Christopher Nolan has been attracting the eyes of critics throughout his entire career. Although it was working with a minuscule budget of $6,000 and only played in a few theaters in the United States, his 1998 debut feature “Following” was praised for its tight storytelling and terse psychological underpinnings. Nolan then rose to international fame with his 2000 film “Memento,” a neo-noir about a man unable to form new memories. Its backward-chronological-order plot was cleverly conceived and impeccably laid out, somehow coming to a traditional narrative climax even while running in reverse.
From there it was off to the races, so to speak. Nolan became a power player in Hollywood, directing gigantic movie stars like Al Pacino and Robin Williams in a remake of “Insomnia” and making a gigantic, zeitgeist-shifting hit with 2005’s “Batman Begins.” Nolan’s three Batman movies are still spoken of with enthusiasm to this day. Their success also allowed him to make multiple ambitious ensemble films about the shifting perceptions of time, including “Inception,” “Interstellar,” “Dunkirk,” and “Tenet.” Nolan’s most recent film, “Oppenheimer,” a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, just won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Nolan is a steely, unemotional filmmaker, more concerned with the groaning mechanics of temporal machinery, or the intricate construction of weapons than he is with the human heart. He is also a deeply enthused cineaste, familiar with a broad swath of cinema and fond of international classics familiar to subscribers of the Criterion Channel. Indeed, back in 2013, Nolan was asked by Criterion to list his 10 favorite movies, and nine of them had already been released by their prestigious Collection.
None of Nolan’s favorites are wholly obscure, but most of them are a little off-the-beaten path. His recommendations, listed below, are all worth checking out.
