Movie 2023 MOVIE DISCUSSION THREAD

[colonial]

My daughter is now 12 and recently asked if I could take her to a PG-13 movie. She said she wanted to see Five Nights at Freddy's. I said OK, and we saw it today.

She liked it. I thought it was the drizzling poops.

It's a scary movie without any scares, a thriller chiller minus the thrills and chills, twists you can see a mile away (particularly if you've played the games and read into the FNAF storylines). 

Spoiler

And they build a plot to this by telling the story of a man desperately trying to provide for his younger sister -- who it's implied is on the spectrum  -- and keep custody away from an aunt that neither of them like. There were times it felt like a 1980s generic movie of the week with animatronic killer robots thrown in.

The animatronics and puppetry were done well, and how they showed how a child with autism behaves and acts was OK, but the filmmakers threw too much at the screen -- sometimes it was straight-up thriller, other times it's an ABC afterschool special, still other times it's an arthouse film from a director who doesn't know what an arthouse film is.

This is not "Friday the 13th" or "Halloween" where ...

Spoiler

... you see the gore. You never see blood shed, just the after effects. One scene had a decapitation done in shadow background.

Also ...

Spoiler

The main character gets the job at Freddy's as a last-ditch position after he is shown pummeling a father in a mall fountain after he mistakenly thinks the dad was a child abductor. It was a vicious beating witnessed by dozens, yet he never faced criminal charges? He moves to the next job like it's nothing? Yes, the next job and how he got it is where the twist comes in but how we get from A to B was beyond ludicrous.

Also, the aunt hires the sister's babysitter and her henchmen (one resembling Mick Foley with a girly laugh) to bring down the main character and win custody of the child. The guy who got beat up at the mall was right there for the massive lawsuit, ma'am! Don't go gang that couldn't shoot straight on us.

Some other things ...

Among the films we saw in the previews from FNAF was ... FNAF.

The theater put a warning on the screen before the film that the movie could cause epileptic seizures given the use of strobe lighting in the picture. This was unique to the theater itself and I thought that was a nice touch.

FNAF was showing on Screen 5 of an eight-screen theater. Screen 8 was sharing two films this weekend, leading to the marquee to provide us with this unfortunate but hilarious title ...

 

PAW PATROL AFTER DEATH

[colonial]

My daughter is now 12 and recently asked if I could take her to a PG-13 movie. She said she wanted to see Five Nights at Freddy's. I said OK, and we saw it today.

She liked it. I thought it was the drizzling poops.

It's a scary movie without any scares, a thriller chiller minus the thrills and chills, twists you can see a mile away (particularly if you've played the games and read into the FNAF storylines). 

Spoiler

And they build a plot to this by telling the story of a man desperately trying to provide for his younger sister -- who it's implied is on the spectrum  -- and keep custody away from an aunt that neither of them like. There were times it felt like a 1980s generic movie of the week with animatronic killer robots thrown in.

The animatronics and puppetry were done well, and how they showed how a child with autism behaves and acts was OK, but the filmmakers threw too much at the screen -- sometimes it was straight-up thriller, other times it's an ABC afterschool special, still other times it's an arthouse film from a director who doesn't know what an arthouse film is.

This is not "Friday the 13th" or "Halloween" where ...

Spoiler

... you see the gore. You never see blood shed, just the after effects. One scene had a decapitation done in shadow background.

Also ...

Spoiler

The main character gets the job at Freddy's as a last-ditch position after he is shown pummeling a father in a mall fountain after he mistakenly thinks the dad was a child abductor. It was a vicious beating witnessed by dozens, yet he never faced criminal charges? He moves to the next job like it's nothing? Yes, the next job and how he got it is where the twist comes in but how we get from A to B was beyond ludicrous.

Also, the aunt hires the sister's babysitter and her henchmen (one resembling Mick Foley with a girly laugh) to bring down the main character and win custody of the child. The guy who got beat up at the mall was right there for the massive lawsuit, ma'am! Don't go gang that couldn't shoot straight on us.

Some other things ...

Among the films we saw in the previews from FNAF was ... FNAF.

The theater put a warning on the screen before the film that the movie could cause epileptic seizures given the use of strobe lighting in the picture. This was unique to the theater itself and I thought that was a nice touch.

FNAF was showing on Screen 5 of an eight-screen theater. Screen 8 was sharing two films this weekend, leading to the marquee to provide us with this unfortunate but hilarious title ...

 

PAW PATROL AFTER DEATH

[Curt McGirt]

2 hours ago, colonial said:

PAW PATROL AFTER DEATH

The review I read for After Death literally called it what used to be "street trash", saying it would be a pamphlet that would be left on a park bench in prior years. I was hoping for it to at least get to Chick Tract level but apparently it doesn't even go that far. (BTW, it's made by the same group of crowd-funded arseholes who made Sound of Freedom.)

[driver]

18 hours ago, J.T. said:

If there was ever a movie that needed an intermission it is that one.   Three and a half hours is a long fucking time if you bought a large beverage to drink and have an old man's bladder.

This man gets it!

[Tabe]

18 hours ago, J.T. said:

Killers is nearly three and a half hours, but it's not crazy long like Lawrence of Arabia or The Ten Commandments or anything.

Those two movies are 12 (3:38) and 14 (3:40) minutes longer, respectively, than Killers, which clocks in at 3:26. 

[J.T.]

Ben Hur also clocks in at about three and a half hours.

Spartacus felt like it lasted forever but it was about 3:15.

Edited October 29, 2023 by J.T.

[Contentious C]

Movies.  They're a thing.

The Wicker Man (2006) - Oh boy.  I wonder if you could write an entire review that's just parodying the "Not the bees!" scene (which wasn't even in the the theatrical version because it couldn't have made PG-13 that way).  Let's try!

Not the unnecessary remake!  Not the total failure to understand how allergies to bee stings work!  Not the rampant misogyny of a writer/director known for rampant misogyny!  Not the obvious final scene where the cop FORGETS TO CHECK IF HIS GUN IS LOADED!  Not the highway patrolman who talks about trying to make detective and then spends his first investigative case asking the stupidest questions at the worst possible times!  Not the unearned use of the unreliable narrator trope so we never know if that mom and little girl were even in the car or if he's hallucinating them on the island!  Not the preposterous plot twist that requires ten thousand more or less random things to go a million percent perfectly to hold together at all!  Not the ending where James Franco gets to be the next victim of the weird bee lady cul---actually, YES that ending, because fuck James Franco.

Now imagine Nicolas Cage screamed all that in character and you have something more entertaining than this insulting pile of utter shit.

The Fog - I'm not sure why so many of you are so high on this movie, unless you're all-in on atmosphere, because it's got plenty of that.  I think maybe I'm sort of horror-troped out at this point in my life, because it just feels like anyone worth their salt who could have borrowed from this has already done so, and I've seen the conventions played out better elsewhere.  Also, I was kind of put off by Tom Atkins being the romantic interest for Jamie Lee fucking Curtis in this movie, but she was, well, also kind of weird looking when she was younger.  Adrienne Barbeau really keeps this thing glued together fairly well.  If anything, it reminded me a lot of Michael Mann's The Keep, except this made sense.  Then again...why did it make sense?  If you're undead, what are you going to do with gold?  If you've been stuck in limbo for a hundred years for no reason except to exact revenge, why would six people satisfy that revenge?  As much as this tries to go the "unknowable terror" route, it's, I dunno, maybe a little too knowable.  But it looks interesting and is tight and does a lot with a little.

Assault on Precinct 13 - Guess I better just keep watching Carpenter I haven't seen.  This is...well, it's kind of hokey.  There are a few standout moments, such as the ice cream truck, but mostly it's like he remade Night of the Living Dead into Night of the Living Living and tried to add snappier dialogue (and mostly failed on that count).  I'm not sure if this is really more successful than 15 or 20 other movies that tried to capitalize on the "rampant crime" paranoia that was sweeping through cities; I'm too young to contextualize it with respect to film and actual news, and most stats would say things didn't hit their peak until the late 80s anyway.  I guess at the end of the day, I'm still just not convinced Carpenter is the big deal some make him out to be, and at this point, I think Prince of Darkness is the only major film of his I haven't seen.

Play Misty for Me - Man, did anyone come further in directing than Clint Eastwood?  This is...not very well-done at all if we're talking composition.  It's boring as fuck, the suspense moments are done badly, the love scenes are done even worse, big splashy landscapes get tossed in for no other reason than to keep you from getting distracted, and the main highlight is the footage from the Monterrey Jazz Festival.  But, then the guy did Unforgiven 20 years later.  So, there's that.  Also, it's pretty hard to feel bad for a sleazoid when they get what's coming to them.  The only way they could make me less empathetic towards Clint's character is if they did a remake with Johnny Depp in his role and Amber Heard in Jessica Walter's.  I'd consider the movie a tragedy on multiple levels if that ever happened: sad she could stand him in the first place, sad she thought he was worth getting killed over.  Walter's unhinged performance is probably the only thing about the movie that keeps it from being trash.

Deep Cover - I had to dig a little to remember why Bill Duke's name seemed familiar, and then I realized, "THAT Bill Duke!  Holy shit!"  I could really live without the voiceovers, which is true for basically every movie, but the ones at the beginning and the end add a little bit.  The end especially encapsulates what felt like the biggest overarching theme present in the whole film, which is that it feels like an answer to Spike Lee.  "'Do the Right Thing'?  Well, here's my movie, 'Easy for You to Say, Kid'."  That's even present in precisely how the voiceover ends the film.  Jeff Goldblum's character goes a little too fast from interesting, to on-the-edge, to never-was-anything-but-a-gangster, but it's one of his better roles regardless, and I think this is probably Laurence Fishburne's best role by a mile; not that he isn't usually good in everything (although he's been coasting since Morpheus part 1), but he outdid himself with this one.  There are a ton of murky characters and murky choices, and all that comes together nicely into one nation-sized pile of quicksand.

[odessasteps]

Isn’t Assault on Precinct 13 either a remake of a Western or his “updating” the western to present day?

[Contentious C]

Rio Bravo, allegedly, but since I haven't seen that and *have* seen Night of the Living Dead...

Besides, it sounds like the plot of Rio Bravo makes a lot more fucking sense than Assault did.

[(BP)]

Hawks and Wayne reused the central premise of Rio Bravo in El Dorado and Rio Lobo, to the extent those movies are considered remakes, so Carpenter was working with a very established western trope in Precinct 13.

[J.T.]

14 hours ago, Contentious C said:

If anything, it reminded me a lot of Michael Mann's The Keep, except this made sense.  Then again...why did it make sense?  If you're undead, what are you going to do with gold?  If you've been stuck in limbo for a hundred years for no reason except to exact revenge, why would six people satisfy that revenge?

Who says they're going to do anything with the gold?  We the audience assumed that the gold would satisfy the revenants because reasons and it did not as you saw at the end of the movie.  To put it mildly, the priest's apology on behalf of his ancestor was not accepted.

And the end of the movie also kinda answers your second question.  We the audience assume that six people will satisfy the revenge because we like closure.  Ghosts are assholes and they don't take betrayal very well.  Nothing says that they won't keep coming back to murder the descendants of the conspirators until the family bloodlines are completely cut off.

14 hours ago, Contentious C said:

If anything, it reminded me a lot of Michael Mann's The Keep, except this made sense.

I will probably die on the worst hill ever defending the silliness of The Keep, but the most intriguing story in this movie really isn't about Nazis or immortal good vs infernal evil, is it?

It is all about the good Dr. Cuza making a deal with implacable malevolence and honestly believing that being Jewish does not make him complicit in the possible doom of the world.  That the injustice and genocide suffered by his people somehow gives him a pass to sign the world's death warrant if only to destroy Hitler.

I mean, they're Nazi's right?  They kinda have it coming. But it is too late to be all WHAT HAVE i DONE~? when it dawns on you that Berlin is only the first stop on the world damnation tour and that you were instrumental in creating Hell on Earth.

The Keep has a very odd parallel to Oppenheimer, doesn't it.   Oppenheimer is perfectly fine dropping the bomb on Nazis, even if there is a small percentage of a chance that the thermonuclear reaction will incinerate the atmosphere and kill all life on earth.  You have to believe that for many of the Jewish scientists working on the bomb, turning Berlin into a glowing crater isn't just about winning the war.  It's revenge.  This is your chance to destroy the architects of The Holocaust with a tool of your own design.. 

And if you prove that you are smarter and more resourceful than the Nazi scientists working for Hitler by beating them to the bomb, even better.

Oppenheimer doesn't really find his conscience until after Germany is defeated by conventional means and his bomb will be used to destroy not-Nazis, despite the very real notion that best way to win the war is to break the fighting spirit of the Japanese army and that a ground invasion will be an absolute bloodbath for all parties involved.

That's the problem with Faustian bargains, isn't it?  The part where everyone but you holds up your end of the deal?

Edited October 29, 2023 by J.T.

[Curt McGirt]

Mr. C, someday you need a write a list of the films you do like. Top 20 or something.

[elizium]

Made it 2 hours into Killers of the Flower Moon before needing to step out to pee. I am now intermission-pilled.

Some spoilers the rest of the way if you want to skip past the rest of my post

I loved it, it personally lands in the top third of Scorsese’s work. Loved the weirdly meta ending with the radio play (did not recognize Jack White at all).

My main complaint is that I felt the Osage were sidelined in the 2nd half of the movie. A lot of that was consequence of the story, as Mollie was our perspective but she spent the last bit of the movie bedridden. Would be interesting to see a movie told from a purely Osage perspective, but as others have said elsewhere, that’s not really Scorsese’s story to tell. Soroya Roberts has a really good story on Defector about the moral purpose of art as it relates to Killers.

I’m curious as to what Scorsese’s original intention to do a complete police procedural with the story would have looked like. I don’t think it would have been as good.

Was it ever said what Mollie was being poisoned with? Until she went to the hospital I had assumed they were just giving her laudanum or something to keep her doped up. I was also suspicious that she was getting any insulin at all. Since she wasn’t improving, I assumed that they had just been putting saline or something in the vials. 

[odessasteps]

2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Mr. C, someday you need a write a list of the films you do like. Top 20 or something.

As someone constantly criticized in real life for not liking anything, I might not even be in the top five on the board.

[Curt McGirt]

During the scene where they took her into the hospital and she began to show signs of withdrawal the doctor called for them to bring him heroin, specifically. I was thinking it was the more likely morphine, but I guess not. Heroin was illegalized in 1914 so it was already banned for anything but medical use but was still available for that. It would make sense that De Niro would insist "give her ALL of it" because he wanted Dicaprio to overdose her. 

[Contentious C]

4 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Mr. C, someday you need a write a list of the films you do like. Top 20 or something.

Well, I already did this once about 2 minutes ago, and then fat-fingered the list away. That's what I get for insisting on italicizing things. Should be quick, though. No particular order:

• Seven Samurai
• Ikiru
• Pulp Fiction
• The Big Lebowski
• The Piano
• Do the Right Thing
• Videodrome
• Amelie
• Children of Men
• Pan's Labyrinth
• Blade Runner
• Alien
• Insomnia (1997)
• Godzilla (1954)
• Lawrence of Arabia
• In the Mood for Love
• Being There
• Citizen Kane
• 8 1/2
• Secrets & Lies

More than a little front-loaded on modern stuff, probably super obvious and crusty, more than a few honorable mentions to what I have seen out of Ozu and Scorsese and Villeneuve, but yeah.  Bolded the ones I have talked about.  I also have massive, John Ford- and Bergman-sized holes in my viewing.  The latter is particularly bad since I still have the Criterion box set sitting here unopened.  First ones out if I changed it would probably be, I dunno, Blade Runner, since there have been 80 different versions and I don't even entirely like the choices made in the Final Cut, and Insomnia.  I could just as easily flip them for Late Spring or The Lighthouse or Drive My Car.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Contentious C

[Travis Sheldon]

@Contentious C, I'm glad to see we share common ground on a number of films.

Sometimes I read your reviews and wonder "what is your major malfunction", but that is the beauty of the arts, as we all get something a bit different from the same source material. 

I happen to love (most) of the films of John Carpenter, but he's had such a variety of subject matter that it would be hard to like them all. 

The Fog in particular is one of my favorites of his. 

One of the most efficient ghost stories ever put to film. 

[Contentious C]

I never said I didn't like it.  I'm just a lot more indifferent to it than most of you seem to be - something I could probably say about a lot of his movies.  I didn't love The Thing, for example.  But They Live would be an outside candidate to make that top 20 list.  Out of things from that post, The Fog was definitely the 2nd-best thing I watched after Deep Cover. 

Also, I should have, but didn't, preface that list by remarking that Curt asked me what I "liked".  You'll notice I didn't mention, say, the Godfather movies or Come and See or something like that.  If I were making a "Best" list, it'd be a lot of the same, but not the same list to the letter.  But I would say those 20 movies I mentioned represent things I would want to see at a film festival or a replay (I have done that for Lebowski), or that I would sit down and watch with someone else to see if they grooved to the same things about them that I do.

And now that I know who's super-touchy about Carpenter, I guess I should start watching some more Bresson or some Jacques Rivette or *really* let people know what I think of Godard to see who gets bent out of shape about them...heaven forfend I dig into the Tarkovsky I have, either...

[Dolfan in NYC]

On 10/28/2023 at 3:39 AM, J.T. said:

TMK there has only been one 3+ hour Marvel movie and that was Endgame clocking in at 3 hours and a minute.

Don't make me get Natty in here to list every single Marvel movie with their run time.  

(Actually a quick glance says there's been only 1 Marvel movie under two hours in the last 5 years. That was Thor 4.) 

[Dolfan in NYC]

Speaking of Marvel...  Joe Russo is totally not mad about it:

I'm honestly not sure which is more cringe, the video or the caption.

[Kuetsar]

8 hours ago, Contentious C said:

I never said I didn't like it.  I'm just a lot more indifferent to it than most of you seem to be - something I could probably say about a lot of his movies.  I didn't love The Thing, for example.  But They Live would be an outside candidate to make that top 20 list.  Out of things from that post, The Fog was definitely the 2nd-best thing I watched after Deep Cover. 

Also, I should have, but didn't, preface that list by remarking that Curt asked me what I "liked".  You'll notice I didn't mention, say, the Godfather movies or Come and See or something like that.  If I were making a "Best" list, it'd be a lot of the same, but not the same list to the letter.  But I would say those 20 movies I mentioned represent things I would want to see at a film festival or a replay (I have done that for Lebowski), or that I would sit down and watch with someone else to see if they grooved to the same things about them that I do.

And now that I know who's super-touchy about Carpenter, I guess I should start watching some more Bresson or some Jacques Rivette or *really* let people know what I think of Godard to see who gets bent out of shape about them...heaven forfend I dig into the Tarkovsky I have, either...

Its not nearly as fun to read gushing reviews of things, either. Gimme the snarky negative reviews any day.

[Contentious C]

Movies?  Movies.

Pascali's Island - I don't really know why I watched this, except for a second it sounded like it could be the Unknown Hostage movie I can't place.  It isn't.  But it has some familiar faces. This feels at times like a low-rent Merchant/Ivory joint, or a high-end Grenada one, or something Anthony Minghella borrowed heavily from, but most of all it feels like an unfaithful "faithful adaptation". Haven't read the book, don't intend to, but you very much get the sense that the *events* of the book have been followed closely without enough of the subtext and detail that give those events meaning. So the ending just feels inevitable but nowhere near as tragic as it's played.

Plus the church scene is so hokey, you can practically hear Trey Parker and Matt Stone making jokes over the top of it.

Broken Embraces - I guess even mediocre Almodovar is still Almodovar...sort of.  Although it's certainly a type of cheating to constantly cast Penelope Cruz for these things, because God knows your eyeballs will be stuck to her every second she's on the screen for one reason or another.  The problem is...the rest of it.  The first 5 minutes or so are pointless and confusing, but it drops into a nice rhythm for a while.  The acting is sometimes interesting, sometimes not, and the ending is pulled out of what must have been a relatively large orifice to store so many files.  Just not enough to raise this above "average melodrama".

The Man in the Moon - Speaking of dead average melodrama, here's Reese Witherspoon's first film role.  The weird thing is, you can tell she's got "it" even then, as she's just showing up everyone in the movie who isn't Sam Waterston.  But as much as the movie seems to be about her, it's really more about her older sister, and that story is almost compelling for about 10 minutes before it has to be wrapped up so this gets an actual ending instead of meatier questions being left to linger.  If you've seen Smooth Talk, you've seen a better-acted, better-written, more thought-provoking, sleazier version of this kind of movie.  Or mash together any combination of the Deep South movies that suddenly became popular in the late 80s/early 90s, and you have this.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Here's what I wrote on Letterboxd:

I like this movie, but............

Problem # 1: This isn't really a Miles movie. It's a Gwen movie. And when the focus is on her in the first section, it sings. It SIIIIIIINGS. And when the focus is not on her, there's a drop-off. Some of the Spot jokes land, some are trying a little too hard to get the adults to laugh, but it's just better when Gwen is the focal point. Which of course becomes doubly problematic when the real story reveals itself and your emotions have betrayed you as much as any character can.

Problem # 2: We leave right when we finally get an emotional resolution to everything in Problem # 1, but nothing close to any other sort of resolution. Call it the Mockingjay Effect.

Problem # The Biggest: Um, people don't actually do what Miles does. I don't mean, "They're not superheroes"; that's obvious. But Miles keeps what is, at its essence, a "good" secret. For as long as he possibly can. And it twists him up inside. No one keeps "good" secrets. If it's good, you can't wait to share it. What he's doing for the people of Brooklyn-1610 is close to an unqualified good. And...yeah, we as a species don't do that. Ever.

Pop quiz: your spouse has been sneaking off for weeks and months, comes home too tired to talk, has their phone fingerprint-locked where they didn't before. Are they A) sneaking off at night to feed the homeless in a soup kitchen, or B) sneaking off at night to bang a coworker. No one is ever going to suggest Option A is the explanation. Because. We. Don't. Do. That. Mostly because we're the absolute worst. But also because, when we're not being the worst, we still manage to be the worst and we greedily want credit for the rare occasions when we do something decent for someone, anyone.

Miles Morales, by comparison, isn't a person. He's a 15-year-old superpowered saint with sometimes-questionable taste in music.

Granted, it's obvious *why* he keeps the Only Theoretically Possible Good Secret - because he believes it will protect people - but it runs so contrary to human nature that this single storytelling element veers more heavily into the realm of unreality than any of the comic book tropes the movie trots out at lightning speed.

But yes, if someone is keeping a secret from you, they're not going to tell you they've been fostering abused animals, or helping the elderly write their memoirs, or making sure the medically uninsured get insulin or something. No, our kept secrets fall squarely into the entirely neutral ground: "I lost my job/Mom and Dad, I'm gay/I don't actually like "Star Wars", I just put up with it because it's your favorite" or they swing into Trash Person Territory: "I'm cheating on you/I embezzled money from a non-profit/I'm a child molester and I did that in your bed once."

That's the world we live in. It's the world Miles Morales lives in, too! And that's a problem for a movie - and frankly, an entire genre - that wants you to believe otherwise. I can suspend a lot of the rest of the disbelief, but not that one.

Paddington - This is a fucking delight and I have nothing else to say about it.

[Dolfan in NYC]

For fans of The VVitch

 

[Tabe]

Saw Killers of the Flower Moon this afternoon. Just me and four other people. Overall, I would say it's....... OK. 

First, the criticisms that the movie is too long are accurate. It is definitely padded out for whatever reason. 45 minutes could've easily been cut out without losing anything. I wasn't bored or anything - it just didn't need to be 3-1/2 hours. 

Second, Lily Gladstone was good. Understated and controlled. Can't say I was exactly impressed with the performances from the rest of the cast. Kudos to DeNiro for putting in the work to learn to pronounce the Osage language correctly. And Brendan Fraser's little bit sucked. And Leo & DeNiro were miscast from the jump. Ernest was 20 when moved to his uncle's farm and 25 when he got married. Leo is now 48. The uncle was *38* when Ernest moved in. Robert DeNiro is *80*. This led to the absurdity of Jesse Plemons repeatedly calling Dicaprio "son" despite being 13 years younger. 

Third, the movie looks great. 

But... 

If this is the "oops, we focused too much on the white people and had to course correct" version of the movie, I cannot imagine what the original was like. The movie strays quite a bit from the source material to portray Ernest Burkhart as a bit of a simpleton who really loved his wife but was manipulated by his uncle. It tries to make him almost sympathetic. It's gross and inaccurate and does a disservice to the true story. He was fully aware and involved. The movie also leaves out that Mollie figured out Ernest was poisoning her - and did so pretty quickly before leaving of her own volition (as opposed to being rescued as in the movie). 

There is far too little screen time given to the way the Osage were treated as children nor allowed to control their own affairs. Or the myriad ways they were ripped off and abused by just about everyone. Some of this stuff is covered but it's done quickly and should've been a larger focus. 

And, really, that's the main gripe. Too little focus on the victims and the Osage tribe. It's not like it's glossed over just that the balance is tilted way too far in the direction of showing off Scorcese's friends Leo & Bob. 

And then, finally, the movie ends with a radio reenactment of the case that gives the outcomes for various people. It's slightly inaccurate and is a misfire. It comes off as almost lighthearted. The movie would have been better served by the cliche white text on black background wrapup with grim music. 

So, overall, I'm a bit disappointed. The book is a heartwrenching look at the worst of humanity is very tough to get through. The movie... isn't. 

6/10.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Tabe

[Curt McGirt]

Ouch. 

Sounds like you had the same problems I did with The Irishman after reading I Heard You Paint Houses, except this is worse. I'll have to read the book sometime.