The Best Christopher Nolan Movies to Watch

There are directors, and then there is Christopher Nolan—a filmmaker whose name has been on everyone’s lips for years. Nolan has built a filmography that spans genres—from war dramas to science fiction that questions the very nature of time and space. With his highly anticipated adaptation of The Odyssey set to hit theatres this month, there’s no better time to revisit the films that made him one of the most celebrated filmmakers of his generation.

Here are the best Christopher Nolan movies to watch, from his early acclaimed hits to his upcoming epic spectacle.

Starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya and Charlize Theron, The Odyssey is Nolan’s upcoming film, which will be released theaters worldwide this month. The film is an adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek story of the same name, which chronicles Odysseus’s ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

Before jumping into Greek mythology, Nolan surprised us all with his science-fiction film Interstellar. The film follows farmer and ex-NASA pilot Joseph Cooper as he’s tasked with piloting a spacecraft with a team of astronauts to find a new home for humanity when Earth is uninhabitable. Leaving his family behind, the film portrays a heartbreaking rendition of navigating with sacrifices.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy, Inception follows Cobb, who steals top secret information by infiltrating the subconscious of his target’s mind. When he is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased—allegedly killing his wife—he accepts a risky job to plan an idea into the mind of a CEO.

Oppenheimer is a dramatised biographical film about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was tasked with designing an atomic bomb—which was detonated on 16 July, 1945—with a team of scientists, bringing an end to World War II.

Stepping into historical fiction, Nolan narrates a story of soldiers from the British Empire, Belgium and France trying to evacuate the town of Dunkirk during a battle in World War II.

A film that took years to be produced, Tenet is another science fiction film Nolan created. This time around, the film tells the story of a CIA operative, known as the Protagonist, who must save the world when objects are being manipulated and used as weapons in the future. He must then trace the origin of the objects and stop them from travelling through time.

Based on the DC Comics superhero Batman, The Dark Knight follows Batman as he discovers a new foe, the Joker, who is hell-bent on burning Gotham City to the ground. Creating alliances with Gordon and Harvey Dent, they together try to stop Joker from causing more damage. Starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Morgan Freeman and more, this is one of the most acclaimed films Nolan’s ever made.