Oppenheimer

Absolutely stupendous. I had high hopes for this but was still stunned at how good it actually was. I haven’t watched a film that good in cinema other than a goodfellas re run so it feels surreal to experience something this good first hand.  As for the film itself it’s right up my street, I’m a history student at university and I’ve always had a great interest in the political side of war rather than the frontlines, so while for some the hearings and such are a deterrent, for me it’s fascinating. The acting is sublime, across the board completely, down to the cameos from niche actors to the supporting roles from Matt Damon and Bennie Safdie. It would be far far easier to single out the mediocre than to praise the great as it’s at such a high standard. Of course the lead 3 are standouts, should all be locks for Oscar noms and RDJ resoundingly beats the Marvel allegations.  The directing, cinematography and score are all outstanding. There’s countless incredible shots ranging from the haunting speech scene after the bomb test and the extremely strange ‘sex’ scene in the hearing. The way the film flows chronologically is brilliant, the final 45 minutes are built to perfectly, I was fully invested in the side characters and their loyalty to Oppenheimer. I’ve been a slight Nolan skeptic, while still massively enjoying the bulk of this work to a high degree, I’ve doubted whether or not he could make a film I hailed as a masterpiece due to the ‘Nolan-isms’ with the pacing and overused score etc which hold me back with like every film he’s ever made bar The Dark Knight, none at all we’re present in the slightest. This flowed so so seamlessly and the score was only present when it really needed to be.  I just thought this was a pure masterpiece, so many great actors will get their flowers. This is Nolan’s magnum opus, I can’t speak enough about how good this is. I do however think a side from the Japan perspective would have aided it, but the direction was very clearly for the entire thing to either be from Oppenheimer or Strauss’ perspective so it would have been hard to incorporate that. It’s very ‘wordy’ so it won’t be for everyone, it can lose you a little if you’re not really good with names as they’re thrown around a lot, but when the dialogue is genuinely good (which hasn’t been the case for other Nolan films so I was glad it was so good here) and the acting is great as it was, then this works. While the gangster genre is and likely always will be my favourite due to mixing the great dialogue with some action (see The Irishman), this outstanding effort definitely settles as one of my favourites.  Fantastic. 10/10