**Dunkirk** by Christopher Nolan was just a fabulous experience. I definitely enjoyed the movie quite a bit from start to finish, and usually war movies aren't really my cup of tea (at least not anymore). However, cinematically, the entire movie is just a masterpiece. As a big movie buff, I could appreciate how meticulously crafted the whole movie was. It's so hard to create a movie like this within this genre while trying to remain "minimal", but Christopher Nolan accomplishes it in every sense of the word. He seamlessly interweaves 3-4 different plot narratives/timelines, while using minimal amounts of exposition. He gives the viewer such a sense of a looming and foreboding threat, while never even having a Nazi soldier on screen at any time. He tells us "so much with so little" and allows the viewer to take in the conflict of each situation (and there are a lot of them) rather than point it all out to us. In that sense, you really feel like you're getting into the mind of each one of the soldiers/main characters when they are contemplating some very crucial decisions that literally determine life and death, for not just them, but many other men as well. Nolan gives us continued development, closure and solid endings in each one of the tiny subplots that he sets off from the beginning. It's definitely a joy seeing how all the different plotlines intermingle with each other at the end especially with the civilian aspect added in. And, most importantly, he accomplishes all this in less than 2 hours (and by a damn good margin as well). If you appreciate amazing direction, cinematography, and vision within a movie, this will be an absolute joy. It could definitely get Christopher Nolan that elusive Best Director Oscar come Academy Award season. I watched **Dunkirk** in 70mm, but, honestly, I couldn't really tell the difference, especially without being able to do a side-by-side comparison to a regular version. Overall, it didn't seem too different from the usual XD or IMAX type presentation at my local big theater. Still, the movie is a visual treat lending heavily to more practical effects that gives a nice sense of realism to it all. Anyways, this gets a solid 9/10 from me, coming from a war movie curmudgeon. Watch it, and you won't regret it.

Fantastic film, but I'm noticing a trend with Nolan's movies where you can't hear a word anyone is saying. This movie has very little dialog but so much of it is almost unintelligible. Characters are shouting lines in thick accents with loud background audio. I also feel like the plot got muddled at some points - What's happening in this scene? Who got shot down? What side are they? Who is this person? Was it the same person as before? I don't know, *almost all of the British soldiers look alike.* I went with many friends who also said they had these two issues. That being said: the cinematography is stunning. There's some truly tense scenes in this film. It's well written, the multiple storylines fit together well and it seems pretty historically accurate, as much as it can be at least. The non-dialogue audio is absolutely spot-on, you must watch this in a theater with great surround sound. Interesting choices were made regarding the constant background of music/sound and I think it works incredibly well to set the mood of each scene. Overall it's a solid film but not my favorite.

To each their own, but this movie felt like beating a dead horse. The directing and the characters are nice, but the story itself felt a little bit too shallow. I can see where the positive reviewers are coming from, but to me personally it was an O.K. movie, but no more.

While the viewer could be excused for not knowing the event surroundings the evacuation of Dunkirk, Nolan took the approach of denying anything else than his idealized version of those events, with obvious inaccuracies that makes the film cringe-worthy at time, almost as bad as U-571. The rest of the time, the little action and almost non existent dialogues do very little to fill what could otherwise be a perfect setup for a contemplative film (see the Thin Red Line from Terrence Malick for an example). This is a big let down and I would rather watch another couple of Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson war movie than this, which, although isn't intrinsically bad, isn't very good either.