Christopher Nolan, one of the greatest directors of all time. He is known for his insane plots; dark, twisted loopholes; and enough psychoanalytic trauma to fill Sigmund Freud's offices for years.
We'll start with his early work. Memento, his first big movie, tells the tale of a man who is looking for his wife's killer. There's a catch, however, he has short-term memory loss, much like Dory, but with him it's devastating because he knows about his condition and is constantly leaving mementos for himself, taking pictures and writing things on them to remind him of something important, tattooing himself with words that he needs never forget and which will now never get lost. The film jumps from place to place, time to time, telling this man's tale as he sees it. It moves almost backwards, which makes for a very confusing plot but once you watch it more than once it all falls into place and becomes one of the best movies I have ever seen. Nolan has a tendency to make his stories dark, which Memento certainly is. I place it 3rd on my list of all-time best movies and give it a 9.7/10 simply because in order to fully understand it you must watch it at least twice.
Next, we move to The Prestige. A story about magicians and the science behind magic. It tells the story of two magicians, competing in a stage war to garner more popularity. It delves into the psyche of these two, or maybe three, artists. They do everything from steampunk devices which remove birds from cages to escaping from a glass box full of water to vanishing acts, that puts one person in two places at the same time. Nolan is almost obsessive with the three stages of magic. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course...it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige". Recommended for a light evening. 8.4/10
Nolan investigated Batman. He spent nearly a decade on The Dark Knight trilogy and it is one of the greatest vigilante stories in history. At a staggering 7.5 hours, you couldn’t watch the entire thing in a school day. In classic Nolan theme, he turns everything dark and throws some of the most terrifying villains of all time, one of which gave Heath Ledger an Academy Award. The only thing I can say is you need to watch this trilogy. 9.8/10. The second installment, The Dark Knight, falls second on the list of all time best.
Inception and Interstellar are two action packed thrills where Nolan challenges science in more ways than one. With Inception he challenges the idea that we are able to control our dreams and that we can even extract information from the subconscious mind. Leonardo DiCaprio does a fantastic job portraying a disgruntled man trying to get back to his family. Falling fifth best of all time, it gets a 9.6/10. In Interstellar, Nolan looks at wormholes and space travel. With highly accurate science he puts a dystopian Earth in need of a new planet in a decision between making enough food to survive and funding a space program to search for a new home. It goes beyond three dimensions and shows manipulation of the fourth and maybe even fifth dimension. Excellent science, recommended highly. Twelfth on the all-time list. 9.4/10.
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