If there’s one thing you can count on from movies, it’s to provide regular (and unfortunately oft-needed) reminders of the horrors that humans have inflicted on each other. That kind of importantmovie used to be common Oscar bait, the sort of thing you have to see and respect out of a sense of duty, but they’ve since fallen out of favor — possibly because of the preponderance of people who no longer believe in reality, or simply because it’s easier to read a Wikipedia entry than to see a movie. Either way, director James Vanderbilt‘s 2025 historical thriller Nurembergis something of a throwback.
Now available on Netflix, the film follows the true story of Douglas Kelley, a psychiatrist who was enlisted to determine the mental stability of a bunch of high-ranking Nazis during the Nuremberg war crime trials. Rami Malek plays Kelley, who is oddly prone to performing close-up magic, opposite Russell Crowe as Nazi second-in-command Hermann Göring. The film was a modest box office hit, making over $50 million off of a reported $10 million budget, and while it holds a decent 72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, it has a staggering 95 percent rating from users (which easily puts it among the highest-rated war thrillers of all time). Perhaps that’s because the actual filmmaking isn’t particularly revelatory, but the film’s message is worth remembering.
Why is ‘Nuremberg’ so Relevant Today?
Russell Crowe taking the stand with two soldiers beside him in NurembergImage via Sony Pictures Classics
Setting aside the modern rise of far-right political movements and the ever-looming threat of fascism, the Nuremberg trials were an important moment in the establishment of international criminal law. As noted in the movie, the U.S. government initially just wanted to execute Nazi leaders after Germany surrendered, but advocates for the creation of an international justice system argued to put them on trial instead. This helped put the Nazis’ war crimes (namely the Holocaust) under a more public spotlight, and, in theory, set a precedent for punishing countries that aggressively try to incite war.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
There’s also a lesson in the film’s relationship between Göring and Kelley, who is initially fascinated by the Nazi’s intelligence. He makes a connection with Göring’s family, he shows Göring his magic tricks, and he starts to fall for the lie that all of the Nazis — including Göring — were just following orders and had no knowledge of what was being done in the concentration camps. That is, of course, not true, and it suggests that people capable of committing such evil will do anything to justify it and avoid taking responsibility for it. Of course, that applies to any number of people committing atrocities (let’s not forget the examples of the American government putting people in camps).
Nuremberg ends with Malek’s Kelley being traumatized by his dealings with the Nazis at the trial, and he tries to write about his experience in a book. Ultimately, he comes to the realization that there is nothing uniquely evil about people like Göring or the rest of the Nazis, and punishing them won’t be enough to stop future fascist regimes from following in their footsteps. This is conveyed in onscreen text that might as well involve Malek coming out of the screen and pointing at the words for emphasis. The lesson, as is the case with a lot of movies involving Nazis, is that this can all very easily happen again and probably will if we don’t do anything to stop it before it starts. Hint hint.
There’s a reason someone would make this particular movie right now, and it’s certainly not because humanity has evolved past the need for something like the Nuremberg trials where leaders are held accountable for the evil they inflict on the world. And now it’s more accessible than it was before, thanks to Netflix.
Release Date
November 7, 2025
Runtime
148 minutes
Director
James Vanderbilt
Writers
James Vanderbilt, Jack El-Hai
Producers
István Major, Richard Saperstein, William Sherak, Bradley J. Fischer, Paul Neinstein
