Martin Scorsese’s (Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street) Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer were my most anticipated movies of 2023. It had so much of what I look for in a movie. First and foremost, it had Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant, Revolutionary Road), my favorite actor. Secondly, it looked like a tension-driven drama with fiery characters enriched in their story and setting. Thirdly, it was based on a true story. When all things else are equal, I lean on based on actual story films as a deciding factor. Even with a ridiculous run time of 3 hours and 26 minutes, I was convinced that the gripping tale wouldn’t have me counting the minutes for the film to end, which I did on multiple occasions with Scorsese’s last film, the insufferable The Irishman. While Killers of the Flower Moon might struggle to finish in my end-of-year top ten list, it was a worthwhile theater-going experience. While it felt long at times, it certainly did not drag in the way that I feared it might. Scorsese dignifiedly shed light on an important story in our country’s history.
Category Archives: Academy Award Nominees
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Ready to call it a career, Frank James (Sam Shepard – Out of the Furnace, The Right Stuff) promises his brother Jesse (Brad Pitt – Legends of the Fall, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) one last train heist with the notorious James Gang. Then, Frank will drift off into the sunset and live out the rest of his life quietly. But what will happen to Jesse? Well, he will be assassinated by the coward Robert Ford. The film’s title gives the plot away unless somehow we are talking about the assassination metaphorically. We are not. So what keeps director Andrew Dominik’s (Blonde, Killing Them Softly) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford such an alluring watch for its nearly three-hour runtime?
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Legends of the Fall (1994)
I remember walking out of the theater with a group of my first-year college friends after watching Edward Zwick’s (The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond) Legends of the Fall when my one friend turned to me and said, “I feel like I just want go in a hole and die now.” Truer words couldn’t have been spoken for, perhaps, the most extensive epic I had seen in a theater until that point in my life. I knew little about the film besides that it starred Brad Pitt (Twelve Monkeys, Se7en), and it could be a darker, more adult-oriented version of the beloved A River Runs Through It. The unknown was just a fraction of what made Legends of the Fall become one of my favorite movies of all time and one that has never fallen out of my Top 50. That is until my 2023 rewatch, some 15 years after I last watched the film.
No Country for Old Men (2008)
No Country for Old Men is the most well-received and critically acclaimed adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy (my favorite author) novel. There have been six. The Road is, by far, my favorite McCarthy novel and a movie masterpiece. The others are the slightly underrated All the Pretty Horses, the disappointing box office flop The Counselor, the virtually unseen Child of God, and The Sunset Limited, a film I still need to see. No Country for Old Men is the only McCarthy-adapted film to receive an Oscar, earning eight nominations and four wins, including the first nomination and win in Best Achievement in Directing for Hollywood darlings Joel and Ethan Coen.
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Love or hate him, Terrence Malick has a unique style. Personally, he’s not for me. The New World was a decent enough film, but it left me wanting more. I had such high hopes for The Tree of Life, only for it to result in one of my most frustrating and tedious theater-going experiences ever, that I was ready to write him off. However, there is often an anomaly. For me, it was his devastatingly beautiful portrayal of World War II in 1998’s The Thin Red Line. Rightfully or not, The Thin Red Line will forever be associated and compared with Saving Private Ryan, another World War II-based Best Picture nominee of 1998. And, if I’m being 100% honest, I did not know that Malick directed the Thin Red Line until after I finished watching it.