Oppenheimer

Leave it to Nolan, the director who can be handed the keys to everything, to produce a 3hr film which is of such breakneck speed but says absolutely nothing. Not only is it visually unremarkable, it fails to show the science, fails to show the psychological effects on its character (did Nolan seriously believe that the excessive use of close-ups can somehow reveal something profound?), fails to show the horror of nuclear war in general (the only good scene, and quite a brilliant one, in the entire film: the rapturous reception by audience following his speech as indistinguishable from common effects of radiation), and all that remains is a tedious post-war McCarthy procedure.

It's comically atrocious. 1/5

I would love to pm you about it.

If you had said this on any other movie website, whether it was Box Office Theory or World of KJ, They probably would've found a way to ban you for saying something like this about a Nolan movie and I'm not saying it to be a smartass, but telling it like it is.. In the eye of Nolan Bros, this man can do absolutely 0 wrong.. Like I said, Nolan coild make a movie about paint drying and the Nolan Bros would be out in full force to see it, even in IMAX which apparently isn't needed for a movie like this while, Tom Cruise who puts his life on the line doing the stunts he does barely gets IMAX for a week because of Oppenheimer and Barbie, another movie that didn't need the IMAX Treatment.. Movies like The MEG 2 and Mission:IMPOSSBLE VII deserve IMAX and unfortunately, won't see this format because of this and that's unfortunate..

Having seen this in 70mm, I have trouble imagining a world in which The Meg 2 is more deserving of the big screen than this. Even Dead Reckoning, which I also liked, is debatable.

Anyway, I liked this quite a bit. I'm something of a Nolan agnostic - I generally like his films but rarely feel strongly about them (especially not in a good way), but this is the first one of his I've seen in a long time that felt like it could actually challenge Memento as his best.

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In the end, it's a movie about the creation of the Atomic Bomb, how does this warrant being seen in IMAX other than this is what Nolan shot the movie with over Tom Cruise driving off the top of a cliff with a motorcycle while leaping off of it or the train sequence?? Stunts done in movies ALWAYS look better in IMAX including the BOND movies.. And how exactly does a movie like BARBIE be required to be seen in IMAX over a Giant Shark movie??

There's obviously the spectacle of the bomb itself, but Nolan still manages to infuse everything else with a degree of dynamism through techniques like overexposure or the constant shifting between colour and black-and-white. If he's going to make most of the movie about science labs or government hearings (to say nothing of rendering characters' headspaces), the least he can do is make them visually interesting in a way that justifies IMAX and I'd say he succeeds in this regard. IMAX doesn't just have to be reserved for the most obviously dynamic action like the stuff in Mission: Impossible. And I never said anything about Barbie - I'm even inclined to agree that that isn't an overly engaging visual experience outside of its art direction.

The funny thing is... while an IMAX screen is of course per standard huge, there are no IMAX scenes in Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning in fact

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Putting aside the few visual moments (like the atomic bomb testing), I would say there's plenty of aesthetic techniques on display which make its IMAX screening justified. Whether you're referring to the overexposure of certain scenes which match the effect of a nuclear bomb very well, the occasional splicing of nuclear bomb/fission imagery throughout, the shifts between color and black and white throughout, or the various loud sound effects throughout the film (in spite of me half-joking about them upthread, I actually think they worked very well), I think it turns what could've just been another dry, talk-heavy biopic into a memorable spectacle which, instead of the aspects I mentioned upthread feeling showy, creates a subjective experience which puts you in Oppenheimer's headspace very well. There are different ways a film can warrant an IMAX screening aside from exciting and over-the-top action and I would argue this film as an exception.

Anyways, I'm not as down on Nolan as some people are, but I would definitely consider this to be among his best films.

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The last act was my favorite and seems to be one of the most divisive parts of the film. All of the people getting their little moments, especially the hero who we don’t see coming.

One of the most impressive parts was the casting, especially these child actors or former “it” guys. When we saw that Guy Ritchie armored truck movie, it occurred to me why Josh Hartnett’s career disappeared. He was horrible. After seeing this, I can see him in every Robert Redford role for the next 20 years.

I hope to get a viewing in sometime this week! Will report back with thoughts afterward.

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If you've seen Oppenheimer in the theaters and you want to know more I suggest this excellent documentary made in 1981. It interviews scientist who worked at Los Alamos including Frank Oppenheimer who worked with his famous brother on the 'gadget'. I watched this documentary last night and thought it was excellent. It gave me insight into the real story and conflicts at Los Alamos and into the type of man Robert Oppenheimer was...Oh and I learned that his funny hat is called a Pork Pie hat.

I finally was able to find a 3+ hour time block to see this, and it kept my attention the whole time. That being said, it was odd to me that the plot was centered around and revealed via flashbacks during testimonials post-WWII. It works, but I feel like other documentaries/movies/series have made this more compelling previously.

Maybe a good comparison would be making a movie about Elon Musk and revolving it around his takeover of Twitter

I also thought the audio was a bit misplaced at times...bombarding you with timely random particle collisions and such that made my eardrums hurt

You're right it has been done before. I just watched this excellent docudrama a couple days ago. It centered around Oppenheimer's trail with flashbacks telling his story.
If someone does watch this, especially if you've seen Nolan's Oppenheimer I wish you'd post your thoughts about it.

Just saw it.

meh.

Shortest review you ever wrote I'd love to hear what you didn't like about it, even a paragraph or two. I'm interested in the subject matter so considering watching it, but not convinced I'll like it either.

I’ll probably write something lengthy some time. Very busy these days though. Don’t even know how I made time for this three hour film.

But in short, it’s basically just Nolan’s flaws as a filmmaker that made me not wholly enjoy this film. Don’t get me wrong there’s great stuff in here, but it was more or less exactly as I expected a modern-era-Nolan would direct a three hour character-piece. And his flaws are just more obvious when he can’t hide every scene in grandiose big-scale spectacle (even though he attacks almost every scene like that, which is kind of the ironic part)…

I think Nolan’s obsession with the IMAX camera has actually become his Achilles heel. He sacrifices good storytelling and intimacy for the sake of being able to capture it with the big and clunky IMAX cameras. He has truly gone lost in the big format frame.

I had to go back to rewatch the interrogation scene from The Dark Knight to remind myself that he did in fact once direct dialogue scenes that felt better written, more free and less calculated, less clunky and which didn’t cut on every single line in a shot-reverse-shot dialogue scene. Oh, and also didn’t have a score constantly playing in the background.

I gave it for now and will rewatch it once it’s available at home. Who knows, maybe I’ll like it more then.

Thanks MM That was very informative and even though I haven't seen the movie I'd say you seem to have a good eye for what Nolan did and what he needs to do. I'll post a review of Oppenheimer when it becomes available to stream.

Yeah I guess, but many love Nolan and this film too. So who knows. You said you’re interested in the subject that should probably help. *

but I don’t know how you like Nolan’s other work. Can’t remember your thoughts on those.

Interesting comment, because my reaction was nearly opposite. In my other life, when I'm not at the movies, I'm a history geek. One of my favorite topics of one year was the Bomb project. It's the historic intersection of several major threads in history...evolving science, politics, war and evil dictatorships. Robert Oppenheimer sat in the middle of that intersection, in between war, science, nazis, American antisemitism, the Holocaust, Stalin, and right wing American paranoia about home grown communism. It's such a big GD story that a 3 hour movie can't be any other than a quick, selective view. Getting there first (before not just before the nazis, but before the USSR too), was a white-heat panic carried on in total secrecy. None of "our guys" had any idea whether the Germans were making progress on what turned out to be a minimal, misconceived bomb project and, it turned out that the USSR had embedded spies in our project, hence their project.

Focusing on Oppenheimer just gives you a snapshot, but there was a lot going on in that time. It over-showed Einstein who really had little to do with the project, while minimizing an obscure guy named Leo Szilard (he's in some establishing shots), who conceptually figured out how a bomb would work several years earlier. It missed the part about Uranium enrichment, an essential but boring component of the story and reduced the importance of Colonel/General Leslie Groves (Damon's character). By focusing on Oppenheimer himself, it ended up being a small movie about big events, a 3 hour movie that needed to be about 12 hours long in order to tell the story.

If anything, the "big" Nolan style of movie was not nearly big enough, although I admit that audiences probably could not sit for a 12 hour movie.

I guess I'll need to go back and re-read one of those long books on the project.

I'm not a fan of Nolan's films per say. And I'm not usually a fan of grandiose style of film making. I prefer reflective and introspective.

I posted this about the Nolan films I've seen:
Memento (2000) & Inception (2010)
Didn't like either. I'm not into mind trip movies, especially ones that feel manufactured to be trippy.

Interstellar (2014)
Liked it OK but in retrospect I don't think I want to watch it again.

Dunkirk (2017)
Didn't like it when it first came out, I even tried to rewatch it for the war countdown but shut if off after 30 minutes. No story to speak of, no character development, just lots of cinematography.