What Is The Last Film You Watched? (Newer Films)

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

You and I are through.

 

But really, it's interesting seeing the reactions.  Some diehard fans are feeling like it's a total step back or his worst, typical non fans think it's great and maybe his best, and I'm sitting here thinking he's made some progress but that also some stuff was lacking, so pretty much steady Nolan but with positive momentum.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Reminds me of how hardcore ID4 fans hated the sequel with a passion (for good reason, it's terrible), but casual viewers who were indifferent to ID4, or even disliked it, gave the second one a good write up, perhaps misunderstanding what made the first one so good.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

50 minutes ago, TheGreyPilgrim said:

You and I are through.

 

But really, it's interesting seeing the reactions.  Some diehard fans are feeling like it's a total step back or his worst, typical non fans think it's great and maybe his best, and I'm sitting here thinking he's made some progress but that also some stuff was lacking, so pretty much steady Nolan but with positive momentum.

I primarily blame the hype train. All the gushing praise and adjectives used are wildly misappropriated. It's technically sound, but emotionally vacant. No sense of scale or even rising drama. This eternal build up and assault on all senses were no where to be found. 

[KK 3,307]

I think it boasts some of the best all-round applications of Nolan's usual techniques and vices. For better or worse, it's one of his most "Nolan-esque" films, through and through. And that seems to work much better in this context than it did with the likes of Interstellar.

 

So while Nolan didn't really break any new ground for himself as many of us may have hoped, I think he's delivered one of his most solid, air-tight efforts in years.

[Bilbo 3,709]

On 21/7/2017 at 8:38 PM, Disco Stu said:

The 10 best films of 2017 so far as rated by Letterboxd users (which is a great, fun website and I will be friends with anyone from here who joins or has joined)

 

I've seen 5 of these.

 

 

I've only seen three so far. One of the others I absolutely intend on seeing and one I will absolutely go out of my way to avoid. Dunkirk will knock it out of the top 10 anyway. 

[A24 4,325]

3 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

It's Nolan's worst film. 

 

Dunkirk? Really? 

[Brundlefly 2,385]

Batman Begins is his worst film.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,489]

...and MEMENTO is his best.

[crocodile 7,974]

The Dark Knight Rises is his worst. I like a lot of it but it doesn't hold together that well. It's a very clunky film.

 

I like Dunkirk the more I think about it. But it wasn't a very strong reaction. Having said that, the very reason why I was left bit cold might be actually the best thing about this film. If that makes sense (it probably doesn't)...

 

Karol

[A24 4,325]

"I didn't feel anything. 5 stars!"

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Cheap emotions like what Spielberg and Williams did are no longer in fashion.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

4 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

"I didn't feel anything. 5 stars!"

 

That's Nolan fanboys for ya!

[crocodile 7,974]

I have a particular distaste for films "based on actual real events". They always end up being some sort of propaganda piece one way or another or turn something real into unbearable melodrama. In a way the new Planet of the Apes is a more honest war drama than most because it is fiction so therefore cannot be as dishonest. That is why Dunkirk is more refreshing. It doesn't make you say who is right, it doesn't even show the enemy or discuss it at all. Characters don't show you pictures of their loved ones so you care about them. People on screen don't have extended monologues about morality or any profound revelations. The entire thing almost entirely relies on the language of cinema. I do appreciate that actually.

 

13 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

It's a crucial element of Malick's stream of consciousness style. 

 

Again, I do understand what he's trying to achieve. Thing is... it is redundant. The rich visuals, expressive actor faces and music are already taking care of that. He needs to trust his audience more.

 

Karol

[Hurmm 91]

11 minutes ago, crocodile said:

The Dark Knight Rises is his worst. I like a lot of it but it doesn't hold together that well. It's a very clunky film.

 

I like Dunkirk the more I think about it. But it wasn't a very strong reaction. Having said that, the very reason why I was left bit cold might be actually the best thing about this film. If that makes sense (it probably doesn't)...

 

Karol

 

I agree that TDKR is possibly his worst. In fact any of his post-TDK films has a shot.  But time will tell if Dunkirk is right down there too. 

 

Honestly the movie wasn't just cold in the way Kubrick movies can be. Stripped of his usual high-minded ideas and script, Dunkirk really showcases Nolan's worst traits (or his best if you're his fan I guess). Everything is so sterile, so rigid, so... boring. It's just that it leaves me cold because none of the characters were developed (they aren't developed, but that's fine). It's cold because most of anything that transpires on screen is so mechanical and devoid of any intrinsic notion of entertainment. It's just stimulating, intellectually or visually. And it feels to me that this is the result of Nolan trying really hard to avoid the usual tropes of war films -- the action, violence, the directness and in-your-faceness of it all, and by eschewing all of that what's left is a bunch of visuals that don't entertain or stimulate. It's an obvious case of try hard.  I have no doubt most of his scenes are realistic, but fuck realism if it's at the expense of any form of entertainment. I'm not expecting the gut punch of the Omaha sequence in SPR, or the ponderous nature of its ending, but there has got to be something between that and what Dunkirk is. This movie has shown what a terrible entertainer Nolan is. The planes roar loudly, but the dogfights here are dogshite. 

[Disco Stu 15,495]

6 hours ago, Bilbo Skywalker said:

 

I've only seen three so far. One of the others I absolutely intend on seeing and one I will absolutely go out of my way to avoid. Dunkirk will knock it out of the top 10 anyway. 

 

I love GOTG2 and I don't care who knows it!!!  *snaps fingers back and forth*

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Am I the only one that just thought of Bane whenever Hardy was on screen?

 

The Dark Knight Rises > Dunkirk

[Matt C 452]

Despicable Me 3 - Forget Gru and his family, the little yellow Minions were the only ones worth watching. The film gets sidetracked with the annoying retconned 'long-lost twin brother Dru' A-plot and Agnes' irritating 'find the unicorn' B-plot. And let's not forget Trey Parker's annoying supervillain, aptly named Bratt. It's time to put this franchise out to pasture.

 

Zeus and Roxanne - Bland but unoffensive. The beautiful Bahamas scenery and Kathleen Quinlan make it watchable. The titular characters, dog Zeus and dolphin Roxanne, got on my nerves after a while.

[Romão 2,274]

18 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

 No sense of scale or even rising drama. 

 

I liked the movie quite a deal, but this what you wrote were major gripes I had with the movie

[crocodile 7,974]

Blame history!

 

Karol

[Koray Savas 2,251]

1 hour ago, Romão said:

 

I liked the movie quite a deal, but this what you wrote were major gripes I had with the movie

I'm giving it a hard time, because it's by no means a bad movie, it's just that after Interstellar, I had... stellar expectations. 

 

The lack of any emotional resonance or meaningful characters is the film's Achilles' heel, I think. It's typically the core of any Nolan film, and here the action felt void of impact because of that missing element. 

[KK 3,307]

Emotional resonance is typically the core of Nolan films? This is new to me.

[Fancyarcher 350]

Okja -  This was fantastic. Can't believe it took me so long to watch it, ha. Gyllenhaal's performance got on my nerves, but once I viewed the character as being insane and crazy, that "high-pitched Joker like" voice made sense. 8.5 / 10

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

2 hours ago, KK said:

Emotional resonance is typically the core of Nolan films? This is new to me.

 

It's of course a common critique that his films lack this, but I know I and others do feel that to be completely untrue.  I don't think it was lacking in Dunkirk either, but it relies even more than usual for Nolan on what the viewer brings to the experience as well.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

4 hours ago, KK said:

Emotional resonance is typically the core of Nolan films? This is new to me.

Memento - Wife's murder

Insomnia - Pacino's inner turmoil 

The Prestige - Bale's family

Batman - Rachel's death

Inception - Wife's suicide

Interstellar - Obviously relationship between father and daughter

 

Dunkirk - ?

Maybe he avoids genre clichés, but there was no emotional center for me, as a viewer, to latch on to. 

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

How about our potential for nobility, heroism, and decency?  That's what I came away thinking about.  Mark Rylance as the quintessential (Quintussential?) English gent ready to do the right thing is the beating heart of the film, along with all the other little ship folks, I reckon.  Hardy's character too.  All of this pays off throughout, and obviously mostly during the finale with Churchill's words.  

[KK 3,307]

I don't know. I don't think Dunkirk's aims are quite as lofty as that. While all that is definitely there, in the end, Dunkirk is ruthlessly efficient at delivering the 'experience' of the evacuation itself. Everything else is kind of background noise. It fares better when seen as a compact thriller rather than a moving portrait of human decency.

 

I guess that's one of the reasons why I wasn't a huge fan of the usual Nolan wrap-up montage this time. Part of it might also have to do with having Hardy's capture be the misplaced closing shot of the film, set against rousing, emotional score. 

[A24 4,325]

 

2 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

 

The Prestige - Bale's family

 

 

?

 

2 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

 

Inception - Wife's suicide

 

 

We don't know hem/her. We don't care. These are not the emotional cores of the movie. It's not why people emotionally relate to the movie.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

What are you talking about? Cobb's entire character revolves around his wife and children. 

[A24 4,325]

Who cares? A motivation of a character can often be something technical for narrative reasons and is not automatically the emotional core of the movie for the audience. In the case of Inception, the viewer has no emotional attachment to the family of Leo. Rachael's death is the emotional core in TDK? Really? That's why we connect to the movie for two and a half hours? That's why the audience relates to TDK?! I don't think Inception or other Nolan movies have a clear and obvious emotional core. Not all movies have them.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

It literally creates the dramatic conflict on screen.

 

When Rachel dies, Bruce Wayne is broken. This is standard hero's journey stuff. 

 

2 hours ago, TheGreyPilgrim said:

How about our potential for nobility, heroism, and decency?  That's what I came away thinking about.  Mark Rylance as the quintessential (Quintussential?) English gent ready to do the right thing is the beating heart of the film, along with all the other little ship folks, I reckon.  Hardy's character too.  All of this pays off throughout, and obviously mostly during the finale with Churchill's words.  

I can kinda see it, but it just doesn't come through well. I found the boat crew laughably shallow in their execution. Particularly when little George took a tumble down the stairs. Who cared?

[A24 4,325]

3 minutes ago, Koray Savas said:

 

 

When Rachel dies, Bruce Wayne is broken. This is standard hero's journey stuff. 

 

A death of one of the characters is not per se the emotional core that people take away from a movie. 

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Isn't the core of TDK that anyone can go mad if they have a bad enough day? Sort of like The Killing Joke.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

5 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

 

A death of one of the characters is not per se the emotional core that people take away from a movie. 

I'm not saying it is, I'm saying these instances are what influence the protaginist and the continuing narrative. The audience cares about the protagonist, no?

 

This is all fairly moot anyway since you haven't seen Dunkirk. 

[A24 4,325]

The emotional core is often what drives a character and how much we can relate to that. In Rocky the emotional core is clear (the journey from zero to hero) but in TDK? It's not a death or an event in the story. Those are merely plot things. In TDK, it's more cerebral, the many moral dilemmas that play out in the movie.

[Fancyarcher 350]

Last Men in Aleppo - 8.5 / 10 - Really really powerful.

[Quintus 5,399]

Dunkirk (2017)

 

I didn't really like it, sorry.

 

Zimmer has never been more overbearingly omnipresent than he is in this film, and Christopher Nolan is just a really poor visual storyteller, it's easily his biggest weakness as a filmmaker.

 

Most disappointing.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

You're just a hater who likes to hate for the sake of hating. The Internet is full of people like you.

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Yes, I'm so sick of these negative haters.  Please find something positive to say so I can feel better!

[crocodile 7,974]

I melt like a snowflake.

 

Karol

[Matt C 452]

Dunkirk

 

It's just not something I want to rewatch, but it is ruthlessly efficient with some breathtaking set pieces. Christopher Nolan nails the intensity of the Dunkirk evacuations and pushes the PG-13 limit pretty far, especially the opening sequence and that scene with the Germans shooting holes in the beached fishing boat. Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography is breathtaking in places but captures the grittiness of the 1940s well. But there's not much of an emotional center to hold on to, none of the characters really make much of an impression.

 

Zimmer's score is equal parts effective and grating. It helps whip up suspense whenever the soldiers are racing or fighting for their lives, but Zimmer is just following his Dark Knight temp track here. (At least Interstellar offered up something new.)

[Dixon Hill 4,232]

Nolan doesn't temp.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Finally two others that agree with me!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

2 hours ago, TheGreyPilgrim said:

Nolan doesn't temp.

 

Tell that to Edith Piaf's heirs!

[Quintus 5,399]

The original film with John Mills is the better Dunkirk picture. It's far more rounded and satisfying.

 

There were parts that were good and well done in Nolan's snapshot into the operation, it has [literally] contained sequences of suspense which are effective, but it's all so fragmented and needlessly interwoven via a pointless jumping timeline which to me feels like it has been worked in to make up for a lack of crucial structural drama underlining the whole thing, to plug that gap. But it is desperately contrived and undoing.

 

Nolan needs his dialogue to tell his stories; he flounders without here, and is entirely reliant on his capability to build a filmic canvas through visuals alone, to sew a dramatic visual narrative which makes sense and feels satisfying throughout, but he fails to make a straightforward cinematic story feel cohesive and I think it exposes his basic deficiency as a director.

 

This is where Zimmer was brought in to fasten it all together, and his soundtrack does blare out over almost all of the film and over each of the timelines without pause, and it almost wrecks it. This has to be the most authoritarian soundtrack to a film I have ever heard. You haven't heard a mix like it.

 

In the end I'm just disappointed about the experience, because as I say, there are good ideas and successful compartments of drama in there. Mark Rylance is excellent, Kenneth Brannagh is quality and the Elgar tinged scenes at the end are pitch perfect in their handling; that was at least a very rousing coda to an otherwise spare experience.

[Hurmm 91]

Yeah there are little pockets of suspense but it's never sustained is it? And I liked the ending too. 

 

It speaks to Brannagh's quality and screen presence that he was able to command every frame he was in while all he basically did was stand on a pier the whole film. 

[publicist 4,643]

13 hours ago, Quintus said:

The original film with John Mills is the better Dunkirk picture. It's far more rounded and satisfying.

 

After i've seen it i beg to to mildly disagree. It's really not about Dunkirk and not really a war movie (any siege movie, even 'The Thing' can be told this way). It is more a try at a film purely based on affects - the loud Zimmer pulse is its heart and the movie would be nothing without it - and to ground it in a famous WW2 retreat situation imho only came about because Nolan needed a blockbuster theme big enough to exploit these situational affects, most obviously the unbearable tension of waiting for the strike to happen and the fear of being the one killed (the enemy is never shown till the end, the soldiers only run away).

 

In that i found it an interesting experiment, though ironically in case of 'Dunkirk', it's the big blockbuster spectacle - all the stuff you don't need Nolan's heady concoctions for, the big beach scenes, the aerial and sea battles - that keeps you awake while the more artsy construction, the concept what usually distinguishes Nolan from the chaff, drag like a Merchant-Ivory movie. 

 

In the end i respect it more than i found it engrossing but one thing is clear: if a prize is given, it should go to Zimmer & crew because frankly, i do not remember the last time when the contribution of the sound/music department (it isn't strictly music) made such a striking difference. The movie would be unbearably boring without the score, though some might say it's unbearable because of it.

[Quintus 5,399]

I'm the latter, yes. A score isn't supposed to tear the beholder out of his seat every other minute and remind them that they are indeed watching a movie which has been made. Zimmer nigh on constantly disrupted my synergy with the film, it became a meta as the film progressed.

[publicist 4,643]

But i guess that was the point. Nolan just too shy making 'just another war movie' without offering some new perspective. If that is successful lies very certainly in the eye of the beholder.

[Quintus 5,399]

I like personal stories, or "small stories on a big backdrop", but they're hard to pull off, to get the balance right. Spielberg tried something similar with War Horse. Again, I didn't think that was too successful either. 

 

But Zimmer crossed a line I didn't entirely realise I had in place with this one. I don't like overbearing sound, I don't appreciate being bashed around the head by incessant and relentless scoring which is the experiment of an audio designer who has no care for the sensibility thresholds of others (what makes this latest "churning propeller" Zimmerism any less obnoxious than his Superman "drum circles", really?). Mad Max is another recent audiovisual assault which I detested for very similar reasons. I won't be beaten down into somehow respecting a film by its dictorial audio signature just because that was what they hoped for, just because they were trying something different or new.

[publicist 4,643]

Wasn't Nolan taken to task for patrons going deaf after watching 'Interstellar'? You had it certainly coming.