First teaser trailer released for Christopher Nolan's latest project - Dunkirk:
Dunkirk (2017)
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Susan Boulton
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Keith Taylor
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The teaser looks pretty good. This is gonna be one of those movies I build up in my head over the next year, then I'll inevitably be disappointed 
A proper trailer is now up:
Trailer 2:
And on a related note, this also looks interesting for different reasons:
A cynic writes: everything looks fantastic in the latest Dunkirk trailer, but I can't help wondering where the twists and turns of the story are going to come from. Army evacuates from beach under attack from aircraft, and some make it off, some don't -- that's about it. You don't have much of a strategy element, but neither does it seem strongly focused on the stories of a few minor players. It seems to me to follow the rules of the modern blockbuster in that the drama is all in the explosions.
Frost Giant
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The preview looked good, I'll be curious to see what Nolan does with a war picture.
WaylanderToo
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watch it - it is magnificent! The only thing I did not like was the time-line which jumped around a little. Other than that 10/10
AlexH
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I was disappointed in this. It looks great, but I didn't find the characters engaging at all. The acting was good, but I guess they weren't given enough screen time to develop a connection. There was no need for the incessant music all the way through either - the planes and gunfire were epic enough for the horrors of war, and I found the music combined with that off-putting.
My father was at Dunkirk. He told me about an incident while they were waiting for evacuation that was depicted in the film just as he described it.
Gave me a funny feeling.
Gave me a funny feeling.
I thought this was a great movie. It took a bold move to tell the story of Dunkirk from the perspective of the ordinary men rather than some overblown history that laid out the facts a'la A Bridge Too Far or The Battle of Britain (Don't get me wrong, ABtF and TBfB are great too, but I don't think it's Nolen's style to copy an old template for a war film.) This is more what fighting is like for everyone - it's not all Call of Duty or Band of Brothers set pieces. It reminds me of what a veteran said on The World at War - something along the lines of 'Fighting is nothing like what you have in the movies, you can be sitting about for days not seeing the enemy, not hearing a shot being fired and then being told that the battle is lost and you have to retreat.'
It's difficult to say you can enjoy or love a film like this. It gripped me, made me think and made a lasting impression.
I was on edge almost all the film - I found myself gripping the chair and being mesmerised by the visuals, the music, the characters and drama.
No problems with the timesplitting employed - I'm not much of a 'linear man' when it comes to novels & films and like experimentation like this. It meant that there were great moments, say when Tom Hardy's pilot flies over his downed wingman and he sees a 'wave that he is okay', but we find to be completely overturned when we actually find out what was happening to the pilot. A great use of Subjectivity!
Of course the apex of the movie, in some senses, was ridiculous: Tom Hardy's 'hampered' Spitfire taking out a diving Stuka. But I'll allow that moment of fantasy. (In fact there was a bit of discussion amongst those who are obsessed with these planes that the dogfights were all 'wrong' but that is, I think, because they actually used real aircraft to film everything, more-or-less, and they just couldn't afford to actually make the planes manoeuvre how the actual pilots of the time flew their aircraft. There would have been a much bigger risk of crashing these planes and destroying a real bit of history. However I'm not obsessed by this topic and did not notice anything in the dogfights that pulled me out of the movie!)
I'll allow it because I was redeemed by the fantastic final moments for Hardy's airman as he lands and sets his plane on fire and he remains, as the sun sets, and the Germans (for the first time appearing as men!) capture him. It was a great scene.
A great film.
It's difficult to say you can enjoy or love a film like this. It gripped me, made me think and made a lasting impression.
I was on edge almost all the film - I found myself gripping the chair and being mesmerised by the visuals, the music, the characters and drama.
No problems with the timesplitting employed - I'm not much of a 'linear man' when it comes to novels & films and like experimentation like this. It meant that there were great moments, say when Tom Hardy's pilot flies over his downed wingman and he sees a 'wave that he is okay', but we find to be completely overturned when we actually find out what was happening to the pilot. A great use of Subjectivity!
Of course the apex of the movie, in some senses, was ridiculous: Tom Hardy's 'hampered' Spitfire taking out a diving Stuka. But I'll allow that moment of fantasy. (In fact there was a bit of discussion amongst those who are obsessed with these planes that the dogfights were all 'wrong' but that is, I think, because they actually used real aircraft to film everything, more-or-less, and they just couldn't afford to actually make the planes manoeuvre how the actual pilots of the time flew their aircraft. There would have been a much bigger risk of crashing these planes and destroying a real bit of history. However I'm not obsessed by this topic and did not notice anything in the dogfights that pulled me out of the movie!)
I'll allow it because I was redeemed by the fantastic final moments for Hardy's airman as he lands and sets his plane on fire and he remains, as the sun sets, and the Germans (for the first time appearing as men!) capture him. It was a great scene.
A great film.
I enjoyed it, but I can't help thinking it could have been better. I also didn't like the jumping about in time, and kept getting confused eg when the three Spitfires fly over Mark Rylance's boat seen from his POV, I thought it was a new flight not the ones we'd already seen, and the chap they pulled from the torpedoed ship, we later see in uniform getting onto the ship. I think. As I say, I got confused, which rather pulled me out of the whole film, rather than allowing me to be immersed in it.
I agree with Alex about the characters not being engaging, at least as far as the three soldiers on the beach were concerned (I could never work out which was which, so that didn't help!) and it wouldn't have worried me if all three of them had copped it. Mark Rylance was superb, as always, and the older boy with him was fine, but I could have done without the other lad and his subplot which added nothing as far as I was concerned -- that people die in meaningless ways even in wartime was far better done in Their Finest.
The film was a lot less emotionally engaging than I'd expected. I'd seen the trailers, and that staccato-typed tagline of "When 400,000 men couldn't get home, home came for them" had me welling up every time, but the only occasions during the film that approached it was firstly when Kenneth Branagh (also v good) sees the little ships for the first time and the Elgar swells, and secondly at the end when the elderly blind man says "Well done" and the solder says something like "All we did was survive" and the answer is "That's enough". The rest of it, nada. Our cinema had a booklet compiled by a local history group in connection with some of the little ships that sailed from the Southampton area, telling the men's stories in their own words, and I was in floods of tears reading those -- they were far more affecting and horrific than any of the stuff on the screen.
The scenes with the planes were very good. Though I thought the wingman-waving scene from Tom Hardy's POV happened after we know the truth of the incident -- someone needs to watch the film again and check! The reason I think it was that way round is because it was the only occasion when the time jumps actually added something to the film, because of the dramatic irony. So if I've got it wrong, then nothing about the "5 days, 2 days, 1 hour" or whatever it was worked for me. I agree the final shooting down of the Stuka was more than a little far-fetched, but I also forgave it for the brilliance -- if implausibility -- of that final flight along the beach and landing. I didn't see it myself, but my sister says there was a documentary about Dunkirk and in it an old soldier confirmed the men on the beaches were blazing angry at the RAF -- who were largely unseen, as they were fighting miles away to hold up the German advance -- so much so that downed pilots were actually prevented from boarding the evacuation ships by way of punishment. The old boy was in tears when he found out the truth.
The one bit of the film I really didn't like was the "Fight them on the beaches" speech at the end. I can fully understand why they wouldn't want someone impersonating Churchill, or have it as a gravelly voice-over, but the terribly flat way it was read out just killed it stone dead. Rylance or Branagh could have given it meaning without any element of jingoism, or the words could just have been typed onto the screen. It was so downplayed, I wondered why they bothered including it.
mosaix -- if it isn't too personal or upsetting, can I ask which incident it was that your dad told you about? (Very few war memories have been passed on from my family. My dad was in the marines -- he'd signed up pre-war, not HO -- but he never spoke of any action in which his ships were involved, only of funny incidents or time spent ashore, whether because he never saw any action or he simply couldn't talk of it, I'm not sure. My uncle -- afraid of heights so couldn't climb a ladder, so he volunteered for the paratroops! -- was badly injured at Arnhem, and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp, but I never thought to ask him about his experiences until it was too late and he'd developed dementia. I understand another uncle suffered PTSD post-war but I never met him, so I've no idea what horrors he'd seen/undergone.)
I agree with Alex about the characters not being engaging, at least as far as the three soldiers on the beach were concerned (I could never work out which was which, so that didn't help!) and it wouldn't have worried me if all three of them had copped it. Mark Rylance was superb, as always, and the older boy with him was fine, but I could have done without the other lad and his subplot which added nothing as far as I was concerned -- that people die in meaningless ways even in wartime was far better done in Their Finest.
The film was a lot less emotionally engaging than I'd expected. I'd seen the trailers, and that staccato-typed tagline of "When 400,000 men couldn't get home, home came for them" had me welling up every time, but the only occasions during the film that approached it was firstly when Kenneth Branagh (also v good) sees the little ships for the first time and the Elgar swells, and secondly at the end when the elderly blind man says "Well done" and the solder says something like "All we did was survive" and the answer is "That's enough". The rest of it, nada. Our cinema had a booklet compiled by a local history group in connection with some of the little ships that sailed from the Southampton area, telling the men's stories in their own words, and I was in floods of tears reading those -- they were far more affecting and horrific than any of the stuff on the screen.
The scenes with the planes were very good. Though I thought the wingman-waving scene from Tom Hardy's POV happened after we know the truth of the incident -- someone needs to watch the film again and check! The reason I think it was that way round is because it was the only occasion when the time jumps actually added something to the film, because of the dramatic irony. So if I've got it wrong, then nothing about the "5 days, 2 days, 1 hour" or whatever it was worked for me. I agree the final shooting down of the Stuka was more than a little far-fetched, but I also forgave it for the brilliance -- if implausibility -- of that final flight along the beach and landing. I didn't see it myself, but my sister says there was a documentary about Dunkirk and in it an old soldier confirmed the men on the beaches were blazing angry at the RAF -- who were largely unseen, as they were fighting miles away to hold up the German advance -- so much so that downed pilots were actually prevented from boarding the evacuation ships by way of punishment. The old boy was in tears when he found out the truth.
The one bit of the film I really didn't like was the "Fight them on the beaches" speech at the end. I can fully understand why they wouldn't want someone impersonating Churchill, or have it as a gravelly voice-over, but the terribly flat way it was read out just killed it stone dead. Rylance or Branagh could have given it meaning without any element of jingoism, or the words could just have been typed onto the screen. It was so downplayed, I wondered why they bothered including it.
mosaix -- if it isn't too personal or upsetting, can I ask which incident it was that your dad told you about? (Very few war memories have been passed on from my family. My dad was in the marines -- he'd signed up pre-war, not HO -- but he never spoke of any action in which his ships were involved, only of funny incidents or time spent ashore, whether because he never saw any action or he simply couldn't talk of it, I'm not sure. My uncle -- afraid of heights so couldn't climb a ladder, so he volunteered for the paratroops! -- was badly injured at Arnhem, and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp, but I never thought to ask him about his experiences until it was too late and he'd developed dementia. I understand another uncle suffered PTSD post-war but I never met him, so I've no idea what horrors he'd seen/undergone.)
TJ he was on that 'jetty' that had been dive bombed. Some soldiers had to balance on the remaining wooden spars to get over the gap as per the film.
By the time his turn came the spars had collapsed (don't think this was shown) and he had to run and jump across. Lots of them took it in turn to do this and the waiting was intolerable. They knew not of all of them would escape. He was one of the lucky ones.
By the time his turn came the spars had collapsed (don't think this was shown) and he had to run and jump across. Lots of them took it in turn to do this and the waiting was intolerable. They knew not of all of them would escape. He was one of the lucky ones.
I havn't seen it yet, but very much want to. A friend of mine said it did bring tears as he'd been told many stories from his relatives that were there. My great Uncle Wink, nicknamed Wink, as he had a squint, died in what were known as the safe houses, basically bunkers defending the beach, trying to keep the Germans off the beach during the evacuation. He was grenaded in a safehouse. He was 20 years old.
I was pretty annoyed when someone described the film as full of 'toxic masculinity'. That was war, it isn't a fairytale, it was real men, fighting against a real enemy that really would have filled the world with toxic evil.
I was pretty annoyed when someone described the film as full of 'toxic masculinity'. That was war, it isn't a fairytale, it was real men, fighting against a real enemy that really would have filled the world with toxic evil.
Toxic masculinity?! I don't know what film that person saw, but it's not the one I watched.
The men on the beaches are scared, raging angry, depressed and demoralised. There are cowards and bullies shown, men suffering shell-shock, and men who are would-be (and possibly have-been) murderers. There's aggression, certainly, but it arises from fear. There are moments of heroism, if that's thought to be toxic and/or masculine, but of the quiet understated kind that was absolutely of the time eg Mark Rylance's character, or the Tom Hardy pilot -- there's a job to be done and they have to get on and do it without making a fuss.
NB I have heard second hand of a review that states -- with apparent indignation and/or by way of a warning advisory -- that there are no people of colour shown in the film and only a couple of women, which rather makes one despair of historical understanding. (I think there was in fact a contingent of Indian troops at Dunkirk, but the film wasn't attempting to show the whole 350-400,000 on the beaches, only a representation of the great majority, who would inevitably have been white.)
The men on the beaches are scared, raging angry, depressed and demoralised. There are cowards and bullies shown, men suffering shell-shock, and men who are would-be (and possibly have-been) murderers. There's aggression, certainly, but it arises from fear. There are moments of heroism, if that's thought to be toxic and/or masculine, but of the quiet understated kind that was absolutely of the time eg Mark Rylance's character, or the Tom Hardy pilot -- there's a job to be done and they have to get on and do it without making a fuss.
NB I have heard second hand of a review that states -- with apparent indignation and/or by way of a warning advisory -- that there are no people of colour shown in the film and only a couple of women, which rather makes one despair of historical understanding. (I think there was in fact a contingent of Indian troops at Dunkirk, but the film wasn't attempting to show the whole 350-400,000 on the beaches, only a representation of the great majority, who would inevitably have been white.)
Id look for the article, but want to start a political/opinions discussion. It just annoyed me. Yeah, I read the same review, and thought 'yeah, but you know... History and all that. This isn't a made up story. ' The past is a different country, they do things differently there.
Is Dunkirk out on DVD now then?
Is Dunkirk out on DVD now then?
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