21 thoughts on “Dunkirk”

      1. I only saw one of them, and that was one of the ‘could have been good if they’d cut an hour’ movies. It just seemed to be Batman chases Joker, Batman catches Joker, Joker escapes, Batman chases Joker, Batman catches Joker, Joker escapes, etc, etc, for at least an hour too long. Every time I thought it was finally over, the cycle started again.

          1. The one movie of his I did see, Interstellar, also felt like watching something on Xanax. It felt kind of artificial like I was watching Blade Runner. It was a good movie but still…

  2. I enjoyed it. IMHO part of Nolan’s point was that the exact individuals involved weren’t that important to the outcome; all kinds of people were heroes and some were villains and some were simply fallible. The real heros were, for lack of a better term, the common men and women who were willing to do what had to be done in the cause of freedom. Nolan is one filmmaker who will not bow down to the altar of political correctness.

    That said, I found the score a little overpowering at times, but the lack of a linear narrative and lack of major gore didn’t bother me; there’s plenty of suspense – a sequence inside a small beached freighter is pretty harrowing. And there’s no shakey-cam cheating either.

    1. In a way the tale of Dunkirk strikes me as awfully similar to the Taxis of the Marne in WWI. In both there were rapid troop movements with civilian vehicles which in the end in no small way helped the Germans lose the war.

  3. I saw it Thursday night in IMAX. Visually impressive, but little dialog and with multiple POV’s it was hard to get a sense of the whole.

    Also many technical goofs (some not too important – the Mk V Spit was ordered for production in late 1940, and could not have been at Dunkirk, the ME-109 should not have been painted with a yellow nose but I understand they wanted the public to be able to see it).

    But the Destroyers anchored (WTF?) off the beach, with apparently everybody tucked in for the night? Anchored in a war zone and guns not manned?

    And why were the British troops standing in formation for hours at a time in the ocean? Thats stupid even for Brits…

  4. Bought the ticket before I read this, so… The reviewer was correct except for one thing: the score. He thought Hans Zimmer did a good job. I, on the other hand, think Zimmer blew it. This is not so much a musical sound track as it is a noise sound track done with musical instruments. It was annoying, over amplified, tedious, monotonous, and tiring. It droned on and on, continuously blasting with over-done, totally-out-of-place phase-shifted sound effects that are typically heard in sci-fi movies like “Transformers.” Here, check it out for yourself:

    Trailer

    But be sure to crank the volume up to where it is painful, and run the action scenes over and over for an hour or two and you’ve pretty much experienced the movie (because it’s essentially these scenes, and same audio, over and over… and over). And one more stunning thing: Nolan managed to make Churchill’s stirring “fighting on the beaches” words–boring! It was read by a soldier with about as much enthusiasm as one would read aloud a URL address. My recommendation is to wait till this comes out on Netflix, and then don’t watch it.

    1. I can’t handle the painful noise of Nolan’s soundtracks. I might have liked Interstellar more but there was too much corn and the soundtrack hurt. At least the corn was at the beginning and finally ended, but the noise never did.

    2. I actually don’t remember the score at all. Except like most movies these days the volume was way the hell too high, even with my aged hearing.

      I’ve got to start taking ear plugs to the theater when I go.

      1. I took some to the last movie I went to. Oddly, the movie volume was OK, but the trailers at the beginning were blasted.

    1. I was going to see Valerian (because Cara Delevigne) but then I saw her being interviewed where she said the biggest issue facing Africa is the lack of gender fluidity….

      Really? Malaria, Aids, starvation, corruption, slavery, blood diamonds, poaching, war, pestilence, disease, etc are all less important than gender fluidity?

      I don’t suffer fools lightly and I try not to pay for the privilege.

  6. I can’t believe the opening of the article “This article contains spoilers for Dunkirk”, are there that many people ignorant ignorant of Dunkirk? BTW, rhetorical question. That said, I’ve read both historical & fictional stories about Dunkirk & the unique heroism of the captains & crews of small civilian fishing boats & coastal cutters is the true story & one that deserves to be told in detail (sans CGI & all). Maybe something on the order of “Perfect Storm”?

    1. The civilians done good, but the military?…

      The German motorized troops and tanks had outrun their infantry in country that was very unfriendly to tanks. Meaning they were relatively unprotected. These German tanks were not the great vehicles they developed later, but about equal in both number and quality to French tanks.

      400,000 well equipped troops. Pulling back to Dunkirk concentrated defenses where you typically need 3 to 1 odds for an attack to succeed.

      1940 could have essentially been the end of the war for Germany. Instead a defeat is celebrated as a long term win???

      1. Air power, Ken, air power.

        By June 6, 1944, the Luftwaffe may not have been ground to dust, but the Allies had the upper hand in air power. By the Battle of the Bulge, the only reason the Germans could counter attack was that the weather grounded the American fighter bombers.

        In 1940, the air power balance was a close thing and the RAF losses in France were high. Churchill was criticized by his French ally for not making a total air support commitment to the Battle of France, but he consciously and perhaps stubbornly decided to hold back a reserve for the Battle of Britain. Were he to have gone “all in” with the RAF in France, he would have had nothing left, no trained pilots, no aircraft to speak of to defend the British homeland.

        Winston Churchill may have made some tough decisions but he wasn’t in the least bit unaware of the tradeoffs. RAF Air Marshall Hugh Dowding may have had input on these decisions, but I am certain that the ultimate decision was made at a higher level than he.

      2. The weather helped with the evacuation. That same weather would have helped in destroying German tanks.

        Air power helps fix enemies in position but ground troops do the actual job. Instead of producing new equipment, the British spent years replacing the equipment they left on the beach, never used against the Germans. Rather, abandoned to the Germans. A lot of equipment and still lost men they may not have if they fought instead of abandoned.

        Even the French did a good job of rearguard even though over matched. The addition of 400,000 troops to the fight in country that favored infantry could have ended the war right there.

        An invasion like Normandy is a killer for the attacking troops. Those at Dunkirk were already past that point. Already in position and greatly equipped to fight. They just didn’t because they believed the German super-soldier propaganda.

        The Stuka was more a psychological weapon than effective destructively. The British military blew it.

  7. I was going to see Valerian (because Cara Delevigne) but then I saw her being interviewed where she said …
    I’ve never understood why anyone cares what actors have to say about politics.

  9. Dennis Prager had somethings to say about this today. And oh, he didn’t like it much. You can hear his comments on this Podcast of The Dennis Prager Show, hour 1, 7/24/2017. He also discusses the reviewers who not only observe movies differently than the typical moviegoer, but insert their idiotic (my words) ideology in their reviews. It’s worth a listen.

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