Scorsese and DiCaprio back together again with 'Killers of the Flower Moon'.

hhttp://variety.com/2017/film/news/martin-scorsese-development-killers-of-the-flower-moon-dante-ferretti-1202495680/

The story it's based on is nothing if not fascinating and undoubtedly gruesome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage_Indian_murders

Will be keen to see if they can do justice both to the victims and the source material.

o damn adapting the grann book ? u crazy for this one marty

he better get to that Pacino-De Niro film before they all croak

i thought they were going to do the adaptation of Devil in the White City? this sounds like it's more interesting, though. i'd be worried the former would just be a Chicago GoNY.

bully

http://deadline.com/2017/09/leonardo-dicaprio-martin-scorsese-teddy-roosevelt-movie-paramount-1202177329/

Marty has an Instagram page

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6521-scorsese-opening-nyff-and-preparing-killers-of-the-flower-moon

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/07/martin-scorsese-scouts-killers-of-the-flower-moon-dicaprio-de-niro-1202161737/

so do his dogs

https://www.instagram.com/the.scorsese.dogs/

After working with Malick, Lynch, PTA, De Palma & more, legendary production designer Jack Fisk is teaming with Martin Scorsese for the first time with 'Killers of the Flower Moon' https://t.co/vTYuqPkTPe pic.twitter.com/BuTVFwsGSd

— The Film Stage 📽 (@TheFilmStage) April 7, 2021

Jason Isbell & Sturgill Simpson announced as part of the cast for this!

honestly i’m into it, it’s a wild story & will make a great movie if they do it right

https://i1.wp.com/bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/killers-of-the-flower-moon-scaled.jpg?w=2560&ssl=1

I'm looking forward to this one, I think! Good cast, good source material, sometimes OK screenwriter, seems like a good fit for Scorsese.

I'm about 3/4ths of the way through the book right now, looking forward to this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG0si5bSd6I

The book was good. This looks promising!

Was Plemons in that trailer? Must have missed him.

206 minutes.

Plemons is there at least once, looks like an interrogation scene w/dicaprio.

there's thoroughly unnerving vibe to that, which is appropriate for the story.

Feels like this has been in the making for 10 years, looking forward to it though

(only 5 years apparently)

Took them that long develop the technology to make De Niro look so old.

Bet in another ten years things will have progressed that they can make him look even older

I read the book last summer. It was a deeply horrifying story of murder, racism, greed, conspiracy, and exploitation committed against indigenous people that everyone needs to hear about. But I didn't care much for that trailer. They made it look like some kind of big budget horror movie.

Guardedly optimistic based on that trailer; some great images. (Haven't read the novel.) The very last words I'll utter on my deathbed, though, will be "Scorsese and DiCaprio...I don't get it."

The lead actress is from Montana so the article in my local paper is all about her, as it should be.

Trailer Released for New Martin Scorsese Film Starring Blackfeet Nation’s Lily Gladstone

The first official teaser trailer for the director Martin Scorsese’s new movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which stars the actress Lily Gladstone, was released online Thursday ahead of the film’s world premiere this weekend at the Cannes Film Festival.

Gladstone, who is of Blackfeet and Niimíipuu heritage, was born at Kalispell Regional Medical Center and spent her early years living on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, before her family moved to Seattle when she was in middle school. A 2016 profile of Gladstone written for the University of Montana’s “Montanan” magazine describes how at an early age she was cast in a Missoula Children’s Theatre production of “Cinderella” that was performed in East Glacier Park, and how eventually she began pursuing ballet, learning in the basement of a Browning church, and taking lessons in Columbia Falls. She eventually focused on theater, performing in high school and community theater productions. Gladstone went on to enroll in the University of Montana’s Davidson Honors College where she ultimately graduated with a BFA in acting and a minor in Native American studies.

Gladstone was wonderful in Reichardt's Certain Women several years ago.

I think the horror element one feels watching that trailer is key, considering it's a late chapter in what is one of the true American horror stories. I think the POV shots seen in that trailer are thoroughly key.

I hadn't clocked the horror feel but that would certainly explain why this is the first Scorsese movie I've been mildly enthusiastic to see since, well, Shutter Island

But Silence was a horror movie!

Interview: https://time.com/collection/time100-leadership-series/6311403/martin-scorsese-killers-of-the-flower-moon-interview/

As beautiful and powerful as you'd expect but does tend to reduce attempted genocide to an opportunity for Leo to do his moral dilemma face for an hour or two. If you thought Oppenheimer was problematic then hoo, boy...

Just saw Lily Gladstone is going to campaign for lead actress and not supporting, which good

Potentially stiffer competition, tho

I'd normally rush off and see this, but I'll probably hold off a couple of weeks for a friend who's on the road. Will make sure to avoid all reviews. Remain hopeful.

(And will also, as always, go in with an unreasonably high bar I expect it to meet.)

may I suggest that while you're waiting, you read the book. the basic story will be the same in book and film, but the depth of detail will be much greater in the book and the details accumulate to make a very overwhelming impression that spreads well beyond the confines of the basic story.

I thought I'd been nailed with another "It's the thread revive we all hoped for!"--close call.

chalk that other up to The Goodfellas Effect

I'm not a great reader of fiction--I've always got a couple of non-fiction books on the go--so I always give precedence to the film. I've occasionally followed up a film I liked by reading the novel (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold comes to mind--and I did think the novel was excellent), but not very often.

Well then you're in luck because Killers of the Flower Moon is nonfiction (and very good).

Didn't know that, thought it was historical fiction...Being Scorsese, I'm still going to give the film priority.

the process of turning the book into a script and a film will necessarily introduce various kinds of compression, elision, and other minor fictionalizations, but as you watch be aware that the murders, the murderers and their motives were all too real

That was my assumption: that the book was a fictionalization of real events. Reading up, I see it's straight reportage (and that there was an earlier novel based on the same events).

the book is great but the last third where the author inserts himself into the narrative--understandably so, as he helped solve some of the underlying crimes, i can't remember the exact details--really took wind out of the sails for me. up to then, it had been an excellent read

I'm invited to the press screening tomorrow night, but a 3:26 film on a Tuesday night when assignments are due at midnight is a burden too heavy to bear.

I was actually disappointed by the Grann book, most especially the way he chose to structure it as a whodunnit when the villain of the piece seemed pretty obvious almost right away (and looks even more obvious in the trailer for the Scorsese adaptation). I did like lots of the incidental details about various outlaws, bandits and ne'er-do-wells, and I hope the long run time allows Scorsese to keep some of that flavour.

Watching this tonight, thankfully basically blind and hopeful

Really, the best way to watch a movie.

saw this tonight, thought it was good but not great. I am not really someone who demands that films “center” certain perspectives, but I do think there was a certain incoherence to the point of view of the film: not nearly enough of the interior life of molly, and eventually as marty realizes he isn’t sure how to bring this out of her, the focus shifts to the internal conflict within earnest. which overall is fine — I’m not the biggest leo guy, but I think this is one of his better performances. de niro was also very good obv.

and while despite the 206 minute runtime the movie somehow did not drag…I still really feel as though a good 30 minutes or more could have been cut, leaving a still very good, still very long film

doing some quick skimming of some reviews — I’m glad I’m not the only person who thought of PHANTOM THREAD!

this might be an anti-cinema opinion but I couldn't help thinking it would have been better as a ten-hour series

Blind willie Johnson montage the highlight of the film. Really ugly watching the first 2/3’s. Made the one gag in the film (“can I…. Can I talk alone to this man for a moment?”) absolutely sparkle with life lol.

It was long, but justified. The better half who is not a movie person at all and groaned when I told her the length came out enjoying it so that’s as good an endorsement as any that it didn’t drag its heels

He didn't streamline it tho, he made it baggier — added 50 minutes and a whole layer of (tedious imo) Catholic framing to it.

Hah, yes he did! It's been too long since I saw either. But the Catholic framing, do you mean the sense of guilt? I remember that being in Infernal Affairs as well though it wasn't rooted in Catholicism. (Regardless, that part never made a strong impression either.)

Yeah, it was there in the original but rooted in personal loyalties. But Scorsese can't help letting Catholicism run all over everything (explicitly or otherwise).

It made logical sense when they transplanted the film to Boston - it's almost become a cliché at this point, so many Boston-based dramas I've seen over the past 20 years work the Catholic presence, whether it's Mystic River or (for obvious reasons) Spotlight.

I don't mind it. I like when artists' religion and politics bleed all over the place.

I mean, why else watch Scorsese? If I want amoral gangster shit I can watch a Warner Bros pic or Brian De Palma.

Very true. Honestly, it's hard to imagine his work without it, but if you somehow wrote that out of the scripts for, say, Mean Streets or Raging Bull, I don't think he'd ever make those films and I'm not sure there would be any real merit to them. Jake LaMotta truly does become nothing more than a cockroach, which is what the reluctant execs at UA initially believed when they were pitched the film.

Actually, LaMotta is a cockroach. The Age of Innocence, Silence, Killers of the Flower Moon >>>>>> Raging Bull.

LOL, we'll have to disagree, but I always thought that was Scorsese's best film because of what he finds in that story.

And also to add what I posted before, I say that as an agnostic - what makes Scorsese (or Leo McCarey or Paul Schrader among others for that matter) so compelling is a lot of what they explore through their faith is universal. The struggles their characters go through feel very honest, something anyone can recognize or experience.

Sure, the "Catholic stuff" is part of what makes his great stuff great. But in what should have been a trifle like The Departed, to me it felt like padding, like he had to find a way to make the story feel important enough for him or something.

(I don't like The Departed anyway, if it's not clear. It cracks me up that it was his Oscar film.)

Yeah, far from my favorite, but it was such a big success that it made Hugo possible, which again is one of my favorites from recent years. I think he said it allowed him to pass on some projects he would've considered before as well.

Hugo is the only Scorsese I havent watched!

I watched Hugo. It felt like Scorsese wanted very badly to make a magical kid's movie tapping into our sense of innocent wonder and he just didn't have the chops for it. It's way too heavy to get airborne.

Innocent wonder is like a Spielberg fantasy, I never got the impression Hugo was interested in those sort of illusions. The heart of it is about a very bitter and broken man, and the war played a huge role in that. It's still uplifting to me because of the way they find their way out of despair. I don't doubt that's heavy, but that's pretty much why it left a lasting impression.

Nice New Yorker interview with LG

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/lily-gladstone-is-holding-the-door-open?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_020424&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=5be9da642ddf9c72dc27c25d&cndid=29476922&hasha=f0ef51a738774f8c6d037c5c6beb7573&hashb=7cfed5b1cbcbc6a71fea3c2fc2bc754ee2661f52&hashc=fdd5c8d249d863be98861f55628588b242a4ca01384346986428715bbfdd44db&esrc=CDS_OP

Lily Gladstone honored by the Blackfeet tribe in Montana:

Today the Blackfeet Nation celebrated Lily Gladstone Day. Lily made history as the first Indigenous person to be nominated for an Academy Award and to win a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actress in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Her achievements are a beacon… pic.twitter.com/fwJCqH2U76

— Ryan Busse (@ryandbusse) March 26, 2024

The poster, Ryan Busse, is running for governor against Greg "human garbage" Gianforte this year.

https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2025/1/13/killers-of-the-flower-moon-screenwriter-has-mixed-feelings-about-the-film

This is on Apple TV, so I finally got around to it this week.

ROBERT DE NIRO: Now, nephew, we need to kill all these Indians and steal their oil money. Kill the Indians, take the oil money. Got it?

LEONARDO DICAPRIO: *makes SLING BLADE face*

Repeat for 3 1/2 hours.

I finally got around to it this week. My impression of DiCaprio's performance was less dismissive than unperson's, above, but it wasn't especially favorable. I see the bulk of commentary above aligns pretty well with my thoughts.
Earnest was just back from his service in WWI at the start of the film. Mainly, the part called for a much younger actor. DiCaprio was more or less 50 years old during filming, playing a man who must have been in his early 20s. The externals painted him as wild, an irresponsible drinker, who participated in a gang of armed robbers, then blew the money at cards. Molly found him attractive, if a rogue.

DiCaprio just didn't fit the requirements. He was far too subdued throughout and, yes, his facial expression was nearly frozen into the same puzzled frown for at least 2 1/2 hours of the 3 1/2 hour run time. His interpretation never really worked and Scorsese let him run with it, to the detriment of the movie. But Scorsese should have known better than to cast Leo in the first place.

The movie had other strengths, but some of the weaknesses were all too apparent.

Good point, but I don't think the terrible miscasting of DeNiro should also pass without mention.

I saw it again over Memorial Day weekend, first time since opening weekend. De Niro was even stronger this time, Scrunchy Face less so. I was again impressed with the burial sequence of Lily Gladstone's hapless mom.

The casting of De Niro works because he brings his post-Fockers avuncular star baggage to the part. He has to stress how the Osage would trust him while at the same time not fooling the audience a bit.

The DeNiro problem may just be me - its hard for me to watch him in this without wondering how a Mafia boss ended up on a farm in Oklahoma.

scorsese has been drawing the connection between mobs and people with respected power for a while -- wolf of wall st being a clone of goodfellas, for example

Yeah, De Niro's character in KOTFM has the psychology of a mobster, it's just the trappings that vary.

Probably discussed here, but I could have sworn I read Leo's role was originally going to be Jesse Plemons. Regardless, Plemons would have been better, and Leo (who iirc was ... fine?) should have sat it out. De Niro, too. Good or no, De Niro and Leo are too big to get lost in this a movie like this, to its detriment. It didn't need their distracting movie star pull.

wolf of wall st being a clone of goodfellas, for example

I'd have to re-watch it, but a few surface things aside, I didn't recall "Wolf" being much like "GoodFellas." But speaking of re-watches, I just saw "Casino" again for the first time in 20 years or whatever, and, man, what an impeccably made nothing of a movie it remains. It's def., per its reputation, very much a "GoodFellas" retread, except without the young-version build-up and sweaty paranoid desperation of its inevitable everything-falls-apart denouement. It's just like one long ... middle.

idk that's a very surface level take of a movie that's extremely unlike Goodfellas, i mean it's an entirely different kind of movie in so many ways. familiar instruments, new composition.

People need to stop casting DiCaprio in movies.

I got news for you about Heat 2

I’m just imagining Scorsese, who has definitely gone through eras of casting a guy or one of several puzzling it out. If DiCaprio can’t be the male lead, what do
you want? DeNiro as the young man? What are we doing here?

tbf he kind of did that with The Irishman

Probably discussed here, but I could have sworn I read Leo's role was originally going to be Jesse Plemons.

Actually, DiCaprio was originally supposed to play the Plemons role (the FBI agent), who is a bigger character in the book. Then the script was rewritten to make the Ernest/Mollie relationship more of a focal point. So DiCaprio switched to play Ernest, and Plemons was cast as the FBI guy.

I think of Goodfellas and Wolf as quite similar, as a compilation of stories and moments that members of a subculture (Mafia gangsters and traders) would tell each other, presented with a verve that makes the moral dubiousness part of the thrill. As in: You’ll never believe what happened when this friend of a friend had to put a body in a trunk, or Let me tell you about this guy strung out on ‘ludes trying to get out of his car.

Yeah, Wolf is basically a (to my mind inferior) retread on Goodfellas, Casino meanwhile while thematically similar is miles away tonally.

Can't say I can relate to the argument that you don't want movie stars in a film like Killers Of The Flower Moon, it's not a pseudo documentary, if it was Jesse Plemons instead of Di Caprio I would also be thinking "that's Jesse Plemons", in either case they are playing someone else, that is fine, it's on me as a viewer to accept that lol.

I suppose one difference is that when Jesse Plemons is in a movie, I don't go into it thinking, ok, here's another Jesse Plemons role. He's fresh and interesting enough as an actor that I feel he's not yet quite the known quantity that Leo is, or De Niro, for that matter. Especially De Niro as cartoon villain, too many familiar beats. As far as that goes, I only saw The Irishman once, but I recall him being good in that one. And Pesci, and Pacino, too, which was a nice reminder of their abilities when given something (at least slightly) different to do. (FWIW, One Battle did a great job leaning on Leo's comic timing, a reminder that he's often at his best or most enjoyable when he's not trying to be so intense.)

Anyway, I did just see Casino again two nights ago, and GoodFellas again not too long before that, and I do think they have a lot more in common than GoodFellas and Wolf, imo. You've got the mob machinations, natch. You've got the untouchable made man. You've got Pesci as wild card. You've got wooing the girl with the flash and access. You've got the same girl ultimately reduced to hysterics. You've got all the side goons/enforcers. You've got the narration. Etc. I mean, they are all packed with Scorsese traits (turned up to 10 in Casino, from the music cues to the camera moves), and they are all variations on the corruption of greed, with slight shifts. Casino is two (or three) different ways of getting all you can before the whole enterprise implodes. GoodFellas is getting all you can but knowing when to quit to save yourself, the limits of loyalty. Wolf is getting all you can but operating with the utmost arrogance, understanding that the system is ultimately built to protect *you*. That's why Wolf leaves me the most queasy/disturbed, and makes it a great Leo fit. His sleaze is essential. (Killers is of course disturbing, too, but I didn't find De Niro or Leo as written complex enough to add much to the already compelling story.)

Yeah Josh but all the things you list are plot related, thematic. In terms of editing, pacing, visuals Goodfellas and Wolf are much closer than Casino, and for a movie that's what really counts imo.

Especially De Niro as cartoon villain, too many familiar beats

I don't think the character's cartoonish at all and cannot remember any other roles that are particularly similar to what he's doing here.

Interesting. I feel like the avuncular villain is something he's offered before, but I'd have to think about what I was thinking of. Like, a him leading Lorraine Bracco down the alley in "GoodFellas" sort of vibe?

I suppose one difference is that when Jesse Plemons is in a movie, I don't go into it thinking, ok, here's another Jesse Plemons role.

I do?

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQVx4LkvWWg8TfQXOtKgJDLMTS80nGWz6nyHQ&s

Maybe it's a different sort of type casting, but Plemons imo might have played more convincing rube than Leo.

He might have. It might've worked. But there's been a Plemons type since Friday Night Lights.

Probably right. Maybe I consider him a fresher face only because he's literally much younger than Leo.

Casino was the first Scorsese movie where I really felt like he was disappearing up his own ass/falling into fan service. I mean, it was like an entire movie made with voice-over and classic rock. I didn't like it at all. Then I went back to it years later and now I love it, exactly because it is so feverish and over-the-top (I don't mean just violent, I mean that every aspect of it is turned up to 10 - the few slow scenes are agonizingly slow, the tragic stuff is opera-level tragic, etc., etc.). There is nothing subtle about Casino, which is perfect because it's a movie about the least subtle place on Earth.

With the exceptional exceptions of "Age of Innocence" and "Kundun," Scorsese's post-"Goodfellas" run finds him at his most garish and indulgent, which may be why I don't really like - or maybe I should say, haven't returned to - "Cape Fear," "Bringing Out the Dead," "Gangs of New York," "The Aviator," "The Departed" and "Shutter Island" (and until this week, "Casino"). I wonder how they hold up.

I feel like the avuncular villain is something he's offered before

Maybe the Paul Vitti role in "Analyze This" and "Analyze That"? also the young Don Corleone in Godfather Pt II.

Well, it's a bit different I think - the avuncularity in the Analyze movies is genuine, it's been a long, long time but I also remember De Niro's role in Godfather 2 being more of a sympathetic character faced with impossible choices. In Killers the avuncular aspect is a disguise, a weapon.

Yeah, but it's kind of a terrible disguise, unless you are a total rube like Leo's character. At least, as I remember it. So I felt no tension there, because it was all laid bare. As opposed to the alley scene in "GoodFellas." We know *and* she knows not to trust him, so we just watch her squirm and feel what she is feeling. But Leo in "Killers," combined with it being De Niro, we know what he's up to and Leo doesn't ... but should. I'm thinking of scenes like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5qnxZvOpVk

At this point there's no ambiguity, so there's no tension. Imo. If the movie were shorter I'd watch it again, lol! (Same with "The Irishman," tbh.)

Yeah Plemons's strange rise to leading roles has been fairly consistently bland imo.

I respect that, though it may be that his generally bland affect - blonde, slightly doughy southern guy - ironically gives him a slightly unpredictable edge in stuff like "Breaking Bad," "Bugonia" or "Civil War." Tbc, I don't necessarily look forward to him *or* Leo in movies, lol, I just feel that Plemons is still working his way to something, maybe, but Leo is more of a known quantity.

Josh, I kinda don't disagree with your take there but don't think it's down to the actors? Organized crime is a more thrilling, vicarious type of evil than white supremacy, and De Niro's character starts from a position of power while Liotta starts as an underdog. Ambiguity and tension are not what the story's about imo - it's more of a tragedy in the Greek sense.

I get that, and the inevitability of the (story's) end is part of what gives it its disturbing impact, I just wasn't a fan of how the story was told. Fortunately (if that is the right word), the book exists, is very good and doesn't invite debates about casting!