Darkest Hour Vs. Dunkirk

I agree with your opinions on both. Someone suggested watching part of Darkest Hour, then Dunkirk, then the rest of Darkest Hour.

Whichever order you watch them in, the first will give away the ending to the second.

"Dunkirk" is the better film while "Darkest Hour" had the best performance by far.

What I found to be refreshing about both films was that despite both of them being war dramas, neither one resorted to extreme violence with excessive gore and blood so common in war movies of today and relied heavily on implied violence, kinda a throwback to '60s era war films. I believe the timing of doing this was especially appropriate in light of Hollywood coming under increased scrutiny for its depiction of violence in light of the rash of mass shootings going on here in the U.S as of late.

I thought Darkest Hour was a pretty plain, but effective telling of its story. It doesn't do anything grand in the directing aspect of filmmaking, but the performances are so incredibly strong, and the story is so important, that it carries the film to a greater height. Whereas I found Dunkirk to be downright tedious, meandering, disjointed, a failure as a war film. So personally, I much prefer Darkest Hour.

Watching "Darkest Hour" and so far I vastly prefer it to "Dunkirk", which I found totally uninvolving. But in "DE" Oldman grabbed my attention from the get-go, and is doing a damn good job of keeping it. What will he say next!

I don't know why "Dunkirk" didn't grab me, I suspect it's one of those movies that needs to be seen in a theater. At home, with distractions present, the visuals have much less power, and that movie is all about the visuals.

Darkest Hour. Whilst both were fanciful flights of fiction, Dunkirk was SO far from reality I couldn't wait for it to end.

..Joe