Tenet, 2020

Christopher Nolan’s best film is not The Dark Knight, Dunkirk, or even Oppenheimer—it’s 2020’s Tenet. That might sound absolutely bonkers if you’ve never seem the director’s time-bending action masterpiece, but it is the truth. In an early scene, a character literally tells John David Washington, who plays a character known only as The Protagonist, “Don’t try to understand.” That goes for the audience as well. If you try to wrap your head around the logic of inverted entropy and bullets moving backwards through time then you will make your brain hurt, but if you just watch a 747 get blown to hell both forward and backwards, you’re in for a great ride.

Still, even with a somewhat nonsensical premise, everything Nolan excels as a director is present in Tenet. The action set pieces are unparalleled and almost entirely practical, and they’re connected by solid performances from the cast. Washington is exceedingly charismatic as The Protagonist and gets a solid co-star in Robert Pattinson. The script is minimal thanks to how much the action speaks for the characters but every line packs a punch. There is even a thematic throughline about the horrors of war and humanity’s obsession with destroying ourselves—we even get an Oppenheimer name drop. Tenet is a film made by a director at the peak of his career, a gorgeously shot and excellently acted flourish of cinematic mastery that refuses to be anything but original. — Willa Rowe