What I sense with the Nolan films that I've watched is that he packs a lot into the runtime, even accounting for how they generally are long films to start with

What I sense with the Nolan films that I've watched is that he packs a lot into the runtime, even accounting for how they generally are long films to start with. He has to be very efficient with how he uses the time, every shot and dialogue carries some information that is useful in some way, there's little spare space or idling. In a way I wonder if it's a bit deliberate to overwhelm the view a little on the first viewing so they can't take it all in and analyze as they go so late revelations have the impact they do, if it was spaced out as a TV series the writing would need to adjust.