Last movie you watched (Page 74 of 83)

They need to make some sort of trilogy boxset of this, Eraserhead, and Rosemary's Baby for people who never, ever want to have kids. *raises hand* Good Lord.

If there's one flaw here it's that the titular character is a bit too cartoonishly evil. But as a portrait of grief and a devastating tearing-down of the mandatory love we're supposed to feel for our children, it's absolutely brilliant. We don't deserve Tilda Swinton. I watched this to gear up for Ramsay's upcoming You Were Never Really Here, for which my man Joaquin got Best Actor at Cannes, and now I'm even more stoked for that film.

Last edited by Abbie (2017-07-20 05:13:36)

My "Love-Frustration" relationship with Nolan continues...

Saw it in 70MM Imax - all the praise heaped upon its immersive realism is warranted. Some striking images. And effective sound design - it must be the loudest flick I've seen in ages. Bullet jump-scares. The diving Stuka sequences were probably the highlight.

But once again, the editing lets it down. Too fragmented. One plotline resolves, and then Nolan rewinds time to bring you another perspective. Imagine Frodo drops the Ring into the lava, the Black Tower collapses and everyone rejoices, and then it cuts to another's perspective hours earlier where we have to go through all that again.

The refusal to use much CG gives it a small-scale perspective than what we're used to. No U-boats, no tanks, only three Spitfires, one bomber, very few warships, a dozen pleasure craft, and a few queues of extras on the beach. Contrast the Greek invasion armada in Troy - admittedly that's too much in the opposite direction. Dunkirk is also completely santized of any blood 'n guts, unusual in today's war movies. Contrast with Hacksaw Ridge.

The second downside of trying to capture everything in-camera is that action scenes are disjointed and confusing as there's not enough coverage. Poor continuity too. Then add in Nolan's fucking around with chronology, and there's no emotional through-line in the narrative. It's clear by now that Nolan is a poor director of action. Also, he doesn't care much about dialogue and is happy to have none or have it drowned out by Zimmer's bombast.

Only afterwards did I realise that the beach-wharf sequences played out over a week, while the boat narrative played out over a day, and Tom Hardy's Spitfire pilot sequences played out over an hour. The title card didn't make that clear. The way it's cut (and conventional movie logic) dictates that this all should be concurrent. Afterall, it's a very simple story - men need to evacuate the beach.

There was escalating tension, but it went on too long... the boys plugging holes in the trawler, the repetitive aerial dogfights (impressive the first and second times, but got boring after a while). And man, those Spitfires can glide and glide.

Also, no context with no overall historical geographical layout, also unusual in "highbrow" historical pics. Why didn't the Germans just send 100+ planes to finish off the BEF?

In short, Nolan, in all his mature movies, leans heavily on Zimmer, IMAX, an A-list cast, and sheer chutzpah. It seems enough. He gets away with it every time, despite the short-comings in editing. His movies promise more than they deliver e.g. remember the trailer for Inception that promised you an architecture-bending mind-fuck (that Dr Strange actually delivered) and instead you got a conventional James Bond shoot-out in the snow.

But overall, Dunkirk felt more like an "DUNKIRK EXPERIENCE" that you see in a War Museum, than conventional movie.

It's not pronounced the way you think it is

I wanna try phoneticizing it, hold on.

So, generally, it's "huht" — rhymes with "foot' — "spah." "Huht-spah." But then it also has some of that Smeagol-clearing-his-throat hhhcccckkkkchchhhckk-ness before the first syllable, so it's ultimately pronounced "hchsHUHT-spah."

This has been fun for you and for me.

I think the best phonetic spelling is phleghmuht-spah

"You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

I wanted to love this so hard. I rooted for it when the entire internet seemed determined to rise up in hatred years before it came out. I was genuinely thrilled by the first trailer. Even when the reviews broke yesterday, I was hoping against hope it would somehow be good.

I was in actual physical discomfort throughout this movie's ninety minutes from how bad it was. Absolutely nothing good from the books is here. To borrow Dorkman's analogy, someone started calling this movie The Dark Tower and stuck in characters we know were in a series called The Dark Tower, but it's no more The Dark Tower than a shitty fan trailer is.

What makes it so much worse is how this thing completely fucking wasted its cast. We were never gonna get a better Roland than Idris Elba or Flagg than Matthew McConaughey, and the filmmakers fucking blew it. And it doesn't just apply to the two leads. Remember the awesome crazy weirdo charismatic blonde wife from Mad Max: Fury Road? She's in here, but it might as well be a random extra playing her character for all the impact she's allowed to have. The characters are all nothings, the script seems like it was assembled by a computer, and Mid-World has all the vibrancy and life of a screensaver.

I can't decide whether this or Beauty and the Beast is my least favorite entry in what has otherwise been a damn fine year for film. What a joke.

Last edited by Abbie (2017-08-04 03:28:46)

I'm very surpried by this information.

We did an Extended Edition episode on it and rather enjoyed it.

It's not in any way ground breaking but if you enjoy adventure films and want to watch a Pirates sequel you could do far worse.

It's impossible to review this film without spoiling it. Suffice to say I've never seen another piece of art so full of seething, all-encompassing hatred. I am, as they say, shook.

Like The Witch, this is an extremely poweful, extremely disturbing film that a lot of people are gonna hate until twenty years from now when it becomes a classic.

Last edited by Abbie (2017-09-15 03:46:35)

The new Kingsmen probably not high art, but it's top fun.

went to your blog and hoped for a review because I was curious. Got an interesting discussion of Veggietales.

Surprisingly, as a Christian, I agree with you that the Bible needs to be handed down as it is. There are things that are completely terrible in that book, and the text doesn't water it down.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.