With the long-awaited Oppenheimer finally here, there’s a good chance many are looking to watch the best Christopher Nolan movies more than any other point in the past few years. Whether you’ve seen his various psychological thrillers and all-time great superhero movies multiple times or never before, we have everything you need to know for one incredible marathon full of the director’s incredible scenes and his trademark style and plot devices.
And while it’s best to see Nolan’s work on the biggest screen possible, you may have missed that opportunity for one reason or another. Or maybe you're just looking to revisit his past films. That being said, there are the various ways to check out the likes of Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and the rest of the filmmaker’s work, be it on a TV screen, phone, airplane, or even a watch.
Inception (2010)
One of the sci-fi movies to not focus on aliens or robots, Christopher Nolan’s 2010 visually-stunning action thriller Inception offers a unique concept and one hell of an execution of said premise. The movie follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an on-the-run thief who’s given the prospect of a clean slate if he can successfully break into the dreams of his client’s rival and plant an idea instead of stealing information.
This star-studded spectacle is full of twists and turns, as well as an ending we’re still debating more than a decade later.
Interstellar (2014)
In 2014, Nolan gave the world one of the most awe-inspiring and emotional sci-fi stories of all time with Interstellar, a movie that features equal parts hard science and human emotion. The film centers on Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a widowed NASA pilot-turned-farmer who becomes humanity’s best chance of survival as he leads a last-ditch effort to find a new home. Leaving behind a young daughter and son on a dying Earth, Cooper sets off to the cosmos for a mind-bending and heart-wrenching journey.
What makes the movie even more impressive is its scientific accuracy and the fact much of the movie was shot without green screen.
Stream Interstellar on Prime Video.
Stream Interstellar on Paramount+.
Dunkirk (2017)
One of the best military dramas of the 21st century, Dunkirk is also one of the more unique, as it picks up after the battle on which it draws its name instead of focusing on the action. With three different storylines – one taking place over a week, one a day, one an hour – the moving 2017 drama features a nonlinear narrative that shows that heroes come in all forms with varying motivations.
The movie features some of the director’s most impressive shots and sequences, and what makes them even more extraordinary are all the tricks and techniques Nolan employed to pull them off.
Stream Dunkirk on Netflix.
Stream Dunkirk on Max.
Rent/buy Dunkirk on Amazon.
Tenet (2020)
Months after the pandemic forced major changes to the theatrical calendar, Nolan came out with Tenet, one of his loudest movies yet, which was also one with one of his wildest plots to date. The movie centers on a secret agent known as the Protagonist (John David Washington) as he is tasked with traveling through time to prevent World War III.
This is an incredibly simplified description of the film’s plot and doesn’t even tackle the Tenet ending, as there are certain elements of the labyrinthian puzzle that are still being unpacked nearly three years after the film’s initial release.
The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005 - 2012)
Over the course of seven years and three movies, Christopher Nolan told the story of Batman (Christian Bale) as he transforms himself from the heir to the Wayne family legacy to a symbol of hope for Gotham City. From his early days of burning the candle at both ends in Batman Begins to taking on an anarchic and violent enemy in The Dark Knight to saving the city he loves from a zealot in The Dark Knight Rises, the caped crusader (as well as the man behind the mask) goes through tremendous change.
With some of the best Batman chase sequences and unforgettable scenes we still think about years later, there are plenty of reasons the Dark Knight trilogy remains so popular after so much time.
Stream Batman Begins on Max. (Rent/buy Batman Begins on Amazon.)
Stream The Dark Knight on Max. (Rent/buy The Dark Knight on Amazon.)
Stream The Dark Knight Rises on Max. (Rent/buy The Dark Knight Rises on Amazon.)
The Prestige (2006)
Between his first and second Batman movies, Nolan took audiences to late 19th-century London with a story about two rival magicians (Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman) who are driven to the brink of madness as they attempt to master the art of teleportation.
The Prestige, with its complex story, outstanding performances by its cast, and stunning visuals, remains one of the best examples of the director’s work, whether or not you like the film's ending.
Rent/buy The Prestige on Amazon.
Insomnia (2002)
Released in 2002, Insomnia follows embattled LAPD detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino) as he travels to a remote fishing village in Alaska to help local authorities nab a serial killer who has been targeting young women. With the man suspected of the killings, Walter Finch (Robin Williams) toying with the cop and taking advantage of his troubled past, Dormer finds himself in quite a heated situation.
Though it’s not talked about as much as Nolan’s other films, this remake of the 1997 Norwegian crime thriller of the same name, is something that fans of his work need to check out.
Memento (2000)
Memento, the movie that put Christopher Nolan on the map back at the turn of the 21st century, is one of those movies that not only transformed the director’s career but also modern cinema. This riveting psychological thriller follows Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) as he attempts to find out who brutally murdered his wife. But that’s not the hard part…
Leonard suffers from an extreme form of amnesia that results in short-term memory loss and the inability to create new memories, which adds a whole other dimension to this complex murder mystery.
Stream Memento on Hoopla.
Stream Memento on Kanopy.
Rent/buy Memento on Amazon.
Following (1998)
If you want to go back and see where it all started for Chirstopher Nolan as a feature film director, then you have to check out his 70-minute, black-and-white thriller, Following. What starts out as a hobby of shadowing people around the streets of London quickly turns into a game of life-or-death for a young writer (Jeremy Theobald) after he makes the mistake of following the wrong person.
This is your classic neo-noir story but with some inventive Nolan-isms, elements that would be fine-tuned in the movies that followed.
Stream Following onTubi.
Rent/buy Following on Amazon.
Though it’s just now opening in theaters, there will soon be a time when Oppenheimer is added to this list. But until then, check out what the critics have to say about the 2023 movie our own Mike Reyes described as a “cinematic triumph” in CinemaBlend’s Oppenheimer review.
