Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023)

[Persona]

I love Silence, it is a Top 5 Scorsese for me, but The Irishman is also a really fine work and while it is long, everything in it is purposeful.

Budget will have nothing to do with whether Flower Moon is "bloated" or "self-indulgent." It comes down to the creative decisions. But the scope of the source material invites a broad canvas.

[bluesforyou]

While I am pretty excited to see this movie storywise, I am a little worried about the budget thing. I liked "The Irishman" but I did think it was too long and a bit self-indulgent. Which was only made possible by it's enormous budget. Scorsese's best in the 2010s was "Silence", in my opinion, which "coincidentally" also had the lowest budget.

Silence is not exactly a restrained film. It cost less because everyone took pay cuts and there wasn't as much CGI involved. The Irishman has a big budget because of its many stars that commanded big salaries and the extravagant CGI.

From Wolf to Irishman, Scorsese is working in a very similar mode which I expect to continue here.

[FrauBlucher]

I am a much bigger fan of the first half of Scorsese's filmography. As for the films in the second half of his filmography, I like and find entertaining, for me I find nothing special in that group. My top five in that group are... 1) Silence 2) Hugo 3) The Departed 4) Shutter Island 5) Bringing Out the Dead

I am very curious about this, though. His take on a western will be intriguing for me

[hearthesilence]

Silence and Hugo would definitely be my two latter-day favorites as well. Also documentaries like No Direction Home and especially My Voyage to Italy deserve to be mentioned - those two in particular are pretty great. Just about everything in the second half of his filmography has something great about them, but they also tend to be fatally flawed in conception.

GoodFellas is sometimes cited as the cut-off point for fans, but I love The Age of Innocence, I think it's a truly great and moving adaptation of a wonderful book. (Michelle Pfeiffer is arguably miscast, but she still does a fine job. What may have been lost or diminished in the original character is balanced by the fact that there's never any skepticism about Archer's tormented love for her.)

Cape Fear doesn't quite succeed, but the cast is terrific, and Scorsese brings some amazing touches to the film. (The "POV" shot as Nolte pulls his car away from DeNiro, right when he mutters something threatening/insulting is brilliant, especially the way they cut it.) I'm also surprised how much of the film became so memorable to its audience, though to be fair The Simpsons might have had something to do with that.

I think the first half of Casino is brilliantly made, and as a procedural on criminally-run establishments it's highly entertaining - had it sustained that level of interest to the end, I would have agreed with David Ehrenstein's argument that GoodFellas was a dry run for Casino. But the back half always felt a lot less interesting to me, so much that I wasn't surprised when Scorsese insinuated that he did it to help finance other projects.

Rather than go through the rest of his films, I'll just say I actually like how Scorsese was willing to explore new territory, but sometimes the results can feel a little thin or letdown by the casting. Re: the latter, I noticed this when I saw The Departed back-to-back with GoodFellas, and both of those are supposed to be in his comfort zone. The Departed is entertaining, you get the sense that the entire cast is having fun, but it also feels very slick and glossy compared to GoodFellas - it really feels like you're watching a bunch of movie stars whereas GoodFellas feels more grounded, like you could be watching people who run in those circles. Then there's Gangs of New York - there's a lot of things I love about it, but it also would have benefitted enormously if, say, Sarah Polley was cast instead of Diaz and if they cast someone else instead of DiCaprio. (I don't think DiCaprio is terrible, but it doesn't feel like he really tapped into the conflict within his character, and there's something about him that feels too anachronistic, like he was never completely comfortable within that setting - I can see someone like Christian Bale being a much more convincing inhabitant of 19th century NYC.)

EDIT: One thing about Bringing Out the Dead, it didn't live up to my high expectations, but Nicolas Cage is wonderful. Not just his acting, but his face - it's so perfect for the material. (Just look at the movie poster, where they superimpose his face over the red cross.) Even if he wasn't a top box office draw in 1999, I'm sure Scorsese would have wanted him.

[therewillbeblus]

Bringing Out the Dead is usually the Scorsese film people approach with the lowest expectations, comparatively within his body of work. It’s also the best work Scorsese, Schrader, and Cage have ever done.

[FrauBlucher]

Silence and Hugo would definitely be my two latter-day favorites as well. Also documentaries like No Direction Home and especially My Voyage to Italy deserve to be mentioned - those two in particular are pretty great. Just about everything in the second half of his filmography has something great about them, but they also tend to be fatally flawed in conception.

GoodFellas is sometimes cited as the cut-off point for fans, but I love The Age of Innocence, I think it's a truly great and moving adaptation of a wonderful book. (Michelle Pfeiffer is arguably miscast, but she still does a fine job. What may have been lost or diminished in the original character is balanced by the fact that there's never any skepticism about Archer's tormented love for her.)

I intentionally left off his docs, because I rate them as high as many of his later day narratives. With the exception of Shine a Light which was just a shitty mess.

For me Casino (1995) is the cutoff point. That's approximately a little over 25 years from his beginning. We're now in little over 25 years of that second half group.

[hearthesilence]

I intentionally left off his docs, because I rate them as high as many of his later day narratives. With the exception of Shine a Light which was just a shitty mess.

I remember asking one friend after another if they wanted to see this, and honestly I think Salò wouldn't have gotten a better reaction. I'm a huge Stones fan and even I was reluctant to go. I will say it looks nice, and the Buddy Guy number is excellent, but I really wish the band would put out more stuff from their prime (1963 to 1972, or 1978 if it's easier) rather than flood the market with releases like this.

[Never Cursed]

First image released by Osage News (spoilered because of its size). There's also an article on the same website, but it's currently inaccessible because of the sheer volume of traffic moving towards the Osage News site now.

SpoilerShow

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

First image released by Osage News (spoilered because of its size). There's also an article on the same website, but it's currently inaccessible because of the sheer volume of traffic moving towards the Osage News site now.

SpoilerShow

The NY Post referred to Leo as "unrecognizable" in that picture and got dragged on twitter for it. The memes are pretty solid.

[hearthesilence]

First image released by Osage News (spoilered because of its size). There's also an article on the same website, but it's currently inaccessible because of the sheer volume of traffic moving towards the Osage News site now.

SpoilerShow

The NY Post referred to Leo as "unrecognizable" in that picture and got dragged on twitter for it. The memes are pretty solid.

Tough crowd! I get what the Post reporter mean though, you can obviously identify him as DiCaprio, but he doesn't look like the same eternally boyish megastar of virtually ever film he's been in, sometimes to his character's detriment (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, etc.)

[FrauBlucher]

but he doesn't look like the same eternally boyish megastar of virtually ever film he's been in, sometimes to his character's detriment (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, etc.)

Totally agree. I would include The Revenant in that

[beamish14]

but he doesn't look like the same eternally boyish megastar of virtually ever film he's been in, sometimes to his character's detriment (Gangs of New York, The Aviator, etc.)

Totally agree. I would include The Revenant in that

I remember cracking up during the jail cell push-ups scene in The Departed.

[cdnchris]

My wife has the exact same problem with him, which actually makes it harder for her to take him seriously in a lot of movies; she feels he's eternally 17. She started to finally come around with Django and she loves The Revnant but I see the hesitation in her eyes every time she comes across one of his films.

[hearthesilence]

Paradoxically, it's a big reason why he's about even with Brad Pitt as the biggest movie star of the last 10 or 15 years. They're both amazingly good looking, but in ways that have had a different impact on their work. I posted this elsewhere, but Pitt's become one of the great film stars ever for the same reason as Gary Cooper. They've both aged in similar ways, and I'll let David Thomson's description of Cooper sum it up: "Like so many of the great stars, he gave the impression of being caught unexpectedly in his own thoughts...as time went by, his beauty cracked and his face began to show the dreadful anxiety of his own thoughts." You see it in every close-up, especially in Moneyball, The Tree of Life and Ad Astra among many others. DiCaprio on the other hand seems cursed by his boyishness. One of the Village Voice's critics brought this up in a review for The Aviator back in the day - in DiCaprio's defense, they point out that he's actually the right age IRL to play Hughes, but movie stars of the '00s tend to look a lot more youthful than adults of the '30s and '40s, and DiCaprio winds up appearing too young. I don't know if DiCaprio's consciously tried to sand those youthful features away when he takes on physically brutal roles or lets himself go (see Revolutionary Road where he's put on a lot of weight), but it doesn't feel like it's enough.

[anton]

DiCaprios histrionic acting and shitty line deliveries dont help either.

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

De Niro injured his leg, flew back to NY.

[black&huge]

well he can zoom call his scenes so they don't have to halt filming. But really I hope it's not too serious.

[yoloswegmaster]

Brendan Fraser has joined the cast

[therewillbeblus]

Such an unexpected career resurgence, I imagine his agent is getting just as much publicity in the inner circles of repping over this casting trend

[black&huge]

I only ever seen him during this resurgence in No Sudden Move but that was enough for me to be on board with him getting his second wind. I actually always liked him regardless of the films he was for most of his career and I'm very excited he's in a Scorsese movie and for it to be this of all things.

[therewillbeblus]

Same- especially The Mummy, and by resurgence I mean mostly upcoming titles like starring in the new Aronofsky

[knives]

Doesn’t he also have a television show?

[jazzo]

He was in the first season (and maybe second, which I haven’t seen) of the Three Days of the Condor expansion to series, aptly titled…are you ready for it…Condor.

[yoloswegmaster]

John Lithgow joins the the film.

[PfR73]

He was in the first season (and maybe second, which I haven’t seen) of the Three Days of the Condor expansion to series, aptly titled…are you ready for it…Condor.

He was also great in the Danny Boyle miniseries "Trust" for FX.