Joel R.’s review published on Letterboxd:
While Oppenheimer Isn't my favorite film this year it very well may be the best! It's a towering achievement! The work of a master filmmaker and a cinephile's dream!
If you watched both John Wick 4 and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, a couple of 2 hour 45 minute long action flicks and thought to yourself these movies would be great if they removed all the action scenes, Oppenheimer is for you! It's 3 straight hours of people talking and little else!
You might be thinking to yourself well that sounds awful and for some people it probably will be. For me I found it almost always engaging, fascinating, thrilling and absolutely riveting! I say almost always because I'd be lying if I said I didn't look at my watch a time or two but for 90% of the film I was dialed in!
The editing is pretty incredible! It rarely lingers on a single scene for long. It rapidly jumps between scenes, back and forth in time, switches from color to black and white and back again. It has the potential to be confusing, hard to follow and jarring so the fact I was never lost, always felt like I knew what was going on was an amazing feat! Eventually I even stopped noticing the transitions between color and black and white.
The cinematography is stunning! The score epic!
All the performances are impeccable! Not surprising when almost every role is played by a talented somebody!
I've heard a number of reviews refer to Oppenheimer as a very unlikeable person, that wasn't my experience at all, I felt a great deal of sympathy for the man thanks to Cillian Murphy's excellent portrayal!
But as many others have already stated Robert Downey Jr is unbelievably good in this! Best performance of his career? Maybe. I think we're going to hear his name a lot come awards season because this is the kind of supporting role voters go nuts for!
If not for RDJ Matt Damon might be the one getting all the praise and awards buzz!
Two big issues I had with the film and honestly this first one is largely on me and could be considered spoiler ish so if you haven't seen the film skip the next paragraph.
I thought we were going to see THE BOMB, instead we see a bomb, the test to be exact. The build up is fantastic! You can almost feel everyone holding their breath! The detonation is stunningly filmed! But I thought it was just the appetizer so when the main course never came my disappointment was immense but again I place much of the blame for that on me.
My second issue is with the sex/nudity. I'm no prude, in any other movie I would count seeing Florence Pugh naked as a positive! A main selling point! It would receive a very enthusiastic Borat two thumbs up "very nice" seal of approval! But in this film it felt unnecessary, out of place.
They could have accomplished the same thing under covers post act. You remove those scenes and this is PG-13, there's a couple of F bombs but in a three hour long film you can get away with that and still maintain the lower rating. It almost felt like Nolan wanted the film to be R so included those scenes just to guarantee it.
I get that there probably aren't many youths under the age of 17 dying to watch this and the ones who are most likely have parents who will take them. I don't know, it probably shouldn't be an issue but for some reason I can't shake the feeling it soured me on the film just a tiny bit.
I'm getting long winded so I'll wrap it up. Oppenheimer is a daunting film that asks a lot of the audience, for some potentially too much. I don't know if I'll see it again in theaters, if I do it'll be weeks from now, it's not something I can turn around and immediately watch again like I'll be doing with Barbie in a couple of hour's. But hey if I only end up seeing it once that one viewing was highly memorable!
