mysterymoviegoer

This sweet little entry gets off to a slowish start. Coogan correctly underplays his part as a part-time English teacher in fascist Argentina of the 1970's looking to survive. He rescues a penguin while trying to pick up a woman and goes home alone with the penguin following. How the penguin takes over every one's life at the school (including Coogan's) is the main story here. The ensemble work is great, though the all-boys class hijinx seems a little like a TV sit-com stuff. Jonathon Pryce turns up as the headmaster, light years away from his Cardinal Wolsey now on TV's Wolf Hall. The other actors acquit themselves very well This is light fare which is refreshing after the past years' heavy hitters like Anora, The Brutalist and Emilia Perez, none of which I would ever want to watch again. I'd love to know how the penguin (and his stand-ins) was trained to perform so well. He does steal your heart. Are there Oscars for Birds? There should be.

Talky, overly-long, meander through French death investigation. Did spiteful wife push annoying writer husband who blames her for his unhappiness out of chalet attic window? What does visually-impaired son know of truth? Is she flirting with interviewer or attorney? Not very convincing. Case for guilt of writer wife never very strong on evidence. Key tape of domestic spat dropped into plot at 2 hours plus. Trial gets bogged down on minutiae. Suggestion someone poisoned family dog with 10 aspirin to test theory incredible. Too much deadening filler. Forensic investigation whets the appetite for deliberation that never follows. Passable acting. This is academy award material? A major disappointment.

This is a mini-series treated as a 3-plus hour movie. The direction, special effects, scenery, and editing are great. But the movie bogs down early with tedious, boring dialogue, pretentious posturing and emotional sterility which bleaches any life out of it. This is a tale about the creation of the atom bomb treated like episodes of Days of Lives. Murphy is flat and two-dimensional as Oppenheimer, though he looks the part. He has two or three expressions which are over-used.. Robert Downey Jr. Easily walks off with the acting honors.

The script veers of into scenes that are not essential to the story telling. The high point is the test at Los Alamos but the movie plows on for an hour move giving us chapter and verse about how Oppenheimer was later abused by people he trusted.

The film is over-stuffed with characters you struggle to keep straight and bitty scenes that add little to your understanding. For all its length, Oppenheimer remains something of a mystery at the end.. There is no reason for this film to run over 3 hours. You will be checking your watch by the end.