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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2017 10:28:41 GMT
i have seen it. Way overrated.Remember that scene where the boat sank? Or the other boat sank? Or that one? Or the other one? Great , a director who uses practical effects! Too bad I didn't know any of the characters on the boats, nor was Nolan's camera able to focus on a scene long enough for me to concentrate or care before another quick cutaway.
Also Kenneth Branagh staring at the sky with a horrified look upon his face. Powerful stuff the first time. Not so powerful the second time. Okay, why is he doing it a third time? A fourth time? Now this is getting comical.
I demand subtitles on all future Nolan movies. The way the sound effects drown out all the dialogue is very disappointing.
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Post by SuperDevilDoctor on Jul 21, 2017 12:45:00 GMT
How many soldiers are shown smoking cigarettes in the film?
If virtually nil, then the movie is a crock (historically speaking, that is).
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Post by charzhino on Jul 22, 2017 0:29:08 GMT
Came back from an IMAX screening. I think its overrated. A lot of the movie feels like one big continuous trailer. Some scenes feel repetitive even though they are intense. Character insight is a problem too - theres not enough of it. I get that people have criticised Nolan a lot in the past for his overuse of exposition, but I think its badly needed in this film along with more character dialogue. The most interesting parts of Dunkirk for me was the story arc of Mark Rylance and his sons. The acting is great throughout and the use of glorious practical effects justifies the splendid cinematography. The film looks fantastic no doubt and captures the atmosphere of war perfectly- but beyond that theres just not enough meat to it. My score is 7/10
I would put this somewhere in the middle of the pack for Nolan films. The 3 Batman films, Prestige and Interstellar are much more engaging imo.
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Post by charzhino on Jul 22, 2017 0:30:06 GMT
How many soldiers are shown smoking cigarettes in the film? If virtually nil, then the movie is a crock (historically speaking, that is). No smoking in Dunkirk.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2017 1:06:16 GMT
Unreal , fantastic film. Surpassed the hype imo . (Keep in mind I am not some Nolan fanboy and didn't care for Interstellar at all) but this was fuckin unbelievable ! probably the loudest / most intense film I've seen in theaters since maybe Mad Max Fury Road , but I think it tops that too.
Nolan did a superb job directing this and it moves at a brisk pace . Highly recommend seeing this in theaters ASAP! 10/10
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Post by SuperDevilDoctor on Jul 22, 2017 7:52:32 GMT
How many soldiers are shown smoking cigarettes in the film? If virtually nil, then the movie is a crock (historically speaking, that is). No smoking in Dunkirk. You've got to be kidding. That's like making a movie about the Napoleonic Wars, and deliberately refusing to show anyone wearing a plumed hat. Or riding a horse. It's bullshit.
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Post by LeWildPlatypus on Jul 22, 2017 13:30:22 GMT
You don't see anyone smoking but that's not to say no one smoked in the film, there's a lot of things you don't see. There isn't a great deal of focus on the characters or is there a lot of dialogue. It does however silence the Interstellar complainers who criticized the film for being too dialogue/exposition heavy. There's a lot of face acting, the expression on the young soldiers faces say more than words ever could.
The sense of threat and endangerment is very effective, it's by far one of the most atmospheric and haunting war films ever made. Great film, and for once in Hollywood it's not a propaganda piece and it's not pushing some kind of agenda. 9/10.
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Post by sdrew13163 on Jul 22, 2017 18:37:15 GMT
You've got to be kidding. That's like making a movie about the Napoleonic Wars, and deliberately refusing to show anyone wearing a plumed hat. Or riding a horse. It's bullshit. I can't tell if you're joking or not. I guess I kind of agree, though. Smoking does add a level of realism and visual intrigue.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2017 18:59:04 GMT
What a huge disappointment. I found it to be so very boring. I did because I didn't get to know, connect, with any of the characters. It was just one looong escape.
I know you want the good guys trying to escape to prevail, but it was just like watching a movie where a family, who you don't get to know at all, has their house broken into by murderers. Then after the break-in, the whole movie shows the family, who are complete strangers to you, being chased by the murderers and they're trying to escape and not get killed. Sure. You don't want the innocent family to die, but you don't really have any feelings for them because there was no connection at all. You never got to know them. They were just a family running scared, and like Dunkirk, they didn’t talk much at all.
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Post by Nora on Jul 22, 2017 22:13:23 GMT
i have seen it. Way overrated.Remember that scene where the boat sank? Or the other boat sank? Or that one? Or the other one? Great , a director who uses practical effects! Too bad I didn't know any of the characters on the boats, nor was Nolan's camera able to focus on a scene long enough for me to concentrate or care before another quick cutaway. Also Kenneth Branagh staring at the sky with a horrified look upon his face. Powerful stuff the first time. Not so powerful the second time. Okay, why is he doing it a third time? A fourth time? Now this is getting comical. I demand subtitles on all future Nolan movies. The way the sound effects drown out all the dialogue is very disappointing. agreed on all points. found it mostly boring, kytchy at times and surprisingly - emotionally it did nothing for me, there was too much continuous music for it to have any effect on me after a while it just felt like a videoclip. i was really looking forward to it, maybe thats part of the problem.
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Post by SuperDevilDoctor on Jul 23, 2017 9:43:20 GMT
You've got to be kidding. That's like making a movie about the Napoleonic Wars, and deliberately refusing to show anyone wearing a plumed hat. Or riding a horse. It's bullshit. I can't tell if you're joking or not. I guess I kind of agree, though. Smoking does add a level of realism and visual intrigue. I am NOT joking. One of the most ridiculously inexpensive things a filmmaker could do to add genuine "historical accuracy" to his WWII movie... and Nolan -- who is supposedly meticulous about detail -- refuses to do it? It's just plain DUMB. An historical film, with its real-life/real events context, does not automatically earn an "R" rating for tobacco use in the U.S.
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Post by SuperDevilDoctor on Jul 23, 2017 9:56:13 GMT
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Post by moviemanjackson on Jul 24, 2017 23:29:30 GMT
I loved the production, score (music levels were really high though), but I agree with some in here. I found myself bored at times. I understood the movie was about the event itself and war so not really characters, but I didn't expect it to be so distant.
I do wonder if it wasn't Nolan who directed it would this get more flack for not having good characters and better writing.
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Post by charzhino on Jul 24, 2017 23:39:08 GMT
I loved the production, score (music levels were really high though), but I agree with some in here. I found myself bored at times. I understood the movie was about the event itself and war so not really characters, but I didn't expect it to be so distant. I do wonder if it wasn't Nolan who directed it would this get more flack for not having good characters and better writing. It wouldn't get as high of a score I'm sure of it. Theres zero character in this movie and Im still shocked as why Nolan chose to portray it like this. He's produced some of the most fleshed out protagonists and villains and written superb dialogue. To ignore one of his strongest trademarks is baffling. Even survival films that rely on visuals like The Relevant and Gravity have very well developed heros accompanying the stunning visuals. Dunkirk just left me cold and emotionless unfortunately.
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Post by tastytomatoes on Jul 26, 2017 2:42:43 GMT
9/10
An intense experience and a very refreshing war movie. I'm going for a second watch.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Jul 27, 2017 9:12:56 GMT
I viewed Dunkirk on Tuesday night, in Extreme Digital, and based on an initial viewing (I may see it once more, yet not necessarily), I would consider it "decent/pretty good"—in other words, slightly above-average. The film is worth seeing, but I certainly do not believe that it justifies the critical acclaim that it seems to have largely (although certainly not unanimously) received.
Unquestionably, the film constitutes a visual spectacle, especially in terms of color—Dunkirk is something like a compendium of blue. Even the non-blues in the film seem imperceptibly tinted by that shade somehow, and the formal blues run the gamut from stone-cold navy to exotic turquoise and aqua, as if to suggest the range of possibilities in the human experience, even within war. The sound mixing is impressively lifelike, and Hans Zimmer's score is dramatically pulsating yet economical for the most part, until a couple of late passages where his strings swell into conventional sentimentality. And certainly, the movie becomes tenser in the second half, especially in a couple of paradoxical situations that call simple-minded patriotism into question. One, involving a middle-aged man (played by Mark Rylance), his two young charges, and a "shell-shocked" soldier that they have picked up in their civilian boat, weighs patriotic idealism against the shattering costs of war. The other weighs the questions of whether common humanity can, or should, transcend nationalistic antagonisms in a desperate life-or-death quandary. Another tense sequence involves the question of whether a pilot can escape his sinking plane.
Unfortunately, these more intimate scenes, sometimes offering probing moral questions and paradoxes, are elusive. They play more as a grab bag, as a fleeting sprinkle amid the greater spectacle. These narrative threads or vignettes are not sustained long enough or consistently enough. Some of the characters who appear seem intriguing or compelling, but writer-director Christopher Nolan hardly develops them. From very early on in the movie, one can sense a void in character development or human intimacy, and the film constantly threatens to disinterest the viewer (myself, at least, but evidently others as well based on some of the comments here) as a result.
Moreover, one receives little sense of the overall battle or the strategic imperatives; I had to read up on Dunkirk after the movie in a couple of history textbooks of mine in order to receive a firm grasp on what its historical significance happened to be or what it really amounted to. One might imagine that in the absence of character development and a sustained human connection to the battle, one might receive a broader sense of the strategic significance. But this aspect, too, is fleeting, filled mainly by the momentous words of Winston Churchill playing over some concluding images and montages.
In short, Dunkirk is overloaded with visual spectacle and undernourished in other vital areas, creating an imbalance. The movie held my attention, but only lightly. Nor do I believe that the film exceptionally showcases the death, destruction, and grisliness of war. The early scene of the German bombing on the beach is chilling and haunting, but much of the rest amounts to fairly standard aerial fighter battles, torpedoing of ships, and so forth. I have found several war films from the last eleven years—Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, American Sniper, Hacksaw Ridge—to be far more powerful and effective at conveying the carnage, distress, and horrifying (if sometimes honorable) nature of war. Hacksaw Ridge, which was still playing in theaters about five months ago, provided much greater insight into the draining and devastating nature of warfare and the costs of such service and sacrifice. Dunkirk, in my view, fails to make that kind of impact. Instead, it just does a lot of standard stuff spectacularly.
One receives the sense that Nolan wanted to make an epic World War II spectacle, but that he did not have much of anything to say—neither coherent inspiration nor a subversive critique. Instead, he belatedly creates a couple of compelling quandaries that hint at antiwar ironies—and then overrides their potential impact with a denouement that proves about as traditionally patriotic as one can imagine. I am sure that Winston Churchill, for instance, wishes that he could have had Dunkirk handy circa the summer of 1940 (or 1941) to show to Franklin Roosevelt and the American public. But again, the film fails to place its ultimate catharsis and inspirational uplift into a broader ordering framework. Instead, Nolan just seems to latch onto those elements at the end in a last-ditch effort to accrue greater meaning.
I formulated my thoughts before reading Richard Brody's review in the New Yorker, but I do believe that he is one of the best film critics around these days. Certainly, he is an independent and creative thinker, unlike so many reviewers who seem most interested in satisfying their own presumptive expectations, their conformist social circle, or their politically correct agenda. And for whatever it may be worth (which, to be fair, could be nothing), Brody seems to see Dunkirk in much the same way that I do.
I respect the fact that Dunkirk works powerfully for some viewers—seeking out the spectrum of popular response is largely the point of forums such as this one. But I appreciate the fact that several posters seem to see matters from the same perspective as myself and Brody. In other words, visual hammers, by themselves, do not necessarily create emotional power—at least not for everyone.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Jul 27, 2017 9:14:48 GMT
I loved the production, score (music levels were really high though), but I agree with some in here. I found myself bored at times. I understood the movie was about the event itself and war so not really characters, but I didn't expect it to be so distant. I do wonder if it wasn't Nolan who directed it would this get more flack for not having good characters and better writing. It wouldn't get as high of a score I'm sure of it. Theres zero character in this movie and Im still shocked as why Nolan chose to portray it like this. He's produced some of the most fleshed out protagonists and villains and written superb dialogue. To ignore one of his strongest trademarks is baffling. Even survival films that rely on visuals like The Relevant and Gravity have very well developed heros accompanying the stunning visuals. Dunkirk just left me cold and emotionless unfortunately. ... excellent point of comparison.
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Post by tastytomatoes on Jul 28, 2017 7:29:37 GMT
It wouldn't get as high of a score I'm sure of it. Theres zero character in this movie and Im still shocked as why Nolan chose to portray it like this. He's produced some of the most fleshed out protagonists and villains and written superb dialogue. To ignore one of his strongest trademarks is baffling. Even survival films that rely on visuals like The Relevant and Gravity have very well developed heros accompanying the stunning visuals. Dunkirk just left me cold and emotionless unfortunately. ... excellent point of comparison. That is the exact difference. Dunkirk was about soldiers surviving to get home, citizens embarking in the war to save lives, spitfire pilots racing against time, and in it, moments of humanity and inhumanity occur. Dunkirk is not the story of a single hero we follow through the movie, hence we were not given one. A second watch would help you connect much more with the characters if you didn't because you already know their story. Tommy, Gibson, Alex, Mr. Dawson, George, Farrier...
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Post by deeznutz on Jul 28, 2017 11:39:17 GMT
i have seen it. Way overrated.Remember that scene where the boat sank? Or the other boat sank? Or that one? Or the other one? Great , a director who uses practical effects! Too bad I didn't know any of the characters on the boats, nor was Nolan's camera able to focus on a scene long enough for me to concentrate or care before another quick cutaway. Also Kenneth Branagh staring at the sky with a horrified look upon his face. Powerful stuff the first time. Not so powerful the second time. Okay, why is he doing it a third time? A fourth time? Now this is getting comical. I demand subtitles on all future Nolan movies. The way the sound effects drown out all the dialogue is very disappointing. totally agree with your review esp the Branagh staring / looking around talk about an easy payday
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Jul 29, 2017 9:24:31 GMT
... excellent point of comparison. That is the exact difference. Dunkirk was about soldiers surviving to get home, citizens embarking in the war to save lives, spitfire pilots racing against time, and in it, moments of humanity and inhumanity occur. Dunkirk is not the story of a single hero we follow through the movie, hence we were not given one. A second watch would help you connect much more with the characters if you didn't because you already know their story. Tommy, Gibson, Alex, Mr. Dawson, George, Farrier... ... totally true; the subject matter and narrative structure of Dunkirk do not necessarily allow for the same character development as films such as The Revenant and Gravity. On the other hand, Nolan perhaps could have developed these characters and these vignettes more consistently and with a more intimate focus, in part by scaling back some of the spectacle elsewhere. But he wants the aerial fighter sequences, the repeated shots of the huddling officers, and so forth—if he does not necessarily "want it all," he wants a lot, and doing so almost invariably entails some sacrifices. As I indicated in my longer post, I found the characters that you cite to often be intriguing or compelling or promising—but thinly or shallowly sketched, almost like starter kits of characterization that Nolan fails to fully develop. He may have possessed his legitimate reasoning—perhaps to give viewers a portal-like glimpse of the war rather than to presume false intimacy, or just to suggest the anonymity and randomness of wartime "humanity and inhumanity," as you phrase it. But Nolan may have also been too consumed by his desire for spectacle. I would say that Nolan's treatment of characterization would have been more defensible if it was part of a more balanced approach, with somewhat less spectacle and more prolonged character vignettes—or a greater array of them. Although I cannot recall any specifically, there may have been war films in the past that basically sought to survey a bunch of different anonymous characters and their implicit or de facto perspectives in a "cinema verite" mold, also achieving what Richard Brody describes as "multiplicity" in that passage that I quoted in my longer post. Nolan's mode of characterization seems to be more oriented in those directions, except that he never approaches "multiplicity," and "cinema verite" would be somewhat incongruous with his lavish sense of spectacle. I suppose that that is why I referred to his treatment of intimate character stories as a "grab bag" and a "fleeing sprinkle." There are worthwhile elements in this regard, but they are arguably minimized within a larger swirl of spectacle and the sweeping patriotic justifications of the closing sequences.
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