f13.net

Let's get this started.  Trailer number 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-eMt3SrfFU)

I've enjoyed Nolan's film (yes even Interstellar) so I have hope but my reaction was a whole pile of meh to that.

I love Nolan's work and the trailer gave me chills - but I can't help but feel like I know what I'm going to get. It'll be very Saving Private Ryan in the "Jesus, why did I watch this I really do not want to see any more beautifully shot scenes of man's inhumanity towards men and the triumph of the human spirit."

Well, you could always scrub it out of your mind by watching Transformers fuck with Arthurian Legend immediately afterward.

Saving Private Ryan in reverse? Looks too clean and ..empty?..for a good SPR type movie.

They did a trailer for Dunkirk during Wonder Woman in the original IMAX aspect ratio (where it fills the entire screen vertically) and I had totally forgotten how insane that looks. If they are doing the movie itself like that and you are going to see it you better find a good (real) imax screen.

I love Christopher Nolan but I take no glee in watching dramatized war porn, which this will almost assuredly be only a hair more minimal than other war movies because Nolan.

Liked The Thin Red Line a lot, but what has been revealed about this film yet leaves me cold so far.

To be really specific, the only war-related thing made in the last 20 years or so that I *really* liked was Generation Kill.

And if we go farther back? (Not just asking you).

I think my top list would be, in descending order:

• Apocalypse Now
• Das Boot
• Platoon
• Stalingrad
• The Thin Red Line
• Full Metal Jacket

I don't see Lawrence of Arabia as "war film" else it would be Top 1.
Saving Private Ryan...another classic but it is "OK-ish" only. Too cliche.

Good list, although Apocalypse bogs down in spots for me.  I don't know that I could put it on top.  Also, I have not seen Stalingrad.  I'll have to find it and give it a watch.

More recently, I liked Fury, but really only because I have to admit to a minor armor fetish (particularly tanks).  Hacksaw Ridge also wasn't a great movie but the story held my interest.

• A Bridge Too Far
• Where Eagles Dare

I'd add those to your list. The Thin Red Line is my favourite movie.

I just saw Fury and it does the best job of capturing the phrase "the horror of war" by showing what it does to people. It added something that had not been said as clearly in that way before.

Good additions.

I am really a bit biased here. My grandfather got drafted in 1944, at age 16, sent to the eastern front, got captured the same year and (I think) was in siberia, returned home in 1946.
Never really talked about it, so the only thing I was told is that he once mentioned they were eating rats to survive.
What I know is  he was drinking heavily when he came home. And he was a nice grandfather to me, but I got also told he was violent towards my grandmother. And my grandparents had 9 children, the war was never a topic, he didn't mention it until he was 60+ and (I think in order to cope with it) started to read books about it. Some I of which still keep.

so meh, make a film about him.

I'd watch it.

The sequel can be about my grandfather, a beloved small town doctor in Scotland, sent to Burma with the British Army. He also never talked about it and I got into trouble as a kid by traumatising him with war-glorifying boy stuff in a letter from Australia. I only know one dumb anecdote, about him returning from the toilet during fighting and everyone laughing because he had a bullet hole through his pants, which suggests he saw some action and it was probably too terrible to really tell. I have a silver figurine he brought back from Burma.

Reminds me of my grandfather, he didn't eat any rats that I'm aware of but he came back from the Pacific with a dent in his head from a mortar fragment, and developed (so I'm told) a violent temper and an alcohol problem.  I saw the drinking, but he never showed the temper to us grandkids

Really, there is nothing new to say cinematically or narratively about Dunkirk etc.  I can't imagine a film that is more than 'dutiful' on the subject. If there's a rebel filmmaker out there who really wants to unsettle shit, they should make something about the firebombing of Dresden etc.  Or frankly about something that people really know nothing about--the invasion of Poland by the Nazis, the internment of Italians in Southern Rhodesia, the campaign in Burma, you name it, there's five hundred war movies that need to be made before fucking Dunkirk.

I'm pretty sure most people know fuckall about Dunkirk so in that respect there's a lot to say. If you want to ask "why is this worth making?" multiple movies come out every week that are better deserving of that question.

Its odd as fuck to me that nobody has the balls to do the Korean war. Plenty not said about that conflict imo.

I mean, is it odd? Im not even sure the Korean war is taught anymore. Hell, people 25 years old today probably couldnt tell you when it was.

I'm fairly sure at least 1/3 of the U.S. population couldn't tell you where it took place.

Stalingrad is really good but holy shit, it makes Saving Private Ryan look like Mary Poppins.

Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron and Oliver Stone's Platoon.

I'm pretty sure 50% of the American population couldn't tell you *where* the Korean War happened, let alone when.

Nor could they tell you the Why.

Korea was only 3 years and is wholly an American/ Korean thing, despite the international consequences 60 years later. Vietnam was a 20-year scar on the largest generation's psyche and a blow to American Invincibility. WW2 was an epic international struggle we hopefully won't see the scale of again. WWI was dwarfed by it despite being the stage the war was set with.

Attempting to do a Dresden piece in this political climate is just asking for trouble. Velorath is right that most average people know jack shit about Dunkirk. The extent of war knowledge is  typically, "Nazis bad, Allies good, Japanese bad, America saved everyone's ass."  Nuance is something American culture is awful at introducing, nevermind teaching.

I thought we already had a perfectly acceptable cinematic Dunkirk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHcsWeSbldg). Maybe Nolan wants to make it feel more heroic for... nationalist reasons? Hip hip for the common man?

Dunkirk does not rank among great moments in British military history so much as among great Nazi mistakes.

Since Chinesa was involved as well and suffered ~100,000 dead any Korea war film wouldn't be shown there, not good for the box office.

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Uh, the Korean War was the first major (and frankly, only) UN military action.  Thousands of soldiers from dozens of countries died in the fighting.  The US was the bulk of the force true, but I think it's a bit disrespectful to write off the contributions of of everybody else, especially since that contribution remains a point of pride for many nations.  /diplomatic view off

If you've ever taken the time to study it, the Korean War is really fascinating politically (and it had as hard of fighting as was seen in most of WW2).  You would have a better chance of making an interesting war movie out of that because of its obscurity and craziness than doing yet another God damn WW2 piece.  As others have said, I love Nolan.  But I have a hard time seeing this going beyond, at best, a well shot beautiful totally by the books cliche.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri and Park Chop Hill are a decent Korean War movies

M*A*S*H* is set in the Korean War but is really a Vietnam War movie.

There are a lot of very interesting South Korean films about the Korean war. They have STRONG opinions, and often complex ones.

You might enjoy 'Quartered Safe out here' which is written by George McDonald Fraser about his experiences in the final Burmese campaign. Fraser went on to write the Flashman series and the screenplay to Octopussy.

Saw it last night.  Liked it but it was a little slow moving at times.  Focused on the event and not relationships. Thought the overbearing music score was a major miss, it wasn't needed to ratchet up tension.

You nailed it except it wasn't cliche, it was Nolan doing that whole absence of things you'd expect = art bit. It almost worked. Hardy may be my new male actor crush, he was great without being able to see him or him saying fuckall. The problem was there just wasn't much there, there. It had some insane Nolan shots but I really really wish that I had gone in seeing zero trailers instead of seeing that 15min trailer before Logan or Rogue One that basically spoiled every part of the entire movie except one and oh the other trailers spoiled the Churchill speech that ended the movie which was the only thing not in that 15min trailer.

Looked amazeballs on a true fullsize imax screen in 70mm, was probably a technical and artistic achievement in filmaking, left me feeling a bit cold and hmmm while it did have tension it just felt too "i know the outcome of this and i'm not even sure why i care about this part".

It's the only movie since Following (his first) which he wrote himself, and the first since Batman Begins I think where his brother wasn't involved in some capacity. He's a great director but maybe not the best writer.

Or where it was. :awesome_for_real:

Not a movie, but I'd say Band of Brothers is my favourite war movie/show.  The Pacific isn't too bad but it's nearly as good.  I couldn't stand Thin Red Line and Full Metal Jacket really loses it's momentum once they leave boot camp.

Band of Brothers is really good.

Saving Private Ryan's staging of D-Day is very good.

Patton would be on my list of great war movies in addition to those mentioned.

Catch-22 I think as well.

I wouldn't really list Apocalypse Now as a great war movie, though I think it's a great movie. I think it's a war movie like Star Wars is a war movie--technically, but it's really something else.

You are right about Apocalypse Now not really being a war film. But good anyway.


Back to the film at question: has anyone seen it since? Movie critics are apparently in love with it...

I really liked it. I've seen complaints about lack of characterization, I counter with the fact that the situation was the main character. Beautifully shot and really well paced. I even cared about the silent kid.

That's where I'm at. It's technically brilliant and the interlocking time period structure is really interesting.  The characters are just used mostly as a point of focus to walk you through the experience but the performances are good (Mark Roylance and Kenneth Branaugh particularly, but of course they are).  People who find Nolan's work "cold" will have problems with it as it is his style on steroids.

Rented this. I'm usually a fan of Nolan films but this was near awful. The film felt empty, like they couldn't pay for some cgi soldiers. (300k? felt like 3000). Didn't feel any of the 'dread' that we were supposed to be getting, you never see the Germans outside of a few planes. Music was great, the rest was fairly wanky (and let's talk about unlimited ammo on a Spitfire).