I can’t find a thread for Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER so here you go

this was average and a real waste of three hours and all that cast tbh

how I felt too

yep

few things from thread

script is bad, on a line by line level its as functional and graceless as any 90's thoughtless biopic. packed with good actors filling suits and wigs in order to convey some nugget of personality that ultimately gets wasted in the overall churn.

rdj does not walk away with it imo, hes as bad in this as any performance i think ive ever seen him in, the last hour record scratch between him and aldenreich is hamfisted nonsense tbh. aside from murphy and perhaps safdie nobody really gets to act out anything but purely functional dialogue at all

hp upthread i have to say didnt see the movie i did. none of oppenheimers culpability nor his knowledge of it is underplayed whatsoever and imo in order to think it had been i almost feel like youd have to have decided to have that take and ignore most of the relevant dialogue/scenes tbh

malick i get, jfk def but it fills the former vibe with needless say-everything nolansplaining and the latter lacks any zing or style or fun.

someone gave a very good precis of nolan above "i dont mind him when he keeps it to high concept action that has a gimmick" which on all evidence here is very otm. the einstein mush isnt enough of a gimmick, the majority of the rest has no emotional nor performance merit at all and the bomb/fire/space scenes aren't long enough to carry ninety minutes let alone five days or whatever this was

its not as good or important or essential as say apollo 13 is about the gist of it

oh- oldman did at least crack me up so there was that

Hey wtf I saw the same movie (and also made that précis!). My main gripe wasn’t the underplaying of oppenheimers culpability, rather the overplaying of how sad and tragic all this was for him without foregrounding the hundreds of thousands dead

it was not i hope a personal assault :)

well it's very much a biopic not a historical journal i think it wears that out front tbh but one of my things is criticising things for what they are badly rather than what they arent (blame tuomas)

Okay it was foregrounded with Oppenheimer watching (with eyes closed) the results in the cinema, and in his mental breakdowns at the rally+hearing, I just don’t think it was given it’s appropriate weight. I commented above that this movie was called “Oppenheimer”, not “the Atomic Bomb and its victims”, so again, whatever I guess it fulfilled its purpose and maybe its wrong to ask something to be what it was not trying to be. But my take comes from my visceral gut reaction of “this is extremely unpleasant to focus on how bad life is for this bloke who just took a major part in the murder of hundreds of thousands of citizens” which lasted for most of the latter half of the movie. Don’t have much more to say about it than that.

i feel you underplayed gary oldman as the colonel tho

well it's very much a biopic not a historical journal i think it wears that out front tbh but one of my things is criticising things for what they are badly rather than what they arent (blame tuomas)

― Ár an broc a mhic (darraghmac), Friday, 28 July 2023 7:26 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wrote what I said before reading this. I’m guilty for both not liking what it wasn’t and also what it was (in some parts)

No dramas, “wtf” is part of my regrettably jokey vocabulary :)

I thought Truman and Kitty were the heroes of this story tbh, sorry should have foregrounded that earlier

Whoever played the bloke Oppenheimer has to inadvertently give his information about a “friend of a friend heard about moving having communist connections”, I want to see everything he has ever done. He was terrifying

I said to my wife early on “thank god you’re not like her” in reference to kitty, which I then rescinded during her speech at the hearing. That was very satisfying

P Badshaw, who normally gushes over Nolan movies only gave this 4 stars and called it flawed which seems generous to me because I'd give all his movies zero stars and call them all garbage. An interesting criticism he makes is that Nolan doesn't get to grips with the antisemitism that Oppenheimer experienced and also noting that the two most famous Jewish characters of the 20th century in it are both played by non-Jewish actors.

Whoever played the bloke Oppenheimer has to inadvertently give his information about a “friend of a friend heard about moving having communist connections”, I want to see everything he has ever done. He was terrifying

― hrep (H.P), Friday, 28 July 2023 09:35 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

not affleck? the herr flick lookin dude?

Yep Affleck

Oof he’s got quite the Wikipedia page :\

it's always jarring for me to see former dudebro sex comedy star Josh Hartnett in roles w/ gravitas or closely approximating gravitas

he doesnt work enough!

jesus hes goodlooking also and ive heard a lot about him in those stocky suits in the past twelve hours or so

I assumed that Josh Harnett had morphed into Taylor Kitsch to get younger roles

Just saw this last night. The final scene was the highlight imo. Also, Emily Blunt was very good (if--of course--underutilized).

young Han Solo being Iron Man's aide was a nice touch

Jean Tatlock. The circumstances are definitely dodgy: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/12/11/the-curious-death-of-oppenheimers-mistress/

"One of Oppenhemier's Mistresses"

everyone bar murphy was underutilized

in a four hour movie

"Keep your head down, Fuchs."

everyone bar murphy was underutilized

it's funny i think the other movie that has this approach (recognizable faces in fleeting parts) is the thin red line...used maybe to different effect there.

anyway you guys are a tough crowd! maybe im a bit of sucker for nolan's particular showboating prowess...but, say, that black and white scene at the dinner table where the soviet test is first discussed...the editing, the performances, the visual flourishes, that is cinema to me.

i also think the third hour is the best, a few nolan-y eye rolling moments aside.

also my favorites of his are probably Dunkirk and Tenet...so that's where I'm coming from.

it's funny i think the other movie that has this approach (recognizable faces in fleeting parts) is the thin red line

i thought that was one ot the best parts of “thin red line”! and imo central to whatever it was i thought the film wanted to say about war vs murder (or if you prefer, what’s happening there vs what’s happening in badlands)

With the 3rd act/last hour, I felt that Nolan was all We Need A Climax (I still maintain with pacing of it all that it's meant to be somewhat climactic) when the previous 2 hours didn't require that. Perhaps the demands of it to be a $100M hollywood tent pole with third act reveals, character development etc etc can tend to rub against the material at times. At the same time, I am coming around to it a bit. Oppenheimer is so shell shocked and checked out after trinity that he’s just going through the motions as everything slips away from him. He shrinks further and further in the interrigation room. The whole episode was just a pyrric victory in the end as Oppenhemier is still left staring into the distance plagued by guilt. His victory seems undermined and its men like Strauss who call the shots ultimately.

I need to see it again lol

yeah it's obvious that nolan wanted to use the security clearance kangaroo court as a kind of trial of conscience...but as you say it also demonstrates the drift from the moral clarity of the war and scientific hubris to political cowardice, backbiting, venality, etc....even kitty's testimony is empty theater....she knows how to play those games. but she's also the one who, twice, tells him he won't be forgiven and probably doesn't deserve it. ("you don't get to commit the sin and have us feel sorry for you")

Saw this without much of an expectation last night. Came out frustrated and annoyed. Perhaps I just don't like Nolan's style anymore, but this movie was exhausting to watch. I don't think a single scene lasted longer than 30 seconds. Everything is cut so quickly, flashbacks immediately after phrases uttered, almost stream of consciousness style layered with an unrelenting barrage of intense string arrangements. If I was to use music production terms to describe this movie, it felt "brick walled" to death and had no dynamic range. At all.

No character development, no nuance, no emotional depth, no intrigue, simply exposition for 3 hours, like a 3 hour long movie preview. The sex scenes were completely awkward and forced. Every actor was directed to express one note: intensity. The structure of the narrative and editing felt completely disorienting, frankly. And I get it - this has been Nolan's stylistic MO going back to The Prestige. But in films like that one, like Inception or Interstellar, the mysteriousness and jittery editing and rapid fire flashbacks and flash-forwards help to buoy the intrigue and ambiguity in the story; it works (though I felt the last 30 minutes of Interstellar were quite exhausting as well). However, this is a biopic!

Didn't see Dunkirk or Tenet, and after watching this one, I have no desire to. Hope Barbie is much better, seeing that Sunday, but damn if this isn't a big let down for a film attempting to revive the "summer blockbuster" tradition of seeing things in the theater post-pandemic. Sure didn't convince me.

Everyone remembers J. Robert Oppenheimer, no one gives a shit about Lewis Strauss.

the first half hour to an hour was indeed almost Snyder-esque brief scenes at a dizzying pace, which did initially annoy me.

I did like the movie overall, but it was mostly a boilerplate biopic with a big budget and the typical Nolan dourness.

they were even frowning while fucking

"Read this Sanskrit to me while we fuck"

"just play kula shaker ffs"

xp octobeard both dunkirk and tenet well worth catching tbh

dunkirk yes, tenet no

sorry

tenet is htrow gnihctaw sdrawkcab

the first half hour to an hour was indeed almost Snyder-esque brief scenes at a dizzying pace

yeah my prince valiant comment was not entirely random, i was imagining something like this for the first hour except every panel is a one second shot with a subliminally slow dolly, and there's no monologue just hans zimmer

https://nebushumor.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/prince-valiant_mark-schultz-thomas-yeates_27-june-2021.jpg

^^ probably my favorite prince valiant

i know nothing about comics or movies so maybe that's just a standard training montage in either context?

nolan might be master of the movie length training montage, maybe tenet is that masterpiece

I'm a sucker for handsome period movies - even some bad ones and ppl comparing this to thin red line and jfk makes me think I might even enjoy it - but then I remember trying to put aside my Nolan grievances and watching Dunkirk with an open mind and then realising I hated this guy's movies much more than I even knew before.

The Thin Red Line was so much better though. It had style and pacing to balance the surrealism

"Read this Sanskrit to me while we fuck"

There are better ways to show she's a sapio!

I think Nolan would like to think there are expressionist/surrealist influences driving some of his movies, but he's bad at what he does so it just comes across as all because the lady loves milk tray mystery man bullshit.

his aesthetic sense is really uninteresting to me, he would make really good Gillette razor ads though

Arkham's razor

this is no thin red line he keeps explaining things

xp a++++++++ sharp wit

xp exactly, Nolan really disrespects his audience nowadays and assumes they're stupid. Also his pretensions come across so poorly - the moment Trinity goes off with the extended silence, for example, at 2 miles away there's a 9 second delay. There was far more than 9 seconds of breathing and editing to the point where I just sat there could even see Nolan himself wanking off screen for a second there. He probably felt smart for trying to over-stylize the moment it goes off. Just felt incredibly unrealistic and took me out of it. Was almost hoping for a cool slow motion perspective of the explosion as depicted here:

https://i.imgur.com/EguVpqI.jpeg

So I live about five blocks away from wherever these scenes were filmed.
https://www.quartzcity.net/2022/04/28/streets-of-sierra-madre-april-2022/