The 20 Best Christian Bale Movies

Christian Bale was only 13 when he first showed the world his talent in Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age war epic Empire of the Sun. He’s gone on to star in more than 40 films, ranging from his unhinged portrayal of a serial killer in American Psycho to his brooding caped crusader in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy to a pair of understated performances for Terrence Malick. He’s played both Dick Cheney and Moses; voiced the roles of Mowgli’s panther buddy Bagheera and Howl from the English dub of Howl’s Moving Castle. Along the way, he’s won just about every little statue a film actor can receive, from the Independent Spirit Awards to the Oscars. And his upcoming projects are just as varied: He’ll soon portray Marvel supervillain Gorr the God Butcher in the new Thor movie, a retired detective working with Edgar Allen Poe in horror thriller The Pale Blue Eye and re-team with David O. Russell and a cast that includes everyone from Robert De Niro to Taylor Swift on a yet-to-be-titled project.

Here we look at the 20 best Christian Bale movies:

20. Public EnemiesYear: 2009
Director: Michael Mann
Stars: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard
Rating: R
Runtime: 140 minutes

Watch on Peacock

Public Enemies stars two of Hollywood’s strong leading men, actors of diametrically opposed styles, and they both take the job seriously. Johnny Depp isn’t impersonating any skunks or rock stars, and Christian Bale isn’t shouting needlessly or speaking in an unusually low register. They’re acting, they’re doing it well, and I only wish they’d been able to share the screen instead of stewing and smirking in two counter-posed worlds. Depp is bank robber John Dillinger, on the lam, and Bale is FBI agent Melvin Purvis, on the hunt. Rarely, but inevitably, the twain shall meet. The same could be said for Dillinger and his sweetheart Billie, a beautiful young woman, played by Marion Cotillard, whose sexy aura is only enhanced by a willingness to hitch her wagon to this gangster’s Ford Deluxe. She and Dillinger talk in a crowded, high-ceiling restaurant, but all the noise around them drops neatly away. For a moment, they float, just like in the movies. In a sense, that’s what the film is about: two bodies in a dance or in a tug of war that will eventually end in mud. Good guys vs. bad guys, sure, but also film vs. video, real life vs. the movies, free will vs. determinism, tainted glory vs. tainted glory. The story in Public Enemies has already been told, sometimes in films more exciting but rarely more thoughtful than this one. —Robert Davis

Most Popular

19. ViceYear: 2018
Director: Adam McKay
Stars: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Tyler Perry
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 132 minutes

Watch on Hulu

Vice, writer/director Adam McKay’s deconstructionist biopic of former vice president Richard B. Cheney (Christian Bale), opens with a new twist on that old canard, “Based on a true story”; swiftly introduces a fourth wall-breaking narrator (Jesse Plemons) with no apparent connection to the film’s subject; and “ends,” before its own midway point, on a note of ersatz valediction, replete with explanatory cards and rolling credits over images of a Cheney family idyll. The key to Vice is its placement of McKay’s brasher, clumsier choices alongside his more conventional ones. After all, it’s his wife Lynne (Amy Adams), whose argument with Dick leads into the title sequence, with its warning to “Beware the quiet man”—when it comes to the biopic, Vice suggests, it’s the work you can’t see that poses the danger. It’s no surprise, really, that reactions to the film have been decidedly mixed: Vice is both a genre provocation and a Big Short-style digest of the Bush administration’s misrule, and only the former challenges our prevailing understanding of its subject. McKay’s bombast throws his subtler twists on the genre into razor-sharp relief, at once a respite from the film’s in-your-face discomfort and a reminder that nothing in it plays straight. McKay’s bomb-throwing anti-biopic may be a blunt instrument, but its refusal to cede to our most facile narrative instincts at least offers an answer to its own guiding question. How does a man go on to become who he is? We make him that way. —Matt Brennan

18. Henry VYear: 1989
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Stars: Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Christian Bale, Judi Dench, Emma Thompson
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 138 minutes

Watch on Pluto TV

Kenneth Branagh’s directorial debut and an important part of his powerhouse-casting Shakespearean reboot-a-thon, Henry V is widely considered one of the best Shakespeare adaptations of all time. Its heavily laureled cast includes Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Judi Dench, Christian Bale, Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson, as well as Branagh himself in the title role, receiving Oscar nods for both Best Actor and Best Director. A darker and grittier version of the text than Laurence Olivier’s 1944 Henry V, the film has a significantly edited script and incorporates some unconventional flashbacks, primarily involving Falstaff (Coltrane), who is technically only referenced in the play. Branagh’s production is exceedingly accessible, a film well-designed to make contemporary audiences fall in love with Shakespeare, and a tremendous showcase of British acting power. —Amy Glynn

17. Rescue DawnYear: 2006
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 120 minutes

Watch on Showtime

As PG-13 as a war movie can get, Werner Herzog’s cinematic re-creation of his own documentary (Little Dieter Needs to Fly) feels as if, like any Herzog film can, it was re-created on the fly. Rescue Dawn avoids a strict adherence to the truth of Dieter Dengler’s ordeal, in which he served as a pilot for the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, shot down over Laos then captured and tortured for months before escaping. It’s also historically inaccurate, as only any Herzog film can be, for the benefit of the more “ecstatic” truth the director was attempting to reach, ignoring the complaints of Dengler’s fellow prisoners’ accounts, which mostly have to do with how heroically Herzog portrays Dengler (Christian Bale) and how pathetically he imagines the others. Herzog saw himself in the real Dengler anyway—they were both born poor in Hitler’s Germany—and Bale seems to intuit the director’s projection, playing Dengler as an endlessly fascinating hybrid of wide-eyed innocent and arrogant American, fully committed to the freedom and opportunities for self-aggrandizement that being an American affords. And yet, Rescue Dawn doesn’t defend Dengler’s patriotism, or really have anything poignant to offer about American’s checkered military past. Instead, Herzog is concerned as ever with the tyranny of Nature and all powers like it, which happen to include war, America, the ambition of Man, whatever—an idealistic guy like Dieter Dengler can only suffer, survive and then tell his story later to a director who will warp its facts to keep the true extent of the man’s suffering from the cold, calculating judgment of the MPAA. —Dom Sinacola

16. EquilibriumYear: 2002
Director: Kurt Wimmer
Stars: Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Taye Diggs, Angus MacFadyen, Sean Bean, William Fichtner
Rating: R
Runtime: 107 minutes

Watch on Netflix

In Equilibrium, Taye Diggs plays a future fascist law enforcement officer named Brandt, and near the climax of the film, Brandt gets his face cut off. That’s his whole face, impeccably separated from his head, hair- to jawline. This follows a kind of lightning-quick, future samurai sword fight in which Christian Bale’s character, the heroically named John Preston, has singlehandedly massacred his way, gun in one hand and blade in the other, through one law enforcement officer after another, determined to wrench humanity from the binds of a totalitarian state that has outlawed—you guessed it—feelings. Much like Taye Diggs’ face, Equilibrium is quite pretty in its action, very symmetrical. But also like his face, the fact that I just gave away a meaty part of the climax should be easily disconnected from whether or not you should still watch Equilibrium. You should: It’s all as simultaneously bonkers and well-mannered as the moment in which Taye Diggs’ beautiful features slide off the front of his head like salami from a meat slicer. —Dom Sinacola

15. Knight of CupsYear: 2015
Director: Terrence Malick
Stars: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman
Rating: R
Runtime: 118 minutes

Available to rent

Regardless of how successfully the film explores the once-elusive director’s recently obsessive, less universal themes like the banality of excess, Knight of Cups delivers on all things Terrence Malick. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, who’s shot Malick’s last four projects and in February picked up his third Oscar, opulently embosses the sterile vacuum of high-living in L.A. One of the film’s most gratifying sequences has a dog underwater in a pool trying to retrieve an eerily elusive tennis ball—you half expect “Scarborough Fair” to queue up on the soundtrack. But what ultimately elevates Knight of Cups above Malick’s previous film, To the Wonder, are the performances. Wonder was left too much in the hands of Ben Affleck, an actor not known for physical emoting. The ability to convey much while saying little is a rather crucial trait for any actor serving as the protagonist in a Malick film, as they remain largely silent in the present action while other players provide voiceovers explaining in teasing, arcane wisps the backstory and dilemma du jour. Bale, so quirky and masterful in films like The Fighter and The Big Short, has much greater carrying capacity (for lack of a better phrase) than Affleck, and he’s blessed with a talented supporting ensemble. (The cast list has everyone from Fabio to Antonio Banderas in it.) His Rick is far less appealing than Affleck’s homeboy, but Knight of Cups in turn carries infinitely greater wonderment. —Tom Meek

14. 3:10 to YumaYear: 2007
Director: James Mangold
Stars: Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Ben Foster, Peter Fonda, Gretchen Mol
Rating: R
Runtime: 122 minutes

Available to rent

Based on the original 1957 film and a story by Elmore Leonard, 3:10 to Yuma stars Russell Crowe as the notorious outlaw Ben Wade, who has been captured in a small western town. Low on money and about to lose his ranch, family man Dan Evans (Christian Bale) and others are hired to help escort Wade on a three-day journey to the nearest train bound for the prison in Yuma while his ever-loyal gang waits for the opportunity to set their leader free. (Ben Foster is wonderfully evil and despicable as Wade’s unfailingly loyal lieutenant Charlie Prince.) While the group struggles against the outlaws, they also encounter attacks from Indians forced from their homeland, and railroad workers intent to dispense their own form of justice. Director James Mangold turns the trip into a mini-epic on the historical changes of the old west. As the relationship between Wade and Evans transforms, the fine line between good and evil is well played, serving as a just tribute to earlier, classic westerns such as The Searchers and Unforgiven. The film hurtles toward the inevitable climax at the train station where it comes close to imploding from the weight of its own cleverness. But somehow it works. 3:10 to Yuma was just another in a series of advancing steps for Bale who continues to impress. As Evans, he demonstrates both self-defeat and tremendous courage, while Crowe never appears to be acting. He is Wade with all the complexities of a great leader—confident, faithful, ruthless and self-centered, the kind of qualities that make newspaper headlines. —Tim Basham

13. The Dark Knight RisesYear: 2012
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Morgan Freeman
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 165 minutes

Watch on HBO Max

At two hours and 44 minutes, The Dark Knight Rises is way too long … and way too short. Welcome to the temporal paradox that is the third, final and a bit overladen entry of Christopher Nolan’s tripartite take on the caped crusader. In the third film of his trilogy, Nolan brings his A game (and A team, for that matter) to bear in an attempt to at least match the billion-dollar-grossing, Heath Ledger-elevated The Dark Knight in tone, tenor and pace. But between multiple characters afflicted with “plotty mouth” and a need to have readers suspend disbelief early and (a bit too) often, this trilogy capper falls well short of the two films that preceded it. After all, nearly three hours may seem like a long time to maintain tension and viewer interest in anything not involving hobbits or the NFL, but it’s also all too short when you’re trying to juxtapose the slow burn of a hero’s psychological journey (and physical recovery) with a villain’s crisp, diabolical plan (and throwing in three to four additional character arcs for good measure). It’s at this intersection of hurry up and slow down that the film both bogs down and skips beats. It’s why 30 minutes more would have told a more convincing tale of Bruce Wayne, and 30 minutes less would have done wonders for the story of Batman’s battle with Bane. Still, though The Dark Knight Rises may have joined the long list of finales that did not measure up to what went immediately before, that doesn’t make it any easier of an act to follow.—Michael Burgin

12. The FighterYear: 2010
Director: David O. Russell
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo
Rating: R
Runtime: 116 minutes

Watch on AMC+

Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg are boxing brothers in this brilliant David O. Russell film about the real Ward brothers, Micky (Wahlberg) and Dicky (Bale). Both were pro welterweight fighters coming up during the crack and crime epidemic of the late ’80s in their hometown of Lowell, Mass. Dicky was a once-promising fighter who had succumbed to a crack addiction, but also the apple of his domineering mother’s eye. He works now as a trainer and close confidante of his brother, but knows he needs to keep clean to be useful to his family. This moving family drama is as much about the bonds of love and friendship between brothers as it is about the redemptive hard graft and tough breaks of professional boxing. All of it is executed with the utmost care for both psychological and sporting realism. —Christina Newland

11. The Big ShortYear: 2015
Director: Adam McKay
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Marissa Tomei, Finn Wittrock, John Magaro, Melissa Leo
Rating: R
Runtime: 130 minutes

Available to rent

Based on the 2010 nonfiction book by Michael Lewis, Adam McKay’s latest film offers a kaleidoscopic look into the months leading up to the 2007 financial meltdown, following the perspective of several key Wall Street players who saw the crash coming and decided, in a move considered by everyone else to be nothing short of clinical insanity, to bet against the banks. The Big Short is an angry film. And rightfully so—the amount of callous thievery characters uncover here is enough to make any rational person’s blood boil. It’s also, unquestionably, a funny film, tempering its acerbic leanings by highlighting just how blatantly surreal the whole ordeal truly was. The comedy serves as the sugar that helps the abrasive medicine go down. Our initial guide into this world comes in the form of bank trader, Jared Vennett (played, to smarmy perfection, by Ryan Gosling). After a phone mishap puts him in touch with temperamental money manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell), the two form an unlikely (and contentious) partnership wherein Jared offers inside information as Baum’s team begins exploring claims that the housing market is set to collapse at any moment. Elsewhere, two wannabe Wall Street upstarts, Jamie Shipley and Charlie Geller (Finn Wittrock and John Magaro, respectively) accidently stumble upon the same conclusion. When their attempt to report the oncoming storm falls on deaf ears, the duo recruits retired trader Ben Rickert (a surprisingly understated Brad Pitt) to help them game the system. Fleshing out this cast is Michael Burry (Christian Bale), an eccentric hedge fund manager with Asperger’s who discovers the banks’ deception after reading hundreds of relevant spreadsheets. Bucking orders from both his superiors and clients, Burry proceeds to invest the fund’s money in favor of the banks failing. One of the most notable and admirable aspects of the film is its refusal, despite boasting major commercial talent both in front of and behind the camera, to oversimplify the issues at play. As a whole, the actors acquit themselves well with the stock market verbiage they must rattle off like a secondary language: It’s similar to watching Shakespeare—you may not catch every word, but you get the gist. If there’s anything approaching a standout performance, it’s Bale’s, who vividly sells Burry’s various idiosyncrasies (smiling awkwardly at people, blaring heavy metal music in his office as he looks over documents) without ever making him feel like a cartoon or compromising his sense of humanity. Big Short may not always succeed, but it stands as an essential film nonetheless. Given the way we know history played out, it’s not surprising that the story concludes with no real catharsis or Trading Places-esque twist wherein the duplicitous money men are put behind bars. Ultimately, this is not a film about brave individuals who dared to go into battle with the banks—it’s about those who decided to loot the village and get the hell out of Dodge before the blood started flowing. In a world as broken and as compromised as this one, the fact that such opportunists are the closest we have to heroes is a sobering statement all on its own. —Mark Rozeman

10. American HustleYear: 2013
Director: David O. Russell
Stars: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner
Rating: R
Runtime: 138 minutes

Watch on Starz

There’s always a risk in any “period piece” that a director’s obsession with the style and atmosphere of a different era will overwhelm the story. In those cases, a gaudy exterior is all that stands between the viewer and his or her realization that the dolled-up narrative playing out on screen is hollow at the core. In the case of American Hustle, though, director David O. Russell had more than just some styling ’70s clothes, retro tunes, and at least five incidences of amazing hair; he had Christian Bale, and Bradley Cooper, and Amy Adams, and Jennifer Lawrence—four of the most exciting actors on the planet. Those are some serious weapons, and they can account for the odd flaw or two. The screenplay, re-written by Russell from Eric Warren Singer’s draft that had been around Hollywood for years, centers on the con artist Irving Rosenfeld (Bale). He’s a shambling, mumbling grifter without a hint of self-awareness, and his only real vanity is his hair, which is parted and somehow pasted onto his bald dome, creating the world’s worst—and best—combover. Bale being Bale, he disappears into the role until you forget he’s there at all, and under his care, Rosenfeld becomes a likable swindler. (It’s also the first evidence since American Psycho that yes, Bale can do funny.) Rosenfeld’s operation goes from small to large when he meets Sydney Prosser (Adams), a woman who uses a British alter-ego as an escape from a boring life, and who, as far as I could tell, never wore a dress or blouse that even attempted to cover the middle of her chest. The pair are blissfully in love as they steal money from suckers in a hazy investment scam (again, details aren’t foremost on Russell’s to-do list), and there are only two problems. For those lovers of ‘70s cinema who miss the gritty, realist approach of directors like Hal Ashby and Bob Rafelson and Robert Altman, I’m sorry to say that American Hustle isn’t your fix. Russell gives his characters all the proper adornments, and the buildings and streets generally look period-correct, but there’s a very modern gloss on this movie that gives it the slick feel of a ’70s-themed costume party rather than the original item. This is a film to be enjoyed for its eccentric performances; a hyper, engrossing dramedy of relationships. It may not benefit you to look too deep, but the truth is that Russell and his excellent cast have made the surface so appealing that it won’t even cross your mind. —Shane Ryan

9. Ford v FerrariYear: 2019
Director: James Mangold
Stars: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Caitriona Balfe, Tracy Letts, Jon Bernthal, Josh Lucas
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 130 minutes

Available to rent

Framing Ford v Ferrari as a feel-good inspirational sports drama feels like bad initial footing for director James Mangold: This is the story of how the Ford Motor Company set about building a car capable of outgunning the dominant Ferrari racing team at the 1966 Le Mans race, a 24-hour test of automotive moxy and testicular fortitude. But it is a blast, particularly when Christian Bale and Matt Damon ham it up with each other, trading jabs and one-liners, and having childish slap fights in broad daylight as Miles’ saintly, patient wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe) quietly observes. Unfortunately it’s also politically muddled to the point of distraction. Tracy Letts plays Ford (a.k.a., “Hank the Deuce”) as a booming, bigmouth business jerk who’s desperate to live up to his dad’s legacy. When his company flounders, he demands that his workers come up with a big idea to save the brand. VP Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) believes that sexing up Ford’s image will lead them to prosperity, and to sex up Ford’s image, they must beat Italian race cars in Europe’s greatest race. Sex sells. Cars are sex. Europe is sex. They just need a genius designer and a deft man behind the wheel. Shelby fits the first bill, a straight-shooting Texan with years of experience to back his bravado. Miles fits the second, but if Shelby is direct and unapologetic, Miles is blunt enough to make a 50-pound sledgehammer blush. He’s a troublemaker. Ford executive Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) knows it. Bale and Damon’s characters are easy to rally behind not simply because they’re wonderful together but because they’re the ones actually doing the work. The further the film gets away from Ford and Ferrari and lets its focus drift to the folks responsible for scoring the former a “W,” the better off it is. Mangold directs his leading men to screwball-level antics; even when they’re trying to connect on emotional levels, they can’t help provoking smiles through sheer electric charm. Racing may or may not be your cup of motor oil, but Ford v Ferrari demands zero racing fluency from its audience. Everything runs through Bale and Damon. Hang onto their performances, and all the rest will follow. —Andy Crump

8. Batman BeginsYear: 2005
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Katie Holmes, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 140 minutes

Watch on HBO Max

Batman Begins is a classic case of a superhero movie arriving at exactly the right time and place. It had been eight years since Batman & Robin, almost an unfathomable stretch of time by today’s franchise standards, but you can consider that to be a mourning and healing period. Rejecting the gaudy, cartoonish excesses of the ’90s Schumacher movies, and in a time before audiences had come to reflexively roll their eyes at the idea of a “dark and gritty reboot,” Begins was simply, exactly what the character of Batman needed in that moment. Hewing more closely to its comic source material, it gave us what will likely be the definitive portrait of Bruce Wayne’s training to become the Batman, a la the influential comic Year One, and it made the wise decision of making the film’s true villain one of Batman’s greatest but least-utilized rogues, Ra’s al Ghul. It’s a film that codifies what makes Batman, Batman—a psychological warrior unafraid of brutality but unwilling to go all the way to judgement and execution (see also: Dredd). It helps that it launched an impeccably cast trilogy of Nolan films as well, featuring iconic turns by Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson and of course Christian Bale as probably the best take on “millionaire playboy asshole” Bruce Wayne. With all that, you can overlook a little Katie Holmes in this one. —Jim Vorel

7. American PsychoYear: 2000
Director: Mary Harron
Stars: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Chloë Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon, Willem Dafoe
Rating: R
Runtime: 102 minutes

Watch on Amazon Prime

There’s something wrong with Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale)—really wrong. Although he writhes within a Christopher Nolan-esque what-is-a-dream conundrum, Bateman is just all-around evil, blatantly expressing just how insane he is, unfortunately to uncaring or uncomprehending ears, because the world he lives in is just as wrong, if not more so. Plus the drug-addled banker has a tendency to get creative with his kill weapons. (Nail gun, anyone?) Like anybody needed another reason to hate rich, white-collar Manhattanites: Mary Harron’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ is a scintillating portrait of corporate soullessness and disdainful affluence. —Darren Orf

6. Little WomenYear: 1994
Director: Gillian Armstrong
Stars:: Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Bale, Claire Danes, Susan Sarandon
Rating: PG
Runtime: 118 minutes

Watch on Netflix

Louisa May Alcott’s timeless 19th century novel about a close-knit Massachusetts family set during and after the Civil War has been adapted many times and in many ways, but perhaps none are as iconic as 1994’s Little Women. Directed by Gillian Armstrong and written by Robin Swicord, this &#821790s dream lineup of March girls features Winona Ryder as Jo, Kirsten Dunst and Samantha Mathis as Amy, Claire Danes as Beth, Trini Alvarado as Meg, and Susan Sarandon as Marmee. The hits just kept coming with the film’s love interests, including Eric Stoltz as John Brook and Christian Bale as Laurie. A beautiful and emotional telling from start to finish, the only mark against the movie might be how much undeniable chemistry there is here between Jo and Laurie. Yes, Amy is a brat (later reformed) and Beth shatters our hearts (Danes’ chin quiver is doing work) as expected, but why would Jo ever cast this Laurie to the side when their scenes sparkle with such a fiery connection? Alas, though the Jo/Laurie faithful won’t find peace here, Gabriel Byrne’s soulful Friedrich Bhaer does help soothe the burn a little. Really the key word for this version of Little Women is warmth, from ignited passions to cozy fireside family moments of forgiveness and redemption. That coupled with an exceptional cast and a thoughtful period aesthetic renders this adaptation as enduringly charming as the classic on which it’s based. —Allison Keene

5. The PrestigeYear: 2006
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Andy Serkis, David Bowie
Rating: R
Runtime: 130 minutes

Watch on Amazon Prime

In The Prestige two competing magicians, played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, try to outdo each other, but are really trying to achieve a brand of immortality. They are competing for the same audience’s faith, and they need all of it, because it is not something that can be shared (many religious institutions hold similar dogma for similar reasons). Each wants to invoke utter and absolute belief in their audiences, much like Nolan wants to do in his own, as if that achievement grants the doer divinity, whether or not it is built on tricks and illusions. Nolan begins the film with a trick, in fact, a shot of top hats littering the forest floor, with the voice-over asking, “Are you watching closely?” It is a shot out of time and place from the rest of the film, Nolan once again doing as he pleases, manipulating our perception of what we’re seeing and when so as to emulate the pledge, turn and prestige of the “magic” acts the film portrays. Our faith is built on lies we tell ourselves and others, Nolan seems to posit, and it’s a thesis on which he elaborates with his Dark Knight trilogy, insinuating that symbols are sacred not for their truth, but simply for what they inspire. —Chet Betz

4. I’m Not ThereYear: 2007
Director: Todd Haynes
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger
Rating: R
Runtime: 135 minutes

Available to rent

“I wanna be Bob Dylan,” Adam Duritz once sang in an old Counting Crows song, expressing a romantic yearning to be, well, who exactly? Subversive writer-director Todd Haynes illustrates what most of us already knew in his nervy Dylan opus I’m Not There: the protean songwriter whose name is synonymous with “mythic icon” is a wellspring of personas. Here, he requires six actors to play him. Gimmicky as that sounds, the conceit gives this phantasmagorical hijacking of the rock bio-pic an edge of wacky genius. Although perhaps overly schematic, these manifestations of Robert Zimmerman allow Haynes to revisit (satirically, metaphorically and speculatively) various stages of Dylan’s life. There’s earnest, boxcar-riding folk-singer Bob (depicted as a young black boy who calls himself Woody); conscience-of-his-generation Bob (Christian Bale, who suddenly renounces celebrity and goes to work for the Lord); movie-star Bob (Heath Ledger, impersonating Dylan in a movie-within-the-movie); Rimbaud Wanna-Be Bob (Ben Wishaw); the self-possessed Electric Bob of 1965 and ’66 (Cate Blanchett); and Bucolic, Drop-Out Bob (portrayed as Billy the Kid by a grizzled Richard Gere). Shuffling six separate narrative lines like a deck of cards, the film can feel drastically uneven. The movie is probably best in those moments of reckless abandon, in which Dylan is liberated from his own history, opening the way for us to slip into the psyche that produced all those songs. (I’m Not There would make a great double-bill with Being John Malkovich). Amid all the kaleidoscopic shape-shfting, the music—performed on and off-camera by Steven Malkmus and the Jicks and Calexico, amongst many others—almost seems like a bonus. —Steve Dollar

3. The New World2005
Director: Terrence Malick
Stars: Colin Farrell, Q’Orianka Kilcher, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 135 minutes

Available to rent

Inside The New World’s framework of American folklore are a thousand questions about paths. The opening credits appear over a map that’s rivers are gradually being traced. Repeatedly characters find themselves rerouted, redirected or offered a new name or new life. At one point, John Smith (Colin Farrell) is asked to explore the New World’s rivers to find a passage to the Indies. “You’re not the sort of man who begins a path and doesn’t pursue it, are you?” someone asks, but the man asking the question doesn’t realize that—if Smith accepts the offer—he’ll be abandoning the path he’s begun with Pocahontas. Later she’ll ask him, “Did you ever find your Indies, John?” and his response is the film’s most memorable line. Terrence Malick risks his entire story to make us feel his characters’ uncertainty. Having established the movie’s Plan A, he drops it, and the movie is suddenly adrift, wallowing in pity for unrequited love. Eventually a Plan B emerges, but as a viewer I resisted it, and so does Pocahontas. Surely Plan A can be salvaged! But Malick, determined to leave it behind, changes the identity of his main character and asks us to begin again, from scratch, this time pairing her with Christian Bale. The landscape changes—from grass tall as men to rows of dirt on homesteads—and later it changes again to manicured royal lawns as different from the Virginia woods as “Rebecca” is from “Pocahontas,” as girdles are from buckskin patches. Having steered his movie through a sharp left turn Malick gradually regains some momentum, but then he does the unthinkable: he leads us to believe that Plan A may be viable after all, that John Smith may return, and that idyllic life in the woods may yet become a reality. Except for one problem: what do we do about Mr. Bale? It’s the sort of dilemma that could have been played to the tragic hilt—and Malick raises the possibility as Smith rides back into the film on horseback—but such a simple, bankrupt conclusion isn’t his way. His characters must consider their lives, consider each other and resolve the situation like adults. And when they do, the story that seemed so irredeemably broken snaps back together, and Pocahontas finds her future, running through a maze of hedges. It’s indeed a movie about new worlds—chosen worlds—and life’s left turns. And it’s one of the boldest movies to come out of Hollywood in a long time, not because it flirts with controversy but because it asks patience of its audience and sacrifices dramatic conventions to explore a greater truth. —Robert Davis

2. Empire of the SunYear: 1987
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson
Rating: PG
Runtime: 152 minutes

Watch on HBO Max

It was the most unusual of creative marriages: Steven Spielberg, then best known as a director of family fare, and J.G. Ballard, controversial author of macabre social horror novels. But in recalibrating Ballard’s semi-autobiographical war book Empire of the Sun as a dark fairytale, and in dipping his toe into darker waters prior to diving in with Schindler’s List, Spielberg made one of his most mature and moving works. It’s WWII through the eyes of a hyperactive child: to Jamie (Christian Bale, at 13 giving one of his very best performances), freed from his upper-crust English bubble when Japanese forces invade his Shanghai home and throw him in an internment camp, wartime is a playground. Absent judgmental parents and teachers, prison is a place for an imaginative young boy to run wild. Sneaking into the neighboring Japanese airfield is a game of hide and seek, while the flash of the atomic bomb is the soul of a fellow prisoner ascending up to heaven. It’s touching stuff, and Spielberg for once doesn’t blow it with a forced happy ending, preferring to finish on an ambiguous note: is Jamie saved, or lost forever? —Brogan Morris

1. The Dark KnightYear: 2008
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Rating: R
Runtime: 142 minutes

Watch on HBO Max

Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) deserves the collective sigh of relief it received in resuscitating the Caped Crusader’s cinematic reputation following Joel Schumacher’s 1997 neon-disco nightmare on ice that was Batman & Robin. And if Batman Begins represents the character’s tonal course correction, The Dark Knight provided an equally important act of rehabilitation—that of Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Joker. (Let’s face it, though not a crime of Schumacherian dimensions, Jack Nicholson’s Joker fell short of setting a standard for the character.) Though ostensibly part of the superhero stable, The Dark Knight is, at its center, a proper crime saga—just as was its source, spawning from the pages of Detective Comics, less Spider-Man than it is Heat, in rather dramatic costume. Significantly trading up in the villain department this round, Heath Ledger’s performance as the Clown Prince of Crime is a force of nature—brilliantly written as a crime boss who wants no less than Gotham’s very soul. Ledger’s Joker is as chilling as he is darkly funny, and the most bracing reminder to date of why he’s the most renowned foe of the World’s Greatest Detective. —Scott Wold