A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS 1

Review of what I watched: Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Celebrity. Contains spoilers so skip if that isn’t what you are interested in.

Hey, hey. I hope you are doing great. I am currently working on a few essays and only God knows when I will finish it because capitalism is crushing me. So I have decided to start a semi-regular series that tells you what I am currently enjoying because I do consume a lot of content and I have awesome tastes, lol. It would be called “A few of my favourite things”. Yes, the name was inspired by the sound of music. This edition would focus on thoughts on shows/movies I watched and enjoyed. It would probably also contain spoilers, if you aren’t interested in that you can stop reading here.

OPPENHEIMER

SUMMARY: The movie follows the physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer as he leads his teams on a top secret mission of developing and designing the atomic bomb.  

When the trailer of this movie came out, absolutely no one was surprised that I was excited about it. I am somewhat of a ww2 and fascism nerd. Not formally trained or anything, just someone with deep interest that has tried to read everything she possibly can about the topic. Added points were also the cast and Christopher Nolan. I would be breaking my review down into two parts: what I liked and my criticism.

I loved the acting from the cast. Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey jr, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek are all great actors individually but all of them together with the rest of the team brought the house down. It was a spectacular and fully immersive performance from everyone. The costume and the set design were so good, it really did look like the various time periods they were trying to portray. 

Oppenheimer also tried to be as historically accurate as possible. They showed seemingly unimportant things like how he was a better theoretical physicist than an experimental physicist to his love affair with Jean Tatlock. Also, mentioning all the cool other scientists who are side characters was a fun moment to just nerd out. The storytelling was somehow fast-paced without feeling like you are being bombarded with information. I however want to ask Nolan why he didn’t include John von Neumann, considering how important he was to the Manhattan Project and Nolan’s emphasis on other minute details.

The special effects were so good. Chris Nolan is known for using as little CGI as humanly possible. So I did wonder how he would get the depiction of the atomic bomb explosion without actually detonating an actual atomic bomb. Whatever he and the team did was so good, down to the depiction of an explosion where light comes before sound because light travels faster than sound. Absolutely loved Nolan doing the first-person and third-person perspective directional perspective. It might be a bit confusing but when you get it, it’s a glorious experience. I also enjoyed how Nolan explored the complexities and effects of McCarthyism.

The story of Oppenheimer is fundamentally a story of ethics in science and I did think the movie did a decent job of portraying how the scientists of that time wrestled with it. I however have criticism of how Oppenheimer was portrayed as “naïve” about the consequences of using the atomic bomb. I believe Oppenheimer was an intelligent man and was aware of the consequences of his actions. This is why I think he enthusiastically took the job in the first place because he wanted to beat the Nazis in the “competition” of creating the atomic bomb. I think playing too much into the “naivete” trope smoothens out a complex man. 

I also think Oppenheimer's “radical politics” were a bit overplayed. Don’t get me wrong, I am aware of him donating to the republic side of the Spanish war (which is objectively a good thing) and he was sympathetic to communism and other left-leaning ideas but I think Oppenheimer was not as radical as he is portrayed in the movie. For example, his brother, Frank Oppenheimer was part of the efforts to desegregate the  Pasadena public swimming pool. To me, there were way more radical people that surrounded Oppenheimer so it seemed odd to me to emphasize it. I also think that scene where he is giving a speech and he sees burning flesh would have been better if it was Japanese people, I felt that would have humanized the victims. I do understand him not wanting to do that though. Also, he could possibly fall into the trap of Orientalism, so there is also that. I think Oppenheimer was an attempt to deal with a complicated man vital in a war with complex nuances.

BARBIE

SUMMARY: Barbie is enjoying her time in Barbie land when she has an existential crisis that forces her to go to the real world. 

I would like to start by saying that I wasn’t a Barbie girly. Don’t think I remember watching a full Barbie anything till I was in secondary school when I had terrible cramps and couldn’t sleep. The only reason I was initially excited about Barbie was Greta Gerwig. I have always liked her perspective on women’s and girls' experiences. It may have been limited but her perspective shown in movies like Ladybird and Little Women has always been interesting to me. Then, I got excited about Margot Robbie being Barbie because I loved her in I, Tonya, and Suicide Squad.

After seeing the movie, I loved it a lot and had a lot of criticism. I absolutely loved the set, it genuinely looks like a doll house. I would like to acknowledge the attention to detail by the team. Weird Barbie did look like a child drew on her, the lack of water was also something that made me giggle because of its accuracy. The costumes were so cute and they really depicted the Barbie world. I also enjoyed the depression-core aesthetic infused into a scene in this movie. I think it’s a nod to girlhood in the current internet culture. When I heard some of the songs before seeing the movie, I kept on thinking “How is this even going to fit into the movie?”. I would like to announce that I was proven very wrong and the songs very much made sense everywhere they were used. 

Also, the jokes were really good. Not all of them landed but I did laugh more than I thought I would laugh. Absolutely loved the shout-out to Ruth Handler, it showed them leaning into Barbie history. The breaking of the fourth wall is something I think was done so well, especially the scene where there is a discussion of beauty with Barbie 

 This movie also made me reflect on femininity. I wrote an essay in defence of girly things (you can read it here ) and the Barbie movie made me think about my relation to femininity. Like why exactly was I never a Barbie girly? Did I not like Barbie or did I not want to be like the “other girls”? There was an Instagram reel from America Ferrara (One of the actors in Barbie) on how women aren’t allowed to hold on to childhood. Men have their man caves and it’s not odd to walk into a room full of men playing FIFA/PES. That perception doesn’t translate for women. Before this, if you walked into a woman watching Barbie on Netflix without a child present you would raise eyebrows. Movie series like GI Joe, Marvel, and DC movies have found a way to mainstream male “childishness” in a way that retains adulthood. I think that is what movies like Barbie would do for women.

Barbie’s attempt to critique Barbie by extension Mattel was its strength and also its weakness. Barbie being self-aware is great but the self-awareness wasn’t “enough”. The Mattel heads were cartoonish and never had to actually deal with criticisms of Mattel. Barbie (the movie) also didn’t deal with some of the criticism, it just waved them away. For example, the top positions in Mattel are male-dominated, beauty standards, over-consumption, etc. I also think Gloria and her daughter’s characters weren’t developed enough. There was a lot more “telling” instead of “showing”.

Before you roll your eyes at me, yes I know the movie is from a large corporation meant to be enjoyed by a large variety of people. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Barbie but I have been thinking about the growing world of “critique” movies/shows and the commodification of critique. This is also criticism I have of Black Mirror doing criticism I have about streaming while being on Netflix. This isn’t the fault of the filmmaker, more of an observation on what to me looks like a trend. I also think it’s a good introduction to topics Barbie chose to tackle, I just think the audience has to do more work and not just stay there.

Side note: I finally listened to the original Aqua “Barbie girl” and I was traumatized. There are a lot of sexual innuendos that would probably fly over children’s heads but the implying that women are bimbos was the most egregious. To find out more, click here.

CELEBRITY

SUMMARY: A-ri’s life changes when she enters the world of Gangnam’s top social media influencers and her life completely changes.

If you know me, you would know that I LOVE KDRAMA. Been a fan since Boy before Flowers, A man called God, etc. So when I saw a show about influencer culture, it piqued my interest. I enjoyed the attempt at examining class. It really did show the ridiculousness of wealth. The moment that the maid was attempting to catch the guy’s shoes, I was like “What the hell?”.

It candidly dissects the entitlement of the influencers and the vapid nature of the industry. It also analyses the performance that influencers do and in the process gives us a look into the inside world of influencer culture. It really does well when going into the perils of fame and social media bullying.

I however think some of the characters needed to be fleshed out more because they honestly felt one-dimensional. When they tried to add complexities, they were not compelling enough for me to see them as anything other than vapid bad guys. Also, there was a lot of dragging out of obvious points. Like this could have been a shorter series.  I still think we didn’t need a love story. Like I enjoyed it because the chemistry was genuinely insane but I didn’t like the prince charming saving Cinderella thingy. I would have been fine with the whole “revenge” thing. 

At the end of the day, these are all movies/shows I enjoyed and I recommend you watch it. 

If you enjoyed this and want me to do more like this, then kindly share and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Thank you for reading. See you next time I publish another essay.