“Oppenheimer” — Read Along
Your 2024 Oscar winning behemoth.
With 13 nominations and 7 wins, in the lazy cliched language of the Oscars, “Oppenheimer” almost “swept the board” and 2024 will now forever be known as the “Year of Oppenheimer”. Being an avowed obsessive for the films of Christopher Nolan and a long time admirer of the genius acting skills of Cillian Murphy I was naturally overjoyed to learn of their joint success this morning. I haven’t watched The Oscars (trademark) for many, many years and so I hope Cillian gave a barbed yet funny acceptance speech, Christopher thanked his brother Jonathan and the Oxford band Radiohead and I truly hope an actor was forced to enter the stage naked in some kind of death cult/Illuminati ritual.
It was The Oscars (trademark) after all. It would only be fair.
Although we’re getting ahead of ourselves, if you were to do me the greatest of honours and take a peek at the second article linked below I hope you’d agree that I soak my spoiler free reviews for the films of Christopher Nolan in the highest of reverence and with the greatest of cinematic love and appreciation. Like the rest of the known universe I missed his original debut film “Following” in 1998 but caught up immediately on seeing the film that pun intentionally followed it two years later and nearly a quarter of a century later, “Memento” still remains my favourite of the now 12 films in his spectacular canon of cinematic work. My goodness what a film. Back to front. Front to back. Colour to Black and White. Overlays. Intrigue. A short term memory for a longer term problem. A riddle you can’t solve. The solution given to you at the beginning of the film.
Or is it the end?
My goodness what a film.
Let’s get the two clunkers out of the way before we proceed shall we?
“Insomnia” is good but aside from the against type performance of the mighty Robin Williams it leaves me as cold and restless as bright daylight at 3am in the morning and “Tenet” is an incredible artistic achievement but which befuddles me after a spectacular beginning. If I told you “Batman Begins” was my favourite of his trilogy of Dark Knight films would this surprise you consider the enormity of performance from Christian Bale and a masterclass for the ages from Heath Ledger in the middle film? Either side of “The Dark Knight” you have “The Prestige” (which I LOVE to the moon and back) and “Inception” (the themes and ambition have oft been copied but never matched and never will be) before “Interstellar” reduces me to a quivering wreck unable to stop sobbing (“It was me Murph, I was your ghost”) and “Dunkirk” could have been an overblown 3 hour epic and which is instead under 2 hours and a masterpiece.
I did tell you I was obsessed with the films of Christopher Nolan didn’t I?
So I was childishly eager when, on 22nd July last year I settled into the comforting darkness of my local picture house with my son to watch “Oppenheimer” for the first time. I returned the next day alone (Shush! Don’t tell him! He still doesn’t know!) and I’ve since watched it on Blu-Ray multiple times and on one crazy night when sleep was evading my grasp once more, back to back to back.
I did tell you I was obsessed with the films of Christopher Nolan didn’t I?
So please allow me to extend a warm welcome to you to the latest in my “Read Along” series of articles on favourite films whereby I present to you both my written, spoiler free review and my video recording of me reading this review direct to camera. I’ll never be entirely sure this idea works, but the concept is you read along with me via my written article as I read it to you via my video recording. Reading aloud isn’t my bag or a forte of mine but I try! I have though written spoiler free film reviews for a bakers dozen of years now and I’m trying something new whilst endeavouring to find a wider audience and may be that’s you? This video is slightly different from my hundreds of others in as much as I recorded this in the garden last Summer as opposed to a lounge setting so common to many of my videos and should you not wish to listen or watch me for 5 minutes ramble through my review to camera you can at least listen to the birdsong of a late Summer’s afternoon in England!
Here follows a brief excerpt from my longer review which is linked immediately below it with a cavalcade of cinematic appreciation following in its wake too. I sincerely hope you enjoy.
Act Three: Genius
Cillian Murphy confirmed the entire shoot for Oppenheimer took 59 days (WTF with Marc Maron podcast, episode 1453) 59 days! But the London born film-making genius has done it again. There’s little point in hiding any of my biases or my unabashed love for the movies he’s created (though Insomnia leaves me cold and you can explain Tenet to me any time you wish) so as you would expect I LOVED this film. Oppenheimer can only age like a fine wine akin to The Prestige, and I can’t compliment Nolan’s latest creation any higher than that.
From ambitious idealist to conflicted outsider blacklisted in a “Kangaroo Court” from the profession he loved surrounded by spooks and spies and character assassinations based upon political ideology, this sets the table for the McCarthyism of the early Cold War and the war with Russia that has been raging, cold or hot, since the end of World War II and which shows no signs of abating to this very day.
Oppenheimer is a towering achievement from Christopher Nolan and I’ll leave the final words to my son who upon seeing it 24 hours before I did remarked that whilst he liked it, “Dad is going to LOVE this”.
And I did.
"Oppenheimer" (2023) Original Review
"Christopher Nolan and his entire cinematic catalogue"
"It was a Christopher Nolan type of a day"
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection" Vol.4
"Oppenheimer" - Youtube version
"Oppenheimer" - Rumble version
So now dear reader you have a choice: You can either
(a) Read my entire review of “Oppenheimer” via the first link above
(b) Perhaps consider reading my opus article on the incredible cinematic career of Christopher Nolan
(c) Watch either of my Youtube or Rumble channel videos of my reading of my own review of “Oppenheimer”, hence the “Read Along” moniker.
or (d) Treat yourself to any combination of the above or even (e) disappear to pastures new within our collective electrical Matrix.
Oh, and (f) There’s a link above to Volume 4 of my exhaustive 7 volumes of “Essential Film Reviews Collection” packaged in my e-book and Kindle series on Amazon and where you’ll find my review of “Oppenheimer”. All FREE to read if you have an Amazon Kindle “Unlimited” package.
Bless you for reading.
Thanks for reading. If you like the premise of this absurd idea of “Read Along”, then you might also enjoy:
"Nine Days (2021) - Read Along
"Monsters" (2010) - Read Along