KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON - Movie Review

hey everybody today I am going to be reviewing killers of the flower moon this was directed by Marty soresi obviously the name Marty soresi I think speaks for itself how many times have we discussed him on this channel probably too many so I will spare you uh an introduction that likely you already know and I will just say that he is 80 years old now and uh he is still making movies and here we have killers of the flower Moon which is one that I think he had been working on for quite a while and I think it's very personal to him I think he wanted to find maybe a different angle or the emotion at the heart of the narrative that maybe isn't explored by him as much at least as of late and as a result we get a three and a half hour epic that Embraces all of the kind of Rich fundamental elements that have to do with like American Wealth capitalism all represented cinematically this movie is yeah it's a Martin squarey film so it's like you know what you're going to get to a degree this movie has all kinds of moving pieces it has a lot of different characters it's a it's a morality tale that is about greed and love and Vengeance it has romance it has murder it has courtroom drama it's it's one of those and I think you know probably based on what I'm saying whether or not this is going to be the type of movie that is for you obviously if you're a Martin squarey film sorry a Martin Scorsese fan you're probably going to see it regardless of what I say but Scorsese of course is an exceptional American filmmaker and so even when he's not at his best necessarily I feel like he's doing much better than you know your average filmmakers could do on their very best day but at his best he's really transcending what is known as typical pasti and I think he's rebuilding something that is new and bold and beautiful again from all of these old movie fragments and memories that are kind of floating around in his head subconsciously certainly this movie has that it's got that like again epic kind of western style of Americana movies I would say the first third of the movie First Act of the movie very early on the first thing I thought of was probably the movie Giant and then as you start to go into like the second half and especially the third act I started to think more about movies like reminded me of like Hitchcock it reminded me of like notorious or uh it reminded me of George cuc's Gaslight also starring uh ingred Bergman the opening of the film has a really nice bite to it and it's got really nice flow movement obviously scor has a great Instinct for that what I do appreciate about this film is that it's not trying to be good Fellas it's not trying to be Casino it's not nearly as flourishy and montageyoutube lingering in a way but it's so ambitious and to me it's just crazy like when you have all of these different elements it's like how do you fit them all together where you are able to create something that has that balance weave everything together so it fully kind of comes to life I think he wanted to create something that is really dense and really powerful and something that is slightly different for him and you know the big question of course everyone wants to know is did it succeed and does it succeed to the degree of some of the really great Martin Scorsese films and it's really really hard for me to say just at this point because I literally while recording this review I just saw it maybe a couple hours ago and I always struggle to give you like a definitive idea on what I thought about something especially if it's a Martin Scorsese film when it's so immediate to a degree it does feel insulting and I really feel like I have to marinate in his world for a while before I find the right words the personal meaning for myself in his work you know like when I saw Good Fellas I have to tell you I always admired it but it wasn't until maybe like the fifth time I saw it that it absolutely clicked in place for me not just emotionally but you know the technique of it I could admire all at the same time so obviously I'm always going to be a little bit hesitant in ways with these initial reviews for him but my initial impression I would say is yes I I did like the film I think there are parts of it that are really really really strong and yet at the same time something just wasn't quite sliding into place for me I think maybe the most compelling thing in this entire film is absolutely the main actress at the center um Leo DiCaprio's wife in the movie uh Molly her Casting is I think by far the most crucial in the entire movie and they absolutely nailed it and I think they they knew that they had to talk about a powerful woman who just she says so much with so little in her face and it just felt like the whole time in the movie when she's not on screen when she is on screen it's like she's burning a hole in the screen little by little and it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger and it doesn't stop I think she has more insight and intensity in in the darkness of her eyes than any of the hubris of men in the entire rest of the film She carries within her the film's most like you know potent ideas about love and emotion and honesty and dignity heart quiet intelligence or I should say quiet intelligence that is never really rewarded and then just gets buried and buried uh within history and never heard from again uh and I think it's that slowburn tragedy of seeing this woman weaken and fade away in the background that is I think the most tragic element of the film and maybe the most most effective in certain ways and it did remind me a lot of just like how you see all that indan all that Native American symbolism in uh The Shining it's just like it's never really at the Forefront but it's like you can feel it always it's like the spirits of these ancestors it's in the walls it's in the picture frames or it's in the Maze or whatever but I feel like in this film the majority of all that mystery and in that culture it all comes from just like that The Battered stare of Molly and just those seething eyes that carry like the Sun and the Moon and the Earth everything and we always need to feel that hisory and that history we need to feel kind of the spirits of the Dead haunting these characters throughout and it is a warning I think to the individuals who do choose greed in the film and I kind of wish that more of those elements could have been brought out throughout the movie in certain ways but in other ways I kind of like that it's always in the peripherals and it's never quite at the Forefront because that's kind of the tragedy of it but for me while the character of Molly and especially the performance is so compelling on a certain level when it comes to the men and their quest for power and dominance and all of this I'm not quite sure that fully materialized for me I think one of the main issues is actually the casting of Robert dairo in the movie who plays the uncle of Leo DiCaprio I just think it's a really really tough part to pull off just from an actor's perspective because a lot of that tension has to rest between him and and our protagonist and it just never quite felt like it was coming off the page and it's not to say that his performance is bad it's certainly not bad I think he's fine he's actually pretty good in it I would say it's just there's something about it I think with dairo obviously he has this Persona or did for many years of being like this hardened raw kind of performer with all this intensity and all that as he's gotten older it softened a little bit and I think that kind of helps him here in this performance because I think initially you do need to feel comfortable with him and at ease with him to a degree because he is somebody who seemingly is widely loved he seen as somebody who likes to take care of people and all of this uh but he also has to have that that natural aggression and tenacity in his demeanor which obviously Robert dairo has in Spades so you have all that and yet again there was just something very complex about the character where I felt like it always needed uh something more so far as the tension is concerned especially when you consider this relationship with his nephew where he's just constantly manipulating him and it's like they build all of this stuff together and they have so much risk if they do fail some of the most emotional things in Scorsese films come from family when I say family I mean you know from blood not NE neily romantic family but you know again the relationships you've had that have built you and here I just wish that their relationship that the uncle and the nephew I just wish it had more Intrigue than it did you know I wish I could really feel that manipulation and that confusion though in the film they are keeping it interesting there's always just little breaks from logic like hints where we're kind of subtly going into the abstract you do see for sure like you know like symbols and images and you're not sure whether they're real or not but we're definitely inching into surreal or at the very least we're just going into something that's very off-kilter there's actually a scene that has kind of like a Twin Peaks aesthetic you like vibe to it that involves Leo DiCaprio Robert dairo and a paddle it's it's off-kilter there is something interesting and like intriguing going on there and yet I'm not sure if it's really making use of that weirdness properly but it may also just have been a case of where I just need to see the film again and like sink my teeth into it more I think Leo decaprio just as a as a casting Choice here was an interesting one because you know how many times have I talked about Leo DiCaprio on this channel and how much I I really don't care for him as an actor too many also I went back and re-reviewed shudder Island several months ago and I think I really kind of went into how I struggle with Scorsese how he uses Leo DiCaprio as a muse over time I think Leo was a really interesting kind of edgy young actor in the mid 1990s in particular but by the time he gets on board with Scorsese it felt like he was really trying to kind of be that mature person and it didn't necessarily feel authentic it felt more like self- serious we've got to get serious were in a Scorsese movie type of thing I have never seen Leonardo DiCaprio as a cerebral performer I think he's somebody who's very physical very extroverted a lot of his emotions exist you know in the external that's just his his performance style but I never really felt like Scorsese understood that or knew what to do with it at least not until we saw something like Wolf of Wall Street there I feel like he finally got what he was about he understands that if you want Leo to be at his very best I think you've got to bring out the humor but at his own expense and this is going to sound like an insult but I don't mean it to be I genuinely think Leo is at his absolute best when he is playing very weak very stupid men again it's why his performance is so strong in Wolf of Wall Street I think it's why somebody like Quinton Tarantino got Leo DiCaprio way better than Scorsese ever did I mean he found a way to emphasize that humor in such a great way especially with um Once Upon a Time in Hollywood but here in killers of the flower Moon I actually think that Leo's instincts here are are spoton we are playing to his strengths here which again exist more in the external this character is somebody that doesn't have a ton going on upstairs he is a lazy selfish fool from day one and uh one of his few redeeming qualities is the fact that he genuinely does care about his wife and genuinely does care about his family but he also loves money and and he quite blatantly says that in in the movie but it's that boyishness that he still has even as a a more seasoned performer that Enders the audience to him and perhaps it's what endear Molly to him as well but quite frankly I I'm not sure I quite bought into their their Love Story from the beginning or at least it just didn't really make sense to me uh so far as you know Molly's motivations are concern just because she has him figured out from day one it's like she knows who he is she knows what he is she she knows exactly what he wants and yet I just wasn't convinced by her decision to commit to the character and yeah there's just something about the writing that always felt just a little bit unfair to her character or a little bit off I like the flirtation between them I like the way he's trying to woo her all of that stuff you know felt very yeah lovely and genuine but again this is a woman of dignity and responsibility and she knows that she's too good for him I think to a degree so yeah so right there it just felt a little bit faulty and I want all of her choices and the things she has to face to fall in line with what her character feels just because so many of the decisions of the other characters in the movie does feel very authentic to them and I do love the idea that in the movie this idea of like color skin racism all of that it's often way more complicated than people pretend that it is it often has a lot more to do with money and power and the preservation of something uh that feels necessary and that's where chaos and hate and division starts to happen and it wasn't necessarily intentional but I do think a great love story at the center that is going to slowly wither because of the way that society and society and everything eats away at it needs to be the thing that Roots Us in the ground but also connects us to all of the more personal ideas now I don't really want to get into like heavy spoiler territory or anything like that just because again I just saw it these are my initial thoughts um I want to let it breathe a little bit before we get into all of that um but the ending of this movie I'm very surprised by it I'm also very confused by it and a little bit speechless it's very meta and obviously scor is a very meta type of director but it's meta in a way that feels different for him in a way that's more specific to kind of now like if you saw asteroid City the ending of that definitely reminded me a lot of this and then I I thought about Bo is afraid as well and regard of what you think about how it works in those two films in this one I just it felt very out of place for me or just like I didn't understand the angle of it or how it ties in with with the rest of the movie cohesively it's just this weird perspective on like the fleeting nature of time I guess you could say and and the nature of historical tragedy and how it is dramatized fictionalized or how the most tragic most important stories of our time are often forgotten or or Twisted in a certain way and often never see the light of day and then there's also that angle of like this being like an FBI approved message which is you know adding another tinge of bitterness to the whole idea but I suppose it's also scor he making a commentary on his own work and how he's kind of contributed um a certain way to history and the perceptions of it and how far as so far as how it's manipulated but how it was presented in the narrative I just don't think it was jelling and it kind of stuck out like a sore thumb maybe I again I need to see it again and maybe I'll see a bunch of that I missed but yeah I would say it was a little bit uneven of an experience for me and I didn't always enjoy it but there were aspects of it that I really really liked I can see this movie getting a lot of a claim I'm just not sure how ready I am to get on board with all of that Acclaim for myself but it is Scorsese and we don't see many quality movies from quality directors these days and each time I see a movie where it says directed by Martin Scorsese I get a little you know sad because I'm thinking how many more of these are we going to have again the guy is 80 years old so I say go support this film especially if you love American film and of course if you love Martin goresy give this a watch and and make your own decision about it but that is my review thank you guys so much for watching I'm going to plug my website as always it is deep focus lens.com I'm an artist I do commission portraits and I also sell prints of my work if that's something you're interested in you can always go to the website below and if you have a question about a commission or a print you can always email me my email is in the description box below as well also I'd like to give a shout out to my patrons who are great guys thank you so much for your support welcome to all the new members if you are interested in supporting ing the link for that is below as well as the rest of my social media information you can watch more videos here and you can subscribe if you'd like catch you next time

Channel: deepfocuslens

Views: 31,296

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Id: -JMlaElrG1g

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2023