, while he's being investigated for faking evidence.
The story dives through guilt and self-delusion, with great performances by Hilary Swank and Robin Williams. It's quite a by-the-numbers thriller, elevated by one of Pacino's best modern performances and Nolan's determination to make everything as foggy as possible, both ethically and literally.
7. Batman Begins
It's funny to remember that this was the 'gritty, grounded' superhero movie of choice at one point, when you consider that it has ancient ninja societies, microwave-based superweapons, and everyone losing their mind because of fear gas. And they all have to deal with Batman and his army of literal bats appearing for the first time in the middle of it.
Nolan drew on the likes of Lawrence of Arabia for Batman's origin story, following Bruce Wayne through his training across the world, and the creation of his tools, leading into his first time out as Batman. Which goes… middlingly, which is fun. But it really leans into what a strange and terrifying idea this would be for a criminal to encounter, and the story of a man who rejects a nihilistic view of the world, and embraces the need to work to improve things where the system can't, is kind of more heartwarming than you remember.
6. Memento
In some ways, the simplest in the "Christopher Nolan screws around with time" genre, but also the most complex because it entirely relies on its premise working – there's not a ton of on-going character stuff here, partly because it's hard to have on-going development when the movie is going backwards.
It follows amnesiac Guy Pearce, who can't make new memories following a head injury, as he tries to hunt down the man responsible. The film runs backwards, where each scene takes place before the scene you just watch, usually tying straight into the previous scene. Uh, I mean the next scene. I think?
It's a twist movie that's full of mini-twists, where usually it turns out the premise of the scene you just watched is undermined by the discoveries of what's in the scene before, and it's maybe the ultimate in unreliable narrator movies, since you quickly come to realise you can't be sure a single thing is how it appears, because when viewing it, you have no certainty over what happened in the movie's past… because you haven't experienced it yet.
5. The Prestige
This is the connoisseur's choice for a lot of people, and I love it too, to be clear. The story of two rivalling magicians is really about the lengths people will go to in their obsession – either for perfection, or to be seen as the best. Or both.
It's got a big "the movie is about filmmaking" vibe, especially since Nolan takes such joy in quietly showing you how the movie will play out at the start, with a voiceover saying "This is what's going on, but you don't really want to see it because you want to enjoy the ride", and then… well, that's how viewers experience this movie.
4. The Dark Knight
I'm sure lots of people would have this at number one, and I wouldn't exactly argue against it. A sprawling crime epic that happens to have Batman and his villains in it, it's as thrilling as it is ambitious.
It covers a period where Batman has established himself, and is starting to close down mob bosses successfully – so they turn to the Joker, who doesn't want anything other than to undo the order that Batman's bringing to the system, including causing chaos for any stabilizing influence in Gotham, from the mayor to judges to friendly District Attorney Harvey Dent.
The Joker is the pillar this movie is built on, and he's as electrifying today as he was in 2008. The Two-Face effect is also so wonderfully grotesque, and the film's use of IMAX is one of the most influential pieces of filmmaking in decades. However, when I called it 'sprawling', it is very sprawling, and the third act drags a bit on rewatch, especially when it adds so many new elements.
3. Dunkirk
The shortest movie here other than Following, and there's good reason for that: you really can't take any more than 100 minutes of it. It's about the evacuation of Dunkirk during World War 2, and it covers a week in the life of a soldier on the beach, a day in the life of a small boat crew heading to help save the soldiers, and an hour of a fighter pilot tasked to protect the action. And guess what, those different timelines interact in usual and interesting ways! What a twist!
Really, it allows the movie to provide flashbacks and flashforwards without actually doing that, which could easily be cheesy. While following the fighter pilot, we see something happening with two stricken boats, then later in the movie we see our soldier getting on one of these boats. The movie uses this structure to build tension constantly – we can see someone getting out of a difficult situation, but we know that they're heading out of the frying pan and into an (oil) fire.
It's another movie that allows itself to go fully sentimental at the end, which it's earned – after putting us through the grinder of this nightmarish evacuation, a swelling score and some some pride is the only way to start breathing again.
2. Inception
The movie that cemented Nolan's place as a director who gets to do whatever he wants. After the colossal success of The Dark Knight, it's common for a director to be able use their cachet to make something that's more their own vision. It's just that most of those movies don't also turn out to be mega-hits, but Inception did, and now Nolan's original ideas are all as big news as his Batman movies were.
Inception is a blend of a heist movie and a Bond movie, about a team of thieves who can enter your dreams to unlock the secrets of your subconscious. The problem is that they're led by Leonardo DiCaprio, who's barely in control of his own mind any more. They're hired to plant an idea into the mind of Cillian Murphy, rather than steal something, which means they'll have to go deeper into the subconscious than is safe.
It's all a glorious excuse for some incredible scenes, such as a fight in a rotating hallway because a van containing sleeping people is rolling over, or Paris being folded in on itself and manipulated. And with different planes of action taking place in different levels of the subconscious, with time running differently at each level (of course), it all builds towards one enormous finale, where the movie channels it all into the final fantastic moments of the heist – explosions, crashes, defibrillation and planes sync into one flow of catharsis, because ending with an all-time great movie score and infamous final shot.
1. Interstellar
Early on, this was one of Nolan's more maligned movies – or at the least, more mixed in reception. Over nearly a decade, opinions at large have changed a lot about it, and it's gained the high reception it always should have, in my opinion. It manages to be Nolan's biggest movie while also delivering the most personal and emotional stakes of his filmography. And also does some mind-bending time-related shenanigans, as the man is wont to include.
It stars Matthew McConaughey as a man who has to leave his family on a dying Earth while he investigates what happened to the explorers that NASA sent out to chart possible other worlds for humans to live on. It's quietly quite a classical epic of journeying to new places, with discoveries, disasters and betrayals on the way. At the same time, we follow the daughter he left behind on Earth, played by Jessica Chastain, and her work to save humanity in her own way, which will tie directly into her father's work.
It's an incredibly, openly sentimental film, fundamentally about the love a family has for each other, even when a parent has to leave and the relationship becomes full of sorrow and anger. This makes some people uncomfortable, and some find it overblown, but it's absolutely the movie's strength – in a film about trying to save humankind, Nolan always ties the stakes of each set piece back to what it means for the ability of this parent to see their children again. But it balances all that with two of the tensest scenes in any Nolan movie so far. I love it.
See our guides to the top new Max movies and new Netflix movies for more fun stuff to watch.
