Come anticipate (I guess?) Christopher Nolan's Batman/One Direction prequel DUNKIRK oh wait I have that wrong

It has one thing going for it -- Branagh NOT wearing his Poirot facial hair.

In a way it fits with the optimism Nolan has when he is at his best, but on the other hand it seems dull and straightforward, and Nolan is really not visually interesting enough to pull this off easily. Cautiously optimistic...

mmhm yeah this has cautious optimism all over it.

As a history buff, it's a story from WWII that deserved telling. 338k soldiers rescued, essentially by every seagoing boat in S. England volunteering. 338k is 28 divisions, more than enough to have arguably turned the tide at El Alamein, and perhaps the Burma/India front. An 11 day miracle that saved the world, and few (at least in the U.S.) know about it.

I do wish this subject was tackled by David Lean, in that era, with those actors. The problem is the lack of singular heroes to wrap a narrative around.

Weird seeing a war movie without chaos. The trailer looks like some purgatory allegory, as storyboarded by Rothko.

it's a commercial guys

Rewatching Memento for the first time in years, in a decade perhaps, and even with just a faint idea about where the plot is going it's kinda boring. There's not a lot to it.

coupla screens in the UK are going for the full 70mm thwack

https://lovinmanchester.com/news/manchester/manchester-one-of-the-only-imax-cinemas-in-the-uk-to-screen-dunkirk

Dunkirk is 106 minutes long! wonder how that happened, did he lose 3 reels?

The people that escaped dying of boredom watching them, self immolated in a pile of those missing reels!

not sure how a war movie can justify being 3 hours long if it doesn't also have grumpy batman or dream spies

I'm really pretty upset that my favorite theaters in town are selling tickets to this already but won't let me buy a seat for a Thursday 7/20 showing of Valerian

Early notices sound absolutely incredible but I still have only the slightest clue how it works. Seeing it next tuesday, and I kinda can't wait. Can't recall the last time I felt this way about a film, most films I look forward to are festival films, and I only get to see them after waves and waves of reviews, analysis, backlash, etc. This time, I only have scraps of information. It's kinda exhilarating.

UK reviews coming in; 5/5 in the Guardian, 5/5 in Telegraph, 5/5 Empire.

incidental to this the usually quiet girl at the counter of our local Vue/Imax offered unprompted that it's "Awesome".

critic in my FB feed just posted "well, it's loud"

saw a movie over the weekend and the trailer for this film didn't telegraph that there was anything plot-like? just an overwhelming sense of dread about war. maybe that's a good thing, but I was left with the impression it's just Nolan doing *horrible war scenes*

this time, its in the ocean

Bradshaw's 5 star rave reviews have become so devalued over the years, he even dished out 5 to Okja last week.

Yeah, this is really something... Looking forward to discussing this with all of you, it's probably best to see this one as cold as possible.

I was left with the impression it's just Nolan doing *horrible war scenes*

yeah

i know virtually nothing about this either but given nolan's track record i'm certain it'll be technically accomplished but utterly empty

I really don't want to spoil anything, but 'technically accomplished' is a massive understatement.

and 'utterly empty'? not getting much of a sense of characters from the reviews i've skimmed

There's so much stuff to think about afterwards, my head is spinning. It's not 'empty' in that sense...

Have vowed never to watch a Nolan again due to the same criticism as bg outlines, is there a reason to see this?

you might get to see harry styles get machinegunned by the filthy jerries?

There's that

Buddy of mine worked on this film, operating the model planes for the action and air battle stuff, and manning the drones etc. Still don't really feel like seeing it tho tbh.

Would love to see an angry, cine verite Battle Of Algiers type movie about Britain's brutal Mau Mau counterinsurgency released r/n. Just to piss off The Telegraph hack who came out with the " heart-hammering and heroically British" quote.

yes, I wouldn't say dunkirk is one of the more overlooked bits of recent history.

manning the drones

I just want to point out that I know what LBI means here but this phrase is oxymoronic and hurt my head for a bit.

Lol sorry

pedant! everyone says "drones" meaning uav. I hate it but that's where we are.

mh the u in uav stands for UNMANNED

tell that to the poor air force people guiding them and watching the video, buddy

maybe "manning the uav control board" is what I'm getting at

imo it's similar to "manning the torpedoes" which may or may not be a malapropism

Speaking of which, I bet Eye In The Sky is a better movie than this.

Human torpedoes or manned torpedoes are a type of rideable submarine used as secret naval weapons in World War II. The basic design is still in use today as a type of diver propulsion vehicle.

wise critic

There will never come a time that i will scroll down on this page pic.twitter.com/QbendaBHRK

— Jake Cole (@notjustmovies) July 19, 2017

Slant critic otmfm!

http://www.thestranger.com/film/2017/07/19/25297266/my-father-who-survived-dunkirk-would-not-have-recognized-christopher-nolans-dunkirk

lol I read the comments on jake's review earlier, good reminder that the internet was a mistake

weird obsession with his review coming out later than the rest of the mudslide, apparently that's a sign of bad faith

also a sign of bad faith: getting your negative review in too early, like all the DKR critics that got death threats on RT

Haven't seen this yet but really enjoyed that Stranger piece. I'd like to see Atonement again.

really liked this. there really isn't much of conventional plot (which I thought was a wise choice), mostly just depictions of the evacuation from three different (non-linear) angles. much of the dialogue is hard to make out and is little more than commands or shouted reactions to a deteriorating situation.

the 70mm print was beautiful too. wasn't really overdramatized either, I mean many intense scenes but not really due to the pathos of any character, more POV war sequences.

was kinda weird when Batman showed up and destroyed a few planes tho

much of the dialogue is hard to make out

Did he do his usual trick of giving the most important dialogue to the least intelligible actors?

War is hell (on the ears). Is there a shot where a loud noise blows out someone's ear drums, and the rest of the scene plays out in a muffled haze with a high-pitched ringing?

nope

does chris nolan's insistence on casting tom hardy then covering most of hardy's face with a mask have a basis in sexual fetish y/n

Lol, I thought about that as well. I love how many weird Nolanesque details that are in this film. It's not wrong that he always has had way too much exposition in his films, and in general way too much focus on legitimizing everything he does, which probably has obscured how weird and personal his films are. This time it's just all there, without bothering to explain why.

just watched. I actually found the music score annoying and a tad innapropriate in most scenes. Apart from that it's a decent movie.

Finally saw this. Thought it was pretty good! Agree the aggressively modern white noise soundtrack was a little ... discordant, but I'm not sure I would have preferred a more predictably rousing score. I also agree with a (neither here nor there) criticism that everyone is just a little too handsome, but whatevs. Also agree that it was a surprising decision to make the movie virtually bloodless, but given so much of it is kind of metaphorically bloodless (by design) it kind of goes with the cold theme, like the entire movie is being experienced through a haze of shock.