Review - Dunkirk

'War is hell' is not fresh fodder for the movies. For a hundred years filmmakers have employed the bombastic, enveloping power of cinema to show audiences just how horrible it is to walk a mile in a soldier's boots, from early touchstones like All Quiet on the Western Front to modern incarnations like Hacksaw Ridge.
But seldom is the chaos of combat evoked with such precision and formal exactitude as it is in Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan's visceral, artfully disorienting account of the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Allied troops from the eponymous beach in the spring of 1940.

The 'Miracle of Dunkirk' is considered a linchpin moment of the second World War – A sort of psychological victory salvaged from an untenable military fiasco in France. Some 400 000 British, French and Belgian men found themselves stranded at the tiny port town of Dunkerque while the German noose tightened around them, waiting to be ferried across the English Channel to safety. The fact that so many of them lived to fight another day became an early cornerstone of the war effort, preserving Britain's might and boosting her morale.

At least, that's how history (having been written by the victors) remembers it.

Catching up with Bond, Shaun, and Ava

If distributors are going to playing coy all November long with their hottest Oscar prospects, I'm going to play catch-up during the lull.

Back in the Spring, Alex Garland's dulcet sci-fi Ex Machina was making the rounds on the arthouse circuit, earning strong notices for its heady ruminations on consciousness and artificial intelligence, and especially for Alicia Vikander's enigmatic robotic performance.

It's a thoughtful, chilling, lingering chamber piece -- and what perfectly designed, minimalist chambers they are too -- that takes a refreshingly intimate approach to subject matter that would tempt most filmmakers to go big. We already knew Garland had a penchant for subtle speculative fiction based on his adapted screenplay of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go from 2010, and his authorial voice remains intact in this directorial debut.

One Category at a Time: Visual Effects

I'll try to keep this post short and sweet, because let's face it: There's no bigger slam dunk this year than Gravity's impending victory for the Best Visual Effects Oscar. This is hardly arguable, even for detractors of the film. But as locked up as the award is, there are still a few tidbits of trivia worth mentioning...

ASC nominees

The American Society of Cinematographers nominees are:
The Artist, Guillaume Shiffman
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Jeff Cronenweth
Hugo, Robert Richardson
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Hoyte van Hoytema
The Tree of Life, Emmanuel Lubezki

Nice bit of love for Hoyte van Hoytema, who I'd have loved to see get an Oscar nom three years back for Let the Right One In. His work on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is similarly nuanced and visually articulate. Very classy selection, ASC.

The other four were largely expected, and I predict will be chalked up for the Oscar.

The conspicuous absence of War Horse from the majority of guild citations so far might be a telling sign. While I still think Janusz Kaminski gets in with the Academy's cinematographers branch, the story these guild snubs tell for the film as a whole is rather ominous. With only a PGA nod (in a ten-wide field) under its belt, it's time to shift it from being a safe Best Picture bet to being on the bubble.