A Sunday To Remember: Box Office Bombshell Oppenheimer Comes to M-Net
2023’s biggest film – and 2024 award season darling – Oppenheimer comes to M-Net in the blockbuster Sunday night movie slot on 5 May at 8pm.
Having scooped seven Academy Awards and British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), eight Critics’ Choice Awards, five Golden Globes and nearly 300 other international awards since its July 2023 release, the film’s critical reception is amongst the best in cinematic history – and its $965 million (R17.8 billion) in box office takings put well within the top 100 grossing films ever made. The Best Director Oscar for director Christopher Nolan – who once again teases viewers with a style that sees time stretched in all directions – was his first win in eight nominations, his first coming for the screenplay of 2000’s Memento.
During World War II, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon) appoints physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer and a team of scientists spend years developing and designing the atomic bomb. Their work comes to fruition on 16 July 1945, as they witness the world’s first nuclear explosion, forever changing the course of history. The all-star ensemble cast includes Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh; Emily Blunt; Josh Hartnett; Gary Oldman and Casey Affleck – almost all of whom scooped numerous awards for their performances.
The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis called the film “a drama about genius, hubris and error, both individual and collective, it brilliantly charts the turbulent life of the American theoretical physicist who helped research and develop the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II — cataclysms that helped usher in our human-dominated age.”
Wendy Ide, writing in The Guardian called it “a towering achievement” and Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for RogerEbert.com says that the film is successful because “the main attraction is not the tale but the telling“.
Stare into the flinty blue eyes of the man who created the world’s most dreaded weapon – and lived to regret it – on Sunday 5 May at 8pm. Revel in it on your DStv Explora or live stream it on DStv Stream at the appointed time.
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