Amanda's Picks

Because Amanda is Amanda, and because my daughter Emma lives for the movies, we were determined to keep our cinema from closing during COVID. At least once, we were the only people in the theater. 

You can imagine how thrilled we are that we no longer feel personally responsible for keeping movie theaters in business. Our late-night Sunday showing of Barbie was almost sold-out. We saw Oppenheimer at 6:30 pm on a Sunday and it was packed. 

There’s been no shortage of “Barbenheimer” press, but none of it explains the success of these two movies. Nobody in “the Biz” said, “I think that the Barbie movie is going to make a billion dollars and that three-hour movie on the guy who created the atom bomb, maybe half-a-billion.” 

As I wrote in my last column, I loved Barbie and will likely see it again before the 47 sequels start dropping. I love that Director Greta Gerwig can now tell Hollywood she wants to make a musical about Marie Curie and someone will say, “Sure, go ahead.” (Note to Greta: If you do make a musical about Marie Curie, please credit me with inspiration.)

No matter how much Oppenheimer rakes in, there won’t be a sequel. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (R) already feels like two movies, a biopic on the title character and a courtroom drama about a guy 90% of the audience never heard of.

When we meet J. Robert “Oppie” Oppenheimer, he is a Jewish-American student, working towards his doctorate in physics at a German university. He moves on to become a professor at Berkeley and the King of Physics or something like that. Soon he is recruited by General Leslie Groves (a mustachioed Matt Damon) to head up the Manhattan Project with the goal of developing a nuclear weapon and ending World War II. 

Meanwhile Oppie flirts with the Communist Party and more than flirts with one of its troubled members, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). He encounters and mingles with influential scientists, including Einstein (Tom Conti), and develops a complicated relationship with Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.), but more on him later. 

In Los Alamos, Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) form a community with all the other scientists and their families. Ultimately, they succeed in their mission and life takes a turn for Oppenheimer in 1954 when all that communist flirting comes back to haunt him and he fights to maintain his reputation and keep his security clearance.

It’s also 1959 when Strauss is hoping to be named Secretary of Commerce. His confirmation hearing becomes more complicated as the movie feeds us details about his work with Oppenheimer. 

You might know Cillian Murphy from supporting roles in Nolan’s previous films including Dunkirk, The Dark Knight and Inception or from the British series Peaky Blinders. He brings a thoughtful intensity and bravado to the younger Oppenheimer, and effortlessly conveys the guilt, conflict and sadness of his later years. Murphy is the earliest and strongest contender for the Best Actor Oscar in 2024. 

Most of the supporting roles are handled skillfully but they’re not fleshed out. Blunt has a couple of very effective scenes as does Pugh. Big names like Kenneth Brannagh and Gary Oldman score just minutes of screen time. Damon is on a roll after a terrific turn in Air, with another solid performance here, and provides the only moment of levity in the movie. 

Most impressive is Downey Jr. as the enigmatic Strauss, reminding us once again that he is much more than Ironman and one of this generation’s most nimble and charismatic actors. Downey Jr. gracefully reveals the layers of Strauss’s character and could be right up there with Murphy on Oscar night. 

I’m not convinced it was worth seeing Oppenheimer in IMAX. Yes, the visuals are occasionally breathtaking, but at least half the movie is set in classrooms and courtrooms. So, unless you have always wanted to see Downey Jr. sweat in IMAX, you can skip it. 

IMAX may have also contributed to Emma and me feeling at times overwhelmed by Ludwig Göransson’s soundtrack. When you have great actors delivering well-written dialogue, you don’t have to pummel the audience with intrusive music and noise, telling us how to feel.

Some people are complaining that Nolan’s screenplay, based on the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning biography, American Prometheus, doesn’t address the lingering effects of the Manhattan Project in New Mexico or of the bombs on Japan. Point taken, but Nolan’s work is intelligent, informative and riveting. You’ll leave Oppenheimer feeling smarter than you felt three hours earlier. And that is a rare thing these days.