Ready Player One

Uh, why exactly would everyone in 2045 be profoundly obsessed with the music and pop culture of the eighties? Well, actually, they wouldn't be. But filmmakers who grew up in the eighties and thus see the decade of their youth as their only reference point...well there's your problem. The '80s referentialism has now become de rigeur in today's tentpole productions, and this one is awash in it. Even as a child of the era, I didn't find the choice to be particularly appealing--or, for that matter, believable within the movie's near-future context. What also hurt was the film's poor concept and execution. This flick presents near constant spectacle stitched together with clunky exposition. And then, worst of all, when you get to the end, the story rejects the obvious climax--destroy the damn thing!--and has the characters, who should have reason to feel otherwise, choosing to swallow the dystopia almost whole. This despite two-plus hours of evidence that we're witnessing a nightmare future. Maybe the only good thing about this movie is how roundly it was rejected at the original box office. Perhaps, in that fact, we can see that there's hope for humanity yet.

Dunkirk

Yeah, surprised me, too. But it turns out that the Bad Cat, apparently, is not a "moggie." Hence, patriotic exercises masquerading as a movie have little positive effect here. This is another example of "Saving Private Ryan" syndrome: "Let me throw a pastiche of combat scenes at you, which don't have any particular thread running through them other than their particular circumstance, and then I'll sit back and listen to your applause. Because, you know, War. And stuff." Narrative barely exists here; mostly, it's just an exercise in two hours of watching British guys sitting around looking mopey. And while certain creative liberties are to be expected in any movie, particularly a history of war flick, some of the license here borders on ridiculous. Day turns to night and then immediately back to day--the same day, apparently--again and again. And I'm pretty sure the same plane was shot down three different times. The movie drags, there seems to be little point (beyond setting up a Churchill oration book report), and the smart viewer's attention wavers to wondering how badly the British armed forces screwed up in allowing the situation to happen (and how incompetent the Nazis were in letting them get away). A major, major disappointment.