Oppenheimer - 2023 Christopher Nolan & Cillian Murphy (birth of the Atom Bomb).

Kyrocera said:
Saw this last night. It did feel like a long film, especially the last 45mins seemed to drag a bit. Certainly not one of Nolans best and wont bother watching again.

I will say he missed a trick of not casting Bryan Cranston as Heisenberg which would have been the perfect cameo.
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I was the same to be honest.

I enjoyed it though but I wouldn’t rewatch it on a plane.
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
genuine lol. I can't watch his videos, the man is obsessed with woke.
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Neither can I ...enjoyed his first stuff as it was kinda funny..but his own agenda is jsut all about " being upset by ""woke"" stuff".

The only thing about the film..did anyone else feel they didnt do anything really to show the size of the bombs destruction etc? I know Nolan doesnt like CGI...but the lack of use to show case scale hurts his films I think..Dunkirk was massively let down buy making it look like there was only a few hundred men being picked up off the beaches etc.
 
I feel like it was like 2 separate films together.

There is the bomb making, science stuff and there is the political stuff, with the interview and Senate hearing stuff. At times it felt like the West Wing.

There were lots and lots of tense scenes and the way it was cut and the way the story was told, i did not want to miss a single second. So much so i hold my wee for the last 90mins of the movie. I enjoyed the film in the moment but as I got home and finished I haven't really thought about it again and I don't think I would be watching it again. That said, I feel the same with much of Nolan's other films like Tenant and Dunkirk, great in the moment but not something i want to rewatch.

Murphy will get Oscar nominated for this and I think also for editing and directing. But if you ask me if I recommend it, I think it depends on the type of person you are, i can see some people would hate it, and that they would be bored because it's just all talking and you need to pay attention, which brings me to the point that I don't think this film would work as well on the small screen. Even though it's all talking, watching it at home with more distraction would break the flow of the film, you really need to turn off the phone, no one else to distract you in order to get into the flow of the story. Especially with all the flashback cuts back and forth constantly. It's so easy to look away and then look back and you wonder which part of the story it is now in.
 
I thought it was just me and the better half after the way people have been talking about it, but it seems like a few in here feel the same as us. It was far too choppy between the politics, him as a man and then the actual timeline of the science. Some parts got the full scene treatment and others just got a quick flash and that's it. Definitely not one I'll watch again.

6/10
 
Seems a very average film from reading around. Seems it's main selling point is people that enjoy the whole IMAX thing.
Probably will get it when it's on Blu-ray to enjoy it.
 
3 hours and I still didn't get much of an idea about the man. Visually it's not even that interesting, so it felt like shelling out £24 a ticket for the BFI IMAX was a bit of a waste of money considering I could have seen it 'free' at my local Odeon with my limitless card.

There really are just lots of shots of men in smallish rooms talking. The women in his life were almost completely glossed over, though Emily Blunt does get one small moment to shine towards the end of the movie.

No bad performances or anything, just not that much of interest happening. At the halfway point I knew I would probably never watch it again.

Nolan's worst movie other than Tenat. And I might even consider watching that again to see if it can ever make much sense.

I don't really get the point of it, it's not anywhere near as clever as it wants to be, and it's a very tepid attempt to confront the morality of it all, seemingly with Nolan's thoughts on the matter put right at the end (Nuclear weapons bad)

It doesn't show a single frame of the damage done in Japan, I know it was mainly focused on the man, and we got to see him react to some of the damage he had done (real or imagined) but it could have added a little bit of emotion into it, cause there's little to no e anywhere else.

It ends up being a court room drama between two people you don't care about, with very little at stake.

6/10.
 
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gettothechopper said:
So just me that really liked it ?

I think I have obscure taste as this seems to happen a lot with films people think are boring

Wait no... it is the kids that are wrong!
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I think some people are expecting some sort of nuclear action film rather than a 3 hour historical biopic. The trailer does focus a lot on the nuclear test but ultimately the film is called ‘Oppenheimer‘ and is about his life so would be remiss to miss out what happens after the test. It’s also based on historical fact so making it more ‘exciting’ would be a challenge lol.
 
The best way I could think to describe it for people to judge is this - if you are the sort of person who loved the entire HBO Chernobyl series (accident, cover-up and court-room style investigation afterwards) and wanted to see something similar but concentrated heavily around a single main lead in a condensed time-frame of 3hrs then you'd probably like this almost docu-drama too. I also can see why people are saying that the "need" to see this in IMAX is overblown as I can't imagine any scene I saw in my normal Vue cinema being made so substantially different by IMAX that it would've changed my view on that scene.

Personally I absolutely loved it and it was an easy 8/10 for me. I would split the film into two sections, the build-up to Trinity and then the aftermath. I think most people would be interested by the "build-up to Trinity" section, but for me I was absolutely riveted by the other section which is what others are describing (accurately to them) as "Men talking in a room" aection, which might seem boring to others but to me each scene was one in a series of acting masterclasses, with every little facial tick, expression, eye contact between speakers, body language etc holding far more importance than what the words being said meant.

If all that kind of stuff blows past folks (no criticism here) then its completely understandable why they'd get bored in the second section just watching numerous scenes of people talking. However, one thing I found annoying, and its becoming a common criticism of Nolan's recent directional style, is that it felt like he's trying to add extra complexity into a story as his own cerebral exercise, at the expense of everyday Mr & Mrs General Public. I know it would have made for a less brain-twisting film, but if he'd just kept a linear timeline with just the occasional short flash-back then the film would've been far more palatable to the average cinema-goer and would probably have done even better at the box-office that it currently has and got better reviews.

Someone else mentioned the "Men in rooms " section was a bit like The West Wing (which I also adore) and whilst I can kind of see that point around the acting, a Sorkin script runs absolute rings anything Nolan has created, which is another one of the recent criticisms of his films - technically detailed Genius but lacking genuine human warmth/appeal in the writing (someone described it as how an advanced AI would write, able to technically describe emotions but having no real understanding of them).

I'll definitely be getting a hard copy once its for sale as it's been the best film I've seen this year, but I can also see the very valid criticisms people have had with it and I worry that Nolan is becoming like a pop band who make their music more and more complex with each album in a bid only to impress other musicians but at the cost of losing the the fans who still just like pop music.
 
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ianh said:
The best way I could think to describe it for people to judge is this - if you are the sort of person who loved the entire HBO Chernobyl series (accident, cover-up and court-room style investigation afterwards) and wanted to see something similar but concentrated heavily around a single main lead in a condensed time-frame of 3hrs then you'd probably like this almost docu-drama too. I also can see why people are saying that the "need" to see this in IMAX is overblown as I can't imagine any scene I saw in my normal Vue cinema being made so substantially different by IMAX that it would've changed my view on that scene.

Personally I absolutely loved it and it was an easy 8/10 for me. I would split the film into two sections, the build-up to Trinity and then the aftermath. I think most people would be interested by the "build-up to Trinity" section, but for me I was absolutely riveted by the other section which is what others are describing (accurately to them) as "Men talking in a room" aection, which might seem boring to others but to me each scene was one in a series of acting masterclasses, with every little facial tick, expression, eye contact between speakers, body language etc holding far more importance than what the words being said meant.

If all that kind of stuff blows past folks (no criticism here) then its completely understandable why they'd get bored in the second section just watching numerous scenes of people talking. However, one thing I found annoying, and its becoming a common criticism of Nolan's recent directional style, is that it felt like he's trying to add extra complexity into a story as his own cerebral exercise, at the expense of everyday Mr & Mrs General Public. I know it would have made for a less brain-twisting film, but if he'd just kept a linear timeline with just the occasional short flash-back then the film would've been far more palatable to the average cinema-goer and would probably have done even better at the box-office that it currently has and got better reviews.

Someone else mentioned the "Men in rooms " section was a bit like The West Wing (which I also adore) and whilst I can kind of see that point around the acting, a Sorkin script runs absolute rings anything Nolan has created, which is another one of the recent criticisms of his films - technically detailed Genius but lacking genuine human warmth/appeal in the writing (someone described it as how an advanced AI would write, able to technically describe emotions but having no real understanding of them).

I'll definitely be getting a hard copy once its for sale as it's been the best film I've seen this year, but I can also see the very valid criticisms people have had with it and I worry that Nolan is becoming like a pop band who make their music more and more complex with each album in a bid only to impress other musicians but at the cost of losing the the fans who still just like pop music.
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I don’t agree with you , I think it’s very different to Chernobyl.

I think that was far more spectacular to look at , and lot more entertaining.

Nolan had plenty of different avenues to go down to make it more spectacular and exciting to watch such as ;

Showing the Nazi’s building a similar weapon.
Showing the effects of the radiation from the bombs from the testing.
The aftermath/destruction of the testing of the bombs.
Oppenheimers regret / emotions for building the bomb.

WW2 - this film was supposedly set in this war, but there was nothing in the film about it, was an excellent opportunity to show how the war was progressing as a side story, and the need for the bomb.

Aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There was so much more which could have been done to make this film much more entertaining.
 
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Bounce said:
I don’t agree with you , I think it’s very different to Chernobyl.

I think that was far more spectacular to look at , and lot more entertaining.

Nolan had plenty of different avenues to go down to make it more spectacular and exciting to watch such as ;

Showing the Nazi’s building a similar weapon.
Showing the effects of the radiation from the bombs from the testing.
The aftermath/destruction of the testing of the bombs.
Oppenheimers regret / emotions for building the bomb.

WW2 - this film was supposedly set in this war, but there was nothing in the film about it, was an excellent opportunity to show how the war was progressing as a side story, and the need for the bomb.

Aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There was so much more which could have been done to make this film much more entertaining.
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But what do any of those have to do with a biography about Oppenheimer?

He led the project to create and test the first bomb and was then stitched up by the US establishment - all of which is in the film.

He had nothing to do with the German development, he didn’t go to Japan and the bomb was tested in the middle of nowhere so no destruction.. his regret makes up the last hour…
 
Bounce said:
I don’t agree with you , I think it’s very different to Chernobyl.
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I didn't say it was like Chernobyl, I said people who liked Chernobyl will probably like Oppenheimer.

n111ck said:
But what do any of those have to do with a biography about Oppenheimer?
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I agree with you, I think your point is what a lot of people are missing with this film. It's a character study of one man, how things effected him, how he dealt with his inner demons etc rather than "How we built the bomb" documentary which seems to be what a lot of people thought this film was and are then complaining about when it wasn't.

Another example is people saying why wasn't Japan shown, which leads back into your point about this being an Oppenheimer film and I thought the film did a great job of showing his inner struggles afterwards (the crowd applauding him and cheering which in his mind he hears as the screams of the atomic victims etc).

Sadly the fact people still don't realise that this is a character study of one individual is a failing of the advertising/PR around the film and not of the people who watched a different film to the one they expected and I wonder if that is yet another reason for the more muted public reaction to this film.
 
VincentHanna said:
I did love Chernobyl by the way.

I just didn't really see why I should be invested as to whether a senator gets confirmed or not though.
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It’s a great concept to slowly unravel how badly Oppenheimer was treated after the bombing of Japan. Tell another story to fill in your main plot. Seems a lot of people are missing half the point of the film is to show how badly let down Oppenheimer was by his country, and what a crazy place it was during McArthyism etc.

I still think it’s a masterpiece. But like a lot of movies that win awards it simply won’t appeal to a lot of people, especially if they’re expecting The-Dark-Knight-builds-a-bomb type of thing.

The Sorkin comparison above is good. Tough to equal that type of script but Nolan gives it a great shot.
 
Watched it Saturday. To keep it brief I felt all the usual Nolan problems where there ie. slightly self important screenplay, bloated dialogue in places and an inability to let certain scenes breathe. I agree largely with what @VincentHanna said in his review.

Overall however I did enjoy it. When he's firing on all cylinders there's very few Directors who can match Nolan for building tension over a short period. The 20 minute segment leading up to Trinity was magnificent, I can't remember the last time I was that enthralled by a sequence in a film. Full on sweaty palms. Score was fantastic also and many of the performances where career bests ie. RDJ, Jason Clarke and Dane Dehaan. Casey Affleck was spellbinding also.
 
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ianh said:
Sadly the fact people still don't realise that this is a character study of one individual is a failing of the advertising/PR around the film and not of the people who watched a different film to the one they expected and I wonder if that is yet another reason for the more muted public reaction to this film.
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It seemed pretty clear to me that the movie was going to be a biopic, though maybe that's because I'd read (or rather tried to read) American Prometheus in my teens, though I didn't know the movie was going to be quite the direct adaption until perhaps last week.

Tbh for all the faults I picked out in the film I thought Nolan found a really great balance.
 
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