Summer Movie Update

I have not written many movie reviews this year so it's time to catch up by posting a brief one sentence summary of the movies I've seen and posting them in order that I liked them.

Dunkirk 8.0- Good war movie and an amazing story. You can see my prior post for more details.

Wonder Woman 7.7- It's good to see a DC comic movie finally do well but I think I heard too many over the top reviews and recommendations so I was a expecting something even better than the Godfather.

Spiderman: Homecoming 7.6- Tom Holland does a good job in the latest Spiderman reboot.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 7.5- It was a pretty good sequel to the first one.

War For the Planet of the Apes 7.5- Great special effects. Kind of dark and depressing.

King Arthur 7.2- I was surprised that hardly anyone liked it. I really enjoy Guy Ritchie's style and thought it had the coolest opening battle scene I've seen in a long time.

Masterminds 7.0- One of those dumb yet very funny movies. I actually watched it several times.

Kong: Skull Island  6.9- Cool effects but I didn't ever end up caring much about King Kong or the other characters during the movie.

Keeping up with the Joneses 6.7- Not the best comedy but there were many funny moments.

Ghost in the Shell  6.6- Don't remember a ton about this one except it was kind of Blade Runnery and Scarlet Johansson did not look very Japanese.

The Mummy 6.3- I can't remember the last time I saw a Tom Cruise movie that wasn't very good, but this one fell flat.

Dunkirk

I have to admit I was not familiar with the events at Dunkirk during World War 2 so when I saw the movie trailer I didn’t really get excited to see it until I realized that Christopher Nolan was the director. I have loved all of the movies he has directed so I was wondering how he would put his customary mind spin on a true war story.

The way he added his usual mind exercises into the movie was by telling 3 different stories of 1) the stranded soldiers at the beach, 2) the British citizens who came to their rescue, and 3) the fighter pilots in the air. Each of these three sections took place at a different time rate but all merged together by the end.

Dunkirk portrays the events that took place when 400,000 British troops were forced to retreat from the Nazis to the beaches of France (Dunkirk.) They were stranded and waiting for boats to transport them back across the channel to England, but they were short on boats and the ones they had kept getting bombed from the air or sunk by German submarines. The British ended up sitting on the beach unable to defend themselves properly from their attackers and were forced to just wait for a miracle.

I liked Dunkirk, but like most good war movies, it reminds us how much war sucks. Even though I liked it I can’t say I’d be super excited to see it again. It was not very graphic like Saving Private Ryan or some other war films, but it was still pretty bleak and depressing in nature until the end.

I give Dunkirk 8.0 stars.