The Creator (2023) review

rating: ****

the story: A vet in plunged into the endgame of a war between humanity and AI.

the review: Here's another movie I have no clue hasn't had far more praise than it's received.  It's damn near a work of genius.  It's close to a masterpiece.

I'm starting to implicitly trust John David Washington's instincts.  He's had a whole string of fascinating projects under his belt in recent years (Tenet, Amsterdam, and now The Creator), pushed himself well beyond dad Denzel Washington's shadow, and establishing his own definitive screen presence, not the calm cool of dad, not necessarily capable of more, but very much his own, and with the capability to fit in effortlessly into sweeping situations without being lost in them.

The Creator is more than Washington, of course.  It's Gareth Edwards' directorial follow-up to Rogue One, which is the leading candidate for Star Wars fans as best of the current cinematic era.  I personally was not a fan of Rogue One.  No, I was very much the opposite.  In context, now, however, it makes a lot more sense, since in a lot of ways The Creator is a response to and continuation of its ideas, which makes much more sense, to me, in this context.  The Creator itself also serves as that elusive concept Hollywood chased for years after 1977, a movie that evokes Star Wars without buckling horribly under the pressure, a thing that was almost impossible for twenty years.  (Incredibly, although I have no idea when I myself will be able to consider the results, 2023 potentially gave us two such movies, with Rebel Moon also clearly envisioned from the bones of Star Wars.)

This is familiar territory, whether you consider the classic I, Robot stories, the movie that eventually resulted from it, the Terminator franchise, the Matrix movies, or even current fears of emerging AI prominence (although The Creator features traditional robots, its was heavily marketed with the concerns sweeping through the culture at the moment, and viewed from that light by critics and likely audiences).  It doesn't matter.  You've never seen anything like this.

I even say this as someone who loved Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen's Descender/Ascender comics, which have a number of parallels to The Creator, including a child robot destined to play a climactic role in events desperately sought by numerous figures.  Doesn't matter.  Visually the results are astonishing, exactly what modern filmmaking should be accomplishing (and not just an endless stream of superhero movies), but narratively, the results are equally assured, deliberate, and where all the critics complaining otherwise are coming from, I haven't a clue, since the central message is as relevant as it's ever been: the oppressed just don't want to be oppressed anymore, they just want to be free to live.

And that's really what's so great about The Creator, that it finally boils the robot story to what it really always was.  We keep dreading the robot apocalypse, and yet...why?  Why assume they're just gonna want to annihilate us?  When do we figure out the best solution will always be the one that benefits everyone?  That's what intelligence tells us, and the "i" in "AI" literally means "intelligence," so again...why?  

That's what The Creator answers.  That's what pushes it toward greatness.  

Along with Washington are a few name actors, Allison Janney representing the humans and Ken Watanabe the robots.  Isn't the presence of Watanabe itself an indication of quality?  He's another actor who's consistently selected great material, always unfailingly delivering quality performances in roles intriguing and relevant to the success of the films around them.

Trust Ken Watanabe.  Trust John David Washington.  There are built-in moments just waiting to be enshrined in the pop canon.  Help make The Creator a cult sensation at the very least!

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) review

the rating: ****

the story: Indy has a chance for one last great archeological find.

the review: I now have my second favorite movie in the series.  And who knows?  It might even become my favorite.  This is not likely something you've heard about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny before.  Certainly not with someone saying their favorite is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  I don't come to the franchise as a diehard believer.  I caught up with Raiders of the Lost Ark much later than other fans.  To me it's the first movie (and Temple of Doom is just another in the series).  I liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, thought it was inconceivable that Lucas and Spielberg struggled to make what was such an obvious entry in the series (aliens) for the kind of careers each otherwise had.  But it took James Mangold to reach Dial of Destiny, which achieves its greatness in much the way he did with Logan.

By finally just doing the kind of story that should have been told in the first place.

Henry Jones is an adventurer.  But that's just the stories he finds himself in.  He's actually, in his normal life, a professor, a lover of history, who sometimes goes on archeological searches, which happen to blow all out of proportion.  But mostly a lover of history.  I think Dial of Destiny is the first time that's really emphasized.  By the time we reach the ending (anyone quibbling about what happens is perhaps forgetting about the leaps of faith the other entries ask of us), it's what he always wanted, the thing that he was destined to experience all along.

Mangold previously achieved this with Logan, as I said, the first and to date only Wolverine appearance from the X-Men film franchise to stop worrying so much about superhero adventures and just let the guy be himself, in his own life.  The Wolverine, which was supposed to be the one that fixed that, buried him in a moody superhero adventure anyway.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine tossed him throughout the timeline, and forgot who the villain was supposed to be (Victor Creed, not Deadpool, regardless of how he was portrayed).  Logan made up for all of that.  It told a complete story, and even played out symmetrically with the first standalone movie (by having Wolverine fight himself, it finished the story the first one abandoned).  It also let him by the hero in an X-Men movie, which the X-Men movies kept dancing around, even when it was clear he was the star.

Dial of Destiny throws the accustomed Nazis at Indy, enemies and allies to work off of, but for the first time it's not the adventure that drives the plot (as with a lot of modern filmmaking the screen is too dark anyway) but rather the awareness that Indy himself is the star, which is also why Last Crusade worked so well, because it put the focus on Indy and his dad (which is what inspired the National Treasure movies).  While Disney continues to marvel at the technology that allows it to de-age faces, it's the older Indy that fascinates, and he's still very much up to the task, incredibly, all these years later.  And at five films and a little over forty years, we've gotten to see a complete arc of the good professor's life.

What's most remarkable, perhaps, is that if you were to watch only one Indiana Jones movie, you could absolutely make the case for it being Dial of Destiny.  Partisans will always default to Raiders, while Last Crusade has its selling points, too, but Destiny has young Indy, and it has old Indy, essentially a complete arc unto itself, and a single story uniting both, and a story linking his teaching life definitively to his private life.  It's all there.  That's why it's easy to sell.

Rounding out the cast this time are Antonio Banderas (I confess to missing everything but a glimpse of him), Mads Mikkelsen as the obligatory Nazi, Boyd Holbrook (who was also a standout in Logan), and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a more youthful audience surrogate in case you're not that interested in seeing old bones revisited.  

They say this is the last one.  It should be.  What a way to go! 

Films from cheap DVD collections

20 Classic Movie Collection: Leading Ladies

Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

Biopic of Broadway pioneer Jerome Kern (best known today for the song "Old Man River") featuring Judy Garland (her spotlight song clearly evoking "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"), Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury.  Not exactly Yankee Doodle Dandy but worth a look.

Home Town Story (1951) Marilyn Monroe has a bit part in this film that's not quite Citizen Kane or Frank Capra, but tries hard to be.

Affair in Monte Carlo (1952)

Weird editing makes this movie's timeline confusing in ways the filmmaking doesn't really support, essentially the body is flashback to a present that doesn't have much to say.  

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

The unorthodox editing works better in this one (in other words, just plain better filmmaking) featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Donna Reed, Roger Moore, and Eva Gabor.  

The Groom Wore Spurs (1951)

A sendup of the classic celluloid cowboy featuring Ginger Rogers.

Midnight Cop (1988)

A horrible detective story featuring Michael York and Morgan Fairchild.

Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring (1975)

TV movie about Sally Field being a hippy who worries her family including Jackie Cooper (the Christopher Reeve-era Perry White) by dating and/or living with other hippies like David Carradine, who looks considerably different with all that hair.

Tulsa (1949)

A movie starring Susan Hayward (and the Ed Begley who's not Ed Begley, Jr.!) that took on new light after I saw and read Flowers of the Killer Moon, covering very similar territory from a much different vantage point.

The Deadly Companions (1961)

Sam Peckinpah directs a movie where people are crazy about Maureen O'Hara, with one good guy having to constantly defend her against all the bad guys he inadvertantly linked up with and prevent everyone from seeing the telltale clue about his past hiding beneath that cowboy hat he never removes...

Dishonored Lady (1947)

Overblown drama revolving around Hedy Lamarr, (part-time inventor).

Kill Cruise (1990)

Nonsense survival fluff featuring a young Elizabeth Hurley.

Nothing Sacred (1937)

Nonsense newspaper shenanigans featuring Carole Lombard, Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West!) and Hattie McDaniel (Gone with the Wind).

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)

An adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway story featuring Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner.

Road to Bali (1952)

The sixth of seven in the series featuring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour (in most of them).  Classic screwball comedy.

Mutiny (1952)

Ridiculous tale featuring Angela Lansbury.

Never Wave at a WAC (1953)

Screwball look at women in the military.

Jane Eyre (1934)

Adaptation starring the literary classic.

The Seducers (1977)

I watched through a lot of movies.  Some of them I did not watch very thoroughly.  Some of them just weren't worth the effort, okay?  When these things are being compiled through the public domain, they take what they can get.  

Katherine (1975)

Another darned TV hippy flick, this one starring Sissy Spacek in the role of the young future star as a hippy and Henry Winkler as the hirsute actor you'll struggle to recognize as the hippy love interest.

Power, Passion & Murder (1983)

Michelle Pfeiffer conveniently in the public domain, and also Hector Elizondo.  And Holland Taylor!

20 Classic Movie Collection: Leading Men

Constantine and the Cross (1962)

Cumbersome version of how Constantine converted himself and/or the Roman Empire.

The Night America Trembled (1957)

This right here was for me worth pursuing any of this in the first place.  A TV version of the famous Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds, featuring Edward R. Murrow, Warren Beatty, Ed Asner and James Coburn.

The Animal Kingdom (1932)

Puffle featuring Myrna Loy.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1958)

Clever musical version of the classic tale featuring Van Johnson and Claude Rains (Prince John in the classic Errol Flynn Adventures of Robin Hood).

That Uncertain Feeling (1941)

Nonsense romance shenanigans featuring Burgess Meredith.

Life with Father (1947)

Directed by Michael Curtiz (best known for Casablanca, but with a bunch of other standouts), but not worth much, a silly story about a dad played by William Powell (The Thin Man et al) and featuring Elizabeth Taylor.

This is the Army (1943)

Also directed by Curtiz (they couldn't afford any of his good movies), featuring Ronald Reagan in a movie that wishes it was White Christmas, with cameos from the likes of Irving Berlin, Joe Louis and Kate Smith.

The Amazing Adventure (1937)

Cary Grant tries to prove he can survive without relying on his massive inherited fortune...but kind of only succeeds because of his massive inherited fortune anyway.

Borderline (1950)

Fred MacMurray's the hero and Raymond Burr's the villain in this tale of uncertain identities pursuing justice.

A Bolt of Lightning (1951)

Another TV episode, a drama set during the runup to the Revolutionary War featuring Charlton Heston and very little to interest viewers.

A Tattered Web (1971)

Features Lloyd Bridges, James Hong (many small roles over the years!), and not much by way of me remembering anything about it.

Target of an Assassin (1976)

Features Anthony Quinn and another movie I don't remember much about.

The Bushwhackers (1952)

Features Lawrence Tierney, Lon Chaney Jr., and a third disc of the set that starts out with nothing much happening.

Royal Wedding (1951)

Fred Astaire to the rescue!  Featuring memorable dancing on walls, ceiling...anything at all, even dancing with a hatrack!

Made for Each Other (1939)

James Stewart and Carole Lombard can't save this.

Fighting Caravans (1931)

Gary Cooper looking so young it's like seeing a silent film version.

The Lady Says No (1952)

David Niven in not much to talk about here.

Behave Yourself (1951)

Lon Chaney Jr. in another movie I didn't spend too much time on that same day.

Port of New York (1949)

Gosh, had to pay attention to this one!  Yul Brynner's hairline makes it pretty clear why he ended up with the bald look...

David and Goliath (1960)

Orson Welles can't save this one.

I barreled through all these from October 2nd to the 29th.  It was an accomplishment of endurance and commitment when a lot of the material really didn't merit it.  Here we are finally writing this up, which was the main reason I did it at all.  Huzzah!

Every 2023 movie I’ve seen so far

65

The more I thought of this one the more I loved it, an experience that’s worth it on a number of levels. Plus allows me to admire Adam Driver’s acting without much distraction.

80 for Brady

The cast is low energy but it would be a sin against my home country not to partake.

A Good Person

This was the year I finally understood the appeal of Florence Pugh. Another Zach Braff film worth savoring, another excellent turn from Morgan Freeman.

Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania

The problem with recent MCU movies is that they keep trying to be overly ambitious without necessarily understanding how to do it. It’s the reverse of Captain America: Civil War, the third one in that trilogy that was essentially an Avengers movie. Keeping this movie entirely contained with Ant-Man characters both robs it of  the Ant-Man storytelling from the two previous entries and makes Kang look infinitely smaller than he should. It’s one thing to contextualize Thanos, another to just use the villain and actually defeat him in epic fashion before he has a chance to be a threat worth bringing in other heroes.

Asteroid City

My gosh one of my favorite Wes Andersons.

Barbie

Yeah, it was fun!

Beau is Afraid

The director (Ari Aster) has been a cult favorite for a few years now, but ironically I find him most palatable when he’s at his most indulgent and not just trying to impress. A strange wonderful experience.

Blue Beetle

I loved this more in theaters than I did at home. 

Chevalier

Wanted to make one point and either intentionally or accidentally made another. Look, we have a black musical genius who ended up buried by history. Worth rediscovering. Not worth trying to sell the benefits of the horrific Reign of Terror in the process.

Cocaine Bear

I really wanted to like a big dumb movie. I ended up just sort of liking it. Desperately needed characters as outlandish as the premise. But the ‘90s sort of proved this was a very fine line to walk. So I get why it went in a different direction.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Basically an MCU movie set outside the MCU.

Fast X

I’ve been along for the ride since the second one. Of course I’m still aboard.

The Flash

I will always doubt public opinion on the face of it when it’s too universally positive or too universally negative, since it becomes clear most of it is just people deciding it’s easy to just agree. This would be one of those modern examples. I love the Barry Allens. I love Keaton’s return. I love Supergirl. I adore this depiction of the Allen household and crisis. Everything else is needless nitpicking.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

I love that we get the secret origin of Rocket. Everything else basically ignores Rocket himself, though, which is the basic problem of the film. If you have the heart you need it pumping.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant 

From April until July this was easily my movie of the year, a breathtaking set of journeys built around themes of duty, commitment, endurance, responsibility, humanity, all needful statements in this current age.

John Wick: Chapter 4

Watching it in the theater I wondered if it had, other than its ending, something valuable to add to the franchise. Watching it back later, I understood its merits better.

Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese has been chasing The Godfather his whole career. This may be his most complete response.

Knock at the Cabin

M. Night Shyamalan back to his classic roots after years of experimenting. 

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

As an addition to Dracula film lore, I’m glad this happened.

Marlowe

Liam Neeson is taken totally for granted these days since he “only makes mindless action movies.” This is a great take on a classic literary and film figure.

Master Gardener

A classic showcase for Joel Edgerton.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

This is the fourth stylistic reincarnation of the series, more playful, somehow more dramatic.

Napoleon 

Ridley Scott is the unchallenged king of historical epics. And this is probably his best work.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

It’s strange how effortlessly I’ve become a fan of Guy Ritchie in recent years, since for a long time I couldn’t have cared less. But these days he can do no wrong for me. This one’s popcorn enjoyable.

Oppenheimer 

Something would have to come out of nowhere to displace this as my favorite movie of the year. A career pinnacle of a career built out of pinnacles.

Paint

Owen Wilson doesn’t appear in Asteroid City, but in this film found something Andersonesque anyway. 

Plane

On Facebook I’m in a Lost group. Someone pointed out this was essentially a Gerard Butler version of the basic plot of the series. Which it is. Which is not necessarily the only way to enjoy it.

Polite Society

This year’s closest equivalent to Everything Everywhere All At Once is a delight not completely to that level but its own irresistible pleasure.

The Pope’s Exorcist 

Russell Crowe getting back into theatrical starring roles is a good thing as far as career statements go. This one wasn’t as good as it could have been. Almost. Still an interesting role and performance from him, though.

Renfield

The other Dracula movie (perfect role for modern Nic Cage!) is great fun.

Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

It’s not just Disney firing blanks with families this year. This is an entertaining movie that came and went with nobody noticing.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods

More confident than the first one. Still requires you to believe this is the DC alternative to everything you didn’t like about every other recent DC movie.

Sisu

One of those obvious cult classics in the making that it’s absolutely worth experiencing. A slightly more grounded John Wick. Slightly.

Sound of Freedom

Jim Caviezel has become a genius at finding projects for those interested in him from that time he got brutalized for two hours.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

A kind of postmodern superhero movie that’s less about the superhero doing anything super and more about the superhero plunged deep into superhero logic. Most comics are being written like this these days. I know this is the second one, but I found this one easier to watch. But still a snake eating its own tail.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Pretty much exactly what it needed to be. (So the exact opposite of that other attempt thirty years ago which thought it was Beetlejuice.)

Sweetwater 

The kind of movie that gets no attention these days but used to be studio and cultural bread and butter, explores the story of the first black player in the NBA, totally unknown today.

Other movies to catch up on, others yet to be seen…!

Don't waste time investigating Billy Jack

Because a collection was at Walmart featuring the character's entire legacy, I finally had a look at Billy Jack (1971), a movie I first heard about when investigating historic box office results.  Until then I had no clue it existed, which is incredibly rare for a large box office hit, which is a phenomenon that happens because a movie makes a significant impact on the pop culture and will be referenced one way or another for years to come.  The Oscars are a completely different matter.  Most nominations are minor films featuring performances or production work Academy voters are keen for one reason or another to recognize, and it's always been that way.

Actually watching Billy Jack explained why this happened to it pretty quickly.  It's a terrible movie.  Its predecessor, The Born Losers (1967) is terrible.  Its sequels, The Trial of Billy Jack (1974) and Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977; which doesn't fail because it's an almost complete reshoot of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but because it retains the same hairbrained production values as the rest of the series, which has as its dubious legacy forcing the blockbuster concept on the wide release schedule movies have been following ever since), are terrible.

I mean terrible.  The title character (which is itself terrible) is a macho hippy.  But a hippy all the same.  All his supporters are hippies.  The real hippies, not the ones the media has tried for decades to sell on a gullible public in the post-hippy era.  Basically the ones Quentin Tarantino features in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, only the Billy Jack hippies are presented as the counterculture heroes of legend, a huge emphasis on "heroes."

The most offensive part, for me, is that these hippies believe they make good music, but they seem fundamentally incapable of any such thing.  The whole series features, proudly, the anthem "One Tin Soldier" which, if you're keeping up with me, is terrible.  Just so completely convoluted it's difficult to understand how even one film, much less any audience member (it's described elsewhere online as iconic) could believe for a hot minute it isn't complete garbage.

Billy Jack himself is pretty awesome.  He's a dude who can't help but get into fights, and he pioneered martial arts as a cinematic way to do so.  He's worth rooting for, but nothing around him really justifies his actions except in the most cardboard way.  It's like the charisma of Steve McQueen without the cool.  Basically every successful Steve McQueen flick was all about selling the cool image.  It was the whole point.  McQueen went well out of his way to make sure he looked cool.  He had an ego.  In the right context, that's exactly all you really need.

Billy Jack desperately needed anything, anything at all to work.  The success of the films, such as it was, owed everything to guerilla marketing.  It worked.  For that time.  But no one in the Hollywood establishment respected the results.  You don't need that.  But you do need good filmmaking.  

So do yourself a favor, and don't waste time investigating Billy Jack.  It's not worth your time.  Unless you have morbid curiosity.

Always adding physical media into the collection…

I never stopped buying DVDs to my collection. I only started buying Blu-rays a few years ago, when I finally got a player upgrade. Yesterday (and today!) was pretty lucky. I always like to check out thrift stores to see what they’ve got. A local community college had apparently purged its collection (because, y’know, streaming platforms fall all over themselves promoting classic film…), had even tried giving their stock away for free, and, well…I ended up getting to benefit. I certainly don’t mind!

Here’s what I picked up:

-As You Like It, one of Kenneth Branagh’s later Shakespeare adaptations. Haven’t seen it yet.

-Blow Out, a Brian De Palma/John Travolta classic I also haven’t seen yet, in a Criterion Collection edition, no less.

-Cloud Atlas, one of those supremely ambitious novels/movies with an all star cast headed by Tom Hanks in probably (several) of his most interesting performances, which I’ve been wanting to revisit for a few years.

-Dog Day Afternoon, an Al Pacino classic I’ve never seen.

-Exit Through the Gift Shop, a documentary on Banksy. Back in yon Borders days, I learned about the graffiti genius through a number of books we always had stocked. A few years back I saw a different Banksy doc on a plane ride.

-Frost/Nixon, which is another movie I’ve long wanted to see.

-A doc on Hemingway.

-The Madness of King George, a ‘90s movie that I’ve also been interested in seeing for years.

-The Man Who Would Be King, which I’ve been wanting to add to my collection for years. Great movie.

-Tess of the D’Urbervilles, a BBC production starring Gemma Arterton I’ve had in my collection before and am glad to add back in, also so I can watch it again.

-Whale Rider, which I’ll be very happy to see again.

-White Christmas, which is a big family favorite I haven’t owned until now.

-Leading Men/Leading Ladies, one of those collections of material that would probably have not sold much individually. By far the production I’m most interested in, here, is The Night America Trembled, concerning Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.

Dollar Tree is a surprisingly good place to find interesting things, including books and, yes, DVDs (and Blu-rays!). Today I found:

-Good Kill, a movie starring Ethan Hawks and Zoe Kravitz (which will probably be the first time I see her in something other than a genre performance).

-The Sun Is Also a Star/Everything, Everything, two adaptation of Nicola Yoon books.

-Killing Eve Season Two, a BBC series (Dollar Tree often has BBC programming, including generous helpings of Doctor Who) starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer (who stole The Last Duel from Adam Driver and Matt Damon). Haven’t seen the show yet, so this will be interesting.

-Spectacle: Elvis Costello with…, a TV series featuring interviews with and performances from a variety of interesting folks.

-Best of British, a box set of various documentaries and several facsimiles of historical documents, which was indeed an awesome find.

Oppenheimer (2023) Review

rating: *****

the story: The director of the Manhattan Project discovers great achievements don't always have happy endings.

the review: Most of the time, when you see what's going to be your favorite movie of the year, there ought to be no doubt.  Christopher Nolan has been one of my favorite directors since 2001, when Memento was released, and for a few years held the slot of my favorite movie, and in the two decades or so since, he's continued to make movies that I have very enthusiastically received, The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar being my favorites from their release years (2008, 2010, 2014).  Although it received a considerable amount of pre-release buzz, in part because it was scheduled to hit theaters the same weekend as Barbie, I had no idea what to expect from Oppenheimer.  I loved his previous attempt at historical, WWII drama, Dunkirk, but it didn't feel like an achievement so much as an experience.  Nolan is very good at experiences, and has at times been on the verge of letting his talents rest of that level alone (here I certainly think of Tenet, which is its own kind of great filmmaking, but not as clear a statement).  Oppenheimer is a complete package.  As social media personality Logan Paul famously lamented, it's pretty much nothing but talking, but it's a tonal masterpiece.  The score certainly helps, but three hours of a perfect score is something even Terrence Malick can't necessarily reliably pull off.  Eventually there needs to be some concrete substance, and that can be found in spades throughout Oppenheimer.

It certainly doesn't hurt the sheer embarrassment of talent, and this is something even I can sometimes get carried away being dazzled by, but Oppenheimer's cast is stuffed to the rafters, and most of its actors are in relatively small roles while the bulk of the film rests on Cillian Murphy (long looking for that one great role, which this is) and a little on Robert Downey Jr. finally proving, once again, he's not just a superhero great at making quips, very deliberately changing his look and most of the time sounding nothing at all like Tony Stark (though happily our Iron Man comes out of his shell now and then), and Emily Blunt resting comfortably in the background until she commands the screen, and Rami Malik echoing that, and Matt Damon playing first supporting role (the man is as near a genius at selecting material as modern cinema has ever found, so often willing to play whatever role he wants it's astonishing that he's also remained a reliable leading actor the whole time), and then there's also Casey Affleck, Gary Oldman and Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke...A pair of would-be next generation lead actors, Dane DeHaan and Josh Hartnett, they're here.

Tom Conti, a respected actor from a previous generation, turns in a chameleon role as Einstein, a pivotal if minor one in the movie.  Einstein's role itself in the movie is genius, stepping away from the theatrics of The Prestige's Tesla though hinging on the same basic story structure, of a crucial moment between two characters that must be examined either by the audience or by the story itself to be understood as so crucial, the kind of storytelling Nolan employed in his first movie, Following, that had one of those twist endings that originally made Nolan himself seem as if he might after all be dismissed as a gimmick, as M. Night Shyamalan was for so long (and so many still believe so today), a fad.  

Oppenheimer is the definitive proof that Christopher Nolan is no such thing.  When Spielberg delivered Schindler's List and then Saving Private Ryan, his own one-two WWII punch, it opened new avenues of appreciation for his talent, and depth of talent.  Nolan, even in his superhero movies, never went broad.  He sought audience approval in scale of spectacle, the way Spielberg did it in the '70s, and never in mere thrills or childlike awe.  For too long Nolan was easy to dismiss because he didn't pursue the "truly adult," the straightforward drama.  Even Dunkirk relies on a series of timelines that robs it of a center beyond the central event.  Oppenheimer is classic Hollywood, a biopic.  Except no one's done it like this before.  

In most of his films, Nolan studied the concept of not just identity but self-identity, and while his characters often find themselves misunderstood, he's never really allowed them to suffer for it, never quite left the impression of an unhappy ending, and yet that's exactly what he does with Oppenheimer, and is thus the answer to why Einstein's brief role in the film is so crucial, why the story keeps circling back to it.  In criticizing the past, Nolan is of course giving us a damning metaphor about the present, since sometimes when you can't state things outright, you have to elucidate another way.  

I've long since stopped worrying about what Christopher Nolan can possibly do next.  Anything he wants.  It's all possible.  Of course he could never make another film, and his work will have already towered over his contemporaries, and the whole history of the medium.