leomessiculer

I was expecting a lot from this movie with the way people were talking about it. I left the theater disappointed.

First off, amazing cinematography, color grading, and infrastructure. Joe Kosinski really knows how to shoot action. You can tell they spent a lot of money on this movie. Some good humor here and there, too.

But it all quickly goes downhill. Absolutely no realism in terms of racing; one team getting 12-odd DNFs in 9 races, 'Plan C' should have received multiple black-and-white flags, physics just doesn't work, and penalties for rash driving don't exist. This seemed like more of a guide on how to crash your car than a movie worthy of its title.

Worst of all is the story itself. By Hollywood standards, it's very, very average, maybe slightly above. The shallow attempt at actually creating a story... just no. This movie was filmed in a way that told me it wanted to scream 'action' all the way. Why include the romance between Sonny and Kate? It was completely nonsensical and unentertaining.

The biggest positive: I came to the theater to watch a movie. I left with 16 new songs for my playlist. Hans Zimmer never misses, and Don Toliver and Doja Cat didn't either. The only bad part about the music was its complete underutilization. Other than Lose My Mind, every song was played for no longer than 30 seconds.

The unexplained hype for winning a GP in a place where it made no impact was the absolute best way to sum up this movie: aimless but filled with action. Still worth a one-time watch, though.

All 6 stars for the racing. Nothing for strategy.

Before this movie, I had never heard of Matthew McConaughey (never got the chance to watch The Wolf of Wall Street). Or Jessica Chastain. In my eyes, there were no big names on this project. And every single one of them blew me away. Profound acting, deep emotions, action, intensity, betrayal, tension, brilliant score, amazing cinematography. Interstellar has it all.

I have no words. I was hooked for all 2h 50m. Worth watching again, and again, and again. Christopher Nolan at his absolute best.

Absolutely brilliant cinematography (for the mood) and screenwriting, very thorough with the content of Oppenheimer's career. A brilliant adaptation of his life - the way it's been transformed into this story was mesmerizing. Speech was impactful, perspectives and color grading on point, and score amazing beyond words. And Cillian Murphy was simply brilliant.

The movie does, however, lack in some places. Firstly, during the stage of Los Alamos and the development of the atomic bomb, I saw that Oppenheimer goes from the main character, a crucial character in the world of quantum physics, to somewhat of a side character, with little involvement in actually making the bomb. His leadership to the project cannot be denied; the story being told is what actually happened. His contributions to the project in terms of physics were not large. He was definitely more involved than what was depicted, though. His main addition was switching from a gun-type assembly to the implosion model, which was highlighted well. Although this part of the movie remains true to history, it doesn't make for much of a great story with this abrupt change and the way it's presented.

Secondly, a careless oversight - the effects of radiation are almost never spoken about or considered during development and testing in the movie. A short string of its effects are shown in a scene where Oppenheimer is giving his victory speech, but they are never really considered in as much detail as the rest of the development stages. This makes for somewhat of an uneven progression in the storyline.

Thirdly, the most common complaint, pacing. I've watched other movies longer than 160 minutes that have been engaging all the way until the end, so it's not just the fact that it's 3 hours long. Heck, even MI: 8 was miles better than this movie in terms of its pacing; I was hooked for the whole 2 hours and 50 minutes. Many parts of Oppenheimer were stretched out way longer than they needed to be. It made for a well-structured film, but simply too long and at times monotonous. Especially after Trinity is completed and the focus moves to Strauss and Oppenheimer's hearing, it seems as though the talking never ends. Questions asked in the same tone with little variation. Answers given with uncertainty over and over. The last hour of the movie is doing little but adding information in the manner a textbook would.

Lastly, and probably most insignificant, the classic court trial or hearing setting used to tell the entirety of a story. It's extremely overused in the industry and I feel it just doesn't fit this scenario well. This was probably one of the reasons for the movie dragging on so long.

Overall, though, this movie presents a strong base with a brilliant story. It will leave you asking questions, maybe even sending you down a rabbit hole. That's just how thought-provoking it is. Definitely not worth struggling to watch this more than once, though. More of a well-written documentary than the 'movie' I expected.

The issues presented don't have a large enough impact for me to give Oppenheimer a bad rating; it's still around a 7.3 or a 7.4 for me, rounding up to an 8/10.