oppenheimer movie reviews reddit

Advertisement

Supported by

Critic’s Pick

‘Oppenheimer’ Review: A Man for Our Time

Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” is a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms.

• Share full article

‘Oppenheimer’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The writer and director christopher nolan narrates the opening sequence from the film, starring cillian murphy..

Hi, I’m Christopher Nolan director, writer, and co-producer of “Oppenheimer.” Opening with the raindrops on the water came late to myself and Jen Lane in the edit suite. But ultimately, it became a motif that runs the whole way through the film. Became very important. These opening images of the detonation at Trinity are based on the real footage. Andrew Jackson, our visual effects supervisor, put them together using analog methods to try and reproduce the incredible frame rates that their technology allowed at the time, superior to what we have today. Adapting Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s book “American Prometheus,” I fully embraced the Prometheun theme, but ultimately chose to change the title to “Oppenheimer” to give a more direct idea of what the film was going to be about and whose point of view we’re seeing. And here we have Cillian Murphy with an IMAX camera inches from his nose. Hoyte van Hoytema was incredible. IMAX camera revealing everything. And I think, to some degree, applying the pressure to Cillian as Oppenheimer that this hearing was applying. “Yes, your honor.” “We’re not judges, Doctor.” “Oh.” And behind him, out of focus, the great Emily Blunt who’s going to become so important to the film as Kitty Oppenheimer, who gradually comes more into focus over the course of the first reel. We divided the two timelines into fission and fusion, the two different approaches to releasing nuclear energy in this devastating form to try and suggest to the audience the two different timelines. And then embraced black-and-white shooting here. Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss being shot on IMAX black-and-white film. The first time anyone’s ever shot that film. Made especially for us. And he’s here talking to Alden Ehrenreich who is absolutely indicative of the incredible ensemble that our casting director John Papsidera put together. Robert Downey Jr. utterly transformed, I think, not just in terms of appearance, but also in terms of approach to character, stripping away years of very well-developed charisma to just try and inhabit the skin of a somewhat awkward, sometimes venal, but also charismatic individual, and losing himself in this utterly. And then as we come up to this door, we go into the Senate hearing rooms. And we try to give that as much visibility, grandeur, and glamour to contrast with the security hearing that’s so claustrophobic. And takes Oppenheimer completely out of the limelight. [CROWD SHOUTING]

By Manohla Dargis

“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s staggering film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” condenses a titanic shift in consciousness into three haunted hours. A drama about genius, hubris and error, both individual and collective, it brilliantly charts the turbulent life of the American theoretical physicist who helped research and develop the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II — cataclysms that helped usher in our human-dominated age.

Listen to This Article

The movie is based on “ American Prometheus : The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” the authoritative 2005 biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Written and directed by Nolan, the film borrows liberally from the book as it surveys Oppenheimer’s life, including his role in the Manhattan Engineer District, better known as the Manhattan Project. He served as director of a clandestine weapons lab built in a near-desolate stretch of Los Alamos, in New Mexico, where he and many other of the era’s most dazzling scientific minds puzzled through how to harness nuclear reactions for the weapons that killed tens of thousands instantly, ending the war in the Pacific.

The atomic bomb and what it wrought define Oppenheimer’s legacy and also shape this film. Nolan goes deep and long on the building of the bomb, a fascinating and appalling process, but he doesn’t restage the attacks; there are no documentary images of the dead or panoramas of cities in ashes, decisions that read as his ethical absolutes. The horror of the bombings, the magnitude of the suffering they caused and the arms race that followed suffuse the film. “Oppenheimer” is a great achievement in formal and conceptual terms, and fully absorbing, but Nolan’s filmmaking is, crucially, in service to the history that it relates.

The story tracks Oppenheimer — played with feverish intensity by Cillian Murphy — across decades, starting in the 1920s with him as a young adult and continuing until his hair grays. The film touches on personal and professional milestones, including his work on the bomb, the controversies that dogged him, the anti-Communist attacks that nearly ruined him, as well as the friendships and romances that helped sustain yet also troubled him. He has an affair with a political firebrand named Jean Tatlock (a vibrant Florence Pugh), and later weds a seductive boozer, Kitty Harrison (Emily Blunt, in a slow-building turn), who accompanies him to Los Alamos, where she gives birth to their second child.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

The Best Performance in Oppenheimer Belongs to Alden Ehrenreich

How do you pick the best performance in a film defined by literally dozens of them? Christopher Nolan assembled a murderer’s row of talent for “ Oppenheimer ,” his grand historical drama about the birth of the atomic bomb and the consequences of its power. It contains a veritable smorgasbord of leading icons, character actors, former child star favorites, and faces you forgot you love so much. There’s certainly a case to be made for so many among this ensemble: the steely-eyed determination and rattled conscience of Cillian Murphy in the title role; Robert Downey Jr.’s charisma shattered by the petulance of bureaucratic squabbles; David Krumholtz as the warm friend whose pragmatism punctures his ideals. However, the face you leave the film remembering for days afterward comes from an actor whose character isn’t even given a name.

Alden Ehrenreich plays a Senate aide, a figure who is one of the many government workers standing behind and to the side of the head honchos helping to grease the wheels of power. He has been tasked with guiding Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) through Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination as Secretary of Commerce to President Eisenhower’s cabinet. Ehrenreich is essentially a PR guy, a guide for Strauss and the audience through the tangled web of Cold War-era D.C. and the front-stabbing figures who have turned politics into a battlefield. He is, by design, not that important. Dozens of other nameless aides are waiting around the corner to do this job. Ehrenreich just so happens to be there at the right/wrong time.

Being an audience avatar is often a thankless role in any film, and it’s a trope that Nolan often struggles with. Discussions of process and ideas often weigh down his films and inserting a figure of relatable naivety into this risks disrupting the narrative flow. “Oppenheimer” often gets away with not having one during the glut of the story since it’s so heavily focused on conversations about science, ethics, and consequences. The scenes with Strauss and Ehrenreich are a break from this, an insight into a post-Oppenheimer world and how it has impacted the system that helped to create him in the first place. Ehrenreich is not unaware, nor is he expected to play catch-up with Strauss and company. Rather, he’s the constant reminder that scientists did not do what happened at Los Alamos alone. That he is unnamed and a fictional creation of Nolan (a sharp contrast to a film populated by real historical players) hammers home the disposability of such an aide. Ehrenreich’s job is to blend in, to keep a straight face against the peacocking Strauss. It’s a role that could, too, have disappeared into the background, but Ehrenreich knows that the best scene stealers are the ones who react to the carnage.

Ehrenreich, a character actor with the face of a 1950s leading man, has always excelled in parts where he tempers his natural charisma with a dash of something sharper. In “ Hail, Caesar! ,” he steals the show from one of the Coen Brothers’ starriest casts as Hobie Doyle, the adorably clueless singing cowboy the studio tries to reinvent as a Noel Coward-esque debonair leading man. He’s the safe port of sincerity in a storm of Hollywood cynicism. As the younger brother of the tempestuous Tetro in Francis Ford Coppola’s indie drama, he is appealingly innocent yet imbued with the abrasive arrogance that only a dolt of a teenage boy could truly possess. Even in “ Solo: A Star Wars Story ,” the u nfairly maligned prequel of the new Disney/Lucasfilm era, Ehrenreich’s Han is less concerned with traditional hero expectations. Audiences seemed furious that he didn’t look or act exactly like Harrison Ford . Still, Ehrenreich understood the giddy enthusiasm of the pre-jaded space cowboy and how the character doesn’t work if he’s always cool (which Ford never was in the original trilogy, something fans often overlook.) The best Ehrenreich performances allow him to dig into humanity’s absurdities and petty mundanities, offering either the freaky flipside or a welcome dose of warmth. It’s never as interesting to be cool when you can be weird, dark, or earnest.

The Senate aide in “Oppenheimer” is clearly used to being the quiet man in the room, the punching bag against whom others launch their egos. His smile is halfway between charm and smarm, with Ehrenreich excelling with those side glances at Strauss as he enters another rant about his battle of attrition with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Everything the aide says feels loaded with subtext, the ruthless efficiency of a worn-down Washington professional. He’s also used to dealing with political players with more bluster than substance, most evident when he has to appease Strauss without rocking the boat. There’s a deadpan quality to him, as though he’s used to being a babysitter more than an advisor. When Strauss reveals his hand and his selfishness thoroughly exposed, Ehrenreich’s subtle reaction most effectively conveys the weight of this moment. It’s not so much that he feels betrayed—he’s clearly too much of a D.C. man to have ever been optimistic—but rather, he’s underwhelmed that years of machinations and supposed patriotism have boiled down to the equivalent of a playground tiff.

And it is Ehrenreich who gets the best line in the film. As Strauss gets ready to face the scrum of ravenous press after the Senate rejects his confirmation, Ehrenreich subtly hides his pleasure but reveals enough to let Strauss know his feelings on the matter. Strauss is consumed by the possibility that Oppenheimer turned the scientific community against him, including Albert Einstein. He repeatedly returns to a perceived conversation between the two that must have made Strauss Einstein’s enemy. Before opening the door to the wolves of the media, Ehrenreich says, “Maybe they were talking about something more important.” Uttered with such casual devastation, the nail in Strauss’ coffin confirms how the world’s fate often means little in the face of one man’s petty grievances. It’s probably for the best that Ehrenreich chose acting as his profession because he would be far too good as a politician.

“Oppenheimer” is, indeed, about far more important things than a politician’s job interview and the concerns of his nameless aide. The Manhattan Project exacerbated humanity’s inevitable self-annihilation, but for rooms full of suits and cigarettes, it was just another day at the office, another tool to be wielded less for destruction than personal bartering. It’s the aide, the one without a name or background or tangible connection to Oppenheimer’s work, who exposes that reality with a crooked smile and killer one-liner. Like a great scene-stealing supporting player, the aide is the one who cuts through the crap to seek the truth. Ehrenreich has long been great at that, and “Oppenheimer” is a welcome new zenith of his career. Here’s hoping there will be many more in the future. 

Leave a comment

Related articles.

Short Films in Focus: Young People, Old People and Nothing In Between

“Risky Business” Remains One of the Most Daring Films of the ’80s

Experience the Star Trek Movies in 70mm at Out of this World L.A. Event

13 Films Illuminate Locarno Film Festival’s Columbia Pictures Retrospective

Popular reviews.

Chicken for Linda!

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan Makes a Riveting Historical Psychodrama, but It Doesn’t Build to a Big Bang

Cillian Murphy gives a phenomenal performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw creation of the atomic bomb, in a film that's ruthlessly authentic and, for much of its three hours, gripping.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• ‘Queer’ Review: Daniel Craig Shows a Whole New Side in Luca Guadagnino’s Bold and Trippy Adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ Ahead-of-Its-Time Novel 19 hours ago
• ‘The Room Next Door’ Review: Tilda Swinton Gives a Monumental Performance as a Woman Confronting Death in Pedro Almodóvar’s First English-Language Drama 2 days ago
• ‘Wolfs’ Review: George Clooney and Brad Pitt Are Rival Fixers in a Winning Action Comedy Spiked With Movie-Star Chemistry 3 days ago

In the early scenes of “ Oppenheimer ,” J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ), an American physics student attending graduate school in England and Germany in the 1920s, with bright blue marble eyes and a curly wedge of hair that stands up like Charlie Chaplin’s, keeps having visions of particles and waves. We see the images that are disrupting his mind, the particles pulsating, the waves aglow in vibratory bands of light. Oppenheimer can see the brave new world of quantum physics, and the visual razzmatazz is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from a biopic written and directed by Christopher Nolan : a molecular light show as a reflection of the hero’s inner spirit.

Related Stories

Fubo’s Battle With Venu Sports Is a Stopgap Measure

'The Masked Singer' Plans Miley Cyrus, Barbie and 'Footloose' Tributes for Season 12

Popular on variety.

The film opens with a flash forward to the 1954 hearing of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that ultimately resulted in Oppenheimer, accused (among other things) of having hidden Communist ties, being stripped of his security clearance. This was the government’s way of silencing him, since in the postwar world he’d become something of a dove on the issue of nuclear weapons, a view that didn’t mesh with America’s Cold War stance of aggression. The hearing was the darkest chapter of Oppenheimer’s life, and using it as a framing device feels, at first, like a very standard thing to do.

Except that the film keeps returning to the hearing, weaving it deep into the fabric of its three-hour running time. Lewis Strauss, played with a captivating bureaucratic terseness by Robert Downey Jr. , is the A.E.C. chairman who became Oppenheimer’s ideological and personal enemy (after Oppenheimer humiliated him during a congressional testimonial), and he’s the secret force behind the hearing, which takes place in a back room hidden away from the press. As Oppenheimer defends himself in front of a committee of hanging judges, the movie uses his anecdotes to flash back in time, and Nolan creates a hypnotic multi-tiered storytelling structure, using it to tease out the hidden continuities that shaped Oppenheimer’s life and his creation of the bomb.

We see how the Cold War really started before World War II was over — it was always there, shaping the rapt paranoia of atom-bomb politics. We see that Oppenheimer the ruthless nuclear zealot and Oppenheimer the mystic idealist were one and the same. And we see that the race to complete the Manhattan Project, rooted in the makeshift creation of a small desert city that Oppenheimer presides over in Los Alamos, New Mexico, meant that the momentum of the nuclear age was already taking on a life of its own.      

In the ’30s, Oppenheimer, already a legend in his own mind, brings quantum mechanics to the U.S., even as his field of passion encompasses Picasso, Freud, and Marx, not to mention the absorbing of half a dozen languages (from Dutch to Sanskrit), all to soak up the revolutionary energy field that’s sweeping the world, influencing everything from physics to workers’ liberation. Oppenheimer isn’t a Communist, but he’s a devoted leftist with many Communists in his life, from his brother and sister-and-law to his doleful bohemian mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). What really makes his eyes go bright is when the atom gets split by two German scientists, in 1938. He at first insists it’s not possible, but then his colleagues at Berkeley, led by Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), demonstrate that it is, and he realizes in an instant where all this points: to the possibility of a bomb.

“Oppenheimer” has a mesmerizing first half, encompassing everything from Oppenheimer’s mysterious Princeton encounter with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) to his far from utopian marriage to the alcoholic Kitty (played with scalding force by Emily Blunt ). Just about everything we see is stunning in its accuracy. “Oppenheimer” isn’t a movie that traffics in composite characters or audience-friendly arcs; Nolan channels the grain of reality, the fervor and detail of what really happened. And the buildup to the creation of the first atomic bomb just about ticks with cosmic suspense. There are Soviet spies at Los Alamos, as well as a sinister comic grace note: the possibility (“a little more than zero”) that the chain reaction begun by the nuclear explosion could spread to the earth’s atmosphere and never stop, an apocalypse that theoretical physics can’t totally rule out.

But the big bang itself, when it finally arrives, as the bomb is tested in the wee hours of that fateful day code-named Trinity, is, I have to say, a letdown. Nolan shows it impressionistically — the sound cutting out, images of what look like radioactive hellfire. But the terrifying awesomeness, the nightmare bigness of it all, does not come across. Nor does it evoke the descriptions of witnesses who say that the blast was streaked with purple and gray and was many times brighter than the noonday sun.

And once Oppenheimer shoots past that nuclear climax, a certain humming intensity leaks out of the movie. We’re still at the damn A.E.C. hearing (after two hours), and the film turns into a woeful meditation on what the bomb meant, whether it should have been dropped, our rivalry with the Soviets, and how Oppenheimer figured into all of that, including his relegation to the status of defrocked Cold War scapegoat. What happened to Oppenheimer, at the height of the McCarthy era, was nothing less than egregious (though it’s relevant that he was never officially convicted of disloyalty). At the same time, there are scenes in which characters take him to task for his vanity, for making the bomb all about him . In one of them, he’s dressed down by no less than President Harry Truman (an unbilled Gary Oldman). Is Truman right?

The most radically authentic line in the movie may be the one where Oppenheimer, just after the Nazis have been defeated, explains to a room full of young Los Alamos scientists why he feels it’s still justifiable to use the bomb on Japan. We all know the dogmatic lesson we learned in high school: that dropping those bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war and saved the lives of countless U.S. soldiers. From the age of 15, I’ve never bought the rationale of that argument. But I buy what Oppenheimer says here: that by using a nuclear weapon, we would create a horrific demonstration of why it could never, ever be used again. (It’s not that that’s a justification . It’s that it’s an explanation of why it happened.)

Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, July 17, 2023. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 180 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Syncopy production, in association with Atlas Entertainment. Producers: Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, Christopher Nolan. Executive producers: J. David Wargo, James Woods, Thomas Hayslip.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Christopher Nolan. Camera: Hoyt van Hoytema. Editor: Jennifer Lame. Music: Ludwig Göransson.
• With: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh.

More from Variety

Beyoncé, Zach Bryan, Kacey Musgraves, Shaboozey Among Leading Nominees for ‘People’s Choice Country’ Second Annual Awards

4D Movie Tech Lacks Consumer Awareness: Survey

Dear Beyoncé and Taylor: Thanks for Staying Home. The DNC Benefited From Treating Musicians as Opening Acts, Not Headliners

‘Existential Threat’ of AI Central to Animation Guild Negotiations

More from our brands, queen guitarist brian may reveals he suffered a ‘scary’ minor stroke.

Vintage Piaget Watches May Be All the Rage, but the Brand’s Current Collection Is Utterly Dazzling

Turf Wars: Each NFL Team Has Its Own Multimillion-Dollar Calculus

The Best Loofahs and Body Scrubbers, According to Dermatologists

The Bachelorette Finale Recap: Jenn Makes Franchise History — But Did She Get a Fairy Tale Ending?

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• About Rotten Tomatoes®
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening This Week
• Top Box Office
• Coming Soon to Theaters
• Certified Fresh Movies

Movies at Home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most Popular Streaming Movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• 74% Blink Twice Link to Blink Twice
• 95% Strange Darling Link to Strange Darling
• 86% Between the Temples Link to Between the Temples

New TV Tonight

• 100% Slow Horses: Season 4
• 96% English Teacher: Season 1
• -- The Perfect Couple: Season 1
• -- Tell Me Lies: Season 2
• -- Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist: Season 1
• -- Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos: Season 1
• -- Outlast: Season 2
• -- The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Season 1
• -- Whose Line Is It Anyway?: Season 14

Most Popular TV on RT

• 72% Kaos: Season 1
• 84% The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Season 2
• 92% Terminator Zero: Season 1
• 100% Dark Winds: Season 2
• 92% Bad Monkey: Season 1
• 95% Only Murders in the Building: Season 4
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV

Certified fresh pick

• 96% English Teacher: Season 1 Link to English Teacher: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Venice Film Festival 2024: Movie Scorecard

30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

The 5 Most Anticipated TV or Streaming Shows of September

The 5 Most Anticipated Movies of September

• Trending on RT
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• Top 10 Box Office
• Venice Film Festival
• Popular Series on Netflix

Oppenheimer Reviews

It’s a film that, through the filter of history, dazzles with its mastery of craft, directly challenging us on how the lust for power can, and perhaps will, one day destroy us all.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 19, 2024

What might be surprising is that dropping the bomb is not that moment in history, Nolan is more interested in how one misinterpretation of a conversation can have long lasting effects.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 5, 2024

Oppenheimer is a phenomenal achievement.http://tonymacklin.net/content.php?cID=1003

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 15, 2024

Oppenhiemer is a return to form for Nolan after the fiasco of Tenet. There's a great movie hiding amidst all of the formal pyrotechnics. But I guess it's too much to ask for a lighter touch from a director who is about as subtle as an atomic bomb.

Full Review | May 21, 2024

Oppenheimer is ultimately a cautionary tale about ego, politics, and power, a true, modern epic.

Full Review | Apr 19, 2024

As increasing tensions with Russia rise once again, it seems fitting that "Oppenheimer" sets forth the events that led to those initial tensions in aftermath of World War II.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 7, 2024

It's the bomb.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 1, 2024

What promises to be Christopher Nolan's first cinematic masterpiece, evaporates before our eyes.

Full Review | Original Score: TWO STARS | Mar 24, 2024

For a film so enmeshed in ideas and loaded with meeting and conversations and debates (scientific and moral), it is as visually compelling as it is narratively.

Full Review | Mar 8, 2024

Downey’s performance is one of subtlety and guile, right up to the last twist. I have never seen an actor so thoroughly redeemed by taking a hard, thankless role like this.

Christopher Nolan’s latest is also his best-ever film. Fully at the height of his large-format artistic powers, he crafts a towering and monumental achievement that is highly difficult to watch but continuously thrilling.

Full Review | Mar 5, 2024

Unlike many epics, Oppenheimer is an actor’s dream.

Full Review | Feb 29, 2024

What do you want from theory alone?

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 1, 2024

Pugh is heartbreaking, but doesn't get to shine as much as Emily Blunt (as Oppenheimer's wife Kitty). Long-suffering thanks to her husband's obsessive career and dalliances, Blunt nonetheless provides needed steel for Bob in the final scenes.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 25, 2024

I liked it, but thought the third act nearly cratered the whole thing.

Full Review | Jan 3, 2024

Nolan is a master of adding tension where there is very little, while deflating strenuous moments and creating an environment that is almost unbearable.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2024

The film’s narrative, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, encompasses an effective blend of historical documentary with dramatic thriller and biography.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jan 1, 2024

A violent reckoning with America’s bloodlust, filtered through a man whose ego and naïveté facilitated one of the most unspeakable monstrosities in the history of the world; an unprecedented devastation that still reverberates through civilizations today.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jan 1, 2024

Only Christopher Nolan could adapt Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s “American Prometheus,” a mammoth tome about American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and have audiences gobble it up like his more traditional summer popcorn films

Full Review | Dec 30, 2023

Epic in scale and substance, writer-director Christopher Nolan has arguably produced the best film of his impressive career. He delivers a nuanced script ... and turns a complex and defining moment in history into a pulse-pounding thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Dec 30, 2023

Screen Rant

6 reasons oppenheimer's reviews are so positive.

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

10 Harsh Realties Of Rewatching Oppenheimer, 1 Year Later

Beetlejuice 2 is on track to break a september box office curse, 10 things from the star wars original trilogy that haven't aged well.

The reviews are in for Oppenheimer and there is a diverse range of reasons that critics are calling director Christopher Nolan’s biopic one of 2023’s best movies. Oppenheimer is a biopic of the American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer directed by Christopher Nolan. Based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus , the ambitious Oppenheimer stars Cillian Murphy as the troubled scientist dubbed the father of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer uses non-linear storytelling to bounce between the time that Murphy’s character spent working on the bomb, his earlier career, and his later run-ins with the House of Un-American Activities Committee.

At three hours, Oppenheimer is long even compared to Nolan’s other movies . However, this has not stopped critics from raving about the ambitious biopic. As the story of a divisive figure in American history, Oppenheimer was always likely to garner mixed reactions. The decision to tell the scientist’s story in a non-linear fashion that disregards the typical biopic formula was also a daring one. That said, both of these creative risks appear to have paid off handsomely, as Oppenheimer debuts with an impressive "Certified Fresh" 93% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes . Although some reviewers claim that the movie stretches beyond its limitations, the critical consensus on Oppenheimer is overwhelmingly positive.

6 Oppenheimer’s Visual Effects Blew Critics Away

The news that Nolan intended to shoot a movie about the birth of the atomic bomb without the aid of CGI was a surprise but, by all accounts, this is not a problem for Oppenheimer . Of course, Nolan’s “ No CGI ” comments on Oppenheimer may have been misconstrued, as the movie does feature post-production CGI and VFX. In any case, reviewers universally praised the visual impact of the biopic. Where more conventional biopics might focus on the external lives of their characters, Oppenheimer spends much of its runtime inside the mind of the mercurial scientist at its center.

To this end, Empire Magazine praised the “ nightmarish potency ” of Oppenheimer ’s visuals, which draw the viewer into the physicist’s mind and allow them to share his unique perspective. Both The New York Times and The AVClub also noted that, while there is plenty of great action on display in Oppenheimer , the movie’s visual impact can’t be understated. This was an important element that Oppenheimer needed to nail since few biopics feature an entire act centered around the detonation of a nuclear bomb. Oppenheimer 's atom bomb scenes needed, in a crowded marketplace of CGI-heavy blockbusters, to truly stun viewers. Critics agree that the movie succeeds in this endeavor.

5 Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer Performance Is A Career-Best

While Variety said that Oppenheimer ’s “ v isual razzmatazz ” was mesmerizing, the publication was quick to note that this would not have mattered without a compelling human presence at the center of the movie. In casting Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer , reviewers concur that Nolan found the right man for the job. The New York Times praised the “ feverish intensity ” of Murphy’s work, and more than one critic suggested that an Oscar nomination might be in the actor's near future. However, not every reviewer felt that the intensity of Murphy’s performance was what made it so powerful. For many critics, it was the quiet moments and subtle facial expressions that allowed Murphy to truly embody Oppenheimer.

4 Oppenheimer’s Supporting Cast Are Universally Strong

Murphy’s work has been praised by almost all of Oppenheimer 's reviews, but the massive ensemble cast of the biopic was equally well-regarded. In particular, almost every reviewer singled out Florence Pugh’s supporting work as Oppenheimer’s Communist lover Jean Tatlock, with the actor imbuing Oppenheimer ’s explicit R-rated scenes with the heart and humanity that Nolan’s earlier movies were accused of lacking. Meanwhile, Emily Blunt’s take on Oppenheimer’s wife has been praised as a spiky but sympathetic portrait, while Robert Downey Jr’s Levi Strauss was called his best work in years. A diverse range of stars including Matt Damon and Gary Oldman round out what Empire Magazine called “ Nolan’s most impressive cast yet .”

Related: Oppenheimer's Age Gap Controversy - Backlash To Cillian Murphy & Florence Pugh's Romance Explained

3 Oppenheimer’s Non-Linear Storytelling Makes Its Story More Impactful

Even though Oppenheimer is a biopic, Nolan did not opt to tell its story in a straightforward, conventional fashion. Oppenheimer was a famously theatrical man and the movie’s retelling of his story is fittingly dramatic, which extends into the chronology of the story’s events. Variety praised the “ heady, dense, dizzying way it slices and dices chronology ” while The New York Times called Nolan’s movie a “ cubistic portrait ” of its subject, offering various perspectives simultaneously to give a clearer view. For RogerEbert.com , Matt Zoller Seitz said that this approach captured " the pinball-machine motions of human consciousness ,” with Oppenheimer ’s story jumps allowing viewers to make emotional leaps alongside the characters.

Similarly, The AVClub praised this “ remarkable exercise in narrative balance ,” saying that the jumps between Oppenheimer ’s explosive nuclear tests and his later security hearings bring the viewer through his life with a deft sense of clarity. According to many reviews, Nolan’s decision to tell Oppenheimer’s story through flashbacks, memories, dreams, fantasies, and visions makes the movie one of his most experimental efforts yet. This departure from traditional storytelling clearly succeeded, with many reviewers admitting that the story’s heavy themes wouldn’t have worked anywhere near as well in a more linear retelling.

2 Oppenheimer’s Cinematography Stunned Reviewers

While Oppenheimer might be unlike any of Nolan’s earlier movies, some things never change. The biopic is as visually stunning as any of the director’s earlier work and, even outside its dramatic explosions and stark black-and-white scenes, the cinematography garnered recognition for its quieter moments. The AVClub praised the “ gorgeous cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema ” while Zoller Seitz noted the movie’s particularly extensive use of close-ups as a means of establishing connection to its characters. The New York Times said the movie’s cinematography “ closes the distance between you and Oppenheimer ,” with Oppenheimer’ s shifts between black and white and color acting as more than a gimmick.

1 Oppenheimer’s Ambition Is Its Greatest Strength (& Flaw)

The New York Times called Oppenheimer a “ great achievement in formal and conceptual terms ,” but the movie’s ambition also worked against it for some reviewers. Variety called Nolan’s biopic a “ relentless, coruscating piece of maximalist cinema ” but felt that it lacked the thematic cohesion of director Oliver Stone’s comparable Nixon . Similarly, a few reviewers noted that the lengthy runtime doesn’t complement the ambiguous ending, which failed to offer a definitive judgment of Oppenheimer’s legacy. That said, both The New York Times and Zoller Seitz argued that this ambiguity is at the very core of Oppenheimer ’s complicated, contradictory portrait.

For these critics, Nolan’s movie isn’t attempting to defend or condemn Oppenheimer’s work. Instead, the biopic’s immersive story allows viewers into his mind and leaves them to come to their own conclusions. Like its tortured subject, Oppenheimer changes its mind constantly and leaps between subjects without warning. For some critics, this left the movie feeling undeniably effective and impactful, but overlong and unfocused. For others, this allowed Oppenheimer to capture the shifting perspectives of the physicist himself without resorting to romanticizing or demonizing him. However, even detractors did concede that Nolan’s Oppenheimer is one of the director’s best movies so far.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Key Release Dates

• Oppenheimer

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

How to Help Kids Build Character Strengths with Quality Media

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

Oppenheimer.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 72 Reviews
• Kids Say 96 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Nolan's complex A-bomb biopic has sex, swearing, violence.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Oppenheimer is director Christopher Nolan's drama about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the scientist responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb. But it's less an entertaining history lesson than it is a dense examination of the unholy matrimony of quantum physics and…

Why Age 15+?

Death by suicide. Massive fiery, loud bomb explosion, accompanied by a loud "doo

Several sex scenes with partial nudity, including long sequences with bare breas

Strong language includes a few uses of "f--k," plus "balls," "goddamn," "idiot,"

Frequent drinking, including by a character who's portrayed as having an alcohol

Any Positive Content?

Scientists are elevated to celebrity status, and their brain power is aspiration

You may have the knowledge and skill to create something dangerously powerful --

Most characters -- historical figures from the 1930s–'50s -- are White American

Violence & Scariness

Death by suicide. Massive fiery, loud bomb explosion, accompanied by a loud "doom" score that underlines the future impact of the detonation. Discussion of the impact of the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a hallucination, the skin on a woman's face appears to blow off. Attempted murder through the eyes of the protagonist.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Several sex scenes with partial nudity, including long sequences with bare breasts. Recurring infidelity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes a few uses of "f--k," plus "balls," "goddamn," "idiot," and "s--t."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Frequent drinking, including by a character who's portrayed as having an alcohol dependency. Smoking cigarettes and a pipe.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Scientists are elevated to celebrity status, and their brain power is aspirational -- as is their perseverance and ability to work as a team to accomplish a daunting goal.

Positive Messages

You may have the knowledge and skill to create something dangerously powerful -- but should you?

Diverse Representations

Most characters -- historical figures from the 1930s–'50s -- are White American or European men. Oppenheimer and many of the other scientists, including Albert Einstein, are Jewish (though the main Jewish characters aren't portrayed by Jewish actors). One female scientist is featured, and other women can be spotted working in the background. The victims of the atomic bomb detonations (Japanese people, interned Japanese Americans, and Native Americans) don't have a voice in the film. A sex scene that includes White characters reading from the holy Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita has drawn complaints for being insensitive/offensive.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Oppenheimer is director Christopher Nolan 's drama about J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ), the scientist responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb. But it's less an entertaining history lesson than it is a dense examination of the unholy matrimony of quantum physics and military bureaucracy, and things can get pretty confusing thanks to frequent undated time jumps and a barrage of names and characters to keep straight. The sex scenes (Nolan's first) include frequent partial nudity (particularly co-star Florence Pugh 's breasts). Characters smoke, as would be expected in the 1930s–'50s setting, and drink. A bomb trial demonstrates the enormousness of the weapon's capabilities, with fire, noise, and smoke. But viewers are told about, rather than shown, the horror that unfolded after the bomb was ultimately dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are references to mass assassination and to suicide, and a brief hallucination of a young woman's skin appearing to blow off. Language includes a few uses of "f--k," plus "goddamn," "s--t," and more. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (72)
• Kids say (96)

Based on 72 parent reviews

I wouldn't ever take my kids (even when they were teenagers)

So unfortunate, what's the story.

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan , OPPENHEIMER follows brilliant scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ) as he studies and masters quantum physics. As the United States enters World War II, Oppenheimer is tapped to assemble and lead a group of allied scientists to create a war-ending bomb.

Is It Any Good?

Like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Nolan is a genius -- and, also like Oppenheimer, he may be too close to his subject matter to realize that he lost the thread. It's now abundantly clear that Nolan is fascinated with World War II, but it may be hard for many viewers (even those who love history) to follow this story with ease. If you need a reference card, captions, the ability to pause and rewind the film, and Wikipedia on standby to understand what's going on, it's an issue. And if some viewers' thoughts start drifting to wondering how Aaron Sorkin , Ron Howard , or Steven Spielberg might have made this movie better, that's a big problem.

The atomic bomb is just part of the story in Oppenheimer -- the plot is actually more about whether the leader of The Manhattan Project will get his security clearance renewed a decade after the end of World War II. Really. And given that Oppenheimer apparently wasn't the greatest guy (the film softens the fact that he apparently tried to murder his teacher), it's difficult to invest or care. Nolan is beloved for creating cinematic puzzles that challenge viewers' intellect and keep us on our toes -- we may sometimes be confused, but we know it's part of the long game. Here, he tries to play that game with viewers again, but it doesn't really work in a biopic that's directed at having audiences examine the morality of innovation. Nolan seems to intend for us to question our present race into artificial intelligence, but the film only leaves us questioning him.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the real-life moral dilemma of building a weapon of mass destruction. Given the circumstances, do you think the scientists had another choice? If you create something powerful, can you be sure it won't be misused in someone else's hands -- and should that worry impede innovation?

Nolan flips between color and black-and-white cinematography as a storytelling device in Oppenheimer . What do you think that choice means?

Discuss the fears and accusations related to Communism in the 1950s. Who were the victims? How does Oppenheimer show how McCarthyism was used to target opponents? Do you see any modern parallels?

How do you think history should judge J. Robert Oppenheimer? Do you think he's depicted accurately or fairly here?

How are drinking and smoking portrayed? Is substance use glamorized? Does the historic setting affect the impact of seeing characters smoke and drink?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 21, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : November 21, 2023
• Cast : Cillian Murphy , Emily Blunt , Matt Damon
• Director : Christopher Nolan
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Brothers and Sisters , History , Science and Nature
• Run time : 180 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some sexuality, nudity and language
• Awards : Academy Award , BAFTA - BAFTA Winner , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
• Last updated : July 22, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

The Imitation Game

Grave of the Fireflies

The Prestige

Fat Man and Little Boy

Saving Private Ryan

Biopic movies, world war ii books for kids, related topics.

• Brothers and Sisters
• Science and Nature

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Oppenheimer

The story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. The story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. The story of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.

• Christopher Nolan
• Martin Sherwin
• Cillian Murphy
• Emily Blunt
• 4.2K User reviews
• 487 Critic reviews
• 90 Metascore
• 349 wins & 359 nominations total

Top cast 99+

• J. Robert Oppenheimer

• Kitty Oppenheimer

• Leslie Groves

• Lewis Strauss

• Senate Aide

• Thomas Morgan

• Gordon Gray

• Lloyd Garrison

• Patrick Blackett

• Senator McGee

• Chairman Magnuson

• Senator Bartlett

• Senator Pastore

• Senator Scott
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Engineering 'Oppenheimer'

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia In order for the black and white sections of the movie to be shot in the same quality as the rest of the film, Kodak produced a limited supply of its Double-X black and white film stock in 70mm. This film stock was chosen specifically for its heritage - it was originally sold to photographers as Super-XX during World War II and was very popular with photojournalists of the era.
• Goofs The stop signs are yellow in the film, which is accurate. The United States used yellow stop signs until 1954.

J. Robert Oppenheimer : Albert? When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world...

Albert Einstein : I remember it well. What of it?

J. Robert Oppenheimer : I believe we did.

• Alternate versions To get a U/A rating certification in India, the movie was edited to remove or censor all nudity using CGI. For example, the scene where Tatlock and Oppenheimer have a conversation and the former character was topless, the nudity was censored with a CGI black dress. Many Middle Eastern countries use this exact same censored version for release.
• Connections Featured in Louder with Crowder: Going Out with a Bang! (2022)
• Soundtracks Holiday in Big Band Land (uncredited) Written by Gerhard Narholz Performed by Les Brown and His Band of Renown

User reviews 4.2K

• Orlando_Gardner
• Jul 18, 2023
• How long is Oppenheimer? Powered by Alexa
• Why did Niels Bohr not help with the Manhattan project?
• Did Truman really call Oppenheimer a "crybaby?"
• Were there black people working for the Manhattan project?
• July 21, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Official Facebook
• Official Instagram
• Oppengeymer
• Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA (only interiors, Los Alamos facilities interiors, including Oppenheimer's house, Fuller Lodge Interior and Exterior)
• Universal Pictures
• Atlas Entertainment
• Gadget Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $100,000,000 (estimated)
• $329,862,540
• $82,455,420
• Jul 23, 2023
• $975,516,634

Technical specs

• Runtime 3 hours
• Black and White
• IMAX 6-Track
• Dolby Digital

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• IMDb Answers: Help fill gaps in our data
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

• AV Undercover

Oppenheimer review: Christopher Nolan delivers his masterpiece

Cillian murphy is remarkable in this powerful, dazzling american tragedy that co-stars robert downey jr., emily blunt, and matt damon.

It’s fitting that Christopher Nolan uses the opening minutes of Oppenheimer to evoke the myth of Prometheus, the legendary titan who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to humanity, only to suffer terrible consequences. Nolan’s film is, after all, adapted from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer-winning biography American Prometheus. But there’s more to the allusion than a nod in the direction of the source material. For the filmmaker himself, the comparison to Prometheus is a warning of what we’re about to see, the announcement of a uniquely American tragedy that’s rooted in reality yet also mythic in scope and ambition. In other words, it’s Nolan calling his shot, swinging for the fences in ways that even he never has before. What follows is perhaps his most self-assured and passionate cinematic effort so far, a film so thunderous and heavy that it just might knock you through the back wall of the theater.

As he has so often throughout his career, Nolan takes a nonlinear approach to the story, here laying out the life and work of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the soft-spoken, intensely brilliant father of the atomic bomb. The film bounces with precision and grace between crucial moments in Oppenheimer’s life, from the day he met his eventual wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) to his arrival at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to, of course, the launch of the Manhattan Project that would give birth to the world’s first nuclear weapon. Along the way, we meet many figures that buoy and challenge him, from a young woman named Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) to a Washington D.C. maneuverer named Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), the latter hewing closer to Oppenheimer’s personal journey than perhaps even he realizes.

• Nothing is as it seems on Severance
• September TV preview: The Penguin , Agatha All Along , Kaitlin Olson, and Slow Horses
• Tension and romance heat up on Severance

The purpose of all the weaving, between Oppenheimer’s student days and the security hearings that challenged his reputation in the 1950s, is not just to allow Nolan opportunities to play with certain symmetries in the physicist’s life, though he certainly makes time for those. Instead, there’s a kind of scientific detail to the way the film chooses to express these moments in a certain order, a sense that getting the combination right will incite a certain chain reaction in the audience. For Oppenheimer, who sees the makeup of the world in ways that no one else does, a chance encounter in the 1920s could change the world in the 1940s, then doom the same world in the 1960s. With that feeling ever-present in the beautifully rendered script—which features several key moments lifted almost verbatim from Bird and Sherwin’s book—all that time-hopping never feels like a gimmick.

But Nolan doesn’t hold this all together alone. He has plenty of help from a team of collaborators bringing their best, from the gorgeous cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema—who captures everything from New Mexico snow to black-and-white Senate hearings with searing power—to the blistering, relentless score of Ludwig Göransson that makes you feel every beat. Then, of course, there’s the cast, led by a driven, vulnerable, remarkably controlled performance from Murphy in the title role. His Oppenheimer is a constantly simmering cauldron not just of brilliance, but of indecision coupled with the idea that for all the talk of his heroism and his genius, he might not actually be a good person. At one point, while musing about his place in the world, he mentions that brilliance allows him to “get away with” many of his own shortcomings. It’s one of the keys to unlocking the film, and Murphy keeps that tone humming throughout. Alongside him, Downey Jr. turns in some of his best work in years, Pugh and Blunt are wonderful presences, and Matt Damon turns in scene-stealing work as Manhattan Project military lead, General Leslie Groves.

• Even Christopher Nolan was gagged by The Curse 's finale
• That's Sir Christopher Nolan to you, peasant

If you’re going to see Oppenheimer , though, it’s not just because it’s a movie full of stars. Odds are you’re turning up at the theater to see how Christopher Nolan films one of the most famous explosions in the history of humankind, and there’s no doubt the director is very aware of the anticipation built around that moment in the film. Thanks to Göransson’s score and masterful editing by Jennifer Lame, the Trinity Test in the New Mexico desert arrives slowly, piece by piece, allowing the weight of the moment to settle over the actors and the audience like a shroud. Then, in an instant, it’s all ripped away in one of the most dazzling, sobering, instantly iconic sequences you’re likely to see at the movies this year.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a mass of contradictions and complications. He was undeniably brilliant, yet he could be distant and selfish, often by his own admission. He was able to command a room of students or colleagues, yet crumble in the face of personal crises. He was, in the end, one of the 20th century’s most recognizable creators and one of its most recognizable destroyers. Nolan could have framed his film around any one of these contradictions and found something compelling and sustaining to carry the narrative for three hours. Instead, he approaches and addresses them all, giving us the good and the bad of Oppenheimer in such dynamic ways that you will root for the man in one scene, then wonder in the very next if you backed the wrong horse. It’s a remarkable exercise in narrative balance, and it’s made all the more impressive by the sheer mythic quality of the story of a man who took command of primal, incomprehensibly destructive forces, then spent the rest of his life collapsing under the weight of what he’d unleashed.

For all this and more, Oppenheimer deserves the title of masterpiece. It’s Christopher Nolan’s best film so far, a step up to a new level for one of our finest filmmakers, and a movie that burns itself into your brain.

Oppenheimer opens in theaters July 21

• September film preview: Fall into back-to-school entertainment with Beetlejuice and Megalopolis
• Reagan's ugly hagiography is middle-of-the-night History Channel nonsense
• George R.R. Martin promises to write about House Of The Dragon 's issues, some other day

GET A.V.CLUB RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX

Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election results
• Google trends
• AP & Elections
• U.S. Open Tennis
• Paralympic Games
• College football
• Auto Racing
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Movie Review: A bomb and its fallout in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Cillian Murphy in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Robert Downey Jr as Lewis Strauss in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, left, and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Dane Dehaan as Kenneth Nichols in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Jason Clarke is Roger Robb in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Benny Safdie as Edward Teller in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures via AP)

• Copy Link copied

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is a kinetic thing of dark, imposing beauty that quakes with the disquieting tremors of a forever rupture in the course of human history.

“Oppenheimer,” a feverish three-hour immersion in the life of Manhattan Project mastermind J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), is poised between the shock and aftershock of the terrible revelation, as one character calls it, of a divine power.

There are times in Nolan’s latest opus that flames fill the frame and visions of subatomic particles flitter across the screen — montages of Oppenheimer’s own churning visions. But for all the immensity of “Oppenheimer,” this is Nolan’s most human-scaled film — and one of his greatest achievements.

It’s told principally in close-ups, which, even in the towering detail of IMAX 70mm, can’t resolve the vast paradoxes of Oppenheimer. He was said to be a magnetic man with piercing blue eyes (Murphy has those in spades) who became the father of the atomic bomb but, in speaking against nuclear proliferation and the hydrogen bomb, emerged as America’s postwar conscience.

Nolan, writing his own adaptation of Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” layers the build-up to the Manhattan Project with two moments from years later.

In 1954, a probing inquiry into Oppenheimer’s leftist politics by a McCarthy-era Atomic Energy Commission stripped him of his security clearance. This provides the frame of “Oppenheimer,” along with a Senate confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), who chaired the Atomic Energy Commission and was a stealthy nemesis to Oppenheimer.

The grubby, political machinations of these hearings — the Strauss section is captured in black and white — act like a stark X-ray of Oppenheimer’s life. It’s an often brutal, unfair interrogation that weighs Oppenheimer’s decisions and accomplishment, inevitably, in moral terms. “Who’d want to justify their whole life?” someone wonders. For the maker of the world’s most lethal weapon, it’s an especially complicated question.

These separate timelines give “Oppenheimer” — dimly lit and shadowy even in the desert — a noirish quality (Nolan has said all his films are ultimately noirs) in reckoning with a physicist who spent the first half of his life in headlong pursuit of a new science and the second half wrestling with the consequences of his colossal, world-altering invention.

“Oppenheimer” moves too fast to come to any neat conclusions. Nolan, as if reaching to match the electron, dives into the story at a blistering pace. From start to finish, “Oppenheimer” buzzes with a heady frequency, tracking Oppenheimer as a promising student in the then-unfolding field of quantum mechanics. “Can you hear the music, Robert?” asks the elder Danish physicist Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh). He can, absolutely, but that doesn’t mean finding harmony.

Nolan, whose last film was the time-traveling, palindrome-rich “Tenet,” may be the only filmmaker for whom delving into quantum mechanics could be considered a step down in complexity. But “Oppenheimer” is less interested in equations than the chemistry of an expanding mind. Oppenheimer reads “The Waste Land” and looks at modernist painting. He dabbles in the communist thinking of the day. (His mistress, Jean Tatlock, played arrestingly, tragically by Florence Pugh, is a party member.) But he aligns with no single cause. “I like a little wiggle room,” says Oppenheimer.

For a filmmaker synonymous with grand architectures — psychologies mapped onto subconscious worlds (“Inception”) and cosmic reaches ( “Interstellar” ) — “Oppenheimer” resides more simply in its subject’s fertile imagination and anguished psyche. (The script was written in first person.) Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema render Oppenheimer’s interiority with flashes of images that stretch across the heavens. His brilliance comes from his limitlessness of thought.

Just how much “wiggle room” Oppenheimer is permitted, though, becomes a more acute point when war breaks out and he’s tasked by Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon) to lead the race to beat the Nazis to an atomic bomb. The rapid building of Los Alamos on the white-sand mesas of New Mexico — a site chosen by and with personal meaning to Oppenheimer — might not be so different than the erecting of movie sets for Nolan’s massive films, which likewise tend to culminate with a spectacular explosion.

There is something inherently queasy about a big-screen spectacle dramatizing the creation — justified or not — of a weapon of mass destruction. Oppenheimer once called the atomic bomb “a weapon for aggressors” wherein “the elements of surprise and terror are as intrinsic to it as are the fissionable nuclei.” Surely a less imperial, leviathan filmmaker than Nolan — a British director making an American epic — might have approached the subject differently.

But the responsibility of power has long been one of Nolan’s chief subjects (think of the all-powerful surveillance machine of “The Dark Knight”). And “Oppenheimer” is consumed with not just the ethical quandary of the Manhattan Project but every ethical quandary that Oppenheimer encounters. Big or small, they could all lead to valor or damnation. What makes “Oppenheimer” so unnerving is how indistinguishable one is from the other.

“Oppenheimer” sticks almost entirely to its protagonist’s point of view yet also populates its three-hour film with an incredible array of faces, all in exquisite detail. Some of the best are Benny Safdie as the hydrogen bomb designer Edward Teller; Jason Clarke as gruff special counsel Roger Robb; Gary Oldman as President Harry Truman; Alden Ehrenreich as an aide to Strauss; Macon Blair as Oppenheimer’s attorney; and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, the physicist’s wife.

The greatest of all of them, though, is Murphy. The actor, a Nolan regular, has always been able to communicate something more disturbing underneath his angular, angelic features. But here, his Oppenheimer is a fascinating coil of contradictions: determined and aloof, present and far-away, brilliant but blind.

Dread hangs over him, and over the film, with the inevitable. The future, post-Hiroshima, is sounded most by the wail of children who will grow up in that world; the Oppenheimers’ babies do nothing but cry.

When the Trinity test comes at Los Alamos after the toil of some 4,000 people and the expense of $2 billion, there’s a palpable, shuddering sense of history changing inexorably. How Nolan captures these sequences — the quiet before the sound of the explosion; the disquieting, thunderous, flag-waving applause that greets Oppenheimer after — are masterful, unforgettable fusions of sound and image, horror and awe.

“Oppenheimer” has much more to go. Government encroaches on science, with plenty of lessons for today’s threats of annihilation. Downey, in his best performance in years, strides toward the center of the film. You could say the film gets bogged down here, relegating a global story to a drab backroom hearing, preferring to vindicate Oppenheimer’s legacy rather than wrestle with harder questions of fallout. But “Oppenheimer” is never not balanced, uncomfortably, with wonder at what humans are capable of, and fear that we don’t know what to do with it.

“Oppenheimer,” a Universal Pictures release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for some sexuality, nudity and language. Running time: 180 minutes. Four stars out of four.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Historical Epic Is as Brilliant and Short-Sighted as Its Subject

David ehrlich.

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on LinkedIn
• Show more sharing options
• Submit to Reddit
• Post to Tumblr
• Print This Page
• Share on WhatsApp

Which isn’t to overstate the degree to which Nolan’s first biopic feels like some kind of grandiose self-portrait (even if the Manhattan Project sequences can seem broadly analogous to the filmmaking process, as large swaths of “Inception” and “The Prestige” did before them), nor to suggest that the director sees himself in the same regard as the man he describes in the “Oppenheimer” press notes as “the most important person who ever lived.” It’s also not to glibly conflate one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century with one of the most controversial figures on the r/Movies subreddit, even if the industry-changing success of “Batman Begins” surely inspired a “now I am become death” moment of Nolan’s very own. 

It’s just to say that Nolan has always been fascinated by characters who are torn between the subatomic particles of personal agency and the vast cosmic forces of our universe, and J. Robert Oppenheimer was perhaps the first person who actually lived a version of the only story that Nolan has ever wanted to tell. So while Nolan’s first biopic may not be a self-portrait, it is an origin story of sorts, and also a devastating statement of purpose. It’s his “Empire of Light.” It’s his “Roma.” Most uncomfortably — and most unfavorably — it’s his “The Wind Rises.” 

That turns out to be very, very close, indeed, and yet also never quite close enough. While “Oppenheimer” invites you to stare at Cillian Murphy’s face in shallow-focus IMAX-sized close-ups for much of its three-hour running time, it seldom offers serious insight as to what’s happening behind his marble-blue eyes, let alone the opportunity to see through them. The result is a movie that’s both singularly propulsive and frustratingly obtuse; an overwritten chamber piece that’s powered by the energy of a super-collider. 

Paced like it was designed for interstellar travel, scripted with a degree of density that scientists once thought purely theoretical in nature, and shot with such large-format bombast that repetitive scenes (or at least Nolan-esque slices ) of old politicians yelling at each other about expired security clearances hit with the same visceral impact as the 747 explosion in “Tenet,” “Oppenheimer” is nothing if not a biopic as only Christopher Nolan could make one. Indeed, it would seem like the ideal vehicle for Nolan’s career-long exploration into the black holes of the human condition — the last riddles of a terrifyingly understandable world.

Per the director’s signature approach, the film’s relentless narrative swerves between different timelines, aspect ratios, color schemes, and perspectives. In truth, however, the conceit essentially boils down to two clear aesthetics spread across three distinct moments in history. 

The first, labeled “Fission” and shot in the closest equivalent this drab-as-death movie has to full color, follows Oppenheimer (Murphy) on a forward path from his days as a rakish autodidact and world-traveling dilettante to his eventual selection as the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project. Also presented in color, or at least striking a dank compromise between “DMV green” and “middle-management white,” are long and increasingly agitated glimpses into Oppenheimer’s secret 1954 security hearing, in which a clutch of hawkish politicians who resented Oppenheimer’s resistance to the H-bomb program attempted to strip him of his top-secret clearance by playing up his pre-war connections to the Communist Party. 

Fission and Fusion. Nolan has never come up with a cleaner way of framing the chemical reaction that galvanizes so many of his films. From “Inception” to “Dunkirk,” Nolan’s symphonic movies don’t hinge on linear cause-and-effect so much as they split themselves into a series of discrete atomic parts that eventually slam into each other with enough excitement to create a hyper-combustible chain reaction, and that’s exactly what happens in “Oppenheimer.” Here, Nolan’s non-chronological approach allows us to experience the bomb and its fallout all at once, thus making discovery inextricable from devastation, creation inextricable from destruction, and the innocent joy of theory inextricable from the unfathomable horror of practice.

It’s 1936, and Oppenheimer is introduced to a socially progressive young psychiatrist named Jean Tatlock at a party in Berkeley; they have sex while he reads her the “Bhagavad Gita” in the original Sanskrit (we’ve all done it). Tatlock is played by a flushed-cheeked Florence Pugh, whose “be here now” earthiness adds a necessary edge to one of the Mal-est female characters Nolan’s written in a minute. Emily Blunt has no such luck in the role of Oppenheimer’s alcoholic wife, whose diminishment feels particularly egregious in a movie that hardly bothers to express what Oppenheimer thinks of her, or if he thinks of her at all.

It’s the following year, and buttoned-up physicist Ernest Lawrence is pleading with Oppenheimer to keep leftist politics out of the classroom. Lawrence is played by the great Josh Hartnett, whose warm and welcome performance sets the tone for a film in which virtually every bit part has been cast with someone’s favorite actor: Benny Safdie, Josh Peck, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Alex Wolff, Dane DeHaan, “Gargoyles” auteur Kenneth Branagh, Macon Blair, Matthew Modine, and Olivia Thirlby are just a small sample of the names printed on what must have been the wildest call sheets in recent memory. 

It’s also 1947, and Oppenheimer is accepting a cushy Princeton job from Downey’s Salieri-like Strauss, who seethes at perceived slights from the giants before him as he watches his new hire make smalltalk with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti, just the right amount of silly). This is the rare scene that proves meaningfully enriched by Nolan’s color-coded approach to subjectivity, as Oppenheimer and Strauss turn out to have very different takeaways from the encounter. For the most part, however, the frequent shifting between color and black-and-white serves as a frustrating reminder of how little Nolan gets in return for this gambit. As the director of “Inception” must already know: If you need a glaring signpost to inform the audience they’re in a character’s head, they’re not really in a character’s head.

The test itself makes for an incredible setpiece, even if Nolan’s awesome pyrotechnics fail to capture the full horror of a bomb that was designed to be a spectacle of deterrence (the explosion feels unimpeachably realistic, and yet falls short of viscerally reconciling modern audiences to a horror that recent generations have tried to wish away). But the aftermath proves far more searing, as Oppenheimer is forced to relinquish control of his precious “gadget” and sit by the radio like everyone else in order to learn about what happened when it was deployed. It’s Schrödinger’s bomb. For one extraordinary moment in time, the destroyer of worlds is perfectly suspended between theory and execution, as Nolan’s shark-like storytelling slows down long enough for us to imagine the moral calculations that Oppenheimer must have been making in his head, and how weak he must have felt in the aftermath of harnessing such god-like might (contained as it is, few movies have so effectively conveyed the destructive power of ambitious men in small rooms). 

Murphy’s performance is every bit as inspired as his casting. He plays Oppenheimer as more of an artist than a physicist — as the rare man of science who God could mistake for a prophet — and the opening passages of Nolan’s film twitch and fulminate in response to that creative temperament. That effect is most palpable in the way that Murphy appears to dance on the bow tip of Ludwig Göransson’s Zimmer-worthy score, which is all mercurial violins and spooky action at a distance before that delicate touch is replaced by the cacophonous layers of sound that every Nolan film relies upon when its parallel storylines converge in the third act.

Nolan sympathetically addresses Oppenheimer’s discomfort with being hailed as a hero, and takes great pains to detail his subject’s even greater distress at realizing that he’ll never be able to put the atomic genie back in its bottle. “Who would want to justify their own life?,” someone asks, with the implicit understanding that none of us could. Nolan indicates time and again that Oppenheimer is powerless to understand the full meaning behind his actions (“Genius is no guarantee of wisdom,” one character offers), but the film is deeply afraid of sitting with the weight of that uncertainty. 

But it’s no great feat to rekindle our fear over the most abominable weapon ever designed by mankind, nor does that seem to be Nolan’s ultimate intention. Like “The Prestige” or “Interstellar” before it, “Oppenheimer” is a movie about the curse of being an emotional creature in a mathematical world. The difference here isn’t just the unparalleled scale of this movie’s tragedy, but also the unfamiliar sensation that Nolan himself is no less human than his characters.

Universal Pictures will release “Oppenheimer” in theaters on Friday, July 21.

Most Popular

You may also like.

to submit an obituary

To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to [email protected] . There is no option to place them through our website. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions.

General Information:

• Your full name,
• Address (City, State, Zip Code),
• Phone number,
• And an alternate phone number (if any)

Obituary Specification:

• Name of Deceased,
• Obituary Text,
• A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo.
• Ad Run dates
• There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply.
• If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information.

Verification of Death:

In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification.

Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours.

A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary.

Guestbook and Outside Websites:

We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter.

Obituary Process:

Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear.

Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines.

After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing.

All obituaries appear on TwinCities.com with a permanent online guestbook presence. If you wish to have the online presence removed, you can contact us to remove the guestbook online. Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions.

Payment Procedure:

Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents.

Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations

EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number.

Cash: Accepted at our FRONT COUNTER Monday – Friday from 8:00AM – 3:30PM

• The minimum charge is $162 for the first 10 lines.
• Every line after the first 10 is $12.20.
• If the ad is under 10 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162.
• On a second run date, the lines are $8.20 per line, starting w/ the first line.
• For example: if first run date was 20 lines the cost would be $164.
• Each photo published is $125 per day.
• For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500.

Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested.

MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST

Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries.

Please call or email us for more memoriam information

Please call 651-228-5280 for more information.

HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS)

Please submit your memoriam ad to [email protected] or call 651-228-5280.

Movies & TV | Review: Gloomy, repetitive ‘Oppenheimer’ is a,…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Submit to Stumbleupon (Opens in new window)

Today's Paper

Movies & TV

• Food & Drink
• Treasure Hunt

Things to Do

Subscriber only, movies & tv | review: gloomy, repetitive ‘oppenheimer’ is a, not the, bomb, despite terrific visuals, sound and acting, the film is tough to sit through.

Unless you're a devotee, you're going to wonder what's going on here.

Subscribe to continue reading this article.

Already subscribed to login in, click here., more in movies & tv.

Movies & TV | 10 movies for fall 2024: Our film picks and questions about everything from ‘Wicked I’ to ‘Joker II’

Movies & TV | TV for fall 2024: Our top 20 shows coming down the pike, including a hospital comedy from creator of ‘Superstore’

Movies & TV | ‘The Deliverance’ review: Lee Daniels’ supernatural thriller doesn’t deliver

High School Sports | Though retired from TV, Randy Shaver is still on the high school football beat

Movies & TV | ‘Pachinko’ returns with Season 2, a more muted but necessary chapter in the series

Movies & TV | ‘Sugarcane’ delves into horrific past at Indigenous boarding school

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘oppenheimer’ called the “best” and “most important film this century”.

Writer-director Paul Schrader offers some strong praise for Christopher Nolan's science epic.

By James Hibberd

James Hibberd

Writer-at-Large

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

The official review embargo for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer isn’t lifted until Wednesday, but writer-director Paul Schrader has some strong words about the World War II science epic.

Writing on Facebook, the Taxi Driver , Raging Bull and Last Temptation of Christ screenwriter called Oppenheimer : “The best, most important film of this century. If you see one film in cinemas this year it should be Oppenheimer . I’m not a Nolan groupie but this one blows the doors off the hinges.”

Related Stories

Jenna ortega says women should have their own franchises: "i don't want 'jamie bond'", netflix's 'perfect couple' trailer serves up wealth, death and nicole kidman.

Previous early reactions to the film coming out of its Paris world premiere earlier this month were also raves. Some samples:

Telegraph  film critic Robbie Collins wrote on Twitter : “Am torn between being all coy and mysterious about Oppenheimer and just coming out and saying it’s a total knockout that split my brain open like a twitchy plutonium nucleus and left me sobbing through the end credits like I can’t even remember what else.”

Total Film’ s Matt Maytum  tweeted , “ Oppenheimer left me stunned: a character study on the grandest scale, with a sublime central performance by Cillian Murphy. An epic historical drama but with a distinctly Nolan sensibility: the tension, structure, sense of scale, startling sound design, remarkable visuals. Wow.”

AP film  writer Lindsey Bahr wrote on Twitter : “Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is truly a spectacular achievement, in its truthful, concise adaptation, inventive storytelling and nuanced performances from Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon and the many, many others involved — some just for a scene. It’s hard to talk about something as dense as this in something as silly as a tweet or thread but Oppenheimer really is a serious, philosophical, adult drama that’s as tense and exciting as Dunkirk . And the big moment — THAT MOMENT — is awe inspiring.”

Oppenheimer opens July 21 and is expected to make about $40 to $49 million across its opening weekend. It’s head-to-head rival Barbie is anticipated to earn about $90 to $110 million.

Aaron Couch contributed to this report .

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

How rage — and laughter — inspired kaniehtiio horn’s directorial debut ‘seeds’, demi moore reveals she got shingles and “lost 20 pounds” while filming ‘the substance’, ‘and their children after them’ review: a deindustrialized town in the french provinces makes a vivid setting for a troubled coming-of-age, bts leader’s doc ‘rm: right people, wrong place’ to premiere at busan film festival, summer box office avoids major disaster as domestic revenue falls just 10 percent, daniel craig’s racy turn in luca guadagnino’s ‘queer’ earns raves at venice film festival with 9-minute standing ovation.

Get the Reddit app

The goal of /r/Movies is to provide an inclusive place for discussions and news about films with major releases. Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just to entertain readers. Read our extensive list of rules for more information on other types of posts like fan-art and self-promotion, or message the moderators if you have any questions.

Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' - Review Thread

Oppenheimer - Review Thread

Rotten Tomatoes : 93% (137 Reviews)

Critics Consensus : Oppenheimer marks another engrossing achievement from Christopher Nolan that benefits from Murphy's tour-de-force performance and stunning visuals.

Metacritic : 90 (49 Reviews)

Review Embargo Lifts at 9:00AM PT

Hollywood Reporter :

This is a big, ballsy, serious-minded cinematic event of a type now virtually extinct from the studios. It fully embraces the contradictions of an intellectual giant who was also a deeply flawed man, his legacy complicated by his own ambivalence toward the breakthrough achievement that secured his place in the history books.

From a man who has taken us into places movies rarely go with films like Interstellar, Inception, Tenet, Memento, the Dark Knight Trilogy, and a very different but equally effective look at World War II in Dunkirk, I think it would be fair to say Oppenheimer could be Christopher Nolan’s most impressive achievement to date. I have heard it described by one person as a lot of scenes with men sitting around talking. Indeed in another interation Nolan could have turned this into a play, but this is a movie, and if there is a lot of “talking”, well he has invested in it such a signature cinematic and breathtaking sense of visual imagery that you just may be on the edge of your seat the entire time.

“Oppenheimer” tacks on a trendy doomsday message about how the world was destroyed by nuclear weapons. But if Oppenheimer, in his way, made the bomb all about him, by that point it’s Nolan and his movie who are doing the same thing.

IGN (10/10):

A biopic in constant free fall, Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s most abstract yet most exacting work, with themes of guilt writ-large through apocalyptic IMAX nightmares that grow both more enormous and more intimate as time ticks on. A disturbing, mesmerizing vision of what humanity is capable of bringing upon itself, both through its innovation, and through its capacity to justify any atrocity.

IndieWire (B):

But it’s no great feat to rekindle our fear over the most abominable weapon ever designed by mankind, nor does that seem to be Nolan’s ultimate intention. Like “The Prestige” or “Interstellar” before it, “Oppenheimer” is a movie about the curse of being an emotional creature in a mathematical world. The difference here isn’t just the unparalleled scale of this movie’s tragedy, but also the unfamiliar sensation that Nolan himself is no less human than his characters.

Total Film (5/5):

With espionage subtexts and gallows humour also interwoven, the film’s cumulative power is matched by the potency of Nolan’s questioning. Possibly the most viscerally intense experience you’ll have in a cinema this year, the Trinity test in particular arrives fraught with uncertainty. Might the test inadvertently spark the world’s end? Well, it didn’t - yet. Even as Oppenheimer grips in the moment, Nolan ensures the aftershocks of its story reverberate down the years, speaking loudly to today.

Collider (A):

Oppenheimer is a towering achievement not just for Nolan, but for everyone involved. It is the kind of film that makes you appreciative of every aspect of filmmaking, blowing you away with how it all comes together in such a fitting fashion. Even though Nolan is honing in on talents that have brought him to where he is today, this film takes this to a whole new level of which we've never seen him before. With Oppenheimer , Nolan is more mature as a filmmaker than ever before, and it feels like we may just now be beginning to see what incredible work he’s truly capable of making.

USA Today :

Stylistically, “Oppenheimer” recalls Oliver Stone's "JFK" in the way it weaves together important history and significant side players, and while it doesn't hit the same emotional notes as Nolan's inspired "Interstellar," the film succeeds as both character study and searing cautionary tale about taking science too far. Characters from yesteryear worry about nervously pushing a fateful button and setting the world on fire, although Nolan drives home the point that fiery existential threat could reignite any time now.

Chicago Times (4/4):

Magnificent. Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical biopic Oppenheimer is a gorgeously photographed, brilliantly acted, masterfully edited and thoroughly engrossing epic that instantly takes its place among the finest films of this decade.

Empire (5/5):

A masterfully constructed character study from a great director operating on a whole new level. A film that you don’t merely watch, but must reckon with.

ComicBook.com (4/5):

Trades the spectacle of Nolan's previous films for a stellar cast that turns the thrills inwards, making for what is arguably the most important film of his career.

The Guardian (4/5):

In the end, Nolan shows us how the US’s governing class couldn’t forgive Oppenheimer for making them lords of the universe, couldn’t tolerate being in the debt of this liberal intellectual. Oppenheimer is poignantly lost in the kaleidoscopic mass of broken glimpses: the sacrificial hero-fetish of the American century.

Los Angeles Times:

That might be a rare failing of this extraordinarily gripping and resonant movie, or it could be a minor mercy. Whatever you feel for Oppenheimer at movie’s end — and I felt a great deal — his tragedy may still be easier to contemplate than our own.

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer

Emily Blunt as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer

Matt Damon as Leslie Groves

Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss

Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock

Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence

Casey Affleck as Boris Pash

Rami Malek as David Hill

Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr

Benny Safdie as Edward Teller

Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer

Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe

David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi

Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush

David Dastmalchian as William L. Borden

Tom Conti as Albert Einstein

Michael Angarano as Robert Serber

Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman

Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge

Olivia Thirlby as Lilli Hornig

Dane DeHaan as Kenneth Nichols

Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi

Alden Ehrenreich as a Senate aide

Jefferson Hall as Haakon Chevalier

Jason Clarke as Roger Robb

James D'Arcy as Patrick Blackett

Tony Goldwyn as Gordon Gray

Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer

Alex Wolff as Luis Walter Alvarez

Scott Grimes as Counsel

Josh Zuckerman as Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz

Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg

Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs

David Rysdahl as Donald Hornig

Guy Burnet as George Eltenton

Louise Lombard as Ruth Tolman

Harrison Gilbertson as Philip Morrison

Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer

Trond Fausa Aurvåg as George Kistiakowsky

Olli Haaskivi as Edward Condon

Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman

John Gowans as Ward Evans

Kurt Koehler as Thomas A. Morgan

Macon Blair as Lloyd Garrison

Harry Groener as Gale W. McGee

Jack Cutmore-Scott as Lyall Johnson

James Remar as Henry Stimson

Gregory Jbara as Warren Magnuson

Tim DeKay as John Pastore

James Urbaniak as Kurt Gödel

By continuing, you agree to our User Agreement and acknowledge that you understand the Privacy Policy .

Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app

You’ve set up two-factor authentication for this account.

Enter a 6-digit backup code

Create your username and password.

Reddit is anonymous, so your username is what you’ll go by here. Choose wisely—because once you get a name, you can’t change it.

Reset your password

Enter your email address or username and we’ll send you a link to reset your password

Check your inbox

An email with a link to reset your password was sent to the email address associated with your account

Choose a Reddit account to continue

More From Forbes

Critic’s review: ‘oppenheimer’ is a hot mess.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Summer movie season heats up this weekend with the arrival of Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer , adapted from the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. But while there’s much to appreciate and plenty to praise, the sum is a hot mess.

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Cillian Murphy in a scene from "Oppenheimer." ... [+] (Universal Pictures via AP)

Nolan’s three-hour R-rated historical drama is squarely focused on adult audiences, mostly men, and opens against pop culture sensation Barbie and returning box office champion Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One . The runtime means less screenings per day, but Oppenheimer has exclusive access to IMAX for several weeks, and trends show we currently lack enough premium theaters to meet high audience demand. So, the three-hour length is somewhat mitigated by the larger number of — and longer run in — IMAX locations.

Barbie looks to top $150+ million worldwide through Sunday, while Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is expected to finish somewhere near $400+/- million in global receipts after its sophomore weekend. Oppenheimer , meanwhile, is looking at right around $100 million.

Older-skewing films have struggled lately, for the most part, especially tentpoles. Already this year, Disney’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had a tough time appealing outside of its narrow target demos, and The Flash — which counted in part on nostalgic appeal for Michael Keaton’s return as Batman — was a disaster for Warner Bros. Discovery. Other high-profile 2023 films targeted mostly to adult audiences, such as 80 For Brady and Book Club: The Next Chapter , likewise had difficulty winning over viewers.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024.

Even Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , which is performing well and earned a series-best opening, still came in under expectations and needs a good hold this weekend to prove it can sustain a long-legged run and benefit from generous international returns like its predecessors.

So we’ll see whether Oppenheimer can please its target audience enough to earn good enough word of mouth to drive strong business and break into other demographics besides primarily middle-aged white men.

With a film this long and of this sort, everything relies heavily on word of mouth and reviews. If reviews are bad, it needs overwhelmingly great word of mouth to do better than just a respectable first wave of audiences on opening weekend.

If reviews are good, it needs at least very good audience word of mouth to overcome the portion of potential viewers who do care about buzz and reviews, who will show up at theaters this weekend and ask themselves, “What will I see? Hmm, which one is supposed to be good?” and recall what they heard from friends/family and what they saw on Rotten Tomatoes.

Luckily for Nolan and Universal Pictures, so far reviews are highly positive. The Cinemascore will tell us how audiences feel, and the combo of the two should paint a fairly clear picture at least for the short term. A B+ grade will suggest weak support in its most enthusiastic viewers — opening weekend fans and those who show up because they were inspired by the buzz and marketing — and thus I’d expect a disappointing overall showing for the film at the end of its box office run.

An A or A+ is what everyone involved in the picture most wants to hear, and would suggest a run similar perhaps to Nolan’s previous picture Dunkirk , another historic true story that earned widespread acclaim and is the filmmaker’s greatest achievement to date.

A grade of A- is the hardest to parse here, as it could swing either way and would largely depend on how international audiences react to the picture. I suspect it will perform well in certain countries, far worse in others, and might not even screen in some markets.

For now, it’s hard for me to say where I think the results will wind up, because my reaction to Oppenheimer is different from most other critics, apparently.

Oppenheimer is ambitious and includes many mesmerizing, often brilliant moments, but those moments cannot sustain themselves nor find common ground as a single compelling narrative or perspective. Despite seemingly global and even cosmic themes, it winds up feeling decidedly contained and restricted, eyes cast downward, abandoning any visionary search for higher meaning behind the processes of science or politics.

The marketing implies this is the story of the USA’s creation of the atomic bomb during World War II, and much mystery and buzz surrounds how Nolan depicts the eventual successful test of the atom bomb. Which would indeed have been a great story to tell, especially with hints that Nolan’s movie was a sort of “mad scientist” version of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the bomb. And in certain moments — far too few and largely restricted to brief early scenes , as it turns out — the film takes on an expressionist, surrealist quality when giving us early glimpses into Oppenheimer’s fascination with quantum theory and its implications.

However, while it’s technically true that the film contains and returns constantly to a generally clinical presentation of scientific highlight moments during the creation of secretive Los Alamos, the main stories are not the bomb. Los Alamos is the backdrop against which the three main stories are told — his romantic life and affairs, the post-war attempts by his enemies to get his security clearance revoked, and an even later period of time when Lewis Strauss faced Congressional hearings to confirm him for a presidential cabinet position and his history of collaboration and conflict with Oppenheimer was a central focus.

Too much screen time (relatively speaking) is dedicated to either Oppenheimer’s romantic and sexual relationships, in which women are portrayed as unreasonable, histrionic, mentally ill, and/or incapable of appreciating/accepting the demands and pressures he was under. Even the few women in the cast who aren’t Oppenheimer’s romantic interests or affairs — specifically, women on the team at Los Alamos — get little to say or are used to present positions and assertions framed as naive or overly simplistic compared against the turmoil and more complicated, serious considerations and burdens of “the great man.”

It feels like a series of “this happened, and then this happened,” scenes collecting events from his life to form some sort of collage, with the parts then mixed into random orders and competing stories, all represented in different ways — more modern moments are black and white, older events in traditional “dramatic period piece” style, and mid-era events a starker almost sizzling representation of 1960s or 1970s newsreel.

I can appreciate using different approaches to distinguish different eras and/or to try to fit the feel of those particular times, but it feels like either the decisions were made at random or — and I’m not sure if this would be better or worse, depending on how much you do or don’t agree with any of the film’s various competing perspectives — to intentionally present Strauss’ storyline in absolute black-and-white terms, present the hearings against Oppenheimer as conspiratorial and too literally glaring in their hypocrisy, and to present the Los Alamos backstory in a gentler, reverent manner.

Perhaps Nolan’s attempt here is to create a cinematic representation of Oppenheimer’s life story that replicates quantum theory in certain regards — mixing up the timelines and jumping between them unequally and unpredictably (including because the editing is at times clipped and jarring), using varying and contrasting color and photographic techniques, switching between his more straightforward classic filmmaking approaches and almost experimental methods of photography and sound and editing (especially in the first act, and then later during a few climactic bomb-related sequences), and having storylines that converge and diverge sometimes in sync and other times at random.

Is this Nolan’s expression of time existing at all moments simultaneously, so to speak? Is this how the chaos and confusion and mystery of quantum theory looks when distilled through artistry of filmmaking and representing someone who dedicated their life to quantum pursuits?

Hard to say, because if not then he merely adapted a biography and attempted to include too many threads that each might’ve held its own appeal but which don’t fit together well in the form he’s created here, which would be a failure of adaptation.

If so, though, then he attempted to adapt a biography by including so many threads that each held its own appeal and which fit together haphazardly and chaotically on the screen but which are still all part of the same lived life, and all of this chaos and all of those various threads are part of the larger story revolving around the central axis that is the introduction of nuclear weapons to our world.

That this is both a remarkable scientific achievement and a potential guarantee that humanity is doomed, then, would speak profoundly to the issues that plagued Oppenheimer in this telling and represent humanity’s nature to make miraculous discoveries and then learn all of the wrong lessons from them.

Sadly, Oppenheimer doesn’t rise to the occasion in the latter regard, if that was the intent. And the biggest problem is that none of the rest of the story — especially the shallow presentation of his affairs, a related tragedy, and the much-reported sex scenes and nudity — are frankly remotely as interesting as the Los Alamos stuff. Every few scenes at Los Alamos, the story suddenly jumps to either the small room in which Oppenheimer is subjected to hours of questioning and character assassination, or a large Congressional chamber where we witness questions and answers during the confirmation process.

How much time do you think you want to spend watching a detailed cinematic rendering of either of those things? Well, your answer better be, “Hours of both!” because that’s what Oppenheimer has in store for you.

The sex and nudity is both grossly overstated in the media, and yet also totally unnecessary to the point those scenes not only add nothing to the film or our understanding of Oppenheimer — or the relationships, or the subtexts, literally nothing is served by the nudity or sex scenes. Indeed, during one scene of nudity and sex, the audience openly laughed at the unintentionally humorous absurdity of the moment.

If you were to break up Oppenheimer into three distinct parts (as you easily could), each of the three — Los Alamos, the security clearance investigation, and the Congressional confirmation hearings — each feels like it could and perhaps should be its own film, or own chapter in a longer miniseries. And each storyline feels as if it were made by a different filmmaker with different ideas and intentions.

If Oliver Stones’ film JFK had lacked a singular focused narrative point and perspective, if it focused mostly on exposition during meetings and instead of a sweeping narrative felt constrained and so grounded it seemed to be wearing lead shoes, if the more experimental moments were exaggerated even more, and if it was comprised of the most boring scenes and often the least relevant. And imagine if it has sex and nudity but as clinical, cold, and emotionless as possible, not to mention out of place and unnecessary to the point of distraction — the hero and his wife discussing the case except they’re naked, or having sex but they’re also in court.

The film’s political sensibilities are also all over the map, seeming at times to represent one perspective only to shrug it off in favor of something else, yet all the while insisting to have no perspective at all really. It’s not even necessary the lack of particular position so much as the disinterested vacillating that’s really the problem.

The end result is a film that wants us to sense its importance right from the start, and which constantly tries to remind us of its high-minded history and implications that include nothing less than an existential threat to human existence, but which feels like it says very little and means none of it. It’s a movie about Oppenheimer and several things that happened to him, some of it engrossing, some of it interesting enough for a magazine article, and much of it not worth paying to sit through three hours to experience.

All of those complaints said, the performances are spectacular. Cillian Murphy absolutely deserves Oscar consideration, and Robert Downey Jr. is so masterful you can literally forget you're watching one of the most famous and recognizable stars of the modern era. Emily Blunt deserved far more chances to shine in the film, but when she finally gets the opportunity she delivers one of the film's most satisfying emotional moments (of which there are very few). Matt Damon has fun and provides welcome humor at times, while Florence Pugh does her utmost with a role too thinly written and uncompromising in its painfully accusatory portrayal.

Any given scene might be good or even great, many extended sequences are wonderfully realized, and it almost always looks gorgeous. But Oppenheimer underwhelms, from its overall inability to tell a coherent story to its lack of reason for us to invest in any of these people’s personal stories. The atomic test, which should be one of the highlights at least visually and emotionally, is mostly just the trailer shots except longer, and as soon as the sequence ended I was perplexed and wondered, “Was that it?”

Not that I just wanted a big CGI nuclear explosion — I understand what this film is meant to be and I know all of the arguments and points made about how and why war and destruction and armageddon shouldn’t be casually treated as entertainment, and why a would-be morality tale shouldn’t glamorize or glorify nuclear holocaust as an “achievement.” But the moment, including actual restored and enhanced footage, could and should easily convey the dread and large-scale impression of absolute extinction — and the reactions of Oppenheimer and others witnessing it — can add to these themes (the film includes a few nods in this direction post-test, just not as much as I expected). This is the central moment of Oppenheimer’s life, it’s why we speak his name today and why this movie exists and why his warning reverberate. So I just feel it should’ve been a more central moment in the film, instead of getting less screen time than and roughly equal emotional representation as his love life.

I am a huge fan of Nolan’s work, regardless of whatever criticisms I’ve offered over the years. I fully expected Oppenheimer to blow me away and be one of my favorite films of the year. I imagined it would be on my top 10 list for 2023 and one of the primary contenders on my list of Best Picture nominees. Instead, I’m disappointed and would have a tough time sitting through Oppenheimer again.

Oppenheimer is Nolan’s weakest film to date, and a sharp contrast to his perfectly ambitious and complex vision in Dunkirk. Still, if getting Dunkirk , Interstellar , and Inception means we sometimes get flawed efforts like Oppenheimer that might include glimpses of greatness, then I’m forever grateful he keeps reaching.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.