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Christopher Nolan's 'Dunkirk' is among 2017's "best" films according to critics...

GregHarmon GregHarmon Managing Editor Durkirk’s release comes 19 years to the weekend after five-time Oscar winner “Saving Private Ryan” released in theaters in 1998

Friday, Warner Bros. Pictures is set to release DUNKIRK - Christopher Nolan's upcoming anxiety-inducing War War II thriller in 125 select theaters equipped for 70mm projection, including 31 IMAX screens installed for 70mm projection. But if that wasn't enough to get you there, it's highly probable the near-unanimous critical consensus will.

Check out what industry critics had to say and circle back with us after you see Dunkirk and submit a review!

Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures

Christopher Nolan’s Monumental War Epic Is The Best Film He’s Ever Made

David Ehrlich │ IndieWire

"Neither as poetic as “The Thin Red Line” nor as savage as “Saving Private Ryan,” Nolan’s contribution to the war genre owes less to its forefathers than it does unbearably anxious thrillers like “The Wages of Fear” or even “United 93.” Riding Hans Zimmer’s typically bombastic score, which abandons melody in favor of ratcheting up the tension, “Dunkirk” leverages raw suspense in order to cut its characters away from their context and throw them back onto themselves. Few movies have so palpably conveyed the sheer isolation of fear, and the extent to which history is often made by people who are just trying to survive it — few movies have so vividly illustrated that one man can only do as much for his country as a country can do for one of its men."

It is a great film about one of the most pivotal battles in World War II

Richard Roeper │ Chicago Sun Times

"This is an intense but not especially violent film. Nolan opted for a PG-13 rating and eschewed graphic scenes of bloodshed in favor of focusing on the emotional, psychological and spiritual challenges facing these young soldiers. Fine work from the cast, from veterans such as Rylance and Murphy and Hardy and Branagh, through newcomers such as Whitehead and the pop singer Harry Styles. But the star of “Dunkirk” is the movie itself. Nolan has crafted a tight, gripping, deeply involving and unforgettable film that ranks among the best war movies of the decade."

The nerve-racking war thriller Dunkirk is the movie Christopher Nolan’s entire career has been building up to

Bilge Ebiri │ LA Weekly

"The nerve-racking war thriller Dunkirk is the movie Christopher Nolan’s entire career has been building up to, in ways that even he may not have realized. He’s taken the British Expeditionary Force’s 1940 evacuation from France, early in World War II — a moment of heroism-in-defeat that has become an integral part of Britain’s vision of itself — and turned it into a nesting doll of increasingly breathless, ticking-clock narratives. Some filmgoers might be expecting a sprawling, grandiose war epic. Instead, Nolan gives us one of the leanest, most ingenious studio films in quite a while: an intercutting montage of competing timelines that expand and contract and collide in ways both inevitable and surprising. And somehow, it’s also uncharacteristically intimate."

Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures

‘Dunkirk’ Is Nonstop Intensity That Will Leave You Physically Exhausted

Mike Ryan │Uproxx

"Dunkirk feels like the movie Christopher Nolan was preparing us for when he made Inception and Interstellar. Remember how time moved differently for those in the deeper dream in the former? And the same thing in the latter if characters were on the planet where a few minutes on the surface turned into years for the person left behind in orbit? Remember how these concepts were explained to us over and over again? Well, Nolan does the same thing in Dunkirk only there’s very little explanation.....But this certainly isn’t a “Harry Styles movie” or a “Tom Hardy movie.” Instead, it’s an experience. And it’s a theatrical experience unlike pretty much anything I’ve seen before. It’s non-stop intensity that will both exhaust a viewer and make one grateful that we didn’t actually have to live through that hell."

Even Christopher Nolan Skeptics Will Be Wowed by Dunkirk

Dana Stevens │ Slate

"The swift-moving, pulse-pounding Dunkirk reveals its filmmaker at his most nimble, supple, and simple—all adjectives that seem strange to use in connection with a movie shot in 65mm IMAX format, using practical effects and real stunts to re-create such large-scale events as the sinking of a WWII destroyer and the attempted mass evacuation of more than 300,000 men. But Dunkirk’s simplicity inheres not in its production logistics but in its storytelling....The degree to which the viewer does or does not “get to know” the characters in this intimate yet somehow impersonal movie may be a point of contention among audiences. Dunkirk is a portrait of a military and humanitarian operation more than it is a study of a group of individuals. It isn’t that big on characterization or, for that matter, dialogue—a good deal of which is inaudible thanks to the near-constant cacophony of plane crashes, gunfire, and explosions."

Dunkirk’s unique time structure will delight fans of puzzle movies

Matt Singer │ ScreenCrush

"On a technical level, the movie is an undeniable achievement. It was shot in 65mm, and on a true IMAX screen the image almost fills your entire field of vision. The dogfight sequences are particularly impressive, with the camera both mimicking the pilots’ point-of-view, and swooping and spinning through the air high above the ocean; occasionally, the effect is so visceral that you feel momentarily weightless. Nolan supposedly avoided digital effects wherever possible, shooting with thousands of extras to simulate the British forces and using real planes and boats (including a few that actually took part in the real Dunkirk evacuation). The result is a film that never once looks fake or phony. And all that verisimilitude feeds back into making you feel like a witness to real, horrifying events of history."

Dunkirk turns a WWII battle into a symphony. It's Christopher Nolan's masterpiece

Alissa Wilkinson │ Vox

"But the film’s brief coda is an essential caveat to all of this. Nobody knew, at Dunkirk, how the war would end. The soldiers leave with their heads low, feeling defeated, as indeed they were. The civilian sailors went home and waited for what would happen next. Invasion seemed imminent and victory by no means a given.

From the distance of history, we can tend to forget this, ascribing a kind of triumphalism to the end of the war and fooling ourselves into thinking that the “good guys” will always win. And though we know what happens after Dunkirk ends, the ending feels ambiguous, not wrapped up neatly at all.

Dunkirk is a symphony for the brave and broken, and it resolves in a major key — but one with an undercurrent of sorrow, and of sober warning. Courage in the face of danger is not just for characters in movies."

Dunkirk - Tom Hardy
Dunkirk - Tom Hardy

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GregHarmon GregHarmon Managing Editor

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