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brendan-hemens
Reviews
Oppenheimer (2023)
Poorly woven mess that denies revelation
Oppenheimer consists of a very many scenes crisscrossing time and space, that knits together a disarray of thoughts presenting the title character as having an essentially successful career based on unlikable ambition, using what he knows to bring better scientists under his control, engaging in regular adultery with their wives while commanding the fruits of their success. He has to attend a bad meeting for a day or three, but basically walks away from it unharmed. He engages in some public waffling about the benefits of continued nuclear research, to virtually no effect and long after it matters. There's a bad guy because there has to be a bad guy, and Robert Downey plays him very well, but his subplot has no real place in the main one, so his comeuppance doesn't do much to exculpate 220,000 dead Japanese and a lifetime of Cold War nightmares for the viewer. There are some terribly trite scenes involving Einstein, or fusing quantum mechanics with romance, that are blech.
I don't understand why this movie got such broad aplomb. Nolan is, for cinema, the true destroyer of worlds.
Ron White: If You Quit Listening, I'll Shut Up (2018)
Never seen anything like it
This was my first experience with Ron - I've never witnessed someone play such complex irony while remaining so deeply in character. Very, very dirty, delivered with the words of a fanatically moral libertarian but the manner of a redneck casual bigot. I found this hilarious!
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Critics have it wrong...
...just like their first reviews of Bohemian Rhapsody the song. We enjoyed the movie immensely - it seems to move too quickly at first, but then we didn't realize how many hits they had right off the bat. It does settle into an emotionally engrossing story, with sooooo many hits woven in. The acting is superb, the story challenging, and the ending was as awesome as it was true.