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I haven't read the thread, nor do I intend to
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Jul 21, 2023 22:56
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she's right
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Jul 21, 2023 22:57
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I have one question. Am I going to be able to understand what the gently caress they're saying in the film?
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Jul 21, 2023 23:02
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I had trouble with certain parts if I wasn't listening closely, but that was because the voices were booming a little on the IMAX speakers, rather than being drowned out by music (the music was centred at times, but not over dialogue).
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Jul 21, 2023 23:08
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Review captured in a single word: "hmmmmmmm" The 3 hours went by pretty painlessly. However, it's about 2h58 of talking and 2 mins of nuclear testing blast. Nicely acted by all involved, especially Matt Damon as Leslie Groves. Handsomely made as you would expect with plenty of interesting moments, including the meeting with President Truman and the Trinity bomb test. However, I felt it was trying to cover too much ground. There's a huge cast of scientists, military men, bureaucrats and lovers (seriously - look at the cast list on the wikipedia page). Either it needed to be more focused or it needed to do a better job of sketching out who the various characters were. I had a passing familiarity with some of them before going into the movie (Leslie Groves, Edward Teller, Richard Feynman) but the film struggled to establish the important role of Lewis Strauss in the narrative amid the blizzard of other players. Other important characters, especially the key women (Kitty Oppenheimer, Jean Tatlock) felt under developed. Worth seeing, but worth calibrating your expectations.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:29
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Carpet posted:I had trouble with certain parts if I wasn't listening closely, but that was because the voices were booming a little on the IMAX speakers, rather than being drowned out by music (the music was centred at times, but not over dialogue). I went to just a plain ole movie theatre and it was hard to hear dialogue at times too. The first third of the movie was a massive slog. My friends used the exact same phrase to describe it. 45 minutes in, I wasn't curious about where it was going, I was just bored. The rest of the film made up for it, and the first hour was needed to set up the last hour, but it wasn't fun. Also agree that the Trinity explosion was a letdown.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:29
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I thought the Trinity scene was good. Sure there was a big pillar of fire but it was the little details around it. Teller with the sunscreen. Feynman actually looking at the blast through glass (I'd previously stumbled across an interview with him when talked about this). Most of the project members lying face down until after the flash. Plus the eerie silence after the light from the blast reaches them but before the sound wave arrives. Also while the Trinity blast is obviously important to the narrative and a memorable scene, it's not the climax of the movie.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:44
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This is a tired criticism but Nolan needs an editor. Many of the scenes after the test bring the film down as a whole: the wife’s sparring with the prosecutor leads to nothing despite the rousing music; the political aide insulting Strauss to his face was unbelievable and the camera repeatedly cutting to his reaction during the hearing was distracting (who gives a gently caress what he thinks?); and the point about the state security apparatus being cold and calculating was made early on. Oh, and the last ‘nuke’ vision during the cross-examination was gratuitous. Anyway, 7/10.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:51
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Carpet posted:Oh, something I've just been thinking about while listening to the score - near the start there's two chapter titles 1: Fission and 2: Fusion. I thought the film was going to be split into chapters with more titles like that appearing, but unless I missed something no more showed up? I'm seeing it again on 35mm tomorrow so I'll check again. If something is in color and is fission, that is the subjective view of the characters. If it's black and white that is fusion and objectively what happened in the scene. Though the characters are still beholden to their subjective viewpoints.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:07
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Dial A For Awesome posted:I thought the Trinity scene was good. Sure there was a big pillar of fire but it was the little details around it. Teller with the sunscreen. Feynman actually looking at the blast through glass (I'd previously stumbled across an interview with him when talked about this). Most of the project members lying face down until after the flash. Plus the eerie silence after the light from the blast reaches them but before the sound wave arrives. I think it would've been a better movie if it was tbh. Or they could've showed Hiroshima.
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Jul 22, 2023 00:22
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Lmao
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Jul 22, 2023 01:21
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mcmagic posted:I think it would've been a better movie if it was tbh. Or they could've showed Hiroshima. I think actual Hiroshima footage was what was missing to really show the gravity of Oppenheimer's moral dilemma. We get couple glimpses of him imagining the effects of the bomb and a couple graphic descriptions, but nothing visceral that really makes the viewer feel like Oppie is feeling throughout the film. I thought the most unnerving part of the movie was the scene right after the Trinity test. Right after this epic explosion that changed the lives of all who witnessed it, the bombs are carted off by a couple of grunts inside a wooden box on the back of a rickety 1945 pickup. As Oppie stares longingly past the gate to the outside world, I did feel his existential dread understanding the rest of the world had no idea what it was in for. Overall, it was very enjoyable if you like historical epics. The scenery was great, the sound was great, and there are plenty of Oscar acting noms to go around. The "Prestige-y" kind of storytelling wasn't necessary to add extra drama, but it didn't hurt. Only minor gripe from it was the unrealistically insubordinate congressional aide and over-explaining the Kennedy line TV-cop-drama style. On the other hand, all those lines landed and got a good reaction from my theater, so maybe Christopher Nolan knows a thing or two about making movies.
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Jul 22, 2023 01:25
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YMMV by theatre quality may vary but I saw the movie in 70mm at an old school picture house called the Astor Theatre here in Melbourne, and the sound was pretty crisp. Maybe a few mildly muffled parts but nothing on the level of Tenet or Bane
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Jul 22, 2023 01:31
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That was a thoroughly enjoyable film, but I think a lot of that is: + The subject matter is inherently interesting + The whole cast is bringing their A game + The sound design is noticeably incredible but I think the script really held it back maybe? - Suffers from the Biopic problem that there are so many characters and no characterization for them. Scene after scene is people reading a wikipedia page on the history so you aren't lost, but in that process you don't learn anything about who you're watching. The performances carry it, but it is info dump after info dump. - The movie's pacing is like a shoegaze song. There is a very obvious peak in the middle (big boom) and end, but it is so relentless up to that point that it borders on tiring? Was laughing 30 minutes in how it felt like a movie speedrun. Intentional for sure, but it means every scene is "tell don't show". - When Lewis Strauss does his big villain speech, it's played up like a prestige reveal but... he was never portrayed as any more chummy with Rob than anyone else. And the mystery never felt that important to the story. - Should have kept a tally of how many scenes were people telling Bob, or Bob telling people the world has changed. Got comical. Still, + The scene at the pond at the end is beautiful. The Einstein actor was charming as all get out. + A lot of the dialog was really entertaining when it wasn't just history. + It is impossible for me to see Jack Quaid in something and not just see a guy just excited to be there, and that's great. Hope he shows up in more movies like this. + Some brilliant scenes. The speech at the gym, the affair being put into public record, the big boom. Just wish there were more. Blind Pineapple posted:I think actual Hiroshima footage was what was missing to really show the gravity of Oppenheimer's moral dilemma. We get couple glimpses of him imagining the effects of the bomb and a couple graphic descriptions, but nothing visceral that really makes the viewer feel like Oppie is feeling throughout the film. Concur with this. I don't know how you do it tastefully, as the actual footage may have been too much of a turn off for people. But the movie doesn't do a great job of really setting in the weight of the bomb. Opts to instead 'tell not show', which has less weight. CatstropheWaitress fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 01:36
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There were a lot of scenes where names were thrown around and I never knew who they were talking about. No characters besides Oppenheimer and Strauss are fleshed out in this movie.
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Jul 22, 2023 01:41
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CatstropheWaitress posted:
Forgot about this one, but yes. They missed the mark on showing the gravity of the bomb, but they nailed the gravity of Kitty getting this knife unnecessarily twisted in her. Emily Blunt got her big scene later on, but this great work by everyone involved.
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Jul 22, 2023 01:49
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I thought it was effective showing all the Americans hooting and cheering for him while he's imagining them getting nuked but I could've done without Chris Nolan's daughter's face melting instead of a Japanese person. It's probably somewhat problematic that there are no Japanese people in this movie at all.
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Jul 22, 2023 02:30
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mcmagic posted:I thought it was effective showing all the Americans hooting and cheering for him while he's imagining them getting nuked but I could've done without Chris Nolan's daughter's face melting instead of a Japanese person. It's probably somewhat problematic that there are no Japanese people in this movie at all. It didn't even look that good. Looked like they just glued some skin slabs to her face and stuck her in front of a fan.
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Jul 22, 2023 02:32
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live with fruit posted:It didn't even look that good. Looked like they just glued some skin slabs to her face and stuck her in front of a fan. I'm not a fan of gore by any means, but agree that this didn't convey the violence of the bombs well at all. Even the brief description they had someone reading felt like one of the less visceral, borderline sanitized ways people were vaporized. Movie works without it, but it does feel like a huge miss in terms of leaving an impact on ya.
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Jul 22, 2023 02:35
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live with fruit posted:It didn't even look that good. Looked like they just glued some skin slabs to her face and stuck her in front of a fan. Yeah it looked bad. Probably the worst visual of the whole movie.
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Jul 22, 2023 02:42
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I don't think you can really argue that showing a Japanese person getting killed would be more persuasive to western audiences about the threat of nuclear war than showing a western person. And it's not true to Oppenheimer, he was not suddenly overcome with compassion for the Japanese, he is overcome with the dread that nuclear fire was gonna kill *everyone*. Frankly I think a fixation on Hiroshima is missing the point. Hiroshima wasn't some unique catastrophe, getting nuked in Hiroshima wasn't uniquely worse than the many, many other horrible things that happened to civilians in WWII. And any future nuclear war will look nothing like Hiroshima, both in terms of causes and consequences. The unique thing about nuclear weapons is how *easy* it is to kill a shitload of people.
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Jul 22, 2023 02:46
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https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1682523576421830656 lol
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Jul 22, 2023 02:53
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kiminewt posted:Yes, for a second (the one scene with Fermi). A lot of silly historical anecdotes made it in for a second while a lot of the big historical things were ignored. I agree with this take. Also the first half of the film is edited like an action scene, just cut after cut, which made some of the final court scenes good but also just a relief that you’re finally able to linger on a moment. Shooting almost every scene at like 1.4f or whatever was a cool experiment but also annoying. The only time he didn’t do that was brief moments of NM landscape but he cut the poo poo out of it so what was the point of using imax?? It felt like the commercials had more bomb time than the movie. Completely let down by test scene. I also expected more of the microscopic explosions the beginning teased. That’s how I’d describe the movie really. a tease I think the studio realized this and said eeh throw some titties in there. The acting really was incredible, and I’d like to watch it again at home when I’m not scared to take a sip of my water cause I can’t fuxkin move for 3 1/2 hours. I’d also probably appreciate it more if I knew anything about any of these people before hand. Maybe I’ll read the book it’s based on.
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Jul 22, 2023 03:33
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I ‘m with those who have said there are a lot of characters in this film, who don’t really get much development. I don’t expect a film with a large, star-studded cast to have arcs and backstories for all of them. I’m just saying that even as someone who has a general familiarity with the Manhattan Project, and some of the real figures involved with it, there were many moments when I wasn’t sure who somebody was. So I guess I need to read a bit more… I think I went into it a bit underprepared. I’m also not one of those who needs gunplay and explosions constantly to keep me involved in a movie. I have no problem with a movie that is almost entirely dialogue. I just felt like this was nearly three hours of dialogue and there was basically one scene where the dialogue really was memorable, to me. There were a couple of other short exchanges where I laughed or otherwise had a reaction to it, but honestly right now I can’t even remember what they were. I thought the film was a bit overwrought, and could have done with a bit of tightening up, to bring the runtime down by thirty minutes or so, I guess. That one scene of dialogue I really liked (and still remember well) was the first time Groves meets Oppenheimer. That whole scene was good, especially the bit that begins with Grove asking “Why haven’t you won a Nobel Prize?” Damon’s character introduction was also the moment the film really began to pick up, for me. I didn’t really feel into it before then. I did like the film overall. I thought Murphy and Damon especially were great. I watched it at a regular theater, and I’m honestly not sure how much IMAX would have added to the experience. It’s a film I need to see one more time, I think. e: Downey Jr. was great too. Maybe his best performance ever, or at least up there with Chaplin MrMojok fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 04:57
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As someone who doesn't go to a theater very often and only went this time because of the hype over the IMAX experience, it was not worth it. I'd say it was worth it going to a theater for the audio experience because this movie, in my opinion, is only notable for the audio experience after having watched it but I felt I got nothing out of the IMAX screen over a regular theater (or even my 44" home tv) screen. Also I only saw it on digital IMAX, no film version anywhere near me. And if you're near an IMAX theater then great, but it was a hefty out of the way trip for me past four other theaters I could have gone to for cheaper, easier, and quicker, and the IMAX experience definitely didn't make it worth any of that.
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Jul 22, 2023 05:52
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Nolan should make a sequel: Teller. In a cast this insanely stacked Benny Safdie really stood out to me, I knew Edward Teller was a bit unusual and looking at his life it's Oppenheimer many times over.
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Jul 22, 2023 07:02
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CeeJee posted:Nolan should make a sequel: Teller. Yeah, Safdie was really good. But in terms of actors who were only in it for one or two scenes (and there were a lot of these) I thought Casey Affleck or Gary Oldman walked away with it.
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Jul 22, 2023 07:52
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The movie has so little to say about the Japanese themselves that it probably seemed tasteless to show footage of Japan just for the effects of the bomb. And as someone said the movie's more about the arm race than the bombings specifically. One could argue it should center more their perspective but then you'd have to restructure the entire thing.
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Jul 22, 2023 08:10
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Had to click through to see if the thread continues (it does)
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Jul 22, 2023 09:35
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We didn’t bomb those people enough. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 22, 2023 10:07
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Was there any point to part of it being black and white?
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Jul 22, 2023 10:08
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:Was there any point to part of it being black and white? Nolan says Oppenheimer's subjective experience is the scenes in color, the rest is black-and-white https://apnews.com/article/oppenheimer-christopher-nolan-0f8c1fdc4a358decee6105cac91a90ae
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Jul 22, 2023 10:38
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Was that really necessary?
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Jul 22, 2023 10:57
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:Was that really necessary? Nolan’s trying to make a parallel between the contradiction of particles and waves existing simultaneously as light with ‘the truth’. As others point out, color is the story of Opp for himself, a traditional biopic if you will, often flattering. His internal conflict is limited to that zone. B&W zone is ‘the record,’ just as open to manipulation by other agents looking to put their spin on this moment in history. Hard to say what’s necessary in art but it worked well enough for me. As others have said I think the Trinity test needed a shot or two to help convey the scale of the blast. Nolan coulda digitally inserted a model of the town from a camera left very far away from the blast. So long as the blast was real I don’t think anybody would have minded. I can’t say I ‘enjoyed’ this movie, in fact it left me with a really horrible feeling afterwards and kind of needed a moment when it was over. Kart Barfunkel fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 11:16
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quote:Nolan coulda digitally inserted a model of the town from a camera left very far away from the blast. Nolan uses a 100% analogue filming and editing process so he can't digitally insert anything even if he wanted to (well, not without changing the entire process). The best he can do is try and do it in-camera with a matte painting probably.
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Jul 22, 2023 11:30
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I don't see why we need to see the explosion when it's going to look the same as every other time we've approached this subject in TV and Movies. Nor does the film improve by cutting away to show some Japanese people getting blasted. There's a ton of media out of Japan about this if you want the Japanese perspective. For me the most chilling scene is where Oppie gives the speech to the Scientists stomping their feet. You see the women who seems in rapture one moment and crying her eyes out the next. Oppie giving it the old "shame we didn't bomb the Germans right guys?" and Murphy embodying his shame. Nightmarish overload.
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Jul 22, 2023 12:02
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:Was there any point to part of it being black and white? It's a movie, none of it is strictly "necessary" The black and white - led to the invention of a new technology, as black and white IMAX film didn't exist - looks cool - actually makes the time/perspective shifts LESS jarring since it more obviously flags the change than if it was still in colour - is a neat throwback to Nolan doing a similar thing back in Memento Lots of this movie felt like Nolan referring back to techniques from his whole career to a higher purpose, including shifts in perspective/time, black and white portions, and also doing surrealist imagery for the first time since Scarecrow in Batman Begins and bringing back the camera shake technique
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Jul 22, 2023 12:24
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DrVenkman posted:For me the most chilling scene is where Oppie gives the speech to the Scientists stomping their feet. You see the women who seems in rapture one moment and crying her eyes out the next. Oppie giving it the old "shame we didn't bomb the Germans right guys?" and Murphy embodying his shame. Nightmarish overload.  completely
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Jul 22, 2023 13:21
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Oppenheimer as a film is undeniably very good. It leaves me with a very gross feeling though. In the entire 3 hour run time, there is only one throwaway line that we used the bomb on an already defeated enemy. It should be common knowledge at this point, but the movie does little to dissuade the commonly held American belief that we needed to drop those bombs to end the war. I understand that's not what this movie is about, but parts of it feel like it's pushing 80 year old propaganda.
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Jul 22, 2023 13:23
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Prius_Roadrage posted:Oppenheimer as a film is undeniably very good. It leaves me with a very gross feeling though. In the entire 3 hour run time, there is only one throwaway line that we used the bomb on an already defeated enemy. It should be common knowledge at this point, but the movie does little to dissuade the commonly held American belief that we needed to drop those bombs to end the war. I understand that's not what this movie is about, but parts of it feel like it's pushing 80 year old propaganda. I thought it was made pretty clear. The focus towards a race got cut off and the movie just became about America pushing towards a bigger weapon and other people's hesitancy. There were more lines and scenes regarding bombing Japan being useless, too.
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Jul 22, 2023 13:44
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