Best Pictures #103: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Killers of the Flower Moon

by A.J.

Best Pictures #103: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Killers of the Flower Moon

"Can you find the wolves in this picture?"

David Grann’s captivating nonfiction book, The Killers of the Flower Moon, about the series of murders of members of the Osage nation in Oklahoma in the 1920’s unfolds like a mystery. Director and co-writer Martin Scorsese’s epic length adaptation makes clear who the killers are right from the start. They are not masterminds—criminals in Scorsese movies rarely are—but they are white in reservation country and powerful, or close to power, and corrupt. When oil is discovered on the Osage land, its people become wealthy and make good lives for themselves. The catch is that many Osage are declared legally “incompetent” and are restricted access to their own money without a (white) guardian. Wolves in sheep's clothing circle and then the murders begin.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a World War I veteran with a stomach injury who returns to Oklahoma looking for as little work as possible. His uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), a wealthy and powerful cattle baron, who doesn’t mind if you call him “King'', sets him up with a job as a chauffeur, one of many who drive wealthy Osage clients. Ernest’s regular customer is Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a full blood Osage, who he falls for and eventually wins over. They marry, meaning that Mollie’s oil “headrights” will go to Ernest if she dies. If her sisters and mother die before her, their oil rights will go to Mollie then to Ernest. Uncle “King'' Hale is pleased with this.

Ernest is a different kind of role for DiCaprio, who turns in one of his best performances. Ernest has his own kind of charm and insists to his uncle that he’s not thick, but he is a dimwit. His love for Mollie seems genuine but he does not see that Hale pushed him to pursue and marry Mollie. He also has no problem following his uncle’s order to kill off certain Osage tribe members, even Mollie’s sister. His inner toil and conflict about what is happening arrives far later than they should have, in part because he is dim and in part because he doesn’t want to admit it to himself, but it makes for some strong and powerful scenes from DiCaprio. 

We spend less time with Mollie than Ernest or Hale, but she is the sympathetic center of the movie. In her early scenes she is quiet and reserved but with an easy to detect liveliness underneath. In the scenes where she must ask her banker, a proud member of the KKK, for her own money she conveys a quiet disdain and defiant dignity. She is diabetic and Hale has arranged for her to receive special insulin shots, with an extra ingredient he’s told Ernest to add. 

Why did the Osage not see that Hale was a villain? Many scenes of Killers of the Flower Moon reminded me of Henry Hill’s words in Scorsese’s Goodfellas, “...nobody ever tells you that they're going to kill you, doesn't happen that way... your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends, the people who've cared for you all of your life.” William “King” Hale spoke Osage, knew and respected their customs, went out of his way to become involved in their lives, and even contributed $1000 to the Osage fund to investigate the killings. De Niro, giving one of his best performances in a very impressive career, is excellent as a wolf in sheep’s clothing; a gentle, avuncular personality who expressed nothing but concern and respect for his Osage neighbors while conspiring with lowlife scum to kill them. The setting and clothes are different but he is still just a greedy gangster. 

There is no way around Killers of the Flower Moon’s intimidating runtime of 3 ½ hours—actually 3 hrs 26 min but that may as well be 3 ½ hours—but it earns its epic length and uses it wisely. The murders did not happen in a spree but spread over years and we see only a handful of them. Life continues, happily even, and then one night someone is shot, then one day a woman succumbs to the “wasting sickness.” Jesse Plemons as Agent Tom White of the newly formed Bureau of Investigation—now the FBI—does not show up until just over 2 hours into the movie. His part is not big but Plemons is a welcome presence because a new chapter of the story begins and perhaps now relief is at hand.

Scorsese is synonymous with gangster movies and has been accused of glamorizing the criminal lifestyle. He has admitted that to a certain degree this is necessary to show the allure of the criminal life. However, the bulk of any of those movies is dedicated to showing that though these characters find wealth and power, and are at times relatable and even funny, they are not good people and their reckless, destructive, violent behavior was not worth anything. With his later movies like The Departed (2006), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), The Irishman (2019), and now Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Scorsese has gone out of his way to not glamourize these characters in any way at all. There is nothing appealing about De Niro’s “King” Hale; he is only a rich and endlessly greedy man. Ernest is an average guy but a puppet, not in control over anything about his life. Every other criminal they deal with, even if they are memorable–and indeed many are–they are not admirable in any way, even if they provide some dark comic relief.

The film’s epilogue, which I won’t go into detail on, is maybe the most striking and even experimental piece of filmmaking Scorsese has ever done. It is jarring and even confusing at first. The film makes a self aware and reflective comment on itself and asks the audience to do the same. The final line, spoken softly and plainly, lands like a gut punch, staying with the audience long after the credits roll. This is a difficult film, an entertaining film, a challenging film, a great film. Scorsese is a magician who, in what should be his sunset years, continues to amaze. 

Best Pictures #102: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Poor Things

by A.J.

Best Pictures #102: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Poor Things

“I have adventured it and found nothing but sugar and violence.”

Poor Things is a strange and unusual movie and yet it tells a familiar story with familiar themes. It is a fable of a simpleton who goes out into the world, has new experiences, and inadvertently exposes the nonsense and hypocrisy of society that we all accept as normal. It is the approach and execution by director Yorgos Lanthimos and the stunning work by the costume designer and production designers that make Poor Things enjoyably outlandish and memorable. 

This dark, fractured fairy tale mixes elements of Frankenstein and Candide together in a steampunk blender. Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, a living experiment who moves and sounds like a toddler-like creature though she has the body of an adult woman. She is the creation (of sorts) of mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), who is her father figure and does not mind that Bella’s nickname for him is “God.” He enlists Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), one of his university students, to track Bella’s development. She learns and matures and of course Max falls in love with her, but Godwin’s lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), whisks her away on a tour of Europe with the promise of experiencing life outside of Godwin’s house and laboratory. And so Bella’s journey of enlightenment and eroticism begins. 

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo’s perfectly over the top performances are a large part of why Poor Things works at all. Stone is great at the broad comedy required. More importantly, she makes Bella’s resilient optimism believable instead of naive or annoying. It’s clear from his very first scene that Wedderurn is a lascivious cad of questionable scruples and also a bit of a buffoon; Ruffalo’s cartoonish take on this character is just right. Bella and Wedderburn’s tour of Europe begins in Lisbon and consists of lots of sex, which Bella calls “furious jumping,” and then more sex. (This film is certainly not shy about sex and nudity.) As Bella learns and experiences more of the world and other people she becomes harder to control and Ruffalo really lets his character’s petulant and buffoonish side take over with great comic results. Even with all the sex and nudity the most interesting parts of Bella’s journey are her encounters with a fellow couple on a cruise, a wizened older woman played by Hanna Schygulla and her younger traveling companion played by Jarrod Carmichel, and her return to London where her optimism and shunning of cruelty are tested.

Unusual though the characters and story may be, it is the production design and costumes that make the film eye-catching and memorable. The look is a highly artificial late Victorian steampunk fantasy version of the world, and it is a feast for the eyes. The scenes on the Mediterranean cruise, especially at night, have an enchanting, surreal aesthetic. Production designers Shona Heath and James Price have done some stunning work and have rightfully received Oscar nominations. Likewise, Bella’s costumes with huge puffy shoulders by Holly Waddington, also Oscar nominated, help create the bizarre fairy tale vibe. 

There are many points where Poor Things could lose a viewer. The use of a fisheye lens and swish pans, favorite techniques of Lanthimos, are jarring and mostly unnecessary since the production design, costumes, and makeup effects are already doing the heavy lifting in creating the unusual aesthetic. However, the element that may be a strange step too far and downright off putting for some involves Bella’s backstory. I’m not sure if this qualifies as a spoiler as it is revealed relatively early on, but I will write about it now. Dr. Godwin tells Max about how one day he found the fresh corpse of a pregnant woman who jumped from a bridge into a river to kill herself. Unable to resist the scientific possibilities, but wanting to respect the woman’s wish to be dead, he put the brain of the unborn baby into the woman’s head and brought her to life. Hence Bella’s toddling and broken speech. Though she learns and matures quickly, just as Frankenstein’s Monster did, there’s a certain uneasiness to men fawning over Bella, whose mental development is still in progress, especially in the early scenes. 

Poor Things has been described by many as a feminist film about a young woman taking agency over her body and her mind. This is certainly true. However, I would certainly not contradict anyone who found its brand of feminism fishy, seeing as how it is about a simple minded woman whose journey of enlightenment and self-realization involves lots and lots of very casual sex. It might come as no surprise to some that the main creative voices behind the movie are all male: director Yorgos Lanthimos, screenwriter Tony McNamara, and Alasdair Gray who wrote the novel. 

Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous films include Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and the Oscar nominated The Favourite, is no stranger to offbeat and challenging subject matter. Somehow Poor Things almost feels like a departure for him since it lacks the grim darkness of his previous films. Bella’s ever flowing optimism and belief in kindness are the heart of the story and make this an ultimately optimistic, life affirming film.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Pearl (2022)

 by A.J. 

Night 9: Psycho-Killer Night II (Qu'est-ce que c'est)

“One day the whole world’s gonna know my name.”

Pearl (2022)

In 2022 writer-director Ti West released not one but two horror films starring Mia Goth, X and a prequel, Pearl. X is a slasher film set in 1979 about a group of people making an independent porno film on a farm owned by an elderly but homicidal woman, Pearl. Mia Goth played one of the would be adult film stars and also, under heavy makeup, Pearl. X is a well made but standard genre exercise; not exceptional but not bad either. On the other side of the coin, Pearl, a prequel showing the elderly woman in her youth, is an exceptional film. While X was genre driven, following the well established formula of a slasher film, Pearl is character driven, the result of conversations West had with Goth about the background of her character. Here, as Pearl, Mia Goth gives one of the best performances of any movie from last year in one of the best films of 2022 (and one of the best horror films of the last few years). Best of all, it truly stands on its own, so you do not need to have seen or even know about X to get the full effect of Pearl.

Set in 1918 as The Great War is drawing to a close and the Spanish Flu pandemic has people fearing disease and wearing masks, we meet young and sweet Pearl, who lives on an isolated farm with her strict German immigrant mother and invalid father but dreams of leaving and becoming a movie star. The impending return of her husband Howard from the army seems to be more of a source of anxiety than joy. Her chance at stardom comes when her blonde, all-American looking sister in law Mitzy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) tells her about an audition for a touring church dance group. In the days leading up to the audition, she will reach her deadly breaking point. 

What makes Pearl a special film is Mia Goth’s performance. She has turned in great supporting performances in films like Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Vol. II, The Cure for Wellness, Suspiria (2018) and Emma.(2020), but here she really gets to shine a starring role (Yes, she is the star of X, but that script offers little for any of the performers). As a performer, Goth brings a sly, unexpected physicality to the role, from her dancing to her sudden, extreme shifts in mood and temper. Long before Pearl deals her first death blow, we know what she is capable of because of the flashes of intensity Goth shows us. She is believably sweet and naïve and innocent and also repressed and angry and maniacal and murderous. 

Ti West is a very stylish director, but every flourish in Pearl, meaning every use of technique or aesthetic highlight, enhances the story instead of drawing your attention to the style itself. The most important thing about the single take close up of Pearl’s confession is Goth’s performance, not the unbroken length of the shot. There is some incongruity however between the period setting (1918 during the sepia toned silent era) and the look and sound of the film (the lavish technicolor look of the 1950’s). The score is evocative of classic Max Steiner scores (his most famous being for Gone With the Wind) and the colors are rich and bright and vivid. The grass of the farm is bright green, the red of the barn is a vivid red, and Pearl’s overalls are a striking shade of blue. It is as though the movie draws from everything someone in the 21st century might deem classic, meaning everything from before 1960. The farm girl wishing for escape story evokes The Wizard of Oz (1939), the rich colors evoke 1950’s technicolor movies of Douglas Sirk or a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie, the story of a girl with with a sinister side evokes Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve or Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed. In not having a specific film or genre to emulate Ti West has made a picture that feels unique. 

The set pieces are not the kills but the scenes that showcase Goth’s performance (which, yes, include the kills). Her dance with a scarecrow in a cornfield shows us her light, dreamy side. Her tongue kissing the scarecrow then realizing what she’s doing and screaming at, “I’M MARRIED!” at the scarecrow and bearing her teeth in a growl, shows us a quite different side. Her extended confessional scene, an excellently written and deeply affecting monologue delivered almost entirely in one take, is the key scene to the whole movie. A great performance really can elevate an entire movie and that is just what happens here. Pearl does indeed have that “x factor” and it is Mia Goth. 

Pearl is available to stream on Showtime, Paramount+ with Showtime, and is available on DVD/Blu-ray.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Gothic (1986)

 by A.J. 

Night 6: Horror Origins Night/Julian Sands Memorial Night

“As long as you are a guest in my house you shall play my games.”

Gothic (1986)

I have long been fascinated by the “haunted summer of 1816,” when Percy and Mary Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, and his traveling companion Dr. John Polidori challenged each other to create ghost stories over an unnaturally dreary and stormy summer at Byron’s vacation villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. Byron wrote only a fragment of a story, Polidori wrote the short story The Vampyre, and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Adding an extra layer of eerie lore to this true story is that their “haunted summer” was caused by the “Year Without a Summer,” when a volcanic eruption from the previous year threw so much dust and ash into the atmosphere that all over the northern hemisphere of the globe summer never really happened. Temperatures were far cooler than average, even frosty and winterlike, and storms and cloudy days were more prevalent. Ken Russell’s film Gothic is a speculative exploration of what inspired those young poets and authors and what ultimately inspired Mary Shelley to create Frankenstein and change the literary world forever. 

Ken Russell is perhaps the only filmmaker who could give John Waters a run for his money in terms of works of sincere camp, and sincere sleaze for that matter. His films are often broad, range from mildly to especially ridiculous, are highly sexual, blasphemous, and explore the origins of myths, as well as the psychological effect of imposed norms on complex persons. In Gothic, the characters grapple with their inner demons and fears, enhanced by cabin fever, until everyone reaches a psychological, nightmarish breaking point during one especially stormy night. With its strange sights and not so subtle subtext, this film might be hard to take seriously, but Ken Russell is perhaps the only filmmaker not afraid to indulge the at times outrageous nature of these characters. 

The cast is great with performances to match. The less famous figures of the bunch, Polidori and Claire, have the most memorable performances by Timothy Spall and Myriam Cyr. Lord Byron is well played by Gabriel Byrne as a sinister but alluring and magnetic figure. Julian Sands as Percy Shelley is perfect as an “artist” type. He is obsessed with his own death, completely overtaken by the wonders of nature, and still is believably worthy of the affection and care of Mary Shelley. Natasha Richardson is great as Mary Shelley–actually Mary Godwin since she and Percy were not legally married at this point–who seems like the only normal or sane person on this vacation filled with eccentrics. She may also seem like the most boring character, but she is not; she is just the best at hiding her neuroses. She may also be the only character with the greatest reason for anxiety and introspection and despair: the recent loss of her newborn baby. Her complexities are buried deep and as the film goes on they rise to the surface. 

Surreal sexual images abound: a woman whose breasts have eyes instead of nipples, a suit of armor with a pointed codpiece, and the anthropomorphized image of an imp, a miniature humanlike demon, sitting on the chest of a woman in her bed–a recreation of the famous painting The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. There is palpable homoeroticism between Byron and Polidori, and also Bryon and Percy Shelley. Polidori’s story The Vampyre is about a vampire disguised as an English gentleman who drains the life of a young woman–Byron had an affair with Polidori’s sister that proved ruinous for her, a mere incident for him. Bryon is more than hinted at as being a vampire, living off attention and lives of those around him. Claire Clairmont is obsessed with Bryon and pregnant with his child; Percy and Mary go to visit him essentially as an excuse for Claire to see Byron again. Since her and Polidori’s affections have been already won, Bryon has little interest in them and makes advances on Mary. 

The climax is a great psychological symphony of horrors. Every character is on the brink of madness or beyond. Gothic is about people that created works of horror, who are themselves haunted by fears and anxieties that come to the forefront of their psyches during one dreary and stormy summer. In a wild, swirling sequence the characters are each confronted with their own fears. 

This is a period movie that does not feel like a period movie due in large part to the style of Ken Russell and his willingness to actually depict fantasies and nightmares for more than pure sensation. All of these characters are young, free thinking Bohemian individuals who act like young Bohemian individuals so they do not seem to belong in the costumes we associate with a time of reserve and manners. These elements give Gothic an incongruous but lively feeling. This is a strange movie but for their time these were strange people.

Gothic is currently streaming on Tubi.

Best Pictures #94: 2022 (95th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: The Fabelmans

 by A.J. 

Best Pictures #94: 2022 (95th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

The Fabelmans

“Movies are dreams, doll, that you never forget.”

It might seem odd to say that Steven Spielberg has never made a movie like The Fabelmans before. Yet, there are no aliens or dinosaurs or anything supernatural or futuristic, it is a period piece but not about a major historical event, nor is it an adaptation of a prestigious work. It is a family drama and a coming-of-age story. It is as though those superb, intimate moments of family life at the beginnings of JAWS, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist (co-written and produced by Spielberg), or Catch Me If You Can get to play out in full. This is not precisely a biopic but it is a dramatization of Spielberg’s childhood and teenage years. Spielberg, of course, embraces sentiment but avoids schmaltz and solipsism and self-indulgence in both story and style to the betterment of his picture. Most importantly he also avoids false humility. Autobiographical aspects notwithstanding, only a master filmmaker like Spielberg could have made a movie as good as The Fabelmans, his best film in twenty years.

This story begins in 1952 in New Jersey as Burt and Mitzi Fabelman take their young son, Sammy, to the movies for the first time to see The Greatest Show on Earth (winner of the Best Picture Oscar that year). It is a life changing experience for Sammy. He is so affected by that movie’s incredible train crash scene that he has to recreate the moment, with the help of his understanding mother, with his toy train set and father’s home movie camera. Thus begins Sammy Fabelman’s life making movies, not as a hobby but because he has to. As time passes and the family moves first to Arizona then to California and Sammy becomes a teenager, and prefers to be called Sam, making movies allows him to see his family and his world in unexpected ways.

Michelle Williams receives top billing as Mitzi Fabelman, whose life is thrown off by the moves the family must make from one state to the next because of her husband Burt’s career. Williams is eccentric but not exactly over the top—a full blown over the top mother would feel too much like a Hollywood contrivance—though she seems to be channeling Liza Minnelli even in her less frantic moments. This is not a fault against her or the movie; her character carries the emotional burden that drives most of the story. Sam’s inner conflict comes in part from learning about his mother’s secret while editing a home movie. The Academy likes performances that it can “see,” so it is no surprise that she earned a Best Actress nomination. Paul Dano is cast perfectly as Burt Fabelman, an engineer working in the new field of computers who connects best with his loved ones when he is talking about technical things. He is a kind, gentle father and there is something of Christopher Walken as Frank Abagnale, Sr. from Catch Me If You Can in Dano’s performance. As lovable “Uncle” Benny, Burt’s best friend and colleague, Seth Rogan gives a career best performance, though he is still playing a comic relief character. Benny is not just Burt’s best friend but also Mitzi’s best friend and confidant and perhaps the audience, like Grandma Fabelman (Jeannie Berlin), will pick up on what only Sammy’s camera sees.

Like a whirlwind, Judd Hirsch, funny, exciting, a little frightening, and unforgettable, enters the movie as Uncle Boris only to exit as unexpectedly as he arrived. He talks to Sammy about being an artist, about having to choose art over family, about how Sammy loves that (the editing machine and film) a little more than his family. Hirsch’s screen time is limited, but memorable enough to have earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Of course, the real star of the movie is Gabriel LaBelle as teenage Sam Fabelman. He does a great job as a teenager who feels out of place in his new home and at his new school. He also has to deal with two kinds of bullies: Logan, the blond “all-American” boy who singles him out because he is new, and Chad, who singles him out because he is Jewish. The antisemitism he experiences in the early 1960’s southern California feels like a real threat (Logan really is no better than Chad); at best his Judaism makes him a fetish object for Monica, his Jesus obsessed high school girlfriend. The final confrontation between Sam and Logan is one of the most interesting bully-victim interactions I’ve seen on film. In a different film, this antisemitism would be the focus of the movie; here co-writers Spielberg and, recent favorite collaborator Tony Kushner, present it as an unsettling part of everyday life.

Composer John Williams, Spielberg’s favorite collaborator for 50 years now, turns in his most memorable score since Catch Me If You Can. Williams has long favored big brass focused scores composed in the key of G, like his themes for Superman or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but his score for The Fabelmans is piano based and gentle. Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg’s favorite cinematographer for decades, tones down his ostentatious style from last year’s West Side Story remake to create a memorable but not distracting visual style.   

At times The Fabelmans feels episodic, as any life story or memoir would, but it does not feel disjointed. It is a long movie but I do not think I would want anything cut. The small idiosyncratic moments that seem disposable are what create an authenticity that turn these characters into people.

This is not a love letter to movies, though it is filled with an unparalleled appreciation for the craft of making movies. I must admit that watching Sam figure out filming techniques reminded me of my own time at film school. I remember the excitement that Sam felt being able to film for six minutes without changing reels or the possibility of using a 16mm Arriflex camera, which I never got to do. For these reasons, the movie hit me in a certain way that I know will not work for everyone else. However, the emotions and themes at play throughout the story of the Fabelman family are universal and what really make it a great movie; it allows for a personal connection. In the final shot, Spielberg shows a playfulness and sense of humor that I have not seen in any of his other movies and that has endeared him to me most unexpectedly. Previous Spielberg movies have played with my heartstrings to great effect, but none have felt as close to my own heart as The Fabelmans. 

Nominees: Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner, producers

Director: Steven Spielberg

Screenplay: Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushner

Cast: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Gabriel LaBelle, Seth Rogan

Production Companies:Amblin Entertainment, Reliance Entertainment

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Release Date: November 11th, 2022

Total Nominations: 7, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Michelle Williams; Supporting Actor-Judd Hirsch; Director-Steven Spielberg; Original Screenplay-Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner; Production Design-Rick Carter, Karen O'Hara; Original Score-John Williams