A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

This is a review of Warner Bros. Entertainment's Dunkirk three-disc Blu-ray/DVD/UltraViolet set. To read my July 2017 review of Christopher Nolan's film, check out this post: Movie Review: 'Dunkirk' On December 19, 2017, Warner Bros. Entertainment released the home media editions of  Dunkirk, director Christopher Nolan's World War II dramatic take on Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of nearly 400,000 British, French, and Belgian soldiers from the beaches at Dunkerque, a French port city on the English Channel coast, under unceasing Luftwaffe attacks and the threat of annihilation or capture by advancing German armies.     Nominated for eight Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound Design, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Production Design) and winner of other accolades, including three Golden Globe awards (Best Picture - Drama, Best Director, and Best Original Score), Dunkirk is now available...

(C) 2015 Dreamworks LLC Steven Spielberg’s 2015 Cold War film “Bridge of Spies” is an intriguing (if somewhat flawed) take on how a Brooklyn insurance attorney named James Donovan (Tom Hanks) helped negotiate the 1961 exchange of convicted Soviet intelligence agent Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) and an American college student (Will Rogers) accused of espionage by Communist-ruled East Germany. Spielberg’s latest historical drama earned five Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, and Best Supporting Actor. “Bridge of Spies” only won one: Mark Rylance walked away with the 2015 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor – a well-deserved recognition for his nuanced performance as accused spy Abel. “Bridge of Spies” begins with Rudolf Abel’s arrest by FBI counterintelligence in 1957. It is an age of atomic anxiety: The U.S. and the Soviet Union are building nuclear ar...

Man of Steel,  director Zack Snyder’s ambitious 2013 reboot of Warner Bros. Superman film franchise, is an earnest but sometimes dour and plodding retelling of the DC Comics superhero’s origin story. Starring British actor Henry Cavill ( Stardust ) in the dual role of Kal-El/Clark Kent and co-starring Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Russell Crowe, and Michael Shannon,  Man of Steel  reinvents Superman’s backstory from the ground up. In essence, it tells Superman’s Moses/Jesus-inspired saga of how Kryptonian scientist Jor-El (Crowe) sends his newborn son to Earth to save him from his home planet’s destruction. Because the screenplay by David S. Goyer (based on a story by producer Christopher Nolan) pretends that the Christopher Reeve/Brandon Routh Superman films don’t exist,  Man of Steel  begins on Krypton. As in the comics and the Richard Donner  Superman: The Movie,  the planet is doomed. However, in Goyer’s reboot, Krypton’s red sun...