You know what happens? People forget.

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2023

#2 :  Killers Of The Flower Moon

Every second of Scorsese’s latest opus thrums with purpose. His telling of the story of the Osage Murders – the 1920s killings that saw the oil-rich Native American Osage people systematically slaughtered by White Americans intent on inheriting their headrights – is a supremely powerful piece of work, unflinching in portraying the callous capitalistic history of the United States with clear resonances in the present day. While the headline event is Scorsese finally uniting Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in one of his features – as the cowardly Ernest Burkhart and his sinister scheming uncle ‘King’ Hale, respectively – it’s Lily Gladstone who looms largest. Her Mollie Burkhart – an Osage woman, wife of Ernest, watching her family members fall one-by-one around her – is a force of nature, Gladstone imbuing her with equal parts fight and fear. There’s undeniable care and conscientiousness and controlled rage in the storytelling here, proving the filmmaker still in his prime at 81. And the final reel will knock your socks off.

Skipping over #3 because we've already seen it on The Guardian's list (at #32, which is quite the difference of opinion - for me, Empire was closer) brings us to another film on both lists, with The Guardian also having this at #2 - how odd for the critics to love the output of Mr Scorsese! However, Marty, Marty, Marty - what ARE we going to do with you? I'm sure that there's a core of a fine film here, but there's absolutely no way that anyone needs 205 minutes of it. And I don't really believe Empire when they say "every second...thrums with purpose", so I'm expecting some of it to drag really quite badly.

OK - let's start with the good. There is an interesting story here set in an interesting time period all of which I knew absolutely nothing about. It has very impressive retro features and an impressively large cast - it looks absolutely beautiful throughout and they must have spent a LOT of money on this. All of which makes it feel like it's very representative of the age - obviously, I've no idea whether it is but I suspect there would have been a massive fuss if it wasn't accurate. It also, to my surprise, sounds very good - there was often serious bass to test the subwoofer.

Considering the actors, Lily Gladstone is indeed very impressive - she's luminous in quite the exalted company and I'd say she completely outshines Leonardo, although a lot of that is down to his character (who is just annoying). Robert De Niro is also good and nicely menacing - it's certainly one of his better roles of the past twenty years or so (it's obviously no Rocky And Bulwinkle though). There are plenty of famous faces in this (John Lithgow, Jesse Plemons, Scott Shepherd, Brendan Fraser and Jason Isbell amongst others) and even more not so famous ones - no-one disgraces themselves and some of the larger scenes are very well co-ordinated.

OK - it's time for the "but". Which is, somewhat unsurprisingly, the length. In its defence, there are very few scenes that drag - the editing is done well at the minute-by-minute level. So watching this as six 30-ish minute TV episodes (which I did) worked pretty well in terms of holding my attention. But there's just not enough overall story here to warrant that length of film, so if I'd tried to watch it in one go then I'd never have managed it. It feels harsh to accuse someone of being lazy when they've obviously put so much work into it but it feels like he's just done the stuff he's interested in at the expense of making a watchable film. Also, somewhat bizarrely (and amazingly), it feels like it's got a rushed ending!

One other thing came to mind whilst watching it - it was an interesting choice not to subtitle the Osage language. Apparently Mr Scorsese wanted the audience to "focus on the visual cues and the overall emotional impact of the scene" - which is fine for the shorter scenes, but is absolute nonsense for the longer ones where I felt I was missing a lot (so I just made like a young person and turned the subtitles on!).

I think I preferred this to The Irishman, but it certainly suffers from a similar set of faults which hide a decent story within unnecessary levels of detail making it all an unnecessarily challenging watch. Lily Gladstone is very good in this though and it was nice to see Bobby De Niro back on form, so if you fancy watching them then it's available to stream on Apple TV+ or to rent in all the usual places.

And with that, we've only got one film left on Empire's top 20 of 2023 - I might even get it done before February is out!

#4 - A horribly tense film
#1 - A fine film, but was it really the best?