Recent Viewing Part IV

Great post, BobdH, and it got me thinking.

I feel like Nolan is the epitome of the Ellison quote, "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you make them really think, they'll hate you." Some critics go further and say, "Stupid people watch Nolan to feel smart", and I don't think that's true, since many of the people I look up to as intelligent love his movies. But specifically with "The Dark Knight", and "Inception", and what I've heard about "Dunkirk", he always seems like, rather than having a focused goal, he's taken a relatively simple genre film and thrown in a bunch of random curve-balls and jumbled philosophy, some of which work, others don't.

He actually admitted this himself in an interview, saying, "We throw a lot of things against the wall to see if it sticks. We put a lot of interesting questions in the air, but that's simply a backdrop for the story." Compare that to say, a movie like "Arrival", where every scene, every moment is built around one core idea, [spoiler]the language we speak determines how we think[/spoiler], and you can see how from this simple seed, the whole movie sprouts, focused and carefully composed.

Then compare that to "The Dark Knight", where we have all these 'deep' quotes thrown at us and then at the end, Gordon literally summarizes for the audience what you were supposed to take away from the film. There's not much room left for 'thinking', but he certainly makes sure we feel like we're thinking.

All that to say, when I hear, "It's quite an unusual piece of work in NOT developing the characters, in NOT following a specific person, in NOT creating heroic set pieces" I can't help but chuckle. It's like Hans Zimmer saying, "For this next score, I've decided to compose a theme with ZERO notes", or something like that. Nolan seems to think, "Okay, a World War II movie", or "Okay, a Batman movie", and instead of thinking, "How can we make this movie as good as possible using every tool at our disposal", he thinks, "How can we make this different?"


“If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.” - Quentin Crisp

It's a fact-based story, a very well executed one, a terribly-well choreographed spectacle. But it doesn't have any of the other elements I mentioned above which was standard up to now with Nolan. It's an otherwise very plain and simple concept.

Absolutely agree.

Although at the first opening scenes when they escape from the shots fired at them through the city, and he runs into the open in the beach for the first time, when the camera comes Steadicam to his left and we see the city beach front In his right side, we definitely and very well clearly see modern lightpoles along the beachline and a very European prominent modern (could be 5 years old for instance) building with flats and glass balconies which is very standard in modern European cities and where I live and instantly caught my attention. And I also counted 5 or 6 more times where in the beach front behind and close to them we observe modern buildings with flats that are clearly post 2000 and definitely not wwii era. Anyone else saw that? if you rewatch it, pay attention. How did they miss this for 5-6 times ? I thought to myself: no way, they knew but they thought there's no way to remove all of them so fuck it whoever saw it saw it

They appear 5-6 times. On both sides of the beach. And even at 2 of those scenes, they continued showing close ups (side Steadicam following the soldier along the coastline at the beginnings of the film) with completely modern buildings in the clear, direct and close background. How in such a huge production which is so very well choreographed and timed, they could do such a mistake 5-6 times in a row ? I am refusing to believe that. I think they couldn't take them out because they would have to do the complete beach in cgi which would not fit at all with the rest of the natural and organic film making, or it cost too much or it took too much time or they saw it late in the production and had no time to fix it and said fuck it whoever sees it, saw it

yes, when the bluray comes out I will do screenshots for you. especially the first scene I mention, the opening establishing shot of the movie the lone soldier in the beachfront, first time he goes out in the opening. the building in question is like this one here http://www.aristodevelopers.com/uploads … n-J5US.jpg with glass balconies

and the light comes from the side and reflects on the glass balconies and shows / outlines it even more!

the light poles in one scene were https://thumb7.shutterstock.com/display … 532009.jpg like these

see here: https://www.google.com/search?q=movie+m … kftEZ0eUKM

others saw it too and when bluray comes out many more will.

read this btw http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/08/02/ … anti-score

Crucial question about all this philosophical bit, have you watched Dunkirk yet?

Isn't it kind of a prerequisite that you watch the said film before you bring down a lot of philosophical quotes onto the ones who are too simple minded or too stupid are you suggested, to think of their own and therefore didn't like Dunkirk because it is the one Nolan film that actually made them think? i'd suppose so anyway watch it first and then we talk, you might find out that you will eventually tone down the philosophy about 50% I for one found nothing too deep or too philosophical about it it's a plain, simple film, very well executed. Just that.

The style of that building Demetris posted could pass as (a latter day adaptation) of funkis, which is very much 40s and before.

Terminator: Genysis

Hadn't seen this yet. Bland, but watchable. Jason Clarke was really good.

That's what I was looking for, thanks. Doing some research on that architectural style shows that this style of buildings started around 1930, which means the building in Dunkirk may have been built after the events of the film, but they're not as out of place as I initially thought they might be, which was probably part of the decision to leave them in if they weren't historically accurate. Making a fuss about them is getting in nitpicking territory.

GET OUT (Jordan Peele)

Entertaining thriller which has its social commentary on liberal racism neatly woven into the fabric of its plot.

I was also pleasantly surprised by Michael Abels' score, an old fashioned and fully organic work including choir chants. Best horror score of the year that seems to be ill-treated by its album release of 43 short tracks.

I hated the first movie, and have no intention to watch the sequel.

Thank you thor.

It had some fun scenes, and the humour was, for the most part, on point. But it lacked a solid story, something to drive those scenes and elevate them. The first one had a simple premise: a bunch of misfits get together to keep a thing from an evil dude who wants to use it for power. It worked, it's all it needed. But this one, for more than half the film, you have no idea what's going on. There's no tension. Nothing that connects the exciting and funny scenes together.

It ended up being more emotional than the first, but it just lacked a solid foundation. Entertaining, but disappointing.