New, spoiler-free, Release! Dunkirk (2017)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Unflinching. Intense. Meticulously filmed. Grim but uplifting. Nolan's latest and most sober film is a sight to behold on the big screen.

Dunkirk tells the story of the evacuation of the eponymous city in 1940, as Germany was reaching its military apex in World War II. Over a few days in June, hundreds of thousands of English and French troops were cornered into the small Belgian town and awaited some form of rescue from the encroaching German ground and air forces. After several days of these ground troops choking down their fears and waiting along the beaches, British fishermen and boatmen several hours away are enlisted to boat across the channel to bring back as many men as they can. This, in the face of potential attack from some German air force or submarine attacks.

In short, I'll go ahead and say that this is now one of the ten best war movies of all time, due mostly to elements which can only be captured with the medium of film. Thanks to masterful visuals, cinematography, and staging, and meticulous attention to detail, the intensity and sensations of such a harrowing episode are brought to life probably as well as they possibly can be, short of actually being in the middle of the real events depicted. While watching the movie, I almost smelled and felt the damp, salty ocean water that must have taunted those stranded soldiers on the shore. I could feel the overwhelming sense of powerlessness and sometimes desperation as they waited and sometimes even watched certain avenues of escape be literally blown to bits and sunken before their very eyes. I don't know that even the best novels, photographs, or even first-hand accounts could have such an effect.

The standout element for me was the aerial scenes and battles. Curiously (and accurately), there were only a handful of fighter jets and bombers that were engaged on either side. But thanks to filming such as I've never seen and being able to watch the movie on a true 75mm IMAX screen (well worth the extra cost, by the way), I was entranced by having a pilot's eye view of World War II dogfights. As far as this aspect of movies go, Nolan just set the bar extremely high for any similar scenes shot in the future. These aerial sequences were the standout among many excellent large-scale visual segments throughout the movie.

A close-up look at one of the few R.A.F. pilots involved in the
evacuation. Along with these intimate shots inside the jets, the
exterior shots and "pilot's eye view" perspectives during the
actual dogfights are absolutely stunning.

My issues with the movie mostly boil down to one thing, which is Christopher Nolan's decision to not tell the story in a chronologically linear fashion. Yes, we all know that he has used circular and flashback narratives to excellent effect in the past, most notably with Memento and The Prestige, but I think it was a poor choice for Dunkirk. When I think about how the movie would have played out in linear fashion, I get the sense that it would have had as much or even more power than it already does. Yes, the non-linear narrative allows us to meet more of the characters earlier than we would have otherwise, such as Mark Rylance's boat captain and Tom Hardy's R.A.F. pilot. But I don't think theirs and others' stories would have lost their power had we met them halfway through the movie as opposed to within the first ten minutes, as the staggered time narrative gives us. It makes me hope that when the film is released on home media that there is actually an option to watch it chronologically, just to see if my hunch is correct.

Despite my slight issues with the narrative structure, and a lack of any specifically memorable individual characters, this is a grand telling of one of World War II's lesser-known episodes (at least here in the U.S., where we often forget that the war had been raging for years before we got involved in 1942). If you have any intention of seeing this movie, I can't recommend enough seeing it on the big screen, and even splurging for the IMAX experience if it's an option for you. 

Retro Trio, Christopher Nolan Edition: The Prestige (2006); Inception (2010); Interstellar (2014)

This little themed set of reviews started with a late-night viewing of The Prestige, and ended up with my discovering that I had never reviewed Inception, which I did re-watch only about a month ago. From there, it was a small jump to add Interstellar, which I only saw once when it was released. 

The Prestige (2006)

It speaks well for a movie when you put it on late at night with the intention of watching maybe 30 minutes while you drift into sleep, and then you realize that it's past midnight and you have every intention of watching every last second of the remaining hour of the movie. This is even more impressive when it's a movie you've seen several times already, as I had with The Prestige before this most recent viewing.

Coming out a little over a year after his true breakout smash hit, Batman Begins, this movie solidified just what Christopher Nolan can do with a large budget. Though completely different in subject and presentation than his take on the famous DC superhero, The Prestige bore all of the hallmarks of Nolan's writing and directing: a non-linear narrative; a surprise ending; a dark general tone; extremely slick visuals; Michael Caine. Nolan's films virtually all blend these elements into solid films.

The Prestige tells the tale of two rival magicians (or "illusionists", as Gob Bluth would demand) in the early 20th century who become viciously obsessed with defeating each other, at first professionally but eventually in every way. Getting their start together as assistants to a more established stage magician in London, one of them accidentally has a hand in the death of the other's wife. This sets of a chain of events in which each one attempts to sabotage the other's act while establishing himself as the premier stage magician in London. The sabotage attempts grow ever-more-dangerous, even leading to maiming and an eventual arrest for murder.

Borden and Angier, two budding magicians before their lethal
rivalry develops. There is refreshing shift in just who is the
more sympathetic character as the plot progresses.

The story has plenty of intrigue built into it already, but Nolan enhances it with his narrative choices. Similar to his approach in Memento, he tells the story by alternating between past and present, giving us a chance to see the steps that led to the deadly opposition between two past colleagues. And not unlike that earlier movie, this is one that is likely to inspire you to want to see it again immediately after your first viewing, just so that you can follow the meaning of the earlier parts of the movie better, once you have the complete picture. I always appreciate how Nolan has fun with how he orders his narratives, and he has a strong enough grasp of the technique that it adds solid entertainment value.

This isn't to say that the movie is flawless. Similar to other Nolan movies, the romantic relationships are never really fleshed out. Despite having very good actors in the key roles - Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johannsen, and Rebecca Hall - the romance between the different pairs never feels completely natural. It's hardly the most essential part of this movie, but it is relevant enough so that the lack of completely authentic emotions results in a dulled impact at certain moments in the movie.

I suppose the one other minor criticism that I can level at the movie is that there is a truly supernatural element thrown into a movie which is otherwise all about the art of slight-of-hand. This element of the truly fantastic works quite well, given how it is introduced and used, but I would understand if some viewers find it more than a little out of place. Perhaps even as a slight bit of cheating, even.

Among Christopher Nolan's films, I would actually rate this among his very best, which for me are The Dark Knight and Inception. Anyone who happened to miss this one would do well to go back and watch it.

Inception (2010)

One could divide Nolan's movies into "original" and "adapted" groups. While the former group would include the Dark Knight trilogy and a remake like Insomnia, Inception would fall into the latter category. And like few directors, Nolan's originals are equal to or arguably better than his adapted films.

If you haven't seen it, Inception focuses on Cobb, an expert in the field of extraction - a method of entering another person's dreams and retrieving ideas. Cobb's services are highly prized by corporate raiders who seek to pull valuable corporate secrets out of the minds of their competitors. However, Cobb is on the run from U.S. law enforcement, as he is the prime suspect in his wife's murder. To clear his name in order to return home to his children, Cobb accepts a highly risky but possibly life-changing job of performing the questionable act of inception - the technique of implanting, rather than extracting, an idea into a person's mind. Cobb assembles a team to help him create a complex series of dream worlds through which they can enter their target's mind and incept the appropriate idea.

In keeping with the stories that Nolan usually tells, Inception unfolds on several levels. Early in the movie, we are introduced to the concept of extraction and even the notion of a dream within a dream. In the third act, though, we eventually are watching a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream (that's five levels, if you didn't count). It can be a bit disorienting or even frustrating, if you're not paying close attention. If you are, however, it can be a really fun and creative ride. Each dream takes place in a distinct environment with its own look and feel, with each one offering some new insight as to how the concepts of inception and extraction work. It helps that there is a tension and urgency built into each dream level, allowing the suspense to pull us along. Nolan has always had fun with how he plays with narratives, and it seems like he was having a blast with this one.

The dream-world hotel hallway fight scene is one of the most
cinematically dazzling sequences in recent times.

The visuals are possibly the best in any Nolan film, which is saying something. He has done some spectacular things on film, but Inception probably features several of his most iconic images. From the folding cities to the slow motion world explosions to the fight in the rotating hotel room, this movie offered a ton of scenes and sequences that are unlikely to be forgotten once seen. Add these to the sleek look and feel of every shot and frame typical to Nolan's pictures, and you have a movie that is visually wondrous to behold.

Upon this most recent viewing, something else finally dawned on me - the terror in the concept of being infected with an idea that you cannot banish. And if that idea is urging you to kill yourself and your loved ones? That is truly the stuff of nightmares and insanity. Inception teases this idea out and drives it home in dramatic fashion, and it was only recently that I recognized just how disturbing it is.

I remember really enjoying Inception  when it was first released, while still having a few gripes about it. There were a few questions I didn't feel were fully addressed, and some parts of the movie tried my patience a bit. Now that I have re-watched it a few times, though, I find it easier to accept the flaws as minor. The movie is actually a rarity for the last decade - a high-quality, big-budget movie that is completely original. Nearly every other mainstream, popular movie has been adapted from a book or series (Harry Potter, anything YA), has been a remake of an earlier movie or franchise (Star Trek, Star Wars), or is a sequel to a previous blockbuster (The Fast and the Furious, among others). This fact makes me root for movies like Inception and appreciate them all the more.

Interstellar (2014)

Nolan shot for the literal and figurative stars with this one. My original review is here.

Upon a second viewing, this film holds up fairly well, and I felt a tad more forgiving about a few of the elements which puzzled or annoyed me back in 2014. Matthew McConaughey's voice is still a nuisance, but a few of the performances which I previously questioned no longer agitate me. And I actually found a little more enjoyment in a few sequences which I felt dragged during my first viewing.

I still consider Interstellar one of Nolan's weaker movies, but this is very relative. Even his worst films are considerably better than most large-scale, epic Hollywood films. Curiously, I think that it will ultimately be looked upon by future viewers much more kindly than the previous year's critical darling Gravity - a movie which amazed me once but which I have never felt the need to watch again, and whose weaknesses are jarring and more obvious with every passing year. I do not foresee such a fate for Interstellar. It's not 2001 or Tarkovsky's Solaris, but it is strong enough to earn a mention and some comparison with those titans of science fiction films about space exploration.

I generally haven't changed my original feelings about the movie, except for one main aspect. I've come to a slightly better acceptance of the forces which bring Cooper back in touch with his daughter. Slightly. I do still find it rather sentimental to use the premise that love spans any breadth of space or time, but I appreciated just how the story is organized and weaves the concept into the overall tale.

Cooper and his crew on a new planet. This was arguably the
most stunning sequences among several strong
contenders. Nolan never slacks on visuals.

One other merit which I failed to fully appreciate on my first viewing was the music. The score, composed, by longtime movie score maestreo Hans Zimmer, is wonderfully affecting. Maybe it's just my love of organ music, but I could find myself watching some of the visual sequences multiple times just to take in the pairing with the music.

Nolan's movies make up an unusually high percentage of the rather small number of movies that I own (out of the 30 blu rays that I have, 4 of them are Nolan films). I'm obviously someone who enjoys his films enough to splurge for them, knowing that I will watch them repeatedly. Yet I still feel no need to buy Interstellar. I think it is a good movie, but not one that I will need to watch again any time soon, if ever. 

Retro Trio: The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-2012)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Once in while, I'm in a mood to watch a movie which will give me a balance of not challenging me with anything new but still being rich enough to avoid dullness. Often, a good action or adventure movie I've seen before does the trick for me in these situations, so when just such a mood recently struck me, I fired up director Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy. Over a few nights, I re-watched Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises.

I think this trilogy is an impressive accomplishment. I own all three, and I enjoy returning to them every few years. This will not change, though there are certain gripes which I have developed regarding a few aspects of the series, as much out of over-familiarity as anything else. Let's get those out of the way:

One thing that irked me is that Bruce Wayne's scientific and detecting genius is almost completely absent. In fact, it is virtually spat upon. Since his very inception in Detective Comics in 1940, Bruce Wayne/Batman was noted for his intellect. He was virtually a Sherlock Holmes. Still, in Batman Begins, after Bruce Wayne is gassed with Scarecrow's hallucinogenic toxin, he awakes to have Lucius Fox rattle off the advanced chemical processes he needed to perform in order to produce an antidote. In response, Wayne simply states, "Is that supposed to mean anything to me?" Wayne's utter inability to comprehend Fox's chemistry jargon has always struck me as a severe oversight in terms of one of Batman's greatest strengths - that he is supposed to be phenomenally brilliant, especially with the forensic sciences, including biochemistry. Almost never in the entire trilogy is his scientific intelligence exhibited. The real shame is that it wouldn't have taken much effort to include it. My guess is that Christopher Nolan was so very focused on Bryce Wayne's tortured psyche that he ignored his considerable intellect, despite the fact that it could have been another avenue along which to explore his obsessive personality.

There's absolutely no way that the Joker (right) could have
been sure that his fellow crew member wasn't going to just
blow him away before his full plan unfolded. Just lucky,
I guess. This happens quite a bit. 

Another general area which exhibits cracks is in the little details and transitions from one plot point to the next. All of Christopher Nolan's movie's virtually crackle with great energy and pace, so that the eyes and mind are stimulated through the entire picture. However, when one watches his movies a second or third time, certain unanswerable questions arise. This was true with Memento, Interstellar, and every movie in between. In the Dark Knight trilogy, they are sprinkled around in plenty of places. In The Dark Knight, during the Joker's interrogation scene, how did the villain know that he would be able to break out at exactly the right time to call and set off his bombs while Wayne raced to save Rachel and Dent? In The Dark Knight Rises, how on Earth does even Batman recover from a broken back and return to peak fighting condition in a few short months? Though none of them ever torpedoes the overall stories, a few of these nagging little problems can be found in each film.

One of my lesser issues is that the dialogue can, depending on the mood I am in, feel overly polished. While there are plenty of thoughtful and brilliant lines (as I'll explore later), I sometimes cannot help but smirk at how nearly every character has a slick, clever line right on the tip of his or her tongue, at virtually every turn. Again, this is a minor issue, as many of the lines are great, but it does rob the characters of a certain level of authenticity.

And oh yes, Christian Bale's and Tom Hardy's respective Batman and Bane voices were strange and distracting choices. But they don't bother me nearly as much as they clearly bothered a lot of people. On to why I continue to return to these movies...

The Dark Knight trilogy did for superhero movies what Alan Moore and Frank Miller did for popular superhero comics two decades earlier: they brought a sense of maturity, depth, atmosphere, and intellect which simply had not been there before. Even some of the really enjoyable superhero movies from before Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, like Tim Burton's Batman and Bryan Singer's first two X-Men movies, still bore hallmarks of PG-rated "bubble gum" comic books. Sure, there was a touch of psychological depth in them, but they still remained primarily plot-driven stories which relied a bit more on colorful visuals than on probing character study. With his Batman trilogy, Nolan decided to take a very close look at Frank Miller's work with Batman in the 1980s, when the writer and artist dug into the damaged and arguably unhinged mind of "the world's greatest detective." Nolan combined this with the question, "What if a real billionaire truly went sort of nuts and decided to take justice into his own hands by pummeling criminals?" Nolan decided to set this story in a world which asked us to suspend our disbelief far less than any previous superhero movie, especially in terms of the powers and abilities of the primary characters. This was very different territory for the movies, and I've greatly appreciated it. Admittedly, things get a bit sillier in the final installment, but it doesn't spoil Nolan's overall realistic take on costumed vigilantes.

Though not a primary character, Lucius Fox was one of the
most consistently entertaining through the trilogy. Morgan
Freeman was the perfect choice to play the sly tech genius.

I also feel that any viewer, even those who have major issues with this series, must admit that there is some rather strong writing throughout the trilogy. Yes, I also get a tad annoyed that so many characters speak in slick, unrealistically clever and didactic epigrams. But there are some truly great lines, all the same. When Jim Gordon, at the end of Batman Begins, says, "I never thanked you", Batman's response "And you'll never have to" is solid gold. In The Dark Knight, virtually every exchange involving the Joker has hypnotic gravitas. I particularly enjoy The Joker's exposition to a burned Harvey Dent on the connection between chaos and the blindness of justice. There are plenty of others, and even minor characters like Lucius Fox and Alfred have some great one-liners, further enhanced by the impeccable deliveries of world-class actors Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Even after seeing these movies multiple times, I still derive no small pleasure from the dialogue.

On a purely aesthetic level, the movies look fantastic. Nolan always showed a keen eye for pleasing visuals, even back to his first color pictures Memento and The Prestige, there is often a brilliant color palate and expertly-arranged sets that are wonderfully pleasing to take in. The trilogy is no exception, exhibiting the "Blade Runner" feel that Nolan wanted for Gotham City just as well as the expansive long shots in the Himalayas or Hong Kong. And working within those scnes are some outstanding actors. Certainly some actors and performances are better than others, but I have a very hard time saying that anyone in the Dark Knight trilogy (or any Nolan movie) turned in a bad performance. Even Katie Holmes was tolerable, and that was about as bad as it got for the entire series.

While the trilogy has its detractors and those who might even argue against some of the above-mentioned aspects which I enjoy, I'm a fan. 

New Release: Interstellar (2014)

Have no fear - there are no spoilers in this review.

Director: Christopher Nolan

It's certainly not a bad movie, but it's one that leaves a few things to be desired.

Christopher Nolan has always loved multi-tiered stories. Whether he's layering experience with memory as in Memento, layering illusion and showmanship with personal desires as in The Prestige, layering heroism and villainy with their own social constructs as in the Dark Knight trilogy, or any of his other movies, his films always operate on a few levels. Interstellar in no different. Unlike his best films, though, this one tries to add at least one stratum too many.

The story is mostly that of Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former test pilot and engineer who is living on a future earth that is slowly dying of a massive and growing blight, a la the Dust Bowl of the 1930s Midwest U.S. This one, though, is on a global scale. In a last-ditch effort to escape the seeming fate of humanity slowly choking to death on its home planet, Cooper is enlisted for a mission through a wormhole next to Saturn, beyond which he hopes to find a habitable alternative planet. Once through the hole, though, things do not go exactly as planned, forcing Cooper and his fellow astronauts to make several extremely difficult decisions that weigh their own beliefs and hopes with those of all humanity.

Many of the themes in the movie are worthy of speculation and make for some solid food for thought. The place of exploration in our society, especially when balanced against far more immediate problems, is one that people have always struggled with. In Interstellar, this makes for a legitimate source of conflict, especially as the success of Cooper's mission is far from guaranteed. Then of course, are the tremendous sacrifices that the boldest explorers must make, and not just to life and limb. When Cooper and his crew near a planet where time is distorted by gravity, they must also consider how their aging will be slowed immensely, leaving everything and everyone they know to age far more quickly while they explore. The film does a very nice job of making these theoretical consequences of space exploration more tangible and impacting on the characters.

I'm no astrophysicist, but much of the science behind the film seems solid; at least, as far as the physical rigors and obstacles which need to be overcome are concerned. These days, there have been so many excellent documentary series done on such topics that we laypeople can have a pretty good idea of what things are like for astronauts, and Nolan seems to have done all of his homework. It helps that the visuals are extremely well done, and several scenes and sequences do an excellent job of capturing the vastness and majesty of the cosmos.

The relationship between Murph and her father is actually
endearing for the first part of the film, but grows a bit stale
as things progress. It eventually comprises what I found to
be one of the biggest weaknesses of the tale.

Where the movie goes astray is with the "human" layer of the tale. Filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky made thoughtful, insightful, artistic statements about humanity's probable destiny in space and the collective psyche of our species. Without giving away anything, I can say that I felt Nolan's attempt to weave human emotion into the story was a tad forced, with extremely shaky support. This thin tether is meant to be the link between Cooper deep in space and his daughter, Murph, back on Earth. The connection works at certain points in the movie, but is often either baffling or lacking the desired emotional effect.

Another problem I have with the film is the casting and acting. While Matthew McConaughey has proven himself to be a legitimately excellent actor in recent years, I was annoyed by the constantly hushed drone that he chose to speak in through nearly the whole movie. A tad more baffling was Nolan's choice to cast Anne Hathaway as the fellow astronaut/astrophysicist Brand. She's not terrible, but I found her lacking some of the grit, confidence, and stoicism that I associate with such professionals. I wonder if we're not starting to see Nolan fall in love with some of his own casting choices; what else would make him recast "Catwoman" in such a way? There are a few other casting choices that made me scratch my head, but I don't want to give away too much.

So the movie is a decent one, but I would have to put it towards the bottom of the Christopher Nolan catalog, especially when weighed against its huge ambition and massive budget. Nolan has never, in my view, made a "bad" movie. He has, however, made a few that smack of a bit of pretension and fall a bit short of his lofty goals. Interstellar is one of these. I would recommend that nearly anyone watch it once, but I would caution against expecting a masterpiece. Ultimately, the film just made me want to re-watch Europa Report at the earliest possible chance.