christopher nolan poll

i never saw insomnia, but i thought the prestige was really fucking good

Following followed by Memento. The rest of these are mostly crap. The Prestige is probably the next best (it's miles better than that stupid Edward Norton vehicle.)

cmon max he is far too serious to be taken seriously

Memento, but I like all this guy's movies. Prestige was great.

prestige for me.

Insomnia might have been okay if it had starred someone else and had a better script. Oh wait it did.

have yall seen 'following'? it really is a great movie, worth checking out. 'cobb' became an architect immediately after the movie was shot i think.

haha whats that mean exactly alex?

Insomnia might have been okay if it had starred someone else and had a better script. Oh wait it did.

haha zing. yeah that one's my least favorite

It means the original Insomnia is great and the remake Nolan version is garbage.

he may be slightly pretentious and po-faced but i do like how he manages to make puzzling little intellectual films despite mega production values. not for everyone, obv.

oh yeah id forgotten there was an original insomnia

i was a bigtime nolan fanboy when it came out & i dont recall particularly liking it or ever having desired to watch it again since

also, batman begins was kind of boring - still, gotta credit him for an original vision

watch some Andre Techine films

I hear Insomnia was his audition for Batman i.e. "don't fuck this up by making it an art film and you can make one of our brand name products"

To be fair, I don't blame Nolan for Insomnia sucking (I am assuming he had little to no input into the casting.)

i remember really liking Following but don't remember anything about it.

i remember Memento having jokes but it's been so long

note to self: rent Following

I loved Memento, BB and The Prestige.

lol i've only seen memento, BB and tDK. i thought memento was pretty lame, can't decide between the two batmangs. i didn't hear one good thing about insomnia...

My wife liked Insomnia; ironically, I fell asleep during it.

Haven't seen it, but I'd be surprised if I didn't think The Prestige was the best in this group.

I quite liked Insomnia. With it, Nolan postponed Pacino's demise as a DeNiro-like 'I'm old and ranged out but all the young'uns want me in their film, the pay is good, so why not?'-era Pacino unfortunately has entered also. Pacino plays a great insomniac.

Given that I think his films have too much plot for their own good (maybe he assumes complications imply depth), I'm surprised how well I remember The Prestige.

prestige

im not a plot guy in any way, but whats wrong with a guy doing really well-crafted, smart puzzle movies? and really only his first two fit under that category

its not like he's in any way 'uncinematic', & re morbs suggestion, i doubt that french dude ive never heard of has remotely the same pop sensibility nolan does but id like to be very wrong

Yeah the rest of his films aren't that smart or well-crafted.

The Prestige was so much fun, I think in a way it was a better comic book movie that Batman. Conceptually, it felt like a great comic book story.

Following has some nice ideas but the acting is just awful -- it's your basic over-ambitious-but-still-dreadful debut. There are signs of better things to come in it, at least. But it's still bloody awful.

prestige was fun but dumb, felt like an expensive soap opera or tv movie. memento wins.

m not a plot guy in any way, but whats wrong with a guy doing really well-crafted, smart puzzle movies? and really only his first two fit under that category

The Prestige and The Dark Knight don't count?

Puzzles are ok if the solution's worth the trouble.

^^ yeah this was my problem with memento.

The Prestige was okay, but c'mon, those plot twists could be seen coming from miles away.

I get nolan and bryan singer confused in my head all the time and can't remember who did apt pupil and who did memento and who did usual suspects.

I usually see plot twists coming but I didn't see the big one in The Prestige at all, probably because I was so caught up in the story that I wasn't spending time trying to guess what was coming next.

Really? I thought it was patently obvious that was the trick.

Ha, I'm obviously dumber than both of you, because I was trying to guess the twist and I still couldn't figure it out.

I thought it was obvious that Bale had a twin, not so obvious that Jackman had been murdering all his doubles

x-post

But what Dan says -- about being "caught up in the story" -- I can't think of many movies where I've been so "caught" in the past few years.

best Wolverine Batman crossover ever!

Way to spoil that, Shakey.

SPOILERS

The Bale part caught me off guard, the Jackman part I thought was obvious/inevitable.

Anyway, the Jackman becomes obv. once you understand the cats (which is what 2/3s or 3/4s of the way through?) The Bale part is the TWIST.

I think its safe to assume you're gonna learn some things you don't want to know any time you open an ILX thread

Michael Caine insisting that there must be two people for any such trick, Bale pointing out what the old Chinese guy's "real act" is = heavy telegraphing, come on.

I thought the Jackman part was so obvious that it didn't even occur to me that that might be considered a twist.

Alex, did you mean "cats" or hats"? Because the hats are in the credits and get referenced immediately after the Tesla visit, which is I think halfway through the movie...? That led me to see what was happening in the Jackman story (plus they were pretty explicit in showing that side of things since it was the more fantasy-based story).

I thought it was clear that doubles were being created, but the answer to "well where do they go then?" was not so obvious to me

The elderly couple sitting in front of us in the theater still couldn't figure out what had happened once the credits were rolling, so I guess that one got a wide range of reactions.

Dan, I can't remember now, except that it happened midway through. Maybe it's the (c)hats.

But you see a double die in the opening minutes, Shakey!

Since we've already ruined everything for people have seen it haha.

I guess - at the time you don't know its a double tho, and Bale subsequently goes on trial for murder... ahh who cares. let's agree that it's a decent flick.

The Prestige has one of my favourite movie posters in recent years:

http://www.christophernolan.net/images/prestige_poster2.jpg

Batman Begins - still hate the Gotham action sequences, but the hijinks are solid
The Prestige - well-crafted, but no urge to ever see it again (much better than the Illusionist, though)
Memento - I need to see this one again

whoah great poster - never saw that before

have you seen following milo?

I don't think so

I remember seeing Following at some movie festival years ago and liking it, but all I can remember about it was that it was in black and white and had some dude following random people to their homes. I wonder if it's worth rewatching?

I think puzzle movies like Memento or Usuals Suspects are cool and fun to watch once, but after the puzzle has been solved there's not much more to them. Then again, not too many movies are as enjoyable or have a similar "wow" effect than these two, and Memento is still the best Nolan film I've seen.

i saw 'insomnia' a long time ago, and i liked it, so i'm voting for it.

i liked insomnia too, though it was a bit too ponderous and i HATED the way it brought a couple of hours worth of pleasurable mystery to a close with .... giant shoot-out

prestige was fun but dumb, felt like an expensive soap opera or tv movie.

YES!!

memento wins.

WAIT WAHT

surprised at all the people who thought prestige was 'dumb,' i thought it was pretty smart, i need to see it again though

I remember seeing Following at some movie festival years ago and liking it, but all I can remember about it was that it was in black and white and had some dude following random people to their homes. I wonder if it's worth rewatching?

-- Tuomas

tuomas thats basically the first 5 minutes, so id say yeah

I was agreeing with the dumb thing mainly because it helped make my joke. I actually thought The Prestige was very clever, but it also had a big wild romp quality to it that none of these others really have. The cleverness felt in service to providing great thrills rather than to itself (as in Memento).

There was a pretty big romp going on through The Dark Knight, it was just a romp through evil and depravity.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

How did I not see this poll till now? I'd vote Dark Knight at the moment, I think. I've not seen Following, and only seen Insomnia once, but all his other films I love and own on DVD or will ASAP. He's my favourite film maker at the moment, alongside Cuaron and Del Toro.

You can stick a comic-book movie up your bollocks.

Dark Knight opens this weekend in the UK but I'm on call :(

However - matinees :D

Trying to find a copy of the original Following one-sheet but to no avail. Love the film and the poster captures its simplicity so well:
http://www.christophernolan.net/images/following_posters.jpg

fuckin' A

http://movies.msn.com/story/taxing-movie-people/christopher-nolan/

Christopher Nolan “will commence principal photography in May at French locations on Dunkirk,” reports Naman Ramachandran for Cineuropa. “The film will look at the evacuation of hundreds of thousands Allied troops from the beach and harbor of Dunkirk, France, after being hemmed in by the German army in 1940 during World War II.” The cast includes Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh and Harry Styles.

"The film will be shot on IMAX 65mm film and 65mm large format film."

http://cineuropa.org/nw.aspx?t=newsdetail&l=en&did=306293

Hard to make this one about his anal whodunnit habit so I'm interested

anal whodunnit

now there's a variation of Cluedo that I'd never want to play

Harry Styles

wait waht

there's a history of sneaking pop idols into ww2 films

http://images.publicradio.org/content/2013/05/18/20130518_longest_day_33.jpg

eg Paul Anka

His people

pic.twitter.com/mGa6w4o01y

— James Slaymaker (@jmslaymaker) June 6, 2020

He is WRONG about HBOMax imho, it's the best streaming service.

Speaking of memory loss, my recollection of Momento was that Joe Pantoliano was straight villain and redirected Guy Pearce for his own nefarious ends. I hated the ending and have considered him Highbrow Shamylan since then.

I just caught the last half or so on tv last night and it seems my recollection is faulty. Pantoliano helps Pearce get his revenge but when this doesn’t change things for Pearce, Pantoliano continues to use him but to also “help” him by giving Pearce a continued purpose. It is Pearce himself who breaks the loop by writing on Pantoliano’s photo “don’t trust his lies” and getting the tattoo of his Pantoliano’s license plate that sets Pearce on the path to kill Pantoliano, in essence for Pantoliano telling Pearce the truth. This is a much more interesting ending than I recall with more to say (I guess) about memory, freewill, and trauma.

I have never seen any of his other movies in their entirety.

They found the Peloton instructor and she’s brutal pic.twitter.com/i79Css1NLG https://t.co/dRcYUakC3C

— Jacob Oller (@JacobOller) January 4, 2024

now picturing a world where the Peloton trainer is watching Tenet on a tablet-sized screen attached to a bike and Nolan is watching the Peloton trainer on an IMAX screen with a single bike set up in the middle of the empty theater

lol

Nolan tells an audience of professional film critics, as he accepts the award have just given him, that he thinks film criticism should be left exclusively to professionals like them. The room is filled with warm feelings of mutual admiration.

As someone who has seen all of these Nolans up through Interstellar and found them, to a number, to be immediately entertaining and subsequently forgettable and ultimately a dumb person's idea of smart + serious filmmaking...have any of the last three bucked that trend or nah? I've heard enough hype about Oppenheimer in particular to make me curious but enough of that hype has been of the 'there are filmmakers...AND THEN THERE IS KING NOLAN' variety to make me equally wary.

oppenheimer was muddled imo and paced weirdly

the emotional payoff moments are comical tbh

This is the sad thing, if you like Nolan's work you could just defend the things he's good at and not pretend he's good at the things he's very terrible at

but one of the things he's good at is making people think he's good at the things that he's terrible at.

lol true

My main takeaway every time has been that he has some definite directorial/visual gifts and that he could do some magical stuff if he was willing to let someone else take the scripting reins. And it appears that, yes yes, he does in fact still insist on writing every dang movie he directs. Loud and emphatic sigh.

inception still his best largely because the clinical detachment in that one actually adds poignancy and tragedy to the character

interstellar after that?

No, Oppenheimer does not buck the trend of Chris Nolan doing the very Chris Nolan thing. Dunkirk is the only one that bucks that trend imho, or at least is a better version of it

If I haven't seen Dunkirk or Oppenheimer, is there one I should watch before the other? Not in some imaginary chronology, just wondering if either merits prioritization

Eric not otm. Oppenheimer benefits from Nolan's sudden mind-meld with Oliver Stone.

You got the right ta-ta but the wrong ho-ho

Also, I adore it, but I wouldn't argue against anyone calling JFK "a dumb person's idea of smart + serious filmmaking"

but one of the things he's good at is making people think he's good at the things that he's terrible at.

Bingo

I'd def watch Dunkirk - his best (and maybe a fluke, really)

oppemheimer is roughly as disappointing as inception. tenet might be a comfort movie for me though, in no way profound but pure entertainment once you've figured out the trick (and the dialogue).

It amuses me to imagine that Nolan intended to call the movie Tenant but didn't realize that they were actually two different words.

We’ve definitely gotten to the point where I’m hesitant to tell people I’m a fan of his. It just seems to invite invective. (This was true before Oppenheimer, and is true about any number of people in media.)

I watched Oppenheimer again three Fridays ago and thought, "This is a dumb director's idea of smart Oliver Stone's JFK.

the Prestige is the only one I'd watch again tbrr

ledge otm re tenet i think nolan is in lazy/relaxed mode to an extent and it's a far better watch than a lot of his others besides

pattinson also a revelation in it, surrounded imo by very little of merit performance wise

Dunkirk is a really good one. The narrative timeline trick this time around feels very clever and seamless vs anything that requires explanation or any showoff moments.

If I was ranking them Dunkirk would probably be at the top of the list

Pattinson's been a revelation for a long time imo

admittedly his introduction as a glittery vampire probably resets his actual ability in my mind between movies

The comparison is with Kubrick but he reminds me more of a Stanley Kramer or (at his best) a William Wyler - the ‘quality’ producer-director exception to the low grade populist fare that otherwise dominates the box office. Surely no coincidence that he made a film called The Prestige.

wonder if we ran this again would Memento do so well? it's a clever plot device but it's not a great film by any means.

Nolan can churn out 3.5/5 films like nobody else.

it would imo

and its a great film by any means

Sorry no

in fact yes

I'm not sure what level it's supposed to work on, it's not clever, the central conceit doesn't work and it doesn't make me feel anything

Classic Nolan tbf

I have to say I did like the "Inception's weird emotional closedness is it's strength" argument tho

I normally wouldn't take a boy-movie hack's ugliness so personal but I had to sit thru that fucker in the cinema with my own boy and the scars still itch I guess

i liked the space movie, of course the "high concept" is exactly as dumb as 2001: a von daniken odyssey but it had the big wave planet scene which has decisively entered my dreams

The Dark Knight is currently the #3 film of all time according to the users of IMDB, I saw it for the first time last year and honestly have no idea why this is

Bale isn't even nude in it.

if bale got his dick out for a scene I suspect the film bros probably wouldn't rate it so highly

Nolan is nowhere near as bad as his detractors make him out to be, nor as good as some defenders (or he himself) make him out to be. I appreciate his ambition, even his snobbery, and if his movies typically fall degrees of short from the greatness to which he clearly aspires, I'd rather have him around than not. As far as big-budget Hollywood directors go, at least he's dedicated to creative big-swings. If his stuff is ultimately more mid (as the kids say) than not, better him than, say, the similarly ambitious, arrogant Aronofsky.

Comparing him to Wyler is way too kind.

Nolan's big swings are kinda unambitious in their own way in that he's following the conventional rulebook of what big swings were in the past - a war epic! A biopic! - while Aronofsky's stuff is legitimately insane. So I'm more sympathetic to the latter though I'd rather watch a Nolan movie.

im less critical of that aspect than i am his insistence on puzzle completionism as a fetish tbph

I must be the only Batman Trilogy believer left.

#onhere

The Dark Knight is not in the top 1000 films of all time but that trilogy is better than the trio of Godfather films.

Godfather trilogy has more jokes.

just when I thought Bale had his balls out, they pull them back in

the Batmobile can do more tricks than the Godmobile

top tier trolling from comrade alph altho any Godfather movie would shurely be improved by Tom Hardy doing a funny voice

*funny voice*: thats bait

(me replying to every post by comrade alph)

I do wish Nolan would do something a little less safe/Nolan-esque. He has these big ideas, and there is something to be said for shaping ambitious (again, relatively) sci-fi concepts into something mainstream yet distinctive (also again, relatively), but their formal structure and presentation are still ultimately their most (relatively!) challenging aspects, not their purported ideas. And I do think it takes real smarts to make the sorts of movies he makes. But if he worked more on developing his ideas and less on showy script structure or whatever he'd probably be more interesting, which may be why Memento still works best, since (imo) it has both ideas and formal audacity. Maybe the same goes for The Prestige, an original idea that gets as close to Aronofsky batshittery as Nolan has gotten.

The Godfather needed Joey Pants

finally saw oppie and fuck with better editing and fewer soap opera standard characters, that could have actually not sucked for so fucking long

nolan’s an interesting case study if you think a director’s background and self-image have some reflection in their work. one thing I am sure of is that he thinks the coolest thing a guy can do is have a nice suit

I rewatched Interstellar recently, I thought it held up remarkably well. The cast is solid, and the scientific ideas are . . . . interesting.

I feel like he’s doing interesting issues the cheesiest way possible

"This research station is actually a space ship" was pure cheese, I'll grant you that.

there are literally hundreds of youtubers who have posted vids explaining "why the science in Interstellar is correct" which I'm never going to watch, but then last week in an interview the physicist, Carlo Rovelli said some of it is theoretically solid, but also there is lots of corny bollox in there.

I always find his movies suffocating and exhausting and absolutely lifeless, 10 minutes feels like a lifetime.

founder of loop quantum gravity theory says loops are "theoretically solid"

my appreciation of interstellar is not scientific unless "it bled into my dreams" is science (it is)

I'm probably badly paraphrasing him there, his interview was even more boring than a Nolan movie