Christopher Nolan has emerged over the last two decades to become one of the most distinct voices in modern filmmaking. Nolan’s career has been something of a slow burn, moving steadily from low-budget indies to studio assignments and eventually becoming a name general audiences have come to trust. A new Christopher Nolan movie is now an event in itself, with the director maintaining control from the initial concept down to the final edit.

While some viewers can find Nolan’s style too controlled or cold, a lot of his best work is rooted in emotion, with recurring themes that include characters haunted (sometimes literally) by the death of a loved one or fighting to be reunited with them. Memory, non-linear plot structure and time are repeating elements too, as are ensemble casts, including the ever-present Michael Caine. There are few filmmakers who operate at the same level of freshness and originality as Christopher Nolan, meaning his filmography is something special.

12 Following (1999)

Christopher Nolan's Debut Plays With Time

Following was Nolan’s debut feature, a microbudget, black-and-white thriller about an unemployed writer who follows strangers around London. Following was filmed on weekends, with Nolan self-financing the production. The film really shows the themes and tropes that Nolan would use later in his career with much more money. Unlike Memento, which was told in reverse order, Following is told out of order, with each scene a piece of a puzzle that doesn't reveal the full truth until all the pieces are in place.

It is a plot device that Nolan used later in movies like Memento, Inception, and even The Prestige, as he has always constructed movies in a confusing manner where everything becomes known during the final scenes. For a movie shot for practically nothing, it is an impressive, brooding noir tale, but it’s also rough around the edges. There are seeds of the filmmaker Nolan would eventually become, especially in the non-linear plot structure, and it was even acclaimed enough to receive a Criterion Collection release.

11 The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Christopher Nolan's Batman Finale

The Dark Knight Rises ends the Christopher Nolan Batman era on a strong note, but not without some missteps. From the outside, there was always a sense The Dark Knight Rises was a film that was an obligation instead of a project Nolan was truly invested in. However, there’s still a lot the movie gets right, such as the renewed focus on Bruce Wayne over Batman, the grounded reinvention of the Lazarus Pit and Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman.

The movie is also overlong and it seems much of the story is bloated, falling far short of the superior The Dark Knight.

Yet, there are issues that drag The Dark Knight Rises down. The Talia al Ghul subplot could have been eliminated with a rewrite and the movie wouldn’t have missed it, the pacing can be oddly sluggish, and Bruce Wayne’s final scene feels like a studio note that belongs to another film. The movie is also overlong and it seems much of the story is bloated, falling far short of the superior The Dark Knight. It’s the weakest of the Nolan/Bale era, but it still delivers a satisfying ending.

10 Insomnia (2002)

Nolan Remakes A Norwegian Thriller

Insomnia was Nolan’s move into studio filmmaking, and he delivers an elegant, visually engaging thriller that occasionally feels too chilly for its own good. Insomnia is actually a remake of a Norwegian thriller, with Al Pacino starring as a detective investigating a murder in a small Alaskan town. Pacino’s character is plagued by insomnia, brought on by the guilt of accidentally shooting a fellow cop and covering up the crime and the fact he is in Alaska in the part of the year where the sun never goes down.

Insomnia is a taut psychological character study, and while Pacino is typically great, it's Robin Williams' icy turn as the villain that makes the movie. Williams turns in a career performance as the antagonist where he displays no humor at all throughout the story. The filmmaking also shows how great Nolan would become later in his career, as his lighting and color grading allow the viewers to start to feel the discomfort that Pacino's cop feels as he struggles to cope with the never-ending daylight.

9 Dunkirk (2017)

Christopher Nolan's First War Movie

After a string of comic book movies and sci-fi blockbusters, Dunkirk was a pleasant change of pace for Nolan, which allowed his history buff to come out too. The film details the true story of the evacuation of Allied soldiers from Dunkirk in 1940, with the film unfolding from three different perspectives – land, sea, and air. The first thing to note about Dunkirk is how lean it is, with a tight runtime and sparse dialogue. The film doesn’t even feature any German soldiers, with the movie playing them off as shadowy threats.

Old hands like Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance bring a touch of warmth to Dunkirk, but while the film’s lack of character development is realistic, given the condensed timeframe, it does make it hard to truly invest in the fates of the main characters, since they feel like ciphers. Historians praised Dunkirk for its accuracy to the war, the battles, and the dog fighting in particular. The film also picked up eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

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8 Batman Begins (2005)

Christopher Nolan Reinvents Batman In The Movies

Batman & Robin essentially killed the franchise in 1997, and Warner Bros. spent many years trying to find the right filmmaker to reboot the series. When Christopher Nolan was hired for Batman Begins, he took the character back to his roots, exploring how Bruce Wayne’s trauma pushed him to become Batman. This grounded, psychological take was somewhat groundbreaking for the genre, and Nolan populated the film with great actors – Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy – to sell the reality.

In truth, Batman Begins feels like a dry run for Nolan’s next Batman adventure, and his somewhat sloppy handling of action sequences is at its worst here. That said, Batman Begins brought a sense of humanity that had been lacking in the genre, and Bale’s portrayal would come to define Batman for a new generation. Seeing the first half of the movie being just about Bruce Wayne becoming Batman was like nothing seen in a superhero movie before and the best was yet to come.

7 Tenet (2020)

A Time-Bending Sci-Fi Adventure Movie

After the timeline confusions of Interstellar's ending, Nolan dialed everything up several notches with the high-concept sci-fi spy movie, Tenet. Following John David Washington's The Protagonist as he - along with "colleague" Neil (Robert Pattinson) - works in the employ of a clandestine organization to save the world. Tenet riffs heavily on Bond movie tropes but also on pretty much every idea Nolan had previously expressed in his other films. It is a dense, challenging sci-fi heavily reliant on its own twisting logic.

It's also a deeply rewarding, incredibly bold blockbuster that reinvents the film-watching experience.

It won't ever be to everyone's tastes and the fact that it wears its occasional impenetrability as a badge of honor is very provocative, but that's sort of the point. Nolan wants to challenge his viewers and explore some of his ideas of time and class and the hero's place in the story to its utmost. Further, even. And that comes with some trade-offs on traditional markers of perfection. Amazingly, though, it's not too far off.​​​​​

6 Interstellar (2014)

A Man Travels Through Wormholes To Save The Earth

Nolan got to make his own sci-fi epic with Interstellar, which finds Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper leading a team of astronauts into a wormhole in the hope of finding humankind a new home. While Interstellar deals with a high-concept hook, the movie is at its best when it is focusing on the relationship between Cooper and the daughter he had to leave behind on Earth, who grows up to be his age due to the effects of time dilatation.

This relationship provides the emotional core of Interstellar, which occasionally gets bogged down with dry, academic science talk. Which isn’t to say Interstellar lacks action, with Cooper’s docking with a runaway spacecraft possibly the finest set-piece of Nolan’s career. Hans Zimmer's score provides propulsive energy in the right places, but while Nolan is aiming for his very own 2001: A Space Odyssey, he doesn’t reach those heights. The ending still drags this movie down for some thanks to its confusing resolution.

5 The Prestige (2006)

A Tale Of Dueling Magicians

The Prestige was something of a palette cleanser for Nolan following Batman Begins and cast Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as rival magicians. While the pair start out as friends, their devotion to the art form (and a tragic death) gradually destroys them both. The Prestige gave Nolan a chance to contrast magic tricks with filmmaking, allowing him to perform some deft sleights of hand with the story. It also lets Nolan play with history, as he brings in Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) for an interesting turn.

While The Prestige has plenty of shocking plot twists, the tragedy of the central relationship is what drives it. Though some reviewers felt the film was somewhat gimmicky upon release, it’s since been re-evaluated as one of Nolan’s most complex and undervalued works. A late gear switch into sci-fi can be a dealbreaker for some viewers, but The Prestige saw Nolan continue to evolve as a storyteller.

4 Memento (2000)

The Movie That Made Christopher Nolan A Star

Memento is the film that first put Christopher Nolan on the map, and with good reason. This twisty thriller unravels in reverse order, with Guy Pearce’s lead character trying to solve his wife’s murder whilst dealing with a condition that prevents him from forming new memories. Memento provides Pearce with one of his best roles, allowing him to be funny, tragic, and pathetic by turns, but the other star of the show is Nolan's script, based on the short story Memento Mori by his brother Jonathan Nolan.

The reverse construction of Memento is genius, with Nolan reinventing a classic noir story while putting his own flair on it. He did something similar with his previous movie Following, but was more rigid here, having every scene followed by the one that came before. Memento is where Nolan found his inner auteur, and while his work would get more refined, there’s something to be said for the film's raw energy. This movie thrust Nolan into Hollywood's spotlight, and he has never looked back.

3 Inception (2010)

A Heist Movie Where The Team Steals Memories

The runaway success of The Dark Knight bought Christopher Nolan a blank cheque with Warner Bros, which he enthusiastically cashed on Inception. Nolan originally conceived of the project as a horror film but decided a heist story allowed more possibilities. Not only did the concept allow Nolan to play with the nature of dreams and reality, but it also allowed him to explore the relationship between filmmakers and the audience too. This was something he has worked on since Following and Memento, and here he perfected it.

Inception features all the exciting set pieces and special effects expected of a blockbuster, but its thematic underpinnings and likable cast of characters are what make it discussed to this day. Inception is also a movie that rewards more than one viewing because, like the multiple dream layers the characters descent into, there’s always more to explore.