This was one of my most anticipated movies of the year, and I’m 100% seeing it again. It’s the first Christopher Nolan movie I’ve seen in theaters and I got to see it in IMAX, it was awesome. 
     The story itself if super compelling, which is surprising considering it’s mostly men talking in different locations and hearings and stuff. I did find the first act to be a bit slow, but once Oppenheimer is recruited by Groves, I was hooked the whole way. 
     I love the way the film puts you in Oppenheimer’s shoes, basically the entire movie is from his point of view. At first, I thought it didn’t go into depth enough on his true opinion on the bomb. I was left wondering if Strauss was correct and Oppenheimer really wanted the recognition and martyrdom that history cast on him. After a bit of thought, I think the film actually does a good job of giving the audience enough information to allow them to speculate on his thought process at different points throughout the movie. This also adds to the effect of putting the audience in the character’s shoes because we place our own personal morals onto him, and are forced to think about and confront the terrible situation that Oppenheimer was placed in. Kitty tells Oppenheimer that history won’t forgive him, and he replies “we’ll see”, prompting the viewer to ask this question now, with the benefit of hindsight. 
     I also like that the film doesn’t really sanitize anything. Oppenheimer was kind of a bad dude (aside from the whole nuke thing), he had multiple affairs and the film doesn’t shy away from it. 
     Going in, I was thinking that the Trinity test was going to be the around the climax of the film, but it isn’t. Much of the third act is about Oppenheimer trying to get his security clearance reinstated which is relatively low-stakes, but it’s still super interesting because he’s been set up by Strauss. There’s this really great scene where Strauss’ assistant realizes that he is behind the total discrediting of Oppenheimer and it had me on the edge of my seat. RDJ absolutely kills it in this movie, it’s probably his best performance I’ve seen from him and I could definitely see him getting a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nomination. I also really liked the ending, throughout the whole film there’s this kinda mystery about what Oppenheimer said to Einstein, Strauss thinks it’s about him and that’s why he hates Oppenheimer. When we actually see that scene from Oppenheimer’s point of view we find out that it had nothing to do with Strauss and they were talking about the ramifications of the bomb. “Something more important.” I think it’s an interesting ending because it demonstrates how Oppenheimer didn’t really have much regard for human issues like grudges and politics, he always saw the bigger picture, in this case the fallout of building the atom bomb. The dialogue between Oppenheimer and Einstein, the final line of the film, and the way it shows Oppenheimer’s paranoia and worry about the future all culminate to create a really thought provoking finale.
     Obviously from a technical perspective, the film is incredibly well made. All of the performances are really great. Cillian Murphy is definitely going to be the standout performance and I definitely see him getting at least an Oscar nomination if not a win. Emily Blunt is also really great in this film. The visuals were also really interesting, I loved the use of shallow focus, especially in the scene when Oppenheimer gives a speech after the bombing. The sound design also stuck out to me. I liked how they used the sound of a Geiger counter (which is used to measure radiation) to build suspense when they were building the bomb. Also the way the explosion was completely silent for a while before the sound finally caught up was perfect, and they used a similar effect in the speech scene that I mentioned before. I was also a fan of the how Oppenheimer’s point of view was in color, and the black and white parts could be seen as either the “objective” elements of the film as Nolan put it, or simply the parts of the story shown from Lewis Strauss’ viewpoint, as I like to see it. Thinking back and knowing this, it gives new meaning to some scenes based on if it is shown in color or black and white. 
     Overall, I definitely recommend this, and it just beat out Across the Spider-Verse as my favorite movie of the year so far.