Oppenheimer, like its namesake J. Robert Oppenheimer, is a noble failure—but I've continued to revisit it in my mind’s eye, wondering if it worked on me or if it was merely evocative—and to what degree “evocativeness” is a measure of quality.
Where Asteroid City shines, where it is made masterpiece, is in its brief flashes of joy: a good picture, a milkshake, a song and dance, one more martini. Here is a life not perfect—soldiers wielding guns, no personal space, endless boredom—made enviable by one thing only: each other.
It would be natural to assume it’s impossible to recreate Harold Pinter’s effects on-screen. What cinematic setting could ever replicate the feeling of an ordinary space that simultaneously exists in a howling metaphysical void?