Movies about the Manhattan Project 

• Paramount Pictures
• Fat Man and Little Boy

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (opening in theaters this week) tells the story of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who oversaw the development of the atomic bomb for the U.S. military during World War II. Given the significance of that event on the rest of the 20th century, however, it's not surprising that this isn't the first film to deal with events surrounding that historic gathering of scientific talent. Here's a look at just a few of the others, and where to find them.

Fat Man and Little Boy (1989): The story of the Manhattan Project got one of its more complete—if somewhat fictionalized—cinematic tellings in this historical drama from co-writer/director Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields). It's structured mostly as a battle of wills between the U.S. Army commander in charge of the Los Alamos site, Gen. Leslie Groves (Paul Newman), and Oppenheimer (The A-Team's Dwight Schultz), focused on Groves' concerns about Oppenheimer's leftist politics and his extramarital affair with card-carrying communist Jean Tatlock (Natasha Richardson). It's a little weird tonally—best exemplified by the various motifs employed by composer Ennio Morricone—with a bit too much focus on a composite scientist character played by John Cusack and his obligatory romantic interest (Laura Dern). Still, it does a solid job of capturing the fundamental conflict between scientists weighing the moral consequences of their actions, and a military establishment that—when it comes down to the chance to get a powerful new weapon—reduces the matter to Groves' demand of "Give me the bomb. Just give it to me." Streaming free via Pluto.tv.

The Day After Trinity (1981): Director Jon Else's documentary—narrated by Paul Frees—takes a fairly streamlined approach to chronicling Robert Oppenheimer's life, focusing almost exclusively on the Los Alamos efforts, featuring plenty of Oppenheimer's contemporaries and colleagues in circa-1979 interviews explaining how the Manhattan Project came together. That means far less time spent on Oppenheimer's youth, early research and post-Los Alamos run-ins with objections to his Communist sympathies, which provides a bit less potent context for the scientist's regrets and attempts at promoting arms control. It's nevertheless a vital piece of source material, to the extent that many of the quotes included here ended up being used by the authors of the Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus (itself the source material for Nolan's Oppenheimer). Streaming free via YouTube.

The Atomic Café (1982): This fascinating documentary from co-directors Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty takes on the early years of the Atomic Age in America (approximately 1946 – 1960), with an eye to how official sources tried to shape public perception, making use exclusively of propaganda films, news footage, interviews and other contemporaneous material, including the occasional politically-themed popular song. While the filmmakers do provide an editorial point of view—for example, juxtaposing government stories about the lack of danger to residents of the Marshall Islands after nuclear testing with footage of actual victims—it's mostly compelling as a portrait of how the country tried to process this seismic societal shift, as manipulated by the media and the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. As disturbing as it is to see members of Congress openly advocating for, say, tactical nuclear attacks during the Korean War, it's perhaps even more compelling to realize how disconnected the popular imagination was from the reality of the existential dangers the world faced. Streaming free at Plex.tv.

Infinity (1996): Matthew Broderick's one and only feature directing effort to date—with a screenplay by his mother, playwright Patricia Broderick—finds him playing physicist Richard Feynman in a narrative based on his oral memoirs. Mostly, it's a fairly soppy romantic drama centered on Feynman's relationship with his first love, Arline Greenbaum (Patricia Arquette), and her struggle with a disease that keeps resisting definitive diagnosis. Eventually we get to Feynman's involvement with the Manhattan Project, while Arline is at a hospital in Albuquerque, and there's a somewhat unique vibe to watching a more human side of the people working at Los Alamos, including Feynman overseeing a bunch of wide-eyed young students. Melodramatic though it may be in its slow march toward tragedy, it is a reminder that the scientists on the Manhattan Project were also dealing with other life stuff. And if you're looking for a movie where someone explains a chain reaction by using olives, you've got that too. Streaming free via Tubi and Pluto.tv.