Oppenheimer is now available to watch at home.
Probably that’s not the way director Christopher Nolan would prefer you to see his latest large-scale epic. But, look, sometimes you can’t make it to the theater. Or the IMAX was sold out every time you tried to go. Or your babysitter just upped their prices. For you, there is streaming.
Nolan’s latest is a complex historical drama about the life of scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy. Set in multiple time periods, the film tells Oppenheimer’s life story and considers the development and impact of the first atomic bomb, which Oppenheimer was instrumental in developing during the early 1940s.
Despite the fact that Nolan chose to make a hard-to-follow biopic about a scientist, and despite the fact that the film famously opened the same day as Barbie, the top-grossing film of 2023, Oppenheimer became a major hit in theaters, grossing over $959 million worldwide. It made more money in theaters than Inception! It grossed half a billion dollars more than Batman Begins! That is really wild.
A hit with audiences as well as critics, the movie is now nominated for 13 Academy Awards — the most of any film this year — and looks poised to sweep many of those categories on Oscar night. At this point, it looks like the frontrunner to win Best Picture as well.
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Oppenheimer really was one of Nolan’s great films. It made my list of the best movies of 2023 as well; as I wrote in my review…
Oppenheimer is intelligent non-IP-driven filmmaking on a scale we simply don’t see in movie theaters anymore — especially not in mid-July. At this time of year, we’re so used to movies filled with explosions we become numb to them. Oppenheimer really only contains one bomb — one whose fate we know right from the start — but it’s astonishing how much drama that one blast generates, because Nolan so clearly shows what it meant, not only to Oppenheimer, but to the entire world.
Oppenheimer is now streaming on Peacock.
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