Christopher Nolan Films Ranked

One of Nolan's most underrated films, and quite frankly a very underrated film in general, The Prestige stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale who give incredible performances as two competing stage magicians. The non-linear way Nolan generally tells his stories is done incredibly well here (second best to Memento) and really pays off in the end.

One of the Top 3 comic book/superhero films out there (along with Spider-Man 2 and Logan), The Dark Knight is a cinematic masterpiece that is not just a sequel to Batman Begins but a stand-alone Batman epic in-and-of itself. With incredible performances by Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, and Michael Caine, The Dark Knight has it all. Truly some of the Nolan brothers (as the film was co-written by brother Jonathan Nolan) best work and by far the best live-action Batman film out there.

Nolan's "2001" starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway which is visually stunning. Interstellar is definitely Nolan's most beautiful film that draws its audience in immediately. From the time on Earth with the midwestern cornfields to the intergalactic space travel, Interstellar keeps its audience fully engaged and hoping against hope that the man will make it back to his daughter one day.

Al Pacino and Robin Williams star in Nolan's first suspense thriller and crime drama Insomnia, which is a very interesting movie that keeps you guessing throughout. Nolan's first big studio may not be as well remembered or as loved as some of his other work, but still pretty Nolan-y.

A silent masterpiece that uses both Nolan's trademark non-linear story-telling style while also taking on the challenge of using as little dialog as possible to thrust the audience into the heat of the moment that was the Battle at Dunkirk. Not a war movie, but a thriller that takes a true historic triumph from the Second World War and tells a compelling story about hope that is sure to rock your world.

Inception was a game-changer for Nolan, really bringing him into the spotlight as an original creative force as opposed to just being "the guy who fixed Batman movies". Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and crew deliver on this odd sci-fi epic that, like The Matrix a decade prior, makes it's modern audience question their own reality.

The start of The Dark Knight Trilogy, Batman Begins is often underrated and overshadowed because of The Dark Knight and even The Dark Knight Rises, but Begins has Nolan's nonlinear fingerprints all over it, proving it to be the most "Nolan" film in the trilogy, Bale, Caine, Morgan Freeman, and the rest of the cast definitely deliver to fix Batman after the tragedy that was Batman & Robin.

Memento was the film that put Christopher Nolan on the map, proving that he's more than just some new director. Memento uses Nolan's nonlinear frame as the base for the entire movie, a movie that, without this technique, would be terribly uninteresting but because of it proves to be fantastic.

The conclusion to The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises finishes what Nolan started seven years prior and proves that, unlike other filmmakers, Nolan can wrap everything up nicely and neatly (even without the Joker). Rises may not be the best standalone Batman film, but as a third (and conclusion) in a trilogy it definitely pulls it's weight and delivers through and through.