By Marianne Garvey, CNN

(CNN) — Christopher Nolan was just trying to exercise.

The “Oppenheimer” director, who won just won best director from the New York Film Critics Circle on Wednesday, told the crowd a story about an encounter with a critic while on his Peloton.

“I was on my Peloton doing a high-interval workout, I’m dying,” he said. “The instructor started talking about one of my films and said, ‘Has anyone else seen this? Because that’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back again.’”

He continued: “When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a s— on your film, he doesn’t ask you to work out.”

“In today’s world, where opinions are everywhere, there is a sort of idea that film criticism is being democratized, but I for one think the critical appreciation of films shouldn’t be an instinct but it should be a profession,” he added.

The video was posted to X (formerly Twitter.) In it, the instructor talks about Nolan’s film, “Tenet.”

“This song is from a soundtrack of a movie called Tenet,” instructor Jenn Sherman said in the clip. “Anybody see this s—? Did anybody see this besides me? Because I need a manual. Someone’s got to explain this.”

Sherman later added, “Seriously, you need to be a neuroscientist to understand. And that’s two and a half hours of my life that I want back.”

As for Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” the film has earned nearly $1 billion at the global box office since opening in July.