Hacker Cinema
Dunkirk
2017 · Film · 107 min
Directed by Christopher Nolan
The story of the miraculous evacuation of Allied soldiers from Belgium, Britain, Canada and France, who were cut off and surrounded by the German army from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk between May 26th and June 4th 1940 during World War II.
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72 comments on Hacker News
Nolan used Imax 70mm cameras to film some scenes in the Dark Knight Rises, like the plane scene to open the movie. Dunkirk and Interstellar used 65mm IMAX cameras.
You mean the new, worse, Dune movies. The David Lynch Dune movie was pretty colorful, right? So Dune itself was... Dunkirk-ified?
>three Batman movies
The first batman movie was a paint by numbers reimplementation of The Shadow (1997). You can find comparisons online, nearly shot by shot and most of the same plot beats. The second and third went sort of back towards a very mechanical batman representation that reminded me of the planned low budget Iron Man movie where he wouldn't have had the ability to fly. Just stomping around punching badguys like a Power Rangers extra. The new Bat Mobile seems to inspire some of this reputation
>Inception
Inceptions pretty flat for a film about dreams.
>Interstellar
Neuro-Diverse level of detail until the bits with space magic at the end.
>Tenet
I couldnt sit through 10 minutes of it. Its like the antifilm. It didnt want me to observe it otherwise it wouldnt have emitted such a piercing screeching noise.
>Dunkirk
He has an old period watch, and he recorded the ticking. He overlays the ticking constantly. Also he tells the story out of sequence for some reason. But theres lots of practical effects if you include the stupid watch.
>Oppenheimer
Between tenet hating me on a physical level, and the perfectly servicable fat man and little boy film from the 70s I just havent seen it to comment.
>I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props.
I'm not a huge Nolan-discourse-insider, but that seems like a pretty bizarre reputation to have for someone who's famous for directing three Batman movies, Inception, Interstellar and Tenet?
Is this reputation just because of Oppenheimer?
I haven't seen Dunkirk (and I'm not a WWII buff so couldn't tell if they used right planes/boats/guns/uniforms/whatever even if I tried), but even a short blurb on Wikipedia talks about a "balance historical accuracy with aesthetics that would favour the film stock".
That's a Nolan thing like how Dunkirk used no green screen.
I think Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings embody the transition from old school camera tricks to CGI as they leaned very heavily into set and prop design and as a result have aged very gracefully as movies
also, timers. What absolutely killed Nolan for me was when someone pointed out that he's virtually unable to create tension without a literal timer, be that bombs, watches, countdowns, what have you. Ever single damn movie. There's even a tick-tock sound from Nolan's stopwatch in the soundtrack of Dunkirk.
I dunno, 2015, I'm a little weak on this year: It Follows, Creed, Ex Machina, Max Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful 8. I'd watch those again with someone any time, and recommend all of them often. Several on my to-watch list most of which I expect to be good, like Queen of the Desert, While We're Young, Slow West, and The Overnight, just haven't made it to them yet. Not an exhaustive list, just gleaned from some titles I have at hand.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
The theory doesn't make any sense; unlike The Sixth Sense, the main character in Interstellar interacts with a lot of people. If he's dead, so are they (or they're just figments of his post-death experience).
The journey doesn't make any sense as a post-death experience, since none of the events are tied to his life (before the events of the movie), so there's no deeper meaning to the wave planet, or the ice planet, or falling into the black hole.
Also, Nolan doesn't do meta-contextual films. His specialty is the technical aspects of storytelling (see, e.g., Memento, The Prestige, Dunkirk, and Tenet), not in imbuing deeper emotional meanings into his works. Indeed, one of the big critiques of his films (excluding Dunkirk and Oppenheimer) was that they generally lack any emotional depth.
I wonder what WW2 reality is/was/means and how can you compress that in a movie? The Pianist? Dunkirk?
It was Dunkirk I was most referencing in my original comment. I found it a very disappointing film. Here's this important human story that the movie refuses to tell clearly, making the whole thing hit less than the sum of it's parts. 1917 was much more effective in its stylistic choices in my opinion.
The only "gimmick" in Dunkirk was the way Nolan sanitized it to be PG-13. You see German shells hitting soldiers, but the explosions are rendered immaculately. It carries on the tradition of British war movies being suitable for family viewing because it's important for everyone to understand the sacrifices that were made. The same criticism can be leveled at Sam Mendes and 1917.
Re: #1
It was Christopher Nolan. He said
"The only platform I’m interested in talking about is theatrical exhibition."
and
"“We made the decision a couple of films ago that we weren’t going to mix films for substandard theaters... We’re mixing for well-aligned, great theaters... At a certain point, you have to decide if you’ve made the best possible version of the film and you’re trying to account for inadequacies in presentation... That’s chasing the tail. It doesn’t work. I will say, with our sound mixes, we spent a lot of time and attention making sure that they work in as predictable a way possible."
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/christopher-nolan-interview-dunkirk-netflix-1201857101/
https://www.indiewire.com/features/craft/dunkirk-too-loud-christopher-nolan-1201860027/
I guess it hits extra hard in Dunkirk because of the ominous soundtrack that you're exposed through all the rest of the movie. Then with the plane safely landing in the end, the arrival of the trains full of soldiers, Churchill's speech and Nimrod placed over it, all that tension gets resolved at once in a beautiful way.
There's something special about Nimrod that really resonates with British people. I always found use of it in films to be a rather cheap shot, but I suppose in Dunkirk it is just on the right side of tasteful.
The score for Dunkirk includes a piece by Hans Zimmer that adapts one of the Enigma Variations: https://open.spotify.com/track/5eeBoptaR9wfFe5csGjIMP?si=3b55e566a1714332
One of the most beautiful uses of music in a movie in recent memory, IMO.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-shepard-tone-dunkirk-hans-zimmer-video-scale-score-soundtrack-christopher-nolan-inception-prestige-a7862211.html
Shepard tone is popular for building suspense. The soundtrack for the movie "Dunkirk" leverages a pretty identfiable shepard tone for anyone interested in hearing a quick example.
Uh no. Nolan used a ton of CGI in all the Batman movies he made, in Interstellar, in Dunkirk, Tenet and especially in Inception. Yes he likes to use practical when possible, but the idea that he doesn't use CGI is ridiculous. Everyone uses CGI. Even when it's simple compositing stuff. Everyone conflates CGI with doing a shot/scene entirely digital. Some films do that, but most don't.
Also, Dune is a science fiction movie. Looking as real as possible was not necessarily the goal, but rather to maintain a stylized glean appropriate for a movie with hunter-seekers, force-fields, and sand worms.
I think the VFX approach worked well for the movie, and movie critics seem to universally agree that the cinematography and effects were magnificent.
A better comparison would be a modern period epic like Dunkirk.
Or it reflects that the two genres merged to a degree, because of a more nuanced understanding? Recent war movies like "Dunkirk" don't really show traditional heroism, they show a very bleak version of war, with the soldiers mostly surviving rather than fighting. "1917", while showing a heroic act of one (or two) main characters, also used imagery and portrayal of military and higher ranks that is essentially a reference to classical anti-war movies.
I thought that the soundtrack was the most forgettable part of the movie. It's like they reused half the music from Dunkirk. There's no theme to the film that's stuck in your head after you leave the theater, nothing else special about it. It feels like filler
> […] or you have designated Oscar-type fare, which as of late means something extremely depressing that says how bad humans are.
In the 2020/2021 season, the nominations included The Father about a man suffering dementia (from his perspective) and Sound of Metal about a drummer going deaf.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/93rd_Academy_Awards
For 2019, we had the best picture nominations include Ford v Ferrari, Little Women, and 1917:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/92nd_Academy_Awards
Previous to that, Bohemian Rhapsody:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/91st_Academy_Awards
Going back one more year, Dunkirk and Lady Bird:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90th_Academy_Awards
Lastly for this discussion, Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, Hidden Figures, and La La Land:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/89th_Academy_Awards
I think these are good counter-examples to your claim that only two types of movies being made.
Totally almost off subject but if you want some cool Gibraltar movie action check out Das Boot. And I watched Dunkirk right after if you really want to sob about the meaninglessness of war. The ending of Das Boot transitions well into the story of Dunkirk, in my opinion. And the ending of Dunkirk is one of the nobly beautiful things I've seen.
If this interests you, I recommend Norman Ohler’s book Buzzed: Drugs in the Third Reich[0]. One example from memory: while the French soldiers had as their ration of drugs some chocolate and 2/3 bottle of wine per day, some German soldiers during their push across France (relevant to the events in the movie Dunkirk) were awake for 17 days, driving over 150 km/day, thanks to prescribed methamphetamines. French troops in many checkpoints along the way were caught off guard due to the inhuman speed at which this force moved. This was an engaging look at WWII through the lens of drugs, and reminiscent of John Krakauer’s journalism.
[0] https://www.worldcat.org/title/drugs-in-the-third-reich/oclc/1236024151&referer=brief_results
> Dialogue audio was weirdly quiet
That's Nolan for you. His sound quality (there is probably a more precise word for this) is appalling. A lot of the music in Interstellar is too loud while the dialogue is hard to make out. Same with Dunkirk - the gunfire in the opening had me cover my ears in the cinema to protect my hearing and throughout the rest of film I was wishing there were subtitles.
From my understanding, this is a Nolan problem. The Dark Knight rises had similar issues with sound mixing, especially with Bane's voice in certain scenes. I remember Interstellar having issues as well. Funny enough, Googling his last few movies (ex: "Dunkirk sound mixing problems") all lead to articles around the time of the movie's release and the audience complaining about sound problems.
Slightly off topic, but I personally use subtitles for everything I watch now because I got tired of missing dialogue for different reasons. More movies being on demand is a blessing for me in this regard.
You could easily see this with release of movie Dunkirk - it pretty much completely erased the French defense line from mention (there's a short scene showing them basically sitting around) which caused a huge amount of english speaking internet to insult and disparage the French.
Reality? The French fought tooth and nail to defend the British retreat from the beaches. The movie however deleted this from public conciousness by a simple omission, changing how people understand history.
And this happens with Hollywood and blockbuster games all the time.
> Much of the footage used in the film is borderline unwatchable without the post-processing used
That's an interesting commentary on how much technology has advanced, and how we have become so desensitized to it. Consider that when silent films first started, the movie of a train coming right at the camera scared the audience so much that they ran out of the theatre to get out of the way of the train, IIRC.
I agree on your point regarding engaging audiences. Saving Private Ryan and Dunkirk probably taught more people about WW2 than many classes or books.
It's one of my favorite movies. Even knowing it beat by beat, I enjoy watching it because it is so well told. Even the narrative structure feels integral to how Nolan wants the story told. So it doesn't feel as "gimmicky" as it could be.
It also gives a nice twist on a noir murder mystery. Because the story starts with a murder, then instead of making us guess who did it, it makes us figure out why he did it. With every step giving another piece to that puzzle. So the mystery unfolds linearly while the narrative goes both backwards and forwards to meet back at the beginning of the movie.
While I haven't watched Dunkirk or Tenet yet, Memento remains my favorite Christopher Nolan film.
The Shepard tone illusion, of an ever rising pitch, is used in the movie Dunkirk
https://www.businessinsider.com/dunkirk-music-christopher-nolan-hans-zimmer-2017-7
Can’t watch the video atm, but in case it’s not mentioned - Nolan says he based the structure of Dunkirk on the shepard tone. Always rising in intensity, never ending. Great film!
While it would be possible to edit a film using the original camera reel, this is generally not a good idea because (1) most motion pictures are captured on negative film and (2) the repeated cuts, splices, and general handling of the film that happens during edit will inevitably damage it.
The solution to both problems is to produce a workprint from the camera negative and edit with that. This inverts the negative image and gives you a copy that you can play with freely.
Watching someone editing on a Steenbeck [0], you will quickly see the importance of not editing the camera negative directly.
Once the edit decisions are finalized, the original camera negative is carefully cut and spliced to match the workprint, and a pristine "answer print" is struck from the edited camera negative. Traditionally, this is also where color timing is done—the printer lights can be configured to balance different shots and scenes as the answer print is being made.
The final release prints are usually third-generation copies (if you don't count the camera negative as a copy)—(1) a handful of interpositives are made from the original camera negative following the exact procedure used to make the answer print, then (2) internegatives are struck from the interpositives, and (3) a large number of release prints can be struck from the internegatives.
A notable exception to this was the release of Dunkirk (2017). The 37 IMAX screens in the world [1] that were exhibiting a 15-perf 70mm film print were actually showing a first-generation copy struck directly from the original camera negative.
(All that said, it is possible to shoot on reversal film, which is positive out of the camera, and can be edited and projected directly. Also, I've never edited a film like this myself and likely got a few things wrong—so take this with a grain of salt.)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUxbfiZ_-9Y [1] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/07/imax-melbourne-is-the-only-place-you-can-watch-dunkirk-in-top-quality/
Movie theaters will lose popularity but the theater experience cannot be reproduced in the home at least for the foreseeable future.
I don't see many films in theaters because many films gain nothing by being viewed at the theater. I often see films in like Interstellar, Dunkirk, Blade Runner, etc that are an assault on the senses and have a lot to gain through theater viewing.
The question to me is- will people care? There are plenty of examples of people shirking quality for convenience.
It’s a question of perspective and what exactly you show and write about.
In the “Ballad” Native Americans really are just dangerous and savage boogeyman, a mere threat like a tiger in the jungle. We do not at all get to see their side and motivations. There is no attempt made to create empathy.
I think sometimes that approach is totally fine! A film like “Dunkirk” really doesn’t have to show me the inner life and motivations of the Nazis. They can be the ominous boogeyman beyond the horizon, never clearly shown but always present as a clear threat. There is no need to create empathy, because prejudice against Nazis and those who idolize them is not really a problem at all.
With Native Americans, however, such depictions were (and are?) the norm and that’s really totally unreasonable and not at all understandable. That’s the problem here.
I hope this illustratest sufficiently well that perspective and what exactly you show is important. I make no claim that this is easy to figure out, but you do make it yourself a little to easy, expecially when you invoke things outside the text. I don’t think you can really do this, not to the extent you just did that.
Maybe if we see someone in a film who is clearly identifiable as Jewish in a film killing an SS officer without any further context there is enough foreknowledge there among everyone that you really wouldn’t have to provide any further context within the text to make the motive clear.
With Native Americans I do not at all feel as though we are at that point.
Fine, Chamberlain.
The Dunkirk fiasco and movie should be renamed "So maybe don't back Poland next time"
Although the WWII's successes are taught as such, there just isn't a history of nobility to support what happened.
I would like to see a comparison between Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther and Avenger: Infinity War that supports your hypothesis (the three most recent films besides the very recently released Ant Man and the Wasp).
I'm not arguing the Marvel movies are the perfect movies or that they should displace and divert funding from other movies like say Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Dunkirk, or The Big Sick, and maybe 3 of them per year is a bit too much, but c'mon, "sterile as still packaged surgeon gloves"? Marvel's Overhyperbolic Universe?
It seems like you like good films from auteurs - Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan), Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson).
The great thing about films like that is that if they do age, they age very well, and there are hundreds of films by auteurs you'd probably enjoy.
AFI Top 100 movies, the Criterion collection, or just going through a director's previous films.
If you liked Dunkirk, have you seen the Band of Brothers TV series?
I highly recommend checking out a film festival if you like seeing original films. Most film festivals only show movies that have yet to be public. There are hundreds of movies a year that are shown at film festivals and never seen again.
As someone who doesn't like the Marvel movies and is losing interest in Star Wars it feels like the are fewer movies for me to enjoy in the cinema than there was even just a year ago. There were times my wife and I went to the cinema twice on one weekend because there was so much stuff we wanted to see. This year we've watched Isle of Dogs. Before that was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri which was in December. Last summer we had Dunkirk, Babydriver and shortly after the new Blade Runner. This year everything seems dominated by Marvel and SatWars. Even upcoming movies on IMDb look bleak to me.
Seeing Interstellar and Dunkirk in 70mm IMAX were the two best moviegoing experiences of my life. The scale and detail of true 70mm IMAX film is totally unmatched by a mere 4K blu-ray. It is definitely not economical to shoot or project such film, and something that will sadly probably die out, but I am grateful he keeps doing it.
I don't get it. The original question asked "why don't Americans like Russia" and I replied with reasons why I / other Americans don't like Russia. I didn't say anything about interfering.
If you asked me why I didn't like, say, the movie "Dunkirk", and then I told you why I didn't like it, it would be really odd to reply that it's not my business.
That's not true, but why let the facts get in the way?
6/10 highest-grossing movies last year were not comic book movies: Dunkirk - Original property Fast & Furious 8 - non-comic franchise based on original property Despicable Me - non-comic franchise based on original property It - remake Beauty and the Beast - remake Get Out - original property Star Wars Episode 8 - non-comic franchise based on original property
The most profitable movie of 2017, Get Out, was an original franchise. This follows on the heels of 2016s most profitable movie, Split, a sequel to an original property (The Sixth Sense/Unbreakable universe).
His stories are often lazy, too. The notion of a magic machine that lets everyone wifi and have dreams inside dreams inside dreams together is fun but absurd. The same with the end of Interstellar. Too conveniently we've got a magic wormhole which saves him and drops him a few feet away from a ship around the ring of Saturn. The first half of TDK is incredible, the second is very anti-climatic (maybe not his fault).
Check out anything by Roger Deakins for world class cinematography. Nolan is just good. If you are looking for a director who people might one day consider in the realm of Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson might fit it, but he's got a lot of "weird" movies (even his masterpieces) which don't give him the same wide appeal. [0]
Williams was great in just about anything he was ever in, I wouldn't attribute that to Nolan. The greatest directors elevate their actors (see the crazy stories about Kubrick and The Shining). Nolan works with great talent, but the performances often leave a lot to be desired, this is uncontested even by fans.
Nolan makes movies with interesting themes and he never really does anything bad. But for him to be even be discussed in the same thread as Kubrick shows how overrated he is. I say this owning Interstellar (the teaser gives me chills) and I thought Dunkirk was great simply because he toned it down and worked within something realistic. Given 20 years and a Jurassic Park, we might see Nolan the same way we do Spielberg today, but Kubrick? Forget about it!
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2017/12/22/16809404/there-will-be-blood-paul-thomas-anderson-10-years-daniel-day-lewis
I'm glad to find someone else who agrees. I find Nolan to be an unremarkable director. He has inventive ideas but the actual direction is fairly pedestrian. I have a hard time remembering what his Batman films were even about let alone any outstanding direction (the terrible voice Bale used and the Sean Connery impression Hardy did show he needs to tell his actors no sometimes.)
I haven't seen Dunkirk so maybe it will totally change my mind
I suppose I'm in the cult. About the only complaint I can lodge against Nolan is that the exposition is heavy handed in a few of his films, which he spoke to in the article, and I agree he was forced into that position with the intense story he's often trying to communicate in a film's runtime. He's also not a cinematographer, and has generally worked with Wally Pfister or Hoyte van Hoytema.
I would disagree if you're saying the cinematography won't be remembered; van Hoytema's work on Interstellar and Dunkirk is something I remember quite positively even while typing this comment. I would also disagree on character development, as Nolan directed Robin Williams into one hell of an antagonist in Insomnia, a spectacularly underrated film.
Interesting on Dunkirk; I was skeptical of why someone would make a war film in the present day, but it sounds like his intention in expressing what it means to people is good.
On this subject previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15004843 , me Britsplaining the meaning of Dunkirk.
> It’s become very fashionable in the last couple of decades to forget what good government can do, what good union organizing can do. The idea that benevolent capitalists will just take care of us and the people on top will magically distribute wealth and happiness and security to us little people … no. It’s time we wised up. Strength comes from community in all things. Dunkirk is one of those stories.
This reminds me of something that Hany Abu-Assad, a Dutch-Palestinian film director[0], once said in an interview. He was asked how it is possible that from countries like Iran, with its oppressive regime, we get such amazing directors as Abbas Kiarostami, who created beautiful humanising movies. After a brief moment of contemplation, Abu-Assad answered "society is stronger than the system."
> Would you say “Dunkirk” is your most hopeful film?
> Well … yeah. “Interstellar” is pretty hopeful. But then again, the whole world has ended. There is that. [Laughs]
Funny how one can interpret that both as "doesn't sound very hopeful to me", and "the more impossible the odds are that were overcome, the more hopeful the message inherently is".
WARNING: INTERSTELLAR ENDING SPOILER BELOW
What makes Interstellar especially tricky here is that on the one hand, saving humanity (and presumably as much other life as possible) from extinction when the entire planet is dying is about as big a challenge as it gets, and therefore makes the film feel very hopeful, but on the other hand the ending also implies that the universe is predeterministic, and that can be viewed as the opposite of hopeful.
[0] http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0009463/?ref_=tt_ov_dr
One nice thing is that this image makes it easy to support various VPNs out of the box. Though mine (ProtonVPN) isn't supported, so I had to use CUSTOM and fiddle a bit.
I made a setup using Transmission + VPN and NZBget, automated via Sonarr (for series), Radarr (for movies), and a few other software such as Muximux (for abstraction) and Emby. You can find these and a lot of other interesting images under the linuxserver.io flag [1]. As soon as a specific series (episode) or movies on my watchlist is released in the wild (ie. leaked from scene) I will get it. Automagically. So the other day, I suddenly had Dunkirk available.
I also learned about this software via HN so I guess I'm giving back this way directly. Or parroting, depending on your PoV. smile
[1] https://hub.docker.com/search/?isAutomated=0&isOfficial=0&page=1&pullCount=0&q=linuxserver.io&starCount=0
With movies I am looking at watching "Dunkirk", or some other specific movie, which means there are at most a handful of movies that I want to watch at any given time, whereas with porn I typically want to watch a particular type, but there are lots of any given type of movie and it really doesn't matter if they are old or not.
There's definitely Cinemark theaters with 70mm. I saw Dunkirk at one.
More importantly, though, not very many movies were/are shot in that format. Not enough to really build a business on.
There's certainly an appeal to specific formats like 70mm, but that comes along fairly rarely. I haven't been to Portland, but I have seen 70mm films in classic theaters. They're rarely comfortable, the sound usually sucks, and the lack of stadium seating can be brutal, but you're there for the insane effort that went into end-to-end 70mm production.
Of course, I saw Dunkirk in IMAX 70mm projection at the Metreon in San Francisco, which is a state of the art screening room, but that will probably only ever happen every few years. Sadly the Metreon recently remodeled with completely terrible seats (only in the IMAX room), so I'm rarely tempted to go there.
Have you been to the Hollywood Theater in Portland? They have a 70mm film projector something no Cinemark has. You can see movies like Dunkirk in the format the director intended.
I have seen baby driver, it was ok except large plot holes (especially around his girlfriend and boss behavior which made little sense to me by the end of movie). Dunkirk does not seem my thing, but I will check Logan, thanks.
If those people do, why are the studio executives complaining? Perhaps it's because "Ticket revenue was down at least 12 percent, and ticket sales were at their lowest point for the season in 10 years. Audiences did not want to see remakes of old TV shows (bad news for Baywatch and CHIPS). They did not want to see badly reviewed franchise entries (the take for the latest Transformers installment was way down)."[1] (linked from the article).
[1]: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/movies/dunkirk-girls-trip-are-brights-spots-in-a-bummer-summer-20170825.html
I probably go the cinema once a year, and don't really watch much at home either, but I have some movie buff friends so I get tangential exposure to which movies are good: I just Googled what's out and the ones I've heard were very good include Dunkirk, the new Planet of the Apes, Baby Driver and The Big Sick, and Beach Rats. On top of that are the movies that I probably wouldn't enjoy seeing but that someone who likes movies would likely enjoy: Guardians of the Galaxy, Logan lucky, maybe even Wonder Woman (I just know that one's popular, but not much about how good it is).
This is just stuff that I (who doesn't even enjoy going to the movies) happen to Know about, and wouldn't mind being dragged to if a friend wanted to socialize at the cinema. I find it kind of hard to believe that "Hollywood is putting out garbage" could be true to the degree that that's the reason there's nothing you want to see.
Note that I've left out indie movies since those tend to be less accessible and more polarizing and also left out popular things like the Transformers movie.
Yup, family and I were going to go see a movie on a whim and when we looked at the showings the only interesting movie was Dunkirk which we had already seen but contemplated seeing again.
Also ticket prices being $14+ is a little absurd.
You have to take 15-20% off for issue movies. Wonder Woman ended up being a stealth one.
John Wick is respected as a "craft" movie because of its stuntwork and fight choreography. Same as Dunkirk and The Revenant, but those were appreciated on cinematography, etc.
So, yes, movies loved for their craftsmanship do tend to outperform the quality of their storytelling.
Dunkirk Spoilers: I feel like Rotten Tomato doesn't work all the time. I watched Dunkirk, excited from the 93% on RT, and I walked out and felt disappointed. Like I get the cinematography was great, the story structure is amazing, everything a critic should be looking for was all there, but did I enjoy it? No. I thought it was boring. The movie didn't do anything to foster the relation of characters to the audience. I frankly didn't care about any of them, maybe except the Captain that stayed behind to help the French. I personally thought this was Nolan's weakest movie, although the RT score would suggest otherwise: Inception - 86%, Interstellar - 71% both of which I enjoyed way more than Dunkirk.
I think the audience score also on RT is more telling: Inception - 91% Interstellar - 85% Dunkirk - 82%
We could also take movies that people mentioned on this thread: The Dark Tower - RT: 16%, AS: 54% Baby Driver - RT: 93%, AS: 89% Baywatch - RT: 18%, AS: 60%
I also don't trust critics on the basis of people like Armond White, and since many of them do this for a living, a lot of critics can be bought.
I think what I'm trying to say is that Rotten Tomato is actually inaccurate metric for how enjoyable the movie actually is, and consumers are being misguided.
I also think theres an inherent misunderstanding of the RT score. People look at the score and think this is the quality of the movie, when in reality I think of it as a probability that I would like the movie. A score of 50% doesn't mean the movie has a failing grade, it's that when 100 critics viewed it half the critics enjoyed it and the other half didn't, so there's probably a 50% chance that I'll enjoy the movie.
Do that many people really rely on reviews? I've found I trust them significantly less with movies than I do with many things.
I wish I could remember some specific details, but some incredible films are given ridiculously low ratings within Netflix itself.
I don't even bother with Rotten Tomatoes anymore because it's seemed like such a crap-chute for so long.
If I know I really want to see something, then I'll just see it in the theatre. If I miss it, or I'm less thrilled but still want to give it a go then I wait until it's out on an ubiquitous source like Netflix or I'll rent it.
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(Speaking of IMAX I'm really upset right now because I tried to book free tickets for a TIFF screening of Dunkirk attended by Christopher Nolan at the Ontario Place Cinesphere[0], but their site wasn't working well the day of the bookings and I couldn't get through!)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinesphere
I see perhaps 1.5 movies per year, mostly because the value proposition is not good.
To see a single movie in the non-shitty cinema, with a drink and popcorn will run me up about $35AU. I still have to watch 20 minutes worth of ads at the beginning too, so we'll boost that up to $40AU for wasting my time and brainpower. That gets me about 2hrs entertainment.
Why would I do that when I can pirate your movie in a few months and watch it at home, infinitely cheaper? Only the rare exceptional movie is actually worth the "cinematic experience" (ie. Dunkirk). Something like Guardians of the Galaxy or Deadpool is perfectly fine watching on my TV and Soundbar.
You can skip the ads and tell people off for talking during the movie in your own home too.
> Lastly, the economics of movie theaters have created a feedback loop that results in "big tent pole" films like Disney / Transformers / Star Wars dominating the screens. Adults want serious drama like "House of Cards" -- which is available at home.
To be fair, some movies are big screen movies, and dramas don't tend to be. House of Cards wouldn't work nearly as well as a 2 hour movie, nor would I be willing to go somewhere to watch it.
On the other hand, watching movies like Dunkirk, Doctor Strange, or anything in 3D doesn't feel right at home.
Maybe it's just me, but it feels like the movies that tend to do well in theaters are the same ones in which the home experience would be lacking, unless you have a theater room. Meanwhile, no matter how much I might personally love a given TV show, 90% of the time, it's just not movie appropriate. Of course, I'd definitely pay to have select episodes of Game of Thrones shown on the big screen... YMMV.
what's interesting is the faces they decided not to portray in the movie. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/indian-african-dunkirk-history-whitewash-attitudes
For anyone interested in finding out more about Dunkirk and the events leading up to the evacuation I can strongly recommend "Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man" by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. It gives the British, French and German viewpoints and covers the incredible scale of the operation in a way that the movie couldn't really do.
My grandfather was left behind at Dunkirk, taken prisoner, spent the rest of the war in Poland and returned home in one piece but very thin (6ft 4 and weighing around 8 stone according to family legend). He died aged 48 a year before I was born - heart problems, which might be expected I suppose.
I'm now working with the jigsaw of records and archives in the UK to try and find a little more about what happened and where as a result of the film mainly.
It coincides with the Christopher Nolan "Dunkirk" film.
(Currently considering whether I should Britsplain Dunkirk and its significance to HN. Any takers?)
Yes, that's what I do as well.
Also, I go to the movies more often to see the films I'm actually interested in.
Baby Driver was my favorite movie of the year--in fact, the best movie I've seen in many years.
Dunkirk, Detroit, and Inconvenient Sequel all good as well!
> Taleb is correct to call out this cartoon as the politically correct nonsense that it is.
Agreed -- it's a bullshit attempt to re-write history.
> why, in the current day, history needs to be rewritten to be completely fictitious.
For example complaining the recent Dunkirk film has mostly white men in it... when that was true of the historical event it depicts.
Agreed on the over-revealing trailers! For Nolan movies, just watch the teasers. Interstellar and Dunkirk both had excellent ones, that don't really reveal anything. I deliberately avoided the full trailers for each.
I saw The Hateful Eight in 70mm, but it was projected on a normal-sized movie theater screen, and frankly, if anything, it looked worse than a normal film. I suspect the staff was inadequately trained in how to operate a real film projector, as the focus looked a touch soft.
On the other hand, seeing Interstellar in 70mm IMAX was _incredible_. Even with the recent IMAX Laser projectors, 70mm IMAX prints contain much more resolution and it was the best looking movie experience I have ever had. I highly recommend seeing Dunkirk in 70mm IMAX if it's playing near you.
All due respect to those movies (3 of them which appear to be documentaries) but they have not had the same cultural impact as a movie like Apocalypse Now had back in its time. It's a shame, I'd rather a director like Nolan had made a movie about Iraq or Afghanistan instead of Dunkirk, the same as Coppola had made Apocalypse Now just a couple of years after he had directed the first two Godfather movies. That way you'd be 100% certain that said film and its vision on the realities of current war would make it to almost all the cinemas around the world.
> do Americans learn about Dunkirk
There's a film coming out this summer about it.
Part of Granddad's unit was at Dunkirk (Cheshire Regiment) but he was not - he was in North Africa.
I have been noticing something curious for a while.
It feels as if, in various fields, some kind of test is being carried out to "test the waters", to see how much shit one can get away without being called out by people..
In hollywood, this manifest itself as blockbuster movies. Superhero movies, Christopher nolan movies movies like John wick, Madmax fury road etc.
I mean look at this shot from the trailer of a war movie from Nolan
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/5ieu3i/the_bombs_in_dunkirk_required_you_to_throw/
And another mixup from the same movie
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3732234/One-smirking-extra-accused-ruining-trailer-WWII-film-Dunkirk.html
It is unbelievable that this is from a movie from one of the biggest names in Hollywood! This is the continuation of the sound mixing issues of his previous movie..
People did point to these issues, but they gets drowned in a million apologetic voices...
In this cases, the propaganda appears in form of Hype. The hype generation machinery starts working years before the actual release of the movie.
And when it has completely run its course, what you will have is a body of people who will pay to see the movie, and - this is the important part - will be blown no matter what and will not stop talking about it. It is as if they are under some spell or something.
And no, I don't think only your average joe is susceptible for this manipulation. Even professional movie reviewers will fall for this.
In programming world, you see this happen with things like git. I am not saying Linus is running a propaganda on purpose. But may be, it just so happened because of his god like status in the minds of the people...
And I think with these recent events, we are seeing how far the rabbit hole goes....
This happens to me all the time.
For example, I absolutely loved the Dunkirk's trailer the first time I watched it. Until someone pointed out an actor in the Dunkirk trailer (bottom right side, second guy to look up) who appears to be holding back laughing. Once you're taking out of the films emotional experience it's hard to get back into it. https://youtu.be/rJePvN_4T_E?t=38s
Same with the time I was a kid watching Jurassic Park and noticed the cow they fed the T-Rex looked had a stuffed-animal looking toy eye clearly visible during a close-up. It seemed less scary.
There's a lot of this type of stuff in movies that can really take you out of it. When I hear directors like Stanley Kubrick or Riddley Scott spending 10 hours getting a single shot perfect in Blade Runner I can understand why. The details really do matter.
Reusing this sound effect is just lazy IMO. Just like the jump scare sound effect in all hollywood horror films. It might be pointless to hope for more care to be taken in big productions but I'm still saddened that prioritizing safe easy bets like an obviously reused prominent sound effect is seemingly becoming common practice.
Regardless the best option might be to either stop paying such close attention as ignorance is bliss and/or stop reading reddit comment!