haha good review.
This was also 'good'. Take note 'noise and action' fanboys and girls, this is how its playing:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/it-is-not-our-finest-hour-but-brexit-must-stand-tlmkhkrdp
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 24 July 2017 17:18 (seven years ago) link
oh good I needed a post-lunch digestif
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 24 July 2017 17:20 (seven years ago) link
94% rating on Metacritic? really?!
for that - all technique and nothing much else - movie?!
overrated is an understatement.
the 1 hour/day/week is nothing but a gimmick. could've been also 2 hours/36 hours/week etc and no one could tell the difference. it is not an "abstract film about fear/survival", just a shallow well made hollywood action movie.
on the other hand, Boyhood got 100 on metacritic, so it's not that a surprise..
― nostormo, Tuesday, 25 July 2017 17:45 (seven years ago) link
I can't get that story to last a week. Seems about 24 hours to me.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 25 July 2017 17:47 (seven years ago) link
shallow/deep is, as ever, kind of a worthless distinction with art. but people do love to prove how much smarter than nolan they are.
i was often quite lost as to the "when" of certain scenes, which could be intentional or im just bad at following this sort of thing. I'll watch this again and see if i do better.
― ryan, Tuesday, 25 July 2017 18:14 (seven years ago) link
as i said before, i like Nolan's movies, but this movie is his best because it takes his tendencies for portent and bombast and, paradoxically, makes them work because of how streamlined and simple the core narrative is (if not the structure of the narrative). the time stuff struck me as a necessary choice to address the experience the film is attempting to depict--a kind of constriction or dilation of lived experience.
as an action movie this kind of put me in mind of certain passage of Fury Road more than anything else, but im not quite sure how far i'd take that comparison.
― ryan, Tuesday, 25 July 2017 18:28 (seven years ago) link
"shallow/deep is, as ever, kind of a worthless distinction with art"
why?
if it is a worthless distinction, then any other opinion/distinction about art is worthless
― nostormo, Tuesday, 25 July 2017 18:50 (seven years ago) link
sorry, worthless is too strong. my point is that i dont find it an enlightening or useful distinction in figuring out what's interesting or appealing about art. You can too easily flip them: "deep" becomes "pretentious," "shallow" becomes "stylish."
― ryan, Tuesday, 25 July 2017 18:54 (seven years ago) link
ok i hear you.
well, i should have explained why i think it is shallow, but i don't want to bore people here with a long rant..
― nostormo, Tuesday, 25 July 2017 19:00 (seven years ago) link
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/jul/26/bloodless-boring-empty-christopher-nolan-dunkirk-left-me-cold
This guy's opinions are often shit, but a stopped clock etc...
― calzino, Wednesday, 26 July 2017 16:48 (seven years ago) link
I urge every youngster to go out and watch #Dunkirk pic.twitter.com/wxqap6a2dP— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) July 25, 2017
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 26 July 2017 22:38 (seven years ago) link
Have you seen the film?
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 26 July 2017 22:51 (seven years ago) link
oof this did NOT work for me, by and large
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Thursday, 27 July 2017 02:58 (seven years ago) link
(and not because of the breathless fawning from UK conservatives)
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Thursday, 27 July 2017 02:59 (seven years ago) link
in more words:
- The temporal device was intriguing at first but quickly grew tiresome for me. One of the beautiful things about film editing is that effective crosscutting across physical planes automatically "corrects" temporal schisms when done well, making the impossible or illogical "feel" right in a bit of what you might call (if you hated yourself and others) "movie magic." Instead, Nolan decides on the most didactic puzzle-box structuring device possible, which both served to annihilate tension and needlessly call attention to itself, over and over- The desire to create a "grunt-level", even what you might call "modest" experience of war was repeatedly overshadowed by the aesthetic flash, with the worst offenders being the portions of Zimmer's score that consisted mostly of electronic buzzes slowly ramping up in tempo (the war-movie equivalent of a cheap jump scare in a horror film) and the *three* consecutive shots of sideways water a la Inception- Speaking of spell-breaking, the expository dialogue from Rylance and especially Branagh was a huge problem for me- Anyone who could tell all the young Brit brunettes with identical hair apart from each other has far greater facial recognition than I- The most interesting portion of the movie is actually the closing five minutes, in which there are competing notions of failure and victory competing for space. But then it just ends.- Those opening intertitles were a disgrace.
― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Thursday, 27 July 2017 03:12 (seven years ago) link
Fred - No. And like I said on the other thread I am not going to.
We can say its fawning by hard right politicians but how many times do you get these different constituencies in the same room? It's not nothing.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 27 July 2017 06:42 (seven years ago) link
There’s a moment early in the brisk 100 minutes of Christopher Nolan’s DUNKIRK that struck me as rather false, and it kind of took me out of the movie, although in fact I stayed in the movie and saw all of it. Newcomer Fionn Whitehead, having reached Dunkerque beach, pauses to take a dump in the sand. But we don’t get a strenuous, epic Wim Wenders type defecation. It’s just a quick drop-trou, look nobly into the distance, and then pants up again jobbie. No troublesome, uncinematic wiping or anything like that. This made me worry for our hero’s comfort during the rest of the film, and I wished he’d waded into the cleansing English Channel to do his business.
I suppose you could argue that maybe Mr. Whitehead’s poo was hygienically solid, tough and tightly assembled, like MEMENTO. But I fear that after the foreign environment, army food and the stress of battle, it would be more likely to be splashy, explosive and incredibly protracted, like THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.
(I could take this comparison further. After days of tension and combat, Mr. Fionn Whitehead’s pooing would resemble THE DARK KNIGHT RISES in the way it would drown out dialogue, cause people to put on masks, and bring tears to Sir Michael Caine’s eyes.)
Worse, Mr. Whitehead defecates on a sand dune, gazing out to see, with the likely result that anything emerging from his bottom would roll downhill and end up in his trousers.
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/beach-front/
― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Thursday, 27 July 2017 11:36 (seven years ago) link
Iirc the point of that scene is that he can't shit because he notices a guy burying a body nearby. I guess it's foreshadowing for Harry Styles' monologue on shitting at the climax of the film.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 27 July 2017 11:42 (seven years ago) link
I also like that that guy doesn't know what a mole is. Clearly he should read the vox explainer.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 27 July 2017 11:45 (seven years ago) link
Yeah, that's how I interpreted the moment.
It was an embarrassed and undelivered poo, like INCEPTION.
― jmm, Thursday, 27 July 2017 11:46 (seven years ago) link
lol
― Frederik B, Thursday, 27 July 2017 11:48 (seven years ago) link
Harry Piles
― Bernie Lugg (Ward Fowler), Thursday, 27 July 2017 13:38 (seven years ago) link
this terrible director still hasn't learned how to position cameras and cut action and ending on nimrod was baaaaaaaaaad. but it looked pretty at times and is one of nolan's less bad films because there was relatively little dialogue. i liked that it was short.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 27 July 2017 16:29 (seven years ago) link
It's his least worst film since The Prestige. Brevity and lack of pompous dialogue help.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 27 July 2017 16:45 (seven years ago) link
so if he sticks to making short, not too dialogue heavy, action orientated pics - at least steady mediocrity will be assured.
― calzino, Thursday, 27 July 2017 16:52 (seven years ago) link
Alluded to it upthread, but I do like that the big thematic speech in this is about shitting.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 27 July 2017 16:53 (seven years ago) link
I went the whole movie thinking Fionn Whitehead was a spy because it said "The Mole"
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, 28 July 2017 02:13 (seven years ago) link
Not sure what i was expecting but a combination of In Which We Serve, Titanic and a ‘Punchdrunk’ style immersive art installation wasn’t it. Easily one of the most intense experiences i’ve had in a cinema. Looked unbelievably gorgeous in 70mm Imax. The score is just insanely good. Was shook up/rattled for the rest for the day yesterday as a result.
Beach bits reminded me of Atonement. I think maybe it’s simply not possible to stage a WW2 beach scene and not look like Atonement.
― piscesx, Saturday, 29 July 2017 10:36 (seven years ago) link
Another piece on Dunkirk and political conservatism - from both the left and right of the political spectrum.
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 29 July 2017 11:31 (seven years ago) link
bunch of thoughts
- I could not tell apart the guy the movie started with and the guy who took the clothes off the body.- setting up that one guy doesn't talk much doesn't work when half your movie lacks dialog.- it spends a lot of time setting up the idea that a character might be a spy -- his intro, a title, his hiding under exposition man, his avoiding the mess hall because he's psychic i guess. but why would there be a spy in the place where everyone is getting killed ffs. it's a dumb idea with a tiny payoff.- the air section is a generic bore. planes shoot at each other and at ships and go down. i did not care. also, did every pilot forget about their parachute?- a ship is already sunken, a ship has one survivor, a red cross ship gets bombed, another ship gets torpedoed with a few survivors, another ship gets fired at by troops, another ship gets bombed with oil in the water, and i'm probably forgetting some other slight variations on the same. i don't know why the movie needed all of this.+ land section works the best because it's the only one with some scale. you actually see how many people were involved and how the story characters were a minor part.- the setup for the evacuation is done just with title cards, but then at the end of the movie the secret failurecess of the operation is brought up as one of the key points. i never thought about this through the movie because it spends like 10 seconds on the battle of france. the ending conveniently passes over the failures of the evacuation which was what the movie spent most of its time on.- what was the point of this movie? it ends with the churchill speech, making it seem like a propaganda film for a war that ended over 70 years ago. that ending is way more forceful than the real british war propaganda i've seen.- i saw this in digital and it looked bad -- all the pixels noticeable. i noticed the brightness flickering on the sandbar scenes -- haven't seen that film artifact in a while.+ the sound was good. lots of range, and it got appropriately loud.
― Einstein, Kazanga, Sitar (abanana), Sunday, 30 July 2017 14:52 (seven years ago) link
No title refers to anyone being a spy... They're standing on a freaking mole for a week.
― Frederik B, Sunday, 30 July 2017 15:00 (seven years ago) link
I was looking at some stills from an amusing straight to rental knockoff version of Dunkirk. In that movie they have accidentally dressed the soldiers as Paratroopers(who didn't yet exist at Dunkirk). And it features a French spy storyline, and just so there is no confusion, she is dressed in a beret and stripey top!
― calzino, Sunday, 30 July 2017 15:08 (seven years ago) link
I know the mole is the structure. It's designed to possibly have a double meaning.
― Einstein, Kazanga, Sitar (abanana), Sunday, 30 July 2017 15:59 (seven years ago) link
I really don't get why people think that. It's just a mole?
― Frederik B, Sunday, 30 July 2017 16:03 (seven years ago) link
It's his least worst film since /The Prestige/.
Ouch
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 30 July 2017 16:27 (seven years ago) link
from what I understand this film is about the search for the perfect mole sauce, kind of weird considering the setting but idk
― qualx, Sunday, 30 July 2017 19:54 (seven years ago) link
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/indian-african-dunkirk-history-whitewash-attitudes
The echoes of modern politics are easy to see in the British-first policy of the initial retreat that left French troops at the mercy of the Nazis. In reality, non-white troops were at the back of the queue for evacuation, and far more likely to be caught and murdered by Nazi soldiers than their white colleagues who were able to blend into the crowd.
Nolan's whitewashing of history criticised here. I recall reading that De Gaulle also insisted on "whitewashed" parades after the liberation of Paris, typical racism of the era - I haven't heard Nolan's excuse yet.
― calzino, Tuesday, 1 August 2017 09:12 (seven years ago) link
I'd like to be erased from this. Thank you CL!
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 1 August 2017 10:13 (seven years ago) link
I don't think I've felt such a strong disinclination towards a movie than this one. I mean not just for the Nolan factor, but also for the ball of shit collection of Tory scum that admire it's myopic vision of it'll be all white on the night heroics etc...
― calzino, Tuesday, 1 August 2017 10:40 (seven years ago) link
You'll be missing out on Harry Styles' monologue on shitting though.
― weird echo of the falsies (Tom D.), Tuesday, 1 August 2017 10:57 (seven years ago) link
Ah, a bit of comic relief from the barrage of Nazi artillery Christopher Nolan.
― calzino, Tuesday, 1 August 2017 11:10 (seven years ago) link
b-but six stars!!
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 1 August 2017 17:18 (seven years ago) link
Christopher Nolan was almost made for Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, and they're predictably brilliant on Dunkirk:http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/08/02/dunkirk-part-1-straight-to-the-good-stuff/http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2017/08/09/dunkirk-part-2-the-art-film-as-event-movie/
― Frederik B, Saturday, 12 August 2017 17:05 (seven years ago) link
I am trying to imagine this movie with a cast of Trevor Francis clones playing the BEF and Tony Galvin ones playing the Nazis.
― calzino, Saturday, 12 August 2017 17:15 (seven years ago) link
Mr Veg came out saying this was great & I walked out in a daze
i dont think I fully "got" it because I didnt really understand the context very well? i have delved into various areas of ww2 history but dunkirk seems to have eluded me so i had to get mr Veg to explain it all to me a bit more afterwards.
that being said, the air footage was gorgeous, really put you in the cockpit in a believable way
the sound design was excellent: screaming of the messerschmidts was A+, fkn terrifying
i think i need to rewatch at some point to really get the full effect & appreciate it more
now can we please talk about Tom Hardy's magical gliding Spitfire O_o
― Yoni Loves Chocha (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 13 August 2017 22:28 (seven years ago) link
Very visceral, a bit corny and fast and loose with the idea of physics.& I spent most of the film thinking the guy in the glider was Martin Freeman cos I haven't been indulging in the hype.
Shame Bobby Gillespie has such a cameo in this but at least he dies a hero.
― Stevolende, Monday, 21 August 2017 16:25 (seven years ago) link
hi I have seen this 3 times now (saw it in 70mm IMAX on Sunday)
― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 21 August 2017 21:53 (seven years ago) link
wish my 70 mm had been in IMAX, it was gorgeous all the same tho
― Neanderthal, Monday, 21 August 2017 22:22 (seven years ago) link
Even before getting into what a garbage filmmaker Nolan is, pretending that there were no colonial soldiers present at Dunkirk is a crime imo.
― calzino, Monday, 21 August 2017 22:23 (seven years ago) link
Atonement isn't a great movie but at least the Dunkirk scenes made it look like there were more than a 100 people on the beach, and (gasp!) some of them were not white.
― calzino, Monday, 21 August 2017 22:29 (seven years ago) link