We discuss one of the greatest war movies of all time – a favorite of us both.
Saving Private Ryan
Directed by: Steven Spielberg Produced by: Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon, Gary Levinsohn, Steven Spielberg Written by: Robert Rodat Cinematography: Janusz Kamiński Edited by: Michael Kahn Music by: John Williams Starring: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies Production company: Amblin Entertainment, Mutual Film Company Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
On this anniversary of the Allied Invasion of Normandy, we actually spend a little time thinking about war and how neither of us would have probably survived *any* of them.
The serious topics continue as we talk about when people leave the faith. We promise next episode will be less sobering.
Dunkirk is a $150 million experimental film in the guise of a blockbuster.
Dunkirk features horrifying events stunningly photographed and set to a concussive soundtrack
Writer/director Christopher Nolan has made a career out of crafting smarter-than-average crowd-pleasing movies that function as puzzles as well as dramatic stories.
But Dunkirk is something different when it comes to subject matter. It’s not a sci-fi, mind-bending adventure like Interstellar or Inception. It’s not a grounded take on a superhero like his Batman films. It’s not a non-linear character-driven drama like Memento or The Prestige (my personal favorite).
Nolan has historically locked down his film sets tight in an effort to prevent spoilers from leaking out. But with Dunkirk, a film based on the evacuation of nearly 400,000 British soldiers from France at the beginning of World War II, the story is already known – at least by the history books. It’s a story engrained in the British psyche.
Had the evacuation at Dunkirk failed, World War II would have gone very differently. Nolan’s film only gives hints of that greater context. It’s not much of a history lesson. You won’t learn a lot about what actually happened not because the movie is inaccurate, but because it’s focused on the psychological experience.
