by Sean Narborough
Today not only marks the release of one of the biggest films of the year, Interstellar, but also the return of one of the best directors of our generation to the big screen, Christopher Nolan. Nolan has been able to establish himself as a great visual director and a master of the blockbuster. Critics and fans alike love him, which has made him one of the most popular directors around. While nearly everyone will know Nolan best for The Dark Knight Trilogy, there are other films that deserve high praise as well. So to prepare you for Interstellar, here are the essential Christopher Nolan films to watch.
Today not only marks the release of one of the biggest films of the year, Interstellar, but also the return of one of the best directors of our generation to the big screen, Christopher Nolan. Nolan has been able to establish himself as a great visual director and a master of the blockbuster. Critics and fans alike love him, which has made him one of the most popular directors around. While nearly everyone will know Nolan best for The Dark Knight Trilogy, there are other films that deserve high praise as well. So to prepare you for Interstellar, here are the essential Christopher Nolan films to watch.
Memento
You cannot call yourself a Nolan fanboy/girl until you have seen Memento. Actually you can’t call yourself a film fan until you’ve seen Memento. Nolan’s calling card is a revolutionary piece of filmmaking. Based on Nolan’s brother, Jonathan’s short story “Memento Mori”, Memento follows Leonard, played brilliantly by Guy Pearce, who suffers from anterograde amnesia meaning that he can’t make new memories as he clearly states a number of times in the film. After his wife was killed and he was attacked causing the amnesia, Leonard is on a dangerous path of revenge. What makes Memento stand out from anything around is the script. The structure of the story is so unique that it’s very hard to replicate. The story is spilt into two series of scenes, one in chronological order depicted in black and white and another sequence in reverse order shown in colour. At the end of the film, these two sequences meet to explain everything. I won’t give away the ending, because if you haven’t seen it, it’s something that needs to be experienced. Memento is a film that to this day still amazes me, it’s so cleverly written, genius at times and makes every film student think, “Damn it! I wish I thought of that idea.” It’s a masterpiece of filmmaking and is one film that cannot be missed.
You cannot call yourself a Nolan fanboy/girl until you have seen Memento. Actually you can’t call yourself a film fan until you’ve seen Memento. Nolan’s calling card is a revolutionary piece of filmmaking. Based on Nolan’s brother, Jonathan’s short story “Memento Mori”, Memento follows Leonard, played brilliantly by Guy Pearce, who suffers from anterograde amnesia meaning that he can’t make new memories as he clearly states a number of times in the film. After his wife was killed and he was attacked causing the amnesia, Leonard is on a dangerous path of revenge. What makes Memento stand out from anything around is the script. The structure of the story is so unique that it’s very hard to replicate. The story is spilt into two series of scenes, one in chronological order depicted in black and white and another sequence in reverse order shown in colour. At the end of the film, these two sequences meet to explain everything. I won’t give away the ending, because if you haven’t seen it, it’s something that needs to be experienced. Memento is a film that to this day still amazes me, it’s so cleverly written, genius at times and makes every film student think, “Damn it! I wish I thought of that idea.” It’s a masterpiece of filmmaking and is one film that cannot be missed.
Insomnia
Showcasing the incredible power of Nolan’s cinematic thinking is Insomnia. While not his most well known film, Insomnia is still a treat. A remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, the film follows two LA police detectives working a homicide case in a small town in Alaska. Starring Al Pacino, Hilary Swank and the late, great Robin Williams, Insomnia is a film that always leaves the audience questioning what is really going on and unlike most Hollywood remakes, it gives a breath of fresh air to the original and really separates itself from it. It was also the first film Nolan made with Warner Bros. starting a strong relationship that has lasted for years to come. Incredibly Insomnia is only film where Nolan isn’t credited for writing despite actually writing the final draft. If you haven’t see Insomnia, I strongly recommend it, it’s a little different to most of Nolan’s films but is a nice hidden gem, and any film with Robin Williams is a plus.
Showcasing the incredible power of Nolan’s cinematic thinking is Insomnia. While not his most well known film, Insomnia is still a treat. A remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, the film follows two LA police detectives working a homicide case in a small town in Alaska. Starring Al Pacino, Hilary Swank and the late, great Robin Williams, Insomnia is a film that always leaves the audience questioning what is really going on and unlike most Hollywood remakes, it gives a breath of fresh air to the original and really separates itself from it. It was also the first film Nolan made with Warner Bros. starting a strong relationship that has lasted for years to come. Incredibly Insomnia is only film where Nolan isn’t credited for writing despite actually writing the final draft. If you haven’t see Insomnia, I strongly recommend it, it’s a little different to most of Nolan’s films but is a nice hidden gem, and any film with Robin Williams is a plus.
The Prestige
The Prestige’s ending can be seen as controversial, especially in my family. I loved it. My mum hates it. While I think it was clever, my mum saw it as a cop out. But that sometimes helps to make a film, because you are always discussing it. The Prestige stars Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson and centers around the world of magic at the end of the 19th century as two stage magicians (Bale and Jackman) become relentless in one-upping the other to the point of madness. This was Nolan’s first film after rebooting the Batman franchise, showing that he isn’t afraid to try something different from what people might have expected. Like most Nolan films, you are constantly second guessing everything you see, trying to figure out the twist and just when you think you’ve got it right, you’re wrong. The overall film actually acts like a magic trick, using misdirection and deceit to trick the audience into seeing one thing, when you should really be looking over in the opposite direction. The Prestige has great performances from everyone, a really clever story and is a film you have to watch so you can see if you agree with my mum or me on the ending.
The Prestige’s ending can be seen as controversial, especially in my family. I loved it. My mum hates it. While I think it was clever, my mum saw it as a cop out. But that sometimes helps to make a film, because you are always discussing it. The Prestige stars Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson and centers around the world of magic at the end of the 19th century as two stage magicians (Bale and Jackman) become relentless in one-upping the other to the point of madness. This was Nolan’s first film after rebooting the Batman franchise, showing that he isn’t afraid to try something different from what people might have expected. Like most Nolan films, you are constantly second guessing everything you see, trying to figure out the twist and just when you think you’ve got it right, you’re wrong. The overall film actually acts like a magic trick, using misdirection and deceit to trick the audience into seeing one thing, when you should really be looking over in the opposite direction. The Prestige has great performances from everyone, a really clever story and is a film you have to watch so you can see if you agree with my mum or me on the ending.
The Dark Knight
The film that made Christopher Nolan the man he is today. While Memento was his calling card, The Dark Knight was his wrecking ball to Hollywood. The Dark Knight is the sequel to Batman Begins and the most famous part of The Dark Knight Trilogy. The film follows the new District Attorney of Gotham, Harvey Dent seemingly teaming with Batman to help clean up Gotham, but a deranged psychopath known as The Joker means to upset the establish order. The Dark Knight is famous for so many reasons; it reinvented the comic book genre, one of the first comic book movies to gross over a billion dollars and showed that you use IMAX cameras to film things other than penguins. But one reason The Dark Knight stood out from anything else is Heath Ledger. Heath puts in possibly the greatest performance of his life playing The Joker and even won an Oscar for his iconic portrayal, sadly he was never able to enjoy the spoils. In January 2008, seven months before the release of the film, Heath Ledger had a drug overdose and died. Despite this we never saw Heath as the troubled actor taking his own life, we see him as The Joker. The Dark Knight worked pitch perfectly, from the acting to the action, from the realistic nature of the film to the eerie music that fills the room when The Joker is near. It’s a perfect film, my joint favourite film of all time (alongside (500) Days of Summer) and is without a shadow of a doubt Christopher Nolan’s best film to date.
The film that made Christopher Nolan the man he is today. While Memento was his calling card, The Dark Knight was his wrecking ball to Hollywood. The Dark Knight is the sequel to Batman Begins and the most famous part of The Dark Knight Trilogy. The film follows the new District Attorney of Gotham, Harvey Dent seemingly teaming with Batman to help clean up Gotham, but a deranged psychopath known as The Joker means to upset the establish order. The Dark Knight is famous for so many reasons; it reinvented the comic book genre, one of the first comic book movies to gross over a billion dollars and showed that you use IMAX cameras to film things other than penguins. But one reason The Dark Knight stood out from anything else is Heath Ledger. Heath puts in possibly the greatest performance of his life playing The Joker and even won an Oscar for his iconic portrayal, sadly he was never able to enjoy the spoils. In January 2008, seven months before the release of the film, Heath Ledger had a drug overdose and died. Despite this we never saw Heath as the troubled actor taking his own life, we see him as The Joker. The Dark Knight worked pitch perfectly, from the acting to the action, from the realistic nature of the film to the eerie music that fills the room when The Joker is near. It’s a perfect film, my joint favourite film of all time (alongside (500) Days of Summer) and is without a shadow of a doubt Christopher Nolan’s best film to date.
Inception
So after making one of the best films of all time, what do you do next? You create a film so iconic that its methods are still being copied to this day. So that Nolan would make a third Batman film, Warner Bros. allowed Nolan to make the film he had been waiting to make for 8 years, Inception. The complicated story follows a team of thieves who infiltrate a person’s subconscious through their dreams and steal their ideas. Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is on the run for a crime he didn’t commit, but is given the chance to go home by completing an impossible job, inception, implanting another person’s idea into someone else’s subconscious without them realising where the idea came from, still with me? The story is very complicated and not a lot of people got it the first time round. This ended up being a brilliant strategy by Nolan, even if it was unintentional. Because people didn’t understand it, those people went back to the cinema to watch it again and again and again until they understood the story. That is a genius strategy! Complicated story aside, what’s so great about Inception is a number of things, the great cast, the absolutely incredible visual images displayed on screen and a soundtrack that nearly everyone with a big budget film tries to replicate. While it isn’t on the same level as The Dark Knight (although it is only one level down), it did something just as impressive; it brought originality back to films. In a world filled with superhero movies, reboots and countless f**king adaptions, Inception was a big budget summer blockbuster that was an original idea. And it worked; Inception grossed over 800 Million Dollars worldwide, showing that the Nolan fanboys/girls were out in force to support the film and that audiences were ready for something a little different. Inception is a visual masterpiece with nothing else like it, is an experience that everyone should have, even if you do go deaf from the BWAAAAAAS, and is essential viewing for everyone.
Christopher Nolan is a true visionary, reimagining what you expect from a film. He has written every film he has directed, even if he isn’t credited for Insomnia, produced every film since The Prestige alongside his wife Emma Thomas and continues to bring great visual style to his work and brought originality back to our cinemas. Over the years he has developed a loyal fanbase, which includes yours truly. The saying In Nolan We Trust isn’t just something we throw around, fans truly do trust Nolan to make something great every time (no pressure for Interstellar then), and that’s something most directors would kill for. Now that’s faith you can’t buy.
So after making one of the best films of all time, what do you do next? You create a film so iconic that its methods are still being copied to this day. So that Nolan would make a third Batman film, Warner Bros. allowed Nolan to make the film he had been waiting to make for 8 years, Inception. The complicated story follows a team of thieves who infiltrate a person’s subconscious through their dreams and steal their ideas. Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is on the run for a crime he didn’t commit, but is given the chance to go home by completing an impossible job, inception, implanting another person’s idea into someone else’s subconscious without them realising where the idea came from, still with me? The story is very complicated and not a lot of people got it the first time round. This ended up being a brilliant strategy by Nolan, even if it was unintentional. Because people didn’t understand it, those people went back to the cinema to watch it again and again and again until they understood the story. That is a genius strategy! Complicated story aside, what’s so great about Inception is a number of things, the great cast, the absolutely incredible visual images displayed on screen and a soundtrack that nearly everyone with a big budget film tries to replicate. While it isn’t on the same level as The Dark Knight (although it is only one level down), it did something just as impressive; it brought originality back to films. In a world filled with superhero movies, reboots and countless f**king adaptions, Inception was a big budget summer blockbuster that was an original idea. And it worked; Inception grossed over 800 Million Dollars worldwide, showing that the Nolan fanboys/girls were out in force to support the film and that audiences were ready for something a little different. Inception is a visual masterpiece with nothing else like it, is an experience that everyone should have, even if you do go deaf from the BWAAAAAAS, and is essential viewing for everyone.
Christopher Nolan is a true visionary, reimagining what you expect from a film. He has written every film he has directed, even if he isn’t credited for Insomnia, produced every film since The Prestige alongside his wife Emma Thomas and continues to bring great visual style to his work and brought originality back to our cinemas. Over the years he has developed a loyal fanbase, which includes yours truly. The saying In Nolan We Trust isn’t just something we throw around, fans truly do trust Nolan to make something great every time (no pressure for Interstellar then), and that’s something most directors would kill for. Now that’s faith you can’t buy.
What Do You Think?
Are these the best Christopher Nolan movies?
Have you watched these movies?
Are you a massive fan? Excited for Interstellar?
Let us know in the comments
Have you watched these movies?
Are you a massive fan? Excited for Interstellar?
Let us know in the comments
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