CineBrawlDirector face-off: Nolan · Villeneuve · Fincher · Tarantino
The 16 movies of the “Director face-off: Nolan · Villeneuve · Fincher · Tarantino” bracket, with year, director, runtime and rating for each — then play the knockout tournament and let your own duels pick the winner.
▶ Play this tournamentWhat is in this bracket
The bracket spans 27 years of cinema, from 1994 to 2021, with an average TMDB rating of 8/10. The dominant genres are Drama (10 movies), Thriller (8 movies), Science Fiction (6 movies), Crime (4 movies). Christopher Nolan appears 4 times, Denis Villeneuve appears 4 times, David Fincher appears 4 times — a good sign of how much one filmography weighs on the outcome. Watching the whole line-up back to back would take about 39 hours. The 2010s are the best represented decade with 9 entries.
The highest-rated entry going in is Interstellar (2014) at ★ 8.5/10 — but a bracket is not a ranking: it only takes one duel against a favourite of yours for it to go out in the first round.
The full line-up (16 movies)
Seeded in the order they enter the bracket. 16 titles means 4 rounds and 15 duels to a champion.
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Interstellar
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
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Inception
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
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The Dark Knight
Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.
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The Prestige
A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.
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Arrival
Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.
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Blade Runner 2049
Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.
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Dune
Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence - a commodity capable of unlocking humanity's greatest potential - only
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Sicario
An idealistic FBI agent is enlisted by a government task force to aid in the escalating war against drugs at the border area between the U.S. and Mexico.
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Fight Club
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.
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Se7en
Two homicide detectives are on a desperate hunt for a serial killer whose crimes are based on the "seven deadly sins" in this dark and haunting film that takes viewers from the tortured remains of one victim to the next. The seasoned Det. Somerset researches each sin in an effort to get inside the killer's mind, while his novice partner, Mills, scoffs at his efforts to unravel the case.
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Gone Girl
With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.
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The Social Network
In 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programmer Mark Zuckerberg begins work on a new concept that eventually turns into the global social network known as Facebook. Six years later, Mark is one of the youngest billionaires ever, but his unprecedented success leads to both personal and legal complications when he ends up on the receiving end of two lawsuits, one involving his former friend.
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Pulp Fiction
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
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Django Unchained
With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.
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Inglourious Basterds
In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds, lead by Lt. Aldo Raine soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.
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Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…
How this tournament works
- 16 movies enter a knockout bracket.
- Two titles face off at a time — you pick the one you would rather watch.
- Winners advance round by round until one champion is left: your pick for tonight.
There is no “right” answer and no algorithm deciding for you: the bracket only forces a series of small, easy comparisons instead of one impossible choice in front of a catalogue. You can also play it with friends — everyone votes the same duels from their own phone in a Brawl Room.
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