Dunkirk (2017) - Christopher Nolan

[drinkanddestroy]

Dump this broad and get back together with the one who served in the IDF.

Good idea. I saw LONE SURVIVOR with IDF girl. We both liked it 

[Novecento]

Perfect for me. No (real) dialogue .

Yes - that was great. Film for film's sake.

At the end the film becomes poetic, which is out of place and hurts the film, no matter what Nolan's intentions were (a Spitfire gliding fooreever without the motor running, even shooting down a plane in-between! Pure fantasy. Would have been great - in another film.).

I was in total agreement with pretty much everything you wrote up until this point. I actually loved the poetic ending. I get your point about it being fantasy, but I think Nolan's intention was for it to be metaphorical. It totally worked for me.

At last someone who gets it!

Who made you the arbiter of good taste? 

Plus you didn't even like it that much! It seems like Mike, RR Power and I are the only ones who really enjoyed it.

[mike siegel]

Oh I didn't mean to say I didn't like the ending. I just have a built-in filter, a silent bell that rings when something sticks out regarding continuity, mood or rhythm. I'm sort of an expert with pre 1945 airplanes so I couldn't help raising my eyebrows because everything that happened previously was believable, although ships don't sink in 20 seconds. The endiing could have been edited poetic yet still more realistic . INTERSTELLAR had a problem with the ending as well. Anyway, he is a very interesting filmmaker. Interesting project, pretty close to home for me: Whenever my old school-mate Roland Emmerich  makes a new disaster movie, I am often asked what my "dream project" would be, if someone would hand me over 180 Million to make a film... Most of the time I thought of a totally realistic film about Rommel & Montgomery in Africa, including re-building vehicles etc. (in films the Germans always are equipped with US half-tracks. That only got better in recent years, in Band Of Brothers, or even in the interesting Brad Pitt - tank film, another film that had - a bigger - problem with the ending. Good endings in films are more difficult to achieve these days it seems). My grandpa served in Rommel's orderly for a while and had told me great stories in the 70s. Also NONE of the films about the war in Africa depicted realism. So I would have done DUNKIRK, set in Africa so to speak! Never thinking before anybody would really approach such a project, as mentioned above... Not everybody's cup of tea.

[drinkanddestroy]

A good movie about Rommel in Africa: Five Graves to Cairo  

[mike siegel]

Sure, it is the best. But I was talking about something else...

[noodles_leone]

Who made you the arbiter of good taste?  

Plus you didn't even like it that much! It seems like Mike, RR Power and I are the only ones who really enjoyed it.

Myself! Turns out I almost always agree with me.
More seriously, it's not so much about good taste as about getting what the film is. Which has nothing to do with taste or judgement. Then, you can like or dislike it. You can also do it before you "get" the film but I'm not very interested in your opinion at that point.

I would probably have loved the film, had it been done before Gravity, Fury road and The Revenant: despite their flaws, each of these films do what Dunkirk tries to do, only much better. But I really like the fact that Nolan tries that in a "realistic" war movie.

Ps: I liked the poetic ending too.
I just found weird that Nolan seemed to hesitate about the final shot of the movie (between the burning plane and the close up).

[drinkanddestroy]

n_l, you seem to be saying that you apprrciate experimentation even when a movie is not good. To me, experimentation for its own sake is stupid. I prefer a "classic Hollywood style" good movie to an experimental crappy movie.

[noodles_leone]

Of course I do.

I think it's a filmmaker and film goer's duty to applaud at least the will to experiment. Without flawed - or even failed - experimentations, you would never have a "classic Hollywood style good movie" because nobody would have ever found out how to do them. We would still be watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9MoAQJFn_8. Experimentation has to be rewarded, and we shouldn't count on the studios (it isn't their job) or the mainstream audiences (why would they even care?) to do it... so it's all on you, buddy. Sorry.
But who am I to tell you what to do? You have the right to openly dislike cinema and work for its demise  

Now does that mean I'm willing to pardon every flaw a movie has because it's experimenting?

Of course it doesn't.