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: Leonardo DiCaprio
Don’t Look Up (2021)
Best Picture nominee? Don’t Look Up? Really? This movie had a wide December release. It earned less than one million dollars at the box office and was out of the theaters in under two weeks. Its 56% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes further suggests that this is different from a film one would deem to be selected by the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as one of its ten best films of 2021. Yet (sigh), here we are. The biggest tragedy might be that this isn’t a bad film but is unfairly getting bashed for its affiliation with the other nine movies up for Best Picture in arguably the worst collection of films for any year.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is arguably my favorite Quentin Tarantino’s (Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained) movie. However, that isn’t saying a lot since he is not one of my favorite directors out there. I admit that there is an audience for his movies. I’m just not a part of that audience. For me, his films are too often over the top, are loaded with extreme and unneeded violence, and contain the foulest language you’ll hear from a big-budget movie any year that one of his movies was released. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was FAR different than his previous eight films. The story was not over the top. The cursing, while present, was used to accent a verbal exchange rather than serve as the root of it. And outside of a 10-15 minute sequence, there wasn’t any over-the-top violence. This movie was long and a bit boring, but it wasn’t bad. It also had excellent acting performances.
The Revenant (2015)
Why not save the best for last? It doesn’t always work out that way, but The Revenant was the final movie released in 2015. In fact, except for in a few select theaters in a few select cities, you couldn’t see the film until January 7th. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely it was. It seems like we’ve seen trailers for months building this movie up. Each time I saw a preview, I couldn’t help but get excited. I believe that this might have been my most anticipated movie since Shutter Island, and with that movie, I had reason to be wary because it was a 2010 movie released in February. You usually don’t get the best films of the year released that early in the year. While Shutter Island exceeded expectations, The Revenant was all that and more. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Great Gatsby) has been burned by the Academy many times before. While The Revenant is his fifth Academy Award nomination for acting, he should have at least three or four more. None of those past omissions matter now, as DiCaprio is the front runner to win Best Actor this year. I wouldn’t quite qualify him as a lock to win, but it is only a two-actor race, and his performance was more impressive than the fabulous performance given by Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl.
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Shutter Island (2010)
Without a doubt, Martin Scorsese’s (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Departed) was one of my life’s most incredible theater movie experiences. I had been super excited for the movie since seeing its first preview six months or more before it came out. There was so much hype associated with the film that I was certain it couldn’t live up to the expectations. However, it not only met expectations but also surpassed them. This movie is a complete masterpiece and has only been dampened by the fact that the second viewing (an essential viewing for all film fans) wasn’t as awesome as I thought it would be. I thought I would gain some insight into knowing things about the movie I didn’t realize during my first viewing. Rather than capitalizing on this new knowledge, I found the second viewing rather dull. The excitement of seeing this film for the first time was what made it so great. This movie is also a much better view in the theater than at home, regardless of how big your home television might be. It’s a movie that needed to be seen in a dark theater full of other people viewing the film for the first time.
Continue reading Shutter Island (2010)