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A young Bruce Wayne falls down a well and is attacked by bats, developing a fear of them. Some time later while attending the opera with his parents in Gotham City, Bruce becomes frightened by performers masquerading as bats and asks to leave. Outside, they are accosted by mugger Joe Chill, who murders Bruce's parents in front of him. The orphaned Bruce is raised by the family Butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Fourteen years later, Chill is paroled after testifying against mafia boss Carmine Falcone. Bruce intends to murder Chill to avenge his parents, but one of Falcone's assassins gets to him first. Bruce's childhood friend Rachel Dawes berates him for planning to act outside the justice system. After confronting Falcone, who states that Bruce will never understand criminals because of his upbringing, Bruce disappears from Gotham and spends the next seven years travelling the world and immersing himself in the criminal underworld. In a Bhutan prison he is approached by Henri Ducard, who invites Bruce to join his group in order to find his purpose. Upon completing his training, the group's leader Ra's al Ghul tells Bruce that they believe Gotham is beyond saving and intend to have him lead them in destroying it. Bruce rejects them, and ends up burning down their temple while escaping. Intent on fighting crime, he returns to Gotham. Using his access to his family's company, Bruce acquires prototype defence technologies—such as a protective bodysuit and an armoured vehicle—and starts developing the vigilante identity of "Batman" in order to restore justice to the city. During Bruce's absence, however, Falcone has gotten even more powerful, and is now in league with corrupt psychologist Dr Jonathan Crane, who is smuggling a potent fear-inducing hallucinogen into the city for unknown reasons!

This film hits the ground running, and doesn't let up until the end credits. It answers questions we have had—and some that we didn't even know we had—about where Bruce comes from, what motivates him, and how he becomes Batman. The answers Dir. Nolan gives us are not only very satisfying, they are also sometimes challenging. Along the way, we see Bruce tinkering with and refining the Batman persona, as well as the sacrifices he must make in the process of assuming the Batman alter ego. One thing I really liked is how Batman is depicted not as a one-man show but as part of a greater team of willing as well as unaware allies. The film also presents the titular character's vulnerabilities and limitations, which humanizes him and enhances the film's plausibility. The myriad of villains that round out this film are all fresh and interesting. They also add additional layers and depth to not only the story and setting, but also the Bruce Wayne character.

The film's visuals are another standout feature of the film, with cinematography that is breathtakingly beautiful at times. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's music also has a je ne sais quoi that elevates the film to another level. Overall, the story is relatively easy to follow as Dir. Nolan doesn't manipulate time very often in this film. While the front end of the film is layered with flashbacks, they are presented chronologically in parallel to the film's 'now', and used to explain things as they become relevant; such as why Bruce is in a Bhutanese prison at the beginning. However, large sections of the film—especially at the beginning—are presented in a concentrated form, and one has to be paying attention in order to completely grasp what Nolan is aiming for. That said, arguably the only flaw to film is that it renders Joel Schumacher's Batman films almost unwatchable due to their lack of attention on the main character. While virtually any actor could have played the titular role in those films, it is hard to imagine anyone but Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins and its sequels. This film is a must see, not just because it is a great film, but also because of the impact it continues to have on subsequent films, both within and outside the superhero genre!

In 1890s London, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden work as shills for a magician under the mentorship of John Cutter, an engineer who designs stage magic. During a water tank trick, Angier's wife Julia fails to escape and drowns. Angier, devastated, accuses Borden of causing her death. The two become bitter enemies and part ways. Borden begins a solo act while Cutter helps Angier launch his own career. In retaliation for his wife's death, Angier sabotages Borden's bullet catch trick and shoots off two of the latter's fingers. Borden develops a trick he calls "The Transported Man", in which he appears to travel instantly between two wardrobes on opposite ends of the stage. Unable to discern Borden's method, Angier hires a double, Gerald Root, to perform his own version of the trick. The imitation is a greater success—but Angier is dissatisfied, as he ends the trick hidden under the stand while Root basks in the applause. Borden then approaches Root and explains that he has significant leverage over Angier, causing Root to act more and more arrogantly. In return, Angier has his assistant Olivia spy on Borden to learn how he performs The Transported Man. However, Olivia falls in love with Borden and becomes his assistant. With her help, Borden sabotages Angier's act. Confronted by Angier, Olivia gives him a copy of Borden's encoded diary. Angier subsequently acquires the keyword to decode it by threatening to kill Fallon, Borden's stage engineer. Angier learns from the diary that scientist Nikola Tesla built a machine for The Transported Man trick, so he heads to America to meet Tesla and get him to build a similar machine. However, Tesla refuses to even meet!

The Prestige makes magic its focus, but it isn't so much about magic per se, but obsessions and the lengths people go toward them, and the high cost they pay in doing so. One of the highlights of the film is the magic, and how so-called magicians perform their illusions. Naturally, it evolves into experiments and illusions that use electricity, something that intriguingly still has magical properties for many people even in this day and age. While the film appears to break its own rules and employs some 'true' magic, it's quite acceptable as it ultimately enhances the tragic horror of the duelling magicians. That said, the film does require a certain suspension of disbelief: could those magicians have been so good with makeup and disguise that they could successfully hide their true identity from their opposite even at point blank range? While it's true that building interiors were considerably dimmer in the era that this film takes place, it still feels like a step too far into the fantastical.

Nevertheless, like all Nolan films, this one gets better on repeat viewings. On the one hand, it helps make a bit more sense of the non-linear storytelling, but on the other, it's wonderful discovering the hints and clues about the two protagonists—and the film is loaded with them. Speaking of the protagonists, it is remarkable that they are neither portrayed as good nor evil; amoral at best. That duality is reinforced with a surprising amount of parallelism in the film: both Angier and his wife die by hanging, the protagonist's deadly rivalry is mirrored in Tesla and Edison's rivalry, and so on.

Above all else, thise film is a good mystery—or illusion,as the movie defines it. Even if you missed the clues, the reveal at the end is still shocking as we grasp the true, horrific extent of the magicians' attempts to outdo each other. This is one of those film that stays with you long after the end credits. Can't be missed!

A gang of masked criminals robs a mafia-owned bank in Gotham City, betraying and killing each other until the sole survivor, the Joker, reveals himself as the mastermind and escapes with all the money. The vigilante Batman and police lieutenant Jim Gordon ally with district attorney Harvey Dent to eliminate Gotham's organized crime. Billionaire Bruce Wayne, Batman's true identity, publicly supports Dent as Gotham's legitimate protector. Wayne believes Dent's success will allow him to retire the Batman persona, allowing him to romantically pursue his childhood friend Rachel Dawes—despite her being in a relationship with Dent! Gotham's mafia bosses gather to discuss how to protect their organizations from the Joker, the police, and Batman. The Joker interrupts the meeting and offers to kill Batman for half of their collective fortune, which was just concealed by their accountant Lau before he fled to Hong Kong to avoid extradition. With the help of Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox, Batman captures Lau in Hong Kong and delivers him into the custody of Gotham police. Lau's testimony enables Dent to apprehend not only the crime families, but all of their lieutenants and middlemen. At a loss, the crime bosses accept the Joker's offer. His first targets are high-profile people involved in the trial: the judge, the police commissioner, and Dent! While the police and Batman scramble to protect them from Joker's attacks, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises confronts Fox: he has discovered Batman's connection to Wayne Enterprises!

The Dark Knight is a complex film. It is ostensibly about escalation, but it is also an examination of the lies that people tell either to themselves, or to other people for the greater good. Into the mix comes the Joker, who is essentially an anarchist, but is also motivated to corrupt people into becoming like him if given enough of a metaphorical push.

This film has all the right elements (acting, effects, music) and makes some very pointed observations and arguments, but it just doesn't add together completely. A common theme in Dir. Nolan's films is the manipulation of time. While Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises are comparative lightweights among his works, The Dark Knight doesn't have any. I'd also describe Nolan's films as 'breathless'—in the sense that they have so much to say—such as Inception, Interstellar, and even Batman Begins. This film, however, doesn't feel like that aside from the first reel, and the last ten minutes. The rest? Paraphrasing Wikipedia: 'the film is always climaxing, and scenes are cut off just as they're getting interesting.' That 'constant climaxing' ends up deadening the senses, and coupled with the cutting off, it prevents some of the film's most important points from making a proper impact.

Bruce Wayne is also practically invisible for most of the film, which is disappointing, as he was the most interesting character in Batman Begins. The other character largely missing from this film is Gotham City itself. Maybe Nolan gave the city a bright makeover to make the film more relevant to the intended audience, but it came at the cost of eliminating a lot of the inner city grunge—the very thing that spawned Batman and gives him his raison d'être. As the movie is full of excellent, believable performances, and as each scene more or less works on its own, I'm left wondering if the movie overreached itself and that was complicated by the untimely passing of Heath Ledger. Speaking of Ledger, his performance is one of the main reasons to see this film. While the film doesn't necessarily get better on repeat viewings, noticing new aspects and subtleties to Ledger's performance makes it more than worthwhile.

Cobb and Arthur are "extractors" who perform corporate espionage using experimental dream-sharing technology to infiltrate their targets' subconscious and extract information. Their latest target, Saito, is impressed with Cobb's ability to layer multiple dreams within each other. He offers to hire Cobb for the ostensibly impossible job of implanting an idea into a person's subconscious: performing "inception" on Robert Fischer—the son of Saito's competitor Maurice Fischer—with the idea of dissolving his father's company. In return, Saito promises to clear Cobb's criminal status, allowing him to return home to his children. Cobb accepts the offer and assembles his team: a forger named Eames, a chemist named Yusuf, and a college student named Ariadne. Ariadne is tasked with designing the dream's architecture, something Cobb himself cannot do for fear of being sabotaged by his mind's projection of Mal, his late wife. Maurice Fischer dies, and the team sedates Robert Fischer into a three-layer shared dream on an airplane to America. Time on each layer runs slower than the layer above, with one member staying behind on each to perform a music-synchronized "kick" to awaken dreamers on all three levels simultaneously. While attempting to abduct Robert in a city on the first level, however, his trained subconscious projections attack them. Saito is wounded, and Cobb reveals that while dying in the dream would usually awaken dreamers, Yusuf's sedatives will instead send them into "limbo", an existence that they will never wake up from! They have no choice but to continue on the mission and hope that Saito survives. Further complicating things is the projection of Mal, who is actively trying to prevent Cobb and his team from succeeding!

In a word, Inception is a 'breathless' film—in that it has almost continuous exposition in order to not only explain the plot, but also the 'rules' of shared dreaming. Due to that, the film is highly memorable for having created an entirely new dimension for filmmakers to explore, and that's despite the film's spectacular action sequences! Perhaps the most memorable aspect of the film is how aspects of events happening at a shallower dream level influence and effect the dream at deeper levels. Which is further compounded by how much more time passes the deeper the dream level is. This results in some truly astounding effects, which are made all the more impressive as Dir. Nolan prefers practical effects over CG!

Despite its strokes of creative genius and outstanding visual effects, the film also has excellent characterization. While the film may have focused more on exposition, it still provides an assortment of well-rounded characters with many of them facing tragic circumstances. The emotional payoffs in the climax and conclusion are genuinely earned, and are truly cathartic. The film ultimately transcends its genres and technical achievements in effects, and becomes something truly sublime by an auteur at the top of his game. A definite must see—and one that truly gets better on repeat viewings!

Bane, a former member of the League of Shadows, leads an attack on a CIA plane over Uzbekistan to abduct nuclear physicist, Dr. Leonid Pavel, and fake his death in the crash. Meanwhile, eight years after the death of Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent, organized crime has been eradicated in Gotham by legislation giving expanded powers to the police. Police Commissioner James Gordon has kept Dent's killing spree a secret and allowed the blame for his crimes to fall on Batman. Bruce Wayne, still mourning the death of Rachel Dawes, has become a recluse, and Wayne Enterprises has stagnated. Bane enlists businessman John Daggett to buy Wayne's fingerprints. Cat burglar Selina Kyle steals Wayne's prints from Wayne Manor for Daggett, but he double-crosses her and she alerts the police, who pursue Bane and Daggett's henchmen into the sewers while Kyle flees. The henchmen capture Gordon and take him to Bane, but he escapes and is found by Officer John Blake. Black has deduced Wayne's secret identity, visits him at Wayne Manor, and persuades him to resume his vigilantism. Bane attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange and uses the stolen fingerprints to verify a series of fraudulent transactions, leaving Wayne bankrupt. Batman resurfaces to pursue Bane's henchmen. Kyle agrees to take Batman to Bane but instead leads him into a trap under Wayne Tower. Bane gloats that he intends to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's mission to destroy Gotham City before he brutally cripples Batman. He then takes Wayne to an ancient underground prison in the Middle East, where he leaves Wayne to watch as he destroys Gotham. Back in Gotham, Bane traps the entire police force in the sewers, destroys the bridges surrounding the city, and forces Pavel to convert a fusion reactor core into a neutron bomb in order to hold the city hostage and prevent the armed forces from attempting to liberate the city. He then exposes Dent's crimes—undermining both the legal system and Gordon—releases the prisoners from all the jails, and sets up a proletarian kangaroo court to decide the fate of the city's elites!

Dir. Nolan returns to form in the Batman series with this film that continues from where Batman Begins left off in probing what drives Bruce Wayne on. Nolan's Batman is as much about the present and the future, as it is about looking back on the past for the motivations and the causes. This film is about what it takes to be Batman—in the sense of the willpower needed (what makes Wayne a 'super' hero), and the emotional and physical costs involved—and unflinchingly examines both. It's not always pretty, but through it the Wayne character is rounded out even more than we could have hoped for. That deep examination of Wayne is what makes this film one of the better ones in Nolan's series. More than the title character alter ego, it is Wayne himself who is the most interesting thing about Batman.

Hans Zimmer's score is also a highlight of the film. Not only does it revisit the themes from the preceding films, he also incorporates aspects of the story into the score—sometimes even before we're aware of its significance (arguably another reason why Nolan's films get better when watched again). At one point, I found myself marvelling at the apparent co-opting of Bane's theme by Batman's in the climax! Great stuff.

I really liked the film's running theme of questioning 'how much is enough?' and 'when is it time to move on?'. Questions that the viewer readily answers, but the film holds off answering until the very end. And oh, what an end! The film keeps building and building and building to a truly cathartic payoff. In an era of endless sequels, it's great to have a proper conclusion to a film franchise.

In the near future, humanity is facing extinction following a global famine caused by ecocide. Cooper's family, which includes father-in-law Donald and his children Tom and Murph, survive by pursuing farming. One evening after a dust storm, Cooper discovered a gravitational anomaly inside Murph's bedroom, which creates patterns of falling particles. Decoding the pattern as GPS coordinates, Cooper and Murph discover a secret NASA facility. NASA is believed to have been shut down, but operates in secret with the mission to find a habitable planet beyond the solar system. A team of scientists at the facility is secretly preparing to send a mission through a mysterious wormhole near Saturn, hoping to discover habitable planets in the distant galaxy that it links to. A previous NASA mission has uncovered three planets past the wormhole with potential, each of which orbits a supermassive black hole called Gargantua. The mission leader, Dr. Brand, asks Cooper to pilot the mission due to his past experience as a NASA pilot. Cooper is initially reluctant to leave, but agrees to go when he learns that the Earth is dying and the mission is the best chance to save not just the human race, but his children. Murph is understandably upset, and unwilling to talk with Cooper, and he only leaves after promising her that he will return. The Endurance spacecraft departs with three other NASA scientists, Romilly, Doyle, and Brand's daughter Amelia, as well as TARS and CASE, two intelligent robots. Past the wormhole, the crew decides to check out the planet that has the strongest indications of being habitable. The complication is that it is just inside the gravitational effects of Gargantua: each second spent on the planet is roughly the equivalent to one day on Earth! They agree that the team will race in, gather the data, and race out. While Romilly and TARS stay on Endurance—which remains in orbit just outside of the gravitational effects—the rest of the team takes a shuttle to the planet's ocean surface and lands near where they detected the beacon of Miller, the planet's previous explorer. As they come across the wreckage of Miller's landing pod, they also realize that the planet has massive tidal waves, and the next one is bearing down on them!

I went into this movie with trepidation, as it was billed as a science fiction film on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey and saw the creation of three (!) scientific papers, but was generally panned by the Internet movie-going public. Suffice to say, my expectations were more than surpassed! It had me firing on all cylinders—and that was before they even launched into space! The way the film introduces the setting and characters creates a solid foundation for why they must make the journey, the stakes involved, and most importantly: the emotional bedrock underlying it all. That emotional bedrock, and the character growth and choices stemming from it, have made this film truly unforgettable. I've seen many films, but it's the sentiments and advice of the characters in this one that have remained with me. Perhaps my perspective as an expat parent has made the actions and emotions in this film that much more understandable and poignant for me.

One of the things I really liked about this film is its depiction of near-future space travel. Perhaps more than the broad strokes of space travel, it was the small touches that really got me; such as what 'music' do astronauts listen to? In addition to the thought-provoking real science of the film—ranging from the effects of time dilation to what a black hole would actually look like—it is also fully loaded with mysteries. For example, the film never details the blight that is killing all edible crops, is extremely vague about what happened to the Earth between our 'now' and the film's 'now', and who and what the 'bulk beings' are. That is all in addition to subtle digs on how politics shape education, people being graded on a bell curve to limit access to higher education (ostensibly due to lack of space and funding) and a sly reference to how over-consumerism is bad for the planet.

The more one digs into the film, including its production side, the deeper it gets. Oddly enough, one of the film's greatest 'practical effects' are the cornfields. It's not so much the crop per se, but where they were grown and filmed. This ties in nicely with one of the films more subtle aspects: almost everything on the family's dinner table is corn based. Perhaps even more subtle are the titles of the books that are pushed off of the bookshelf. Most of them directly tie into the theme of the movie, its science, or the situation that the characters find themselves in.

Interstellar is another bold step forward by Dir. Nolan. By focusing as much on the inner, mental challenges as the external, physical ones, he has succeeded in creating an emotionally tought, thought provoking movie. It is arguably Nolan's best film. Highly recommended.

In 1940, during the Battle of France, Allied soldiers have retreated to Dunkirk after being encircled by German forces. British Private Tommy is the sole survivor of a German attack. He makes it to the beach, where he finds thousands upon thousands of troops awaiting evacuation. He meets Gibson, an aloof soldier, who is burying a body. After a dive bomber attack, Tommy and Gibson attempt to board a hospital ship by bringing a wounded man on a stretcher onto it, but are promptly ordered off of the ship. The ship is soon sunk by dive bombers, and Tommy saves Alex from the sinking ship. Concurrently, the Royal Navy is requisiting civilian ships in Great Britain that have a shallow enough draft to get to the soldiers on the Dunkirk beach. Mr. Dawson sets out on his boat with his son Peter to avoid letting the navy commandeer their ship. The teenager George—who is looking for adventure—impulsively jumps aboard just as they leave. En route to Dunkirk, they rescue a shivering, shell-shocked soldier from a wrecked ship. When the soldier realizes that they are heading to Dunkirk, he demands that they turn back and tries to take control of the ship. In the scuffle, George suffers a head injury. Overhead, three Spitfires cross the English Channel with orders to defend the evacuation. After their leader is shot down, Farrier assumes command. His wingmate Collins, however, is soon hit and he has to ditch in the sea. Farrier continues toward Dunkirk. Tommy, Alex, and Gibson finally make it onto a destroyer. Just as it starts toward England, however, it is hit and sunk by a torpedo! The three soldiers have no choice but to head back to the beach, where they rejoin the hundreds of thousands of men who are desperate to get off of it.

Dunkirk is concurrently a nail-biting and thought provoking film. This is partially because the story is told from three perspectives with different time dilations: land (one week), sea (one day), and air (one hour). Due to that, we are shown events both after and before they take place—often in that order! Some characters (Cillian Murphy's Shivering Soldier for example) are shown after and before they undergone a traumatic experience, and how it drastically changes them. In other scenes, what we initially perceive as a relatively successful result later turns out to be anything but! In many ways, the film is a lot more rewarding once the viewer grasps what Dir. Nolan is doing, and is arguably better on rewatches due to that.

The other challenging aspect of the film is that Dir. Nolan is interested in depicting how individual actions—whether self-serving or selfless—add up to the overall success or failure of the entire evacuation. Nolan doesn't bother with providing the backstories and future plans of the characters, and in a certain sense each character is a composite of the actions and behaviour of several people. In many ways, that makes the film more powerful as the soldiers are more relatable as their actions and choices are made from desperation and an overwhelming desire for survival. While the film is hardly gruesome, it is incredibly tense from start to finish. The film's strongest lasting impression is the sheer desperation of the men to not just survive, but to get off the beach as soon as possible!

The highlight of the film is that pretty much everything was filmed practically—with only a minimal amount of CG—under Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography. While the former adds infinitely to the realism of the film, the later makes it all look remarkably beautiful. The only drawback to the film is that it doesn't really address the struggles of the French soldiers who were trapped at Dunkirk along with the British. Nevertheless, the film is a tour de force by an auteur at the top of his game. And while it has all the hallmarks of a Nolan film (practical effects, nonlinear storytelling, Michael Caine, etc.), it is also unique in Nolan's catalogue as a film that isn't going breathless from all the dialogue explaining what's going on. A must see!

"Protagonist", a CIA agent, participates in an extraction at the Kyiv Opera House during a terrorist attack. He loses his team and the plutonium-241 that the operative was carrying. A couple of weeks later, Protagonist is recruited by an organization called Tenet, and is briefed on bullets whose entropy has been inverted—meaning that they move backwards through time. Tracing the inverted bullets to Mumbai, he meets his handler Neil, and break into the home of arms dealer Priya Singh, the original source of the bullets. They learn that Priya is a member of Tenet, and that the bullets were sold to and inverted by Russian oligarch Andrei Sator. In order to get close to Sator, Protagonist approaches his estranged wife Kat. She is being controlled by Sator through blackmail. In exchange for her help, Protagonist agrees to free her by stealing from Sator's freeport storage facility in the Oslo Airport the item that he is using to blackmail her. After breaking into the facility, Protagonist and Neil are startled when the mysterious "turnstile" in the centre of the building suddenly activates and two masked men jump out of it. Jarringly, the one that the Protagonist fights is moving backwards through time! Later, Protagonist is introduced to Sator, and they form a partnership to retrieve the plutonium-241 that was lost in Kyiv. Moments after Protagonist and Neil steal the plutonium, they discover that it is actually an artifact that has travelled back in time from the future. An inverted Sator, who is holding Kat hostage, immediately ambushes them to retrieve the artifact. Protagonist soon learns that not only is Sator allied with and advised by people in the future, they are actively trying to cause WWIII!

Tenet is a true mind-bender. Its time manipulation theme is similar to that of Memento, in which a pair of storylines are moving concurrently both forwards and backwards in time toward a common point. The key twist is that in Tenet, the backwards flowing one is literally moving backwards, and often occurs concurrently to the forward flowing one. This results in not only viewing the same sequence from a different perspective, but experiencing it 'backwards' as one set of characters progresses 'forward' through it.

Confused? I was the first time I saw the film. Nevertheless, I found two quotes in the film to be helpful in unlocking the story: "Don't try to understand it, feel it.", and "There is no first wave—Red Team and Blue Team operate simultaneously. Don't get on the chopper if you can't stop thinking in linear terms." One recurring motif is a pincer movement. However, the film takes pains to note that it's not a pincer movement in 'space', but in 'time'.

This is one of those rare films that becomes more and more understandable (and enjoyable!) the more times one watches it. All the more so as you become aware of what kind of clues to pay attention to. While some have complained that the dialogue is drowned out or hard to hear at times, in a recent viewing I realized that that was the director's way of telling us not to focus on that—in one sequence, the in-movie dialogue had even just instructed one character to pay attention to something else!

Tenet is very well acted, directed, and framed. I found the action sequences set up and filmed extremely well—and despite the dense script and mind-bending concept, the visuals are very clear and easy to follow. What I like most about the film is that the beginning and ending of the movie are not necessarily the start and end of the story (if such concepts are even applicable!) This is a film unlike any before, and due to the complaints it has received, most likely not going to be reproduced any time soon.