Oppenheimer week is closing up on us and our excitement arsenal is ticking so fast that we cannot breathe! The film is written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan and, is based on the 2005 biography titled American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Cillian Murphy playing the titular character, the film flaunts an excellent cast that includes Emily Blunt as Katherine Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Casey Affleck as Boris Pash, Rami Malek as David Hill, Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer, Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe, David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, David Dastmalchian as William L. Borden, Tom Conti as Albert Einstein amongst many others.
The film is going to be about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who helped develop the first set of nuclear weapons on the Manhattan Project. It is produced by Syncopy Inc. and Atlas Entertainment. Ahead of its release, we are here to serve you with some biographical films on the same lines about people who changed history with the help of science.
Biographical Movies Like Oppenheimer That’ll Impact You Deeply
Radioactive
A female physicist that needs to be talked about more has to be Marie Curie and, Radioactive does just that. This 2019 biographical drama is written by Jack Thorne and directed by Marjane Satrapi, based on the graphic novel Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss. Already sounds interesting, right?
With Rosamund Pike playing the role of Curie, oh-so brilliantly, the film is about how Curie committed herself to science after the death of her husband which led to the discovery of something genius and dangerous, all at the same time. It is available on Amazon Prime Video.
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The Theory of Everything
There is nothing more science-film-like than a movie about the great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. Even after suffering from a motor neurone disease, the man went on to make some impeccable contributions to the field of science that has helped us discover things greater than the land we live in. Although The Theory of Everything is termed as a romantic drama, it is strongly supported by an incredible storyline and actors make the movie worth a watch.
The film is directed by James Marsh and adapted by Anthony McCarten from the 2007 memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Hawking’s wife. It stars Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones as Jane Hawking along with Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, Christian McKay, Harry Lloyd, and David Thewlis. You can watch this award-winning film now on Amazon Prime Video.
The Imitation Game
It was not just Robert Oppenheimer who made some significant contributions during World War II. Another rarely sung hero of that era was Alan Turing, who decrypted the German intelligence messages for the British government during the war that changed everything. Morten Tyldum’s 2014 period drama is all about that and is based on the 1983 biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays the role of Turing, the renowned mathematician, codebreaker and early computer scientist alongside Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Charles Dance, and Mark Strong in supporting roles. This movie too is available for viewing on Amazon Prime Video.
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The Man Who Knew Infinity
Let’s step out of the Second World War and head to the first one with this movie about another mathematician who is a remarkable pioneer in the field of mathematics. This biographical drama is based on the Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan and is adapted from the 1991 book of the same name by Robert Kanigel. We have the talented Dev Patel in the lead role alongside Jeremy Irons as G. H. Hardy, Devika Bhise as Janaki, Toby Jones as John, Stephen Fry as Sir Francis Spring, Jeremy Northam as Bertrand Russell and Kevin McNally as Major MacMahon.
Tesla
The Edison versus Tesla battle is still relevant today as the former is more in the high school textbooks than the latter and, we feel that’s unfair, which is why this film in the list might just be the most important and valuable watch for everyone to know more about the thing that has made all our lives easier than every- electricity!
This 2020 biographical drama is written and directed by Michael Almereyda and is about the AC Godfather, Nikola Tesla. It stars Ethan Hawke in the titular role. Eve Hewson, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Jim Gaffigan and Kyle MacLachlan are seen in supporting roles. You can stream the film now on Amazon Prime Video.
Meanwhile, Oppenheimer will release on July 21, 2023. The tickets are live now, so get yours quickly! Also, let us know in the comments below what you feel about this upcoming film.
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