Barbie Oppenheimer

Writer-director Greta Gerwig, fresh off the back-to-back successes of Lady Bird and Little Women (both are worth seeing if you haven’t), ventures into the realm of the IP blockbuster with Barbie

Margot Robbie plays Stereotypical Barbie, who lives a life of bliss in the matriarchal Barbie Land with a variety of other Barbies and Kens. One Ken in particular (Ryan Gosling) is in love with her, but she doesn’t pay him much notice. Suddenly, Barbie becomes burdened with thoughts of mortality and other mysterious ailments (cold water from a shower, flat feet, etc.).

After learning that her melancholy is the result of a psychic link between her and a mother (America Ferrera) saddened by a distant relationship with her tween daughter (Ariana Greenblatt) and frustrated by her job at Mattel, Robbie’s Barbie journeys to the real world with Gosling’s Ken in tow. Panicked Mattel executives (led by Will Ferrell) try to capture Barbie and restore order. Barbie discovers the real world isn’t as kind to women as Barbie Land and Ken revels in the newfound respect he feels in the real world.

There are definitely some funny culture clash moments in Barbie (and the final gag of the film is great). But the second half of the numbers. The speeches are unnecessary. Even the most vapid Ken or Barbie could get the gist of what Gerwig (who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach) is going for. The first time Gosling sings a Matchbox 20 song is amusing. The second time, not so much.

That said, there are also some moving moments in the film’s opening half: an interaction between Barbie and an elderly woman sitting by herself at a bus stop, a montage of a mother and daughter gradually drifting apart, and a scene where Barbie sits in a park and just observes people experiencing the full range of human emotions both good and bad.

Barbie is a mixed bag. It’s also been very nice to see how the internet, which can occasionally be used for good, turned the juxtaposition of Barbie and Oppenheimer opening on the same day into a meme and likely lured lots of people off their couches

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, is a nonlinear, and sometimes pretentiously arty, but gripping story. The emotional core comes through, thanks, in part, to a great central performance by Cillian Murphy. Murphy is believable as a brilliant man, but he also perfectly conveys the inner turmoil this man has with the monster that he has created.

Although the movie is nonlinear, it does have three acts where each one focuses on a certain area of Oppenheimer’s life. Sure, scenes of his later years spill over to the early years, and vice versa, but it all comes together as a thought provoking whole.

The first act opens in 1926 and concentrates on Oppenheimer studying at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, and then at the University of Gottingen in Germany. When he returns to the United States, he teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. The second act has him recruited by U.S. Army General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to head the Manhattan Project in creating an atomic bomb. The final portion of the movie deals with Oppenheimer’s guilt over helping unleash the atomic bomb after two A-bombs were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which ended World War II. Oppenheimer, advocating against any further development of nuclear bombs, is basically put on trial for his alleged ties to the Communist Party. Leading the charge to destroy Oppenheimer is a senior U.S. Atomic Energy Commission member, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.)

The movie also gets into Oppenheimer’s relationship with a lover, Jean (Florence Pugh), his marriage to “Kitty” (Emily Blunt), and his affairs.

The film is directed and written for the screen by Nolan, based on the 2005 biographical book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin that was written over a twenty-five year period. Many of Nolan’s previous movies (Following, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar) play like intense fever dreams, and Oppenheimer is no exception.

One of the best sequences is the testing of the bomb. Ludwig Goransson’s eerie and continuous music score actually halts for a few moments as we see the initial flash and fiery eruption of the explosion in silence before the ferocious sound catches up to the blast wave. It’s a haunting moment in a movie that often plays like a thriller.

—David Vicari