Film Shapes

This perfectly-tuned biopic of the father of the atomic bomb has the Nolan stamp of assuredness upon it. The opening gives us scenes of a young-ish Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) getting to know himself and quantum mechanics, intercut with a couple of hearings - a congressional one with Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) attempting to become U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and a more secretive one to decide on Oppenheimer's security clearance. Sounds pretty dull, to be fair, but Nolan seems to realise the potential for yawns, so he keeps this whole first act zipping along, with constant, escalating music (by Ludwig Göransson) and tight editing (by Jennifer Lame). Oppenheimer breezes through this flurry and arrives at the central driver of the story - the recruitment of scientists to the Manhattan Project, run by Matt Damon's General Leslie Groves. It's around this time in the story that Oppenheimer starts to realise the potential for destruction that his work entails - he j...

Released in September last year in the UK and it takes SIX MONTHS to get to Japan, yet Battleship  arrives seemingly everywhere at once! Just one of the many injustices Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy must endure. Another would be the notion that films like The Artist and Hugo are better than it (according to assorted Awards ceremonies recently past). Piffle and tommy-rot! After reading the book years ago and watching the BBC series with Alec Guiness as Smiley, and enjoying both, I approached this new film with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. And I think it needs to be stated that the book, the TV show and the film are like kids with the same father but different mothers. They all come from the same seed but have quite noticeable differences. Le Carre himself apparently told Tomas Alfredson to do what he liked with the film, saying something along the lines of, "If you fuck up the film, the book will still be good". Well, Alfredson certainly di...