Dunkirk - Movie Review

Starring Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Jack Lowden, James D'Arcy, Tom Glynn-Carney and Barry Keoghan.
Written & Directed by Christopher Nolan.

★★★½

Nolan's WWII movie doesn't have a signature battle scene. It has men just trying to escape. We never see a Nazi's face. We just get the you-are-there experience of soldiers stranded on a beach, trying to survive from being sitting ducks.

Nolan has made an ensemble, but he's given the main roles to relative unknowns. Harry Styles is pretty famous, but this is his first real acting job, and he's very good at it. The kid has a future. The Jim Caviezel breakout here is Fionn Whitehead as Tommy. It's through his eyes we see the bleakness.

Some of Nolan's ensemble show up for support. Tom Hardy once again spends most of his screentime with his face covered like he did as Bane. Cillian Murphy shows up as a shellshocked soldier, a lone survivor of a sunken ship. Michael Caine's voice makes a cameo. Kenneth Branagh (Conspiracy, Valkyrie) plays a composite character, the admiral in charge, there on the beach with everyone else. Oscar winner Mark Rylance is one of the British citizens with small boats who sail across the channel to rescue however many they can.

The dialogue is sparse. I saw this in IMAX, the way it's meant to be seen, and it is an immersive experience. The viewer is there, standing on the beach, or flying in the plane, or sailing on the ship, or whereever Nolan takes us. He also does an interesting non-linear experiment with time. The Whitehead-led beach scenes take place over a several days. The Rylance-led boat scenes take place over a one day. The Hardy-led aerial scenes take place over an hour. It can create some confusion but all of the timelines meet in the end.

This approach also prevents it from becoming a masterpiece. Other than the flawed bookend Spielberg tacked on Saving Private Ryan, that's a classic that will survive for decades more to come. Nolan sacrifices narrative for immersion, and if he'd managed to throw in some better storytelling on top of everything else he'd provided, that could have been his best film to date. As is, I'd still put Memento, The Dark Knight, and Inception ahead of it.

I also like how Nolan kept it PG-13 so I could take my sons to it.

Dunkirk is #1 at box office

For the weekend of July 21-23, 2017, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk was the big hit. Nolan is still one of the most bankable directors in Hollywood, and he has made another critical and commercial success. The WWII drama, which is really about the largest evacuation effort of the war, managed to bring people in despite not having any stars in the main roles.

A notable success in its own right was second-place's Girls Trip. It may have looked like a similar effort to summer's earlier flop Rough Night, but reviews were much kinder and this one didn't have the twist of the girls accidentally killing a guy.

Valerian & the City of 1000 Planets is a bomb in the US. With a production budget exceeding $200 million, it'll need to be a massive overseas hit if it wants to make its money back. Personally I think Luc Besson should have tried to find someone more recognizable than Dane DeHaan in the title role.

Wonder Woman is now officially the domestic winner of summer. It'll pass $400 million soon, and it's been made official that the sequel will arrive in December 2019.

Opens July 28
THE EMOJI MOVIE with the voices of James Corden, TJ Miller and Patrick Stewart.
ATOMIC BLONDE with Charlize Theron, James McAvoy and John Goodman.

Random Movie Stuff - 9/6/13

- Matt Damon's the latest to join Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.  Not much is known about it, but rumors are leaking out that it takes place in the near-future when climate change has killed off most of agriculture, but a wormhole has opened, and scientists journey to try to find a sustainable planet in different dimensions.  It stars Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, David Oyelowo, Ellen Burstyn, Wes Bentley, Mackenzie Foy and John Lithgow.

- Roland Emmerich is planning on rebooting Stargate, and to do so as a trilogy. The 1994 original starred Kurt Russell, James Spader and Jaye Davidson and spawned several successful TV series.

- Al Pacino and Holly Hunter will star in Manglehorn, about a man living with the regrets of a past crime that cost him the love of his life.

- Tom Hiddleston (Thor) has joined Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak, a haunted house movie that also stars Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam and Mia Wasikowska.  He replaces Benedict Cumberbatch, who dropped out last month.

- Rupert Grint (Harry Potter) has joined the cast of Enemy of Man, a new spin on Macbeth starring Game of Throners Sean Bean and Charles Dance.

- The new RoboCop trailer is online:

Random Movie Stuff - 7/24/13

- Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan are teaming with Sylvester Stallone to make Creed.  Stallone would reprise his role as Rocky Balboa as a trainer who helps Apollo Creed's grandson (Jordan) to be a professional boxer.

- David Goyer and Zack Snyder, the respective writer and director of Man of Steel, will reunite for Batman vs. Superman, coming in 2015.  The title's not for sure yet, but Goyer confirmed they're already in pre-production.

- Gil Kenan (Monster House) and Rosemary DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married, The Watch) will star in a remake of Poltergeist.

- Carey Mulligan (The Great Gatsby) is in talks to star in The Fury, about the UK suffrage movement.  It'll be written by Abi Morgan (Shame, which co-starred Mulligan).

- Topher Grace is the latest to join the cast of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.  It's set for release on November 7, 2014, and stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck and John Lithgow.

- Jessica Alba has joined the cast of Stretch, starring Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring) as a limo driver on his last shift who picks up a billionaire (Chris Pine) whose freaky special requests get darker as the night goes on.  Ed Helms and Brooklyn Decker co-star. Joe Carnahan (The Grey) will direct.

- Clint Eastwood will direct The Jersey Boys, based on the hit Broadway musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  Christopher Walken is the first cast member to join. He'll play mobster Angelo "Gyp" DeCarlo.

New trailers:

- Keanu Reeves leads 47 RONIN, opening on December 25.



- Rachel McAdams marries a man who can do a bit of time-traveling in ABOUT TIME, opening November 1.

Random Entertainment News - 5/7/13

- The Avengers 2 is slated for May 2015, but not all of the actors are pinned down, most notably Robert Downey Jr.  Downey made $50 million on the first Avengers and could wind up in the $70 million range for the sequel.  Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk) and others also haven't agreed, and Marvel may replace some of them if they can't settle salary disputes.

- Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) is in talks to join Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar.  Jonathan Nolan (The Dark Knight) wrote the script, and it's set to open November 7, 2014.

- Johnny Depp (The Baker) and Meryl Streep (The Witch) are in talks to star in a big-screen version of Into the Woods for director Rob Marshall (Chicago).

- Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are teaming up for a remake of Guys & Dolls.  The original film version starred Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra.

- Meanwhile, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill will return for 21 Jump Street 2, set to open June 6, 2014.

- Megan Fox will play April in a new live-action/CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Will Arnett co-stars.

- Jason Statham will star in a remake of Heat, not the 1995 classic with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, but the 1987 drama that starred Burt Reynolds.  It's about a gambler who takes on the mob after his friend is brutally beaten.  Sofia Vergara, Stanley Tucci. Jason Alexander, Anne Heche and Michael Angarano co-star.

- NBC has renewed five dramas for this fall - Grimm, Law & Order: SVU, Revolution, Parenthood and Chicago Fire.

- Angus T. Jones will not return as a regular on CBS's Two and a Half Men this fall.  Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer have signed new one-year deals to continue with Season 11.

Random Movie News - 3/8/13

- George Lucas has confirmed that Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher are all on board for Star Wars Episode VII.

- Keri Russell (Dark Skies) has joined the cast of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, starring Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke and Kodi Smit-McPhee.  Most of humanity has been wiped out, but the film centers on a resistance group in San Francisco, and Caesar's attempt to maintain order in his new ape society.

- Liam Neeson and Giovanni Ribisi have join the cast of A Million Ways to Die in the West, a western comedy starring Seth MacFarlane as a cowboy training to be a gunfighter.  Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried co-star.

- Michael Keaton will star in Birdman, about an actor once famous playing a superhero who is now trying to mount a Broadway play.  Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zack Galifianakis, Amy Ryan and Naomi Watts.  Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel) will direct.

- Jessica Chastain tops Warner Bros' wish list to play Jane in their upcoming live-action Tarzan movie.

- Christopher Nolan's next movie will open November 7, 2014. It's called Interstellar, and plot details are currently under wraps.

Zack Snyder directing Superman

Zack Snyder, he of 300 and Legend of the Guardians, is going to direct the next Superman movie. I think what really got him the job was Watchmen, and with Christopher Nolan producing, I think it has great potential.

My main problems with the Bryan Singer movie was Lois Lane, not only the actress but the entire dynamic of her having a kid and a fiance. It made the whole thing too mopey. Brandon Routh and Kevin Spacey were good, I thought, but I don't want to see Superman brood.

So where will this new one go? Sure, maybe he'll fly shirtless with exceptional abs and slo-mo hover here and there. I trust Nolan, and I've liked Snyder's previous stuff. I just hope they don't make the mistake of making it too dark.