I finally saw Oppenheimer and … meh. Christopher Nolan is great at spectacle. The Batman movies are fantastic. I love Inception. But he’s not a director you go to for character development; you go to his movies to look at them. And he always gives you plenty to look at, but does anyone remember the names of any characters in Tenet or Interstellar or even Inception? See what I mean?
From a technical standpoint, Oppenheimer is very good. The cinematography is excellent, as always, in particular. Yes, the Trinity test looks great. He was wise not to go with a CGI sequence, so it does feel realistic.
I think Murphy does as good a job as possible with the titular character, but if you just read the script — without ever having watched a single shot — I don’t think you would come away with a healthy sense of who he was. It was practically the ”Being There” of science films.
I read somewhere he purposefully hired famous people to play even small parts because he was worried the audience wouldn’t otherwise be able to differentiate the characters. If you’re thinking that way, your characters are barely even sketches.
The music is just flat out awful and grating. It’s the longest, most unnecessary crescendo e accelerando I’ve ever encountered. The composer tries to build suspense for an hour, completely losing his way long before reaching the end.
Disappointed! as Kevin Kline’s character yells in A Fish Called Wanda.
