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For all the pre-release speculation about how analog epic-maker Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" would re-create the explosion of the first atomic bomb, the film's most spectacular attraction turns out to be something else: the human face. 

This three-plus hour biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer ( Cillian Murphy ) is a film about faces. They talk, a lot. They listen. They react to good and bad news. And sometimes they get lost in their own heads—none more so than the title character, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons team at Los Alamos whose apocalyptic contribution to science earned him the nickname The American Prometheus (as per the title of Nolan's primary source, the biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherman). Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema use the large-format IMAX film system not merely to capture the splendor of New Mexico's desert panoramas but contrast the external coolness and internal turmoil of Oppenheimer, a brilliant mathematician and low-key showman and leader whose impulsive nature and insatiable sexual appetites made his private life a disaster, and whose greatest contribution to civilization was a weapon that could destroy it. Close-up after close-up shows star Cillian Murphy's face staring into the middle distance, off-screen, and sometimes directly into the lens, while Oppenheimer dissociates from unpleasant interactions, or gets lost inside memories, fantasies, and waking nightmares. "Oppenheimer" rediscovers the power of huge closeups of people's faces as they grapple with who they are, and who other people have decided that they are, and what they've done to themselves and others. 

Sometimes the close-ups of people's faces are interrupted by flash-cuts of events that haven't happened, or already happened. There are recurring images of flame, debris, and smaller chain-reaction explosions that resemble strings of firecrackers, as well as non-incendiary images that evoke other awful, personal disasters. (There are a lot of gradually expanding flashbacks in this film, where you see a glimpse of something first, then a bit more of it, and then finally the entire thing.) But these don't just relate to the big bomb that Oppenheimer's team hopes to detonate in the desert, or the little ones that are constantly detonating in Oppenheimer's life, sometimes because he personally pushed the big red button in a moment of anger, pride or lust, and other times because he made a naive or thoughtless mistake that pissed somebody off long ago, and the wronged person retaliated with the equivalent of a time-delayed bomb. The "fissile" cutting, to borrow a physics word, is also a metaphor for the domino effect caused by individual decisions, and the chain reaction that makes other things happen as a result. This principle is also visualized by repeated images of ripples in water, starting with the opening closeup of raindrops setting off expanding circles on the surface that foreshadow both the ending of Oppenheimer's career as a government advisor and public figure and the explosion of the first nuke at Los Alamos (which observers see, then hear, then finally feel, in all its awful impact). 

The weight of the film's interests and meanings are carried by faces—not just Oppenheimer's, but those of other significant characters, including General Leslie Groves ( Matt Damon ), Los Alamos' military supervisor; Robert's suffering wife Kitty Oppenheimer ( Emily Blunt ), whose tactical mind could have averted a lot of disasters if her husband would have only listened; and Lewis Strauss ( Robert Downey , Jr.), the Atomic Energy Commission chair who despised Oppenheimer for a lot of reasons, including his decision to distance himself from his Jewish roots, and who spent several years trying to derail Oppenheimer's post-Los Alamos career. The latter constitutes its own adjacent full-length story about pettiness, mediocrity, and jealousy. Strauss is Salieri to Oppenheimer's Mozart, regularly and often pathetically reminding others that he studied physics, too, back in the day, and that he's a good person, unlike Oppenheimer the adulterer and communist sympathizer. (This film asserts that Strauss leaked the FBI file on his progressive and communist associations to a third party who then wrote to the bureau's director, J. Edgar Hoover.)

The film speaks quite often of one of the principles of quantum physics, which holds that observing quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the results of this experiment. The editing illustrates it by constantly re-framing our perception of an event to change its meaning, and the script does it by adding new information that undermines, contradicts, or expands our sense of why a character did something, or whether they even knew why they did it. 

That, I believe, is really what "Oppenheimer" is about, much more so than the atom bomb itself, or even its impact on the war and the Japanese civilian population, which is talked about but never shown. The film does show what the atom bomb does to human flesh, but it's not recreations of the actual attacks on Japan: the agonized Oppenheimer imagines Americans going through it. This filmmaking decision is likely to antagonize both viewers who wanted a more direct reckoning with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those who have bought into the arguments advanced by Strauss and others that the bombs had to be dropped because Japan never would have surrendered otherwise. The movie doesn't indicate whether it thinks that interpretation is true or if it sides more with Oppenheimer and others who insisted that Japan was on its knees by that point in World War II and would have eventually given up without atomic attacks that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. No, this is a film that permits itself the freedoms and indulgences of novelists, poets, and opera composers. It does what we expect it to do: Dramatize the life of Oppenheimer and other historically significant people in his orbit in an aesthetically daring way while also letting all of the characters and all of the events be used metaphorically and symbolically as well, so that they become pointillistic elements in a much larger canvas that's about the mysteries of the human personality and the unforeseen impact of decisions made by individuals and societies.

This is another striking thing about "Oppenheimer." It's not entirely about Oppenheimer even though Murphy's baleful face and haunting yet opaque eyes dominate the movie. It's also about the effect of Oppenheimer's personality and decisions on other people, from the other strong-willed members of his atom bomb development team (including Benny Safdie's Edwin Teller, who wanted to skip ahead to create the much more powerful hydrogen bomb, and eventually did) to the beleaguered Kitty; Oppenheimer's mistress Jean Tatlock ( Florence Pugh , who has some of Gloria Grahame's self-immolating smolder); General Groves, who likes Oppenheimer in spite of his arrogance but isn't going to side with him over the United States government; and even Harry Truman, the US president who ordered the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (played in a marvelous cameo by Gary Oldman ) and who derides Oppenheimer as a naive and narcissistic "crybaby" who sees history mainly in terms of his own feelings.

Jennifer Lame's editing is prismatic and relentless, often in a faintly Terrence Malick -y way, skipping between three or more time periods within seconds. It's wedded to virtually nonstop music by  Ludwig Göransson  that fuses with the equally relentless dialogue and monologues to create an odd but distinctive sort of scientifically expository aria that's probably what it would feel like to read American Prometheus  while listening to a playlist of  Philip Glass film scores. Non-linear movies like this one do a better job of capturing the pinball-machine motions of human consciousness than linear movies do, and they also capture what it's like to read a third-person omniscient book (or a biography that permits itself to imagine what its subjects might have been thinking or feeling). It also paradoxically captures the mental process of reading a text and responding to it emotionally and viscerally as well as intellectually. The mind stays anchored to the text. But it also jumps outside of it, connecting the text to other texts, to external knowledge, and to one's own experience and imaginings.

This review hasn't delved into the plot of the film or the real-world history that inspired it, not because it isn't important (of course it is) but because—as is always the case with Nolan—the main attraction is not the tale but the telling. Nolan has been derided as less a dramatist than half showman, half mathematician, making bombastic, overcomplicated blockbusters that are as much puzzles as stories. But whether that characterization was true (and I'm increasingly convinced it never entirely was) it seems beside the point when you see how thoughtfully and rewardingly it's been applied to a biography of a real person. "Oppenheimer" could retrospectively seem like a turning point in the director's filmography, when he takes all of the stylistic and technical practices that he'd been honing for the previous twenty years in intellectualized pulp blockbusters and turns them inward.

The movie is an academic-psychedelic biography in the vein of those 1990s Oliver Stone films that were edited within an inch of their lives (at times it's as if the park bench scene in " JFK " had been expanded to three hours). There's also a strain of pitch-black humor, in a Stanley Kubrick  mode, as when top government officials meet to go over a list of possible Japanese cities to bomb, and the man reading the list says that he just made an executive decision to delete Kyoto from it because he and his wife honeymooned there. (The Kubrick connection is cemented further by the presence of "Full Metal Jacket" star  Matthew Modine , who co-stars as American engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush.) It’s an example of top-of-the-line, studio-produced popular art with a dash of swagger, variously evoking Michael Mann's " The Insider ," late-period Terrence Malick, nonlinearly-edited art cinema touchstones like "Hiroshima Mon Amour," "The Pawnbroker," "All That Jazz" and " Picnic at Hanging Rock "; and, inevitably, " Citizen Kane " (there's even a Rosebud-like mystery surrounding what Oppenheimer and his hero Albert Einstein, played by Tom Conti , talked about on the banks of a Princeton pond). 

Most of the performances have a bit of an "old movie" feeling, with the actors snapping off their lines and not moving their faces as much as they would in a more modern story. A lot of the dialogue is delivered quickly, producing a screwball comedy energy. This comes through most strongly in the arguments between Robert and Kitty about his sexual indiscretions and refusal to listen to her mostly superb advice; the more abstract debates about power and responsibility between Robert and General Groves, and the scenes between Strauss and a Senate aide (Alden Ehrenreich) who is advising him as he testifies before a committee that he hopes will approve him to serve in President Dwight Eisenhower's cabinet.

But as a physical experience, "Oppenheimer" is something else entirely—it's hard to say exactly what, and that's what's so fascinating about it. I've already heard complaints that the movie is "too long," that it could've ended with the first bomb detonating, and could've done without the bits about Oppenheimer's sex life and the enmity of Strauss, and that it's perversely self-defeating to devote so much of the running time, including the most of the third hour, to a pair of governmental hearings: the one where Oppenheimer tries to get his security clearance renewed, and Strauss trying to get approved for Eisenhower's cabinet. But the film's furiously entropic tendencies complement the theoretical discussions of the how's and why's of the individual and collective personality. To greater and lesser degrees, all of the characters are appearing before a tribunal and bring called to account for their contradictions, hypocrisies, and sins. The tribunal is out there in the dark. We've been given the information but not told what to decide, which is as it should be.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Oppenheimer (2023)

Rated R for some sexuality, nudity and language.

181 minutes

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer

Emily Blunt as Katherine 'Kitty' Oppenheimer

Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves Jr.

Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss

Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock

Benny Safdie as Edward Teller

Michael Angarano as Robert Serber

Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence

Rami Malek as David Hill

Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr

Dane DeHaan as Kenneth Nichols

Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer

David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi

Alden Ehrenreich as Senate Aide

Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush

Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman

Alex Wolff as Luis Walter Alvarez

Casey Affleck as Boris Pash

Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman

Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer

Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg

David Dastmalchian as William L. Borden

Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs

Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge

Tony Goldwyn as Gordon Gray

Olivia Thirlby as Lilli Hornig

James Remar as Henry Stimson

• Christopher Nolan

Writer (based on the book by)

• Martin Sherwin

Cinematographer

• Hoyte van Hoytema
• Jennifer Lame
• Ludwig Göransson

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‘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.

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‘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.

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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.

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Oppenheimer review: Christopher Nolan's powerful, timely masterpiece deserves the biggest screens

Surrounded by a deep cast of passionate actors, Cillian Murphy gives an astounding performance as the "father of the atomic bomb."

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

Like the brilliant scientist it takes as its subject, Oppenheimer arrives at a crucial moment in history. At a time when almost every big-budget Hollywood movie (including its opening weekend rival, Barbie ) is drawn from corporate intellectual property, Oppenheimer is an unapologetically brainy movie with great actors playing real people, a true story with important details many viewers will be learning for the first time, and which, despite its roots in reality, feels massive and worthy of director Christopher Nolan 's beloved IMAX screen.

As the title makes clear, this movie is about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb." For most of the three-hour runtime, Nolan places the viewer inside Oppenheimer's prodigious brain. We see the world as this theoretical physicist did, meaning the action is often interrupted by incredible visions of subatomic particles and cosmic fire. Yet Oppenheimer also has aspects of a memory play, or at least an exhaustive biography cut up and shuffled around. Even more than Nolan's previous film, Tenet , Oppenheimer flits about in time, effortlessly moving in and out of different events that took place across several decades, drawing connections that are logical but far from linear.

Embodying the man at the center of this universe, the constant in this shifting sea of science and history, is therefore no easy task — but Cillian Murphy rises to the challenge with an absolutely absorbing performance. Murphy has been working with Nolan for years, often in key supporting roles such as the villainous Scarecrow in Batman Begins and the primary target of Inception 's dream heist. But the actor has proved his leading-man bona fides elsewhere (most recently in the long-running Netflix crime series Peaky Blinders ) and finally brings that side of his skillset home to Nolan. No question, the close-ups on Murphy's face as Oppenheimer thinks through the 20th century's thorniest problems are as compelling as the film's atomic explosions, and as deserving of the biggest screen possible.

But just as Oppenheimer, for all his world-historical genius, could only accomplish his great feat because he was surrounded by many other brilliant thinkers, so is Murphy supported by a galaxy of top-notch actors. Matt Damon brings his movie-star charisma to General Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project whose gruff charms obscures his ulterior motives.

Robert Downey Jr . plays Lewis Strauss, Oppenheimer's rival for control over postwar nuclear policy, and uses his own considerable acting powers to carve out a sizable portion of the film for himself. Strauss' strategy meetings amidst contentious 1959 Senate hearings over his cabinet nomination are the only scenes not set from Oppenheimer's direct perspective, signified both by their black-and-white color grading and Downey's domination of the screen. Downey was one of the most popular and influential American movie stars of the 2010s, but through some mixture of pandemic-era delays and post-Marvel malaise, it's been years since we've seen him in top form. Watching Downey give such a meaty big-screen performance again is not an opportunity to be squandered — especially considering the meta resonance of Downey and Nolan, who each played foundational roles in the rise of the modern superhero blockbuster, collaborating on a film about an inventor feeling ambivalent about his great creation.

Other standouts from Oppenheimer 's deep bench include David Krumholtz, following up his recent heartbreaking Broadway performance in Tom Stoppard's Leopoldstadt with a key turn here as physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi. Krumholtz brings an important sense of Jewish experience to a movie whose protagonist (a Jewish person, played by an Irish actor) is constantly talking about the need to build the atomic bomb before the Nazis do. Rabi is more skeptical: "I don't want decades of physics to culminate in a bomb."

Another Jewish critic of the supposedly anti-Nazi atomic bomb is Albert Einstein, whom Tom Conti plays with the levity of an old legend who has seen the world transformed by his greatest accomplishment (the theory of relativity) in a way he does not care for. By the time the film ends, Oppenheimer will understand how he feels. After all, the atomic bomb was ultimately not used to defeat the Nazis, but to incinerate Japanese civilians.

The Manhattan Project was mostly a boys' club, as many of Nolan's past movies have been. Of all the criticisms the highly-successful director has attracted throughout his career, the stickiest is that his female characters are often "dead wives," whose ghostly after-images serve merely as motivation for the male protagonists. But Emily Blunt 's Kitty Oppenheimer is defiantly alive, in spite of the worldwide crises of the '30s and '40s. Far from the archetype of a "devoted wife," Kitty is not shy about expressing her frustrations with motherhood or her dissatisfaction with politics. Blunt is a great partner for Murphy in their scenes together: bringing him down to Earth when he's off in the clouds, reminding him to fight when he seems content to let history wash over him.

The other primary female character in the film, Jean Tatlock, is played by Florence Pugh . The rising star feels a bit out of place standing alongside her older and more experienced costars, but Pugh brings Oppenheimer a heaping helping of sex and politics — two sides of life that have often been missing from Nolan's earlier films. Tatlock was a committed communist, and attended several party meetings alongside Oppenheimer (who was disturbed by the rise of genocidal Nazism and wanted to support the anti-fascist Republicans in the Spanish Civil War).

The film's attention to political history contributes to its sense of timeliness. Here is a summer blockbuster whose characters vigorously discuss the importance of labor unions and anti-fascist organizing, arriving just as Hollywood's real-life unions are walking picket lines. (The stars even left the film's glitzy premiere as soon as the SAG-AFTRA strike began .) Though viewers might expect Oppenheimer to climax with the Trinity Test at Los Alamos (which is indeed spectacular ), the film spends a final hour exploring the 1954 closed-door hearing where Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked for his ties to communists. Standing in for the McCarthyite era at large, these scenes demonstrate how despite the Allied victory over the fascists, the use of Oppenheimer's atomic bomb empowered reactionaries at home to betray the very people who made their victory possible.

Content meets form here. Oppenheimer is full of heady topics like quantum mechanics and political history, which few viewers will consider themselves experts on. But the film explains these ideas in ways more creative than the exposition dumps of Inception or the just-roll-with-it chaos of Tenet . When Oppenheimer first meets Kitty, she asks him to explain quantum physics. He does so by saying that everything in existence is composed of individual atoms, strung together by forces that make matter seem solid to our eyes, even though it's essentially not. In their next scene, Kitty explains how her second husband was a union organizer who died fighting fascists in Spain. Her life, which seemed solid, was completely undone by a single tiny bullet. Oppenheimer gets to experience this firsthand in 1954, when people who he thought of as allies and friends betray him for their own personal gain.

The study of physics is bifurcated into two disciplines: theory (Oppenheimer's specialty) and practice (embodied by Josh Hartnett 's Ernest Lawrence). Communism, too, is often divided into theory and practice. Though they may seem disparate, the many elements of Oppenheimer refract and reflect each other, like a bunch of atoms creating a chain reaction or a group of scientists building off each other's ideas to forge something new. Grade: A

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‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Devastating, Explosive Magnum Opus

A TRUE EPIC

The three-hour biopic about the so-called father of the atomic bomb is a technical, visual, and storytelling achievement. It’s also the best film of both Nolan’s career and 2023.

Nick Schager

Entertainment Critic

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Universal Pictures

Christopher Nolan’s cinema is one of dualities: between knowledge and ignorance ( Memento ); seeing and sightlessness ( Insomnia ); good and evil ( The Dark Knight ); illusion and authenticity ( The Prestige ); dreaming and waking ( Inception ); courage and cowardice ( Dunkirk ); and the past and the present ( Tenet ). In that regard, Oppenheimer —a film of endless contrasts and contradictions—is the fullest expression of the writer/director’s artistry to date. Propelled by the inexorable march of progress and imagination and electrified by the terrible thrill of theories, dreams, and miracles realized in all their devastating glory, it’s a divided epic of awe and horror, fission and fusion. It’s simultaneously a unified portrait of a conflicted man and a singular achievement for Hollywood’s reigning blockbuster auteur.

Adapted from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography American Prometheus , Oppenheimer (July 21, in theaters) begins with images of raindrops falling on a pond’s surface and fiery detonations in the void—the first of innumerable opposing visions that are in unlikely harmony, or at least uneasy coexistence, in Nolan’s masterpiece. An individual of myriad paradoxes, Cillian Murphy ’s J. Robert Oppenheimer is a scientist (and the father of theoretical physics in the United States) who adores art and culture; a towering intellectual who’s incompetent in the laboratory; an arrogant leader who’s unwilling to fight; a devoted lover and partner who’s habitually unfaithful; and the architect of modern annihilation who wants to foster global peace. When, early in his academic career, he’s drawn to quantum physics, because it suggests that the impossible—namely, that light is both a wave and a particle—is true, it’s a telling snapshot of his inherent attraction to the irreconcilable.

As with so much of Nolan’s prior work, Oppenheimer is chronologically fractured, recounting its tale from two perspectives: that of Oppenheimer, in color, and of Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), in black-and-white. In accordance with that structure, the film casts its dual strands as flashbacks told by these characters during, respectively, the secret, Red Scare-driven 1954 hearing that cost Oppenheimer his security clearance and the 1959 Senate hearing that denied Strauss the Secretary of Commerce position he coveted. Throughout, Nolan narratively and formally intertwines Oppenheimer's and Strauss’ fates, juxtaposing them in order to highlight the story’s fundamental honesty and duplicity—what with its clandestine military operation in the Los Alamos desert, pervasive paranoia about Soviet spies stealing secrets from the Americans, and marital infidelities. Throughout, the film depicts Oppenheimer as a man partially unaware of himself; Edward Teller (Benny Safdie), his Manhattan Project colleague, tellingly asks him, “Nobody knows what you believe! Do you?”

Mysteries of the self and the universe are conjoined in the film, whose early passages find Oppenheimer gazing upwards or out into the darkness amidst cutaways to twinkling stars, shining molecules, and paroxysmal flames. Oppenheimer segues between intimate close-ups of Murphy’s lined, gaunt face and made-for-70mm-IMAX panoramas of cities, mountain ranges, and the cosmos until the two, like every other at-odds element in this drama, feel naturally wedded to one another. Shot with grandeur by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, the film is sensually overwhelming, its titanic visuals matched by Ludwig Göransson’s bellowing score of anxious ticking, thunderous foot-stomping, discordant buzzing, and strident Psycho -esque strings. The last of these is remarkably apt, given that the proceedings are, in a certain sense, a nightmare about the corrosive legacy bequeathed by a parent to their (figurative) progeny.

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

Nolan begins with a flurry of borderline avant-garde cutting between spaces, places, and faces (courtesy of stellar editor Jennifer Lame), and he never lets his foot off the gas. Whether set in Oppenheimer’s Princeton classroom or his beloved New Mexico, every scene is awash in physical and mental movement and progresses at a pace fit for a pulse-pounding thriller. I can recall no biopic ever hurtling forward at such a scorching clip; it shifts among points of literal, conceptual, temporal, and geographic focus at a speed that allows the director to cram an amazing amount of biographical material into his three-hour opus.

At the same time, and particularly with his fiercely loyal wife Kitty (Emily Blunt), the film finds room to also suggest the incidents, dynamics, and struggles taking place beyond the edges of his compositions. Be it Oppenheimer’s impetuous attempt to poison a tutor with a cyanide-laced apple, his volatile romantic relationships, confrontational but respectful partnership with Manhattan Project director Brigadier General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), combative rapport with prosecutor Roger Robb (Jason Clarke), or frustration with Teller—whose interest in fashioning an even more powerful hydrogen bomb he opposed— Oppenheimer is loaded with detail, nuance, incongruity, and ambiguity.

There’s an embarrassment of riches to digest, savor, and mull over in this saga, which touches upon the exhilaration of scientific discovery, the fear of inventing something over which the inventor has no control, and the alarming consequences of paving a historic path, especially when it leads directly to Pandora’s Box. At every turn, superb supporting performances are delivered by Damon, Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Matthew Modine, Alden Ehrenreich, and Tom Conti as Albert Einstein (who knows how uneasily lies the head that wears the crown). Special mention goes to David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, an Oppenheimer associate whose initial moral qualms about joining the Manhattan Project are eventually shared by Oppenheimer and, in the end, by the film. Oppenheimer draws its figures in vigorous strokes, capturing their hesitancy and certainty, loyalty, and treachery—none better than Strauss, whom a tremendous Downey Jr. transforms into the vilest sort of jealous, vindictive rat.

At the center of this maelstrom is Oppenheimer, whom Nolan lionizes to the point of having him don his trademark hat and coat like he was Bruce Wayne putting on his Batsuit. Murphy imbues the scientist with so many warring traits, impulses, and instincts—he’s peerlessly perceptive and blind to his own faults; ambitious and uneasy in the spotlight; self-possessed and ultimately unsure of his choices—that his countenance resonates as a topographical map of his increasingly harried soul. It’s a magnificent marquee turn from the Peaky Blinders star (and frequent Nolan collaborator), providing a micro and macro concept of the physicist’s internal and external battles. No matter if he’s enormous or minuscule in the frame, Oppenheimer as envisioned by Nolan is a pioneer as titanic as the mushroom clouds that his “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” produced. He’s also just as controversial, viewed by his comrades and the public as an exceptional hero, and his McCarthyite detractors and enemies as a left-leaning Communist incapable of being trusted with the nation’s security.

Universal Pictures

Oppenheimer’s socialist sympathies and Judaism are presented as core aspects of his personality and motivation for embarking upon his atom-bomb quest, and the former proves a persistent thorn in his side and results in his (temporary) downfall. His complexity additionally extends to his private life. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” muses Oppenheimer upon witnessing the Manhattan Project’s maiden “Trinity” test, and yet he first utters that Bhagavad Gita quote in the film when he’s in bed with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), the mistress whose suicide would be one of many deaths for which he blamed himself. Love and misery, triumph and tragedy, desire and obligation—all are writ small and large by Nolan, with the personal and political colliding in unpredictable, calamitous ways.

Intensely attuned to its protagonist’s heart and mind, Oppenheimer wrestles with questions of justness and responsibility regarding the atom bomb’s development and function, and with Oppenheimer’s alternately reasonable, reckless, and misguided decisions. It’s a complex character study-cum-history lesson that recognizes that our greatest accomplishments can also be our doom, violently shaking the world in explosions of dazzling light and cacophonous sound (or eerie silence) that leave behind charred bodies, tattered reputations, unappeasable bitterness, and tormented psyches. It's the creation myth of our contemporary age, begat in eruptions of 10,000-foot-tall pillars of fire that swallow the past and engulf us with dreadful ferocity. “A terrible revelation of divine power” is how Oppenheimer describes his paradigm-shifting weapon of mass destruction, and he might as well be speaking about Oppenheimer itself. This is surely the finest and most inspired film of Nolan’s career, not to mention 2023’s best.

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‘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

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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.

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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.

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Critics Have Had Their Say On Oppenheimer, The 'Breathtaking' Story Behind The Atomic Bomb

Senior Editor, HuffPost UK

Christopher Nolan ’s Oppenheimer is one of the most eagerly-anticipated movies of 2023 – forming part of the internet-slaying “ Barbenheimer ” double-header – and critics are hailing the “dazzling” picture as arguably his best.

The Tenet and Batman trilogy director’s 12th film sees Cillian Murphy play the controversial US scientist J Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the development of the first atomic bomb as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project during the Second World War.

An all-star cast – including Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife and Matt Damon as the man who hired him – impressed writers as they tell the story of the race against the Nazis to develop the bomb that America would later drop on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing thousands of people.

Oppenheimer is out in cinemas on July 21. See what critics have said about the “big, ballsy, serious-minded” film below as Murphy wins race notices for his “compelling” turn ...

Radio Times (5/5)

“Admittedly, the three-hour running time and plethora of scenes with boffins in rooms trying to turn quantum physics into reality could be a challenge for audiences expecting more all-out action. However, the director leavens the verbiage and slow-burning story with sequences of atom-splitting, Kubrick-like magnificence, and seismically effective sound, not least during the tension-filled detonation of that first prototype device.”

The Independent (4/5)

“Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s best and most revealing work. It’s a profoundly unnerving story told with a traditionalist’s eye towards craftsmanship and muscular, cinematic imagination.”

Guardian (4/5)

“This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan. He does this without simply turning it into an action stunt – although this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness: filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“For a film so long and so crammed with great performances, the laser focus of the script is astonishing. Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr are all exceptional (as is Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh and pretty much every other A-lister in Hollywood), but they’re all playing parts that Nolan deliberately places as far in the background as he can.”

Empire (5/5)

“At the film’s pulsing nucleus is Murphy as Oppenheimer, and he is compelling throughout. Given the movie’s hefty import, you’d have expected him to infuse every ounce of his talent into this performance, and that is certainly evident from his every moment on screen — often with cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema’s IMAX lens focused squarely and unsparingly on his face, as he conjures the conflicting emotions that rage beneath Oppenheimer’s surface.”

The New York Times

“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.”

“Oppenheimer is a relentless, coruscating piece of maximalist cinema that you watch on the edge of your brain. Nuclear fission means the release of energy that happens when the nucleus of an atom is split, and Nolan has conceived Oppenheimer as an act of cinematic fission. He fragments the story into parts that keep colliding, immersing us in the heat and energy that all gives off. It’s a style that owes a major debt to Oliver Stone’s Nixon, though that movie was a masterpiece. This one is urgent and essential, but in a less fully realised way.”

The 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.”

“A three-hour biopic that plays like a jolting thriller, Oppenheimer seldom slows down except to ruminate on questions of all-consuming guilt, as it imagines a vivid psychology lurking within its protagonist’s conscious mind, plagued by doomsday visions that serve as both warning and indictment for humankind. It’s paralyzing, pulse-pounding, breathtaking.”

“Oppenheimer is both an unerringly focused character study and, somehow, one of the year’s most sprawling ensemble pieces, with vivid turns from Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Olivia Thirlby, Casey Affleck and Dylan Arnold, among many others. Benny Safdie makes a memorably sweaty and argumentative Edward Teller, an early proponent of the hydrogen bomb who has his own shifty role to play in Oppenheimer’s postwar tribulations. And while this is a primarily male-driven story, which speaks as much to the inequities of history as it does to Nolan’s dramatic predilections, Emily Blunt brings startling force to the role of a woman who shames her faithless husband with a loyalty that surpasses all reason.”

“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.”

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‘Oppenheimer’ movie review: Christopher Nolan’s “event that changed the world” is truly captivating

There’s always a worry that arises when a film receives as much hype as Christopher Nolan’s new historical biopic Oppenheimer has because it often leads to unfair expectations, those that suggest the film may be the most extraordinary cinematic event of all time. Of course, that’s always unlikely to be accurate, but Nolan and his cast and crew have still delivered a genuinely captivating movie, even up against the excessive hype.

In Oppenheimer , Cillian Murphy portrays the reluctant “father of the atomic bomb”, J. Robert Oppenheimer, finally being given the lead role-nod in a Nolan film, having starred in five of his previous efforts. Unsurprisingly, given his undoubted talent as an actor, Murphy delivers a performance of dedication, nuance and, most importantly, believability.

After all, Oppenheimer was not just a critical historical figure but someone at the centrepiece of one of the most important historical events the world has ever known. It may as well be called “the event that changed the world forever”. After playing the central part in the Manhattan Project development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos in New Mexico, Oppenheimer irreversibly altered the nature of global mass-scale warfare as we previously knew it, no longer to be played out on the frontlines, but as dangerous and paranoid games of nuclear cat-and-mouse the likes of which we saw during the Cold War proceeding World War II.

So it’s fair to say that Oppenheimer had a fair few megatons of pressure on his slight shoulders, and Nolan’s film throws us straight into such intensity, with just the right amount of biographical information leading up to the main events. We’re spared Oppenheimer’s youth in favour of his days as a student, then a lecturer and finally as the man who would change the world.

The fact that there is rarely a moment of tedium in Oppenheimer is a testament to a three-hour film focusing on only one event (though including its lead-up and fall-out). Then we have the event itself, of course, The Trinity Test, to finally see whether this painstakingly researched atomic bomb could really work and thereby end the Second World War. Unlike Nolan’s other films, though, Oppenheimer , as a biographical drama, is admittedly light on his usual spectacle set-pieces, but the Trinity Test itself does not disappoint; it’s not just a mere explosion, it will viscerally shock and confound audiences but also provide a real focus on the man himself and the justification of his actions.

After all, morality is dripping throughout the film. It all seemed like such a good idea – build the bomb, end the war. But with Hitler dead and Germany already surrendered, leaving only a stubborn Japanese nation still fighting, Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists are pressured by the American government into making this thing work, even with the potential of the comprehensive destruction of the physical world.

Whether we should justify the historical actions of Oppenheimer, his Los Alamos colleagues, United States President Harry S. Truman and his Defence Forces is intentionally left by Nolan to the audiences choosing. And as always with Nolan, he does not assume the audience’s intelligence to be any lower than his own; we’re deemed just as capable of understanding quantum physics as we are of evaluating the morality of dropping nuclear warheads on an increasingly weakening nation.

So Oppenheimer is a vital film, not just a glorification of the actions of a great mind but an examination of that mind grappling with such actions’ intense ramifications. Of course, Oppenheimer would fall flat without the excellence of the cast, particularly Emily Blunt (Kitty Oppenheimer, J. Robert’s wife), Robert Downey Jr. (Lewis Strauss, his jealous scientific rival) and Benny Safdie (fellow scientist Edward Teller), to name but a few.

So too, does Nolan’s actual craft undoubtedly play its part in creating a work of genuine fascination. Re-creating The Trinity Test without the use of CGI is a cinematic marvel in its own right, but equally impressive is the intensity of each of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s shots, beautifully capturing each pore of Murphy et al.’s face in glorious 70mm IMAX film. Even without the usual set pieces of The Dark Knight and Interstellar , Ludwig Göransson’s score can still shine in moments of drama, if not action. However, at times, it can tend to overshadow the more vital dialogue in crucial scenes.

Let’s face it, Nolan consistently delivers in whatever project he takes on; he knows his vision and style and creates a positive, intimate environment for his actors to provide their best work. But with Oppenheimer , he hasn’t just delivered an entertaining, thought-provoking movie as he had done with his previous efforts, but a thoroughly important one that informs even the most sheltered of us about the global situation we find ourselves in today.

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Oppenheimer is an unforgettable experience with a never-better Cillian Murphy

It's out in cinemas this Friday.

The likes of Tenet and Interstellar saw Nolan use theoretical physics to make original sci-fi movies that get the pulse racing and engage your brain. Sometimes they engaged the brain so much that the brain actually hurt and the movies didn't quite hold together, but in Oppenheimer , Nolan gets to work with real-world physics – and still make your brain hurt a bit.

In any other hands, a three-hour biopic about the "father of the atomic bomb" would sound like a bore. In Nolan's hands, however, it transforms into a biopic as a thriller, a countdown to a moment that genuinely could have ended the world and had ramifications that continue today.

Oppenheimer ends up being a bit too sprawling for its own good, but it's still a towering achievement and an unforgettable experience, led by a career-best performance from Cillian Murphy .

Unsurprisingly, Oppenheimer is no standard 'cradle to the grave' biopic, something you could assume would be anathema to Nolan. The master of structural playfulness, Nolan tells J Robert Oppenheimer's story from two viewpoints, switching back and forth throughout.

The first timeline ("Fission") plays out in colour and centres on Oppenheimer's past, the build-up to the Trinity Test and beyond. The second ("Fusion") plays out in black and white and takes place in the late 1950s, mostly centred on Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) and his fraught relationship with Oppenheimer.

By Nolan's standards, it's a relatively straightforward structure. There are so many characters and weighty issues at play, though, that it can be dizzying, especially as Nolan gives us little and throws us right into the action.

Reuniting with Tenet editor Jennifer Lame, Nolan makes Oppenheimer feel like the fastest three-hour movie ever and it's expertly edited. There's so much to condense, though, that it's almost inevitable some aspects get short-changed, especially Oppenheimer's relationship with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh).

Minor complaints aside, Oppenheimer is still an astonishing technical feat and an immersive theatrical experience like no other this year. It's not just the epic scale of the IMAX-filmed cinematography from Hoyte van Hoytema, it's every part of the craft that makes it a true cinematic event.

You might wonder how the Trinity Test could really compel, given we know how it all plays out. But when Oppenheimer gets to it, you'll really end up wondering if it will destroy the world as all aspects, from the ominous score by Ludwig Göransson to the inventive practical effects come to a breathtaking crescendo.

All the technical brilliance would mean nothing without the human at the centre of it: in Cillian Murphy, Nolan found the ideal fit for Oppenheimer's enigmatic personality, especially as the physicist wrestles with the moral dilemmas involved in what he was trying to achieve.

It's a challenging role that asks a lot of Murphy, but he's sensational. Nolan doesn't want to tell you what to think about Oppenheimer, and Murphy brings all the various aspects of Oppenheimer's personality into a compelling whole. Some of the most striking sequences are the simplest, such as an extreme close-up of Murphy's face as Oppenheimer weighs up the haunting aspects of what he's done.

Oppenheimer is definitely Murphy's movie, but there is strong support among the extensive cast. Lewis Strauss is Robert Downey Jr's meatiest role in some time, nuanced and unpredictable (especially if you don't know the story), while Emily Blunt is excellent as Kitty Oppenheimer, every bit his equal but dealing with the frustrations of the era.

There are other notable turns, including Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr, director of the Manhattan Project, and Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, a fellow theoretical physicist who doesn't always agree with Oppenheimer's viewpoint.

There are so many characters, in fact, that not everybody can make an impact. This becomes more apparent as the movie goes past the Trinity Test to what happened to Oppenheimer after it. Characters who had minor appearances from the Fission timeline end up having a big impact in the Fusion timeline, but so much has passed that you could struggle to remember who they were.

Given the subject matter Nolan is dealing with, it's a remarkable achievement that he's even managed to condense American Prometheus (the book it's based on) into a cohesive movie. You won't exactly come out of it knowing theoretical physics, but it's told so expertly that you will be able to have an opinion.

And Oppenheimer is absolutely a movie that you'll want to discuss and chew over for days after first viewing. It's an absorbing and spectacular watch first and foremost, but also one that provokes you to think about the big, weighty topics that arose from Oppenheimer changing the world.

Christopher Nolan certainly won't give you the answers, but in Oppenheimer , he has given you a theatrical experience like no other filmmaker can.

Oppenheimer is out now in cinemas.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

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‘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

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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.”

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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 .

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Christopher Nolan says people are walking out of Oppenheimer ‘devastated’: ‘They can’t speak’

‘i showed it to a filmmaker recently who said it’s kind of a horror movie,’ director says of his new movie, article bookmarked.

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Christopher Nolan has described the visceral reactions of some people who have seen his latest film, Oppenheimer .

The biographical movie stars Cillian Murphy as the eponymous J Robert Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb ”, and is due to be released on 21 July.

“Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated,” Nolan said about early screenings in a new interview with Wired magazine.

“They can’t speak. I mean, there’s an element of fear that’s there in the history and there in the underpinnings. But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I’ve ever done.”

The 52-year-old British-American director added: “It is an intense experience because it’s an intense story. I showed it to a filmmaker recently who said it’s kind of a horror movie. I don’t disagree.”

Nolan even admitted that he was “relieved to be finished” with the project due to the emotional toll it took.

“As I started to finish the film, I started to feel this colour that’s not in my other films, just darkness. It’s there. The film fights against that,” he said.

Earlier this week, the historian who wrote the 2005 biography on which Oppenheimer is based said he was still “emotionally recovering” from watching the film.

The biographer, Kai Bird, who co-authored American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, said: “I think it is going to be a stunning artistic achievement, and I have hopes it will actually stimulate a national, even global conversation about the issues that Oppenheimer was desperate to speak out about – about how to live in the atomic age, how to live with the bomb and about McCarthyism – what it means to be a patriot, and what is the role for a scientist in a society drenched with technology and science, to speak out about public issues.”

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Oppenheimer will be led by Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robery Downey Jr and Florence Pugh.

The film’s cast also includes Matthew Modine, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Benny Safdie, David Krumholtz, Jack Quaid, and Alden Ehrenreich.

Its release date on 21 July marks the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie release, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

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Oppenheimer, common sense media reviewers.

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

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

You may have the knowledge and skill to create som

Scientists are elevated to celebrity status, and t

Most characters -- historical figures from the 193

Death by suicide. Massive fiery, loud bomb explosi

Several sex scenes with partial nudity, including

Strong language includes a few uses of "f--k," plu

Frequent drinking, including by a character who's

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…

Positive Messages

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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

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Community 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

Our editors recommend.

The Imitation Game

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The Prestige

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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

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Oppenheimer blows away UK critics as the 'absorbing and spectacular' movie is given a slew of five star ratings and branded Christopher Nolan’s 'best and most revealing work'

By Ciara Farmer and Brian Marks For Dailymail.com

Published: 10:36 BST, 20 July 2023 | Updated: 11:29 BST, 20 July 2023

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After winning huge praise in the US,  Oppenheimer has now scored epic reviews among UK publications with a slew of four and five star ratings.

Christopher Nolan's latest epic tells the story of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as 'father of the atomic bomb', with Cillian Murphy nabbing the titular role, in which he delivers a chilling performance. 

The film received a perfect five stars  from Daily Mail's Brian Viner, who wrote that Nolan 'magnificently' balances thriller elements with 'profound questions about the morality of laying Hiroshima and Nagasaki to nuclear waste.'

As well as Daily Mail's glowing response, BBC and Empire both offered up five stars while The Guardian, Independent, Financial Times and Digital Spy gave four. 

With the movie set to go head to head against Greta Gerwig's Barbie on Friday, things were looking up for Nolan as Oppenheimer currently boasts 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while Barbie has a still-impressive 89% fresh rating.

It's a hit! After winning huge praise in the US, Oppenheimer has now scored epic reviews among UK publications with a slew of four and five star ratings

Star turn: Christopher Nolan's latest epic tells the story of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as 'father of the atomic bomb', with Cillian Murphy nabbing the titular role, in which he delivers a chilling performance

FACT BOX TITLE

 Brian Viner writes: 'Oppenheimer is a stunningly well-made film... Much of Oppenheimer unfolds like a thriller, while not swerving profound questions about the morality of laying Hiroshima and Nagasaki to nuclear waste. 

'I despair at the inordinate length of many films these days, yet even at three hours this one never seems unreasonably long. There is an awful lot of story to tell, and Nolan tells it magnificently.'

THE GUARDIAN 

Peter Bradshaw writes: 'This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan.

'He does this without simply turning it into an action stunt – although this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness: filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.'

DIGITAL SPY

Ian Sandwell writes: 'Oppenheimer is absolutely a movie that you'll want to discuss and chew over for days after first viewing.

'It's an absorbing and spectacular watch first and foremost, but also one that provokes you to think about the big, weighty topics that arose from Oppenheimer changing the world.

'Christopher Nolan certainly won't give you the answers, but in Oppenheimer, he has given you a theatrical experience like no other filmmaker can.'

Caryn James writes: 'At times circles race across empty darkness or wiry orange strands of light appear, depicting the fears and the science occupying Oppenheimer's mind. 

'Those artful images are sporadic in a film that never loses its sense of story and drama, but they reveal how boldly imaginative and sure-footed the film is.

'Oppenheimer is Nolan's most mature work, combining the explosive, commercially-enticing action of The Dark Knight trilogy with the cerebral underpinnings that go back more than 20 years to Memento and run through Inception and Tenet'.

INDEPENDENT 

Clarisse Loughrey writes: 'Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s best and most revealing work. It’s a profoundly unnerving story told with a traditionalist’s eye towards craftsmanship and muscular, cinematic imagination.

'Here, Nolan treats one of the most contested legacies of the 20th century – that of J Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the “father of the atomic bomb” – as a mathematical puzzle to be solved.'

 FINANCIAL TIMES 

Danny Leigh writes: 'Nolan taps the full sensory potential of moviemaking, pushing picture and sound to meet the scale of the story: clever lines dot the script; the whole project is admirably willing to wrestle with matters of great weight through cinema.

'For all the hint of Hollywood in Los Alamos, Christopher Nolan isn’t Robert Oppenheimer. Nor is he Stanley Kubrick, who gave us that deathless nuclear comedy, Dr Strangelove. Kubrick was brilliant; Nolan is proficient. 

'You may still find that his new film stays with you for days, turning itself over in your mind. And if that owes as much to Oppenheimer as Oppenheimer, the pair do have much in common: each as bold as they are flawed, two contradictory equations.'

 Ben Jolin writes: '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.'

The historical epic was  almost universally praised for its chilling treatment of the development of the first nuclear bombs and for Cillian Murphy's title performance.

Also getting plenty of praise were Nolan's astounding ensemble cast of A-list actors — including Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt  — in small supporting roles.

Daily Mail's Brian Viner wrote: 'Oppenheimer is a stunningly well-made film... Much of Oppenheimer unfolds like a thriller, while not swerving profound questions about the morality of laying Hiroshima and Nagasaki to nuclear waste. 

Alongside a four star rating, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote: 'This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan.

'He does this without simply turning it into an action stunt – although this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness...

'Filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.'

The BBC dished out another five stars, with Caryn James writing: 'At times circles race across empty darkness or wiry orange strands of light appear, depicting the fears and the science occupying Oppenheimer's mind...

In detail:  Alongside a four star rating, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote: 'This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan

'Those artful images are sporadic in a film that never loses its sense of story and drama, but they reveal how boldly imaginative and sure-footed the film is...

Oppenheimer currently boasts a stunning 96 percent fresh rating from the most high-profile critics surveyed by the site, while Barbie has a still-impressive 89 percent fresh rating. 

Although Murphy is far from an unknown after appearing in several of Nolan's blockbusters and starring in the hit crime series Peaky Blinders, many reviewers said Oppenheimer was the most majestic showcase for his abilities to date. 

Across the pond, the reviews remained glowing.  

In the  Los Angeles Times , Justin Chang wrote that Murphy was 'superbly restrained yet intensely expressive' as Oppenheimer.

He compared the film to Paul Thomas Anderson's dark historical drama There Will Be Blood due to its vision of 'an indelible American darkness taking root in western soil.'

The New York Times ' film critic Manohla Dargis listed Oppenheimer as a 'Critic's Pick' and noted that Murphy played the physicist with 'feverish intensity.'

Though she criticized some of the smaller parts by A-listers, including a small role from Rami Malek, she praised compelling scenes of scientists debating future weapons of mass destruction, saying one of the film's 'pleasures is experiencing by proxy the kinetic excitement of intellectual discourse.'

Ann Hornaday wrote for The Washington Post  that Murphy 'commands Oppenheimer' as its deceptively still, small center'.

She applauded his visceral physicality and the way he 'seems to grow more skeletal, ethereal, a wraith whose chief features are his glasslike blue eyes, ever-present cigarette and catlike purr of a voice.'

She gave the film a perfect four stars and declared it a 'masterpiece.' 

Several critics praised Nolan's visual style as one of the film's most compelling aspects.

Matt Zoller-Seitz, Editor at Large for RogerEbert.com , gave the film four stars and praised Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema's masterful use of extreme close-ups, particularly when Murphy is on screen.

He wrote that the film 'rediscovers the power of huge closeups of people's faces as they grapple with who they are, and who other people have decided that they are, and what they've done to themselves and others.'

He's back! One of the most highly praised of Nolan's high-profile ensemble cast was Robert Downey Jr., who plays Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and longtime colleague-turned-nemesis to Oppenheimer

One of the most highly praised of Nolan's high-profile ensemble cast was Robert Downey Jr., who plays Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and longtime colleague to Oppenheimer. 

But their growing feud led him to urge FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate Oppenheimer in the mid-1950s, and Strauss unsuccessful nomination as Commerce Secretary in 1959 was in part scuttled by his earlier battle with the academic.

David Rooney wrote for The Hollywood Reporter  that Downey 'gives the drama’s standout performance,' despite a cast of 'heavy-hitters.'

In a somewhat backhanded compliment, he alluded to Downey's years playing Iron Man almost exclusively before finally freeing himself up for more adventurous fare, calling his Oppenheimer performance a 'reminder of skills that many of our best actors have put aside while they frolic around playing quippy superheroes for huge wads of cash.'

Other also singled out Tom Conti for his performance as Albert Einstein and scenes of him in conversation with Oppenheimer that are a respite from the film's darker sections. 

Among the rare negative reviews, Kristy Puchko complained for Mashable  that Florence Pugh, who plays the psychiatrist and activist — and Oppenheimer's early lover — Jean Tatloc, is 'reduced to weeping and nudity.'

She also criticized the screenplay's treatment of Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's wife, whom she felt was reduced to defending him throughout the movie. 

Wasted: Among the rare negative reviews, Kristy Puchko complained for Mashable that Florence Pugh, who plays the psychiatrist and activist — and Oppenheimer's early lover — Jean Tatloc, is 'reduced to weeping and nudity'

Despite the quibbles, Oppenheimer appears to have come out ahead of its fellow opening film Barbie with the critics, though the Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling–starring comedy is expected to dominate at the box office.

However, Oppenheimer will benefit from the more lucrative ticket prices of premium formats, where many Nolan fans will gravitate toward.

The film has managed an unprecedented three weeks lock on IMAX screens, and several theaters around the country will be presenting it in original IMAX 70mm film, the format Nolan shot the movie on, while smaller cinemas still equipped with rare 70mm projectors will exhibit the film in the normal version of that format.

The 70mm film, which is larger than traditional 35mm stock, has superior definition and color reproduction compared to 35mm, though both formats have largely been supplanted in cinemas across the world in favor of digital projection.

Toe to toe: Despite the quibbles, Oppenheimer appears to have come out ahead of its fellow opening film Barbie with the critics, though the Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling–starring comedy is expected to dominate at the box office

Share or comment on this article: Oppenheimer blows away UK critics as the 'absorbing and spectacular' movie is given a slew of five star ratings and branded Christopher Nolan's 'best and most revealing work'

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Everything We Know

Christopher nolan's oppenheimer : release date, trailer, cast & more, get the inside scoop on oppenheimer learn about the plot, cast, release date, imax format, and watch the trailer on rotten tomatoes..

TAGGED AS: movies , news

Billboards and movie theater pop-ups across Los Angeles have been ticking down for months now: Christopher Nolan’ s epic account of J. Robert Oppenheimer , the father of the atomic bomb, is nearing an explosive release on July 21, 2023.

Nolan movies are always incredibly secretive, twists locked alongside totems behind safe doors, actors not spilling an ounce of Earl Grey tea. But there are always curtains to pull to glimpse the magic behind the prestige, even with a Nolan film based on real events. So with more than five months left until IMAX theaters are packed to the brim, here’s everything we know about Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer :

Behind the Film

(Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/©Paramount Pictures)

Christopher Nolan returns after three years and Tenet’ s rocky pandemic-delayed release for his 12th feature film, Oppenheimer . The biopic about the infamous theoretical physicist represents a number of transformations for Nolan’s career. First and foremost, the film is his first with Universal Pictures following his dramatic split with his previous studio partner, Warner Bros., which had released all of his films since Insomnia . (Paramount and Warner Bros. shared distribution on Interstellar .)

In 2021, WB opted to debut their entire feature slate in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously . In response, Nolan, an avid defender of the theatrical experience, called them “ the worst streaming service .” Numerous studios — Sony, Paramount, Apple among them — engaged in a war to land production and distribution for Oppenheimer . Universal acquiesced to Nolan’s conditions, which included total creative control and a traditional theatrical window, and won out at the end of the day.

(Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)

Nolan’s production team has solidified, but slightly changed, too. Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson , who is only a Tony away from an EGOT, returns after his first collaboration with Nolan on Tenet , furthering the question of whether Nolan’s famed partnership with Hans Zimmer is over or just on pause. Oppenheimer will mark the fourth Nolan picture shot by Dutch-Swedish cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema , who can literally carry an IMAX camera on his shoulders . And visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson ( Mad Max: Fury Road , Dunkirk , Tenet ) tag-teamed with long-time Nolan special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher to simulate the nuclear tests. (More on those later.)

The newcomers, however, are 45-year veteran costume designer Ellen Mirojnick ( Behind the Candelabra , The Greatest Showman , Bridgerton ) and production designer Ruth De Jong, who worked with Van Hoytema and Universal on Nope .

(Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/©Universal Pictures)

Roughly 20 years after Cillian Murphy’ s screen test for Nolan’s Batman Begins , which was so entrancing to the director that it led to Murphy’s casting as the villainous Scarecrow, the Irish actor finally steps into a leading role for one of his greatest cinematic partners. And if the trailer is any indication, with close-up after close-up, Murphy’s hypnotic eyes will be the window into one of the most complex minds in human history.

Matt Damon also steps up from secret role in Interstellar to mustached general Leslie Groves Jr. And the reunions run deep overall, as Oppenheimer features Casey Affleck ( Interstellar ), Kenneth Branagh ( Dunkirk , Tenet ), James D’Arcy ( Dunkirk ), Matthew Modine ( The Dark Knight Rises ), David Dastmalchian ( The Dark Knight ), and Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight Trilogy) as President Harry S. Truman.

(Photo by Emma McIntyre, Karwai Tang, Mondadori Portfolio, Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)

It seems that there wasn’t a place for a return of Harry Styles , but Nolan is tapping into younger audiences through Oscar nominee Florence Pugh . And there’s an unexpected additional avenue into the social media generation: Josh Peck , whose casting echoes Topher Grace’ s appearance in Interstellar , begging the question of whether the Nolan household is a fan of early 2000s sitcoms.

The remainder of the cast is a who’s who of Hollywood stars. Robert Downey Jr. , Rami Malek , and Emily Blunt are the remaining big names, while Alex Wolff , Dane DeHaan , and Devon Bostick bring a bit of the indie darling vibe. And then there’s a deluge of That Guys, headlined by premiere That Guy Jason Clarke , but also including young Han Solo Alden Ehrenreich and Josh Hartnett , who, like Murphy, was nearly cast as Batman but turned down the role .

Perhaps the most tantalizing piece of the acting puzzle, however, is Tom Conti as Albert Einstein. The casting was not heavily reported on, but then, in the IMAX exclusive trailer ahead of Avatar: The Way of Water , bam, there was Einstein, a bombshell cameo to rival the obsessive superhero cameo culture.

(Photo by ©Universal Pictures)

At first glance, the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s involvement in the creation of the atomic bomb, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book  American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, presents itself as a departure from the Nolan norm. He’s never done a biopic. He’s only directed two period films, both more explicitly in his wheelhouse. And he’s not usually one to tell a story based on real events. (The exception, Dunkirk , has close personal ties to Nolan’s British upbringing.) But upon closer inspection, the film is a culmination of Nolan’s most prominent interests.

Nolan is principally a materialist. In The Dark Knight trilogy, he envisions Batman as empowered by military technology and Gotham as simply Chicago. In Interstellar , his sci-fi is simply an expansion of what the world’s top theoretical physicists are discussing. In The Prestige , the fantastical takes a backseat and the big twist is that — spoilers! — there was simply a twin brother. In that lens, it only makes sense that Nolan would make a film about the man who made the most powerful object in human history.

Nuclear weapons, in particular, have been present in Nolan films for over a decade. The Dark Knight Rises revolves around a neutron bomb. When promoting Interstellar , the director told The Daily Beast that such weapons are one of his greatest fears. And Tenet even namedrops Oppenheimer. When Oppenheimer producer Charles Roven (The Dark Knight trilogy) suggested the book to Nolan, it’s easy to see why the director signed on so quickly.

And while this is Nolan’s first biopic, the director nearly made one about Howard Hughes two decades ago. Jim Carrey was to star and Nolan calls it “the best script I’ve ever written,” but it was scrapped once Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator went into production. Nolan put many of those thematic interests into Bruce Wayne. And if certain lines in the IMAX exclusive trailer are any indication — “You’re a dilettante, you’re a womanizer, unstable, theatrical, neurotic” — some may have also found a place in Oppenheimer .

IMAX and Explosions

Oppenheimer will feature footage in color and in black-and-white, harkening back to the director’s breakout film, Memento . But the IMAX-obsessed Nolan encountered an immediate technical hurdle: no one had ever shot on IMAX film in black-and-white before .

“So we challenged the people at Kodak and Fotokem to make this work for us,” Nolan told Total Film. “And they stepped up. For the first time ever, we were able to shoot IMAX film in black-and-white. And the results were thrilling and extraordinary.”

However, no hurdle would be greater for the practical-forward director than simulating the Trinity Test, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. Details are sparse, but Nolan confirmed to Total Film that his team accomplished it without CGI. Given how unprecedented even a tiny fraction of an atomic explosion would be for a film production, one must ask if miniatures and/or forced perspective were used. But as with all Nolan movies, only time will tell.

Oppenheimer opens in theaters on July 21, 2023. Get your tickets now . 

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Oppenheimer kicks off its third annual next-gen peer-to-peer forum.

Nearly 60 of Oppenheimer's Next-Gen Financial Advisors to Convene in New York

Industry-Leading Event Showcases Breadth and Depth of Firmwide Resources to Support the Long-Term Success of Next-Gen Advisors

NEW YORK , Aug. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ --  Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. (Oppenheimer) — a leading investment bank, wealth manager, and a subsidiary of Oppenheimer Holdings (NYSE: OPY) — today announced the commencement of its Next-Gen Peer-to-Peer Forum at the firm's headquarters in New York City . Now in its third year, the two-day event will bring together nearly 60 financial advisors across 25 Private Client Division offices and 16 states nationwide.

"I'm thrilled to kick off this year's Next-Gen Peer-to-Peer Forum with this critical cohort, who represent the future of our firm," said Nicholas Siconolfi , Executive Director, Head of National Sales for Oppenheimer's Private Client Division. "As a Next-Gen leader at the firm, I am keenly focused on constantly enhancing both the resources available to our advisors and the exceptional client service we provide."

The Forum enables Next-Gen advisors to share best practices, engage with mentors and partner with firm product and service leaders on how best to apply the breadth and depth of Oppenheimer's offerings to meet client needs. Attendees will be able to share perspectives on the industry's future and learn how to grow their practices holistically to meet the evolving needs of today's high-net-worth wealth management clients.

Forum participants will experience firsthand why Oppenheimer represents the premier Next-Gen platform on Wall Street. They will learn how the firm is able to unlock young advisors' full potential by offering the infrastructure, resources, support and access needed to grow their practice. Sessions at the Forum will cover the following topics:

Multi-Generational Practice Management

Team Structure and Dynamics

Advanced Planning Concepts

Leveraging Social Media/Digital Marketing

Communicating one's value

Client Acquisition and Retention

The Best Practices of Top Producers

"The Next-Gen Peer-to-Peer Forum fosters collaboration across divisions, cultivates a community of partnership for solving complex client needs and inspires us all to accelerate the growth of our firm," said Ed Harrington , Executive Vice President of the Private Client Division at Oppenheimer. "I am excited for our Next-Gen advisors to discover how our flat organizational structure, nimbleness and world-class capabilities have positioned us for strong long-term success in the wealth management industry."

Harrington continued, "The forum attendees, who collectively manage approximately $6.5 billion in assets, are an experienced, high-performing cohort with a bright future. Between the group's skillset, ambitions and energy and the firm's unwavering support of their efforts, we have built an incredibly powerful dynamic together, and I am excited for what we can achieve going forward."

Oppenheimer manages six junior development programs and has invested in the training of over three generations of financial advisors, capital markets professionals, investment bankers, equity research analysts and other professionals in our industry. We remain committed to these programs and invite current and aspiring wealth management professionals to inquire about opportunities at our firm by emailing [email protected] .

Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. (Oppenheimer), a principal subsidiary of Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. (OPY on the New York Stock Exchange), and its affiliates provide a full range of wealth management, securities brokerage and investment banking services to high-net-worth individuals, families, corporate executives, local governments, businesses and institutions.

Media Contact: Joseph Kuo / Michael Dugan Haven Tower Group LLC 424 317 4851 or 424 317 4852 [email protected] or [email protected]

View original content: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oppenheimer-kicks-off-its-third-annual-next-gen-peer-to-peer-forum-302220300.html

SOURCE Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

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Movie Review: Josh Hartnett goes big as the serial killer in M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Trap’

This image released be Warner Bros. Pictures shows Josh Hartnett in a scene from “Trap.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released be Warner Bros. Pictures shows Josh Hartnett, left, and Ariel Donoghue in a scene from “Trap.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released be Warner Bros. Pictures shows Saleka Night Shyamalan in a scene from “Trap.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

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In our spoiler phobic culture, movie trailers don’t often offer a lot of information. It’s even dangerous territory for a critic to discuss too many specifics, sometimes years after a film or television show has come out.

So it seemed like a particularly bold and even confusing move for “ Trap ,” the latest film from M. Night Shyamalan, to reveal so much so soon. Namely, that the nice guy dad played by nice guy actor Josh Hartnett taking his teenage daughter to a Taylor Swift-like arena concert is a brutal serial killer. Not only that, the entire event has been manufactured by to trap him.

Doesn’t seem like something that a filmmaker known, or at least stereotyped, for his twists would do. Obviously there must be something else going on, right?

Perhaps that something else is that “Trap” really doesn’t take itself that seriously. It is a solidly entertaining film that’s mostly silly and sometimes unnerving. You’re not exactly rooting for Hartnett’s Cooper, whose energy is so manically enthusiastic in his casual interactions with strangers and acquaintances that it takes some getting used to. But you are drawn in enough to be ever curious about his next move.

Hartnett, fresh off a stately turn in “Oppenheimer,” is not going for naturalistic with this performance. He’s a psychopath trying, not very well, to keep his devilish side at bay. When he smiles and attempts pleasantries, it looks almost painful. His energy is intense and a little uncomfortable. If Hartnett was born just a little earlier, you could image him as part of the original “Twin Peaks” cast — even his name seems to be a nod. And here, Cooper’s supervillain power is being able to seamlessly pass as the normal suburban dad just trying to show his daughter (Ariel Donoghue) a fun time. That is soon dashed when a friendly arena employee decides to clue him in on the big plot to catch The Butcher. One thing “Trap” does especially well is exploit the ways in which a guy like Cooper — attractive, confident, white — can pass almost anywhere.

Much of the film transpires at an arena concert full of teen and tween girls obsessed with a pop star called Lady Raven, played by Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka Shyamalan, who wrote 14 songs for the film. It’s quite the hard launch for an up-and-coming performer, but it’s an admirably bold one too. “Everyone needs a break when they’re starting out,” she says to the crowd at one point. “Trap” commits to the bit, too, making you feel like you are on the ground floor experiencing a concert in real time. But if you went in hoping for “Die Hard” in an arena, be prepared for something else.

“Trap” does have some things up its sleeve, including a solid and unexpected acting performance from Saleka Shyamalan. It also feels a bit underbaked, a ridiculous ride that’s not going to get under your skin or provide for a lot of discussion fodder afterwards.

While it’s great to see Hayley Mills, regal as ever, as the mastermind of the police operation, she’s not given much to do besides narrate. But maybe there’s not meant to be some grand there there, like some startling revelation about parenthood or marriage or pop stardom or even sociopaths. We keep wanting Shyamalan to somehow give us “The Sixth Sense” or “Signs” again. “Trap” is not either of those. This is a popcorn movie, with a surprising turn from an underrated star. And ultimately, it’s a pretty fun time at the theater.

“Trap,” a Warner Bros. release now in theaters, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “brief strong language, some violent content.” Running time: 105 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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