OPPENHEIMER

Cert 15 | In cinemas now

- ANDY LEA

In 2020, Christopher Nolan’s spectacular but utterly baffling sci-fi movie Tenet was the first blockbuster to brave socially distanced cinemas. Now, the writer-director returns with a more straightforward proposition – a biopic.

Thankfully, Oppenheimer is easier to follow and no less ambitious.

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” says a tortured J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) after creating the world’s first atomic bomb. Pitting a doom-laden three-hour drama about a weapon of mass destruction against the breezy Barbie movie is up there with taking on a global pandemic.