Goransson

2023 Oscars Best Picture Review: Oppenheimer

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Oppenheimer will get you questioning whether J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) deserves to seen as a hero or villain, or neither.

Would a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer attract crowds to the cinema this summer? Oppenheimer proved to have the right stuff to make it happen.

When the film first arrived, there was the big question. Would a film about the inventor of the atomic bomb fly or would it flop? Would today’s audience care about a story of the inventor of the atomic bomb? Especially with this being a film with a budget of almost $100 million. Would it be a box office hit during the summer? In addition, does the film justify its three-hour running time? Oppenheimer surprised all naysayers by answering “yes” in all cases. It even succeeded in being a hit right while the Barbie phenomenon was in full-swing. No wonder 2023 will be remembered as the summer of “Barbenheimer!”

This film succeeds in justifying it’s importance. It’s easy to develop a fascination for the man who pioneered the “Nuclear Age.” Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still as intriguing and haunting today as they were when the bombs were dropped in August 1945. Even how this would pave the way for the introduction of the nuclear bomb and how it would cause the most intense moments of the Cold War of the past can make people intrigued in the man that started it all. Even though the most intense days are gone, it doesn’t mean the threat is no longer. There’s still Communist China, North Korea and even Putin taunting the world with threats. As long as nuclear bombs exist and are ready to use, J. Robert Oppenheimer will remain a man of intrigue.

The film can’t just be about building the nuclear bomb. The film is about the man himself. Oppenheimer himself started his career off as an aggressively ambition physics professor who had a clever and creative way of describing complicated things. It’s after he learns of nuclear fission in 1938 that he senses that it’s something that can be weaponized. The timing of this comes just as World War II dawns. The Manhattan Project is commissioned in 1942 to create such a weapon. J. Robert, who was Jewish himself, knew of the importance of stopping the Nazis. J. Robert didn’t simply agree to create such a bomb for the sake of having one created. He created one because he sensed the Germans themselves could learn of this and create one of their own. The war ends in Germany without a single use of such a weapon, but as its relevance is questioned, J. Robert suggests it could end the war in the Pacific. The bomb is tested successfully and that prompts President Truman to order them used in the war.

Then Hiroshima and Nagasaki happen. Everything changes for Oppenheimer. He is now ridden with guilt, feeling responsible for all the deaths that happened. The American people, on the other hand, see him as a hero for ending the war. President Truman, full of excitement with winning the war, taunts J. Robert’s empathy and rejects his wish to end further atomic development. It’s at the 1954 hearings that J. Robert, his legacy and his ties to communists are put under question and he has to confront himself on who he is. Eventually his arrogance and competitiveness would take his toll on him in the end. He’d have to face the music of the new world order he helped pioneer.

It’s also about the personal side of the man. J. Robert was a man of ambition in his early days of studies. He was also a man who thrived on knowledge and frequently consulted with Albert Einstein many times, relying on his knowledge. He was a man who liked difficult things and took an interest in the mystical and the cryptic. He was also the husband of Kitty Puening, but the marriage was rocky and riddled with J. Robert’s infidelity. His ties to communists in the intellectual community, and even with wife Kitty being a former writer for a communist newspaper, is something that could easily cause the suspicion in the 1950’s communist crackdown. J. Robert Oppenheimer was as much a complicated person as he was an important part of history.

This film should be seen as the crowning achievement of writer/director Christopher Nolan. His career has spanned over half a century starting in 1998 with Following, making his North American breakthrough with 2001’s Memento. His career would be full of landmark films like The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk. Until this film, only the latter has earned him an Oscar nomination in directing. He’s frequently delivered remarkable storytelling and has often found big box-office success, but many feel he’s missing the big renown he deserves. This film, which is an adaptation of the 2005 book American Prometheus, not only makes us take interest in the man who pioneered the nuclear age, but take us into the times and in the person Oppenheimer was. He succeeds greatly in creating a film that keeps out intrigue in the man himself as our intrigue into the creation of his bomb. Definitely the best film in an illustrious career he’s created.

We should also give many top accolades to Cillian Murphy. As much as this is Nolan’s masterpiece, we should also admire Cillian for making the film work for his portrayal of J. Robert. He does a great job in portraying the man and his genius, his weaknesses, his arrogance, and his hidden frailties. Definitely one of the film’s biggest highlights. Also excellent is the performance of Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer. Not only does she show her struggles with J. Robert’s infidelity and the potentially-destructive work he’s carrying out, but she’s able to tell J. Robert bluntly some awful truths about him, the world and all he caused. Also excellent is Robert Downey Jr. playing Lewis Strauss, the former colleague who turns against him and vilifies him in the end. Additional excellent performances come from Matt Damon as Ge. Leslie Groves who’s cynical and fearful of J. Robert’s work, Florence Pugh as J. Robert’s “other woman,” and Tom Conti as Albert Einstein, whom J. Robert often confides in and confesses to.

The technical feats of Oppenheimer are also excellent. There’s the cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema, a frequent collaborator of Nolan’s, who did a great job of using the black-and-white and color imagery to showcase the two sides of the story. There’s the excellent editing from Jennifer Lame which showcased the story well and justified the film’s three-hour length. There’s also the costuming, hairstylists and makeup personnel that did a great job in recreating the looks of the past. The production design team also did a great job in their recreation of past buildings and the empty town meant to test the bomb’s effects. There’s also the great musical score from composer Ludwig Goransson that adds to the suspense and eeriness of the film and the sound team that delivers the right sound mixing needed for the story.

Oppenheimer is a deserving summer movie hit, an accomplishment for Christopher Nolan, and one of the best films of 2023. It’s a film that can get you feeling sorry for a historical person we should really hate and also show how important the story of his invention is for our times.

Oscars 2018 Best Picture Review: Black Panther

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment

Black Panther
Chadwick Boseman plays The Black Panther who has to save the kingdom of Wakanda and his people.

People have been waiting for the longest time for a superhero movie to get nominated for Best Picture. If there’s a movie genre the 2010’s will most be remembered for, it will be for the heydays of the superhero movie. Deadpool and Wonder Woman were heavy favorites that ‘missed by that much.’ However it’s Black Panther that finally did it. And rightly so!

Now I’m not going to give a brief synopsis of the plot because most of you already know the story and saw the action. I will talk about superhero movies and how it lead to Black Panther’s most recent Oscar success. Now we’ve had superhero movies in previous decades and back in the 20th Century. I’m sure many of you can remember the old Superman and Batman movies from the 80’s and 90’s. The problem is around that time, the emphasis on popcorn movies back then was to be heavy on the action, and even heavy on the market hype, but comparatively minor attention to the characters and story-line. You couldn’t blame them; action movies blew people away and won big at the box office. However the flaws of a shotty script with minimal character development would soon become noticeable, especially by the critics. Around the 90’s as independent films were winning people over with storylines and well-developed characters, the stories and characters in action movies were starting to look either cardboard or idiotic. 1998’s Godzilla was possibly the best example of a film loaded with hype and action, but a ridiculous cookie-cutter story with foolish acting.

The 21st Century would mark a turning point for popcorn movies and especially for superhero movies for them to deliver better stories and better acting. Some say 9/11 became a turning point for movie watchers as they became less interested in cheering for villains and sleazes, but there’s more to that. The first sign was 2002’s SpiderMan. The producers were aware that despite the love for action in movies, the films story and acting could not be compromised. The film was loaded with action, as expected, but it did an excellent job in delivering a good story along with good acting as a result. That would not only open the doors for more superhero movies to come, but would also change the way superhero movies were done too. Marvel and their cooperating studios would become less focused on marketing hype — have you noticed there are less fast food chains plugging action movies lately? — and more focused on developing a well-written and well-acted story. It’s not to say that there were duds. There were a few SpiderMan sequels that were lousy and the 2015 rehash of the Fantastic Four was lame, but most superhero movies were very winning and easily demonstrated why they were winning crowds over.

Also on the subject of superheroes, I remember there were groups from religious organizations highly critical of the movies Hollywood was shelling out. They were complaining about all the ‘hazardous’ things in movies and how it threatened their values. Although no censorship occurred from their pleas, it did have an effect on the way superheroes are portrayed in the big-screen movies. One thing the studios were reminded of was that superheroes didn’t just simply do amazing things with their hands. They were characters that took a stand for values and were not afraid to do what’s right and be unafraid to deliver in their call of duty. In fact there have been many cases of some studios’ writing teams hiring Christian writers for the task. In most cases (obviously not for Deadpool), the superhero movies of the 21st Century were often praised by Christian critics of promoting values and dignity in a winning way. To think back in the 1990’s while gangsta rap and anti-hero entertainment were the call of the day, most people thought a story promoting values would come across being like a Mister Rogers. The 21st Century superhero movies proved that promoting values can be done in a winning way.

However it’s only been in recent years that superhero movies have the potential to do very well in the Oscar race. Most of the time, the best chances superhero movies had at scoring Oscars or Oscar nominations were in the technical categories like Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing. Sometimes they would win nominations in Best Costume Design, Best Production Design or Best Original Score despite nominations going mostly to ‘timepiece’ movies. The big turning point came in 2008 when The Dark Knight was a heavy favorite to get a Best Picture nomination. It didn’t happen, but Heath Ledger won an Oscar for his portrayal as The Joker. It was the biggest sign of how much better superhero movies, and even popcorn movies in general, became. In the past two years, there were two superhero movies, 2016’s Deadpool and 2017’s Wonder Woman, that were nominated for Best Motion Picture for the Producers Guild Awards. The Oscar nomination however did not happen: for Best Picture or any category!

It’s 2018; enter Black Panther. The Black Panther is a hero that actually made its debut in the Marvel universe in a Fantastic Four strip in 1966. The Black Panther has made many appearances in various Marvel comic stories. In film, the first appearance of the Black Panther was in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War where he was played by Chadwick Boseman. That of course was an Easter Egg of what was yet to come. The movie of The Black Panther was released in 2018. As expected, it was to tell the story of how the Black Panther came to be and how the Black Panther had to achieve their first defining moment of greatness. However it did a very good job in presenting a story of a moment in the distant past, to the ‘near-past’ of 1992 to the present. The story doesn’t just simply focus on T’Challa becoming the Black Panther, but also on his family and restoring the dignity of the Jabari Tribe and the wealth of the kingdom of Wakanda.

The film also does a good job in developing a story that’s entertaining for adults but also not too confusing for children. Another hard job of superhero movies is developing a story that works for both children and adults. It shows the conflicts abounding between T’Challa and Killmonger, as well as Killmonger’s pursuit of the throne of Wakanda with the intent to rule corruptly. It delivers the story in an excellent and entertaining manner with well-developed characters. Of course a superhero film needs to have its action moments, but the film does not compromise at all on the story or the characters.

The best efforts of the film come from director/co-writer Ryan Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole. Coogler has had a steady progression in the film world. His first film was the 2013 independent arthouse film Fruitvale Station, then progressed to popcorn movies with 2015’s Creed, and now Black Panther. All have had winning results. Black Panther could have gone to another white director that was part of the Marvel team, but marvel made the right choice to have Coogler direct despite never directing a sci-fi movie. The result is winning. Cole has also been able to make his mark in this film. The most writing experience he had before the film was 2011’s Amber Lake and the TV series The People vs. O.J. Simpson. Here, he’s able to make a name for himself in a big way and should open bigger doors in the future.

With the great directing and the great story, the acting is also excellent. Chadwick Boseman delivers very well as the Black Panther and succeeds in delivering a three-dimensional role for the character. Michael B. Jordan (who also acted in Fruitvale Station and Creed) also does a great job portraying the villain. Lupita Nyong’o was possibly the biggest scene-stealer of the movie. She was enjoyable. The costuming by Ruth E. Cater worked excellently for the film as well as the sets for the film. It made Wakanda look very believable as a place. The music by Ludwig Goransson also fit the film excellently and the special effects were dazzling and entertaining.

It’s easy to see why Black Panther is a winning film. It’s a superhero story that delivers in all facets and manages to dazzle crowds too. It also succeeds in again taking a seldom-known Marvel superhero and turning him into a household name.