I one time made the mistake about asking my Aunt Myrna how she and Uncle Bud met, and it was one of those “he bugged me until I said yes” stories. There was also a fairly large age difference. 
Welp, they seemed happy and are both dead now…
I am not sure where I was going with this.
tbf, i didn’t say everyone must love a review with that sentence, i said one must. and one does. me!
Strange eyes and strange nose.
So is Oppenheimer a Vibes Movie™️, like Tenet was? In case you don’t watch as many online movie reviews and video essays as I do, here’s my current favorite film essayist, Patrick Willems, discussing Nolan’s tendency to make dialogue hard to hear, and why it doesn’t always matter. I really like Inception and Interstellar, and I love Tenet (especially after the second watch), and I was looking forward to Oppenheimer. I mean, I’m still looking forward to it, regardless of reviews like the OP, which mainly seemed to want to dump on the film, and (IMO) really didn’t have much to say beyond, “I didn’t like it,” using many times more words than necessary. I can buy that Nolan isn’t the best person to make a biopic. But I can’t buy that it’s as bad as all that.
The whole premise of Interstellar made no sense at all.
An agricultural blight is wiping out all crops on Earth, so humanity’s only hope is to flee to space in self-contained biospheres. Hey geniuses, if you have the technology to keep everyone alive in self-contained biospheres then what’s the need for moving them into space?
Nolan could have at least come up with some sensible reason for evacuating the planet, like “solar flares are gonna fry Earth so we have to take refuge in orbital habitats on the far side of Jupiter” or something.
It’s bizarre that there isn’t more literature on MAUD. Even Richard Rhodes doesn’t give it that much attention in his books and it comes across as a bit slapdash and amateur when it was anything but - cash strapped and under resourced definitely, but as good, if not better than any other research programme going on anywhere in the World at the time.
MAUD kind of all got swallowed up by the Tube Alloys programme which the UK didn’t have the money or resources to implement; so it was quickly outstripped by the near limitless resources the US could bring to bear.
But I think MAUD deserves the recognition of ULTRA - between the two of them, those madcap schemes saved the World. I wonder if any of it is still classified?
The best book I know of about the early nuclear work conducted by the UK is Churchill’s Bomb: A hidden history of Britain’s first nuclear weapons programme by Graham Farmelo. It’s comprehensive, but not a very compelling read.
I’ll defend the Twilight series!
I actually liked the first Twilight film. Yes, the acting was very hammy at times bordering on cringe but it fun. The other ones weren’t all bad either (although the special effects were unintentionally terrible at times).
Nobody in any the films are taking things very seriously. There’s plenty of little in-jokes, winks to the audience, and lampshading throughout to show that everybody is in on the joke. The last one had some pretty awesome scenes, but was cheapened by the “everything cool you saw didn’t really happen and all the buildup of the last two films was all for not very much” reveal. I also found the final credits scene that called out every character across every film no matter how insignificant the role to be really touching.
And, c’mon. Michael Sheen is just the best in the films. He chews up every scene he’s in and it’s gloriously entertaining.
I’ve long said that the Volturi were by far the most interesting characters in the whole damn film series. Their backstories are never really touched on but based on the little tidbits you do get to see through the films you just know they have seen and been through some shit through the centuries. Too bad they didn’t get a movie of their own.
ETA: now the books on the other hand…. I got halfway through the first one and found it basically unreadable.
ETA2: despite all the flak the film series gets, it somehow has managed to have a lot of really damn good actors to be in it. Surely that says something.
Touché
I’m not a Christopher Nolan fan–I saw Inception and the Batman films when they came out, but haven’t revisited them in a decade. I never saw Interstellar or Tenet, the previews just didn’t interest me much.
But I went to Oppenheimer, for a couple reasons–the subject matter and time period are of interest to me, and Cillian Murphy is an actor I enjoy. And I liked the film, especially the more abstract moments.
As a character study of Oppenheimer, I think it was fascinating. And that’s really all it was–it’s not going to educate anyone on the width and breath of what was happening during WWII from a global perspective. I wouldn’t go in expecting that. The film is aptly titled.
I find that this is a depressingly large part of the Discourse these days. If no one else is telling the other part of the story, then I think it’s worth pointing out that voices are going unheard or stories untold and someone should give that viewpoint a chance to be heard. And we should support those stories coming out! But too often art criticism isn’t addressing the art that was made on its merits, but rather complaining that it isn’t the totally different thing that the critic actually wants.
Exactly my sentiments - I wanted to know more about the physics, the mechanics, the electronics, the logistics, the dangers.
Oppenheimer was made too much of an enigma - which jarred with everyone else being pretty transparent.
And “The Line” - recreating it’s broadcast would have been far more impactful that the hamfisted way they shoehorned it in.
Getting to this point was probably the single biggest improvement in my journey to being a less insufferable person than I was in my 20s. (I may still be insufferable, but I am less insufferable.)
Huh? This review gives a lot of reasons for her dislike of the movie. It’s not her fault that you didn’t hear them.
Welcome to Boing Boing! I think you’ll find that the type of ad hominem attacks and personal insults that you’ve included in your post are a very effective way of getting your post flagged and your account blocked.
Definitely not “one of us”
I kind of read that part of the movie as the unspoken part. Population of earth in interstellar, 8-11 billion, population of all those contained biospheres in space? Probably under half a million.
Logan Paul walked out the movie. That’s all I need to know.
I don’t remember the films (I think.my children never showed any interest on the television and they weren’t around for the cinema, while they do have some vintage films and fandoms Twilight seems to have totally disappeared) but I read a book (or two, can’t remember) and I had read a few vampire books/series aimed at girls around that time and it was probably the best written of what I read. I mean I hated that it was Mormon abstinence edging porn but it wasn’t bad.
I think it disappeared in part because it was a boom thing: vampires are debauchery and overdose and all that. Zombies (what survives, what do you keep when everything falls apart?) dominated from then on. I know there’s a boom now, but it doesn’t affect anyone but the top capitalists. Rest of us are fucked.
It’s apparently not just Nolan…
Michael Sheen in literally everything…
And sometimes those “merits” are indeed misogynistic, or racist or whatever? Is there a reason not to be critical of that?
