9.0 for me. Incredible acting. So cool to see him pull a Tarantino and bring Josh Hartnett and David Krumholtz back from the ether and into meaty roles. Hope to see more from those two. This film felt like Nolan flirting with more of a PTA style and I loved it. I did however feel the runtime towards the very end. Cillian deserves an Oscar.
@@SonnyFrisco Same. It was way too contemplative to be a Scorese pic. There also weren't enough scenes with people screaming over each other and throwing things or breaking stuff or the camera flying all over.
not even close, PTA's touch is all over the place, he doesn't really have one trademark... the best comparison for Oppenheimer is Oliver Stone's JFK... punk political horror
I enjoyed seeing famous scientists like Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Fermi, Teller, portrayed on screen, and of course their choice for Einstein was perfect.
Einstein and Gödel, pictured as halfwits? Okay, they got the hair right, but that does not depict a character. Each one of the scientists were just esquissed, no substance, no character development, nothing you could understand from their motivations. Not even Oppenheimer. It's an empty shell that makes a lot of noise with underwhelming discussions and an emphatic music. Total crap.
@@KIBICKE94 The colored sequence where Einstein was shown was subjective, i.e. through Oppenheimer's eyes. It's not meant to be taken truthfully. But it's still very reliable. Einstein contributed significantly to quantum mechanics; however, he was quite vocal about his discomfort with its probabilistic nature, its incomplete description of reality, and its implications for the nature of cause and effect.
@@sudeshnapal1832 So because of that Oppenheimer saw him as a ridiculous old man? I highly doubt that. And what about their conversations? Do they have to be uninteresting as well? You do the costumes, the haircuts right, you apply a so called artistic concept, like "color" equals "subjective" and you obtain a good film? Sorry, but it's still just pretentious crap, so far from a good film.
@@KIBICKE94 their conversation about the probability of destroying the world when the bomb's dropped was uninteresting to you? Do you expect scientists to be theatrical? I suggest that you read American Prometheus. The movie remained extremely true to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book.
Always loving getting to hear you talk super passionately (in a positive way) about a new release. And it seems we've gotten more of those this year than we normally do.
The imax 70mm version has a monumental amount of bass and is very impactful. That very loud bass really showed the intensity of the great inner turmoil of Robert Oppenheimer.
I watched it twice, and the second time, I realized how awesome this movie is. One of the best. Music really helps to understand the horror that Oppenheimer is feeling in his head.
I just saw this film and stumbled upon your channel. You are awesome. So great to have someone with substantial, granular and educated opinions voicing them fluently, instead of the usual "passionate rambling" that pervades UA-cam. Thank you.
I disliked the movie, I hated the sound track, loud dramatic music for the many scenes that just weren't dramatic. So much talk, talk and more talk, the movie had no hero's, no villain's, and not a lot of excitement. The only part of the movie I enjoyed was the lead up to the test explosion. The mix of black and white with colour left me wondering why. The mixing of timelines felt forced, deliberately confusing the audience, making you piece together the jigsaw pieces into the actual timeline of events. I didn't like any of the character development. I got sick of the close up shots of the actors and the hand held shots. I think a good documentary on this historical event would be a better way to spend my time. 2 hours into the movie, I kept thinking maybe Barbie would have been a better choice!
You clearly don’t have the brain capacity to understand the movie. It was a masterpiece on so many levels. Hence the popularity and Oscars. Stick to barbie.
I think the problem with Nolan doing this story is the same one with him doing Inception or the Prestige. He has a very monochromatic color plaette and a poor sense of writing natural dialogue and building relationships. He stages even scenes between a married couple as a kind of stand off in a doorway. Oppenheimer is a deeply sensitive person drawn to reading the Bhagavad Gita because of it's color, warmth, and tolerant messages. He becomes a leftist as a college student because he wants to help the poor and give them security and family time as he had with his wealthy parents. Cillian Murphy just seems emotionally shell shocked and dredged of hope throughout the whole movie and Nolan films everything so rapidly and without a lot of natural humor and sensuality. He cannot estabish the center of the movie as something to care about- Oppenheimers moral center, because he cannot show us the world Oppenheimer would rather be in. When oppenheimer is torn away from a comfortable world and a politics of peace because of the Axis forces forcing Americas hand, we cannot feel it deeply.
this movie made me realize that nolan is much more than eye-candy and craftsmanship. oppenheimer feels more intimate and "first-person" than i had planned on giving it credit for
you should've gotten this from Guy Pearce in Memento and his main driving force being his love for his wife, DiCaprio in Inception and his main driving force being his love for his children and similarly Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar... always felt like people criticising him for his lack of emotion and humanity in his films are just trying to find fault in a director that is one of a kind and highly celebrated
@@cavy369I'm a Nolan fan and even I almost always felt like Nolan's films were more cerebral than emotional. And again, I'm a Nolan fan. It's not that his movies tend to have no emotion at all it's just that the headiness of it takes far more attention and energy to digest than the emotion does. Interstellar strikes a great balance between the technical and the emotional, while Tenet leans into the lack of emotion and largely focuses on the mechanics of the mission. Inception is centered around Cobb getting back to the reality of his wife and kids but tbh I just don't care about that aspect of the film that much. The personal emotion of Oppenheimer's third act is exquisite, but the road to get there was mostly very talky and technical/political in the meantime - and I'm saying that someone who loved the film and did find it emotional. I honestly think it just comes down to the fact that Nolan's greatest strength is in the cerebral so the emotional side doesn't always resonate as strongly...and frankly that's understandable and ok.
I saw this last night, and I really liked it a lot, too. It may be Nolan's most mature effort thus far as he uses his concepts not as window-dressing for the world but instead shifts the focus within the human soul. As such, it's the best character ensemble of his career by far. Great review, as always, Maggie.
Lol. The entire movie is based on the *utterly false* notion that WW2 ended because of the Atomic Bomb. A notion that only benefited the Japanese elites and our Military Industrial Complex.
It was over wrought, self important and indulgent. A huge mess of a movie. The music and sound design was so confounding that it felt like it was trying to mask the constant, relentless expositional dialogue. One character asks a question, the other simply gives all the information. On and on it goes. For 3 hours. Also, 3 threads of story. Every time one had nowhere else to go, it switched to another. But Strauss’s narrative and the whole closed hearing/communist thread being used as the opening and closing of the film is a huge miscalculation. Those threads might have worked better as a subplot rather than as the main thread to a story about Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb. There were so many opportunities to show us things about the bomb. Just how big was explosion compared to bombs from before? How far did they have to drive to escape the blast? Show us, instead of telling us. Nobody dares to say no to Nolan. He’s the golden boy who can “do no wrong”. I miss the influence of Jonathan Nolan, Hans Zimmer and Wally Pfister on his work.
Exact way I felt about the movie. I’m mindblown she was as receptive to the movie as she was given how critical she’s been of Nolan in the past. It makes me feel like I watched a different movie than her.
Same, definitely over wrought, so much runtime and yet so little to say about Nukes, Oppenheimer as a person, etc. The acting was great but the pacing was awful.
I had the same feeling about needing a rewatch to appreciate the whole narrative as you described but I've come to expect that from Nolan. The marriage here between Murphy's expressive acting and the tense soundtrack that was just as alive and breathing as any of the characters on screen was so haunting and unforgettable. I loved how the scenes with Einstein almost have him painted into the background but his influential presence is still felt. The ending scenes of nuclear war swallowing Earth gave me Dr. Strangelove vibes and I couldn't help but smile. Beautiful film
I need a rewatch with subtitles just to be able to understand the dialogue because the audio mix was terrrrrible. hopefully it was just my theater, but it was impossible to understand them, the music dominated everything.
@@helpfulcommenter didn't run into this issue personally. I saw it at the local cinema here in a pretty small theater so the sound was dialed in well. Only gripe I have is barbie let out about 15 minutes before Oppy and that crowd gave no fucks about us in the smaller theater trying to finish our showing. 😂 Seems like a scheduling oversight but whaddaya gonna do?
Great review as always. I thought this was a beautiful mess. Even though the pacing was so fast, I became exhausted trying to follow the thread, but didn't understand why he unnecessarily made the story seem more complicated than it already was. I like to compare this to JFK. That was a movie with even more characters, complicated details and concepts across a longer period of time, but it was masterfully told with no confusion of what was happening at all. It was also almost 30min longer and I didn't feel the length at all, whereas this sometimes made me want the move to just end. There were some amazing moments, but many things seemed to be overly complicated by the structure itself.
Your analysis review of 2001: a Space Odyssey is my favorite one on this platform, and the present review makes me even more excited to see Oppenheimer tomorrow.
Those guys just let you know what you need to know, nothing more. Most 16 min reviews are boring That's why they are more famous and have better reach.
Just when i had given up on UA-cam movie reviews i searched Poor Things reviews and staggered onto your channel. Articulate, informative ans zero fawning. Just listened to ten reviews whilst out for a run, all brilliant.
I’ve always loved Nolan, even in his messes like Tenet and Interstellar, because of his unique way of blending timelines into a singular story. Oppenheimer, similar to the Prestige, felt like Nolan had a definitive vision from day one and executed it to the letter. Some stuff in the last act drags a bit, but otherwise this is a borderline perfect movie for me (though I’m a bit biased).
@@L33Reacts Mess. Interstellar's emotional core, while more effective to me than others, is literally spelled out in dialogue and is just way too obvious.
Well.. I guess i found meself a new favorite critic, which includes print (Peter Bradshaw had been my front runner above all the past years). Went through a bunch of your backlog in the recent weeks... and yeah. You truly "feel" film, it's components, a creative vision - and you certainly know to break it down and articulate. Very, very impressed I am, and grateful to have stumbled upon your channel.
Peter Bradshaw gave Ghostbusters (2016), The Last Jedi, and RIse of Skywalker 4/5, same as Oppenheimer :D If you're wondering, he gave 5/5 to The Force Awakens.
@@nighttrain1236 Holy smokes, I did not know that! Thanks for letting me know mate. I mean, every critic "expects" something different from the medium and rates the achievement accordingly, but i never thought Peter to be a blockbuster-above-all type critic... I think I found him through his Bond reviews, which were quite on point...
@@thenout Without trying to sound like a reactionary, I've found that many critics who I used to respect have been extremely reluctant to properly criticize bad films that happen to carry 'woke'/social justice messages, which the Disney Star Wars trilogy certainly did. Mark Kermode is a good example.
@@Thomas15 A critic shouldn't just be telling me whether they liked or disliked a film, I expect them to be as objective as possible and exercise some critical thought. If you're talking about Kermode he used to never hold back over bad films, but with the Disney Star Wars trilogy, he was as soft as could be with praise that was tellingly general. We live in a fairly polarised age and many critics are scared of being labeled reactionary right-wingers especially if they're old, white and male. Or it's just the sheer vanity of hoarding virtue.
A very compelling analysis. I saw the film in IMAX with a group of friends and we were all overwhelmed by it and basically talked about it all night afterwards. I think a lot of reviewers who were "bored" simply didnt get it. An unashamedly intelligent film without being pretentious which frankly is always the risk with Nolan.
Loved the film, but really just want to jump on the comment train and say how much of an intelligent and thoughtful speaker you are; everything you have to say, you say incredibly well and in that you stand very tall among other reviewers on this cite. Keep it up!
You are spot-on with plot mechanics and experiments of cinematic emotional manipulation being the narrative core and also the core interest of any Nolan picture. I feel this is their inherent flaw, because this (HYPER-) focus makes them lack in all the other departments of story-telling - especially character development. But also the world-building feels flat, which might also be due to the fact that mostly anything that "rules" Nolan's cinematic worlds are the few motivations/emotions his protagonists have. The rest of the world is just extras and backdrops that feel like props rather than lived-in environments or characters with an everyday life. They merely appear to deliver lines needed to drive the plot and then disappear into nothingness. The problem in Nolan's movies is not lack of emotion per se, but it is lack of character depth. His protagonists usually have a single motivation, and this is at core their only character trait. Monocausal motivation might work on a mechanistic plot level, when you don't want to end up with loose threads, but it does not make a story believable on a human interest level, where you want characters to have depth, inner conflicts, an arc of personal development. Emotional moments can get me interested in following the intricacies of plot, but unless they are expressions of human complexity they won't get me interested in the characters and to follow the story from their perspective. Nolan's stories feel cold, distant and lacking humanity; for even though the plot might contain and play around with emotion-inducing spectacle and effects on a more superficial level of plot, projection and manipulative special effects (sound, vision, stand-in "typical" characters, plot suspense, rapid pacing), these emotions are not an outflow of character exposition, but merely the result of external effects. His minor characters are even worse, they feel vapid and interchangeable, like NPCs in an electronic game that are entirely defined by their skin, game mechanics (here: plot mechanics) and apart from that follow the very same underlying algorithm as all the other NPCs. In this case: Here it is Oppenheimer who wants to prove his scientific genius and societal value to the world vs. Strauß who wants to get back at Oppenheimer for triggering his inferiority complex and to overcome his inferiority complex by climbing the social ladder and make his name known in the high society. And all the other figures are not human characters with complex individual personality traits, but even more reduced to plot function than the two main protagonists, they are merely NPCs in various skins to be moved around the plot like pawns in a game of chess between Strauss and Oppie. . To sum it up: Nolan movies are entirely plot driven, apart from one-track mind energy protagonists/antagonists that wind up and set the music box plot in motion. This is what makes revisiting Nolan movies feel so stale and boring and empty once you have memorized and can anticipate the plot. They are like rides in an amusement park: Well constructed, pretty safe, but lack any sense of adventure or excitement beyond their sheer kinetic force.
Agreed. I think the reason why Nolan is one of my favorite directors is simply because of the subject matter he usually chooses to write about, and his perspective on special effects and cgi where he would rather it be the icing on a cake and not the entire birthday party. It’s very hard for me to suspend my disbelief in films with overly saturated and fake looking cgi. I read and study quantum mechanics, nuclear physics on my own. I love this stuff. I also love how all of my favorite scientists came together like the avengers. So I thought it was a no brainer. I had to love this film. But I didn’t. It was perhaps the coldest biopic I’ve ever seen in my life. It felt like it was written by Dave Filoni. Like it was written and directed by a psychopath. Many of the emotional moments in the film are implied. He’s not actively trying to persuade you of why these characters feel a certain way. Like the scene just shows you they’re emotional, but there’s no real build up to these emotions. He also made “a race against the nazis” the central theme. Which I think would be obvious and inherent given the event, and not something to be hinted at constantly with a perpetual score. It is also implied that Oppenheimer “can hear the music.” He’s great at theory but horrible in lab as a kid. And all we get is him breaking lab equipment. But I felt as though “hearing the music” was a better theme to focus on. They cut back and forth from real life to the image of a wave function dancing around a nucleus. I thought they’d build this atom up to a fissile uranium isotope, and relate the explosion to how fissile Oppenheimer can be in his waking life. But there’s no through line for emotion to build toward a payoff. The emotional wounds of the characters do not drive the plot. You’d think that it would be somewhat obvious to include the consistent turmoil within a Jew facing annihilation, for it to only be a race against the Nazis at face value (I’m not Jewish by the way). But the plot is built on spoon fed exposition, and not on the emotional wounds of the characters or the main character. And if the character is inherently cold, there should be convincing examples of warmer characters to persuade us of some type of temperature difference between him and them as well as us in the audience.
just wanted to say how much i love your videos! you have a talent for perfectly and eloquently putting so many of my feelings towards certain films into words better than i ever could. not to say i consistently agree with every single opinion you share, but rather that you're just very good at communicating how you think and feel to the viewer. it's very refreshing.
I had real issues with the pacing in the first quarter of the film; it genuinely felt like it was rushing way too much, trying to fit in so much history into a short span of time, which ended up making it feel like a very long montage. Also, i wasn't fully satisfied with how he handled the two female characters: Florence Pugh's character was rushed through and just suddenly out of the picture, while Emily Blunt's character was just in the background for the first 2/3 of the film then suddenly she's very important to Oppie. Plus, SPOILER: the reveals towards the end felt a little too detective movie-like, i.e 'it was you all along'. That felt off to me. That being said, i mostly loved it: he had a lot of scope to cover and generally did it really well.
The silence was more than an artistic choice. There were three observation areas 10,000 yards from ground zero, and a base camp at 10 miles out. It took the shock wave / sound 27 seconds to reach the closest groups (including Oppenheimer) and 47 seconds to reach base camp. I feel this adds an extra layer of horror / realism that you will appreciate on your next viewing: they watched the bomb ignite in pure silence and it took 27 / 47 seconds for the blast wave, and the sonic boom carrying the sound, to reach you. And then you would hear the deafening sounds of the atomic furnace.
Yep. One of unrealistic things about most movies and even documentaries is the way the sound of explosions are depicted. You usually hear a loud boom instantly. In reality you don’t hear a bug explosion instantly. If you’re close enough to hear it instantly, then you’re likely to not hear it anyway because you’ll be knocked unconscious and possibly incinerated and instantly dead.
This is a thoughtful online review, one of the best I’ve seen about this movie. I have similar feelings about Nolan. I’ve only just seen Oppenheimer (like everyone) but my initial reaction is it does feel like Nolan straining to synthesize his more metaphysical and experimental instincts as a filmmaker into a historical story that has an already enormously well-documented body of scholarship and writing behind it. Not just the biography on which the movie is based, but Richard Rhodes monumental “The Making Of The Atomic Bomb” and even shorter works such as the graphic novel “Trinity” by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm. Let’s not forget that the BBC did a marvelously well written miniseries in 1980 about Oppenheimer and The Manhattan Project. . Does Nolan’s vision work - yes, spectacularly so in many ways. Does it still have some of the problems of Nolan excess? Yes.
Thanks for this review - based on your description of the absolute silence in the "test" scene and Cillian's "face acting", I'm now pumped to watch this tonight. Right up my alley when I had previously dismissed
I have very mixed (overall positive) feelings towards this movie. My gripes about this and critique to Nolan is that the movie lacks focus. Sure, you can argue that the focus is on Oppenheimer - hence the name of the movie. But by attempting to cover everything the movie will feel packed and slightly rushed and it did feel that way to me. I feel like that’s such a critical decision for a director of Nolan’s calibre, it’s his 12th film after all. I strongly believe had Nolan chosen to focus on specific aspects of Oppenheimer’s life and delved deep into that with more or less the same duration, we would have gotten a superb film. I felt things I’ve never felt before when watching this and I’m a huge fan of Nolan! He did a great job with this inventive concept of a biopic, but I wanted him to do even better!
This. The movie feels unsure if to focus on “consequences” from the bomb making or the political ego battles of the third act. Nolan tries to stitch them by implying that Oppenheimer was punishing himself by playing along with the inquiry but I found that a bit stretched
@@edoardo849 it's not trying to have you settle with anyone's impressions. It's presenting the events as it happened through a subjective lens(color) and an objective lens (black&white). It already shown by Oppenheimer's experience that he's not exactly a great person to follow. Practically a anti-hero, womanizer, highly egotistical, and how he indulges onto others carelessly. He was a real person after all and I think Nolan has the film simply take in the information as it goes. Nolan could've gone a more linear route but because he chose a more chaotic and fast-pace approach suggests to me that Oppenheimer is someone we're merely observing. Nolan letting the audience to choose whether to sympathize and or empathize. Interstellar had focus on the father-daughter relationship because the main focal point is that relationship. The entire dilemma of humanity requires sacrifice and that the father constantly dealing with the possibility he left his daughter to die. And the daughter feeling left behind. And that tension builds as the movie continues, but most importantly; it builds emotionally as it was developed in the beginning. Essentially Oppenheimer is more of a immersive experience of a introspective telling of Oppenheimer himself rather than telling a cohesive story that flows with a redeeming or emotional telling. The "consequences" you mention that the film presents provides the audience to make up its mind about it. The film goes from one event to another without stopping. "Stitching" them together as you stated was more again about presenting information along. The plot is scattered on purpose to bring the forefront message, who is oppenheimer? And the scattered "stiching" approach Nolan does gives me an indication that Nolan dosen't want the audience to follow his version of Oppenheimer alone; but have us interpret it in multiple ways. If Nolan focused on the regretful aspects of Oppenheimer then perhaps it would be a more emotionally engaging film. but ultimately Nolan didn't go that route; because he decided to not make Oppenheimer on an emotional aspect it goes for a documentary feel but still in a very dramatic way. After all though; it's pretty hard to feel emotional connected to people who were on the back end in the making of such a weapon.
I felt like the first half (before the bang) felt like a very long trailer. The editing was a little too fast for me. I know a lot of people like that. Having said that, I thought the movie as a whole was incredible.
Oppenheimer is artwork. The sound engineer needs to be slapped in his face. The ridiculous over mastered sound peaks are completely unneeded given the brilliant artwork onscreen. The movie is well worth seeing over and over because the subject matter built the world we live in today. Director Nolan and fellow artists all , Thank You.
Did anyone else experience genuine fear during the test sequence? Like, I knew a bomb wouldn’t go off, but part of me was scared that the IMAX theater would genuinely blind and/or deafen me showing the bomb. Such great tension build up!
Best reviews since Siskel & Ebert, no joke. Thanks for posting these. I really need to see this to renew my hope for cinema, after going to see that expensive Disney action movie.
Just watched an hour ago. Really scary movie. Overwhelming music and the pacing totally puts you off kilter. The auditorium scene is so emotional. Great cast. Nothing like it has been made in a while.
Scary!? haha. The only good part of the movie is when President Harry Truman (Garry Oldman) gives Oppenheimer a hankie..."and don't let that cry baby back in." lol
auditorium scene was well done. Was surreal but still felt pretty grounded because we knew it was in the mind of Oppenheimer. Felt straight out of an Ari Aster film. An effective horror scene in my opinion.
12:10 I did a rewatch of Oppenheimer and the 3rd act/last 45 mins of the film was so much better for me a second time. I think the crosscutting really starts to ramp up the last half hour and its just an engaging final half hour that I didn't fully appreciate upon first viewing
While I could get with the strong acting of Robert Downing Jr. and Emily Blunt making the most of the little they were given by the script in terms of characterisation and nuance, I totally loathed the blunt, clichéd, over-exaggerated and plump, sensationalistic surreal/special effects that Nolan put on top of their acts, and the very same goes for the characters played by Cillian Murphy and Rami Malek. It seems to me like Nolan himself did not believe in his actors, did not believe in his audience's cognitive and emotional intelligence enough, did not even believe (maybe rightfully so) in his own script to carry the emotional earnestness and gravity of the scenes most crucial to the story. His choice and execution of cinematic techniques was every so often overbearing, out of tone and tune, out of style, out of any subtlety, out of contextual need or nuance, of no dramatic necessity at all, just a self-indulgent, heavy-handed, ham-fisted add-on, uncalled for by the story - and rather kitschy, sloppy and wanky in terms of aestheic experimentation. This led to grotesque and comical, cringe-worthy moments of the film hitting the audience over the head with almost slap-stick-like shots that broke the suspension of disbelief: The unnaturally interrupted sex scene, taking us completely out of any believable continuity, just to shoehorn in a famous quote in a comedically corny context, completely out of touch with reality, just to go for a crass sexual metaphor (or sophomoric joke?). The overdone visuals during Oppenheimer's speech, which crossed over from angsty undertones and a sense of emotional disconnect, disassociation and dejection into paranoid psychosis, a semi-prophetic vision of his colleagues dying from nuclear blast, burning and radiation sickness, thereby almost belittling, making light (or even making fun of?) the real suffering caused to Japanese civilians, victims of an American warcrime. Similarly, the "vision" of his wife in the security hearing when she heard (not for the first time!) of Oppenheimer's infidelity to her, was not only way over the top in its crassness, but also totally uncalled for as actress Emily Blunt's facial expression had already said it all - in not such a fourth-wall-breaking and ridiculous manner. Rami Malek's performance as "deus ex machina" was strong enough to stand out on its own, it did not need extra lighting, and it definitely did not need a CGI halo effect to point out its importance to the plot. The way the role of Albert Einstein was relegated to a cute little, almost Yoda-like, personal mascot of Robert Oppenheimer also seemed oddly out of place and was in effect both diminutive and demeaning. And these are just the crassest moments of Nolan sacrificing any remainders of classiness or nuance to gratuitous use of spectacle. I won't go into more technical continuity errors, because what Nolan did to deface the narration in terms of story outweighs by far how he sometimes also effaces his plot. I got more sarcastic laughs out of Oppenheimer's stylistic failures than out of Barbie's entire societal satire - and Oppenheimer was not even meant to be a comedy.
I've yet to see anyone compare Oppenheimer to Roland Joffe's Fat Man and Little Boy from 1989. That film has apparently fallen down the memory hole. Dwight Schultz was mostly known for The A-Team, a cartoonish comedic action series from the early '80s, but he was very good as Oppenheimer, and Paul Newman was of course superb as Gen. Groves.
I agree. Although that film took little liberties it was an excellent outtake of the Manhattan Project. I still haven’t seen Oppenheimer but I feel Newman was a much better Groves than Matt Damon. I feel Damon is a strong miss cast for the role.
I’m excited to see it. I read American Prometheus years ago and wondered for the life of me why they hadn’t made a movie out of it. I wonder no longer!
Jul 23, 2023 I thought it was an awful movie. Three hours of my life, I can never get back. Listen to the hype at your own peril. If I could give it no stars, I would. There was at least 4 people that walked out, and I heard numerous comments after of "WHAT WAS THAT!"🤮 If my review saves one person from having to sit through 3 hours of dribble, it was worth writing!
If you like American Prometheus I think you'll like this movie. There's a lot of information, people and historical events crammed into this movie and a little familiarity with the material and historical context will keep you better engaged with the pacing of the film. I can image that without affinity for the material, it's easy for people to get lost, miss the significance of certain events and start blaming the film for not holding their hand enough. I think the film is more niche than what we are used to with Christopher Nolan films, so quite a significant part of people who are expecting a regular Nolan epic might walk out disappointed. The Veritasium channel also has a good primer on Oppenheimer to get more out of the film.
@@thedink5bloody hell we need to start a hashtag me too meme for this POV! I am with you ! Oppenheimer Is the first movie I have watched at the cinema in about 8 years and I thought it was unmitigated crap. Such an Absolutely unpleasant film making style and overall experience that totally overwhelmed the actual unimaginable ‘unpleasantness’ of the development and dropping of the A bombs . Words cannot convey my extreme disappointment with this film. My homemade popcorn was very good though, and it did save me some money. It May well be another 8 years before I bother with a Hollywood film again at the cinema. Gaaahh . I am actually really p’ssed off at the assault this film had on my ears- just as a starter. . FFS 🤦
“At times we reach real brilliance” that almost feels like a backhanded compliment and that’s what I dislike about film critics. Nolan to me is hurt by his own brilliance because people take for granted what he does, and dismiss most of the magnitude of what he does. Let’s take a moment to think that he shot on imax film, 100% practical effects, making the most unique biopic you will ever see. He literally made a film that no one makes and it’s an absolute achievement in cinema and there’s still people poking holes in it.
It is possible to admire the craftsmanship while at the same time be critical of certain aspects of the film itself. Imo it’s a very good movie but it’s not a GREAT movie
Yeah, shame it's also not that great at all😂. You wanna complain about critics and then just pull out production fun facts that you heard on some social media post to validate your feelings as if all of a sudden that makes uncriticizable? Yes it's all very nice that he shot a drama made for about 95% of people talking in rooms in Imax, really pointed choice there. Achievement in cinema my ass. It's a pretty good movie, I can give you like 5 biopics that are more unique than this even though biopics are already a terrible genre. If you wanna complain about people for having opinions at least try not to have yours be nothing but a whole lot of dickriding
In my view, the desire for wanting rewatch it does not come from so much going on, it comes from the disjointed story telling. Nolan cuts the plot up, throws everything into the air, and then montages it back together in an almost arbitrary fashion. AFAIC, he does not gain anything nearly enough from the fragmented story telling, compared to the engagement he loses by only ever showing small exposures of some aspect. I am one of the most intellectual people I know and love Kubrick's movies, but watching a film is about getting drawn in at least some of time. In "Oppenheimer" that very rarely happened for me. I believe I can relate to Oppenheimer's world and thought his personality and struggles remained completely underdeveloped. Same for the other scientists. There were some real characters in the Manhatten project, but they remain largely unused like extras in an MTV video. From someone like Nolan I would have expected a more faithful characterisation of scientists in general. Some are OK, but most of them feel like actors on a stage. RDJ's performance at the end is intense, but prior to that Strauss comes across like RDJ (not the other way around) and the intensity is like that of a theatre stage performer (which does very little for me; I really like movies but theatre stage productions always come across as artificial for me). Sadly, Oppenheimer did not work for me for about 95% of the time because of the opportunities it missed and how overtly manipulative it was. FWIW, when thinking about the movie before having seen it, I thought that it would be powerful to show the explosion without sound and let the sound blast arrive with its natural delay (~26s, given the observation distance). I think that was a very natural choice, in particular, given the incessant soundtrack of the movie. The few moments without some background soundtrack trying to add intensity to scenes were indeed very powerful. Not enough to compensate for the near constantly blurting soundtrack which I found ineffective after a while because it wore me out.
For how much the soundtrack blasted in my ears the whole time( my ears were actually ringing afterwards) there was not a memorable musical motif that has stayed with me this morning.
@@virginiacharlotte7007 I concur. I guess the idea was not to have a leitmotif-driven soundtrack. The constant "keep you on your toes" - attacks got on my nerves after while.
This is his finest achievement and my personal favorite right next to Memento... Just wonderful display of great filmmaking and i feel bad for anyone who doesn't appreciate this.
Awesome review. My favourite Nolan movie is still Memento, it’s great. I really like Batman Begins, The Prestige and Insomnia. Dunkirk is good, didn’t love it. The rest of his films were all over the place, with incredible moments, followed by unbearable expository dialogue and messy scenes. But i do admire the man.
A most explosive review! Looking forward to seeing this film on the big big screen. And, incidentally, today is my bee day. Thank you, Chris Nolan, for such an expensive birthday present. You shouldn’t have. ;-)
I wish you would state an opinion. I want to know what you think, not a long description of the movie. Opinions come from the heart, they are real. Descriptions are just words that go on and on.
"A great auteur who continues to challenge himself" - spot on, and by itself a reason to laud Nolan. (though IMO this is his best of several great films)
I really don’t see how he challenged himself. I don’t see the growth of him as a filmmaker in this one as the dialogue is the same as it’s almost always been. He makes it non linear for no apparent reason outside of he likes messing around with time. Non linear cuts actually have a function (in pulp fiction someone gets saved at the end of each scene, in memento it is actually the subjective experience of the detective). He has a score that’s perpetually droning on in the background but doesn’t fit the interactions on screen. I’m a huge Nolan fan but this was one of the coldest biopics I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like the emotion is implied and he never tries to persuade us as to why these characters feel a certain way. It just keeps jumping from one scene to the next with dryly delivered exposition. Felt like it was directed by a psychopath.
Your review is very well considered. Develops some excellent insights. Thank you for posting. (Minor issue. During the Trinity Test, the 30 sec silence between the flash and the bang was due to the distance of their bunker from ground zero. Sound travels much slower than light. Nolan uses the quiet those 10 km create to great effect.)
Oppenheimer - a first "knee jerk" reaction. Just a few hours out of the cinema, and I am still visibly shaken by the strength of my negative reaction to Christopher Nolan’s “magnum opus”, which was for me a crushing disappointment! Somewhere inside this bloated, bombastic mess of a movie there is a smaller, quieter, more interesting argument struggling to make itself heard, if but the surrounding noise weren’t so deafening. Such a visceral reaction clearly demands justification, but I need some time lying down in a darkened room before I can begin to address that. Rant over (I think).
Have your ears stopped ringing yet.? It Took me a whole night and I am still utterly enraged by how poorly made this piece of storytelling was. I have not seen a film at the cinema in at least 8 years, I have no preconceived notions of what is meant to be so bloody great about Chris Nolan films, and I am still so royally p’ssed off by what I endured last night with Oppenheimer. I still cannot think straight about it. Crap and a totally lost opportunity is all I have come up with so far. I Would rather listen to a dry three hour lecture from an actual historian or biographer of Oppenheimer. Sheesh . Why do people swallow this sh!te as mesmeric filmmaking? Every gear of filmmaking technique was fully on show and grinding away in a complete assault of the senses that detracted from any engagement I could have had with the characters or the topic at large. And Cillian Murphy just walked through it all like a Flat Stanley doll . Is everyone just hypnotised by his ‘cerulean blue eyes’ or something. The portrayal of Teller captured me and I wanted to know more but then I never got it . FFS- I could not connect with the nature of who Oppenheimer was AT ALL. Gaaaaah!!!! … but my homemade popcorn was great and it did save me some money from the candy bar.
@@virginiacharlotte7007 Thanks for your interesting response; I feel I do understand where you’re coming from! However, for my own part, I have changed my mind considerably following a second viewing of Oppenheimer, where information overload was no longer such a problem (this was what threw me initially, and I was almost lost after the first hour!). My second experience was much more relaxed (the film appearing to slow down, psychologically speaking), and I could follow the narrative much better. This is a highly complex film, partly due to Nolan’s use of a favourite device of his: non-linear storytelling, requiring a fair amount of effort on the part of the viewer in order to cope with multiple storylines. I also recognise that there are some technical difficulties with the IMAX format, but I am willing to put up with such for the overall experience. I must disagree with you about the acting: Cillian Murphy was superb, IMO, as were the entire cast. I respectfully suggest that your assessment of Murphy might be due to your general discomfiture with format and volume levels of the film, which do, indeed, assault the senses at times (Nolan uses sound almost like a narrator, to underline and even direct the emotional content of a scene). Once one gets a better grip on the details of the film (if one is willing to persevere), the character of Oppenheimer becomes much more comprehensible, although we should remember that Nolan’s project is not intended to provide a clear answer in Yes/No fashion to Oppenheimer’s motivation and moral position: if Oppie was himself unclear or confused, perhaps it behooves us to accept that real human beings are subject to multiple, sometimes contradictory, impulses underlying their actions. In summary: I believe now that my initial response to Oppenheimer was too much of a knee jerk reaction, and I continue to be fascinated by the film - I may even see it a third time! 😲
Why is there no emotional gravitas? or am I the only one? Acting is there but the scene does not portray the atmosphere, or the impactful scene is cut too quickly to let the emotion or the stake to settle in. It feels more like a documentary with good acting and music
I saw it yesterday. Parts of it were good, but it dragged on to me. They were both speed running through a lot of things in the beginning and then dragging out the last act. The more you know about the subject matter, the more you’ll enjoy it. Not enough context is provided for certain things. I have mixed feelings on it
If you know the subject matter (not the propaganda) the movie might as well be a Marvel movie. It's as fictional as Spiderman is. The entire movie is based on the *utterly false* notion that WW2 ended because of the Atomic Bomb. A notion that only benefited/benefits the Japanese elites and our Military Industrial Complex.
Ok, just came back. Incredible film that could have been an A+ in my book if two of Nolan’s obsessions were not present. The need of constant music behind every single scene making the pace agonising and the dialogue difficult to follow. As a result it robs the film from having dynamics, and therefore great emotional impact on the scenes that need it, since everything runs on red start to finish. Second, the fast editing on almost every scene which combined with the constant agonising music in the background made you feel that the events cannot breath and are rushed. On the other hand, I can’t see how he could deliver such a heavy dialogue ridden with political history film with an impact and interest rich attitude to young-blockbuster action hungry audience and mainly Nolan fans( the ones who adore him for Inception, Batman, Interstellar, Tennet and quick action sequences) and keep them engaged. Overhaul great effort and easily one of Nolan’s most mature work.
I couldn't understand a lot of the dialog. I couldn't tell if it was just the mix in the theater I was in was off or something, but the music overwhelmed every scene even when people are just talking.... the dialog was buried in the music and sfx the whole movie, I was straining to understand them.
I hope people appreciate the magnitude of this event in history and the brilliance of the people involved, this period and the following two decades were the apex of humanity
I thought the film dragged a bit after the sucessful test and use of the bomb. I found myself wondering who they were going to end it, what the conclusion was going to be. I think it dragged a bit, for me, because I was not that invested in the question of whether he was a communist or not, and I didn't care whether he had a security clearence or not. It seemed like the movie had those questions, while also trying to tell the story of what being "the father of the atomic bomb" does to a person - and I think it was a bit unfocused because of that, of having too many irons in the fire.
Oppenheimer was an incredible movie, Cillian Murphy really carried it on his back...his performance was totally magnetic. I actually liked Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr alot as well, new character types let them flex their acting chops a bit...
I feel the same about Nolan like he's almost there with say Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. It's great to hear there is some dreamscape surrealism and for that alone I'll be seeing the movie :-)
Can't wait to see this movie! I saw Dunkirk and liked it. I avoided Inception coz those inverting cityscapes would've made me nauseous. Yeah, Cilian Murphy is a helluva compelling actor.
What a total disappointment it was. I’m giving it 2 out of 5, purely for the effort and decent performances but not much else. WALL TO WALL UNENDING MUSIC. So annoying. The music was there to try to build more tension to build up to the THING, but in the end if I was the actor who put in a shift to bring the drama to the scenes only to be eclipsed and almost DROWNED OUT by the INCESSANT MUSIC I would be seriously pissed off and gutted. The whole film is ALL TALK TALK TALK TALK and not much else. I get that it’s about the man, the plight of the man, but to SKIRT AROUND the actual ASTROCITY brought on by what he had a hand in creating by NOW SHOWING the actual death and destruction - NOBODY WILL HAVE LEARNED ANYTHING. What was the point of shooting this in IMAX 70mm when it’s all JUST TALK. What a complete the utter waste of money and chemicals just to process the film. If this was a streamer film GUARANTEED most of you lot would skip through most of it for the incessant talk and annoying music that just fills the dead spots and tries to build tension but failing. It’s an hour too long, most of it could have been chopped way down still, so much it just felt like a long-form MUSIC VIDEO with some dialogue. So sad. Don’t waste your money on this. It’s hype. It’s not worth the money or the time. The 70mm film is a WASTE, it looks no different to anything else, and I watched it on the giant screen in 70mm. It’s definitely not worth the full IMAX as there is nothing to watch in it for that side. There is no need. I wasted 3 hours of my life for that. I wished I hadn’t gone to see it. It’s such a disappointment
Tenet didnt completely work but Kubrick was imperfect too and criticized during his time. No one liked Barry Lyndon when it was released and his films were often seen as cold and lacking in humanity. And no one has a more mixed bag career than Lynch. The key to unlocking Nolan is the Prestige. Film making is something of a magic trick to Nolan and sometimes his reach exceeds grasp. But that exactly is why he's a genius and one of the few shining lights in a vey dire period for the industry. Just enjoy him, because he wont be around forever.
Thanks for the review. Yeah the third act seems to be quite polarizing. I knew the Trinity Test would not be the end of the movie before going in and that the last portion was the government trying to ruin his reputation. After seeing it last night, I am kind of like you where I am not 100% sure how I felt about that decision. I do kind of appreciate Nolan's willingness to not go for the obvious, safe route though. A more conventional director almost certainly would have ended with the bomb and maybe the immediate aftermath, but ending the film with a 30-40 minute courtroom drama mixed in with Oppenheimer's conscience haunting him in various scenes is a more interesting Gambit. I am just not sure if it paid off 100% I'll have to see it again, but I think Nolan wanted to mark his film with yes the Trinity Test, but more than that he really wants us to think about how once you create a new devastating technology you can't put the genie back in the bottle and what this could mean for us today with AI and our constant connectivity to the internet, etc. I think especially with the subjective sequences like the uh... No spoilers-auditorium scene. Or when the background kind of wobbles like jello. It really helps you get into his head space. Sidenote: I totally agree, I wish we got a little more of his personal life. What we did get of Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh was great, and I knew Pugh was not going to have very much screen time going in, but I was kind of surprised at how little screen time Blunt got as well. She was so good when she was on screen-we just needed more!
story: great special effects: amazing performances: absolutely fantastic editing / music use: shockingly abysmal imo. it seriously felt like a series of trailers the entire time, which the constant overly dramatic music did not help at all. shots of oppenheimer just talking with anyone felt like the most important thing to happen ever. the film didnt take a single moment to stop, slow down, and breathe and really let you absorb the characters motives and what was happening (apart from when they test the bomb which was great). pretty much everything else about the movie was amazing. ill have to watch again when it goes on streaming services and re-evaluate, but in the mean time i left very dissapointed.
@@gpapa31Yes. So even when scientists are talking in a room or at a table the dramatic music is just pounding away. It detracts from the dialogue being impactful.
Thank you for noticing, and i completely agree. Most peeople dont seem to mind it or may not even give it any thought but it ruins the movie completely for me. Without the grotesque sound design the movie would've been fantastic. Nolan gives no room to breath at all, he just wanna impress all the time. Incredibly frustrating because there is a great movie hidden underneath all the unnecassary noise.
@@joelbarish Those music cues are so overwhelming and used with little discretion. I feel they completely disrespect some pretty fine performances especially from Cillian Murphy.
Like most Nolan films, I really disliked the first 30-40 minutes. Nolan seems to think that starting a film with a fast paced montage is exciting, but to me, it’s just frustrating. But I think the time jumping really works in the second half.
After they drop the bomb and they start to shun oppenheimer, it just sorta fizzles from there. I loved the ending scene, but other than that the third act needed a lot of chopping. Nolan's dialogue alone is not strong enough to carry the movie for like an hour.
Great video and insight on the movie! I really liked this movie I thought at times it could be really great with subtle moments like the auditorium scene and the bomb dropping scene itself, with like you said, the silence. And Oppenheimer’s role in building it and maybe having to fake his emotions due the people’s love for the big win in a sense. I thought that was pretty interesting and it was edited together really well. I thought the cuts to different scenes at time were confusing. But I really like this movie
I really appreciated your point of view and I definitely agree with you on Nolan's work. Dunkirk and The Prestige felt like his most complete and well told stories before this film. Also if you watch some Oppenheimer interviews of the actual man himself I think you see a lot of that in Murphy's performance.
Just a suggestion, you might want to start adding film clips and make reviews a little more structured... synopsis, director, acting, effects, recommendation level, etc. still like hearing the general thoughts/reactions though.
I still think that The Dark Knight is a perfect movie, and Nolan’s masterpiece. But Oppenheimer is his magnum opus, so far. 9.5 from me but Nolan can’t seem to resist exposition scenes, and while I thank his efforts to educate the audience, he seems to struggle giving the movie time to breathe. Also, I wished I had the chance to take a look of the direct consequences of the bomb, the desolation, the devastation. But Nolan avoided to open that wound. Overall a fantastic movie, the best of the year so far.
Spoiler comment alert: The first third of the film is crowded with intrusive interruptive editing and intrusive orchestral music - all of which is designed to choral the viewer into absorbing plot transposition to set up and move the story along in the most forced and patronising way you could possibly imagine. He literally gives no space into which the story can just sit or allow the performances to breathe at all. So in the section of the film where you expect to be teased and charmed into an incredibly important story - you are instead given sensory overload and abysmally poor sound recording and mixing. Once the film has stopped trying to impress you it settles into a second act which allows you to start connecting with and empathising with the characters, but is a pretty basic account of what happened in Los Alamos. There is no exploration of the radioactive accidents that happened during that time, which would have served to emphasise the terrifying hazard that a nuclear bomb can unleash. There were fatalities under Oppenheimer's project from the mishandling of the plutonium core. So the film totally sidesteps both the risk to the scientists or civilians and the tragedy that entails. There is one section of the film which is brilliant though. The post Hiroshima speech sequence is one of the best things Nolan has ever done on film. Overall though I'm amazed that people have been raving about this as being Nolan's best film. I think he's still too obsessed with technical irrelevance. This didn't need to be filmed in IMAX (mostly indoor scenes), any more than the Hateful Eight needed to be filmed in Panavision 70mm. The first third has such a disturbing rhythm that it feels like it is the artistic equivalent of atrial fibrillation (an erratic pulse) because at the heart of it all Nolan as usual seems to be self consciously compensating for his insecurities as a visual storyteller, by bombarding the viewer with the intention of impressing them I found it instead had the opposite effect of blocking me from connecting with the story. The sad thing is that he's already proved himself in other films early in his career so you'd hope he'd have learned by now from the great auteurs of cinema like Kubrick or Kurosawa - that a visual much be given room to breathe and requires context. There's no respect for storytelling if you play loud music over what your characters are saying or poorly record their voices. Usually the viewer is more intelligent than you give them credit for, so less is more if you truly want to connect with people. I'm hoping that one day Nolan settles down and stops trying so hard to tell us he's a genius and actually starts being one.
I agree Dunkirk is one of my favs. And Oppenheimer is a next level up I think in cinematic artistry. Nolan is a genius man. The way the movie came together is incredible. And mindblowing how profound the whole of the film is
This sounds fascinating. I wonder if it'll be released here in Japan. BTW, your shopping for eggs analogy immediately made me think of Tommy Wiseau shopping for flowers in The Room😊
Your review got me to buy a ticket to see this in IMAX this Saturday. I have lots of issues with Nolan and how overwrought a lot of his work feels to me, but now I think I need to see this in IMAX to really appreciate what he's doing with this film.
I just saw this movie today - I'm not a fan of Nolan - this film resonated more for me than any of his others that ive seen. The last hour should be viewed in the context of the Cold War and anti-Communist hysteria - and his closing exchange with Einstein was very powerful, particularly given the current state of the world
I just finished watching Oppenheimer. I'm hearing Amy Schumer is calling it sexist? Women are walking out from it? Is it because Florence Pugh showed her boobs a few times? Where was this for Titanic when Kate Winslet showed her boobs in a PG-13 film? Oppenheimer is quite tedious. I think the best part was that second hour leading up to testing the hydrogen bomb. But I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I still prefer Spielberg's Munich (2005) much more but I thought it was entertaining enough about a tedious subject matter involving science and engineering. Every actor was great in it. I do agree somewhat with DisGrace Randolph that Nolan isn't great at creating female characters. Florence was underused. I love her as Yelena but she's only in it to be a deranged Commie/mistress who hates flowers and goes topless which I've seen years ago since I'm a member of Celebrity Movie Archive and check AZNude weekly. I've seen hundreds of actresses' boobs. I saw Ana De Armas' boobs several years before Blade Runner 2049. I've seen more female skin than Mr. Skin. Heck, I saw Greta Gerwig's boobs like 12-13 years ago. If I see an attractive actress I'm not familiar with, CMA and AZNude are like my Google to check for any boobies. I did not get a boner seeing Florence's boobs at all. I personally don't find her attractive. Great actress. Looks like a stockier Hayden Panettiere with a bigger head and smaller boobs. But I love Florence's talent which is acting. She was great in Don't Worry Darling. I can love an actress without lusting over her looks. My favorite actress is Julianne Moore and she's freckled with A-cups as seen in Body of Evidence. I still love her as an actress. I don't need to jerk off to an actress to enjoy her work or talent. Not every actress needs to look like Monica Bellucci. I felt Emily Blunt acted no different than January Jones in Mad Men and Laura Dern in The Founder (2016). The typical neglected housewife who becomes a drunk during the mid-20th century when the men had to go to war or do something important. If you ever seen Chaplin (1992), Florence and Emily pretty much acted similar to Charlie's women. But that's how women were in the 1930s through 1950s. Stayed home a lot. What was Nolan supposed to do? Hire Blacks, Asians, and Latinas to work on the H-bomb? The movie was going to be a sausage-fest. My favorite actor in it was definitely Matt Damon. Matt was in my favorite movie of this year: Air. Any movie Matt is in, I usually enjoy it. He gained a lot of weight recently. He's overweight in both Air and Oppenheimer. From what I'm hearing, Matt is a great guy to work with. But I don't mind if he acts like an a-hole in films. David Krumholtz looked like he gained 50 lbs since This Is The End (2013). I almost didn't recognize him the way it took me time to recognize Jamie Lee Curtis in EEAAO. The same guy from The Santa Clause (1994) and Harold & Kumar Trilogy. Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., and Josh Harnett all did an excellent job. So where is Oppenheimer among my favorites of 2023? Maybe bottom top 10. I still enjoyed Air and BlackBerry more. I enjoyed Across The Spider-Verse, The Flash, and Dead Reckoning more. It's a good movie and maybe Nolan's best since Inception. But I still don't love it. *My* *Favorite* *Chris* *Nolan* *Films* 1. The Dark Knight (2008) 2. The Prestige (2006) 3. Memento (2000) 4. Inception (2010) 5. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) 6. Batman Begins (2005) 7. Oppenheimer (2023) 8. Insomnia (2002) 9. Dunkirk (2017) 10. Interstellar (2014) 11. Tenet (2020) Haven't seen Following (1998) yet.
I’m very much in the same camp as you are regarding Nolan, but am very optimistic about this one based on what I’ve been hearing. I’m super excited to see it!
Best movie critic of all time. I learn so much in each of your reviews. I love how you look at it in fine detail. It really helps me to understand how I feel about the movie. And also tha I'm not going mad that I was unsure about the final 3rd of the movie
As someone who doesnt really get abstract art/sculptors etc, Chris Nolan films are the cinema equivalent of going to look at something strange in a gallery..... Doesnt make much sense. Seems needlessly obtuse. But you get to say you went and saw it and it provokes thoughts and conversations afterward. Honestly, im not gonna shit on him. In a world with Barbie and 15 years of endless superhero films, Nolan is now one of the few reasons Ill buy a ticket.
I strongly recommend people see Oppenheimer. It helps if you have some previous knowledge of who the principal scientists are that have roles in the film, otherwise the beginning of the film can seem off to a confusing start. This film is a kind of superhero movie. The hero has some deep character flaws but prevails technically and as a project manager. It’s a film about how America builds up its heroes and then systematically goes about destroying them personally and publicly. I found the last third of the movie about the witch hunt and political skullduggery to be most interesting and agree that Downey’s Strauss character was very well done. It’s unfortunate but the R rating will limit the potential size of the audience.
9.0 for me. Incredible acting. So cool to see him pull a Tarantino and bring Josh Hartnett and David Krumholtz back from the ether and into meaty roles. Hope to see more from those two. This film felt like Nolan flirting with more of a PTA style and I loved it. I did however feel the runtime towards the very end. Cillian deserves an Oscar.
PTA style? I thought it was Scorsese style. Can't think of Biopics and court briefs without the man😂
@@6EndlessNameless9 I found it much closer to There Will Be Blood than any Scorsese film honestly.
@@SonnyFrisco Same. It was way too contemplative to be a Scorese pic. There also weren't enough scenes with people screaming over each other and throwing things or breaking stuff or the camera flying all over.
Far more Kubrickian in my opinion than PTA
not even close, PTA's touch is all over the place, he doesn't really have one trademark... the best comparison for Oppenheimer is Oliver Stone's JFK... punk political horror
I enjoyed seeing famous scientists like Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Fermi, Teller, portrayed on screen, and of course their choice for Einstein was perfect.
John von newmann wasnt there which is really weird .
Einstein and Gödel, pictured as halfwits?
Okay, they got the hair right, but that does not depict a character.
Each one of the scientists were just esquissed, no substance, no character development, nothing you could understand from their motivations. Not even Oppenheimer.
It's an empty shell that makes a lot of noise with underwhelming discussions and an emphatic music.
Total crap.
@@KIBICKE94 The colored sequence where Einstein was shown was subjective, i.e. through Oppenheimer's eyes. It's not meant to be taken truthfully. But it's still very reliable. Einstein contributed significantly to quantum mechanics; however, he was quite vocal about his discomfort with its probabilistic nature, its incomplete description of reality, and its implications for the nature of cause and effect.
@@sudeshnapal1832
So because of that Oppenheimer saw him as a ridiculous old man? I highly doubt that.
And what about their conversations? Do they have to be uninteresting as well?
You do the costumes, the haircuts right, you apply a so called artistic concept, like "color" equals "subjective" and you obtain a good film? Sorry, but it's still just pretentious crap, so far from a good film.
@@KIBICKE94 their conversation about the probability of destroying the world when the bomb's dropped was uninteresting to you? Do you expect scientists to be theatrical? I suggest that you read American Prometheus. The movie remained extremely true to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book.
Always loving getting to hear you talk super passionately (in a positive way) about a new release. And it seems we've gotten more of those this year than we normally do.
The imax 70mm version has a monumental amount of bass and is very impactful. That very loud bass really showed the intensity of the great inner turmoil of Robert Oppenheimer.
Genuinely the only UA-cam reviewer whose thoughts I am seriously interested in hearing.
Nah you just think she hot , she average
only hearing or are you looking at her too 😋😋😛
she has good taste fr i trust her word discovered some good films through her
@@BigZ-19 projection much?
She's way prettier with her intellect.
I watched it twice, and the second time, I realized how awesome this movie is. One of the best. Music really helps to understand the horror that Oppenheimer is feeling in his head.
What’s crazy is that the scene with Truman is accurate with how that interaction actually went
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
I watched Oppenheimer an hour ago.. This review is pretty spot on.
I just saw this film and stumbled upon your channel.
You are awesome. So great to have someone with substantial, granular and educated opinions voicing them fluently, instead of the usual "passionate rambling" that pervades UA-cam. Thank you.
I disliked the movie, I hated the sound track, loud dramatic music for the many scenes that just weren't dramatic. So much talk, talk and more talk, the movie had no hero's, no villain's, and not a lot of excitement. The only part of the movie I enjoyed was the lead up to the test explosion. The mix of black and white with colour left me wondering why. The mixing of timelines felt forced, deliberately confusing the audience, making you piece together the jigsaw pieces into the actual timeline of events. I didn't like any of the character development. I got sick of the close up shots of the actors and the hand held shots. I think a good documentary on this historical event would be a better way to spend my time. 2 hours into the movie, I kept thinking maybe Barbie would have been a better choice!
You clearly don’t have the brain capacity to understand the movie. It was a masterpiece on so many levels. Hence the popularity and Oscars. Stick to barbie.
For you emphatically yes
I think the problem with Nolan doing this story is the same one with him doing Inception or the Prestige. He has a very monochromatic color plaette and a poor sense of writing natural dialogue and building relationships. He stages even scenes between a married couple as a kind of stand off in a doorway. Oppenheimer is a deeply sensitive person drawn to reading the Bhagavad Gita because of it's color, warmth, and tolerant messages. He becomes a leftist as a college student because he wants to help the poor and give them security and family time as he had with his wealthy parents. Cillian Murphy just seems emotionally shell shocked and dredged of hope throughout the whole movie and Nolan films everything so rapidly and without a lot of natural humor and sensuality. He cannot estabish the center of the movie as something to care about- Oppenheimers moral center, because he cannot show us the world Oppenheimer would rather be in. When oppenheimer is torn away from a comfortable world and a politics of peace because of the Axis forces forcing Americas hand, we cannot feel it deeply.
this movie made me realize that nolan is much more than eye-candy and craftsmanship. oppenheimer feels more intimate and "first-person" than i had planned on giving it credit for
So does this mean the hate boner this channel’s audience has for Nolan is finally over?
😂.....eye candy....
most boring movie of all time
you should've gotten this from Guy Pearce in Memento and his main driving force being his love for his wife, DiCaprio in Inception and his main driving force being his love for his children and similarly Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar... always felt like people criticising him for his lack of emotion and humanity in his films are just trying to find fault in a director that is one of a kind and highly celebrated
@@cavy369I'm a Nolan fan and even I almost always felt like Nolan's films were more cerebral than emotional. And again, I'm a Nolan fan.
It's not that his movies tend to have no emotion at all it's just that the headiness of it takes far more attention and energy to digest than the emotion does. Interstellar strikes a great balance between the technical and the emotional, while Tenet leans into the lack of emotion and largely focuses on the mechanics of the mission. Inception is centered around Cobb getting back to the reality of his wife and kids but tbh I just don't care about that aspect of the film that much. The personal emotion of Oppenheimer's third act is exquisite, but the road to get there was mostly very talky and technical/political in the meantime - and I'm saying that someone who loved the film and did find it emotional.
I honestly think it just comes down to the fact that Nolan's greatest strength is in the cerebral so the emotional side doesn't always resonate as strongly...and frankly that's understandable and ok.
When he made Batman Begins, Nolan was always looking for ways to show off Murphys blue eyes
I saw this last night, and I really liked it a lot, too. It may be Nolan's most mature effort thus far as he uses his concepts not as window-dressing for the world but instead shifts the focus within the human soul. As such, it's the best character ensemble of his career by far. Great review, as always, Maggie.
Lol. The entire movie is based on the *utterly false* notion that WW2 ended because of the Atomic Bomb. A notion that only benefited the Japanese elites and our Military Industrial Complex.
That was Memento. He's never been the same since.
It was over wrought, self important and indulgent. A huge mess of a movie. The music and sound design was so confounding that it felt like it was trying to mask the constant, relentless expositional dialogue. One character asks a question, the other simply gives all the information. On and on it goes. For 3 hours.
Also, 3 threads of story. Every time one had nowhere else to go, it switched to another. But Strauss’s narrative and the whole closed hearing/communist thread being used as the opening and closing of the film is a huge miscalculation. Those threads might have worked better as a subplot rather than as the main thread to a story about Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb. There were so many opportunities to show us things about the bomb. Just how big was explosion compared to bombs from before? How far did they have to drive to escape the blast? Show us, instead of telling us.
Nobody dares to say no to Nolan. He’s the golden boy who can “do no wrong”. I miss the influence of Jonathan Nolan, Hans Zimmer and Wally Pfister on his work.
Exact way I felt about the movie. I’m mindblown she was as receptive to the movie as she was given how critical she’s been of Nolan in the past. It makes me feel like I watched a different movie than her.
Same, definitely over wrought, so much runtime and yet so little to say about Nukes, Oppenheimer as a person, etc. The acting was great but the pacing was awful.
I had the same feeling about needing a rewatch to appreciate the whole narrative as you described but I've come to expect that from Nolan. The marriage here between Murphy's expressive acting and the tense soundtrack that was just as alive and breathing as any of the characters on screen was so haunting and unforgettable. I loved how the scenes with Einstein almost have him painted into the background but his influential presence is still felt. The ending scenes of nuclear war swallowing Earth gave me Dr. Strangelove vibes and I couldn't help but smile. Beautiful film
I need a rewatch with subtitles just to be able to understand the dialogue because the audio mix was terrrrrible. hopefully it was just my theater, but it was impossible to understand them, the music dominated everything.
@@helpfulcommenter didn't run into this issue personally. I saw it at the local cinema here in a pretty small theater so the sound was dialed in well. Only gripe I have is barbie let out about 15 minutes before Oppy and that crowd gave no fucks about us in the smaller theater trying to finish our showing. 😂 Seems like a scheduling oversight but whaddaya gonna do?
Great review as always. I thought this was a beautiful mess. Even though the pacing was so fast, I became exhausted trying to follow the thread, but didn't understand why he unnecessarily made the story seem more complicated than it already was. I like to compare this to JFK. That was a movie with even more characters, complicated details and concepts across a longer period of time, but it was masterfully told with no confusion of what was happening at all. It was also almost 30min longer and I didn't feel the length at all, whereas this sometimes made me want the move to just end. There were some amazing moments, but many things seemed to be overly complicated by the structure itself.
“Want it to just end.” Exactly.
Your analysis review of 2001: a Space Odyssey is my favorite one on this platform, and the present review makes me even more excited to see Oppenheimer tomorrow.
There's only one word that ever seems relevant when it comes to 2001: A Space Odyssey: Boring.
An ACTUAL review. Unlike Stuckmann & Jahns. Breath of fresh air this channel
Those guys. 😩
Those guys just let you know what you need to know, nothing more. Most 16 min reviews are boring That's why they are more famous and have better reach.
@sagivijayaramaraju1153 They suck at their jobs. Their reviews are mouthpieces for Hollyweird corporatism.
Cuckman is just terible.
@@sagivijayaramaraju1153No wonder you’re a fan of them. Look at your grammar.
Just when i had given up on UA-cam movie reviews i searched Poor Things reviews and staggered onto your channel. Articulate, informative ans zero fawning. Just listened to ten reviews whilst out for a run, all brilliant.
Seems more like a review of Nolan than Oppenheimer
I’ve always loved Nolan, even in his messes like Tenet and Interstellar, because of his unique way of blending timelines into a singular story. Oppenheimer, similar to the Prestige, felt like Nolan had a definitive vision from day one and executed it to the letter. Some stuff in the last act drags a bit, but otherwise this is a borderline perfect movie for me (though I’m a bit biased).
In what universe is interstellar a miss?
@@L33Reacts Mess. Interstellar's emotional core, while more effective to me than others, is literally spelled out in dialogue and is just way too obvious.
Well.. I guess i found meself a new favorite critic, which includes print (Peter Bradshaw had been my front runner above all the past years). Went through a bunch of your backlog in the recent weeks... and yeah. You truly "feel" film, it's components, a creative vision - and you certainly know to break it down and articulate. Very, very impressed I am, and grateful to have stumbled upon your channel.
Peter Bradshaw gave Ghostbusters (2016), The Last Jedi, and RIse of Skywalker 4/5, same as Oppenheimer :D If you're wondering, he gave 5/5 to The Force Awakens.
@@nighttrain1236 Holy smokes, I did not know that! Thanks for letting me know mate. I mean, every critic "expects" something different from the medium and rates the achievement accordingly, but i never thought Peter to be a blockbuster-above-all type critic... I think I found him through his Bond reviews, which were quite on point...
@@thenout Without trying to sound like a reactionary, I've found that many critics who I used to respect have been extremely reluctant to properly criticize bad films that happen to carry 'woke'/social justice messages, which the Disney Star Wars trilogy certainly did. Mark Kermode is a good example.
@@nighttrain1236 If he didn’t hate those films, do you expect him to lie and say he did in order to appease a vocal minority?
@@Thomas15 A critic shouldn't just be telling me whether they liked or disliked a film, I expect them to be as objective as possible and exercise some critical thought. If you're talking about Kermode he used to never hold back over bad films, but with the Disney Star Wars trilogy, he was as soft as could be with praise that was tellingly general. We live in a fairly polarised age and many critics are scared of being labeled reactionary right-wingers especially if they're old, white and male. Or it's just the sheer vanity of hoarding virtue.
A very compelling analysis. I saw the film in IMAX with a group of friends and we were all overwhelmed by it and basically talked about it all night afterwards. I think a lot of reviewers who were "bored" simply didnt get it. An unashamedly intelligent film without being pretentious which frankly is always the risk with Nolan.
I couldn't stand Tenet. Almost unwatchable.
Loved the film, but really just want to jump on the comment train and say how much of an intelligent and thoughtful speaker you are; everything you have to say, you say incredibly well and in that you stand very tall among other reviewers on this cite. Keep it up!
You are spot-on with plot mechanics and experiments of cinematic emotional manipulation being the narrative core and also the core interest of any Nolan picture.
I feel this is their inherent flaw, because this (HYPER-) focus makes them lack in all the other departments of story-telling - especially character development.
But also the world-building feels flat, which might also be due to the fact that mostly anything that "rules" Nolan's cinematic worlds are the few motivations/emotions his protagonists have. The rest of the world is just extras and backdrops that feel like props rather than lived-in environments or characters with an everyday life. They merely appear to deliver lines needed to drive the plot and then disappear into nothingness.
The problem in Nolan's movies is not lack of emotion per se, but it is lack of character depth.
His protagonists usually have a single motivation, and this is at core their only character trait.
Monocausal motivation might work on a mechanistic plot level, when you don't want to end up with loose threads, but it does not make a story believable on a human interest level, where you want characters to have depth, inner conflicts, an arc of personal development.
Emotional moments can get me interested in following the intricacies of plot, but unless they are expressions of human complexity they won't get me interested in the characters and to follow the story from their perspective.
Nolan's stories feel cold, distant and lacking humanity; for even though the plot might contain and play around with emotion-inducing spectacle and effects on a more superficial level of plot, projection and manipulative special effects (sound, vision, stand-in "typical" characters, plot suspense, rapid pacing), these emotions are not an outflow of character exposition, but merely the result of external effects.
His minor characters are even worse, they feel vapid and interchangeable, like NPCs in an electronic game that are entirely defined by their skin, game mechanics (here: plot mechanics) and apart from that follow the very same underlying algorithm as all the other NPCs.
In this case:
Here it is Oppenheimer who wants to prove his scientific genius and societal value to the world vs. Strauß who wants to get back at Oppenheimer for triggering his inferiority complex and to overcome his inferiority complex by climbing the social ladder and make his name known in the high society. And all the other figures are not human characters with complex individual personality traits, but even more reduced to plot function than the two main protagonists, they are merely NPCs in various skins to be moved around the plot like pawns in a game of chess between Strauss and Oppie. .
To sum it up:
Nolan movies are entirely plot driven, apart from one-track mind energy protagonists/antagonists that wind up and set the music box plot in motion.
This is what makes revisiting Nolan movies feel so stale and boring and empty once you have memorized and can anticipate the plot.
They are like rides in an amusement park: Well constructed, pretty safe, but lack any sense of adventure or excitement beyond their sheer kinetic force.
Agreed.
I think the reason why Nolan is one of my favorite directors is simply because of the subject matter he usually chooses to write about, and his perspective on special effects and cgi where he would rather it be the icing on a cake and not the entire birthday party. It’s very hard for me to suspend my disbelief in films with overly saturated and fake looking cgi.
I read and study quantum mechanics, nuclear physics on my own. I love this stuff. I also love how all of my favorite scientists came together like the avengers. So I thought it was a no brainer. I had to love this film.
But I didn’t. It was perhaps the coldest biopic I’ve ever seen in my life. It felt like it was written by Dave Filoni. Like it was written and directed by a psychopath.
Many of the emotional moments in the film are implied. He’s not actively trying to persuade you of why these characters feel a certain way. Like the scene just shows you they’re emotional, but there’s no real build up to these emotions.
He also made “a race against the nazis” the central theme. Which I think would be obvious and inherent given the event, and not something to be hinted at constantly with a perpetual score.
It is also implied that Oppenheimer “can hear the music.” He’s great at theory but horrible in lab as a kid. And all we get is him breaking lab equipment. But I felt as though “hearing the music” was a better theme to focus on. They cut back and forth from real life to the image of a wave function dancing around a nucleus. I thought they’d build this atom up to a fissile uranium isotope, and relate the explosion to how fissile Oppenheimer can be in his waking life. But there’s no through line for emotion to build toward a payoff. The emotional wounds of the characters do not drive the plot.
You’d think that it would be somewhat obvious to include the consistent turmoil within a Jew facing annihilation, for it to only be a race against the Nazis at face value (I’m not Jewish by the way). But the plot is built on spoon fed exposition, and not on the emotional wounds of the characters or the main character. And if the character is inherently cold, there should be convincing examples of warmer characters to persuade us of some type of temperature difference between him and them as well as us in the audience.
just wanted to say how much i love your videos! you have a talent for perfectly and eloquently putting so many of my feelings towards certain films into words better than i ever could. not to say i consistently agree with every single opinion you share, but rather that you're just very good at communicating how you think and feel to the viewer. it's very refreshing.
I had real issues with the pacing in the first quarter of the film; it genuinely felt like it was rushing way too much, trying to fit in so much history into a short span of time, which ended up making it feel like a very long montage.
Also, i wasn't fully satisfied with how he handled the two female characters: Florence Pugh's character was rushed through and just suddenly out of the picture, while Emily Blunt's character was just in the background for the first 2/3 of the film then suddenly she's very important to Oppie.
Plus, SPOILER: the reveals towards the end felt a little too detective movie-like, i.e 'it was you all along'. That felt off to me.
That being said, i mostly loved it: he had a lot of scope to cover and generally did it really well.
very well put.
but the vibe of "it was you along" is exactly how it was like lol
No it was 10/10 perfect movie.
The silence was more than an artistic choice. There were three observation areas 10,000 yards from ground zero, and a base camp at 10 miles out. It took the shock wave / sound 27 seconds to reach the closest groups (including Oppenheimer) and 47 seconds to reach base camp. I feel this adds an extra layer of horror / realism that you will appreciate on your next viewing: they watched the bomb ignite in pure silence and it took 27 / 47 seconds for the blast wave, and the sonic boom carrying the sound, to reach you. And then you would hear the deafening sounds of the atomic furnace.
Yep. One of unrealistic things about most movies and even documentaries is the way the sound of explosions are depicted. You usually hear a loud boom instantly. In reality you don’t hear a bug explosion instantly. If you’re close enough to hear it instantly, then you’re likely to not hear it anyway because you’ll be knocked unconscious and possibly incinerated and instantly dead.
This is a thoughtful online review, one of the best I’ve seen about this movie.
I have similar feelings about Nolan. I’ve only just seen Oppenheimer (like everyone) but my initial reaction is it does feel like Nolan straining to synthesize his more metaphysical and experimental instincts as a filmmaker into a historical story that has an already enormously well-documented body of scholarship and writing behind it. Not just the biography on which the movie is based, but Richard Rhodes monumental “The Making Of The Atomic Bomb” and even shorter works such as the graphic novel “Trinity” by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm.
Let’s not forget that the BBC did a marvelously well written miniseries in 1980 about Oppenheimer and The Manhattan Project.
.
Does Nolan’s vision work - yes, spectacularly so in many ways. Does it still have some of the problems of Nolan excess? Yes.
Thanks for this review - based on your description of the absolute silence in the "test" scene and Cillian's "face acting", I'm now pumped to watch this tonight. Right up my alley when I had previously dismissed
I have very mixed (overall positive) feelings towards this movie. My gripes about this and critique to Nolan is that the movie lacks focus. Sure, you can argue that the focus is on Oppenheimer - hence the name of the movie. But by attempting to cover everything the movie will feel packed and slightly rushed and it did feel that way to me.
I feel like that’s such a critical decision for a director of Nolan’s calibre, it’s his 12th film after all. I strongly believe had Nolan chosen to focus on specific aspects of Oppenheimer’s life and delved deep into that with more or less the same duration, we would have gotten a superb film.
I felt things I’ve never felt before when watching this and I’m a huge fan of Nolan! He did a great job with this inventive concept of a biopic, but I wanted him to do even better!
This. The movie feels unsure if to focus on “consequences” from the bomb making or the political ego battles of the third act. Nolan tries to stitch them by implying that Oppenheimer was punishing himself by playing along with the inquiry but I found that a bit stretched
@@edoardo849 it's not trying to have you settle with anyone's impressions. It's presenting the events as it happened through a subjective lens(color) and an objective lens (black&white).
It already shown by Oppenheimer's experience that he's not exactly a great person to follow. Practically a anti-hero, womanizer, highly egotistical, and how he indulges onto others carelessly. He was a real person after all and I think Nolan has the film simply take in the information as it goes.
Nolan could've gone a more linear route but because he chose a more chaotic and fast-pace approach suggests to me that Oppenheimer is someone we're merely observing. Nolan letting the audience to choose whether to sympathize and or empathize.
Interstellar had focus on the father-daughter relationship because the main focal point is that relationship. The entire dilemma of humanity requires sacrifice and that the father constantly dealing with the possibility he left his daughter to die. And the daughter feeling left behind. And that tension builds as the movie continues, but most importantly; it builds emotionally as it was developed in the beginning.
Essentially Oppenheimer is more of a immersive experience of a introspective telling of Oppenheimer himself rather than telling a cohesive story that flows with a redeeming or emotional telling.
The "consequences" you mention that the film presents provides the audience to make up its mind about it. The film goes from one event to another without stopping. "Stitching" them together as you stated was more again about presenting information along. The plot is scattered on purpose to bring the forefront message, who is oppenheimer? And the scattered "stiching" approach Nolan does gives me an indication that Nolan dosen't want the audience to follow his version of Oppenheimer alone; but have us interpret it in multiple ways.
If Nolan focused on the regretful aspects of Oppenheimer then perhaps it would be a more emotionally engaging film. but ultimately Nolan didn't go that route; because he decided to not make Oppenheimer on an emotional aspect
it goes for a documentary feel but still in a very dramatic way. After all though; it's pretty hard to feel emotional connected to people who were on the back end in the making of such a weapon.
I felt like the first half (before the bang) felt like a very long trailer. The editing was a little too fast for me. I know a lot of people like that. Having said that, I thought the movie as a whole was incredible.
Love your reviews, so well balanced and considered, lots of detail without spoilers, a real model for how it should be done.
Oppenheimer is artwork. The sound engineer needs to be slapped in his face. The ridiculous over mastered sound peaks are completely unneeded given the brilliant artwork onscreen. The movie is well worth seeing over and over because the subject matter built the world we live in today. Director Nolan and fellow artists all , Thank You.
Gotta be honest, I wasn't expecting a thoughtful film review on UA-cam. Well done.
Did you just discover it or something? 😂😂
Did anyone else experience genuine fear during the test sequence? Like, I knew a bomb wouldn’t go off, but part of me was scared that the IMAX theater would genuinely blind and/or deafen me showing the bomb. Such great tension build up!
Stop romanticizing this trash of a movie
No I did not experience genuine fear
I did! Honestly my heartbeat went faster as soon as that scene started
O yes, same here! And i was even watching it in a normal theatre. Great sequence and the music/sound during the scene was beautiful.
I did and then pfiush a small explosion lol
Best reviews since Siskel & Ebert, no joke. Thanks for posting these. I really need to see this to renew my hope for cinema, after going to see that expensive Disney action movie.
Just watched an hour ago. Really scary movie. Overwhelming music and the pacing totally puts you off kilter. The auditorium scene is so emotional. Great cast. Nothing like it has been made in a while.
The auditorium scene! There is a brief moment when you can hear a scream immediately after the applause, and that made my skin crawl. Fantastic movie.
Scary!? haha. The only good part of the movie is when President Harry Truman (Garry Oldman) gives Oppenheimer a hankie..."and don't let that cry baby back in." lol
I wouldn't say scary but it was definitely haunting
auditorium scene was well done. Was surreal but still felt pretty grounded because we knew it was in the mind of Oppenheimer. Felt straight out of an Ari Aster film. An effective horror scene in my opinion.
12:10 I did a rewatch of Oppenheimer and the 3rd act/last 45 mins of the film was so much better for me a second time. I think the crosscutting really starts to ramp up the last half hour and its just an engaging final half hour that I didn't fully appreciate upon first viewing
the main thing that stood out to me was the score-feels like an all timer to me already.
While I could get with the strong acting of Robert Downing Jr. and Emily Blunt making the most of the little they were given by the script in terms of characterisation and nuance,
I totally loathed the blunt, clichéd, over-exaggerated and plump, sensationalistic surreal/special effects that Nolan put on top of their acts, and the very same goes for the characters played by Cillian Murphy and Rami Malek.
It seems to me like Nolan himself did not believe in his actors, did not believe in his audience's cognitive and emotional intelligence enough, did not even believe (maybe rightfully so) in his own script to carry the emotional earnestness and gravity of the scenes most crucial to the story.
His choice and execution of cinematic techniques was every so often overbearing, out of tone and tune, out of style, out of any subtlety, out of contextual need or nuance, of no dramatic necessity at all, just a self-indulgent, heavy-handed, ham-fisted add-on, uncalled for by the story - and rather kitschy, sloppy and wanky in terms of aestheic experimentation.
This led to grotesque and comical, cringe-worthy moments of the film hitting the audience over the head with almost slap-stick-like shots that broke the suspension of disbelief:
The unnaturally interrupted sex scene, taking us completely out of any believable continuity, just to shoehorn in a famous quote in a comedically corny context, completely out of touch with reality, just to go for a crass sexual metaphor (or sophomoric joke?).
The overdone visuals during Oppenheimer's speech, which crossed over from angsty undertones and a sense of emotional disconnect, disassociation and dejection into paranoid psychosis, a semi-prophetic vision of his colleagues dying from nuclear blast, burning and radiation sickness, thereby almost belittling, making light (or even making fun of?) the real suffering caused to Japanese civilians, victims of an American warcrime.
Similarly, the "vision" of his wife in the security hearing when she heard (not for the first time!) of Oppenheimer's infidelity to her, was not only way over the top in its crassness, but also totally uncalled for as actress Emily Blunt's facial expression had already said it all - in not such a fourth-wall-breaking and ridiculous manner.
Rami Malek's performance as "deus ex machina" was strong enough to stand out on its own, it did not need extra lighting, and it definitely did not need a CGI halo effect to point out its importance to the plot.
The way the role of Albert Einstein was relegated to a cute little, almost Yoda-like, personal mascot of Robert Oppenheimer also seemed oddly out of place and was in effect both diminutive and demeaning.
And these are just the crassest moments of Nolan sacrificing any remainders of classiness or nuance to gratuitous use of spectacle.
I won't go into more technical continuity errors, because what Nolan did to deface the narration in terms of story outweighs by far how he sometimes also effaces his plot.
I got more sarcastic laughs out of Oppenheimer's stylistic failures than out of Barbie's entire societal satire - and Oppenheimer was not even meant to be a comedy.
I've yet to see anyone compare Oppenheimer to Roland Joffe's Fat Man and Little Boy from 1989. That film has apparently fallen down the memory hole. Dwight Schultz was mostly known for The A-Team, a cartoonish comedic action series from the early '80s, but he was very good as Oppenheimer, and Paul Newman was of course superb as Gen. Groves.
I agree. Although that film took little liberties it was an excellent outtake of the Manhattan Project. I still haven’t seen Oppenheimer but I feel Newman was a much better Groves than Matt Damon. I feel Damon is a strong miss cast for the role.
Barclay!
I’m excited to see it. I read American Prometheus years ago and wondered for the life of me why they hadn’t made a movie out of it. I wonder no longer!
Jul 23, 2023
I thought it was an awful movie. Three hours of my life, I can never get back. Listen to the hype at your own peril. If I could give it no stars, I would. There was at least 4 people that walked out, and I heard numerous comments after of "WHAT WAS THAT!"🤮 If my review saves one person from having to sit through 3 hours of dribble, it was worth writing!
If you like American Prometheus I think you'll like this movie. There's a lot of information, people and historical events crammed into this movie and a little familiarity with the material and historical context will keep you better engaged with the pacing of the film.
I can image that without affinity for the material, it's easy for people to get lost, miss the significance of certain events and start blaming the film for not holding their hand enough. I think the film is more niche than what we are used to with Christopher Nolan films, so quite a significant part of people who are expecting a regular Nolan epic might walk out disappointed.
The Veritasium channel also has a good primer on Oppenheimer to get more out of the film.
@@thedink5bloody hell we need to start a hashtag me too meme for this POV! I am with you ! Oppenheimer Is the first movie I have watched at the cinema in about 8 years and I thought it was unmitigated crap. Such an Absolutely unpleasant film making style and overall experience that totally overwhelmed the actual unimaginable ‘unpleasantness’ of the development and dropping of the A bombs . Words cannot convey my extreme disappointment with this film. My homemade popcorn was very good though, and it did save me some money. It May well be another 8 years before I bother with a Hollywood film again at the cinema. Gaaahh . I am actually really p’ssed off at the assault this film had on my ears- just as a starter. . FFS 🤦
“At times we reach real brilliance” that almost feels like a backhanded compliment and that’s what I dislike about film critics. Nolan to me is hurt by his own brilliance because people take for granted what he does, and dismiss most of the magnitude of what he does. Let’s take a moment to think that he shot on imax film, 100% practical effects, making the most unique biopic you will ever see. He literally made a film that no one makes and it’s an absolute achievement in cinema and there’s still people poking holes in it.
It is possible to admire the craftsmanship while at the same time be critical of certain aspects of the film itself. Imo it’s a very good movie but it’s not a GREAT movie
Yeah, shame it's also not that great at all😂. You wanna complain about critics and then just pull out production fun facts that you heard on some social media post to validate your feelings as if all of a sudden that makes uncriticizable? Yes it's all very nice that he shot a drama made for about 95% of people talking in rooms in Imax, really pointed choice there. Achievement in cinema my ass. It's a pretty good movie, I can give you like 5 biopics that are more unique than this even though biopics are already a terrible genre. If you wanna complain about people for having opinions at least try not to have yours be nothing but a whole lot of dickriding
Love your take. It was one of the best films I have seen in a very long time.
It was dumb releasing this as a summer film. The tone of this is far more suited for late fall.
In my view, the desire for wanting rewatch it does not come from so much going on, it comes from the disjointed story telling. Nolan cuts the plot up, throws everything into the air, and then montages it back together in an almost arbitrary fashion. AFAIC, he does not gain anything nearly enough from the fragmented story telling, compared to the engagement he loses by only ever showing small exposures of some aspect. I am one of the most intellectual people I know and love Kubrick's movies, but watching a film is about getting drawn in at least some of time. In "Oppenheimer" that very rarely happened for me. I believe I can relate to Oppenheimer's world and thought his personality and struggles remained completely underdeveloped. Same for the other scientists. There were some real characters in the Manhatten project, but they remain largely unused like extras in an MTV video. From someone like Nolan I would have expected a more faithful characterisation of scientists in general. Some are OK, but most of them feel like actors on a stage. RDJ's performance at the end is intense, but prior to that Strauss comes across like RDJ (not the other way around) and the intensity is like that of a theatre stage performer (which does very little for me; I really like movies but theatre stage productions always come across as artificial for me). Sadly, Oppenheimer did not work for me for about 95% of the time because of the opportunities it missed and how overtly manipulative it was. FWIW, when thinking about the movie before having seen it, I thought that it would be powerful to show the explosion without sound and let the sound blast arrive with its natural delay (~26s, given the observation distance). I think that was a very natural choice, in particular, given the incessant soundtrack of the movie. The few moments without some background soundtrack trying to add intensity to scenes were indeed very powerful. Not enough to compensate for the near constantly blurting soundtrack which I found ineffective after a while because it wore me out.
For how much the soundtrack blasted in my ears the whole time( my ears were actually ringing afterwards) there was not a memorable musical motif that has stayed with me this morning.
@@virginiacharlotte7007 I concur. I guess the idea was not to have a leitmotif-driven soundtrack. The constant "keep you on your toes" - attacks got on my nerves after while.
Sound design alone and everything in Los Alamos and the trinity test is reason enough to see this one in theaters.
precise breakdown (and haven't even seen it yet), and enjoyable review. cilian gret from the start, "28 days later".
thanks for another cool vid.
This is his finest achievement and my personal favorite right next to Memento... Just wonderful display of great filmmaking and i feel bad for anyone who doesn't appreciate this.
Eh, personally, I feel his filmmaking has gotten stale since the early 2000s.
@@adamant5550 2/10 for your effort and thanks for playing.
@@PesterFester1966 Sure thing, ace!
@@adamant5550Anything time hipster.
@@PesterFester1966 Okay, normie.
Awesome review. My favourite Nolan movie is still Memento, it’s great. I really like Batman Begins, The Prestige and Insomnia. Dunkirk is good, didn’t love it. The rest of his films were all over the place, with incredible moments, followed by unbearable expository dialogue and messy scenes. But i do admire the man.
I thought it was terrible. No dramatic thread. It's episodic, and I never felt suspense or got a sense of a story.
A most explosive review! Looking forward to seeing this film on the big big screen.
And, incidentally, today is my bee day. Thank you, Chris Nolan, for such an expensive birthday present. You shouldn’t have. ;-)
I wish you would state an opinion. I want to know what you think, not a long description of the movie. Opinions come from the heart, they are real. Descriptions are just words that go on and on.
I’m 3 min in and she hasn’t said if she liked it or not. I don’t get it
Would you say that the story of Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb was ultimately about the friends he made along the way?
😂 I enjoyed that.
it was the power of anime friendship
"A great auteur who continues to challenge himself" - spot on, and by itself a reason to laud Nolan. (though IMO this is his best of several great films)
I really don’t see how he challenged himself. I don’t see the growth of him as a filmmaker in this one as the dialogue is the same as it’s almost always been. He makes it non linear for no apparent reason outside of he likes messing around with time. Non linear cuts actually have a function (in pulp fiction someone gets saved at the end of each scene, in memento it is actually the subjective experience of the detective). He has a score that’s perpetually droning on in the background but doesn’t fit the interactions on screen. I’m a huge Nolan fan but this was one of the coldest biopics I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like the emotion is implied and he never tries to persuade us as to why these characters feel a certain way. It just keeps jumping from one scene to the next with dryly delivered exposition. Felt like it was directed by a psychopath.
I didn't realize that was Gary Oldman playing Truman
I'm hoping to get out to see it. Like you, I've been frustrated by some of Nolan's past movies, but I have high hopes for Oppenheimer.
Your review is very well considered. Develops some excellent insights. Thank you for posting.
(Minor issue. During the Trinity Test, the 30 sec silence between the flash and the bang was due to the distance of their bunker from ground zero. Sound travels much slower than light. Nolan uses the quiet those 10 km create to great effect.)
Oppenheimer - a first "knee jerk" reaction.
Just a few hours out of the cinema, and I am still visibly shaken by the strength of my negative reaction to Christopher Nolan’s “magnum opus”, which was for me a crushing disappointment!
Somewhere inside this bloated, bombastic mess of a movie there is a smaller, quieter, more interesting argument struggling to make itself heard, if but the surrounding noise weren’t so deafening.
Such a visceral reaction clearly demands justification, but I need some time lying down in a darkened room before I can begin to address that.
Rant over (I think).
Have your ears stopped ringing yet.? It Took me a whole night and I am still utterly enraged by how poorly made this piece of storytelling was. I have not seen a film at the cinema in at least 8 years, I have no preconceived notions of what is meant to be so bloody great about Chris Nolan films, and I am still so royally p’ssed off by what I endured last night with Oppenheimer. I still cannot think straight about it. Crap and a totally lost opportunity is all I have come up with so far. I Would rather listen to a dry three hour lecture from an actual historian or biographer of Oppenheimer. Sheesh . Why do people swallow this sh!te as mesmeric filmmaking? Every gear of filmmaking technique was fully on show and grinding away in a complete assault of the senses that detracted from any engagement I could have had with the characters or the topic at large. And Cillian Murphy just walked through it all like a Flat Stanley doll . Is everyone just hypnotised by his ‘cerulean blue eyes’ or something. The portrayal of Teller captured me and I wanted to know more but then I never got it . FFS- I could not connect with the nature of who Oppenheimer was AT ALL. Gaaaaah!!!! … but my homemade popcorn was great and it did save me some money from the candy bar.
@@virginiacharlotte7007 Thanks for your interesting response; I feel I do understand where you’re coming from! However, for my own part, I have changed my mind considerably following a second viewing of Oppenheimer, where information overload was no longer such a problem (this was what threw me initially, and I was almost lost after the first hour!). My second experience was much more relaxed (the film appearing to slow down, psychologically speaking), and I could follow the narrative much better. This is a highly complex film, partly due to Nolan’s use of a favourite device of his: non-linear storytelling, requiring a fair amount of effort on the part of the viewer in order to cope with multiple storylines. I also recognise that there are some technical difficulties with the IMAX format, but I am willing to put up with such for the overall experience.
I must disagree with you about the acting: Cillian Murphy was superb, IMO, as were the entire cast. I respectfully suggest that your assessment of Murphy might be due to your general discomfiture with format and volume levels of the film, which do, indeed, assault the senses at times (Nolan uses sound almost like a narrator, to underline and even direct the emotional content of a scene). Once one gets a better grip on the details of the film (if one is willing to persevere), the character of Oppenheimer becomes much more comprehensible, although we should remember that Nolan’s project is not intended to provide a clear answer in Yes/No fashion to Oppenheimer’s motivation and moral position: if Oppie was himself unclear or confused, perhaps it behooves us to accept that real human beings are subject to multiple, sometimes contradictory, impulses underlying their actions.
In summary: I believe now that my initial response to Oppenheimer was too much of a knee jerk reaction, and I continue to be fascinated by the film - I may even see it a third time! 😲
Why is there no emotional gravitas? or am I the only one? Acting is there but the scene does not portray the atmosphere, or the impactful scene is cut too quickly to let the emotion or the stake to settle in. It feels more like a documentary with good acting and music
I saw it yesterday. Parts of it were good, but it dragged on to me. They were both speed running through a lot of things in the beginning and then dragging out the last act. The more you know about the subject matter, the more you’ll enjoy it. Not enough context is provided for certain things. I have mixed feelings on it
If you know the subject matter (not the propaganda) the movie might as well be a Marvel movie. It's as fictional as Spiderman is. The entire movie is based on the *utterly false* notion that WW2 ended because of the Atomic Bomb. A notion that only benefited/benefits the Japanese elites and our Military Industrial Complex.
Ok, just came back.
Incredible film that could have been an A+ in my book if two of Nolan’s obsessions were not present. The need of constant music behind every single scene making the pace agonising and the dialogue difficult to follow. As a result it robs the film from having dynamics, and therefore great emotional impact on the scenes that need it, since everything runs on red start to finish. Second, the fast editing on almost every scene which combined with the constant agonising music in the background made you feel that the events cannot breath and are rushed. On the other hand, I can’t see how he could deliver such a heavy dialogue ridden with political history film with an impact and interest rich attitude to young-blockbuster action hungry audience and mainly Nolan fans( the ones who adore him for Inception, Batman, Interstellar, Tennet and quick action sequences) and keep them engaged. Overhaul great effort and easily one of Nolan’s most mature work.
I couldn't understand a lot of the dialog. I couldn't tell if it was just the mix in the theater I was in was off or something, but the music overwhelmed every scene even when people are just talking.... the dialog was buried in the music and sfx the whole movie, I was straining to understand them.
typical nolan flub for the past decade
I hope people appreciate the magnitude of this event in history and the brilliance of the people involved, this period and the following two decades were the apex of humanity
Love the way you reviewed it without giving much about the movie up - really excited to see this on 70mm imax
I thought the film dragged a bit after the sucessful test and use of the bomb. I found myself wondering who they were going to end it, what the conclusion was going to be. I think it dragged a bit, for me, because I was not that invested in the question of whether he was a communist or not, and I didn't care whether he had a security clearence or not. It seemed like the movie had those questions, while also trying to tell the story of what being "the father of the atomic bomb" does to a person - and I think it was a bit unfocused because of that, of having too many irons in the fire.
Oppenheimer was an incredible movie, Cillian Murphy really carried it on his back...his performance was totally magnetic. I actually liked Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr alot as well, new character types let them flex their acting chops a bit...
I feel the same about Nolan like he's almost there with say Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. It's great to hear there is some dreamscape surrealism and for that alone I'll be seeing the movie :-)
Can't wait to see this movie! I saw Dunkirk and liked it. I avoided Inception coz those inverting cityscapes would've made me nauseous. Yeah, Cilian Murphy is a helluva compelling actor.
It doesn’t do the inverted scapes too crazy, inception is definitely his best work imo - should def check it out
The observation Nolan and Oppenheimer are doing similar roles is interesting
What a total disappointment it was. I’m giving it 2 out of 5, purely for the effort and decent performances but not much else.
WALL TO WALL UNENDING MUSIC. So annoying. The music was there to try to build more tension to build up to the THING, but in the end if I was the actor who put in a shift to bring the drama to the scenes only to be eclipsed and almost DROWNED OUT by the INCESSANT MUSIC I would be seriously pissed off and gutted.
The whole film is ALL TALK TALK TALK TALK and not much else. I get that it’s about the man, the plight of the man, but to SKIRT AROUND the actual ASTROCITY brought on by what he had a hand in creating by NOW SHOWING the actual death and destruction - NOBODY WILL HAVE LEARNED ANYTHING.
What was the point of shooting this in IMAX 70mm when it’s all JUST TALK. What a complete the utter waste of money and chemicals just to process the film.
If this was a streamer film GUARANTEED most of you lot would skip through most of it for the incessant talk and annoying music that just fills the dead spots and tries to build tension but failing.
It’s an hour too long, most of it could have been chopped way down still, so much it just felt like a long-form MUSIC VIDEO with some dialogue.
So sad.
Don’t waste your money on this. It’s hype. It’s not worth the money or the time. The 70mm film is a WASTE, it looks no different to anything else, and I watched it on the giant screen in 70mm. It’s definitely not worth the full IMAX as there is nothing to watch in it for that side. There is no need.
I wasted 3 hours of my life for that. I wished I hadn’t gone to see it. It’s such a disappointment
great to hear well thought out and balanced critique. subscribed.
Tenet didnt completely work but Kubrick was imperfect too and criticized during his time.
No one liked Barry Lyndon when it was released and his films were often seen as cold and lacking in humanity.
And no one has a more mixed bag career than Lynch.
The key to unlocking Nolan is the Prestige. Film making is something of a magic trick to Nolan and sometimes his reach exceeds grasp. But that exactly is why he's a genius and one of the few shining lights in a vey dire period for the industry.
Just enjoy him, because he wont be around forever.
Yeah The Prestige was brilliant, gripping.
Thanks for the review. Yeah the third act seems to be quite polarizing. I knew the Trinity Test would not be the end of the movie before going in and that the last portion was the government trying to ruin his reputation.
After seeing it last night, I am kind of like you where I am not 100% sure how I felt about that decision. I do kind of appreciate Nolan's willingness to not go for the obvious, safe route though. A more conventional director almost certainly would have ended with the bomb and maybe the immediate aftermath, but ending the film with a 30-40 minute courtroom drama mixed in with Oppenheimer's conscience haunting him in various scenes is a more interesting Gambit. I am just not sure if it paid off 100%
I'll have to see it again, but I think Nolan wanted to mark his film with yes the Trinity Test, but more than that he really wants us to think about how once you create a new devastating technology you can't put the genie back in the bottle and what this could mean for us today with AI and our constant connectivity to the internet, etc. I think especially with the subjective sequences like the uh... No spoilers-auditorium scene. Or when the background kind of wobbles like jello. It really helps you get into his head space.
Sidenote: I totally agree, I wish we got a little more of his personal life. What we did get of Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh was great, and I knew Pugh was not going to have very much screen time going in, but I was kind of surprised at how little screen time Blunt got as well. She was so good when she was on screen-we just needed more!
story: great
special effects: amazing
performances: absolutely fantastic
editing / music use: shockingly abysmal imo.
it seriously felt like a series of trailers the entire time, which the constant overly dramatic music did not help at all. shots of oppenheimer just talking with anyone felt like the most important thing to happen ever. the film didnt take a single moment to stop, slow down, and breathe and really let you absorb the characters motives and what was happening (apart from when they test the bomb which was great). pretty much everything else about the movie was amazing. ill have to watch again when it goes on streaming services and re-evaluate, but in the mean time i left very dissapointed.
So it lacked dynamics, it was on “panic” mode start to finish with agonising score, like Dunkirk?
How about the leght
¿ its 3 hours
@@gpapa31Yes. So even when scientists are talking in a room or at a table the dramatic music is just pounding away. It detracts from the dialogue being impactful.
Thank you for noticing, and i completely agree. Most peeople dont seem to mind it or may not even give it any thought but it ruins the movie completely for me. Without the grotesque sound design the movie would've been fantastic. Nolan gives no room to breath at all, he just wanna impress all the time. Incredibly frustrating because there is a great movie hidden underneath all the unnecassary noise.
@@joelbarish Those music cues are so overwhelming and used with little discretion. I feel they completely disrespect some pretty fine performances especially from Cillian Murphy.
I took the third act as the torture he has to (or chooses to) endure.
Like most Nolan films, I really disliked the first 30-40 minutes. Nolan seems to think that starting a film with a fast paced montage is exciting, but to me, it’s just frustrating. But I think the time jumping really works in the second half.
Beautifully balanced review Maggie, can't wait to see the film.
After they drop the bomb and they start to shun oppenheimer, it just sorta fizzles from there. I loved the ending scene, but other than that the third act needed a lot of chopping. Nolan's dialogue alone is not strong enough to carry the movie for like an hour.
Great video and insight on the movie! I really liked this movie I thought at times it could be really great with subtle moments like the auditorium scene and the bomb dropping scene itself, with like you said, the silence. And Oppenheimer’s role in building it and maybe having to fake his emotions due the people’s love for the big win in a sense. I thought that was pretty interesting and it was edited together really well. I thought the cuts to different scenes at time were confusing. But I really like this movie
I really appreciated your point of view and I definitely agree with you on Nolan's work. Dunkirk and The Prestige felt like his most complete and well told stories before this film. Also if you watch some Oppenheimer interviews of the actual man himself I think you see a lot of that in Murphy's performance.
Just a suggestion, you might want to start adding film clips and make reviews a little more structured... synopsis, director, acting, effects, recommendation level, etc. still like hearing the general thoughts/reactions though.
I still think that The Dark Knight is a perfect movie, and Nolan’s masterpiece. But Oppenheimer is his magnum opus, so far. 9.5 from me but Nolan can’t seem to resist exposition scenes, and while I thank his efforts to educate the audience, he seems to struggle giving the movie time to breathe. Also, I wished I had the chance to take a look of the direct consequences of the bomb, the desolation, the devastation. But Nolan avoided to open that wound. Overall a fantastic movie, the best of the year so far.
Music, fast editing was once in a lifetime experience for me in theatre.
Spoiler comment alert: The first third of the film is crowded with intrusive interruptive editing and intrusive orchestral music - all of which is designed to choral the viewer into absorbing plot transposition to set up and move the story along in the most forced and patronising way you could possibly imagine. He literally gives no space into which the story can just sit or allow the performances to breathe at all. So in the section of the film where you expect to be teased and charmed into an incredibly important story - you are instead given sensory overload and abysmally poor sound recording and mixing. Once the film has stopped trying to impress you it settles into a second act which allows you to start connecting with and empathising with the characters, but is a pretty basic account of what happened in Los Alamos. There is no exploration of the radioactive accidents that happened during that time, which would have served to emphasise the terrifying hazard that a nuclear bomb can unleash. There were fatalities under Oppenheimer's project from the mishandling of the plutonium core. So the film totally sidesteps both the risk to the scientists or civilians and the tragedy that entails. There is one section of the film which is brilliant though. The post Hiroshima speech sequence is one of the best things Nolan has ever done on film. Overall though I'm amazed that people have been raving about this as being Nolan's best film. I think he's still too obsessed with technical irrelevance. This didn't need to be filmed in IMAX (mostly indoor scenes), any more than the Hateful Eight needed to be filmed in Panavision 70mm. The first third has such a disturbing rhythm that it feels like it is the artistic equivalent of atrial fibrillation (an erratic pulse) because at the heart of it all Nolan as usual seems to be self consciously compensating for his insecurities as a visual storyteller, by bombarding the viewer with the intention of impressing them I found it instead had the opposite effect of blocking me from connecting with the story. The sad thing is that he's already proved himself in other films early in his career so you'd hope he'd have learned by now from the great auteurs of cinema like Kubrick or Kurosawa - that a visual much be given room to breathe and requires context. There's no respect for storytelling if you play loud music over what your characters are saying or poorly record their voices. Usually the viewer is more intelligent than you give them credit for, so less is more if you truly want to connect with people. I'm hoping that one day Nolan settles down and stops trying so hard to tell us he's a genius and actually starts being one.
I agree Dunkirk is one of my favs. And Oppenheimer is a next level up I think in cinematic artistry. Nolan is a genius man. The way the movie came together is incredible. And mindblowing how profound the whole of the film is
Dunkirk is his worst movie
@@GeorgeZimmermen L
@@efcdk92 still true. Cry harder
@@GeorgeZimmermen nope. Get some taste.
@@efcdk92 get some character development instead of event development, then we’ll talk
This sounds fascinating. I wonder if it'll be released here in Japan.
BTW, your shopping for eggs analogy immediately made me think of Tommy Wiseau shopping for flowers in The Room😊
what a great scene
I heard that it first released in japan. 😂
depends, I've been wondering whether they actually show hiroshima myself. Hard to do in good taste, especially in a bombastic format like IMAX
@@Yesman_2399__ Hmm
@@Yesman_2399__I see what you did there
Your review got me to buy a ticket to see this in IMAX this Saturday. I have lots of issues with Nolan and how overwrought a lot of his work feels to me, but now I think I need to see this in IMAX to really appreciate what he's doing with this film.
I just saw this movie today - I'm not a fan of Nolan - this film resonated more for me than any of his others that ive seen. The last hour should be viewed in the context of the Cold War and anti-Communist hysteria - and his closing exchange with Einstein was very powerful, particularly given the current state of the world
I just finished watching Oppenheimer. I'm hearing Amy Schumer is calling it sexist? Women are walking out from it? Is it because Florence Pugh showed her boobs a few times? Where was this for Titanic when Kate Winslet showed her boobs in a PG-13 film?
Oppenheimer is quite tedious. I think the best part was that second hour leading up to testing the hydrogen bomb. But I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I still prefer Spielberg's Munich (2005) much more but I thought it was entertaining enough about a tedious subject matter involving science and engineering.
Every actor was great in it. I do agree somewhat with DisGrace Randolph that Nolan isn't great at creating female characters. Florence was underused. I love her as Yelena but she's only in it to be a deranged Commie/mistress who hates flowers and goes topless which I've seen years ago since I'm a member of Celebrity Movie Archive and check AZNude weekly.
I've seen hundreds of actresses' boobs. I saw Ana De Armas' boobs several years before Blade Runner 2049. I've seen more female skin than Mr. Skin. Heck, I saw Greta Gerwig's boobs like 12-13 years ago. If I see an attractive actress I'm not familiar with, CMA and AZNude are like my Google to check for any boobies.
I did not get a boner seeing Florence's boobs at all. I personally don't find her attractive. Great actress. Looks like a stockier Hayden Panettiere with a bigger head and smaller boobs. But I love Florence's talent which is acting. She was great in Don't Worry Darling.
I can love an actress without lusting over her looks. My favorite actress is Julianne Moore and she's freckled with A-cups as seen in Body of Evidence. I still love her as an actress. I don't need to jerk off to an actress to enjoy her work or talent. Not every actress needs to look like Monica Bellucci.
I felt Emily Blunt acted no different than January Jones in Mad Men and Laura Dern in The Founder (2016). The typical neglected housewife who becomes a drunk during the mid-20th century when the men had to go to war or do something important.
If you ever seen Chaplin (1992), Florence and Emily pretty much acted similar to Charlie's women. But that's how women were in the 1930s through 1950s. Stayed home a lot. What was Nolan supposed to do? Hire Blacks, Asians, and Latinas to work on the H-bomb? The movie was going to be a sausage-fest.
My favorite actor in it was definitely Matt Damon. Matt was in my favorite movie of this year: Air. Any movie Matt is in, I usually enjoy it. He gained a lot of weight recently. He's overweight in both Air and Oppenheimer. From what I'm hearing, Matt is a great guy to work with. But I don't mind if he acts like an a-hole in films.
David Krumholtz looked like he gained 50 lbs since This Is The End (2013). I almost didn't recognize him the way it took me time to recognize Jamie Lee Curtis in EEAAO. The same guy from The Santa Clause (1994) and Harold & Kumar Trilogy. Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., and Josh Harnett all did an excellent job.
So where is Oppenheimer among my favorites of 2023? Maybe bottom top 10. I still enjoyed Air and BlackBerry more. I enjoyed Across The Spider-Verse, The Flash, and Dead Reckoning more. It's a good movie and maybe Nolan's best since Inception. But I still don't love it.
*My* *Favorite* *Chris* *Nolan* *Films*
1. The Dark Knight (2008)
2. The Prestige (2006)
3. Memento (2000)
4. Inception (2010)
5. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
6. Batman Begins (2005)
7. Oppenheimer (2023)
8. Insomnia (2002)
9. Dunkirk (2017)
10. Interstellar (2014)
11. Tenet (2020)
Haven't seen Following (1998) yet.
I’m very much in the same camp as you are regarding Nolan, but am very optimistic about this one based on what I’ve been hearing. I’m super excited to see it!
Wow! What a sublime review
i also found this video very sublime. Extremely sublime.
SUBLIME! 👱🏻♂️
Best movie critic of all time. I learn so much in each of your reviews. I love how you look at it in fine detail. It really helps me to understand how I feel about the movie. And also tha I'm not going mad that I was unsure about the final 3rd of the movie
Dan Harmon said it when Interstellar came out. Man needs to outsource his screenplays.
I would certainly have open ears to your response to my Nolan fave, "The Prestige." Consider it!
As someone who doesnt really get abstract art/sculptors etc, Chris Nolan films are the cinema equivalent of going to look at something strange in a gallery.....
Doesnt make much sense. Seems needlessly obtuse. But you get to say you went and saw it and it provokes thoughts and conversations afterward.
Honestly, im not gonna shit on him. In a world with Barbie and 15 years of endless superhero films, Nolan is now one of the few reasons Ill buy a ticket.
I strongly recommend people see Oppenheimer. It helps if you have some previous knowledge of who the principal scientists are that have roles in the film, otherwise the beginning of the film can seem off to a confusing start.
This film is a kind of superhero movie. The hero has some deep character flaws but prevails technically and as a project manager. It’s a film about how America builds up its heroes and then systematically goes about destroying them personally and publicly.
I found the last third of the movie about the witch hunt and political skullduggery to be most interesting and agree that Downey’s Strauss character was very well done.
It’s unfortunate but the R rating will limit the potential size of the audience.
Finally got out to see this yesterday and I thought it was very good. The crowd was applauding at the end of it.