The Prestige (2006) - Nolan's overrated magician picture

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Two familiar male star leads and a hazy female star wedged between them make up this dark, enigmatic poster for Christopher Nolan's The Prestige

Robert Angier and Alfred Borden are magicians in Victorian era London, feuding over a prestigious teleportation trick.

 

The Prestige is written by Jonathan Nolan (Interstellar (2014)) and his brother, English master filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Following (1998)), whose 5th feature it is. It is an adaptation of the same-titled 1995 novel by Christopher Priest (Short Circuit (1986)).

It is an overrated film in which we have to take two men who make tall hats disappear gravely serious. Basic suspense and a teasing final image don't disguise that The Prestige suffers from miscasts in its female roles and general awkwardness.

 

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Watch a fan-made trailer for the film here 

 

Cost: 40 mil. $

Box office: 109.6 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 2.74 times its cost)

[The Prestige premiered 17 October (Rome Film Fest) and runs 130 minutes. Shooting took place in June 2005 and from January - April 2006 in Colorado and California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #1 to a 14.8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent 1 more weekend in the top 5 (#3), grossing 53 mil. $ (48.4 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 6.8 mil. $ (6.2 %) and Spain with 5.1 mil. $ (4.7 %). The film was nominated for 2 Oscars. It lost Best Cinematography (Wally Pfister (Batman Begins (2005)) to Guillermo Navarro for Pan's Labyrinth and Art Direction also to Pan's Labyrinth. Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. IMDb's users have rated the film in at #42 on the site's Top 250 list, sitting between Whiplash (2014) and The Usual Suspects (1995). Nolan returned with The Dark Knight (2008). Hugh Jackman (Real Steel (2011)) returned with 2 voice performances, a TV-series performance and a short prior to his theatrical return in Deception (2008); Christian Bale (American Hustle (2013)) in 3:10 to Yuma (2007). The Prestige is certified fresh at 76 % with a 7.10/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Prestige? 

Memento (2000) - Nolan's overrated amnesia mindfuck

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Polaroids of polaroids of polaroids of pola ... on this iconic poster for Christopher Nolan's Memento

A man with 'anterograde amnesia', a condition that lets him remember only fifteen minutes at a time, attempts to avenge his murdered wife through an elaborate system involving Polaroids and tattoos.

Memento is written and directed by English master filmmaker Christopher Nolan (Following (1998)), from a story developed by his brother Jonathan Nolan (Westworld (2016-21)).
Memento is a much hyped psychological drama-thriller that's best the first time around, as its highly mystifying structure impresses considerably. (It is made up of chronologically B/W sequences and chronologically backwards revolving color sequences.)
Guy Pearce (In Her Skin (2009)) is not really that good in Memento, disastrous for a film that also has rather weak first and last half hours, leaving about 50 minutes of a good film in the middle.
Memento delights in its own cognitive veils and invites many interpretations. The unique condition of the protagonist, his tattoos and the editing ploys are what make the film worthwhile.

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Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 9 mil. $
Box office: 39.7 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 4.41 times its cost)
[Memento premiered 5 September (Venice Film Festival) and runs 113 minutes. Jonathan Nolan's story idea also turned into his short story Memento Mori (2001). Christopher Nolan was given an initial budget of 4.5 mil. $. Brad Pitt was initially slated to play the protagonist. Shooting took 25 days from September - October 1999 in California, including Los Angeles, and in Las Vegas, Nevada. American distributors were reluctant to bet on the film, despite festival raves, but as production company Newmarket distributed it themselves and found that they had a hit, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein attempted to buy the film away from them, without luck. The film opened #27 to a 235k $ first weekend in 11 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #8 and in 531 theaters, grossing 25.5 mil. $ (64.2 % of the total gross). The foreign market sheet for the film on Box Office Mojo is regrettably incomplete. The film was nominated for 2 Oscars: It lost Best Original Screenplay to Julian Fellowes for Gosford Park and Editing to Black Hawk Down. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe, won 1/3 AFI award nominations, 4/5 Independent Spirit award nominations, a National Board of Review award, an award in Sundance and several other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. IMDb's users have rated the film in at #55 on the site's Top 250, sitting between Apocalypse Now (1979) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Nolan returned with Insomnia (2002). Pearce returned in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002); Carrie-Anne Moss (Snow Cake (2006)) in Red Planet (2000); and Joe Pantoliano (Waterfront (2006, TV-series)) in A Better Way to Die (2000). Memento is certified fresh at 93 % with an 8.29/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Memento?

The Dark Knight (2008) - Nolan's best Batman

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+ Best Action Movie of the Year + Best Superhero Movie of the Year + Best Villain of the Year: The Joker (Heath Ledger) + Most Profitable Movie of the Year: 217 mil. $ range

The dark, exciting poster for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight

QUICK REVIEW:

Gotham City is terrorized by the Joker, and the new district attorney Harvey Dent looks like the metropolis' only hope. But when Dent SPOILER loses his wife and burns off half of his face in an accident, he becomes the bitter, resentful Two-Face. - And Batman will have to take the trash out!

Christian Bale (Rescue Dawn (2006)) had by British master filmmaker Christopher Nolan's (Interstellar (2014)) second Batman movie grown into a cult character as excess yuppie Bruce Wayne. Aaron Eckhart (Thank You for Smoking (2005)) is also good here as the torn man Dent.
Quality-wise, Dark Knight is nearly a schematic reflection of Nolan's first Batman movie, Batman Begins (2005), with one major exception; the Joker. Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow was neat as the villain of the first film, but Heath Ledger's (Brokeback Mountain (2005)) anarchistic heavy is larger-than-life. A truly great performance, and Ledger's only Oscar-win. Unfortunately, he died tragically of an overdose six months prior to the release of the film and therefore never received the statue in person.
Ledger's premature demise has most certainly contributed to the undue celebration of The Dark Knight that has since ensued: The film still rests at #4 on IMDb's Top 250! Knight is great entertainment for sure, but held up against the greatest Batman movie to date, Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992), I still far prefer Burton's colorful, Gothic fantasy adventure over Nolan's stark realism and seriousness.
Knight is co-written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan (Interstellar), with David S. Goyer (Blade (1998)) contributing story.

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Watch the great trailer for the film here

Cost: 185 mil. $
Box office: 1,005 bil. $
=  Big hit
[The Dark Knight broke records galore: With 8 Oscar nominations, it is the most Oscar-nominated film based on a comic or graphic novel to date, beating Dick Tracy's (1990) 7 nominations. Dark Knight was 2008's highest-grossing film and remains the 4th highest-grossing superhero movie, (almost certain to be bested soon by Avengers: Age of Ultron.) It made 534.9 mil. $ (53 %) of its total gross in the US, where it had an earth-shattering opening weekend of 158.4 mil. $. The film was re-released traditionally and in IMAX in early 2009, which made it break through the 1 bil. $ mark.]

What do you think of The Dark Knight?
And Nolan's other films?

Interstellar (2014) - Nolan heads to space in opulent, exciting epic

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+ Best Science Fiction Movie of the Year

A hyper-charged, dizzying poster for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar

Interstellar is the big space opera of 2014, and we may note that this and last year have been good years in this respect: Gravity (2013) captivated the world last year and was a tremendous survival space thriller ride, while Interstellar this year is a grander envisioned, thrilling epic. I didn't, unfortunately, experience it in IMAX, which it is made for (co-writer/director Christopher Nolan (Inception (2010)) is an avid fan of the format), but I highly recommend you to catch it in IMAX if in any way possible,  because the scope of the exploration in the film indeed begs for this huge format.

In a dystopic future, mankind is threatened by dust storms and hunger as crops mysteriously die out, and a former NASA astronaut is put back into service after receiving a mysterious clue from the beyond. Together with a small crew, he must go through a wormhole to search out new planets for the future of the human race.

Nolan cements his position as one of the world's most exciting, ambitious filmmakers here: Co-writing with his brother Jonathan Nolan (The Dark Knight (2008)), the two have here created a journey into space that transports its audience with a measure of awe, because they seem to spin their narrative with a physicist's integrity. Indeed the events of Interstellar are well-researched and generally realistic, and the seriousness and lack of condescension of the film is liberating and noteworthy. The adventure suffers from some overlength, though, and the plot becomes increasingly hard to understand, not unlike other Nolan titles like Memento (2000) and his best to date, Inception (2010). The ending is the weakest part of the film, as Interstellar seems to want us to bawl out in praise, because it decides to tie its beginning to its end:
SPOILER Never one to include religion or God in his pictures or world-view, Nolan nonetheless here gets metaphysical, as lead Matthew McConaughey (Mud (2012)) acts as a sort of time-space-crossing ghost in a black hole-induced space of alternate universes ad infinitum, which I found highly unpleasant and downright nightmarish. McConaughey comes out as a near Superman, as he survives this, and made me remember my similar, unsatisfied sentiment about Nolan's closing of  of The Dark Knight Rises (2012), in which Batman, incredibly, seems to die, - but then didn't anyway ... Interstellar is still very exciting, like a modern, unique meeting of Giant (1956) and Hud (1963) with Donnie Darko (2001) and Armageddon (1998), which stays riveting throughout in significant part due to Hans Zimmer's (Inception) terrific score. There's also a cool robot (called TARS) and stunning, believable visuals. - Especially the scenes of space flight strike one with the wonder and mind-numbing realities of space, which also links the film directly to Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
A high-point of Interstellar concerns our space mission's visit on the icy planet that a Dr. Mann (Matt Damon (Elysium (2013)) has lived on by himself for years. Casting Damon against McConaughey in this part of the film, whose face has puffed up a bit with age, while McConaughey's has become more taut and emaciated (perhaps because of work and straining roles the last few years), is a masterstroke. This whole chapter of Interstellar was incredible. McConaughey is generally a great lead for the film, although his always cool cleverness can be a bit thick to some at times.
The film has an impressive cast, although I think Michael Caine (Children of Men (2006)) seems more like a benign superintendent than an ingenious professor, and Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty (2012)) seemed to struggle a bit with the abstractness of her character's reality, (which is understandable.)
Interstellar makes people gasp out, sniffle, laugh, scream, urge to the people on the screen and ask questions. It is a voyage that will no doubt thrill little boys and girls the world over to pursue the sciences. - Don't miss it!

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The Dark Knight Rises (2012) or, Batman and the Storm, Darkness, Anarchy, Evil, Depression
Batman Begins (2005) or, Modern, Dark, Smooth Batman

 Watch the awesome trailer for the film here

Cost: 165 mil. $
Box office: 204.1 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[Interstellar had a good American debut (#2 with 47.5 mil. $ behind Disney's Big Hero 6 with 56.2 mil. $). It has reached 200 mil. $ worldwide in just 6 days, and will rely on a longer, strong run (similar to Gravity's last year) to turn a profit due to its high budget.]

What do you think of Interstellar?

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) or, Batman and the Storm, Darkness, Anarchy, Evil, Depression

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Christian Bale in his impressive suit on the poster for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises should undoubtedly attract people with leather and/or domination kinks

Batman has been a depressed hermit for 7 years, having retired Batman, in which time his business has gone to hell. Now a young woman steals a pearl necklace from his safe, and a lunatic by the name of Bain threatens Gotham City ...

Rises is impressive, partially shot in IMAX, and it has scenes, - especially action scenes and those featuring its futuristic vehicles, - which pack a wallop. The production values are top notch, and the huge budget involved here wasn't lost on CGI excesses.
The ensemble cast is huge and also overly so; the film suffers from too many characters and a running time that is way too permissive; the film should have lost about 40 minutes.

Hans Zimmer (Inferno (2016)) has created another rumbling, excitement-awakening score full of chanting and war drums, and Rises also has first-rate sound work. English master co-writer/director Christopher Nolan (Inception) wrote the movie with his brother Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer, trying to tie a highly mythical ending to the Nolan Batman trilogy, while introducing several new but familiar characters (namely Catwoman and Robin), and it becomes too much.
Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)) is menacing as the kind of super-terrorist madman Bain, but the Nolans have kept way too much of his gloom and doom speeches in their final movie. This also makes the film too dark and heavy for a superhero movie. (The film's overly dark mode was made an even more pregnant fact around the time of its summer release, when a young, deranged man shot 12 people and wounded 58, wearing a Bain-like gas mask at a midnight showing of the film in Aurora, Colorado. He later called himself the Joker. The tragedy pulled a heavy, dark shadow over a movie that already had too much darkness in itself.)
Despite its many good elements, Dark Knight Rises is a disappointing end of this Batman, and it also has a nonsense ending, SPOILER in which Batman's death is mourned, after he has sacrificed himself for Gotham in a nuclear explosion; only to mysteriously survive this impossible ordeal and pop up in Florence.

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Tom Hardy is fairly unrecognizable as the angry, strong, merciless Bain, in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises

Most of the principal characters of The Dark Knight Rises on display in this appropriately dark as !#?¤ artwork

Watch the trailer here

Budget: 230 mil. $ (after tax reductions)
Box office: 1 bl. $
= Mega-hit, 10th highest grossing film of all time

What do you think of The Dark Knight Rises?