During her 7.18 Oppenheimer screening in Burbank Sasha Stone was hugely bothered by a pair of 20something women who took out their phones around the half-hour mark and were pretty much texting all through it. They didn’t even turn down the brightness levels on their screens.

The first thing I texted Sasha when my Oppie screening ended last night at 10:20 pm was “as much as I condemn phone-surfing during a film and especially during a major blue-chip immersion like Oppenheimer, I understand why those women were texting.”

An unmistakably grade–A experience, Oppenheimer could be re-titled Oppenheimer: Interiors as it’s almost all super-smart dialogue, super-smart dialogue and more super-smart dialogue inside rooms (university classrooms, Los Alamos conference rooms, hallways, hotel rooms, dining rooms, the Oval Office).

Okay, the historic New Mexico test explosion of the first atom bomb (7.16.45. 5:29 am) happens under an open-air nightscape and there are several other moments that happen outdoors, but still…

The likely truth is that if you’re not at least half in love with the Oppie legend going in — if you haven’t done your homework by having seen The Day After Trinity (free on YouTube) and if you haven’t read “American Prometheus” — your Oppenheimer experience may (emphasis on this word) feel like a big fat Alaskan grizzly bear sitting in your lap, or certainly right next to you.

It feels (and is) long and demanding, and at three hours is certainly a proverbial tough sit. And yet it’s undeniably a first–rate, grand–vision, smart–person movie that absolutely surges with the spirit of semi-tortured genius (I was reminded of similar-toned portions of A Beautiful Mind) and is highly charged in every respect and is even emotionally engrossing during the persecution-of-Oppie finale (kudos to the “junior Senator from Massachusetts” for voting against the venal Robert Downey Jr.!!).

And I adored viewing this Christopher Nolan film on that tall-as-an-apartment-building, super-sized IMAX screen (I was sitting third-row center), but I’m afraid I’ll need to re-watch it at home with subtitles as I fully understood roughly half of the dialogue, certainly no more than two-thirds. That or I’m simply too fucking dumb to keep up with all the density and complexity.

Not to mention the fact that my poor right knee was aching and moaning in pain as I had no place to shift or maneuver within that tight IMAX seating area, and my knee massages began around the 45-minute mark and never stopped…one of the most challenging IMAX screenings I’ve ever endured.

At the one-hour mark I looked at my watch and said to myself, “oh, dear Lord, this is so brilliant and dense and tightly woven and sharply focused to a fare-thee-well, and God help me but there’s another two hours to go!”

And man, the Ludwig Goransson score is really loud in portions, and certainly during the final act. It throttles and hammers you into submission.

HE to friendo: “You didn’t feel a tiny little ‘yay!’ surge when it’s mentioned that JFK voted against Downey? I did.”

Friendo to HE: “Naah, that was just a little fun grace note of JFK nostalgia.”

…as I’m waiting for the big-ass, 15/70 IMAX screening of Oppenheimer to begin at 7 pm…this is the best I can do on the fly…please forgive the repetitions.

Barbie is cheerful, ironic, smart…it’s colorful, pop-pop-pop feminist and male-despising propaganda in a fleet and funny way…it’s clever and snappy enough to make you say to yourself “okay, fine…men are the foolish morons in this thing and there will be no oxygen for steady, fair-minded viewpoints…just give into it, man…whatever. Because it’s zippy and fizzy and a fair amount of fun.”

Barbie really is fun and juiced for the most part…it’s sharp and clever and peppy as fuck and production designed to a fare-thee-well.

Red-staters will have problems with the basic Barbie attitude. This movie definitely tries to nudge the little girls and boys that will see it into the man-hating, male-pitying side of the discussion. Megyn Kelly, take note!

If you want to start your little girl (or your little boy) on a path to despising foolish and idiotic straight men, this is the film to take them to — trust me.

In a very good-natured and heavily ironic and often comedic way (except for the final 25 to 30 minutes, when it turns into one soul-baring speech after another about the burdens of being a woman and the necessity of men accepting their fundamental immaturity and subservient role, and the task of crafting and molding your own identity)…what was I saying?

In a very good-natured and heavily ironic and often comedic way Greta Gerwig‘s movie absolutely DESPISES men. It really does — it’s total propaganda to this effect.

But at the same time it’s giggly and brisk and breezy and funny and, I have to admit, a very well assembled satire of sorts. A woman-celebrating, man-pitying satire. Wheeee!

Never has a major studio film ever conveyed such utter contempt for straight guys…in its peppy and good natured way Barbie constantly belittles men and regards them as delusional little boys with selfish and thoughtless agendas.

But it does so with such brisk and perky energy & with such a persistent sense of nerve and extra-ness…a certain punching-through-the-fourth-wall self-awareness.

And it does have a great final line that is just about equal to the final line in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot so you just have to roll with it and accept the male humiliation and the dominant species of Barbie-women.

This afternoon’s audience was like a midnight crowd at the Rocky Horror Picture Show in the early ’80s, or like the young-girl audience that first showed up to see the first Twilight on opening weekend…a lot of women (and a couple of trans guys!) dressed in pink and giggling and delighted with how the film made them feel. And a fair number of gay gays laughing and giggling and feeling the euphoria.

This is a cultural event, this film…it’s a celebration of the feminine wonderfulness of Barbieland and straight-male mocking and belittling, and a concurrent celebration of feminized gay males.

All The Kens are allegedly straight, you see, except they all look and dress gay. Go figure.

There are phony moments here and there. During her initial visit to the real world, Barbie sits next to an 80something woman and, despite having no frame of reference about older people or age or anything about real-world biology, she says to the 80something woman, “You’re so beautiful.” And the old woman chuckles and says, “I know.” Bullshit, doesn’t work.

My screening was crammed with Millennials and Zoomers…mostly women and a decent smattering of gay men. There was a guy sitting behind me who was giggling like a deballed falsetto Chihuahua…”hee-hee-hee-hee….ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo…hee-hee-hee-ee!”

At the very beginning a hot-pink Warner Bros. logo appears, and this same idiot was DEE-LIGHTED by this…”ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…tee-hee-hee-hee-hee!!” I almost turned around and said to him, “Do you know what the term ‘easy lay’ means?”

First thing I wrote after Barbie ended: “I have to give Gerwig and Noah Baumbach credit for having created a fleet, zippy, self-acknowledging, hall-of-mirrors Barbie universe that mostly works.

“If you don’t mind the relentless humiliation that is heaped upon the stupid, self-deluding Ken men, the film holds together. It’s fully realized and precisely thought through and is quite the pink creation, quite the work of imagination…

“Even though it regards men as pathetic and immature and basically seven- and eight-year-olds…the Barbie women are the wise and the strong and way, WAY more commanding and visionary and competent….the Ken men are foolish, emotionally stunted infants, and woman know SO much more and are SO much wiser and more mature and they, henceforth, will lead the way. And are destined, it is fully implied, to run the real world once the men are fully deballed and schooled and feminized…”

No Clint Eastwood or Lee Marvin types allowed! And no Cary Grants or Jack Lemmons either! Only buff-bod gay guys who are pretending to be straight, or at least aren’t identified as queer.

It’s funny how these Oscar Poker chats go. Sometimes the discussion will feel relaxed and confident, and sound that way. At other times a relaxed chat (like this one) will bore your pants off. Still other times a discussion that feels awkward and inarticulate during recording will result in a good listen.

Having seen Oppenheimer in Burbank on Tuesday evening (7.18), Sasha shared her euphoric impressions, calling it a 10. She also described a grotesque encounter with a pair of selfish 20something women who were texting all through it. Jeff won’t see Oppie until this evening (Thursday, 7.20, 7:30 pm), and so he asked questions about this and that aspect while quoting from other reviewers. Plus a little Barbie action.

Again, the link

Director-screenwriter friendo to HE: ‘I know you appreciate old-school class, etc. Mister O’s is a retro-designed supper club a la Mad Men and ’60s Rat Pack style in the Valley. Since Universal and other neighboring studios are making it additionally difficult for picketing writers and actors by doing things like cutting down shade trees and blocking sidewalks, this upscale restaurant is offering itself as a cooling station…and it’s a very cool place to hang and cool down.”