Dunkirk

Following fantastic trips to the dreamscape (Inception) and outer space (Interstellar), director Christopher Nolan takes on British wartime history with this tour-de-force treatment of the miracle of Dunkirk. The 1958 film of the same name is a rousing tribute to the ordinary folk who sailed their small boats across the Channel to rescue Allied forces trapped on the beaches by the German army. Nolan's utterly immersive epic plunges the viewer into a three-pronged story that unfolds on land, sea and air with the life-and-death ordeals of teenage soldier Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) and his comrades (One Direction's Harry Styles, among them) dovetailing with those of Mark Rylance's quietly determined boat owner and Tom Hardy's resolute Spitfire pilot. Their exploits coalesce into a race-against-time tale of survival that puts the audience in the boots of soldiers under fire, the bowels of capsizing ships and a Spitfire cockpit during dizzying aerial dogfights. Nolan strips down the war picture, leaving out subplots and faux heroism, and extracts drama and emotion from nerve-shredding suspense, authentic visuals, elemental spectacle, superb sound and a magnificent score from Hans Zimmer, providing a pulsating heartbeat to the on-screen action. Dunkirk the event may have been "a colossal military disaster" according to Churchill, but Dunkirk the movie is a glorious, breathtaking triumph from a director at the top of his game.