John Wick was an action film that seemed to sneak up on everyone. Sure, it had a great trailer, but I don’t think anyone expected to walk away from just how great it actually was. What made it so effective weren’t just the well-choreographed fights and the stylish look of the film, but it was the characters that while over the top, were also ones the audience could relate to. Atomic Blonde is helmed by half the directing team that gave us the first John Wick, and from what the trailers first teased us with, I came into it with hopes we’d get something special.  While on the surface I can’t say that this film surpasses John Wick, what it does is stand alone for being a culturally and socially important film as it delivers not just the ultimate badass female in an action film, but I believe the first that belongs in the LBGT community.  It’s a big deal what this character represents, but how does the rest of the film fare throughout the fistfights and shootouts?

It’s the fall of 1989 in Berlin when we are introduced to Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron). She’s bruised and battered as she enjoys an ice bath.  The Cold War is coming to a close as the Berlin Wall is closer than ever to coming down.  She is an agent with MI:6 and is being debriefed by her superior, Eric Gray (Toby Jones) and a member of the CIA, played by John Goodman.  The debriefing is a combative one. Obviously we can tell she’s been through hell, and she begins to tell her story from the previous days as she attempted to complete her mission.

When Christopher Nolan has a new release, it’s an event to get excited about. There are few directors I can say this about. Sure, there are directors that I like, but still there are few who manage to capture what makes going to the cinema an experience. Dunkirk is his latest cinematic opus. Despite it being his shortest film, with the exception of The Following; this is the first time he has shot a film entirely in IMAX form. What’s the big deal? Well, aside from the picture being twice the size of the regular format, what he does with these cameras is deliver a beautifully striking picture of destruction and survival.  There’s a lot of buzz going around with this film, and already it’s being looked at as the first real Oscar contender of the year.  Is the film worth the hype?  Is it really Nolan’s best picture?

Christopher Nolan is widely known for his Dark Knight Trilogy, as well as Inception and Interstellar.  While I’m a fan of these films, it’s his film Memento that has always stuck with me as his most inspired work, a film that plays with a timeline to serve the overall experience of the film.  Dunkirk is yet another film that unfolds over the course of three timelines to tell its story of heroism and survival. While I appreciate Nolan’s attempt to be innovative with this storytelling technique, it’s definitely something I feel harms the overall film, because as the film unfolds we jump from one scene in the afternoon to another scene at night, and the sequences are edited to in such a way that tonally they coincide, but visually it’s jarring.  But still that’s not the greatest fault I find in the film; instead, it’s that I feel we are missing the entire first act of the film.