Reviews for Oppenheimer
Although the visual scale is smaller than the many widescreen epics [Christopher] Nolan has made — save for the part where the bomb goes off — Oppenheimer might be his most ambitious work as a filmmaker to date.
Working with the superlative editor Jennifer Lame… Nolan employs a double-helix structure, interlacing [Robert Oppenheimer's] student-age discoveries of quantum mechanics and socialist politics in the 1930s with his ultimate expulsion from America's national-security community.
That [Nolan] turned this most devastating of stories into a riveting pop culture phenomenon without ceding one inch on its tragic dimensions is surely an achievement for the ages.
There’s a gorgeous poetry to the way Nolan uses IMAX, particularly when evoking Oppenheimer’s interior landscape.
One thing that must be highlighted is the sheer, utter brilliance of Nolan’s depiction of the first atomic bomb detonation. Nolan brings everything to bear on this sequence, stretching out moments, increasing the sound, wiping out the sound, and taking time to bask in the horrifying beauty of the destruction.
What marks him as an artist, and not just a dazzling technician, is that amid the sound and fury, we feel the moral implications of the moment in all their awful complexity.
Nolan, as an auteur, has some unfortunate tics, and some are on display in Oppenheimer. The dialogue, especially in the early sections, can be ham-handed, especially when exposition is involved. The female characters struggle to find their footing.