Christopher Nolan Ranked

Welcome to the latest edition of "Ranked"-where I rank a franchise or filmography from worst to best and hand out related accolades. This week, I'm profiling the work of Christopher Nolan. 

Christopher Nolan's Filmography Ranked:

11.Interstellar (D+)

10.Insomnia (C)

9.Following (B-)

8.Tenet (B-)

7.Dunkirk (B)

6.The Prestige (B+)

5.The Dark Knight Rises (A-)

4.The Dark Knight (A-)

3.Batman Begins (A)

2.Inception (A)

1.Memento (A+)

Top Dog: Memento (2001)

Nolan's breakout project is the perfect encapsulation of what makes his movies so intriguing (when they work). The plot is a headtrip that is a blast to try and piece together, the atmosphere is full of palpable unease and the ending beautifully ties every moving part of its complex mystery together.   

Lowlight: Interstellar (2014)

This dull and disgustingly corny sci-fi adventure is the type of woeful negative benchmark that Nolan is going to a really difficult time trying to top (I'll go into further detail about why I hate it so much below). 

Most Underrated: Batman Begins (2005)

With The Dark Knight's standing as an all time classic and the ongoing spirited debates in film circles about the quality of Dark Knight Rises, Batman Begins has somehow managed to become the forgotten entry in Nolan's Batman trilogy. While it's slipped into relative anonymity within the pop culture landscape, I still believe that it's the most impressive and important film in the Dark Knight series. Batman Begins laid down the foundation for Nolan's gritty, noir-inspired take on the character by tapping into the pain and desire to use his immense resources to help protect the people of his city that drives Bruce Wayne to turn into Batman, delivering a colorful, compelling introduction to the type of psychos (Tom Wilkinson's Carmine Falcone, Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow-which remains a criminally underrated superhero villain turn) that occupy Gotham and immediately confirming that Christian Bale was the perfect actor to bring this grounded version of the character to life.        

Most Overrated: Interstellar (2014)

Science is something I don't remotely understand and once Interstellar started to break down the intricacies of wormholes, parallel dimensions, etc, my brain got completely overwhelmed-so the boredom stemming from the confusion caused by this narrative approach is completely on me. However, one thing I can wrap my minuscule brain around is parent/child relationships and Nolan delivers a wildly inept portrayal of that dynamic that turns Interstellar into a big flying piece of interdimensional poop. The "MY DAD ABANDONED US BY GOING INTO SPACE" plot is needlessly melodramatic and that fucking "twist" ending is not only idiotic, but so ridiculously contrived and sentimental that it could've been ripped from a Nicolas Sparks novel.   

Greatest Use of a Masked Tom Hardy: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Hardy has dawned a mask in 2 of his collaborations with Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises, Dunkirk) and quite frankly, it's not much of a debate as to which one is better. Masked fighter pilot Hardy in Dunkirk was just an innocuous heroic gent who sacrificed himself to the Germans to save allied troops. Bane is an imposing fashion icon who dispensed highly quotable dialogue with an incredibly bizarre and enthralling high-pitched voice. Now Nolan needs to give the world want it wants: a full blown Bane spin-off that doesn't star Batman and features nothing but Bane terrorizing the people of Gotham while delivering maniacal monologues for 2-3 hours. 

Most Needlessly Complicated: Tenet (2020)

In the early stages of Tenet, everything was going great. An unnamed American intelligence agent (John David Washington) gets tasked with figuring out who is behind a time traveling weapons scheme with potential nuclear implications after backwards-traveling bullets are found at the scene of a sting operation he was a part of at an opera house in Kiev. The plot displays impressive momentum as Washington's unnamed protagonist and his partner (Robert Pattinson) travel the globe doing espionage work to figure out who/what is responsible for this dangerous time-bending phenomenon as well as some impressive action setpieces/stuntwork that tie the plot together. Then the last hour happens and shit gets real messy real quick. Between its continued piling on of new wrinkles to its time traveling rules, a punishingly loud sound mix that routinely drowns out dialogue that's important to the story and a series of last minute revelations that attempt give an otherwise one-dimensional cartoonish villain some unearned humanity, it becomes an exhaustingly incoherent ride that brings on a headache quicker than slamming a $3 bottle of Chardonnay. While it's possible that Tenet would benefit from a rewatch, right now I can't help but feel that Nolan dropped the ball on a great premise by getting too cute with the physics and mythology of the time traveling espionage world he created.