The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Rankings
July 21, 2026/ 118 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Chris Ryan
Chris Ryan joins Sean and Amanda to mark 'The Odyssey' opening to a $264M worldwide weekend, then the three rank all thirteen Christopher Nolan features into one negotiated list. Opens with a movie-news block: the Avengers: Doomsday trailer, the paused Paramount-Warner merger, and a festival slate rundown.
37 films across 3 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Movie newsbefore the main event
The trailer drops the Monday after 'The Odyssey' opens, timed to Comic-Con. Chris and Sean saw it four months earlier at CinemaCon and found the room's enthusiasm manufactured; the group reads Marvel as 'completely cooked,' with Robert Downey Jr.'s Dr. Doom the one intriguing swing. Still dated against Dune: Part Three.
Held up as the model Doomsday can't match: a decade of buildup paying off in shock and awe. 'I don't know if Namor in distress is gonna do the same thing.'
The other half of the payoff Marvel earned once and is trying to reverse-engineer with a Secret Wars two-parter.
Sean 'knew it was over' in the theater; the film vanished after a week and took its characters' stakes for Doomsday with it. Julia Garner's Silver Surfer went undefended.
Leads a Netflix slate Sean concedes looks strong this year, part of the festival talk.
Brad Bird's long-in-the-making animated film.
Seen at Cannes; a big awards contender this year.
Lee Chang-dong; sounds Venice-bound.
Ben Affleck directs and plays a mayor in a kidnapping story; Kerry Washington co-stars.
Roman Gavras; picked up at TIFF last year.
Greg Kwedar's follow-up to 'Sing Sing.'
The Robert Pattinson / Denzel Washington movie.
Lena Dunham.
Peter Berg's WWII football sports drama.
World premiering at TIFF.
Chris Rock's new film as director; an A24 title.
Takashi Miike, world premiering at TIFF.
Lauren Miller Rogen's; the cast includes Seth Rogen.
Anton Corbijn, from the play 'Switzerland' about Patricia Highsmith; stars Helen Mirren.
Pedro Pascal; Chris expects a Telluride ride.
Chloe Domont's Christmas movie with Michelle Williams and Daisy Edgar-Jones.
'The final Jason Bourne movie was quite poor,' the context for the new Matt Damon / Edward Berger Bourne, reported as one more entry rather than a reboot, with Zendaya rumored to inherit the franchise.
Amanda's favorite: the country house and the haircutting. The group agrees Berger is about the best possible choice to continue it.
The triumph of 'The Odyssey'spoilers
A $264.1M worldwide opening ($125M domestic): the biggest debut since 'The Dark Knight Rises' and the year's third-largest, behind only 'Toy Story 5' and the Mario Galaxy movie, for a three-hour R-rated film. The three read it as the skeleton key to Nolan, the movie that makes the whole filmography cohere. Chris's takeaways: the sea-people invention as a xenophobia commentary (Xenia, Zeus's law of the stranger); Odysseus as a bastard given regret Homer never grants him; the siren-song description as some of the best writing Nolan's put on screen; the Hades sequence and Ludwig Goransson's atonal score as career-best craft. Dissents: the John Wick-ish suitor massacre plays flat and Batman-y, and Nolan still gestures at violence he won't show. The revisionist sacking of Troy lands the theme through action rather than voiceover.
The Christopher Nolan Movie Rankingsone negotiated list, best to worst
No. 1: the compromise winner and Chris's personal favorite. Showing over telling; a third of it silent. Amanda finds the structure a touch too cute; the others give it the top slot to keep 'The Odyssey' off it.
No. 2. Sean would have it at one; the last two hours are transcendent, the Tom Conti / Casey Affleck scenes among the sickest work Nolan's done, even if the endgame keeps going.
No. 3. Everyone agrees No. 1 would be recency-bias cringe; Amanda privately has it first. Could climb in six months.
No. 4. Old tools applied to a new kind of blockbuster. Chris keeps stacking films above it as time goes on; not in his top four.
No. 5. Parked here because most people expect it there and both Sean and Amanda rate it over Memento; Chris would have it at nine.
No. 6. 'What people like.' Sean's actual No. 1; the group won't risk the backlash of ranking it higher.
No. 7. Some of the sickest craft you'll see, but the McConaughey sentimentality tips it over. 'The Interstellar boys are gonna cry.'
No. 8. Best of the Jonathan-scripted films; a 1940s Warner Bros. crime movie in reverse.
No. 9. A cult favorite the group appreciates from afar (Hugh Jackman, magic, Bowie as Tesla) but won't rate over Inception.
No. 10. 'Goes hard when it goes hard,' but often quite silly and plot-incoherent. A comfortable placeholder that spares anyone's feelings.
No. 11. No real villain and a well-worn Bruce Wayne origin; the Scarecrow still terrifies Amanda. Sean would rather rewatch Insomnia.
No. 12. The least Nolan-y of the bunch, a studio job he didn't write, but the action's solid and Robin Williams is very good.
No. 13 (or 12). The micro-budget debut where everything's already present: the fractured time, the withheld information, a man named Cobb, a Batman sticker on a door.
Also mentioned raised along the way
The Bourne back catalog The Bourne SupremacyThe Bourne UltimatumThe Bourne LegacyThe Avengers
In passing Sing SingThe InstigatorsMay DecemberKillers of the Flower MoonThe Lost City of ZBabylonMan of SteelSaving Private RyanCasualties of WarThe TownThe Raid 2John WickSinnersThe King's SpeechTangledBoogie NightsMagnoliaDune: Part ThreeThe Passenger
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV WestworldThe CrownAndorThe X-FilesSuccession
Featurettes The Making of the Odyssey
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