Dunkirk - Christopher Nolan - 2017

★★★★★ - Christopher Nolan is an absolute genius. He is in my top five filmmakers of all time. I love all of his films. This might be his best.

Tells of the Dunkirk evacuation through the perspectives of the land, sea, and air. Chronology is all over the place before coming together at the end. Has what he calls a “snowballing effect” where everything connects but is made clear in the third act. This is something he does in most of his movies to great effect.

Stellar cast includes Aneurin Barnard, Kenneth Branagh, James D'Arcy, Tom Glynn-Carney, Tom Hardy, Barry Keoghan, Jack Lowden, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Harry Styles in his film debut, and Fionn Whitehead. Mostly character actors that you know, but not by name.

The film is the highest-grossing World War II film of all-time, which is nuts, earning $527 million worldwide. Dunkirk received praise for its screenplay, direction, musical score, sound effects and cinematography; some critics called it Nolan's best work, and one of the greatest war films. The film received various accolades, Received eight nominations for the 90th Academy Awards including for Best Picture and Best Director (Nolan's first directing nomination) and won three for editing.

What is crazy is Nolan conceived the film in the 1990s before ever making a feature film when he and his future wife Emma Thomas sailed across the English Channel along the path the small boats took in the evacuation. However, Nolan didn't set out to make it until he had acquired sufficient experience directing large-scale action films, wanting to do it right.

Features an economy of dialogue instead creating suspense from cinematography and music. Historically accurate, apparently, if you care about such things. However, the characters were fictional.

My overall takeaway was the film is truly breathtaking. Wish I would have seen it in IMAX. It might be my favorite WWII movie. I was glued to the screen the entire time.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is the greatest movie of all time

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I know what gold does to men's souls... Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges! John Huston movie from 1948. Amazing film. Winner of three Academy Awards. One for the father of Huston, Walter, for Best Supporting. Two for John, one for Best Director and one for Best Adapted Screenplay. When daughter Anjelica Huston won for Best Supporting in 1985 for Prizzi's Honor, haven't seen it and looks terrible, they became the first three generation family to win Academy Awards. The Coppollas have since done this as well. Filmed on location just because Huston was an adventurer and wanted to go to Mexico. Also get away from the studio. Humphrey Bogart is completely fucking deranged in this extremely dark flick. Huston's old man, Walter, becomes what we collectively think of when we think olde timey prospector. A first time watch, this instantly became one of my favorite films. Been on a John Huston kick since watching the documentary They'll Love Me When I'm Dead about the until recently unreleased film The Other Side of the Wind by one Orson Welles. Huston is like the Dos XX guy except not irritating and real. His look and his voice. Cool shit. Fathered the lovely Angelica Huston, hands down my female companion's favorite. Also, you may have heard, he's a pretty solid filmmaker. This film is considered one of his best though this is one of four he directed with a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes (along with Fat City, The Maltese Falcon, and The Misfits).

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Remade but never duplicated, this darkly humorous morality tale represents John Huston at his finest.

Gist of the movie is two dirt poor Americans living in Mexico, Bob Curtin played by Tim Holt and wild man Fred C. Dobbs played by Humphrey Bogart, desperate for money, decide to join a old prospector, Howard who is played by the director's father, Walter Huston, in the Sierra Madre Mountains to mine for gold. The three make a fortune but bandits and greed brings it all crashing down.

While Huston the elder won the Academy Award for Best Supporting, it is Bogie's deranged performance that is most memorable. First off, dude looks like complete shit. It is rumored that he was taking fertility drugs, he and wife Lauren Bacall were trying to conceive, but that may or may not be bullshit. What is known is that he showed up bald and aged which doctors blamed on heavy drinking and a vitamin B deficiency. Huston rolled with it though as it just made the character that much crazier. He goes from being a shortsighted bum asking an American, played by the director, multiple times for money for food, never bothering to look the guy in the eye, to a completely uncontrollable Gollum type figure, completely obsessing over his newfound wealth.

I mean, at first he was a guy who couldn't pick the guy giving him handouts out of a lineup, begrudged the guy keeping him alive rather than being thankful. Then he and partner Bob get a gig that involves a lot of work from an American contractor with a huge payday at the end which never comes. The guy completely suckers them. Next thing you know, they run into the guy at a bar where he tries to sucker them again. An extremely clumsy and realistic fight breaks out when the labor boss knows he's fucked and goes on the offensive, attacking them with a bottle. They eventually kick the shit out of the guy with Bogart's character reaching into the guy's wallet and taking only the money they were owed. Later in the movie, after they have found enough gold to support the men for a lifetime, not long after buddy Bob saves Dobbs's life when he gets trapped in a mine, the unhinged Bogart character comes completely undone, obsessively fixed on Bob and Howard cutting him out and taking his share for themselves. Late in the movie, when Howard is living it up in a Mexican village after saving a child's life, it is just Dobbs and Curtin making their way to town. But Dobbs is already gone by that point, his mind clawed out, he tells Curtin, whom he has attacked and has him at gunpoint, that once he falls asleep, he is going to kill him. The wild look in his eye after staying up for days is fucking chilling. You sure as shit don't want him in your party, you outlasting him in an endurance contest for your life. Yeah, he totally wins the movie.

A young Robert Blake, passing as Mexican

All of that stuff with the three guys finding all that gold and it destroying at least one of them and them ending up with nothing in the end reminds me of "The Pardoner's Tale" from the Canterbury Tales, my favorite among them. In that three men search for Death whereupon they encounter an old man who says he saw Death behind a tree. When they go to that tree they find gold and guard it overnight. At first all is good but when they draw straws, sending the youngest one to town for food and wine, the two left behind plot to kill him, which they do. But they soon discover that the younger man has poisoned their provisions and die a painful, grueling death. The difference between this tale and the movie, however, is that only Dobbs had murder on his mind. The other two, though they lose everything, literally laugh it off in the end at the absurdity of the situation.

Huston, looking fly

This is also one of those films with lots of great stories coming out of the production. Like how John Huston adopted an orphan child. Or how Italian American Our Gang child star Robert Blake, who would later go on to star in such films as In Cold Blood/play a minor but pivotal part in Lost Highway and eventually murder his future wife, played the little Mexican boy selling lottery numbers, which Bogart's character wins. But the weirdest of this has to be the story of one Hal Croves's presence on set and the theory surrounding his identity.

The gist of this is that the author of the novel that the movie is based on, B. Traven, was extremely reclusive with all the details about him, including his name or real identity, subject to dispute. As I read about this guy, I became certain that this is who Roberto Bolaño based his novelist character Benno von Archimboldi in the book 2666, one of my three favorite books of all-time. (A quick Google search showed I wasn't alone in this theory). Anyway, the author was supposed to show up on set and work as a technical advisor for $1000 a week but instead a guy claiming the name Hal Croves, said to be a close friend of the author, showed up in his stead. Pretty much everyone was like, uh, this is obviously Traven, though he denied it, but Huston didn't want to make a big deal about it. He was getting a knowledgeable adviser and translator for $150 a week instead of a grand and respected the guy's privacy. He later even wrote in his autobiography that he ultimately didn't think they were the same person because of the way he spoke and acted IRL was so different than their correspondence via letters and such. Huston further explained that a lot of this theorizing was the result of people on set asking Croves if he was Traven and him denying it in this bullshitty way that made people think he was indeed full of shit. However, Huston's wife at the time, actress Evelyn Keyes, who was apparently cool with Huston's impromptu adoption of a Mexican child, by the by, was sure they were the goddamn person. According to her, Croves said "I" instead of "he" and basically sounded exactly like the guy in the letters he had written to Huston. Fascinating shit you can read about along with who Traven may or may not have really been in "The Mystery of B. Traven," a nice piece of journalism, at Vice.

Bohemian Rhapsody is the great movie of all time

Bohemian Rhapsody. Is this real life? Or just fantasy? Surprised that there is a lot of backlash with this flick. Sort of polarizing to some extent partly because they don't really go into his later years, specifically the relationship he had with his partner, Jim Hutton. Basically the movie begins and ends with the Live Aid Concert. Shows at the beginning this is peak Queen and the movie is how they got there. Personally, good call to bookend it with Live Aid Concert. That's storytelling and shit. Guess a bunch of people were pissed that they didn't go into the relationship with Jim Hutton more. I'm fine with the way it was. A lot of that relationship was implied. That they were happy and ended as such. This movie was more about the his time with Queen and not so much about what came before or after. Again, I'm good with that. Bitches be bitching. This movie is amazing. Shut your mouths. This is the greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: Bohemian Rhapsody hits a handful of high notes, but as an in-depth look at a beloved band, it offers more of a medley than a true greatest hits collection.

Pros: Rami Malek's performance is pretty fucking sick. I like that he lip syncs. Some don't. Those people are fools. Tells a good story. Flows well. Is long as shit but doesn't really feel like it. Casting is pretty much spot on. Brian May's portrayal probably most. I mean Malek probably looks the least like the person he is playing which is insane. Movie has it all. And you can't fuck with that soundtrack.

Cons: Is a bit too long. The Live Aid Concert is slightly anticlimactic because it doesn't get any better than watching the real thing.

Gist of the movie is the biography of Queen mostly with a focus on lead singer Freddie Mercury. Follows a somewhat fictional account of his life just before joining the band, Queen coming together and finding gradual success before making it big, him nearly marrying a chick and then coming to terms with his sexuality, him getting a big head and leaving the band (which actually never happened), him firing his manager, and finally getting back with the band, getting with partner Jim Hutton (not remotely how it really happened but that's okay), and performing at Live Aid. Disclaimer,: anyone who dislikes this movie doesn't know what the fuck he or she is talking about.

Directed by Bryan Singer of X-Men movies. It stars Malek in what has to be an Oscar nod as Freddie Mercury. It stars Rami Malek as Mercury, with Lucy Boynton as Mercury's fiance Mary Austin, Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger on Game of Thrones) as original band manager John Reid, Ben Hardy as drummer Roger Taylor, Tom Hollander as lawyer Jim Beach whom Mercury dubbed Miami, Gwilym Lee as guitarist Brian May, Allen Leech as the Judas manager who outed Mercury as gay and talked hella shit Paul Prenter, Joe Mazzello as bassist John Deacon, and Mike Myers as some fictional asshole record executive. Beach (one of the producers of the film), May, and Rogers (both creative and music consultants for the film) as were heavily involved in the project which is nice. I am not sure why Myers is in the film other than that he epically used the song in Wayne's World. His Scottish accent is the exact one he always uses, the one for his dad in So I Married an Ax Murderer and Fat Bastard in Austin Powers, which is an interesting call. Despite that shit, the film uses him as a solid foil.

Best scene of the movie is when Freddy and the band are in the office of Ray Foster, Mike Myers's character, when Mercury sells everyone on A Night at the Opera. The little speech he gives is inspire as shit, talking about opera and poetry and how it is is going to be the greatest album ever and will have something for everyone and how it's going to be legend. Foster is all, stick to the formula. Mercury has won everyone over though. "Fortune favors the bold," says their manager. Their lawyer, Jim Beach, is asked to weigh in. Mercury cuts everyone off, saying he is a bad ass and needs a bad ass name, "I dub thee, 'Miami'." "What do you think, Jim?" "Miami," Beach corrects. Everyone is stoked. The band said that that was him. Possessed by Mercury. Foster lost the room and off Queen go to make their greatest achievement.

Favorite line of the flick comes after Taylor tells Mercury, "You're a legend, Fred." Mercury responds "We're all legends." After a few moments he adds, "But you're right, I am a legend." That he was. Classic Freddie Mercury. Also, love that he was into cats. Makes him a legend in my eyes. Like that he talks to them on the phone and such. Feel the same way about my little Richard Parker. Such a good cat buddy. Love a good cat owner and Mercury was very sweet to kitties. Pet the next one you see for Freddie Mercury.

Anyway, I will say the Live Aid Concert is sort of a let down. It looks a little fake and the way they shot it, with focused shots on Mercury that didn't happen in the real footage of the event, is a little distracting. It's sort of like, "oh, I don't remember that closeup" or whatever. It happens just enough for it to be off. I'm buddies with this chick who is fucking obsessed with the real Live Aid video. Like I showed her the college commencement speech from my graduation by David Foster Wallace which is still just so inspiring and such and she showed me that video, equally inspiring to her. She did not like the way it was done in the movie. I get it. But it was still not terrible and in no way ruined the movie, which was fucking great. Also, Queen never actually broke up like they do in the movie with Freddie basically being an asshole. In reality, the band was just taking a break after touring together for a decade. This was in roughly 1983. But they were working on The Works which came out in 1984. So not so much of a breakup. Need some drama I suppose.

MVP is obviously Malek who kills it. Like other successful biopics--I, Tonya, Man on the Moon, Lincoln, Capote, The Social Network, so forth--dude becomes his subject. And more than the look, Malek really nails the attitude. He does a good job of being magnetic although I imagine it's not too hard when you are the star and all and have talent and what not. As he told Hollywood Insider:

"what I really knew I needed was to capture his spontaneity. The man's not choreographed. Every time he steps out onto a stage, no one knows what he's going to do, and that's what I knew I needed to tether myself to. In order to do that, I realized, I can't work with a choreographer, I need someone to help me with movement, someone to help me discover the impetus for why he does what he does. Why every flick of the wrist occurs with him in such an elegant, sometimes dainty and sometimes aggressive way, depending on his mood. I just had to find his humanity — what his conflicts were — and discover all the sides of him, because I knew there was more to Freddie Mercury than a man who holds an audience in the palm of his hand. But I had to get that down as well."

He totes does while doing his thing out there on stage. I mean, couldn't imagine what this would have been like if Sasha Baron Cohen hadn't been let go. He looks like Mercury and all, moe so than Malek for sure, but I couldn't exactly see him nail the Queen front man. And thank fuck Malek knew enough not to fucking sing. One of the previews they showed before the movie was for Rocketman, the Elton John movie. That dude, we see, sings. I mean, he sounds fine but he ain't fucking Elton John. And I'm sure Malek is no Freddie Mercury. Just lip sync it and look dope doing it, like Malek does here. This should be required viewing for anyone making a musical biopic and this should be the main thing that aspiring directors take away. Great fucking flick.

BlacKkKlansman is the greatest movie of all time

BlacKkKlansman. It's great. I thought director Spike Lee was done. Didn't think he would ever make another movie that I gave a shit about. The last movie of his I really, really liked was Clockers and Oldboy ended it for me. I wasn't ever going to get excited about a Spike Lee joint ever again. Also, he really turned me off when I went and saw him give a talk that he obviously hadn't prepared for where he railed on the Academy Awards making "make up calls" (which, to be fair, isn't wrong), choosing majors, and kids texting/playing video games. I know a dad ramble when I hear one and that was a dad ramble. It did start off with this pompous dean from the business school that gave a 10 minute masturbatory intro that culminated with him gifting Spike the gift of an IU Adidas basketball jersey to which Spike fucking told the dude "I can't take that. Don't you know I have a Nike contract? Respect that." which was pretty baller. Also, love me some Reggie Miller and the 1990s Indiana Pacers and their feud with Spike didn't really impress me much. But anyway. Yeah. Thought that dude was past his prime. But this shit was god damned amazing. Instant classic. Greatest fucking movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: BlacKkKlansman uses history to offer bitingly trenchant commentary on current events -- and brings out some of Spike Lee's hardest-hitting work in decades along the way.

Pros: Spike Lee is fucking back and bringing that shit. The casting is pretty great and everyone fucking brings it. A lot of these roles can't be easy either. Denzel's kid is the next Denzel. Adam Driver is fucking sick too. The story is crazy interesting. Spike fucking nails the late 1970s. Great soundtrack.

Cons:  The tone of the movie at times seemed way off. The first half of the movie was too light, bordering on comedy, for how heavy the last half gets. Otherwise it was perfect.

Gist of the movie, based on a true story, is that undercover Colorado Springs police detective Ron Stallworth, a black man, miraculously infiltrates the the Ku Klux Klan through a series of phone calls to organization leadership including Grand Wizard/former Republican (of course) Louisiana State Representative/presidential candidate David Duke. Obviously unable to meet the group face-to-face, Stallworth gets veteran detective Flip Zimmerman to take on the role as they work to take down the hate group intent on white-washing their violent image to garner more mainstream appeal. Staring in the film are Adam Driver as Zimmerman, Topher Grace as Duke, Laura Harrier as foxy lady Patrice Dumas, and John David Washington as Stallworth who just knocks it out of the fucking park.

Some extraordinarily powerful scenes. The one that really got to me was one that featured Harry Belafonte at a black power rally where he tells the story of a mentally handicapped boy's lynching that he witnessed as a boy. White people at the lynching took pictures of the guy being tortured and made postcards out of them. I went to the movie with a history teacher who talked about how this was real and how some guy compiled a bunch of them to bare witness. This site shows some but be warned it is truly disturbing (as is this part of the movie). I wish I hadn't clicked on it as I am too sensitive for that stuff. Spike splices this in with a Klan rally where they watch super racist silent film Birth of a Nation that portrays black men (mostly played by whites in blackface) as obsessed with raping white women and the KKK as heroes giving the two sides a nice juxtaposition. One as clearly fucked and the other is clearly not. No both sides bullshit.

This is where the film excels in that the film does a great job of making the contemporary alt-right, white nationalist group look ridiculous while also illustrating dangerously horrific they were at one time and have managed to become again in the Trump era. While the movie takes place in the 1970s, a lot of the rhetoric that is getting thrown around today. Stuff like "make America great again" and "America first" and so forth. Stuff that they really said that right-wing shit heads say all the time. Spike also splices together a couple of minutes of footage from last year's Charlottesville rally, including the woman getting hit by the car, and Trump saying it was "both side". So if it wasn't clear throughout the movie that this shit is still a problem, it totes is clear, then there is no mistaking it by the time you leave the theater.

Another uncomfortable scene is one where a klansman's chunky wife gleefully talks about "killing niggers" which is seriously fucked. This chick was really stoked. It was like she was anticipating having her first child or something. Showing just a pure joy and what not.

MVP of the film is an easy win for Washington. I had no idea this was Denzel's boy, the one that briefly played in the NFL, and kept thinking how he was Denzel-esque. Even sounded just like him and the performance has to have Oscar buzz when that time rolls around. Favorite little ditty with him is when he asks David Duke if he can get a photo with him and at the last second puts his arm around him in a baller move. He is gonna be a star, this guy. It's not even close although this made me a true believer in Spike Lee again and Adam Driver is a 10/10 as well. Driver's best scene comes when he talks about being jewish. It's not something he ever really thought about, but now, as someone who has infiltrated the KKK, he thinks about it all the time and this assignment is getting to him and what not.

So that was BlacKkKlansman. Movie totally kicks ass. Now that I've cancelled MoviePass for finally going to shit and picked up AMC's deal where you can go see the same movie more than once, I'll likely go see this one again before it's out of the theater. Yeah, greatest movie of all time.

Black Panther is the greatest movie of all time

Black Panther (BP). So hyped I thought it was going to be impossible for it to live up. For the most part it does. It's a super solid movie and is at worst a top three Marvel Cinematic Universe film. I'd put it at second behind Ragnarok and just ahead of the first Guardians movie. Dope but not perfect, basically. But culturally it is what we need, or at least that is my unoriginal take.

Fake news

Forever it's been the unspoken rule that black movies don't sell. Just like R-rated superhero movies would sell tickets before Deadpool.  This became the spoken rule when the Sony leaks came out. But it's the foreign audience that is racist... Right... But here we are.  With this dope black movie that is fucking crushing it. Right time? Right circumstances? Definitely. Yeah, what we need. Also a dope movie in a kick ass universe. Hopefully studios learn the right lesson here which I shan't get into.

Just stop

The dumbest shit I've seen said about this movie is from fucking Breitbart which I shant link to (ever). At first the right said it sucked. Created Facebook events to flood Rotten Tomatoes with negative reviews to tank the audience score and shit. This was the alt-right reaction to what they call "social justice warriors" or SJWs. When that didn't work they took to condescending everybody with their "hey black people, Wakanda does not exist." No fucking shit. No one fucking thinks that. Gotham, Metropolis, Atlantis. No one believes they exist either. When Justice League came out no one said anything like this. Shit is racist. Now, typically, they are claiming as their own which is fucking absurd. The dumbshit at Breitbart in "The Movie’s Hero Is Trump, the Villain Is Black Lives Matter" trolls us with shit like "If T’Challa is Trump, Killmonger is Black Lives Matter. Did I just write that? Yes. I. Did." At first I thought he had only watched the first half of the movie because T'Challa abandons his isolationist philosophies but then we get this shit: "By the end of the movie, T’Challa is even more like Trump inasmuch as he sees that his country of Wakanda cannot completely isolate itself from the world because he has a moral responsibility to help others," and "if T’Challa were a left-wing Democrat — a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton — he would oppose bringing people together." What's that now? This has to be a fucking joke. Not funny though. And the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Black Panther elevates superhero cinema to thrilling new heights while telling one of the MCU's most absorbing stories -- and introducing some of its most fully realized characters.

Pros: Story is fucking dope. Get some vegetarian representation, finally (though that character does make a joke about feeding a dude to his kids ["JK. We don't eat meat."] which was sardonic and hilarious). The cast is sick.

Cons: The action is meh, like always. Every movie is Some of the CGI was shockingly bad. Like in the scene during the big battle near the end when BP tackles a rhino I laughed out loud it looked like such shit. It was worse than anything in the Lord of the Rings movies from 15 years ago. Definitely the worst CGI I've seen in a MCU flick.

To start, if there is hot black actor in a show or a movie you've seen in the last couple years, they are probably in this movie. Got Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther. Was James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and Jackie Robinson. Lot of sweet historical roles there. Michael B. Jordan who was Creed in Creed, Wallace in The Wire, and QB1 in Friday Night Lights, is Killmonger (or as I call him, Murdergasm), the main villain dude. Lupita Nyong'o who was in 12 Years a Slave, Star Wars: The Forece Awakens, and The Jungle Book is one of the female leads/love interest, Danai Gurira who is Michone in The Walking Dead, Daniel Kaluuya who is the main dude in Get Out, Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker who need no introduction are in it, as is Sterling K. Brown from This is Us and played Christopher Darden in American Crime Story. Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis (who was really dope) are the white dudes that are also in the movie.

The films gives us T'Challa who rises from prince to king--which comes with the perk of receiving the powers of the Black Panther--of the technologically advanced isolationist nation state of Wakanda. As seen in Captain America: Civil War, the previous king, T'Challa's old man, was killed in a terrorist attack. After a brief reign on the throne, Killmonger, T'Challa's cousin who's dad (T'Challa's paternal uncle), seizes power with the intention of using Wakanda's tech to cause worldwide uprisings for oppressed peoples (he isn't wrong but is sort of a total asshole [with his {spoiler} dying breath he basically tells T'Challa "You still a slave, bitch" but much more eloquently). Shit then hits the old fan.

Two things I've been focusing on with this movie--one of which came up in conversation while the other came up in a podcast--were how his suit works and vibranium as a metaphor for culture. The suit comes out of the dueling black panthers' necklaces. It sort of engulfs them. But late in the movie, at a point when the vibranium that they run on is neutralized, we sort of see the suit pealing off sort of thing where we get bare skin. So are they naked underneath that? Are their clothes like stuffed in those little teeth on the necklace? How are they clothed when the suit completely disappears? So forth. The vibranium as a metaphor for culture is the hottest take I've heard on the movie. Heard it on the podcast The Daily Zeitgeist. The guest was talking about an African friend of his who came up with this. Slick viewing, this guy. This guy says vibranium is "a treasure trove of artistic and spiritual resources that, like Wakanda, are 'hiding in plain sight'-- disdained by whites, but also always at risk of being exploited by them." So basically look for academic study on this film in the future (which I'm totally into).

Only thing I can really shit on besides the CGI are the weapons that Okoye (Gurira) and Shuri (T'Challa's sister who is played by Letitia Wright and is like a super genius) use in the battle scenes. Okoye has these magic frisbee golf  discs while Shuri has these lame wizard hands that shoot concussion blasts of vibranium. Shit is whack. But, yeah, other than that shit is dope. You should watch it as it is the greatest movie of all time.