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Oppenheimer (2023)
Nolan tries his best, but it's still just a biography
A biography that could have been trimmed down by half an hour on each side. If you don't like slow biographies where half the movie is cross-examining people in a tiny room, Nolan is not going to make you like it now.
The entire subplot around Strauss could have been chopped way down as I stopped caring about 30 minutes before its resolution. Seriously, the movie goes for at least 45 minutes of boring courtroom drama after the climax.
Cool visual effects are few and far between, and the movie tries to present shallow and obvious ideas as deep and meaningful, such as "the next generation of scientists will not be obsessed with your contributions and will be eager to make their own contributions". The movie goes out of its way to show how Oppenheimer's and Einstein's work was just a small part of a larger system, and how humanity would have built the bomb one way or another, and then ends on the therefore irrelevant notion that "Einstein and Oppenheimer started a chain reaction which will end the world". Why should this feel shocking when the whole movie is talking about the inevitability that all of that would happen?
There is a great little 1.5 hour biography to show to high school history students buried in there somewhere, but virtually everything Nolan did to try to make the movie more than that was a swing and a miss. If you swapped the name of the director and didn't use 20 A-list actors, I don't think many people would have much interest in this movie.
The Rehearsal (2022)
Nathan for You at 1/4 speed
It's just too slow. It has that similar dry humor that Nathan for you had, but it feels like 1/4 of a Nathan for You episode stretched out to 45 minutes. 1/4 the laughs, 1/4 the awkwardness, not worth it.
Doctor Who: Day of the Moon (2011)
Very confusing, but great nonetheless
We all knew that it would be a VERY tall order to create an episode that would be as great as the first part (which was amazing). This episode went in an entirely different direction, and while it wasn't bad, it couldn't quite stand up.
Part 1: Amy shoots at the girl in the spacesuit. Part 2: It is revealed that ........ she missed. Come on, I understand that this is a realistic conclusion, but who is watching Doctor Who for "she missed".
The episode itself was very confusing, but I cannot say it was completely illogical until I ask somebody who better understands. The biggest logic error of the episode, in my opinion is how the crew knows that the marks mean that they have seen the Silence. Part 1 showed that after seeing the Silence, you have NO MEMORY of them. It's not that you can't remember how they looked. It's that you can't remember seeing them. In part 2, the doctor explains that "all information (about the Silence) is erased". This means that you cannot record a message saying "the marks mean that I have seen the Silence" because it is instantly erased! There is no way to inform the outside world while you are seeing the Silence because any information is ERASED! And you don't know that the Silence exist if you are not seeing them! If all information about the silence is forgotten when you are not seeing them, then YOU CANNOT KNOW THAT THE SILENCE EXIST WHEN YOU ARE NOT SEEING THEM. If you could, it would defeat the entire purpose of being unable to be remembered. There was much more confusion in this episode, but it could take hours to explain all of it. Still, if anybody has ever seen (insert ridiculous Doctor Who finale here), they know that Doctor Who doesn't always make perfect sense.
The episode was a bit annoying to watch because you can see Amy's face clear of marks at one point, then a second later she looks in the window and you see that there are marks all over her face. It is impossible to figure out what is going on when the camera skips around time without so much as a cut. When they are analyzing the hologram of the Silence in the TARDIS, you cannot figure out for the life of you whose perspective you are seeing because it is nobody's perspective. Nobody in the TARDIS would be able to see Delaware's hand beeping before seeing the hologram of the Silence, but this is the visual that we were given. These time skips seem like cheap tricks to keep viewers confused.
Despite the confusion and the trickery, the episode was very exciting, and very scary. There were some good cliffhangers in part 2, but many of the cliffhangers from the part 1 still need to be resolved. It was awkward to hide long-term mysteries in the first of a two-parter, as the act builds false hope for part 2. Adding insult to injury, the Doctor (for some reason) basically says, "Who cares about figuring out who this girl is, or finding the origin of the living space suit, or figuring out why the Silence needed it? Lets go to random places, probably until the finale!"
*May Contain Spoilers* Response to ebman07: I am fairly familiar with Doctor Who and perception filters. The reason I made the note regarding the crews awareness of the Silence was because I was fed contrary information in part 1. When Amy leaves the White House bathroom, she recalls that she "must tell the Doctor something". This recollection has only to do with the Silence's ability to plant thoughts in people's minds. Other than this memory, she has no recollection whatsoever. Unless the Silence implanted the idea that they exist into the minds of the crew, the crew would be unable to recall the Silence's existence.
Yes, many intermediary episodes will reference main story arcs, but usually only a small portion is revealed before the finale.
You are correct to question my statement about the Doctor explaining his disinterest with the current situation at the end of part 2. I didn't have any reliable information regarding the crew's next actions, but I personally didn't get the Doctor's sarcasm, so I assumed that his desire to go adventuring was simply a way to transition into episodes that don't very much relate to the introduced story arc. Now I must see the beginning of the next episode!