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.
She Came To Me (2023)
The biggest compliment I can give Rebecca Miller’s (The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Maggie’s Plan) unmemorable She Came To Me was that it was creative. I crave originality. While none of the singular components were necessarily imaginative, the sum of the parts brought a freshness that kept me engaged. Unfortunately, I left feeling uninspired and disappointed as Miller dipped in and out of genres. Pegged as a romantic dramedy, I never felt involved enough with the characters to take the film seriously. Likewise, the comedy was a miss for me, though I heard some chuckling from the other ten or so people in my theater. And, while the film centered around intimate relationships at its core, this was far from checking off the romance genre checkbox. In all, it was pretty messy as it crawled towards a predictable finish line, misusing the talents of three of Hollywood’s biggest names in the process.
Dumb Money (2023)
I love it when a movie is timely and relevant. I refer to The Social Network, the 2010 origin film about the social phenomenon of Facebook. This social media platform had been made available to the public less than four years earlier. Aaron Sorokin and David Fincher worked magic to create such a masterpiece quickly. I still maintain that The King’s Speech beating The Social Network for Best Picture was one of the biggest shams in Oscar history. It showed just how antiquated and set in their ways The Academy had become. While Craig Gillespie’s (I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl) Dumb Money is not entirely on the same level as The Social Network, its timely significance cannot be overlooked. Though in a completely different way, the events in Dumb Money are (to many individuals, organizations, and sectors) as impactful as to those in The Social Network.
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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Alice, Darling (2022)
It isn’t so much that Alice, Darling, the feature-length directorial debut of Mary Nighy, was a good movie nor an enjoyable watch, but rather how it remains in your mind long after its watch. It’s both a timely and timeless movie about emotional abuse, told exclusively through the eyes of a victim amid the turmoil, but having no sense of what to do about it or even if she knows if she’s genuinely experiencing this abuse. In this regard, the movie hits on all cylinders, even when it misses almost everything else.