26 years into his career, Christopher Nolan is billed on one of the most impressive creative and commercial streaks the film industry has ever seen. After he burst onto the scene with his breakthrough second game Memento in 2001, all he did was make one critically acclaimed box office hit after another. Given the big budgets he's used to working with, that's a winning streak that none of our grand maestros can match. Even Steven Spielberg experienced critical and/or commercial turbulence at this point in his career. with movies like 1941 "Empire of the Sun", "Always" and "Hook". But aside from Tenet (which would have been a blockbuster had the Covid pandemic not kept the vast majority of moviegoers out of theaters during the summer of 2020), all of Nolan's films have doubled their production budgets at the global box office. and are currently rated fresh at Rotten Tomatoes.

How best to appreciate what Nolan has accomplished since 1998? You can't do much better than a full review of all his films - or, if you somehow denied yourself the pleasure, a first trip through his cinema. In what order should you see his 12 completed functions? You may find that chronologically is the way to go, but there is a more interesting and perhaps instructive approach.

If you want to maximize your Christopher Nolan viewing experience, you should choose this path:

"Remembrance" (2000)

"Following" (1998)

"Insomnia" (2002)

Batman Begins (2005)

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

"The Prestige" (2006)

"Beginning" (2010)

"Interstellar" (2014)

Dunkirk (2017)

Tenet (2020)

Oppenheimer (2023)

While there are far more prolific filmmakers out there (like Steven Soderbergh, who has two films hitting theaters within months of each other in 2025), Nolan has worked steadily throughout his career. He never went more than three years between films, roughly the amount of time it took to develop and edit films on the massive physical scale of Dunkirk and Tenet. At 54, he shows no signs of slowing down or slowing down, as evidenced by his just-announced 2026 epic adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey.

So why not go in chronological order like a sane person?

The first installment of four films in the above order aims to recap how moviegoers discovered and understood Nolan's visual storytelling aesthetic. You'll never be able to fully capture the full shock and awe of Memento that quietly hit theaters during the spring of 2001, but when you throw it on just imagine you've stepped into some modestly budgeted neo-noir with Guy Pearce in the main role. (best known at the time for 'LA Confidential') and Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity from 'The Matrix'), and having that It slowly feels like you're watching a perfectly constructed puzzle of a movie at this point. find Following - which, while a much smaller, less narratively ambitious film, was still impressive.

Then came Nolan's first crack at a Hollywood picture with a straightforward yet superbly crafted remake of the Norwegian thriller Insomnia, at which point we realized this man had the craft to thrive at the studio level — and through Batman Begins , the wit and skill to play in the franchise sandbox without losing its creative identity.

At this point, you'll want to knock out Nolan's next two Batman movies because, while visually stunning and well above average for superhero movies, this trilogy is the least interesting part of his career. So after The Dark Knight Rises, you will return to Prestige from 2006. his intricately plotted magician thriller that some Nolan-philes consider his best work to date. Then you move on to his other Batman hiatus film, Inception, which proved emphatically that Nolan is a filmmaker who can deliver blockbuster hits without the comics.

Finally, you'll continue chronologically with "Interstellar" (my pick for his best right now), "Dunkirk" (which should have been his first Oscar), "Tenet" and the Oscar-winning biopic "Oppenheimer." If Nolan isn't your favorite director by this point, at least you'll be able to admire the incredible sureness with which he moves from epic to epic. David Lean couldn't have done it better. And it sounds like The Odyssey may be his greatest undertaking to date. Serious filmmakers are lucky to have him.