Oppenheimer

What a waste of celluloid. When your 3-hour dialogue-heavy film gets drowned nearly every second by its music score, that’s a sign you were anything but confident about your story and characters to begin with. I wouldn’t have been bothered by this if Nolan had an Aaron Sorkin-esque talent for writing dialogue, but we all know that’s not the case. My score also directly reflects my annoyance vis-à-vis Nolan’s arrogance and self-indulgence for using miles of IMAX film just to film people talking.

Barely made it through it, it felt painfully American. The best I can say about it is that it's well made and has good performances. There are a few interesting scenes, but do not justify the 3h runtime. I couldn't find anything insightful or fresh observed about the millionth tortured controversial male genius story. Every Japanese Gojira has more to say about Hiroshima. Twin Peaks The Return Part 8 is 1.000x better than this at talking about this topic.

A phenomenal film. I also heard what the actors were saying. I have no idea where so many others were coming from. A gargantuan biopic, and an epic one. I’ve not seen one of this scale in terms of cast and production. Great tension, fascinating drama and a protagonist that I even felt for at times. Murphy and Downey are amazing, but everyone else is great too. It did feel as long as it is at times, but I was throughly fascinated and very moved in the end. Harrowing, relevant filmmaking.

This is what Nolan is best suited to. His self-seriousness often comes off as insufferable pretension in some of his fictional projects but here the stakes are the fate of our world so this kind of spectacle filmmaking is exactly what you want from this story. Interesting angles are covered which I wouldn't have expected coming in. Visual fx are perfect to get into the troubled mind of Oppenheimer. Performances are top tier all round, some weird Nolany dialogue moments tho. Much to discus...

Not since Come And See did close-ups on a face haunt me. Nolan's bonkers casting choices are not a new thing (look at Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, dude cast an attractive star with a smoulder that could melt the coldest hearts and altered his onscreen legacy forever with the Joker), but he got the best acting out of David Krumholtz and Benny Safdie yet, and even got something subdued out of Josh Peck.