Barbenheimer!

Yesterday, Dave and I went to the 15:30 showing of Oppenheimer, followed by an excellent Thai meal, and then the 20:30 showing of Barbie - to complete the Barbenheimer experience!

And it was pretty epic.

Oppenheimer (while three hours long) was a masterpiece. It wasn't an easy watch in places, but it was fascinating, tense, beautifully constructed, phenomenally well-acted, and well worth the time investment. Cillian Murphy was fantastic, but it was a tour de force performance from Robert Downey Jnr, in my opinion. I was also particularly impressed by Rami Malek, who didn't look like he was going to be in it much and then delivered one of the best speeches of the whole film towards the end. Emily Blunt was also amazing in an unforgiving part as Oppenheimer's wife. I learned a lot about the development of atomic weapons, I experienced some emotional reactions I wasn't expecting, and we had a great discussion afterwards about the moral questions posed, as well as the way certain aspects of the story were portrayed to elicit specific responses. I'm very glad I went to see this film.

And then there was Barbie - which I wouldn't have had any interest in at all, if I hadn't been told about the whole Barbenheimer phenomenon - and it was also really good. Not in the same league as Oppenheimer - though not because of a lack of effort in terms of presenting a very thought-provoking film. I almost wish I hadn't known what kind of story it was going to be, as some of the surprise factor was thus diminished - but then I wouldn't have gone to see it at all otherwise. There were a lot of aspects of it that I loved (Ryan Gosling was fantastic throughout and a lot of it was very funny and very interesting) but there were also certain aspects I wasn't so keen on, or I thought didn't work quite as well as intended. Still, I enjoyed it overall and was glad I went to see it.

So, I would definitely recommend the Barbenheimer experience!

Meet Me At The Museum

Meet Me At The Museum by Anne Youngson is an epistolary novel about a late-middle-age farmer's wife who strikes up a correspondence with the curator of a museum in Denmark. They share an interest in the Iron Age and gradually become close through the medium of their letters.

I wanted to like this book - and I did like both main characters - but their letters weren't very compelling and I found it difficult to maintain my interest in how the relationship was going to develop. I admit I skipped to the end after about 30 pages, so I know roughly what happened, but I wasn't invested enough to want to read the whole book properly, I'm afraid.