The Christopher Nolan sci-fi film Interstellar was released a decade ago today. So how does it fare on our list of all 12 Christopher Nolan movies ranked? Proceed to find out.
By the Way
There are, in our careful judgement, no bad Christopher Nolan movies. Some are good, and some are outstanding.
So if you’re looking for someone to complain about Nolan, this isn’t the place. We’re sorry.
Now on with our list, starting with No. 12…
Following (1999)
Following is a relatively small movie about an aspiring writer (Jeremy Theobald, above) who follows people for fun, and ends up aligned with a daylight burglar named Cobb (Alex Haw) — the only named character.
Now on the Criterion Channel, it’s a fascinating watch because of how many of its elements end up in later Nolan films. The Blonde (Lucy Russell) feels like an early influence on Tenet‘s Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), though both recall Hitchcock’s icy blondes. The black and white of Following will return in Oppenheimer, and the time-manipulating elements appear in almost every Nolan film that isn’t about Batman.
Most amusingly, the main character has a Batman sticker on his door — six years before Nolan’s Batman Begins.
Insomnia
The major flaw of Insomnia is that it’s the only Christopher Nolan movie not written by Christopher Nolan. It’s a remake of the 1997 Norwegian thriller Insomnia, and it unravels in the midnight sun of Alaska (the inverse setup of 2024’s True Detective: Night Country). It’s an examination of guilt cloaked as a daylight noir, and while Nolan films can be too complicated, we wish this one were a little more complicated.
It’s atmospheric and cool, but not Nolan’s best. Still, it did demonstrate his propensity for working with A-list actors: The stacked cast includes Robin Williams, Al Pacino, and Hilary Swank (above).
Nolan has called it the most underrated of his films.
Interstellar
We love Nolan for the density of his plots, and how he constantly raises the stakes and tension while asking moral and metaphysical questions.
But as beautiful as Interstellar looks, we felt like the simple story of a father (Matthew McConaughey) and daughter (Jessica Chastain) got overwhelmed in all the hard science.
Still, we love the ambition. And it’s interesting how the physics in the film arise again in Oppenheimer.
The Prestige
The Prestige is undeniably cool, especially as the rivarly ramps up between Victorian magicians Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). And yes, in addition to Wolverine and Batman, we also have the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in the uniformly stellar cast.
It’s an awe-inspiring movie, but the reveals maybe get a little excessive, starting when we find out what Nicholas Tesla’s machine does.
Still: Are we really complaining about a movie that features David Bowie as Tesla? Honestly, no. Just explaining why this one isn’t higher on our list of Christopher Nolan movies ranked.
Tenet
This is without a doubt the most dense and messy of all Nolan movies, and it’s thundering soundtrack — which makes much of the dialogue tough to decipher — doesn’t help. And that’s before Nolan starts all the head-spinning games with time.
But you know what? Tenet is so unabashedly ambitious and filled with spectacle that we’re willing to ignore the incoherent elements and just go along with the ride. When it works it just soars, and it seems pedantic to get tripped up on the confusing parts when the purely emotional elements work so well.
It was also incredibly cathartic to be welcome back to theaters by Tenet after the long pandemic lockdowns, and that factors into our affection for the film.
Memento
A murder mystery noir thriller about a man with no short term memory (Guy Pearce) that unfolds backwards.
Could anyone but Christopher Nolan make a movie like Memento? It was a perfect calling card anticipating the brilliance to come.
The Dark Knight Rises
Like all Nolan movies, this one gets better on repeat viewings. Yes, it’s a little hard to follow at times. But it all makes sense when you pay close attention. And it does much cooler Nolanesque reveals than 99 percent of superhero movies.
In fact, Nolan doesn’t treat his Dark Knight trilogy as a superhero saga — which makes it feel all the more grounded and resonant. And Tom Hardy turns in a masterful performance as Bane, whether you can hear him through the mask or not. We also love Nolan’s collaborations with Marion Cotillard, whose mystique pairs perfectly with Nolan’s tight sense of control.
Also, Anne Hathaway is the best Catwoman, and the plane-hijack opening may be the most assured of all Nolan action sequences — and there are a lot of incredible Nolan action sequences.
Batman Begins
A Batman movie that wonders how to justify every single aspect of the Batman legend, no matter how cartoonish they might once have seemed.
Memory cloth? The Batmobile? Watching this movie as an adult felt like having all our childhood fantasies and suspicions justified.
Christian Bale is the best Batman by far, Cillian Murphy is outstanding as Jonathan Crane, and the atmosphere is exactly right.
The Dark Knight
A Christopher Nolan movie posing as a Batman movie, The Dark Knight becomes more fascinating the moment you realize — and it may take several viewings — that Alfred is completely wrong when he tries to explain the Joker’s behavior by saying “some men just like to watch the world burn.” And the Joker is simply feeding the myth when he asks Harvey Dent: “Do I really look like a guy with a plan?”
No, he doesn’t, but that’s just misdirection. He makes everyone think he’s a mad clown, but in truth, he’s the best planner in Gotham, able to orchestrate a bank heist, a prison escape, or a ferryboat morality test with equally devastating aplomb.
Unlike the countless lesser actors who play up the Joker’s clownish qualities, Heath Ledger played him with amused distance. Just like the unnamed master criminal playing him in the movie.
Inception
The top three Christopher Nolan movies on our list are here because they best combine Nolan’s astonishing gift for complexity with an underrated power to harness emotion. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb (yes, the same name as the thief in Following) is a captivatingly tragic figure caught in the mad love of his lost love Mal (Cotillard).
Many of the great Nolan players are here — Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt — and the set pieces are in every sense a dream.
You can also watch the film again and again and come away with a different answer to the question of whether that top will ever stop spinning.
Finally, Hans Zimmer’s “Time” may be our single favorite piece of movie music.
Dunkirk
Nolan seems to play against type in this tight hour-and-forty-seven minute that eschews all the cliches of World War II epics and plays it small.
The most powerful moment is a surrender. The greatest heroes are completely ordinary people. The big speech — one of the most famous speeches in history — isn’t presented as a speech.
And one could make the case, that for all that, the events depicted in Dunkirk saved humankind from hell.
Oppenheimer
How do you raise the stakes from Dunkirk? Oppenheimer may well be the story of the beginning of the end of the world. It is incredibly dense, but everything is rooted in simple human emotion — love, passion, embarrassment, fear. All the things that drive us toward irreversible mistakes.
Oppenheimer is a story of science gone mad, but also a story about the importance of tolerating unpopular views — from political thought to arguing against the bomb you helped build. The cast, led by Cillian Murphy, is extraordinary, with Emily Blunt and Robert Downey Jr. especially standing out. (Murphy, Downey, and Nolan all won well-deserved Oscars, and Oppenheimer won Best Picture.)
Someone once told us Oppenheimer is the movie we’ll still be talking about in a hundred years, and I couldn’t agree more.
And if we pay attention to the film, we may even still be here in a hundred years.
Liked This List of Christopher Nolan Movies Ranked?
You might also like this list of the 10 Gen X Film Stars Gone to Soon, including The Dark Knight star Heath Ledger.
Or this answer to a big question about Oppenheimer.
Main image: Jessica Chastain in Interstellar. Warner Bros.