Displaying items by tag: Movie Review

I have the good fortune of having one of the thirty theaters on Earth that’s showing Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in 15 perf/70 mm IMAX located within three miles of my house. So I needed all the coffees on Tuesday morning, after seeing the film at an 11 PM showing on Monday night, which is the only decent single ticket I could get my hands on. (My theatre of choice is virtually sold out well into the second week of August.)

I must say, the experience of this film in IMAX 70 was impressive, with the urgency of its editing and immediacy of its cinematography creating a uniquely engrossing narrative momentum. J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life and career, from his college years to his post-war exile, are covered in extensive detail, and while all of this adds context, I’m not sure that much detail was strictly necessary. (In Nolan’s shoes, I might have shortened the film by a good twenty minutes.)

The ensemble cast is fantastic, each of them disappearing into their roles to a degree I didn’t think some of these actors were capable of. There are many familiar faces that I knew would appear in this film, but many more here were unexpected (including Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman of all people, James Urbaniak as Kurt Gödel, and Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman), yet all of them raised their game. What’s more, this is certainly the finest performance of Cillian Murphy’s career, and one of the most compelling. Hands down, the guy deserves an Oscar for this role. [Read on here...]