1. Oppenheimer (2023)

All those “Barbenheimer” memes were good fun. Pastels, hot pinks, and Ryan Gosling’s singing canceled out whatever pitch-black moods were wrought by Oppenheimer. But no movie by Nolan feels as contemplative and introspective yet simultaneously so expansive quite like his biopic of the man who built the atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer casts recurring Nolan collaborator Cillian Murphy in the title role of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the real-life physicist who oversaw the making of the atomic bomb that ended World War II – and subsequently spent his life trying in futility to halt the nuclear arms race. In his main character, along with antagonistic Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) whose perceived sleights against him drives the movie’s conflicts, Nolan unspools the United States’ aggressive evolution into a global superpower. A whole nation mistaken in its notions that peace is achievable only when it holds the biggest guns towards everyone else’s heads.

Boasting all of Nolan’s hallmarks, includinnon-linear plotting, expressionism mixed with hyper-realism, anxious concerns for time and timing, and obsessions that breed destruction, Oppenheimer often feels like Nolan’s style perfected at the molecular level and refined to a single shell. I could keep going with bomb metaphors, but the simple truth is that Oppenheimer is a modern masterpiece that shoulders so much more than the life of one complicated man who seeks to reconcile his actions with his intentions. Even if it didn’t sweep the Oscars, Oppenheimer is an overwhelming experience that leaves all shocked and awed.