Oppenheimer: It’s “The Bomb!”

This film has high-level buzz and has been eagerly awaited for months!  On the whole, I think it has lived up to the hype.  It's a MUST-SEE and will probably get multiple AA nominations.  My close friend (Arnie) even enthusiastically declared it to be "one of the best ten films I have ever seen!"  (I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's still the best film I've seen this year.)  Director/Writer Christopher Nolan has chosen to use large-format IMAX for the film, although I don't think it is essential for anyone to see it at an IMAX theatre.  The movie is based on the autobiography "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) was an extremely complex – as well as tortured – genius.  The film essentially covers Oppenheimer's adult life, from his education, his leading the Nuclear Weapons team at Los Alamos, and his post-Manhattan-Project life, where he was essentially unjustly slandered, vilified, and disgraced for being a communist.  Oppenheimer was supported by General Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon), but Lewis Strauss, the Atomic Energy Commission Chair (Robert Downey, Jr.), had other plans for him. Oppenheimer's life was filled with self-sabotaging and self-defeating decisions, which – much like a nuclear chain reaction – wreaked havoc.  The two main women in his life, his communist lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and his wife, "Kitty" (Emily Blunt), both were exasperated by him, despite their love for him. As was inevitable, Oppenheimer was tormented by the conflict between developing the atom bomb before the Nazis did, which would be critical for the allies to win the war, and the knowledge that this weapon would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and perhaps even eventually obliterate the human race. Although I seem to be in the minority, I found it about 30 minutes too long (at 3 hours).  The film covered so much ground, I wish it had a more narrow and more straightforward focus, rather than a diffuse one.  Nevertheless, a very interesting story, and A.A. worth acting from Murphy, Downey Jr., and Pugh, make for a top-notch movie experience.  The only person I know of that might like this movie (and its subject matter) better than Arnie did would be "Ant Man!"