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 REEL Productions presents REEL Film Reviewed, the podcast that delivers short spoiler free film and TV reviews, followed by a post viewing discussion hosted by Kris Chaney. Here is, REEL Film Reviewed.

Welcome back everyone. This episode, REEL Film Reviewed Oppenheimer. Let’s get into the spoiler free review. A new biopic about American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. Looking at the stories, this was considered by many to be a revamp of 1989’s Fat Man and Little Boy with Paul Newman.

But I preferred the way Oppenheimer told the story. Oppenheimer is a two-part biopic about Oppy mixed into the story of the Secret World War II project, known as the Manhattan Project and the testing of the first atomic bombs in Los Alamos. The effects were something that drew a lot of people to see it.

And I’ll say that the effects didn’t disappoint, but we’ll talk more about that in the post viewing discussion, as usual. This film was just as much about performances as it is about the visual effects and the sound quality and the cast was more than sufficient to accomplish an all star performance film.

Cillian Murphy Stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer. And while I sensed a little bit of Tommy from Peaky Blinders, I think he did a decent job of capturing Oppy. Matt Damon is Leslie Groves, the general in charge of forming the team that would develop the bomb. And I enjoyed seeing Matt as a military man in this film. He pulled off Groves well as well as carrying the military swagger of that time very well.

Emily Blunt is Kitty Oppenheimer and she does a wonderful job as Kitty and capturing how Kitty loved and defended API at every turn. She was always very vocal about him being attacked for his role in developing the bomb.

Good old Robert Downey Jr. is Lewis Strauss, the infamous backstabber who turned on Oppenheimer after the bomb was dropped, and I think Robert gets better every time I see him. His versatility and ability to be someone completely different in each film that he’s in, despite how popular he is for other roles, is amazing.

The REEL-View rating. Eight outta 10 stars. This film was a decent combination of the biopic of Oppy, how he came to be a part of the Manhattan Project, and the aftermath of the atomic bomb. Some common opinions we’ve heard are pacing issues, misunderstanding of what the film was or what it was going to show and length. We’ll get into all of that in a moment.

Oppenheimer was released in 2023. It is directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr. Jason Clarke. Tony Goldwyn and Florence Pugh. It is rated R with a runtime of three hours. It can be viewed in select theaters and is now available for rent on Prime.

All right, here is the spoiler alert warning, those new to REEL Film Reviewed. After this point, I will discuss this review further potentially, and likely revealing spoilers. Thank you for listening to the spoiler free review. REEL Film Reviewed will continue after a brief promo.

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Welcome back, everyone. Let’s dive into the REEL-View Hollywood comparison. The REEL-View rating was eight out of 10 stars. The meta score is 88. Collective audience opinion is 8.6 out of 10 Stars. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 93% with their audience, giving it a 91%. I enjoyed this new telling of the story of Oppenheimer and how he came to oversee the Manhattan Project Building Los Alamos and a little glimpse into his personal life.

First, I would like to get out of the way that I saw Fatman and Little Boy with Paul Newman quite a while ago, but I know the source material used was similar to this take on Oppenheimer, but Oppenheimer did not feel like the other film’s story, if that makes sense. A lot of the time when films are redone, they just refresh the story, but Oppenheimer showed us a few things that the other film didn’t.

This was more of a recollection and telling of the facts versus Fatman and Little Boy being more story and being present in the action and a little bit more acting heavy. The way this story was told was a back and forth, present and past combination with a little hint of the future near the end of the film.

I would not call this film a biopic, (Even though I did earlier, that was IMDB’s description) because there was not quite enough to say that this was all about Oppenheimer and there was not enough of the war component to call this a war film. I would call it a historical drama, which covered a very specific moment and time in our country’s and the world’s history.

Breaking down the REEL-View – a lot of people have called this film slow, and I honestly did not feel that I knew how long the film was when I went in to see it. And I had watched an Oppenheimer documentary before I saw this. I checked the time a couple of times throughout the film just to check the pacing of the film, which appeared to be spot on once the film ended.

I felt that it was timed well. Some feel that it was a little fast in the beginning and then slow in the end, but I believe what they were experiencing was the sporadic times covered, to provide background to Oppenheimer as it related to where he was at the time that he was tasked to be the head of the Manhattan Project.

The pieces that we saw of Oppy’s history were strategic to understand him as we saw him in the present and leading into the Manhattan Project. And then of course, the aftermath, which Oppy famously struggled with. In these films, especially when they’re longer, the audience sometimes loses the respect for the art of cinema.

This film gave us just enough, not too much of the background to know and understand Oppenheimer, understand where our country was in the war, the race to build the bomb while Germany and other enemies were building something destructive. And that’s the most important thing to understand in this story, is the fear of the country during this time. We knew other countries were experimenting with chemical warfare and that they could create something destructive enough to flip the power from the United States, and we could not risk the future and the safety of our country.

When F D R died, everyone was even more afraid. The film also mentioned several key figures in scientists in history that some may not have picked up on, some may have, some of my Breaking bad fans may have picked up on Werner Heisenberg, the German theoretical physicist who went on to work for the Nazis during this time. Edward Teller, the Hungarian American theoretical physicist who went on to build the hydrogen bomb, and there was even sight of probably the most widely recognized theoretical scientists in the world, albert Einstein.

Speaking of Albert, there was also an artistic component to this film, aside from the effects of the first test of the A bomb, the mystery of what Albert and Oppenheimer talked about by the lake in the beginning of the film, which plagued Lewis Strauss for most of the film, was a nice addition to the dramatic aspects of the film. I also really enjoyed the scenes between Kitty and Oppy because you can get a sense of how Protective Kitty was over Oppy she was proud of him when he was advancing and being asked to lead the project.

She also saw him through his hardest times while suffering a few of her own, but stuck by him especially when the same people who talked him into the project turned on him after he delivered their weapon. Emily Blunt was great as the strong-minded and strong-willed Kitty Oppenheimer.

The real view was on par with the majority’s opinion. Mine was loosely based on the balance of drama and action. It is after all a Christopher Nolan film and also some factual errors were present. One goof, I will correct that I have heard is that the stop signs were yellow. I feel like that was a little bit obvious, but the US used yellow stop signs until 1954. This was not a goof. This was intentional to demonstrate the times.

A goof that really was a factual goof is during the speech that Oppenheimer gives later on in the film that people are seeing waving American flags. These flags contained 50 stars, which was not adopted until 1960, and that was more than a decade from the time that was shown during that scene.

There are a few more in there. My history buffs. I’m sure that you’ll challenge yourselves if you haven’t already, to find them all, I usually just call out the obvious ones that I see. I try not to look for mistakes, but if they’re obvious and apparent, I’ll call ’em out. Speaking of, let’s get into some, did you know facts?

I’m going to say that there were quite a few. I called out a few cinematic ones as well as a few historical ones. I. So the first one we’ve got in order for the black and white sections of the movie to be shot in the same quality as the rest of the film. Kodak developed the first ever black and white film stock for IMAX when in the bunker.

Oppenheimer says that they’ll know if the bomb is successful in one hour and 58 minutes. The bomb goes off in the movie at the one hour and 58 minute mark. Matt Damon was on a break from acting as a promise to his wife with one condition. It would go on hold if Christopher Nolan called. As luck would have it, Nolan offered Damon the role of Leslie Groves and the break went on hold.

The Trinity Detonation scene uses a combination of practical effects and digital compositing. Multiple explosions were performed practically with a hybrid of gasoline, propane, aluminum, and magnesium substances involving big miniatures. These were filmed at high speeds from multiple angles and then layered using digital effects to create the iconic mushroom cloud.

The score for the film doesn’t feature any drums. As director Christopher Nolan and Composer Ludwig Goransson felt using a sound typically associated with the military would be inauthentic to musically capture the character of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Albert Einstein is shown walking in the woods with Kurt Godell. The two of them did actually take long walks together as friends in the Institute for Advanced Studies. Several scenes were shot on location at Los Alamos and Princeton. Tom Conti found it really very funny to walk through Princeton and have people react to him dressed as Albert Einstein.

That is all I have for you everyone. As always, please find me on X, formerly Twitter at @reelfilmpkc and let me know what you thought of the film. And if you watch the film after listening to the review, let me know. Thanks for listening, everyone. I’ll catch you next time.

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