3. His Movies Are Pretentious
The Criticism: There's a lot of damning things for film to be called - cliché, unoriginal, boring - but one of the worst has to be "pretentious." It's not only criticising the film on its own merits, but where it comes from as well. Nolan's movies have, at least since Batman Begins, straddled the divide between blockbuster and think piece, so it's really only to be expected that eventually people would start to accuse them of not being as smart as they think.
The Defence: A central part of this criticism is that his films manage to have a wide audience appeal as well as positing big concepts, prompting the suggestion that despite thinking of themselves as profound the films are really just scratching the surface of grand ideas. But to enter into that school of thought imagines that a film can only ever play to one type of audience. And while that may be true in the case of, say, Transformers or 12 Years A Slave, it's not a universal rule, proven by the likes of The Prestige and Inception. In fact, The Prestige is a very potent example because it manages to wear the overarching theme on its sleeve while also leaving enough for analysis upon re-watch; the whole duality element runs much deeper than a quick viewing reveals.