Dunkirk (2017)

About a year ago,I was thinking about Dunkirk, as you do.

It probably had something to do with the war movie exhibition running at the Imperial War Museum. One of the films covered by the exhibition was Atonement - specifically the Dunkirk beach scene from the . It only touched briefly on that event though - Dunkirk seemed to be fairly absent from the recent cinematic narrative of the Second World War.

And then I heard the news that Christopher Nolan was making a movie about Dunkirk. Considering he"s one of my favourite directors, that should have been the perfect match.

The reviews this week have also been remarkably positive. Surely nothing could go wrong?

Well, yes, it could, but it didn't.

Dunkirk is a practically flawless piece of cinema. The scenes on the beaches are the best depiction of warfare since the Omaha Beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan. But unlike Ryan, at no point does Dunkirk fail to live up to its initial promise. It builds, and it builds, and it builds.

Like most of Nolan's films, it employs an unconventional narrative structure, which works incredibly well. The film is intelligent, visceral, and emotional in a beautifully understated way. There's no selfishness in the emotional moments - they're earned and never feel manipulative.

See this film in a cinema with a decent sound system. The sound plays as important a part as the stunning visuals. Acting is too notch too, with Tom Hardy and Kenneth Branagh the standout parts for my money.

There's so much else I could mention, but I think I'll by saying this is probably my film of the year (so far at least). Don't wait to see this one on the small screen if you can help it.