Welp, that's an odd, if a bit underwhelming first entry in a saga that I discovered with the masterpiece that is Fury Road.
First thing's first, it was insanely funny to go into this expecting a post-apocalyptic setting only to find a very mildly dystopian Australia. Having said this, the barebones sets and locations make this work surprisingly well, in a way similar to A Clockwork Orange. Max drives around in what feels like a zombie world, vaguely parroting civilization…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
For the first two of its ruthlessly designed three acts, Oppenheimer plays like a mostly conventional take on the genius biopic.
We get one hour to acquaint ourselves with the troubled yet magnetic young Robert, dashing from his studies in Europe to spreading the good word about the wonders of science (specifically the novel quantum physics) to America. Nolan's extremely subjective storytelling (90% of the film being told through Oppenheimer's eyes) goes as far as to visually invite us into…
Force Majeure's main problem is that it contains one of the greatest comedic scenes I've seen in recent memory, an almost surgical picking apart of male vanity in the form of a single, three-minute take.
Incredibly, the closer you look at that take, the more you perceive how choreographed it is, for all its apparent chaos and nonchalance. For instance, the gloriously goofy choice of music for the scene actually matches the timing of the main beats perfectly, and also…
