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Post by twothousandonemark on Aug 18, 2023 2:29:08 GMT
Highest grossing domestic now to have never been #1 at the box office.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Aug 19, 2023 2:51:44 GMT
The lightning-fast editing was a bit disorienting at times, but I think I understood what they were going for. There’s a deliberately uneasy and tense atmosphere throughout the film, and the fact that it barely gives you time to breathe certainly helps contribute to this feeling. The Trinity test scene does a great job of feeling utterly nerve-wracking. It could be that; it also could constitute more of a commercial choice. Although I like Oppenheimer quite a bit ("good/very good" after an initial IMAX screening), it is an unambitiously ambitious movie—historical drama as cinematic spectacle. One could argue that it is perfect and flawless, in part because Oppenheimer never strives for genuine greatness or even a moment's worth of realism. Likewise, it merely suggests depth rather than exploring its depths. The movie is very much a manifestation of commercial cinema—a movie's movie, a movie about 'movieness,' and in some ways it plays like a three-hour theatrical trailer, with constant non-diegetic music, the continually quick editing, and the snappily stylized dialogue where language serves to provide historical summaries and synopses rather than reflect how most anyone would have actually spoken to one another. It could be that Christopher Nolan felt that the only way that he could make a summer blockbuster out of a three-hour film regarding events from the forties and fifties would be to employ such a style, with spectacle serving as content or vice versa. Alternatively, it could be a case where Nolan's filmmaking style simply leans toward spectacle and busyness regardless, as seen in his earlier historical epic, Dunkirk (2017). Still, unambitiously ambitious (or ambitiously unambitious) as Oppenheimer may be, it also knows exactly what it wants to be and executes that mode and manner efficiently, to the point where it did not feel as long as three hours (which is the effect that Nolan and the studio must have been hoping for). And while it does not seek greater personal depths or take risks beyond cosmetic choices (some of which, such as certain editing decisions and their attendant visual effects, are quite daring), Oppenheimer at least raises all of the important issues (more or less) and presents them to the audience. It does not stop or pause to explore the wrenching ironies and poignancies of those issues, to let them marinate and find their own organic pathways. But by at least presenting them and refusing easy sentimental escapes, Oppenheimer stands as perhaps the most substantive and legitimately grave summer blockbuster ever. Just make no mistake that it is first and foremost a summer blockbuster (with fine acting) by design, not an idiosyncratic film that happened to become a summer blockbuster.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Aug 19, 2023 2:54:37 GMT
**Disclaimer before I start this** Not the biggest fan of Nolan, but I was curious about this one. I'm in agreement with Creped on this, it wasn't the last hour that I had issues with, but that first hour or so was brutal for me to get through. I thought a couple of times that if it didn't get better, I might excuse myself early...then the narrative moved to Los Alamos and the movie picked up from there all the way to the finish line for me. One of the few three hour movies I've seen that FELT like a three hour movie. 7/10 I concur that the last hour or so, or the last two hours or so, work better than the first hour. Perhaps the viewer just needs time to become acclimated to the film's thickly interwoven style.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Aug 19, 2023 3:36:17 GMT
oh man, i did Not like the movie at all. am bummed I wouldn't go that far but it's certainly far from Nolan's best. I was into it up until they finally detonated the bomb, and just when you think "well, that was good, and the three hours mostly flew by", it goes on for another hour. And while Oppie's post-war troubles are somewhat interesting in of themselves, the whole "twist" with Downey Jr was kinda ludicrous. Like, we barely know this guy or his relationship to Oppenheimer in the first place and suddenly he's this Machiavellian supervillain motivated by the thinnest of petty grievances and it's impossible to care about any of it. Some strange editing choices (ie, Oppie becoming "naked" in his interrogation and being cowgirl'd by Florence Pugh) and while knocking Nolan for his writing of female characters is a cliche at this point, the ones in this...oof. At least Pugh's character was supposed to be crazy. Emily Blunt seemed a few fries short of a happy meal herself. I actually had a free pre-screening ticket for this but chose to wait to see it in my town's sole true-imax theater. And while I knew it'd mostly be guys sitting in rooms talking about quantum mechanics for 99% of the runtime basically since the movie was announced, I figured "hey, at least the trinity test scene should be spectacular". What we got was actors reacting to a bright light followed by close ups of fire and then a boom noise. Don't get me wrong, it's a tense scene and good filmmaking in its own merits, but there's no real need or reason you have to see it in imax. ... good comments, but I would say that the last hour is perhaps the most significant because it raises all the paradoxes, ironies, and quandaries about the whole experience: patriotism, freedom, liberty, loyalty, celebrity, the nuclear arms race, scientific congeniality versus competitiveness, and how none of these matters are necessarily what they seem. Oppenheimer's saga represents something of a Greek tragedy, and although the film is not exactly reflective in that regard, it at least shows the audience that this story is far from simple and easy, and that we live with that complicated legacy to this day. Your take on the Lewis Strauss character (Downey) is certainly fair, and again indicates how the film suggests depth as opposed to exploring depth and delving into human relationships in a realistic or profound manner (see my de facto review of Oppenheimer in this thread). That is why having watched the NBC News Studios documentary To End All War: Oppenheimer & the Atomic Bomb, as I did in July on MSNBC, helped, as it familiarized me with the basic issues and relationships before having to rapidly devour them in the format of a fast-paced spectacle. And the documentary is great—intimate and reflective in the way that Oppenheimer is not (by design).
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Aug 19, 2023 4:04:31 GMT
Weird that everyone seems to think the last hour was bad or boring. It was probably my favorite part of the movie. It was fine, alas it'll be a barrier from many re-watches. The Trinity test with an hour remaining will be noted forever. I just think litigating known history as it were for re-watches will keep me from it. Reminds me of Goodfellas' hand holding narration - fine the first 3 or so viewings... now it's just deja vu. But the Trinity test is nowhere near the endpoint of the overall story, and that is why Oppenheimer's saga flummoxes and haunts us (as a society). Indeed, the Trinity test is as much a beginning as an end. The last hour rather brings everything into focus: the unintended and apocalyptic consequences of Oppenheimer's creation; the false idolatry and convenient scapegoating; the ruthless opportunism of allegedly altruistic people supposedly devoted to science and country; the personal disloyalty masquerading as national loyalty. But then, too, there were legitimate concerns about how the Soviet Union had built its atomic bomb so quickly and how American nuclear secrets could have leaked out, and whether Oppenheimer's hope for international cooperation as a means of curtailing the arms race was hopelessly naïve, and why he opposed the hydrogen bomb morally yet did not oppose the atomic bomb for those same reasons. One could certainly argue that these questions would have been better addressed by a quieter, more intimate, more idiosyncratic film. However, to not have raised them (principally through the post-Trinity portion of the movie) would have been to glorify subject matter that needed to be critiqued rather than celebrated. Nolan's sense of spectacle does not optimally lend itself to this darkly twisted tale, but at least he acknowledges that the tale is darkly twisted.
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Post by Vits on Sept 1, 2023 20:03:09 GMT
Every scene in OPPENHEIMER (the real story of a physicist and the development of the atomic bomb) has the ingredients that a dramatic story needs, including a lot of good performances, but only some scenes manage to be compelling. And that’s because of the editing style, which is faster than any other Christopher Nolan movie (how ironic, since it’s the one with the least amount of action/suspense sequences). It feels like a 3-hour trailer! How can I, as a viewer, get invested in a conflict or a particular dynamic between characters if the movie itself isn’t invested? Whenever an element like this is introduced, the movie is ready to jump to the next one. And even when things slow down to focus on a specific situation for a couple of minutes, there are still several unnecessary cuts. The main example is the scene where the title character meets his future wife, Kitty. It’s brief, but it was enough to give me a headache! By the way, I don’t like how she’s characterized. Her personality isn’t properly established at the beginning, to the point where her switch to a drunk who complains about the stress of motherhood feels like it happens out of nowhere, and she spends most of her screen time sad or angry. It seems to be deep, but it isn’t.
5/10
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Post by thisguy4000 on Sept 17, 2023 18:07:43 GMT
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Post by moviebuffbrad on Sept 21, 2023 21:14:55 GMT
Damn, it beat The Passion.
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