Reviews for Oppenheimer are in and the epic biopic looks to be another critical hit for celebrated director and screenwriter Christopher Nolan.
The biopic non-linearly splits its attention across the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is played by Cillian Murphy. The film centers, of course, the development and testing of his horrific creation: the atomic bomb. Flashbacks and flash-forwards explore his education and a 1954 Atomic Energy Commission hearing on Oppenheimer’s involvement with the US Communist party. The movie uses the first black-and-white footage ever to be shot on IMAX cameras.
Oppenheimer is directed and written by Christopher Nolan and is based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. It stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, and Kenneth Branagh.
As of writing, Oppenheimer is sitting at 90 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic, based on 47 critic reviews. It premieres on July 21, the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Below is a selection of reviews.
Oppenheimer
- Directed by Christopher Nolan
- Written by Christopher Nolan
- Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, and Kenneth Branagh
- Premiere Date: July 21, 2023
GameSpot – 90
“Oppenheimer is not an easy film to write about after one viewing. It’s a massive movie both in terms of its length and in terms of its intricately and painstakingly laid-out story, which defies all of Hollywood’s rules for biographical and historical films. Christopher Nolan, as always, is doing things his way. And it’s going to take the rest of us a minute to catch up.” – Phil Owen [Full review]
The Telegraph – 100
“Oppenheimer is a film that works simultaneously on the most intimate and cosmic scales. It’s at once a speeding roller-coaster and a skin-tingling spiritual portrait; an often classically minded period piece that only Nolan could have made, and only now, after a quarter-century’s run-up.” – Robbie Collin [Full review]
The Hollywood Reporter – 100
“Perhaps the most surprising element of this audacious epic is that the scramble for atomic armament ends up being secondary to the scathing depiction of political gamesmanship, as one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the 20th century is vilified for voicing learned opinions that go against America’s arms-race thinking.” – David Rooney [Full review]
RobertEbert.com – 100
“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, or waking nightmares. ‘Oppenheimer’ rediscovers the power of huge close-ups 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.” – Matt Zoller Seitz [Full review]
Rolling Stone – 90
“There’s a roll-the-dice sensation throughout: Scenes of people sitting in rooms talking can seem thrilling or plodding, clarify historical conflicts and complicated concepts or confuse the hell out of you. Set pieces feel sweeping one second, and like they’re sucking the oxygen out of the room the next. Then, suddenly, the movie cuts to a huge close-up of Murphy, his eyes suggesting a man wrestling for his soul, and you’re transfixed. As with so much of Nolan’s work, you can feel a truly great film peeking out in fits and spurts within a longer, slightly uneven one.” – David Fear [Full review]
Vulture – 80
“Oppenheimer is a movie so sprawling it’s difficult to contend with. It’s rich, uncompromising, and borderline unwieldy, but more than anything, it’s a tragedy of operatic grandeur despite so many of its scenes consisting of men talking in rooms” – Alison Willmore [Full review]
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