The Movie Thread

[me_in_japan]

by the way, the new short from Oats Studio is up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0V24IEHao

As before, int'restin. It's set in 'Nam, with a touch of Akira.

[AndrewGPaul]

In the last week, I've seen Despicable Me 3 (not as good as the other two, but still good - if you like Minions, of course) and Baby Driver (Excellent. Not so sure about the last act, but it's a very stylish film. Visually, but more importantly in the sound and use of music). Both worth a watch, IMO; Baby Driver moreso if you have to choose one.

[ashmie]

Dunkirk. We were there.
Good film. I give it 2 stars, Dad gave it 4. I thought Atonement did a better job at portraying the beach scenes. They just didn't have enough extras in this film to portray the panic and sheer numbers of the debacle. Way too much time focused on the air scenes made it feel very low budget. Overall a good effort and a killer Vangelis style soundtrack by Hans Zimmer that led and carried the whole piece. The first 20 minutes of the film are excellent. The pacing, the look, the atmosphere gives it that Saving Private Ryan kick off a good war film needs.
And then Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins) turns up, an actor who I hate. This ruined it a bit for me. The rest of the acting was spot on including Branagh with the Royal Shakespeare sea admiral character. Would I watch again? Probably not. If you like Spitfires though, this film is epic. For a better war film see Hamburger Ridge or American Sniper.
Very patriotic in places and very real but ultimately not A Bridge Too Far. I enjoyed the time with Dad as we sat under the speaker and he was leaping out of his seat literally and yelling "SHIT" "POOR BUGGERS"> LOL

[Primarch]

I saw Dunkirk today along with Yellowstreak.
I have to say that I loved every second of it. The film was absolutely unrelenting. Even in the quiet seconds you were waiting for something to happen, and it did. The pacing was spot on, I didn't take my eyes off the screen throughout the film. The film very cleverly interweaves three separate, yet connected time frames during the evacuation. The scenes on the beaches of Dunkirk cover a period of a week, for the crew of the small ships sent to rescue the troops the movie covers one day. Finally for the RAF pilots covering the evacuation, the whole affair is only one hour. As your view switches between the different locales, you'll see the same event happening from different viewpoints. At one stage early in the film, the RAF engage a bomber, about an hour later you see the same dogfight from the point of view of one of the ships' crew.
There isn't a whole lot of dialogue in the film, most of the time you're listening to engines roaring, the scream of divebombers as they unleash their payloads on the men below, or the sounds of panic as men try to escape a sinking ship. The music keeps the tension up, with a steady tick, tick, tick of a clock in the lulls between orchestra pieces. Whether that clock is counting down the seconds to salvation or the last few seconds of someone's life is really up to the viewer.
The cast are all brilliant (unless, as Ashmie does, you dislike a particular actor). I'm not Tom Hardy's biggest fan, but he puts his "glaring-eyes-and-hidden-mouth" acting experience to good use as the fighter pilot covering the evacuation. Beyond some aircraft you don't really see the Germans, the enemy is out there somewhere, but their presence as an invisible yet ever present threat works very well.
Overall I'd give this movie a very positive review. It is a great piece of cinema. Anyone expecting Harry Styles to run around shooting Nazis will be somewhat disappointed though. It is very much the story of an event rather than the story of any of the characters. Having watched it in IMAX, the whole world seemed a lot quieter and muted when I left the theatre.

Go and see it if you haven't already.

[kojibear]

Sounds like a great movie and just my cup of tea, and a darn sight more fun than my work today!

Look forward to watching it another time. Thanks for giving the run down on it gents.

[Mike the Pike]

Now that most of us have seen it (?) time to gripe...

Actually, I quite liked it too as a spectacle. It’s not a traditional war movie per se. Probably not a film one buys on iTunes/DVD/pirates and watches over and over again like Private Ryan etc. Nonetheless it’s a visually stunning representation of the actual events. IMHO you won’t be able to really appreciate unless you see it on the big screen.

Now for the whingeing...

Small ones first:
I just didn’t get the impression of hundreds of thousands on the beach. I know you can only hire so many extras, but...
Shooting down a Plane while gliding. It did actually happen during the war by all accounts but seemed too ‘miraculous’ for this supposedly realistic movie.
The Spit pilot closing his canopy before ditching. Duh!

All of these were quite forgivable given the overall accuracy and quality of the film.

However there was unforgivable error...

Bane gliding his Spitfire low over the beach then turning 180 degrees to land. The Plane would have lost soooo much energy in the turn it would have just fallen out of the sky. Nooooooo!

[Primarch]

Now for the whingeing...
I just didn’t get the impression of hundreds of thousands on the beach. I know you can only hire so many extras, but...

Hire, transport, clothe, feed etc. Unless you happen to know a quarter of a million unemployed WW2 re-enactors who all live within walking distance of Dunkirk, I think that was always going to be a problem without CGI-ing it and risking it breaking the immersion of the film a little. At least they didn't go the Sharpe route. 2 dozen guys and a lot of smoke.

I guess the Spitfire pilot closed the canopy after deciding not to bail out to maintain the aerodynamics of the plane to stay aloft for as long as possible. I can't imagine it would be much fun having the wind whipping past your head and trying to land your damaged plane on the sea at the same time. That's just my opinion though, I have no idea of correct procedure for ditching a turboprop plane into the sea after a dogfight.

The 180 degree, gliding intercept of the Stuka was a little too much, but by that stage I was feeling pretty shell-shocked myself and it barely registered.

[Mike the Pike]

Oh yeah, the decidedly 80’s style train interiors at the end...

[Mike the Pike]

Standard procedure for ditching was to open your canopy. As for wind whipping through your hair, how do you think WW1 pilots got on
Pilots flying in the tropics often flew with canopies open too.

[Primarch]

As for wind whipping through your hair, how do you think WW1 pilots got on

They wore a hat?