Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)

AllForIt · 23-07-2017 12:49AM

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

For the 5 words he uttered from under a mask? No one did enough in the film to warrant an award for acting.

Tom Hardy is the most overrated actor of the last decade. Second is Matt Damon. His performance in Inception was as wooden a performance I've ever seen in any major movie I've seen. If I had one criticism of Nolan it is that he employs Hardy and I can't understand what he see's in him other than a pretty face.

BlitzKrieg · 23-07-2017 12:53AM

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

But as the chronology and temporal planes began to align here, it felt sometimes as if we were retreading ground or complicating matters without necessarily getting a whole lot more out of the situations. I almost feel bad criticising it for this, as it's extremely refreshing to see a major blockbuster experiment and depart from straightforward linear storytelling - especially in a way that makes sense for the drama and situation. But the overlap proved a weird mix of satisfying and disjointed, and just felt it was lacking that special something to really sell it.

I think especially to the end that varies from viewer to viewer, I'd somewhat agree with you in some sense but other people I saw it with took something from the repeat

the second segment to be repeated and probably the first big one in terms of action in both ends I felt gave the most to the repeat fashion, the spitfire ditching in the water, because in the first pass its almost entirely from Tom Hardy's perspective and like him I assumed the hand gesture from the pilot when he flew over to mean the pilot was ok, but in the repeat this was drastically changed as he wasnt actually waving but struggling to get the cockpit open. I liked this and felt the repeat worked. I do agree though the last sequence to get repeated a bit felt a bit more redundent, But I was alone in that as some people I was with took more from details being filled in on the two ships sinking (especially the smaller one) that was filled in later (I think we see the trawler sinking from tom hardy's perspective before we see the soldiers boarding it on the beach.) and were delighted to have the scene repeat the 2-3 times it did filling more and more details

seiphil · 23-07-2017 06:14AM

Loved it.

What an intense movie. The movie for me is not so much about the actors/characters and more about the experience of the actual events and I thought it was done brilliantly. In a sense the whole cast are supporting actors as their is no real lead.

The sound, especially when the Nazi Bombers were attacking was deafening and add Zimmers tense score in the background was just perfect.

Fact we don't actually really see the enemy I thought was quite creative and really pushed the whole it's a thriller and not your typical war movie.

Also I know it's not possible for everybody but I went for the whole IMAX experience(In Toronto) and it really adds to it. The movie is made for it.

9/10

Outkast_IRE · 23-07-2017 12:48PM

Honestly for me 4/5.

The film is faultless with regards to production, directing, editing, acting, score, visual effects. It is technically a massive achievement and will do very well for itself with regards to awards.

However i did find it all a little soulless, and a bit too sanitised. I found i cared very little for any of the characters. War is a bloodbath and the men around you being killed are your brothers, to me it was a fairly dispassionate view of the event.

This movie is intense, the score and production is excellent and will only be fully appreciated on the big screen. I would urge people to go see it, it is still likely the best big screen film of the year. Go see it on the biggest, best screen you have access to. We went to the local Omnimaxx screen and got the best seats in the house and really felt we were part of an experience ( In Cork this is the best option available).

razorblunt · 23-07-2017 12:49PM

One question I have...

If Hardy was able to swing around for the incoming Luftwaffe plane with fuel empty, why didn't he swing once more and land back the way towards his own troops?

Outkast_IRE · 23-07-2017 12:55PM

razorblunt wrote: »

One question I have...
If Hardy was able to swing around for the incoming Luftwaffe plane with fuel empty, why didn't he swing once more and land back the way towards his own troops?

Every time you turn when gliding you lose a serious amount of speed. You lose too much and you end up in a stall and have no control over your decent. Whilst this is only a film, to me making the first turn to tackle the incoming plane without engines was a stretch anyway. Probably just made a decent ending to that thread of the story for him to get captured.

fergus1001 · 23-07-2017 12:58PM

razorblunt wrote:

One question I have...

Puzzled me too but I'd say he didn't have enough range to get back around, if he ran from where he was he would have been shot

Conall Cernach · 23-07-2017 01:42PM

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

For the 5 words he uttered from under a mask? No one did enough in the film to warrant an award for acting.

Mark Rylance is almost certain to get a nod from somewhere be it BAFTA or AA.

fergus1001 · 23-07-2017 05:01PM

I think it was great that there was no one actor who was the "lead" everyone's role was equally important

I also loved the historical accuracy of the rim jam on the lee enfield

Unearthly · 23-07-2017 05:05PM

I liked it a lot. Some of the best sounding intense moments in a long time. Makes a nice change he didn't have Michael Caine taking up an hour with exposition and a twist.

irishfeen · 23-07-2017 05:07PM

Seen this film yesterday and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised in fact it's excellent!

Intense from start to finish with fantastic visuals, acting and pace.

8.5/10 for me, best film I've seen this year at the cinema!

Ronanc1 · 23-07-2017 05:30PM

Anyone seen it in the IFI 70mm yet? If so how is it?

seiphil · 23-07-2017 05:48PM

Michael Caine is actually in this movie. Very briefly. But he's there.

He plays Winston Churchill on the radio to the spitfire fighters.Nolan confirmed this was Caine.

bennyl10 · 23-07-2017 11:44PM

Having seen this this evening.. I'm blown away..
It's an absolute masterpiece.

Simplistic sure, but the simplicity is what makes it so refreshing..

Zimmer's score and sound design in general..

Legitimately don't think I've seen a better movie in cinema this year!

Looper007 · 24-07-2017 03:01AM

This is what makes Cinema great, never felt so much tension in a long while watching a film. You definitely see the budget on the screen and it takes some guts to do a film which is a summer blockbuster where barely any character talks a few lines yet you still are engrossed from the first minute until the last.

From Hoyte Van Hoytema stunning Cinematography to Hans Zimmer Stunning score, to a all round great cast (no Oscar winning performances but more of a team effort on this one) and some of the best epic scope that Lean and Kurosawa would be proud of. Definitely won't be everyone's cup of tea, it will get some backlash cause it's a Nolan film as nearly most of his films do but you can't please everyone(is there a director who gets so much love that garners so much backlash too, think Tarantino is the only other one I can think of. Kubrick got the same in his lifetime too).

Definitely needs a rewatch in IMAX, anyway 9/10 for me.

team_actimel · 24-07-2017 09:43AM

Saw it at the weekend. I'll give it a 7/10.

It started off strong especially the first half of the film but I got somewhat bored halfway through it.
The film score was excellent and really helped the tension in the film.

I couldn't get used to Harry Styles in it and it somehow distracted from the scenes with the other unknown actors.
I thought the young actor who played the lead did a great job but felt Murphy and Hardy were wasted on their characters.

It was a decent film but I didn't care about the characters enough to warrant another viewing.

homerun_homer · 24-07-2017 03:54PM

Great film. I appreciated more afterwards on reflection and thinking about it. I must admit that I was caught out with not being able to understand half the dialogue because of the volume of everything else (a common Nolan issue, for better or worse). The visuals were amazing.

I went to see it in IMAX, when original plan was to go to 70mm until a friend bailed. The sound in the Imax was incredible, it really added to the immersive feeling. I thought I would be more edge of my seat from early talk of it, but maybe it's just me feeling desensitised to that sort of thing unless I have more emotional investment. I'm perfectly fine with the lack of adding backstory to everyone I should add. It adds to it in a way. I'll like that more with rewatching it vs scenes of exposition about how a soldier just wants to get back to his true love, who is pregnant back home while it cuts to scenes of her crying for him :pac:.

I will go see this again in 70mm to compare to the IMAX experience and to get the cool little gift they give you for going there to see it.

team_actimel wrote: »

I couldn't get used to Harry Styles in it and it somehow distracted from the scenes with the other unknown actors.

Unless you've to look at Harry Styles posters in your gaff and absolutely hate the lad, I don't understand why anyone would have issue with him in the film. He does a good job. If I had a problem on that front it was that too many of the dark haired lads looks a bit similar, particular in the darker scenes as they struggled through particular hazards.

Dirty Dingus McGee · 24-07-2017 04:53PM

homerun_homer wrote: »

Unless you've to look at Harry Styles posters in your gaff and absolutely hate the lad, I don't understand why anyone would have issue with him in the film. He does a good job. If I had a problem on that front it was that too many of the dark haired lads looks a bit similar, particular in the darker scenes as they struggled through particular hazards.

Agree.They really should have mixed up the hair colours a bit more so that all the key characters were 100% identifiable. However I do find in war movies this happens a lot , I had a similar issue with the early episodes of Band of Brothers.

Dirty Dingus McGee · 24-07-2017 04:56PM

Just back from watching this.

Excellent film and there are a few moments that genuinely lifted me out of my seat.Very little talking in it which I liked as it didn't need much talking and I thought Tom Hardy and Kenneths Branaghs performances were excellent.

Was it just me or did Cillian Murphy's Cork accent sneak through on a few occassions?

One minor quibble I have is that perhaps the scene

when all the boats arriving in Dunkirk could have lasted a minute longer and we get to see the entire scale of all the boats arriving and all 400,000 men on the beach .We never really got to see a picture of every single man on the beach or at least it didn't seem like we did.There was a scene in the film Atonement which I though covered this part very of the Dunkirk evacuation very well and you got to see the entire scale of what was happening in one single shot.

Also it was a surprisingly short film.I would have though it would clock in at about 2 hours and 20 minutes but it seemed to be only 1 hour and 40 minutes.Also I would say this is definitely a film for watching in a cinema and not on DVD.

utyh2ikcq9z76b · 24-07-2017 04:57PM

Wow totally underwhelmed, alot of it felt like a cheap tv series, no epic scale to it at all, few thousand on the beach, 3 or 4 fighter planes, bout 20-30 civilian rescue boats, few small destroyers, side story about the youngefella in the boat you didnt give a **** about and overuse of shots similar to ones in interstellar of spaceships entering a planets atmosphere(camera on wings/underneath etc) so loads of shots of beach and sea..Tom hardy says and does **** all.One of the first shots at the beach,the houses in the background look very recent and it really stands out, velux windows and all...4/10

Interstellar on the other hand is in my top 10

PowerToWait · 24-07-2017 05:17PM

Ingrid Spoiled Jaguar wrote: »

Wow totally underwhelmed, alot of it felt like a cheap tv series, no epic scale to it at all, few thousand on the beach, 3 or 4 fighter planes, bout 20-30 civilian rescue boats, few small destroyers, side story about the youngefella in the boat you didnt give a **** about and overuse of shots similar to ones in interstellar of spaceships entering a planets atmosphere(camera on wings/underneath etc) so loads of shots of beach and sea..Tom hardy says and does **** all.One of the first shots at the beach,the houses in the background look very recent and it really stands out, velux windows and all...4/10

Interstellar on the other hand is in my top 10

Strongly agree. Very disappointing, expected so much more.

seiphil · 24-07-2017 05:32PM

Ingrid Spoiled Jaguar wrote: »

Wow totally underwhelmed, alot of it felt like a cheap tv series, no epic scale to it at all, few thousand on the beach, 3 or 4 fighter planes, bout 20-30 civilian rescue boats, few small destroyers, side story about the youngefella in the boat you didnt give a **** about and overuse of shots similar to ones in interstellar of spaceships entering a planets atmosphere(camera on wings/underneath etc) so loads of shots of beach and sea..Tom hardy says and does **** all.One of the first shots at the beach,the houses in the background look very recent and it really stands out, velux windows and all...4/10

Interstellar on the other hand is in my top 10

That's how the actual Dunkirk was though. It's historically accurate. Nothing about it being cheap. It was actually an extremely expensive movie to make. He went for historical accuracy.

Veterans who were on that beach got a special viewing even said it was exactly like how he portrayed it.

It's a factual film not fiction.

Also it's a thriller. Not really a war movie.

Sad Professor · 24-07-2017 08:16PM

I spent most of the movie thinking Fionn Whitehead was Harry Styles, who I assumed had the bigger role given all the hoo-ha over him being in the film. I had to google Harry Styles to confirm my dawning realisation that maybe he was the other guy.

As for the film, it's Nolan's purest, best and biggest leap forward as a filmmaker to date. Plot and dialogue, the twin crutches on which his previous films leaned so heavily to their detriment, are reduced to a minimum. And while there’s some temporal hijinks, narratively this is among Nolan’s most straight-forward films. The whole film is a middle act, the rising action part of a traditional cinematic narrative but drawn out to feature length. As an exercise in old school formalism and propulsive suspense, this is pretty damn awesome filmmaking. While the rest of Hollywood longly stares into the abyss, Nolan is blazing a trail for mainstream cinema to follow.

TheQuietBeatle · 24-07-2017 08:24PM

PowerToWait wrote: »

Strongly agree. Very disappointing, expected so much more.

Phew. Was beginning to think I was the only one on the planet who was disappointed and underwhelmed with this movie. I feel it's one of those movies everyone is expected to like and quite frankly it's overrated.

PowerToWait · 24-07-2017 08:48PM

TheQuietBeatle wrote: »

Phew. Was beginning to think I was the only one on the planet who was disappointed and underwhelmed with this movie. I feel it's one of those movies everyone is expected to like and quite frankly it's overrated.

My gf didn't think it fantastic either but judging by the conversations I overheard afterward most people thought it tense, edge of yer seat stuff. I just didn't get that at all.

I really liked the air scenes, strongest imo.

As to it being historically accurate, the best part of 400,000 men passed over that beach, in the movie it looked like a few Lidl queues.

Inviere · 24-07-2017 09:25PM

Seen it today in the 'imax' in Dublin. Thought it was incredibly well put together, incredible to look at (so so bleak at times, so visceral, and really sucks you in), and the sound...my god the sound, I've never heard anything like it in the cinema, incredible. Loved every minute of it I have to say

seiphil · 24-07-2017 10:20PM

PowerToWait wrote: »

My gf didn't think it fantastic either but judging by the conversations I overheard afterward most people thought it tense, edge of yer seat stuff. I just didn't get that at all.

I really liked the air scenes, strongest imo.

As to it being historically accurate, the best part of 400,000 men passed over that beach, in the movie it looked like a few Lidl queues.

Like Normandy, those beaches are huuuuge and it would be virtually impossible to capture 400'000 men in the one area.

Also they needed to be spread out or they would have been an even easier target for the Nazi's.

The budget for this was 150mil.

Shelga · 24-07-2017 10:49PM

A group of WW2 veterans watched the premiere and told Nolan he got it all right, except the sound in the cinema was louder than what it felt like in reality.

Might go see it again at the weekend, is Imax or 70mm better? Tbh I don't really understand what the difference is

Or why something being filmed on 70mm is such a big deal? It's much clearer/higher definition?

Sad Professor · 24-07-2017 11:15PM

seiphil wrote: »

Like Normandy, those beaches are huuuuge and it would be virtually impossible to capture 400'000 men in the one area.

Also they needed to be spread out or they would have been an even easier target for the Nazi's.

The budget for this was 150mil.

Yeah, one of the problems war movies have is that cinema has to condense time and space. When depicting war, especially combat, this can lead to considerable inaccuracies. Like patrols walking ridiculously close together (one mine and they'd all be dead), or soldiers running side by side toward the enemy (making it easier to mow them all down), or just talking waay too much in situations in which they wouldn't be saying anything. None of this usually happens in real life unless the soldiers have a death wish, but we're so used to it in war movies that we accept it. Like, the D-Day sequence in SPR is spectacular cinema, but it was probably nothing like that. Blood in the sea, crawling over each other, screaming, etc. It's all exaggerated and concentrated for cinematic effect. I remember Oliver Stone talking about this re: Platoon and that he had to fall back on war genre cliches at times because there was simply no way of capturing his own experience of Vietnam.

I don't consider Dunkirk a traditional war movie, as Nolan has said it's more a survival movie, but I liked how spread out everything felt. There's a greater sense of space and time which I think is closer to the truth than many war movies.

Jimbob1977 · 24-07-2017 11:33PM

Can a Spitfire glide for hours without fuel?

The engines cut out in the afternoon and the plane was still flying after dusk

Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)

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