Oppenheimer is Nolan's worst film

I actually don't think this. I'm just seeing if Minio is awake.

hi

sup

__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

The Dark Knight begs to differ!

The 2st and 3rd of those Batman films are probably his worst. Oppenheimer is close though. Fancy casting Tom Conti as Einstein. Laughable.

The secondst Batman film is indeed the worst.

I meant the firstest but it came out wonrg

TDKR would be at the bottom of my list. I consider Memento to be his best film.

I think that's about right.

Coincidentally, I watched my lovely 4k disc of Interstellar 2 days ago and ended up liking it a whole lot more than I did on release. It's possibly becaue I have a young inquisitive daughter now so it's super poignant, but even so, I'd say it's his 2nd best film.

I thought this would be Minio's April 2nd follow-up...

__________________

I didn't care for it when I watched it, but I'm curious if a rewatch will change my mind. Not really itching to do so, but maybe someday.

I think in many cases, the hype surrounding Nolan's films and the whole "This movie is a masterpiece. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't understand it." argument does more harm than good since it can be quite disconcerting to read through and makes it unfun to discuss his films.

That's spot on. I find myself almost reacting negatively before I've even seen a Nolan film because it's #9 in IMDB's top 250 with a rating of 8.8 3 days after release.

That said I very much doubt I'll ever change my opinion on Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight Rises.

Out of what I've seen, Memento is clearly Nolan's best.


Interstellar is maybe not so clearly, his worst.

And he's never made a masterpiece and is unlikely to ever do so.

Also, making a masterpiece is overrated

I'll defend the movie. As a history geek on my non-movie days, I've read several long books about The Bomb, have some wayback ancestral stuff I was told about Oppenheimer (his brother worked with some family members). Of course, Oppenheimer plays a central role in the narrative. It's a huge story, only partially told in the movie and only partially centered around Oppie. In fact, it's such a huge, long story that, I don't think any single movie could scratch the surface. The central part of the story (and history) that is compact enough to be approached in one movie, is the drama of Oppenheimer in the immediate time when the bomb was first tested and, of course, in act two, when he was jacked up in the crazy communist conspiracy days. The story been tried before with results that were not nearly as good as the current movie.

Nolan's version of the story misses an awful lot of details and back story, but it's mainly on target about what it does portray. You can find videos of Oppenheimer on Youtube if you're not sure that the movie gets a lot right.

This is like making a movie about Abraham Lincoln, where everybody will have an opinion and a fixed idea about how the story and the character should be.

I paid attention to Oppenheimer. I couldn't even stay awake for Batman Begins.

I don't think enough people appreciate how terrible Dark Knight Rises is.


His first two Batmen movies are certainly overrated, but the third is just BAD.

I have no cares if the film is close to historic accuracy or not. It's a film not a documentary. I enjoy Pablo Larrain's work like Spencer and Jackie. I enjoyed Blonde, the Monroe picture. I don't care if things that happenned in it didn't happen in real life, because it's a film. They are films.

Oppenheimer is just weak. There's no heart to it. There's no emotion. There's no art. There's no beauty. There's no soul. There's no humour. There's no depth. A close up of Cillian Murphy's face isn't emotion or depth. It's just a close up. Weak, weak film. Oh and Tom Conti plays Albert Einstein.

Wow. In case you didn't know, the Manhattan Project was not about heart, emotion, art, beauty, humor or soul. It was about scientists, sequestered in the desert, surrounded by barbed wire and heavily armed soldiers. They could not leave on their own. The people who worked on this realized that they were dealing with deadly radiation and that, if it all went well, huge numbers of civilians and their cities would be incinerated. Others would spend the remainders of their mortal life with radiation injuries. The remark about setting the atmosphere on fire was only half joking. It was gallows humor.

If all did NOT go well (where the US gets to incinerate Germans or Japanese) and someone else got the bomb first, then Americans would be incinerated and irradiated. Think about Stalin or Hitler with A Bombs if you need a shiver. This was apocalyptic logic. Truth and beauty were not part of the formula, deadly fear and desperation were.

If anything, the movie minimized the horrific, desperate aspect of the story. It was a whole lot bleaker than anything in the movie. Another quotable quote from reality by a witness was "now we have all become sons of bitches". Oppenheimer's was "now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds". Just look at Oppenheimer's face in the real video and see if he looks like a guy who just found truth and beauty.

I guess you need a different movie about a different bomb, the one with art and humor. Einstein was mostly a cameo. He discovered some of the basic science, but was not directly involved in the actual making of a bomb.

And this is why it doesn't work (for me). It has to be compared to the reality too much. It's too ingrained in real history to be a film That explores characters or situations or arcs or whatever. There's no room for any of the things I mentioned like heart and soul.

"Just look at Oppenheimer's face in the real video" illustrates perfectly why the film isn't good. It needs too much context to go with it. You need to mention other videos, things, slices of history, people etc

And yes Einstein being a cameo is exactly why that segment of the film was appalling.

Should have been a documentary.

I can't see how a film maker could glamorize this story nor make it entertaining, much less poetic. It really IS an edge of the apocalypse kind of story but also a high-science story; there are lots of dry documentaries on it. It was carried on under the tightest military security possible, by a bunch of scientists who were sequestered along with their families, under the watchful, paranoid eye of General Groves. In spite of all that security, there were Soviet moles stealing the secrets.

I vaguely recall one of the conversations, recorded in one of the books with quotes something like, "we're not here to do f**king science, we're here to make a f**king bomb and don't forget that", or something like, in reference to a scientist that seemed not committed to the project...."you want me to have him killed?" The goal was to kill more Germans or Japanese than they can kill of us. Originally intended for the Germans, they managed to surrender before the bomb was ready.

I really is a movie about a specific time and place in history that's well documented. It would do injustice to the actual history to smooth it over any more than the movie did, like when there were some boobs on display in a domestic scene. No boobs were allowed in "A Building".

I don't think anybody knows what to do with Einstein, since he's so well known, but, he was not directly involved with the bomb. He does supply some historical continuity for the science, but he was not at Los Alamos, nor was he busy trying to find a way to separate out the fissionable Uranium isotope, much less create Plutonium. The Hanford site, where plutonium was made, is still a toxic horror.

I shamelessly adore this film, especially all the dad/daughter stuff. I never get tired of watching this.