"What happens to stars when they die?" J. Robert Oppenheimer excitedly muses to his Berkeley colleague Haakon Chevalier at a cocktail party. Chevalier is intrigued. "Do stars die?" Exchanges like this elevate Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" from a mere biopic to a full-sensory artistic experience, tugging at mind and soul.
It also primes us to better appreciate the existential panic that coldcocks Stereotypical Barbie at a parallel moment in Greta Gerwig's "Barbie." Margot Robbie's living doll is throwing a Barbieland rager and dancing merrily when, seemingly out of nowhere she yells out, "You guys ever think about dying?"
