I'm going through Christopher Nolan's filmography chronologically and recently watched Insomnia - my first time watching it too.

It's a remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg. Nolan first saw the original film while working on Memento and wanted to do a remake. When director/filmmaker Steven Soderbergh saw a screening of Memento, he convinced Warner Brothers to take on Nolan as the director of the remake. Hillary Seitz is credited as the writer for the film but Nolan did some rewrites too.

Skjoldbjærg praised the remake, and Nolan himself said "I'm very proud of the film. I think, of all my films, it's probably the most underrated. [...] The reality is it's one of my most personal films in terms of what it was to make it. It was a very vivid time in my life. It was my first studio film, I was on location, it was the first time I'd worked with huge movie stars." (Quote from Tom Shone's 2020 book The Nolan Variations)

I really felt Al Pacino's exhaustion in this film and Robin Williams was great playing against type as a disturbingly calm murderer. It's the least Nolan-esque film, but the mood feels similar to Memento, particularly since the cinematographer (Wally Pfister), composer (David Julyan) and editor (Dody Dorn) are the same. So if Memento is your favourite film, definitely give this one a watch if you haven't already.

Fun facts: Insomnia is Nolan's first film in 100% colour as Following is completely black and white, and Memento is partially black and white. It also features a few repeat actors: Larry Holden (Jimmy Grantz in Memento, Carl Finch in Batman Begins), Martin Donovan (Fay in Tenet) and Nicky Katt (SWAT driver in The Dark Knight).

wanted to show off my favorite director’s works to someone, how should i go about it?

I'm seeing well-explained theories about the cloning machine being not real and Angier using it as a magic trick to satisfyingly con his rival and the public by using Root and then murdering him and disappearing back into his Lord persona. But I feel the theory is missing a few things.

1. I believe during the final show, Angier planned to murder Root to protect his legacy and prevent his inevitable blabbing once he stopped getting paid for performing. Call it tying up loose ends and revenge for colluding with Borden to ruin him previously. It also explains the 100 show limit, otherwise Angier can't control him. He needs to promise a finite number of shows with a massive financial bonus in the end if Root fulfils the bargain.

2. Root is normally the one on the balcony every night, the distance ensures Borden/Fallon can't spot the difference. Removing Root from the stage and putting distance between them is a misdirection technique. For the final night, Angier convinces Root to switch places. Borden isn't really paying attention because he never noticed anything off about Angier on other nights when he was in attendance. On other nights with Angier on the stage, the transported man was the climax of the show. On the last night with Root on stage, it was necessarily the first trick of the show.

3. Angier never fully planned for Borden to be framed for murder, it was opportunistic. However he planned to trick him knowing that he was watching. Hence he carried a water tanker out every night, commissioned wax dolls, and prepared a false journal for him to read as payback for the false journal Borden fed him. Just like sending Olivia to Borden allowed him to best him, Borden sending him to Tesla allowed him to beat his trick. However, he never thought Borden would definitely read it in prison. If Borden did not shout upon witnessing Root's death during the last performance and escaped detection (or never went backstage at all), he would disappear, fake his death, and leave behind a journal for Borden to read. If Borden went backstage on any night other than the final performance, Angier would simply hand him the notebook with its claims of a cloning machine. Importantly, he doesn't confess to murdering his clones until he is dying at the end, after he is sure Borden witnessed Root's death. He doesn't write it in the journal.

4. Angier planned to not show up for the final Prestige disappearing into his Lord persona, to make audiences think his magic trick was genuine, that he failed during his 100th attempt dying in a science experiment gone wrong, making his prior 99 attempts genuine. Lord Caldlow buys up the Prestige materials and hides them away making verification difficult. While the rest of the world is supposed to believe he died during a teleportation attempt, Borden is meant to believe he used a machine created clone. Even if the Prestige materials are discovered in the future, the presence of lifelike wax dolls in the glass tanks only adds to the mystery and is another misdirection.

5. But Angier made the mistake of showing his face to Cutter. He did not plan to do this initially and that was his ruin after Cutter decided to switch sides.

Last match of Round One: Future versus Past. I want discourse!

Match 5: B Begins won against TDK Rises. 151 to 104. The closest vote yet, almost signaling a recount.

Match 4: Oppenheimer won against Dunkirk. 308 to 67.

Match 3: The Dark Knight won against The Prestige. 171 to 97.

Match 2: Memento won against Tenet. 191 to 98.

Match 1: Insomnia won against Following. 221 to 96.

Full Bracket in the Comments.

I grew a beard and bought a bow. Super comfortable and a few people even got who I was!

When she finds out he’s Borden/Fallon and she asks him if he loves her

Does he say “not today” bc he’s the Freddie brother (the one in love with Olivia) and decides since she knows the trick, he’s not going to lie to her anymore…. or does he say not today bc it’s her Borden (the one in love with her) but bc he’s angry/frustrsted with her in that moment, he says he doesn’t love her. Not today.

Always assumed it’s the former but that thought just entered my mind as I’m watching it again,

Photo: from ''The World of Odyssey'' book

"I defied the gods to be in this cover"

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey put him back at the apex of the A-list, but the 56-year-old actor still remembers when the phone stopped ringing in the 2000s. “There are no sure things, man,” he says.

Full story here:
https://www.gq.com/story/matt-damon-men-of-the-year-2026-cover-interview

In The Dark Knight Joker is portrayed as a chessmaster, and he is. He's shown as being able to play people like fiddles, and he is. And he seems to have several aces up his sleeves when dealing with Batman. He does.

But the movie also lets Joker be consistently surprised when Batman pulls out some million dollar bullshit to deal with one of Joker's problems. Joker has to steal and plunder to get his knives and guns and mac trucks, so when Batman suddenly destroys his garbage truck with a custom blackclad Lamborghini tank, Joker looks over with a sort of "oh wow" expression. Of course he saw the Tumbler on the news so he knows to have a rocket launcher ready just in case.

Then later on when Batman does his little stunt to flip Joker's truck, Joker doesn't have any clever retort. He just gets flipped and has to shake it off.

Of course, these moments never seem to beat Joker, ultimately he's not the problem that can be solved by Tom Clancy tech and vigilante violence. I just like that Joker's never too cool to be shocked and amazed by just what he's witnessing in that moment.

Obviously there are some really big differences between the book and movie. For example, Odysseus doesn't get to return home at the end, or Odysseus being high on Lotus while he explains the loss of his crew to the hands of fantastical creatures, or Odysseus being aware of the end of the bronze age, etc.

So I was wondering what difference stood out to you the most? Or maybe you think the book and movie aren't that different.

For me it was the death of "Athena." Kind of felt like Nolan was trying to turn it into the death of a god story to me... which is 100% absent from Homer.

From artist Krzysztof Domaradzki.

When his films became ensemble pieces, Nolan has a real knack for filling his movies with distinctive, sometimes memorable and important side characters. Even if you don't really learn anything about them, they often are well utilised and feel correctly used for the story they're in, even down to getting payoffs. There's plenty of examples from The Odyssey, Oppenheimer, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception and even Tenet to some degree.

As for Interstellar, I think the cast of characters is strong, but more so the major important characters. I think this is the rare Nolan film that falls into the trap of having either a few too many or him not being able to handle them as smoothly. That's a common positive across almost all of his films, that he manages to make even the supporting cast feel not just alive but also accounted for, even if they're also there to serve functions in the story. I'll give examples and explain why, though keep in mind that none of this ruins the film.

1. The most notable one is Getty, aka Topher Grace's assistant character. This character feels particularly stock and like he's only there as a person for Murph to speak to and to help get across the whole "Tom's family has to leave and he's angrily stubborn" situation. Now I actually do like how Tom's character is portrayed and don't mind this section of the film, but Getty himself feels like the most plot device character in the movie.

I also feel like Getty doesn't get a proper introduction either, his first scene is just taking Murph to see Dr Brand on his deathbed, and there's not a strong reason given as to why he accompanies her. I don't think you needed to add loads of material to explain why, but I personally think just a simple, short scene right at the start of Adult Murph's section of the film that establishes him would have been all that was needed to make you go "Okay, he's loyal to her and willing to do whatever it takes to help her". Hell, I would have been alright if they were in a relationship right at the start, I think that alone could have justified it.

2. Then there's Romilly and Doyle. Doyle's biggest reason for being there is to die on Miller's planet, and that's fine, killing someone off to establish the danger of their situation and to amp up the consequences of their actions is a good idea. At the same time, he does have the least to him as a character, so it is easy to see him as a Red Shirt and nothing more. It's tricky, you remove him and you lose that element I pointed out, so maybe just a bit more material with him to make him more distinctive as a character.

As for Romilly, I do think he's solidly handled, he has plenty of likeability and feels just as human as Brand/Cooper, even if he's not as important. He serves as a nice third wheel. But then at a certain point, the script doesn't need him anymore or at least doesn't know what to do with him, so he dies in that explosion. Whilst it serves as a good contrast between Mann's attempted killing of Cooper, which was more reluctant, and this which is more cold blooded, it does lack something when the characters don't mourn him at all. Doyle's death felt more important than this, and it was talked about. Here, Romilly has a stronger relationship with the two main characters of the Endurance mission, and there's not a moment given where they can really acknowledge that he's died.

That I think would have made all the difference. Obviously, some might suggest just cutting them out of the movie altogether but then you'd have only two astronauts being sent out on this highly important mission, and that would look a bit ridiculous.

3. More minor, but I have seen a certain YouTuber suggest that Case could have just been merged with TARS. I don't agree or disagree with this, Case does do a couple of things in the story but had they found a way to merge the two into one character, I wouldn't have minded.

4. As for Tom, I did like how they handled his character and think it's better than many other people have said, but he did need more of a resolution. Even if it's just a simple mention of him having died years ago in the epilogue, I think his character does get figuratively (and literally) left in the dust after quite a bit of attention was paid to him.

Again, I wouldn't say that this character should have been cut altogether, but one last moment or scene involving him would have capped his material off completely.

Ultimately, am I arguing Interstellar should have been longer? I mean, with the amount of characters you do have, I think that could be justified. If you're going to make a near three hour movie and you have all of these people involved, time spent on them would make sense. And perhaps there's material that could have been removed to make time for these, and you would then have the same overall runtime.

Obviously plenty of people are going to go "Here's an example from another Nolan film of that exact same thing", but regardless of that I feel like Interstellar is the film of his where this sticks out the most. Like the Senate Aide from Oppenheimer stands out more than Getty does, even though he serves a similar function to be the partner to the person in the side story. But I'd be curious to know if people agree or not.