Topic: Anyone been to the movie Dunkirk ?

[vfourfreak]

If so, what did you think of it ??

Kev

[vfourfreak]

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170728-should-you-see-dunkirk

I think I will

[simon#42]

let me know what you think of it .

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Just saw it.

[simon#42]

Just saw it.

and?

[vfourfreak]

tenterhooks here . .

basically I have the decision to see it in an IMAX theatre, or just a local cinema where possibly the presentation wont be so impressive

what format did you view it in ?

Kev

[Killer Canary]

My predictions, hopefully I'm wrong:
there will be a hot leading lady who never existed,
the hero will be from Seattle,
the americans come along in the nick of time and save everyone's asses.
Witness the debacles that were The Great Escape and Flyboys.

[carnivorous chicken]

the hero will be from Seattle,

Oh, you mean Boeing? Ha!

[simon#42]

My predictions, hopefully I'm wrong:
there will be a hot leading lady who never existed,
the hero will be from Seattle,
the americans come along in the nick of time and save everyone's asses.
Witness the debacles that were The Great Escape and Flyboys.

should not be to many americans in it , they didnt show up for a couple more years .

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

No Yanks portrayed in the film. The cast is pretty amazing (including the relative unknown lead, Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance).  The Tom Hardy character has a great arc, too.  I didn't care for Harry Styles (some British boy band pop star).  The movie is visually stunning -- Director Christopher Nolan emphasized practical effects over CGI, and it shows. In fact, the production used period airplanes, warships and even some "surviving" civilian vessels that were actually used in the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk.  The presentation of the story is also interesting in that it interweaves events (sometime repeated) based on the perspective of the characters.

It is worth checking out. 

[vfourfreak]

Thanks for that ! I'll be there as sooon as it's available in my locality, but can I ask must it be be viewewed in IMAX format or is it equally impresseive in normal presentation. Like my small town cinema.

Tiny town : think last Picture Show

Kev

[simon#42]

No Yanks portrayed in the film. The cast is pretty amazing (including the relative unknown lead, Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance).  The Tom Hardy character has a great arc, too.  I didn't care for Harry Styles (some British boy band pop star).  The movie is visually stunning -- Director Christopher Nolan emphasized practical effects over CGI, and it shows. In fact, the production used period airplanes, warships and even some "surviving" civilian vessels that were actually used in the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk.  The presentation of the story is also interesting in that it interweaves events (sometime repeated) based on the perspective of the characters.

It is worth checking out. 

thanks on the strength of that review i will give it a look ! 

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Thanks for that ! I'll be there as sooon as it's available in my locality, but can I ask must it be be viewewed in IMAX format or is it equally impresseive in normal presentation. Like my small town cinema.

Tiny town : think last Picture Show

Kev

It was filmed in IMAX but I saw it on a large digital projection theater.

[CycleRanger]

I saw it today.  Pretty to look at, especially the air sequences.
However, almost zero character development.
The old guy on the boat was most interesting character but even he didn't have much to do.
(Tom Hardy was good but once again he spends most of the film wearing a mask!)
The CGI was pretty good but the ship bombing sequences were just bad.

I did like the way they cut around in the time line to fit the story together.
But in trying to "personalize" the events I feel he failed to capture the scale of the event.
There were hundreds of planes, ships, thousands of troops, etc. that just didn't appear on the screen.
It was worth seeing but I wouldn't consider it a classic. It was no Longest Day or Bridge Too Far.

He avoided most of the war movie cliches but Chris Nolan could have used some help with the script.

But, I'm quite a WWII buff and I'm always super-critical of war films. 

[Kevin D]

Saw it at the local digital screen and it was great, as a stock 750 in good tune is. It mighta been better at the IMAX theater with an 836 kit, race cam, JMR head etc etc...

It might have been the loudest movie I have ever been to and the extra sound was used to good effect.

The strength of the movie is not the presentation. It is the heroic story of the British non-combatant fleet rescuing the British army from annihilation. The presentation does help facilitate the great story.

[SOHC4 Cafe Racer Fan]

Another thing lost in the film was that it was not just a single pick up by small boats that evacuated 300K plus men.  It spanned days and took over 850 vessels (over 200 being sunk), some of the small ones ferrying troops to larger ships off shore -- all the while fending off the Luftwaffe.

[jlh3rd]

Just saw it, was disappointed. Dunkirk wasn't about a few individual soldiers, a couple of spitfires ,and a boat. They didn't tell the story. It was about practically the entire British army backed up to the channel coast with nowhere to go, and desperately needed back in England.
How close was the German army? How much time did the stranded soldiers have. How desperate were the communications between commanders and the British command.
Why,specifically,could the soldiers not be rescued.? Who came up with the idea for the British coastal inhabitants to use their own boats? Did the soldiers know beforehand that their own citizens were coming to get them? Did the Germans know it?
    And with digital effect capability, the visual effect of 100's and 100's of personal boats and the frantic boarding and evacuation efforts of all involved would have been fantastic......yeah, just a little disappointed....

[jgger]

I had read about that evacuation, it was lightly covered in "The Rise and Fall of the 3RD Reich". A very touchy and dangerous operation where the Germans had backed the Brits into a corner. It was get out or die for them.

It's a shame that so much of history isn't taught in school, I can't imagine what it was like in person.

I guess Ill have to go see it soon myself.

[jlh3rd]

Exactly....I don't think the german's would have tolerated 300,000 plus troops as prisoners....another factor not discussed
    It is taught in some schools at least....my girlfriend's grandson,a sophomore to be in high school actually was taught about Dunkirk in his American history class...

[Keith]

I was dissppointed..it seemed there were only three Spitfires in the air at any time, and only three Stukas. The British commander just stood there, and the men in the stranded boat was a waste of time. Should have been cameras in the cockpits that made you feel the"g"s...or the feel of a steep dive. Hacksaw Ridge was a far better movie, in my opinion. This movie missed  portraying the raw emotion  and anger the soldiers and pilots must have experienced.

[simon#42]

i was also disappointed while not a bad film they totally failed to give you a sense of scale  . it looked like a few hundred men and a dozen boats
not 400 thousand plus men and hundreds of boats . they also didnt show that the boats made 3 or 4 trips a day for a week . it was a huge event
much more dramatic than d day but all this was lost im afraid .

[Don R]

 What he said ^ 

[tlbranth]

My Dad was at Dunkirk for 3 days. He lost all his friends to stuka bombers and his regiment had to be disbanded. I wish I'd queried him more but my recollection of what he told me was that the bombing and strafing was constant. This wasn't evident in the movie.
Luckily he survived Dunkirk and went on to kick the #$%* out of Jerry at El Alamein.
I enjoyed the movie. The spitfire scenes were especially good and the whole thing seemed quite realistic to me.

[vfourfreak]

My Dad was at Dunkirk for 3 days. He lost all his friends to stuka bombers and his regiment had to be disbanded. I wish I'd queried him more but my recollection of what he told me was that the bombing and strafing was constant. This wasn't evident in the movie.
Luckily he survived Dunkirk and went on to kick the #$%* out of Jerry at El Alamein.
I enjoyed the movie. The spitfire scenes were especially good and the whole thing seemed quite realistic to me.

Huge respect !

[74cb750]

Just saw it this weekend. Not a very good movie overall.