Movie Review: Dunkirk

Last night my wife and I saw an advanced screening of Christopher Nolan's WWII epic Dunkirk, and I'm still in awe of what we saw.

The film breaks down the rescue of nearly 400,000 allied soldiers in late May and early June of 1940 from three different points of view; Land, which follows the soldiers attempting to evacuate, Sea, which follows the civilian ships coming to their rescue, and Air, which follows two air force pilots attempting to offer as much cover as possible.

The film is sparse on dialogue, with the lead from the Land section speaking very little until the end, but massive on immersion.  Hans Zimmer's score, often timed out with a stopwatch keeps the tension high and the action moving.

The sheer spectacle of the film was pretty amazing for me, but after a day to think about it, I think I preferred the characterization in Saving Private Ryan to this, which focused much more on the people than the events it covered.

A few caveats: the movie is loud, and in many cases the accents are thick, so unless you've got an ear for English accents, you may have some difficulty understanding some of the dialogue. 

In the end I found the film to be an incredibly immersive experience, and well worth seeing in theatres.

Movie Review: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

So last week I saw Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but didn't want to give an opinion at the time as I needed to mull my feelings over a little.

So here we go:

First off, on the positive, I did feel that it connected nicely with Man of Steel - if you were not a fan of the earlier film due to tone, this one isn't going to change your opinion, but as far as existing in a shared world, this film does a pretty great job of setting a consistent tone for upcoming DC films.

On the negative side, the tone is much darker than you may like and thoroughly without humor (I counted two jokes in the entire movie), so if you're looking for the quips and witticisms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you may want to hold off for Captain America: Ciivil War.

In many ways I felt like this was designed to be a more grown up superhero film; it dealt with the fallout from the previous films (both in continuity and with moviegoers), focused on a retired Batman who had clearly already run Gotham city for years and attempted to introduce a number of upcoming bog players in the DC universe.

My biggest problem was honestly the lack of joy in the film - I fully understand that Batman has very little joy as a concept, but Superman is (for me) a character designed to provoke awe and wonder, and much of this film is focused on villainizing him.

In the end the movie was better than I feared, but not as good as I had hoped.

Move Review: Inception

This weekend I went out with my BFF Mike and saw the new Christopher Nolan film Inception.

First impression: Wow.

Luckily as I've had a day to digest it, my post will go on a little longer than that.

The premise of the film is pretty neat - imagine you could find a way to travel into a person's dreams, then imagine that while you're there you could find all of their secrets and bring the info back into the waking world. Our main characters in the film are extractors - shady figures who do exactly this, stealing secrets from businessmen and the like.

The title comes from the possible job of putting a thought in someone's head rather than taking one out, and more importantly, making them think the ideas was theirs in the first place.

I've loved movies based in the world of dreams for a long time, from Dreamscape to The Cell, there is just something so intriguing to me about journeys through the subconscious.

Also I love when my university book learning actually pays off in some way (I recognized that Canadian Ellen Page's character is named Ariadne, who in Greek mythology helped Theseus escape from the labyrinth of the Minotaur), so that I can feel my cash is actually leading towards me knowing more stuff.

The movie definitely falls within the category of films I would own, as I would recommend it to others and watch it again myself. The acting was great, the chase sequences were very cool and overall I simply felt invested in all these characters.

Years ago when I watched Memento, I thought that this writer/director had come up with an intriguing brain puzzle of a story. Inception is like that but on an entirely different level.