Dunkirk, I feel conflicted writing this and it took me about a time to collect my thoughts, but Dunkirk is a ear shattering, mesmerizing and intense war film but it lacks a special something to make you fully engage, and care. I was mostly in awe during this movie, but not because of what the characters were doing, but simply because of the visuals and practical work.

Directing, cannot be understated that this is a incredible looking film, special shoutout to the color palette, it looks vibrant but also bleak, a fantastic combination. The fighter pilot scenes were something special, the beach scenes, the amount of extras, the scale of it all, brilliant. This is a movie that will suck you in, even more so with the score..

The score/music, Zimmer pulls off magic that never stops, every beating moment you're there, you hear and feel the escalation, the continues cold tension of waiting, it is a brilliant score, that only works on this exact movie. I wouldn't really go listening to it on spotify or anything, but it is tailor made to this movie in the most extreme manner.

Audio, having seen a few Nolan movies so far this is by far the loudest of them all. And I'm relieved this movie is not the usual 2,5+ hours because I really started feeling it after a while and it just exhausted my hearing. Dialog was fine, parts that mattered were audible but not perfect. On a audio level, this equals a horror in terms of jump scares, because you will jump when it blasts your ears. Seems like this movie could almost induce shell shock just by viewing. Another audio caveat is also that it's highly depended on your audio system, for it to be effective you can't really put it on low and have no subwoofer, in a rare case this actually seems like one of those movies that only really comes to it's full potential in a theater, a opinion I don't always agree on.

Story/etc, I get where Nolan is coming from. But it doesn't make for a good movie sadly. By giving us such a objective look, such a clean look as well; I found that the movie never really showed the horrors of war, because it decided to avoid any real nastiness. But that wasn't the intention. I don't need a gore fest, but when it's also so muted, it feels less impactful. Sound design for the screams are good though and very impactful, that is certainly a horror aspect. But back to the story, it's objective, flat, and just shows how it went, combined into three storylines which was fine, the aspect ratios where more annoying than anything though, and took my attention away from the full experience, cool idea, not great to watch. The main issue is making your main character generic soldier #77565, for a documentary or anything like that, perfectly fine. But we need something to connect to as a movie, the human element. The thing that makes war so horrible. There's just a lot missing there.

It left me feeling like I saw a really pretty and impressive movie, but that's about it.