I thought it was absolute Hollywood garbage. Very disappointed. I am a history buff, love great films. This is not one. Cheap storytelling out if filmmaking 101 and so many errors in shots...just awful and cheap.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
INCREDIBLE movie!

Saw it last night and thought it was amazing. It's no Saving Private Ryan with lots of machine guns and people getting bloodily blown to bits, but is instead a Nolan masterpiece of long stretches of no dialog and the music literally had me on the edge of my seat the entire time, it was almost stressful.

A friend complained that it was "slow in spots" but then again he thinks movies like Transformers where it's 100% ACTION ALL THE TIME! are cinematic masterpieces.

Overall it was REALLY well done and not at all what I expected and the way they told the story from 3 different points of view that jumped around chronologically was also really good.

Agree. This is an incredible movie. I'm not a movie critic, nor someone looking for authenticity from Hollyweird. This movie kept me on the edge of my seat and told an heroic story without all the mush. Let the viewer decide, rather the Director tell his tale. Well worth the $, and I'd really like to see it again.

We just came back, sorry but I/we expected a bit more. No regrets, but I don't think it lives up the the reviews.

Just talking about it I did learn much more about Dunkirk and the events in question though.

Overall, a very good movie. Not as good as I hoped it would be, but clearly a very well done movie that is well above the average Hollywood clap-trap. I'd hoped for more but am satisfied with what was done.

No leftist monologuing but also no pedantic rah-rah either. The do include Churchill's speech, but almost understate that in the presentation.

As to what was said above, I do think having more than 1 guy shooting his rifle at the 109 would have been more helpfully accurate. I do think they fail to quite capture the scope of the rescue, and almost swallow the words when the actual figure was given. Not sure that those who are not already familiar with history will understand the magnitude of the success.

Speaking of history, the uniforms and gear were well done, especially by movie standards.
Indy Star accuracy of movie elements

I read a review in which a 96 year old veteran of Dunkirk said that the memories had left him, but that watching this brought them back, fairly vividly. I'll defer my final opinion to his, since he would know better than any of us. “Being that long ago, it was died with the memory. But when I saw the film, I was brought back.”

NY Times review

EDIT: Oh, and the Russian embassy had a few things to say about it too LINK

Just saw it with my son. I agree with the previous statements that it wasn't a bad movie, just that the hype had me expecting more.

I will definatley be seeing this shortly. Few movies are worthy of the theatre, but I am going to check this one out.

Land a Spit, with its notoriously narrow undercarriage, on a beach without groundlooping it?

No way.

-Tom

quote:

Originally posted by Replacement Tommel:
Land a Spit, with its notoriously narrow undercarriage, on a beach without groundlooping it?

No way.

-Tom

https://www.google.com/search?...mgrc=JI-xy_cqksDxrM:

Not exactly the same, but this dude did okay.

quote:

Originally posted by 10X-Shooter:
Saw it yesterday. I though they did a fairly good job portraying the desperation and lack of support. I kept wondering why I'm the hell everyone wasn't firing their rifles when the planes came low on their passes. Good movie.

They probably had no ammo left after fighting to that beach, plus it's pretty hard to hit a fast moving aircraft with a rifle, near impossible.

I saw the movie yesterday. The depiction of the British and those of the French forces were basically beaten and just wanted out. That's what the movie showed. It took the British ground forces along time to get back on their feet.

I saw it tonight. I wish I would have saved my money.

Saw it last night. I liked it very much. Without a doubt, not your typical Hollywood narrative popcorn movie. If you're looking for Private Ryan, this ain't it, basically like checkers vs. chess.

If you decide to see it, go the extra mile and find a real IMAX 70mm theater. To me, the best part of last nights showing was seeing it projected with film. It's been a long time since I've experienced this.

decent flick.


would recommend watching if you can catch matinee.

I have to say I'm really surprised and saddened to see so many people here saying they didn't like it.


Were you expecting to see nonstop machine guns and shit blowing up for 2 hours? This was a huge retreat of a beaten army, not a battle involving a fresh one but it was a retreat that changed the course of history!

Incidentally, something like a combined 200,000 British and French troops who were holding the perimeter to allow the main body to escape, were captured and marched off to POW concentration camps if they were luckily enough to not be executed on the spot like a good many of them were.


From Christopher Nolan on IMDB:

quote:

"This is an essential moment in the history of the Second World War. If this evacuation had not been a success, Great Britain would have been obliged to capitulate. And the whole world would have been lost, or would have known a different fate: the Germans would undoubtedly have conquered Europe, the US would not have returned to war. It is a true point of rupture in war and in history of the world. A decisive moment. And the success of the evacuation allowed Churchill to impose the idea of a moral victory, which allowed him to galvanize his troops like civilians and to impose a spirit of resistance while the logic of this sequence should have been that of surrender. Militarily it is a defeat; on the human plane it is a colossal victory."

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I have to say I'm really surprised and saddened to see so many people here saying they didn't like it.

Maybe because it is not a typical Hollywood war movie with the screaming drill sergeant, the wise-cracking private, the bad-ass Rambo hero soldier, the all-too-wise lifer, etc. You know, war movie clichés interwoven with sentimentality.

We went with some friends to see the film and they thought it was ok, but not as good as Hacksaw Ridge, a movie I saw on DVD and didn't particularly like. One of my friends thought it would have been an improvement if there was more dialog and banter between the soldiers and I disagreed with him. And thinking about it now, I can't really recall a single cliché in the entire movie. It certainly is a unique film.

I think it's very well done. I hope it wins some Oscars (score, cinematography etc). Couple points: According to survivors it was extremely loud on the beach, constant artillery & waves of fighters and bombers every 30 minutes (like German clockwork). They were said to have had "Dunkirk throat" for a couple weeks after from all the shouting, screaming & exposures. I found the sense of chaos and desperation lacking. It almost seemed like automatons posed on the beach by some artist. More examples like the opening garden hose scene of how they survived on the beach would have helped a lot. Some time - pressure by seeing the outer defensive perimeter being slowly overwhelmed would have helped as well, though in his 3 in 1 timeline compression I'm not sure how that would have been worked in.

This is a love it or hate it movie. I saw at least 10 couples walk out and leave. No doubt, I would imagine most women would hate this movie. And the comic book losers that are impressed with child's play comic book movies probably wouldn't like this movie.

That being said, I think it is an absolute cinematic masterpiece. It was the most uncomfortable movie I ever saw. Thousands of emotions thrown into a blender and mixed on high.

I would have a hard time describing it with mere words. There are just too many emotions.

Larry Vickers said it was the best war movie of all time. I agree with that sentiment.

I never served, but I would think that anyone that has served their country would have a deep appreciation for this film.

And lastly, I cant explain it, and am not ashamed to admit, that I was crying heavily in the last 5 minutes of the film. After the credits had rolled, I continued crying and just sat there for about 15 minutes. I finally looked around, and found a completely empty theater, at which point I wiped my eyes, got up, and left.

So make fun of me if you want, but I really appreciated the movie and plan on seeing it again this week if I have time.

Its definitely in my top 10 best movies of all time.

I thought the movie was well done, although the flexible time line thing was somewhat confusing. The director really got the "quiet desperation" theme across through his portrayals of those on the land, sea, and in the air. Like the concern about how much fuel was left to fly the Spitfires, whether or not the ammo in them would run out, the issue of time (or the lack of it) was constantly present.

I felt the acting was good and the writing was realistic. The death of the one character on the civilian boat was believable and how the loss was handled was (to me) credible, considering what was going on at the time.

Although their role wasn't played out on the screen for very long, I thought the French soldiers' staving off the Germans in the beginning of the film adequately informed the audience why so many English soldiers were able to crowd that beach for as long as they did. The complaints by Frenchmen about their portrayal were (to me) unfounded.

Overall, it was a very good movie, but (IMHO) it lacked the emotional intensity of "Band of Brothers", because we never got to know the subjects' personalities to the degree the HBO series allowed us to. Of course the series had a lot more time to provide that knowledge and (I'm hoping!) that when the series "The Mighty Eighth" arrives, it will combine history and drama as well at BoB did.

I liked Dunkirk, but like much of Nolan's work, I'm much more of a fan of his filmmaking craft than the film itself.

I loved the pace, the editing, the art direction, and the sound. I saw it in a 70mm non-IMAX print, and it was great to see actual film being projected. (I even got excited seeing the "cigarette burn" reel changeover cue mark on the print! I can't remember the last time I saw that.) The mature tone is such a breath of fresh air to all that flippant snarky lightweight Millennial comic book fare that normally dominates summer blockbusters.

I'm less a fan of the storytelling. The film drops you into the middle of the action, so it feels like you've walked into a movie that's already been playing for an hour. That, and the fact there's so much going on, made the characterizations suffer. I felt like Kevbo did - I didn't have any emotional involvement with any of the characters. Also, PG-13 and PG war films feel very cinematic to me, but also unrealistic and un-war-like. It felt odd in storytelling that's otherwise very tense and visceral.

But overall, I give Dunkirk a thumbs-up. I will take this hands-down over the normal mindless summer dreck.

I loved it. The cinematography was captivating as was the misic. But the sounds on the beach in the ship, and in the AIR were astonishing. Little details like the pilots kept their masks on and didn't dramatically remove them till they were down. Yes the dialog was mostly absent, and I appreciated that. I loved the subtle impression that they had 'lost' and were coming home to shame and then not so much. The reading of the speech the way it would have been, one soldier to his group from a paper. I wanted to be the old man handing beers through the window.
My dad said it was very British. Maybe so. I loved every second of it. I do wish the story of how the Germans backed off and meant to crush them with air power but got socked in and then they escaped, had been more present. To do that Nolan would have to tell a German story too. However, the hopelessness of the soldiers on the beach is there. And in good British fashion they did their duty and stayed orderly.
I liked it and I believe it is one of the best.