a Yourlist ranking · the crowd decides the order
From a $6,000 black-and-white debut to $100M IMAX epics about the atomic bomb, Christopher Nolan has built the most argued-about filmography in modern Hollywood. Vote on where each of his twelve features lands.
What counts: 'Best' reflects overall critical and audience consensus—storytelling ambition, rewatchability, and cultural impact—not just box office. Ratings and grosses are approximate, rounded, and pulled from public consensus figures; vote to reorder based on your own taste.
Heath Ledger's Joker turned a superhero sequel into a operatic crime epic, and the interrogation-room 'agent of chaos' scene remains Nolan's most quoted sequence. It redefined what comic-book movies could be and still tops most fan rankings of his entire career.
Release Year: 2008IMDb Rating: 9/10Worldwide Box Office: 1,005 $MRuntime: 152 min
added by IJRin 11 rankings
A heist movie set inside dreams-within-dreams, anchored by that spinning top ending that's still debated at parties. It's the film that proved Nolan could sell pure, original, brain-bending science fiction at a billion-dollar scale.
Release Year: 2010IMDb Rating: 8.8/10Worldwide Box Office: 836 $MRuntime: 148 min
added by IJRin 9 rankings
Wormholes, relativity, and Matthew McConaughey sobbing through decades-old video messages from his kids make this Nolan's most emotionally raw epic. The docking sequence scored by Hans Zimmer's organ is a masterclass in tension.
Release Year: 2014IMDb Rating: 8.7/10Worldwide Box Office: 701 $MRuntime: 169 min
added by IJRin 10 rankings
Three hours of dialogue-driven tension about the man who built the bomb, somehow becoming a billion-dollar summer blockbuster and Best Picture winner. The Trinity test sequence—all silence and dread before the flash—is the quietest, loudest moment in his filmography.
Release Year: 2023IMDb Rating: 8.3/10Worldwide Box Office: 975 $MRuntime: 180 min
added by IJRin 6 rankings
Two rival magicians destroy each other's lives chasing the perfect trick, culminating in a twist involving Tesla, clones, and a room full of top hats that rewards every rewatch. It's Nolan's most purely obsessive film about obsession itself.
Release Year: 2006IMDb Rating: 8.5/10Worldwide Box Office: 109 $MRuntime: 130 min
added by IJRin 3 rankings
Told in reverse chronological order to mirror its amnesiac hero's fractured mind, this micro-budget puzzle box put Nolan on the map before he ever touched a superhero. Guy Pearce's Polaroid-and-tattoo memory system became an instantly iconic gimmick that actually serves the story
Release Year: 2000IMDb Rating: 8.4/10Worldwide Box Office: 40 $MRuntime: 113 min
added by IJRin 4 rankings
A near-wordless war film told across three overlapping timelines—land, sea, and air—that turns evacuation into unbearable suspense rather than triumphant battle. Zimmer's ticking-clock score and the Spitfire glide-landing finale make it Nolan's tightest, most formally daring work
Release Year: 2017IMDb Rating: 7.8/10Worldwide Box Office: 527 $MRuntime: 106 min
added by IJRin 2 rankings
The film that rescued Batman from Schumacher-era camp by grounding him in fear, trauma, and Ra's al Ghul's League of Shadows philosophy. Christian Bale's origin story set the template every superhero reboot has chased since.
Release Year: 2005IMDb Rating: 8.2/10Worldwide Box Office: 373 $MRuntime: 140 min
added by IJR
Bane breaks the Bat and occupies Gotham in a sprawling, ambitious trilogy-closer that never quite reaches its predecessor's heights but still delivers the stadium-collapse opener and Bruce Wayne's prison-pit climb. A divisive but commercially massive finale.
Release Year: 2012IMDb Rating: 8.4/10Worldwide Box Office: 1,085 $MRuntime: 164 min
added by IJRin 2 rankings
Time-inverted bullets, a backwards car chase, and dialogue deliberately mixed to be hard to parse make this Nolan's most polarizing puzzle. Released mid-pandemic, its ambition was undeniable even when the plot left audiences confused walking out.
Release Year: 2020IMDb Rating: 7.3/10Worldwide Box Office: 365 $MRuntime: 150 min
added by IJRin 2 rankings
Nolan's only remake and only studio-for-hire job, sending Al Pacino's sleep-deprived detective to chase Robin Williams' chilling killer through unending Alaskan daylight. Underrated as a tense procedural, it's the film where Nolan proved he could direct movie stars, not just conc
Release Year: 2002IMDb Rating: 7.2/10Worldwide Box Office: 113 $MRuntime: 118 min
added by IJR
Shot on weekends for pocket change in grainy black-and-white 16mm, this micro-noir about a writer who stalks strangers already contains Nolan's obsessions with unreliable narrators and nonlinear structure. It's the fascinating, rough-edged blueprint for everything that followed.
Release Year: 1998IMDb Rating: 7.5/10Worldwide Box Office: 0.05 $MRuntime: 69 min
added by IJRin 2 rankings
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