The latest film releases include “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “The Beanie Bubble,” and “They Cloned Tyrone.” KCRW gets reviews from Amy Nicholson, host of the podcast Unspooled and film reviewer for The New York Times; and Shawn Edwards, a film critic at Fox 4 News and co-founder of the African American Film Critics Association.
“Oppenheimer”
Cillian Murphy plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, aka “the father of the atomic bomb,” alongside co-stars Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Robert Downey Jr. Director Christopher Nolan shot this in IMAX 70mm film. The story is based on the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Edwards: “You can tell that [Christopher Nolan] wanted to do this project for a really long time. … It's not a biopic per se. It's more of this really immersive character study in a cinematic op-ed. And I love the way the movie goes back to 1954 and flash-forwards. The construction and the timeline and … he really digs deep into Oppenheimer's emotional core — it's fabulous. Technically, everything about this is terrific.
… But the problem I have with it is it lacks cohesiveness and a sense of clear direction. But I'm willing to give Christopher Nolan a pass for that, because everything you see on the screen, you can tell that he just really dug in and … maybe sometimes over-thought about it. But everything that he delivers is what you want from a cinematic experience.
… It's a very heavy narrative that sometimes strays in too many directions, and it often becomes clumsy. But to the rescue are the cast, which is incredible. I mean, Cillian Murphy, he's perfection and definitely deserves an Oscar nomination. And then you have the showy Robert Downey Jr. … who just reminds us that he's such a brilliant thespian. And then this really calculated and precise performance delivered by Emily Blunt.”
Nicholson: “Your tolerance for listening to people in bland rooms talk about Communism has to be very, very high to watch this movie. … This movie becomes interesting in everything that … Nolan is choosing not to show. Because you know that Nolan is a man who can do beautiful interiors and grandeur and amazing visuals. He's a man who can show anything he wants to on the screen. And he chooses so much not to in this film. He chooses to keep us in these tepid interiors.
… Nolan really respects that there's this enigma at the heart of Oppenheimer. And at the end of three hours, he wants to let him stay that way. … He doesn't want to probe, he doesn't want to show things that aren't outside of his immediate orbit. And in part of that, he chooses not to show Japan, he chooses almost not to show the war really happening at all in the background.
… The way that everybody is talking about Oppenheimer in the movie, the way all the other characters are referring to him, that he's egotistical, that he's destructive, that he's selfish, he's a womanizer — they're making him sound more interesting in dialogue than actually anything Nolan’s showing us onscreen.”
“Barbie”
Directed by Oscar-nominee Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird,” “Little Women,” “Frances Ha”), Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) are living their perfect lives in Barbie Land. Then she goes to the real world, where her normally high heel-shaped feet go flat.
Nicholson: “Greta Gerwig is really doing a great job in here, wrestling with every dimension of the Barbie phenomenon, from the range of Barbie as a role model, the woman who can do every job on the planet and owns her dream home; and the Barbie who is also a symbol of female misery, a symbol of the unrealistic pressure to be great at everything and look gorgeous doing it. And what does that do for the man in her life as well? The Ken — the most inessential man on the planet.”
Edwards: “‘Barbie’ is a sprawling, colorful, sometimes fun, but ultimately a movie disguised as a lecture on feminism. Dear parents: This movie ain't the one for kids because the themes that Greta Gerwig reaches for are way too complex and way too adult. … They packed too much into this film. And it's trying to say too many things. It's trying to do too many things.
… You have these playful musical numbers that all pretty much fall flat. They're not fun, they're not memorable. They don't push the story forward. And it seems to all be done for gimmicks and games. And you see the film winking back at the film's marketing saying, ‘Hey, this is what we want to be, but like going to the dentist, we're going to give you something else.’”
“They Cloned Tyrone”
Jamie Foxx stars in this science fiction comedy about strange events that lead three people to a government conspiracy:
Edwards: “Jamie Foxx … [is] on full display, once again proving that he may be the most versatile living actor in the business. … The thing that really makes this movie so unique is that it's part blaxploitation film, part gangster flick, part satire, part science fiction, part mystery movie, part straight comedy. And it's a combination of all those things. But it's also none of those things. This film is dealing with social commentary on race, conspiracies, and gentrification.
… It may be the most impressive first film I've seen since Spike Lee’s ‘She's Gotta Have It,” and that came out way back in 1986. This movie's inventive. It's stylish. It’s thought-provoking. It's very entertaining.”
“The Beanie Bubble”
This comedy is about the collectible Beanie Babies from the 1990s and early 2000s.
Nicholson: “Over this 15-year period that the story takes place, we're jumping back and forth, nonstop. … And yet, what we see is that Ty [Warner], even though he's going through literal facelifts, becoming a wealthy man, he is still this same insecure child who can't let any of the women in his company take credit. So in a way, this movie is really not so much about Beanie Babies. … There's not a lot of actual doll information in here. It's really more about the different forms that patriarchy takes, that it's not just muscle-bound men with mustaches, but it can be baby men who want everything their way.”