MOVIE: Oppenheimer (2023)

by benmweilertNo Comments
OppenheimerYear: 2023Rating: RLength: 180 minutes / 3.00 hours Christopher Nolan's filmography has been building to this movie. Over decades, Nolan has had gimmicks in his films that make them stand out. Oppenheimer (2023) uses many of them to create a compelling story that's half scientific discovery and half political drama. That a movie like this—about unleashing the Pandora's box of nuclear weapons—hadn't been made like this before is perhaps the more impressive feat. The way Nolan weaves the two halves of the story together is masterful. However, the actors definitely do a lot of heavy lifting here. It took me a second viewing to piece together that the black-and-white segments followed Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) while the color segments focused on J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). This visual stylization hearkened back to the way Nolan made Memento (2000) unique. The shifted timelines between the black-and-white/color segments evoked Dunkirk (2017)., I'm just glad that I could actually understand what everyone was saying,...
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MOVIE: Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

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Mary Poppins Returns Year: 2018 Rating: PG Length: 130 minutes / 2.17 hours While it’s a somewhat rare occurrence, it usually doesn’t take Disney over five decades to release a sequel to a critically-acclaimed movie (like how Fantasia 2000 (1999) came out sixty years after Fantasia (1940)). The original Mary Poppins (1964) was a triumph in live-action for a studio known for its animation—which also makes an appearance. It raked in the Oscar Nominations, even gaining a nod for Best Picture. As far as sequels go, Mary Poppins Returns (2018) is a sharp and polished upgrade compared to the original but hits most of the same beats for the sake of nostalgia. Emily Blunt was more than passable as the title character, even if her representation seemed a bit more on the sarcastic and irritated eye-rolling side of the spectrum from Julie Andrews’ measured patience in the original. The songs in Mary Poppins Returns were certainly catchy—a trait undoubtedly inherited from Lin Manuel-Miranda—but didn’t seem...
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