Film Review: OPPENHEIMER

By now we all know that when an avalanche of advertising precedes the release of a new movie, it's likely a real bomb. While Oppenheimer is not that, it's about a bomb and leaves much to be desired. So very, very much. Like a film editor with a backbone, for starters. It's three hours long and it might have been fairly decent at two with all the detritus removed. For example:

There are lots of scenes featuring blackboards covered with mathematical formulas, surrounded by young men in suits spouting technical jargon. I snoozed a bit through those.

The film switches from color to black and white for no apparent reason, many times. It also moves from one era to another era with little warning, and the color vs. black and white is not a clue. Only the director (Christopher Nolan) knows why.

To break up the tedium, a brief and dreary "sex" scene was inserted that makes the act of fornication look like a Hamas punishment wherein two naked people are strapped together and forced to move oddly, one on top of the other, while having a depressing conversation. Later on, more nudity shows up for no apparent reason other than to keep members of the audience from falling asleep.

Oppenheimer in close up, again and again and again .....

The director wastes a lot of frames on psychedelic bursts of colors and shapes, ostensibly to describe physics and explosions -- atom bomb, get it? -- and what you see in your head when you drop acid or have an ocular migraine. I'm guessing here, but perhaps it was because the movie first was released on IMAX. I watched it in my living room on a regular TV and was not blown away, unless you count leaving to go to the bathroom.

Mr. Oppenheimer is played by a skinny little guy with no charisma, I forget his name, whose face is almost always right there, for a long time. (We get it, the film is called Oppenheimer, enough already!) 

Other known actors who showed up for itty bitty parts are Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branaugh. The actor who played Albert Einstein looked more like Captain Kangaroo than Albert Einstein. A lot more.

The beautiful Emily Blunt deserves an Oscar for looking hideous and accepting a role that had almost no character development.

The U.S. dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima and boo-hoo, some of the people who made the bomb felt bad about it. Like who knew it would kill so many people and burn their faces off?

Robert Downey Jr. is the best part of the movie and will still be handsome when he's old. Matt Damon is already not handsome anymore and gives the worst performance of his career and this film.