Finally caught this at my closest genuine 70mm IMAX in Denver (CO). I hate paying $20 for movie tickets but figured it would be worth it for a film that Nolan shot entirely in IMAX, unlike TDK/R where only a few scenes were shot in IMAX (although those scenes were undoubtedly awesome, I still remember that one on the plane with Bane in TDKR and feeling like I was actually in the plane with them!).
Not much to say that hasn't already been said, this was just incredible, especially on 70mm IMAX which added to the immersiveness. I didn't pay much attention to those title cards at first and was confused by the timeline, especially when day turned to night on the beach and was immediately followed by daytime scenes (at sea), but after a few minutes of that happening I understood what was going on.
I really have only two notable complaints with the film, one creative and the other technical: (1) I didn't like Cillian Murphy's character by the end of the film, even if we were supposed to sympathize with him for being a survivor. His [blackout]accidental injury of the boy with no verbal apology (which then turned into the boy ending up dead, even though he didn't find that out)[/blackout] really turned me off to the character. Most of the other characters had a shred of humanity but Cillian Murphy's character apparent lack of it just turned me off. (2) I've been complaining about Nolan's sound mixing on every film since TDK (TDK, TDKR, Inception, Interstellar, and now Dunkirk). I honestly don't get what he's trying to achieve by making music so LOUD that it becomes hard to hear characters talking over it. What the heck is his problem and why does he keep doing this?! If he keeps up with this I'm going to have to stop watching his films because it's making them damn near unwatchable for me. Yeah, I get the effect that he wanted from the clock-ticking sounds and other musical accents. But Dunkirk especially felt like a movie that didn't need music much, and I felt would've worked equally well with no music at all during certain scenes. Lots of other films do that, why can't Nolan?? Just the sound effects alone were loud enough, and then the music had to come in and drown that out. Totally annoying. I do like Nolan for his filmmaking style in general but his sound mixing style HAS to go, it's ruining his films for me.
Also, like a lot of others here I did find it difficult to understand what the characters were saying at times due to their British accents. Really wish the film had subtitles, but at least Nolan made up for it with his visual storytelling, so I didn't really need to hear what they said all the time.
9/10 for me, but out of Nolan's other films, I'd probably rate Batman Begins higher, just because it's Batman (and I liked it more than TDK and TDKR), so for me:
1. BB
2. Dunkirk
3. Interstellar
4. Inception
5. Memento
6. Insomnia
7. TDK > TDKR
8. The Prestige
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