Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" (July 21, 2017) - Part 2

[Arachnerd]

I can't believe I did not like this movie. And I'm a big Nolan fan.

People are saying Nolanesque to the Max???

Really??

Memento, Prestige, and Inception are GREAT Nolan films.

For me, not only is this the worst Nolan film it's the worst War movie

It's fine if you didn't like the movie, but hyperbole much?

 

[StormC]

He steals the show, but it would have to been an insanely weak year for Best Supporting Actor for him to get a nod.

If anyone has even the slightest shot at an Oscar nod, it's Rylance.

I mean, Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor despite being in Moonlight for maybe ten minutes in the first act. But I agree Rylance is probably the more likely candidate.

 

[harlequinade]

I mean, Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor despite being in Moonlight for maybe ten minutes in the first act. But I agree Rylance is probably the more likely candidate.

if Hardy was black then, yeah. That helped Ali.

 

[Dr. Evil]

Good to see this film do well in North America.

 

[redhawk23]

if Hardy was black then, yeah. That helped Ali.

*Looks at the entire history of nominations and wins*

*Looks at just the last 10 years of nominations and wins*

Being black does not help you win awards. Diametrically the opposite is true.


Ali won because he gave a strong performance that looms over the rest of a fantastic film. It is the definition of a great supporting performance and role. He has about as much screen time as Hopkins did in Silence of the Lambs, and Hopkins won for Actor not even Supporting Actor.

 

[NotSoLongAgo]

*Looks at the entire history of nominations and wins*

*Looks at just the last 10 years of nominations and wins*

Being black does not help you win awards. Diametrically the opposite is true.


Ali won because he gave a strong performance that looms over the rest of a fantastic film. It is the definition of a great supporting performance and role. He has about as much screen time as Hopkins did in Silence of the Lambs, and Hopkins won for Actor not even Supporting Actor.

There's an air of overcompensation after the penultimate oscar fiasco

 

[harlequinade]

*Looks at the entire history of nominations and wins*

*Looks at just the last 10 years of nominations and wins*

Being black does not help you win awards. Diametrically the opposite is true.


Ali won because he gave a strong performance that looms over the rest of a fantastic film. It is the definition of a great supporting performance and role. He has about as much screen time as Hopkins did in Silence of the Lambs, and Hopkins won for Actor not even Supporting Actor.

Not last year, not right after OscarSoWhite. You have a feeling Hopkins was in a film far longer because of how memorable he was. The same cannot be said, imho, about Ali

 

[antsman41]

Yeah, we never see Murphy's boat sink... and he was messed up because everyone but himself died. Like, literally over 1,000 soldiers probably sank... and he was the lone survivor. I'd be pretty messed up, especially because he was of higher rank.

 

[FunkMiller]

I can't believe I did not like this movie. And I'm a big Nolan fan.

People are saying Nolanesque to the Max???

Really??

Memento, Prestige, and Inception are GREAT Nolan films.

For me, not only is this the worst Nolan film it's the worst War movie

Let me guess... not a big follower of the British involvement in the war?

 

[Longshot777]

All of Nolan's great movies has great legs because they are all designed for a viewer to rewatch it again and again because their endings gives you a new perspective of the movie you just watched. He gives you a premise in the movie and the ending gives you a total different perspective that you have to rewatch it again to see it with this new perspective.

This movie doesn't have it. That is why I predict it will have the most 2nd week drop off of any Nolan movies.

Memento questions are memories and satisfactions. How can someone have his satisfaction in revenge if he doesn't remember it at all.

Prestige shows the price and sacrifices of a great illusion.

Inception questions our dreams and reality itself. If we die, do we just wake up to the "real" world.

Dundirk is really just a simple war movie. Very basic for someone like Nolan.

Unless I really miss the whole point Nolan is trying to make.

#LetMeKnowWhatIMissed

 

[NotSoLongAgo]

I think your statements say more about you than they do about Nolan

 

[BatLobster]

All of Nolan's great movies has great legs because they are all designed for a viewer to rewatch it again and again because their endings gives you a new perspective of the movie you just watched. He gives you a premise in the movie and the ending gives you a total different perspective that you have to rewatch it again to see it with this new perspective.

This movie doesn't have it. That is why I predict it will have the most 2nd week drop off of any Nolan movies.

Memento questions are memories and satisfactions. How can someone have his satisfaction in revenge if he doesn't remember it at all.

Prestige shows the price and sacrifices of a great illusion.

Inception questions our dreams and reality itself. If we die, do we just wake up to the "real" world.

Dundirk is really just a simple war movie. Very basic for someone like Nolan.

Unless I really miss the whole point Nolan is trying to make.

#LetMeKnowWhatIMissed

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/07/24/convergence-at-dunkirk-transcending-time-and-tribalism

Give this a read for a start. Dunkirk is a simple film on the surface, but almost deceptively so. I works amazingly as a very straight forward 'experience', but if you look beneath the surface there's plenty going on thematically in ways that link to Nolan's other films, as usual. The brilliance of the way he handles time in this film really didn't hit me until I started reflecting on it after the fact.

 

[DKDetective]

All of Nolan's great movies has great legs because they are all designed for a viewer to rewatch it again and again because their endings gives you a new perspective of the movie you just watched. He gives you a premise in the movie and the ending gives you a total different perspective that you have to rewatch it again to see it with this new perspective.

This movie doesn't have it. That is why I predict it will have the most 2nd week drop off of any Nolan movies.

Memento questions are memories and satisfactions. How can someone have his satisfaction in revenge if he doesn't remember it at all.

Prestige shows the price and sacrifices of a great illusion.

Inception questions our dreams and reality itself. If we die, do we just wake up to the "real" world.

Dundirk is really just a simple war movie. Very basic for someone like Nolan.

Unless I really miss the whole point Nolan is trying to make.

#LetMeKnowWhatIMissed

Totally disagree. This is not just some basic war movie, it is about a people's collective experience of a defining historical event and how different perspectives affect the memory of events. The re-watchability in this film is in the subtleties of the different perspectives and remembrances of the different parties, which is most obviously depicted in the different time frames of the different perspectives. The smaller differences and commentary can be seen in the small inconsistencies between the different perspectives, which is a well-known aspect of collective memory and historical accounts. For instance,

Spoiler

when we first watch Collins go down from Farrier's perspective, it looks like Collins is waving Farrier off and signalling that he is okay. When we see the event from the perspective of the "Sea", which is shown from Collins' perspective, we learn that Collins was actually panicking because his cockpit was jammed and he couldn't get out. These sort of different perspectives and inconsistencies are repeated throughout the film and only really reveal themselves upon multiple viewings.

The film is in many ways a commentary on the fallibility of human perception and is a historiography essay in film format. It is brilliant and as thoughtful and deep as Nolan's other works. The big difference is that it is a masterpiece of show, don't tell. It just doesn't feel as deep simply because there aren't a bunch of info dumps and a spoon fed dramatic third act story twist.

 

[StormC]

As someone who really liked Dunkirk but didn't love it...the idea that this movie was "basic" is laughable to me.

 

[FunkMiller]

Dundirk is really just a simple war movie. Very basic for someone like Nolan.

Unless I really miss the whole point Nolan is trying to make.

#LetMeKnowWhatIMissed

How about the fact that it isn't a war movie? It's a suspense movie set during a wartime event. This film isn't about the usual tropes of war. Need proof? You don't see the Germans once.

So yes, you did miss something... rather fundamental. You thought you were seeing a war movie (The Pledge) but then you realised you weren't (The Turn) and maybe if you start to examine this 'simple' movie properly, you find to your surprise, that it's anything but (The Prestige).

 

[BaelaTargaryen]

Back to 93% on RT. 91/100 on Critics' Choice.

 

[redhawk23]

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/07/24/convergence-at-dunkirk-transcending-time-and-tribalism

This is damn near the only article anyone needs to read about Dunkirk. It is a fantastic breakdown not of just the film but of Nolan's entire career, his fiic techniques as well as his themes and fixations. It's basically the Inified Field if Chris Nolan. In a fantastic way it connects the way Nolan constantly bends time, the way his characters bend the truth and the way hisvies are shot and edited.

 

[Kreem Pi]

Nope. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's review over at avclub is a masterclass too. And still waiting on filmcritichulk.

 

[MadVillainy]

I'm a big Nolan stan. I like every one of his movies. Love most of them. I think TDKR gets way too much hate and a lot of the complaints can just be boiled down to "TDK did it better" and nitpicks.
Nolan I think is the modern day Kubrick

But this movie was kinda trash. I did not like it at all. I don't get why anyone likes it to be perfect honest

The good...it looks gorgeous. Cinemotagraphy was great. The score was good, but I didn't walk away with any "I need to listen to that track" moments. The scene near the end on the beached boat was good

The bad was everything else to me. Following the soldiers on the beach (Harry Styles and that other kid) was just dreadful. You're just following the most boring character and, at least for me, I had trouble figuring out who was who during the scenes. It was just a bunch a dark haired guys with NO personality. I was so disengaged. They have no personality, no interesting traits, they're just scenery.
Then there was Hardy and his wingmen. That was boring to me to. And before anyone cries about it, no it wasn't boring because it wasn't balls to the wall action. It was boring because Hardy's performance was so bland along with the rest of them.
And then Mark Rylance's stuff was interesting, but then again his performance was just boring.
It felt like the whole movie was made by a robot who doesn't understand humans. This movie is cold to the point where I felt numb. When there were character deaths I just didn't care.
And before anyone says anything (once again anticipating what people will say) I loved Arrival and that's a, for the most part, understated and slow paced movie. There's a way to do a movie like that is by having character you care about or a great performance to anchor the movie. I don't think this movie had it. Tom Hardy? Love Hardy since Rock N Rolla and Bronson. I was not impressed by his performance at all.

Also, I'm not a huge rating snob. I don't usually say "This has to be rated ___" but I think a lack of an R rating hurt this a bit. A bit. I think when you want to show the brutality of war you gotta do it R.


Now I didn't watch any trailers for this except that very very first teaser that just had that brief shot in it. I also didn't read any reviews, go into any threads, or even glance at the RT score.
I got out the movie and was curious what the score was. I saw it and let out an audible "Get the f*** outta here". I don't get it.
Now I saw on Twitter that Jeremy Jahns was getting flack from some geniuses who cant reconcile that people have different opinions on movies. Once I finally watched his review after the movie he summed what I thought of this movie almost perfectly. Except for the non-linear narrative, I understood it, but i thought it was pointless because I don't think Nolan didn't do anything interesting with it

But listen, I'm not bashing anyone's opinion. Glad people like it. But for me this was kinda trash. I don't think i'll ever revisit it and like Nolan's last 2 movies to a lot of people I don't think this will hold up. Now there are plenty of war movies I haven't seen, but out of the ones I've seen this is my least favorite. It's the only Nolan movie I don't want in my collection. As I said, I'm a big Nolan fan but a lot of the time I thought this movie was some bulls***

It wasn't tense to me because I didn't care about the characters. It wasn't interesting me because I didn't care about the characters. It looked good? Cool. There's more to movies than that to me. I'm not that impressed if you put pretty stuff on the screen but can't do anything else interesting me.

/rant

 

[Greens]

Trash is a big word, but I hear ya there. Nolan puts a lot of techniques on display and executes them very well, but there was just no emotional resonance with me. I will not buy the Blu-ray for this, I might not ever watch it again.

Another thing, I think the decision to turn up the volume to ear damaging levels was an ass-backward, stupid decision on Nolan's part. It doesn't add anything to the movie, it just annoys me. I have pretty sensitive ears, but I have no problem watching a movie in the cinema under normal conditions. Watching this movie I was constantly waiting for some eardrum splitting sound to happen. Completely distracting.

 

[MadVillainy]

Trash is a big word, but I hear ya there. Nolan puts a lot of techniques on display and executes them very well, but there was just no emotional resonance with me. I will not buy the Blu-ray for this, I might not ever watch it again.

Good man I said "kinda trash"

It's not full trash. It's not terrible, but it's not good.

 

[Greens]

Kinda trash might as well be full-on trash in my book

 

[Kane52630]

Something I forgot to put in my review is after I saw Dunkirk I came home and on HBO they were playing Hacksaw Ridge... I almost forgot how brutal that movie was (despite it's lackluster tv-like first half)... even if there was little character development with some of the cast, they made up for it with horrific scenes of war and gore. You care for them going though it. And after the first couple of scenes in Dunkirk that feeling almost went away. Still though, I thought the Mark Rylance scenes was great and it needed that to be spread to the rest of the movie.

 

[FunkMiller]

Trash is a big word, but I hear ya there. Nolan puts a lot of techniques on display and executes them very well, but there was just no emotional resonance with me. I will not buy the Blu-ray for this, I might not ever watch it again.

Another thing, I think the decision to turn up the volume to ear damaging levels was an ass-backward, stupid decision on Nolan's part. It doesn't add anything to the movie, it just annoys me. I have pretty sensitive ears, but I have no problem watching a movie in the cinema under normal conditions. Watching this movie I was constantly waiting for some eardrum splitting sound to happen. Completely distracting.

The noise level was perfect for my screening. A pity the theatre you were at was like that. I've had films ruined because of stuff like that.

 

[Greens]

The noise level was perfect for my screening. A pity the theatre you were at was like that. I've had films ruined because of stuff like that.

I've read so many reports of loudness at Dunkirk screenings that it can't just be my theater.