DAILY MAIL

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 Brian Viner writes: ‘Oppenheimer is a stunningly well-made film… Much of Oppenheimer unfolds like a thriller, while not swerving profound questions about the morality of laying Hiroshima and Nagasaki to nuclear waste. 

‘I despair at the inordinate length of many films these days, yet even at three hours this one never seems unreasonably long. There is an awful lot of story to tell, and Nolan tells it magnificently.’

THE GUARDIAN 

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Peter Bradshaw writes: ‘This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan.

‘He does this without simply turning it into an action stunt – although this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness: filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’

DIGITAL SPY

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Ian Sandwell writes: ‘Oppenheimer is absolutely a movie that you’ll want to discuss and chew over for days after first viewing.

‘It’s an absorbing and spectacular watch first and foremost, but also one that provokes you to think about the big, weighty topics that arose from Oppenheimer changing the world.

‘Christopher Nolan certainly won’t give you the answers, but in Oppenheimer, he has given you a theatrical experience like no other filmmaker can.’

 BBC

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Caryn James writes: ‘At times circles race across empty darkness or wiry orange strands of light appear, depicting the fears and the science occupying Oppenheimer’s mind. 

‘Those artful images are sporadic in a film that never loses its sense of story and drama, but they reveal how boldly imaginative and sure-footed the film is.

‘Oppenheimer is Nolan’s most mature work, combining the explosive, commercially-enticing action of The Dark Knight trilogy with the cerebral underpinnings that go back more than 20 years to Memento and run through Inception and Tenet’.

INDEPENDENT 

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Clarisse Loughrey writes: ‘Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s best and most revealing work. It’s a profoundly unnerving story told with a traditionalist’s eye towards craftsmanship and muscular, cinematic imagination.

‘Here, Nolan treats one of the most contested legacies of the 20th century – that of J Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the “father of the atomic bomb” – as a mathematical puzzle to be solved.’

 FINANCIAL TIMES 

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Danny Leigh writes: ‘Nolan taps the full sensory potential of moviemaking, pushing picture and sound to meet the scale of the story: clever lines dot the script; the whole project is admirably willing to wrestle with matters of great weight through cinema.

‘For all the hint of Hollywood in Los Alamos, Christopher Nolan isn’t Robert Oppenheimer. Nor is he Stanley Kubrick, who gave us that deathless nuclear comedy, Dr Strangelove. Kubrick was brilliant; Nolan is proficient. 

‘You may still find that his new film stays with you for days, turning itself over in your mind. And if that owes as much to Oppenheimer as Oppenheimer, the pair do have much in common: each as bold as they are flawed, two contradictory equations.’

EMPIRE 

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 Ben Jolin writes: ‘A masterfully constructed character study from a great director operating on a whole new level. A film that you don’t merely watch, but must reckon with.’

 

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