Twisty tales. Isolated characters. Cool mysterious style.

This is when Christopher Nolan is at his best. Before he shook up the world of comic book movies with Batman Begins, and subsequently stuck it up his own ass with The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan was making a name for himself with films like Memento and Insomnia. Chris Nolan showed promise and when you look at his big films today, its humbling to go back and watch the films that would later come to define, or destroy him.

I wouldn't call myself a Nolan fan, but that certainly doesn't mean I hate him either. Like I said, he is a director that has shown great promise and his early films are…

Nolan's feature length debut sets in stone many recurring themes in the director's filmography, most notably making use of a non-linear narrative to create a puzzle-like mystery that bit by bit becomes clearer and clearer, culminating in a twist likely to catch anyone off guard. He perfected it in Memento, which remains his best work, but even here Nolan's potential is visible, and in many ways this feels like a spiritual predecessor. It's obviously not as expertly written and executed but there are plenty of things to like, even if it is a flawed film. The acting is questionable and the characters quite dull, something Nolan luckily corrected in his follow-up, as well as the twist itself being incredibly far-fetched…

Cinebro Caused My Divorce - The June 100 Challenge (1/100)

I haven't seen enough of Chris Nolan's films to know whether Following contains many of the themes that would be recurring in his later films. That is apart from the Batman symbol on that door and a bloke being called Cobb.

But as micro low budget films go, Following is a pretty good debut that has a nice and strong noir-ish story at its centre but doesn't have the acting to really force this film into being something more dramatically exciting and convincing. I know I probably should give the film some leeway on all fronts considering its budget and so on but I never really judge a film on…

Christopher Nolan’s brand of high brow blockbuster filmmaking has certainly shaped the landscape of quality populist cinema. He single handedly revived the Batman franchise and in the process, formed a style guide which is regularly referenced by his peers in an attempt to emulate his successful recipe. Years before the BWWWOOOOMMMMM Inception sound rewrote modern day marketing, Nolan wrote and directed ‘Following’, filmed in black and white and shot on weekends with his film school friends. It’s an impressive first feature that isn’t without its problems.

The film stars Jeremy Theobald as an unemployed, unnamed writer who follows strangers in hopes to find inspiration for his first novel. One of his targets, a young man in a dark suit, calls…

Film #7 of the June Challenge

High concept film? Check.

Groomed men in suits? Check.

Neo-Noir aspects? Check.

Women being a source of psychological conflict for our male protaginst? Check.

Other? Check.

Yup. It's a Christopher Nolan film.

Right from the beginning with Following it seems like Nolan already has an idea of what he wants his career to be: High concept films with a psychological basis.

Following feels like a prototype for the much better Memento. I don't say this because I was comparing it while watching the film, but merely because Following's fragmented narrative structure merely reminds me of it. It's honestly not done well here, and the film would have been fine in chronological order, especially since…

Nolan's feature length debut sets in stone many recurring themes in the director's filmography, most notably making use of a non-linear narrative to create a puzzle-like mystery that bit by bit becomes clearer and clearer, culminating in a twist likely to catch anyone off guard. He perfected it in Memento, which remains his best work, but even here Nolan's potential is visible, and in many ways this feels like a spiritual predecessor. It's obviously not as expertly written and executed but there are plenty of things to like, even if it is a flawed film. The acting is questionable and the characters quite dull, something Nolan luckily corrected in his follow-up, as well as the twist itself being incredibly far-fetched…

Twisty tales. Isolated characters. Cool mysterious style.

This is when Christopher Nolan is at his best. Before he shook up the world of comic book movies with Batman Begins, and subsequently stuck it up his own ass with The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan was making a name for himself with films like Memento and Insomnia. Chris Nolan showed promise and when you look at his big films today, its humbling to go back and watch the films that would later come to define, or destroy him.

I wouldn't call myself a Nolan fan, but that certainly doesn't mean I hate him either. Like I said, he is a director that has shown great promise and his early films are…

Christopher Nolan has been absorbed into the Hollywood system, and to his credit, he's found a way to make it work for him rather than vice-versa. His career has been marked by finding ways to balance thoughtful subtext with entertainment. However, the entertainment he does these days is on a blockbuster level, and I wonder if he'll ever return to a humble picture like Following or Memento (one of my all-time favorites).

Following is just damn good noir, and would be right at home among the noir movies of the 1940s like Detour and Double Indemnity. It's pure homage and broken down to its essential elements (the main character is credited as "The Young Man" while the femme fatale is…