If you like film at all, you’ll no doubt be seeing Christopher Nolan’s epic three-hour biopic Oppenheimer. Considering the cinematic doldrums lately, why wouldn’t you go for this hugely hyped, wildly praised spectacle, which is bound to be given every known award? You’ll spend the hours studying legendary physicist and “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, in vast close-ups, especially if you see the film in IMAX, which makes Murphy’s face seem as tall as skyscrapers and his wide blue eyes as big as swimming pools.

The attempt to understand “what made Oppenheimer tick” is as old as the A-bomb, and this film tackles it afresh, clearly with the assumption that it’ll all be news to the younger generation. If you’re already convinced of the dangers of nuclear war, superseded only by the ongoing end-times series of rolling climate catastrophes that now seem more likely to kill us all, this film is going to lack a certain urgency, however.

Still, all of the Nolanisms beloved by his fans — who are legion after such career hits as The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk — are represented. Nolan’s traditional, emotionally melodramatic Hollywood movie tendencies are, as usual, dressed up in intricate flashbacks, narrative trickiness, pyrotechnic editing flourishes, and pounding soundtrack bombast.