Review of Oppenheimer (2023) by Ethanrucker — 24 Jul 2023

Oppenheimer meets the quality expectations for a Christopher Nolan movie. It's gorgeous, fantastically acted, and it's decently written. Where Oppenheimer stumbles first is actually before the movie was released.

The movie was promoted that it was made to be seen in Imax and that is was a masterpiece just because Nolan made it, so we should trust him that he outdid himself to make a masterpiece. Other than a 20 second explosion and bits and pieces of other shots this movie doesn't get elevated by an Imax camera, unless your main reason to see it in Imax was to be able to see the individual pores of Cillian Murphy.

The dialogue suffers at times and the movie doesn't slow down for the first 2 hours, so you don't have time to draw closer to the characters or feel an emotional connection when something happens. It cuts very fast throughout Dr.

Oppenheimer's life which makes for an entertaining watch as you are always on your toes in a new scene, but hurts the movie in terms of character development which makes for lifeless characters for a good portion of the movie.

The score in confusing at times because it will pick up and add tension to a scene that didn't need tension so you are left with a weird unsatisfied feeling. There also wasn't any motifs in the movie, which made it feel like a 3 hour freestyle speeding up and slowing down depending on what's happening, it wasn't bad by any means, but it didn't add much to what was happening on screen.

The last 45 minutes of the movie is where it shined. I felt impacted, emotional, and uncomfortable which is a good thing for the topic that is being covered. It made me think hard on the situation presented in Oppenheimer as I was leaving the theater which doesn't happen very often.

The positives is what you will expect with Nolan, it's an excellent made movie, BUT I can't say this is a masterpiece or Nolans best. I have been debating with myself over a rating of 9/10 or 8.5/10, but for now I'm going to go with 8.