Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

[Minami Minegishi]

The guy behind us fell asleep after an hour and started snoring. His wife didn't wake him, so when the very loud bang in the film happened, he woke with a start. 'Have I been asleep?' They actually left shortly after the start of the second half. The interval was 2 hours in, so 80 mins left to go - they lasted 20 minutes, probably just enough time for them to munch on their ice cream tubs.

I'm not proud to say that if you ended that post by saying that the couple were hit by an articulated lorry as they left the cinema, I would have slightly smiled, nodded once, and gone "huh".

[Mister Six]

I was captivated by this at the start - ooh, a proper film by a proper filmmaker with a proper budget! Sets! Crane shots! Dollies! Loads of extras! Plus Scorsese's usual sure hand behind the camera. All boded well.

And I got properly drawn into the story, DeNiro putting in a bit of elbow grease for once, DiCaprio being less irritating than usual, Gladstone being charismatic as hell and really getting to run the gamut.

But around the two hour (I think) mark, it started to lose its focus a bit too much, and the shift away from the Osage stuff that gripped me towards boring ugly white men killing people ineptly made it a bit of a struggle to stay engaged. It didn't help that pretty much everyone's cards were on the table at that point, especially once Ernest started poisoning Mollie, so there wasn't much dramatic momentum, just people you know to be cunts acting like cunts in minor variartions.

Even Scorsese seemed to get a bit bored around there. The playful direction of the start just kind of petered out a bit and the soundtrack just turned into that guitar going dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun while Ernest grimaced pensively through car windows.

Then the FBI came to town and the writing became weirdly inelegant (or its weird inelegance was suddenly revealed to me). Did we need to see goons 1 and 2 admitting to stuff we already knew had happened (sometimes with flashbacks)? Did we need to see DeNiro set up goon 3 with a bogus robbery job so he'd get shot to death - even if he didn't - and then see him do the exact same thing with goon 4? Feels like the kind of thing that would have been skipped over deftly with voiceover by Goodfellas-era Marty. Maybe have the FBI summarise their findings in voiceover and squeeze those 15-20 minutes down to 5 and chance?

Ernest's to and fro over whether to give testimony was a snooze too. I think Scorsese was too married to historical fact and laying out what happened as it happened, but by that point the protagonist has surely shifted either to Plemons: FBI or DeNiro, not Ernest?

And then that coda, which I found a bit distracting in execution, and Scorsese's being the last face we see in this film that has been slowly moving its focus away from the Osage the whole time felt wrong. That final shot was lovely, but not enough to make up for it.

I still love that first half or so, but the more I think about the second half, the more it falters in my estimation.

[Mister Six]

Thinking about it, I think I'd rather have seen a film focusing on Mollie and her sisters, and how they grew up as the first generation in this new world, getting comfortable just enough to make themselves vulnerable to the white predators. Seeing DeNiro from their POV first, rather than immediately introducing him as An Evil Snake Cunt, would have made the spiralling collapse of everything, and the losses of all the members of the Osage community, have so much more heft. Keep it tight on Mollie, her relationships with her kids and Ernest, and make that final joyous scene of the present-day Osage people dancing feel genuinely cathartic, rather than Scorsese realising his face can't be the last one you see on the screen.

But that would require the universe to stop revolving around Leonardo DiCaprio, and that was never going to happen, so...

[Minami Minegishi]

ahem :cough: :cough:

[Mister Six]

Got a bit dusty in here since I killed the conversation?

[Minami Minegishi]

Not, just my overly vague 'this is now available' klaxon.

[BlodwynPig]

All films are shit.

[Minami Minegishi]

Well, I liked this a huge amount but did not love it.

I feel like it

Spoiler alert

needed a beat at the start to show lost Ernest is, and how he needs a Father figure, just to make his terrible acts more pathetic. And casting Plemons in that role would have helped that too. The character is such an awful, cowardly cunt I just found him impossible to watch sometimes.

[close]

Yes, definitely some Trump-isms in that one De Niro scene. Almost on the nose.

[neveragain]

Thinking about it, I think I'd rather have seen a film focusing on Mollie and her sisters, and how they grew up as the first generation in this new world, getting comfortable just enough to make themselves vulnerable to the white predators. Seeing DeNiro from their POV first, rather than immediately introducing him as An Evil Snake Cunt, would have made the spiralling collapse of everything, and the losses of all the members of the Osage community, have so much more heft. Keep it tight on Mollie, her relationships with her kids and Ernest, and make that final joyous scene of the present-day Osage people dancing feel genuinely cathartic...

I like this idea. Would have been very powerful to get attached to her family and see them all unceremoniously bumped off. Seeing less of De Niro and DiCaprio's characters (although they were both great actually) would have been an effective choice too.

Appreciated the film but it could have been cut down a lot.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Watched this the other night and it was... alright? I can't say I'll ever want to watch it again. It is far too long when the story itself is a relatively short and simple one.

One of the problems with current day old chap Scorsese moving to streaming is that he now is surrounded by yes men and can indulge his every whim, which means you get 3 and a half hour films that really didn't need to be that long. Back when he was making films the "traditional" way at least he had producers etc telling him "cut that scene, it's crap" or "this is way too long mate, I think we can trim about an hour off the runtime and it would actually improve the film".

[Minami Minegishi]

One of the problems with current day old chap Scorsese moving to streaming is that he now is surrounded by yes men and can indulge his every whim, which means you get 3 and a half hour films that really didn't need to be that long. Back when he was making films the "traditional" way at least he had producers etc telling him "cut that scene, it's crap" or "this is way too long mate, I think we can trim about an hour off the runtime and it would actually improve the film".

I honestly far prefer this indulgent Scorsese to the 'I will get the money to build this set but only if I cast Cameron Diaz in the lead' Scorsese.

[checkoutgirl]

Probably too much of a faff for most people, and I think folks still like the thing of going to a place and meeting up with friends. It's not even just about the viewing experience, as these days you can get a massive screen and decent sound system for relatively cheap.

Half the time people are going to the cinema to get out of the house. But sitting in your own sitting room isn't getting out out of the house! It's quite different. You might even say it's the exact opposite. I think there'll  always be cinemas, in some form, even if only a few. With Amazon and Spotify, there's hardly any other reason to leave the house at this point, might as well hang onto a cinema or two. A film premiere on Oculus is just depressing.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Beyond it actually being a nice experience when the audience is experiencing things together, I find it more immersive anyway because social convention forces me to pay attention and not tit about on my phone. I've tried putting the phone and laptop out of reach but the temptation is still there in a way it isn't when I'm in a cinema.

god I'm pathetic.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Curse of the modern age mate. If you watch people nowadays the moment they're given any amount of free time they sort of panic and immediately reach for their phone or whatever. It used to be that everyone would be far more Zen about everything and just be content with sitting somewhere (maybe a nice comfy chair or a bench) and observing the world. I reckon the moment we got affordable data contracts for phones that just immediately fucked us.

[13 schoolyards]

Half the time people are going to the cinema to get out of the house. But sitting in your own sitting room isn't getting out out of the house! It's quite different. You might even say it's the exact opposite. I think there'll  always be cinemas, in some form, even if only a few. With Amazon and Spotify, there's hardly any other reason to leave the house at this point, might as well hang onto a cinema or two. A film premiere on Oculus is just depressing.

A couple people I know through work are convinced that VR / AR will mean the instant death of cinemas, but they are dudes in their 40s and so are in no way the audience for going to the cinema - they're movie nerds, which is a different thing these days.

Cinemas are where teens go to get away from their parents, young people go for dates (they're together but don't have to have an awkward convo, then afterwards they can talk about the movie) and old people go for a "night out". Watching stuff at home in no way competes with any of that, so it's not going to replace it (though cinemas being increasingly shit might mean people eventually give up on them)

[checkoutgirl]

As mentioned the film is too long. Two hours would be plenty. I was surprised at the lack of detail on the Osage characters. I would have thought given the tone of the film some of their motivations and fears would be explored but no, it's all from the whites perspective.

Leo and DeNiro are very much the order of the day here which is tolerable for DeNiro as his character is an absolute psychopath and very infuriating. It was curious that DiCaprio's character had most of the film on his shoulders as he's a complete idiot. Is it really advisable to follow around a simpleton for the guts of four hours? Bumbling his way through terrible crimes and being manipulated. It could have been so much better.

Overall it was fine but could have been more interesting and shorter.

[Mister Six]

Like I said before, reframe it on the sisters, have them growing up amid social change, show DeNiro as this seemingly benign figure, then show the slow deterioration and Mollie's realisation that not just DeNiro but also her husband are in on it. Having DiCaprio as this funny simpleton who seems to care about his family, then revealing that he's been helping orchestrate the murders all along, could be really effective.

But DiCaprio would never play second fiddle like that, and I imagine his involvement was necessary to get the $$$$$.

A couple people I know through work are convinced that VR / AR will mean the instant death of cinemas, but they are dudes in their 40s and so are in no way the audience for going to the cinema - they're movie nerds, which is a different thing these days.

Only if VR can accurately recreate the vibe of being in a cinema - complete with surround sound, picture quality, atmosphere - minus the fucking idiots that ruin everything, and without making people want to vomit after periods of extended use.

Even then, I think there's a social pleasure to going to the movies, among other group activities, that VR will never be able to replicate, short of some kind of holodeck-type situation.

[13 schoolyards]

I suspect saying VR will replace cinema is like saying your awesome home stereo will replace live music - as Mister Six said, people like group activities. It's not like half the people going to the movies now are paying that much attention to the screen anyway

[Minami Minegishi]

Personally, I don't like the communal aspect as I can often find it distracting. An empty cinema makes me very happy.

Does anyone know if there is research done on the visual, immersive qualities of the cinema? I could sit really close to my TV, or even put my phone a few inches from my face. It fills up exactly the same field of vision, but somehow is not immersive or cinematic.

I searched through various research databases to see what articles there are on this subject but they were more concerned with eye-tracking, and also they are very dense.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

[Terry Torpid]

I thought VR cinema would mean you have a full range of view, like you're standing in the middle of the action and can look around. Instead of shot reverse shot you turn your head from person to person while they have a conversation. I'm not sure I'd like it. But if it just means you're sitting in an imaginary cinema, with an imaginary 2-D screen on the wall, it seems pointless.

[Dayraven]

Immersive VR would effectively mean you're having the film framed for you by an amateur cameraman who doesn't know what's happening next.

[Mister Six]

I thought VR cinema would mean you have a full range of view, like you're standing in the middle of the action and can look around. Instead of shot reverse shot you turn your head from person to person while they have a conversation. I'm not sure I'd like it. But if it just means you're sitting in an imaginary cinema, with an imaginary 2-D screen on the wall, it seems pointless.

That seems more like VR theatre. Removing the director's ability to dictate shots fundamentally breaks the cinematic medium.

So yeah, that's probably what the techbro twats mean, because their thought processes and engagement with art don't go further than watching Transformers 14 and thinking "WOAH, imagine if you were INSIDE this explosion!"

[El Unicornio, mang]

I thought VR cinema would mean you have a full range of view, like you're standing in the middle of the action and can look around.

There are VR films like that, but they're not the kind you'd see at your local family multiplex...

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Every time I see the topic title I keep hearing this in my head and replacing the words in the chorus.

[SteveDave]

We watched the first 105 minutes of this last night and I'm enjoying that for a film that's 3 and a half hours long, things seem to be zipping by.

Why is Robert the Niro playing his character as though he's Frank Reynolds?

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

It works. The character was only a mastermind compared to his accomplices, who were complete idiots. He was able to carry on his plan because of a lack of interest in the suspicious deaths of Native Americans, but he was very sloppy and his grudges would also get in the way.