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No fucking way did Oppenheimer deserve Best Picture. Gwan the boy Cillian for nabbing Best Actor though, doing Cork proud.
I didn't watch enough movies to give a better alternative. Not Barbie. Not Killers of the Flower Moon. I liked Asteroid City better, but it wasn't even nominated.
I want to like Nolan films, but on the whole, I don't. Oppenheimer was one of Nolan's better films, but I still disliked its overall structure. School > Communism > Manhattan Project > Security Clearance Hearing > Senate Confirmation Hearing. It felt unfocused to me.
EDIT: I think J. Robert Oppenheimer is a strange choice for a three hour biographical thriller. A documentary makes more sense to me.
Also I tend to dislike biopics due to the propagandistic nature of the genre.
I tend to dislike biopics for the simple reason that they seem to lack focus. They're slow to get started because they have to focus on marginally relevant bits from their childhood or early adulthood, and the crux of their professional life is represented by a series of only semi-related vignettes. Sometimes, like in Gandhi, this ends up being okay because their entire life was really leading to one thing, in Gandhi's case Indian independence. The way to do it, though, is like in Lincoln, where you focus on one aspect of their professional life that could be a movie in and of itself.
As far as propagandistic ones go, though, Walk the Line has to be the worst example. By all accounts, Johnny Cash was a horrible human being throughout most of his life, yet the movie makes it seem like his life was a redemption story when he met June Carter and found Jesus. The movie conveniently ends before the part where he has an affair with his wife's sister while his wife is pregnant, and that whatever redemption he found came in like, 1992. But after that movie came out I had to endure people playing the same three songs on jukeboxes in bars while telling me that he knew pain and was a great man, etc., etc.
Of course, whatever you think about him as a person, Cash at least is one of the most important figures in 20th Century American music. The same can't be said for Queen (and not just because they aren't American). Bohemian Rhapsody probably has to be the worst example of this kind of propagandizing, and also one of the most effective. First while I understand that Hollywood is going to take some liberties with historical facts to make a more compelling story, I don't expect them to play copy and paste with a band's chronology. This is easily verifiable information that everyone with a certain degree of familiarity with the subject already knows. It's like making a film about the American Revolution that tells you the war began with Washington crossing the Delaware and has them signing the Declaration of Independence in 1780. They also relied to heavily on first-hand accounts from Brian May to get the inside story of the band. I know you have to get it from somewhere, but I doubt Freddie Mercury apologized to them as much in real life as he did in the movie.
But the real travesty of this film is that it created the myth that Queen were an iconic band up there with the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Who. I've listened to their entire catalog and well, they aren't. When they started out they were a pretty good hard rock band, but the only songs from this period that anyone still talks about are Killer Queen and maybe Keep Yourself Alive. Then they made what are supposed to be their best two albums, A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera and they're... good. But they aren't iconic albums. Even if my dislike of Bohemian Rhapsody the song is due merely to overexposure, most of it is just unmemorable. They'd make a series of okay albums with hits of varying quality and plenty of padding until the '80s were in full swing, at which point what would have been padding started to sound substantial in comparison to the dross that made up the majority. By the end even their hits were unlistenable. I don't hate Queen, but I don't know why some people consider them better than, say, The Doobie Brothers, who made at least three albums that are better than anything Queen ever did.
Some people will argue that those who dislike Queen simply have a distaste for the theatrical elements of their performances, particularly the strong allusions to opera and musical theater; if you don't like either of those, you won't like them integrated into your rock music. While I agree with this up to a point, and agree that they started to go downhill when they became "theatrical", it's not because of a dislike of theatrical element per se, it's that they do it badly. Their understanding of opera is surface level, not going beyond what you see in a J.G. Wentworth commercial. And while some Beatles fans will complain about what John Lennon referred to as Paul's "granny music" (Your Mother Should Know, When I'm Sixty-Four, Honey Pie, etc.), it's sincere, borne out of an appreciation for the music he grew up listening to. With Queen, on the other hand, it's pure kitsch. There's nothing wrong with kitsch, but there's a low ceiling for how great it can be. This kind of got off the rails, but I don't think any of this happens without that stupid movie.
Los Alamos was the only part of Oppenheimer that really worked for me (minus the colossal cinematic cocktease of the Trinity test), because Nolan is interested in concepts and bored by people. The entire last hour of the movie was an exercise in tedium. Who gives a shit if Opp loses his security clearance?
Exactly. It's not like the prevention of nuclear proliferation hinged on whether or not he lost his security clearance. That's what didn't work for me. Why's the rest of his life important? What's the takeaway? Don't associate with communism, otherwise you'll lose your security clearance?
The movie should've focused solely on the Manhattan Project and the immediate reaction to the dropping of the bombs. Or maybe the race between the two sides, getting more of the German and/or Japanese perspective.
The takeaway is that evil meddling anti-communist politicians drove out the brave, wonderful philosopher-scientists who just wanted to give peace a chance.
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