The Reel Rejects - Just Watched KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON!! Instant Reaction & Review

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

RIGHT OUT OF THE THEATER! Killers Of The Flower Moon Movie Review for the latest Martin Scorsese movie starring Leonardo Dicaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemmons, & Brendan Fraser. After the director helmed Goodfellas, The Departed, Shudder Island, Taxi Driver, Casino, The Irishman, Mean Streets, The Aviator, Gangs Of New York, Cape Fear, & Much More featuring these two leads - it became an instant must watch and was surprised to learn about this true story of the Osage Tribe history...but does the movie live up to the Oscar Nominaton hype? Thank you to IMAX for inviting us! #killersoftheflowermoon #martinscorsese #leonardodicaprio #robertdeniro #moviereaction #Moviereview #review Become A Super Sexy Reject For Full-Length T.V. & Movie Reactions! https://www.patreon.com/thereelrejects Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Aparrel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-reel-rejects/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Citizens of the Reject Nation, we just got out of watching Killers of the Flower Moon on IMAX. I want to thank IMAX for inviting us. I want to thank Gabriela especially for inviting us because she is letting us shoot here right now when everything is cleared out. And we want to make this short. She is being so kind to let us shoot this, like obnoxious teenagers wanting to make a little vlog video. for you guys. So with that in mind, IMAX is the best thing in the world. The second we were invited to is one that we said yes to right away. Reason why Martin Scorsese, especially on my end, between the two of us, is my all-time favorite director. So the idea of seeing one of his movies

on my favorite screen, and I'm not just saying that it is my favorite screen. Yeah, I have to see Killers the Flower Moon. So undoubtedly, a very bias I'm going to be like, yeah, it's the best way to watch this movie. IMAX it all the way. But with that in mind, like I said, we got to keep it short. We didn't know anything about this movie before watching it. We never did a trailer reaction for it. All I knew was Scorsese, De Niro, DiCaprio, the two greatest leading actors. My favorite director has done multiple films with, and now he's going to be directing them in the same movie. Have to go see it. And apparently this is based on a true story. One of the greatest things I can say about it is it feels that way. It feels true.

Like the entire time out of a three and a half hour experience, it just rings authentic. It never, ever delves into a Hollywood. Even when you think it's going to go like a Hollywood trope, it never goes to the Hollywood trope you think it's going to go to. This is not a Christopher Nolan period piece. No, no, there's nothing that feels fantastical about it, you know? No, it very much feels like a fly on the wall. It has almost like a documentary type quality.

If you've ever seen like a Ken Burns, you know, American history, It has that kind of aura. And to the point of how authentic it feels, I've got to tell you guys what this movie is about. Something, again, we did not know about, which felt like a big educational experience, I must say. That makes you want to read. So in the 1920s in Oklahoma, the sage,

they discovered oil, which brought them a lot of wealth. And then with having wealth, you know, sometimes white people step in and they go, hey, actually, let me explain. Please, please take it away. What did you guys do? Well, you know, we saw the opportunity and we were like, how can we ingratiate ourselves to what is clearly something we are owed by just being here at all? Clearly. How do you plant your seed and then manage to take away the fortune?

Yeah. And maybe that involves murdering some people. So that way you can speed up the process of inheritance down the way. I don't know nothing, Greg. I don't know nothing. It explores that main topic, largely forgotten part of history. It also was, I believe, one of the earliest cases, if not the first. major case of the FBI?

Like the way they talk about it, at least in this movie. Yeah, certainly. It feels like it's a fresh occurrence. You know, there's already all this federal suspicion anyways. So now to have, you know, investigators coming out from there. Yeah, it is a cold film. It is a top film. It is one that definitely requires a lot of patience. I will say

that like the first hour to an hour and a half, like it does have, it's like it is a slow movie. The last half of this movie is where you really start to get a lot more of like that payoff for your patience where a lot of the intensity does start to really unfold because a lot of it's like it's consistently interesting but then that's when it starts getting like oh wow the corruption is getting really intense at this point but let's talk about the performances

really quick now obviously decaprio the star of this movie uh he plays a guy named ernest who meets up with his uncle who played by bob deniro bob d bobby d who is the villain of this movie he he's someone who likes to, you know, pose as righteous and a man for the people. And I'm one of these other white people. I'm one of the ones who's good with the Eastish people. I speak your language. I know your customs. And I'm here for you.

He knows how to take advantage of everyone. And it's one of De Niro's best performances in years, probably since the Irish. And him and DeCaprio do play off each other really well. It's a really twisted type of, because it's his uncle, but it's more of a father's son dynamic. Yeah, absolutely. and it's something that grows and ebbs and flows throughout. So it's something that's going to really give you the weight of that clash that you want between

these two every wades. And then you got Leonardo DiCaprio playing I think his third southern drunk bumbling idiot. You're a fucking miserable drunk. Yes, yes. This time, the biggest idiot. The biggest place.

Honestly, it's a really great performance. It is. It's very believable. Like, he just, he's like a rotting pumpkin in this movie. He really is, yeah, and he's such a sad sack, mush-mouthed kind of guy, and if he had any kind of, like, you spend the movie wishing he would grow a spine, but that's part of what's interesting about the character in general is how he is completely manipulated and pushed around by every circumstance around him, except for one, you know, which is the third, you know, kind of biggest performance of the movie, I would say, which is Lily Gladstone, which everyone's highlighting, certainly for good reason. Yeah, Lily Gladstone plays DiCaprio's wife. She is one of the wealthy Osage people who, you know, DeCaprio marries in this movie. It's tough to get into it without really spoiling anything like that.

But De Niro wants DeCapro to marry her to inherit the wealth. And the thing is, DiCaprio, part of the complexity with this character that makes him actually interesting is, no, he actually loves his wife. Truly, yeah. But her performance. Wow, I cannot imagine the torture she went through. truly it is a very it's a restrained performance very when i heard people but praising her yeah it's when i heard people praising her work i thought it was going to be something where oh she's going to get a bunch of big scenes of uh of just uh monologues of tears and stuff

but it's actually the opposite of that while there's anguish in a lot of scenes it's a surprisingly restrained but really she does command the screen whenever she's there you know she really does she has a great presence and so much of the painful heart of the movie is told through her eyes Very, very strong. There's a great, like, casts all around. But I loved about the casting in general is I didn't recognize 90% of them. I feel like indigenous people who were cast, and Native American people who were cast, they felt like they were just real people that they cast.

And I would even say the same thing for the white people who were cast. Yeah, this is full of great casting across the board. And, yeah, a bunch of character actors who look like they were just plucked out of the time. Yeah, like you eventually get some of your more famous people who do show up, but it's often so late into the movie. It has that quality of the movie being so imbued by its time and place and the casting. Like, this is a movie that's very composed and everything from the production designs to the cast that fills those sets and those spaces. It all really feels, again, researched and lived in.

That's one of the best things I could say about it is you could tell just like the analytical details about this, capturing this period piece to the point where you do feel like you're kind of plucked in time in one of the harshest ways you can imagine. because there's nothing, like, flowery about the way its emotionality is expressed. Like, a lot of times, the camera just lingers on scenes, you know? A lot of times, like, oh, man, we haven't cut away from this one guy just talking for a very long time. There's a lot of great scene work, a lot of great performances, very performance reliant. And I think the one thing with the experience of it is the movie did kind of weirdly out of three and a half hours kind of keep me out of distance. It does, yeah.

because it is so cold that I never really got emotionally like I appreciate everything the movie's doing and I love what the top I don't love what it it's about but I love that the movie's doing this story you know yeah however I never quite got emotionally hooked into someone's journey you know to the point where I'm on the journey with them kind of the thing you want out of a three and a half hour film yeah and nor is it like a good fellas for example which is kind of funny to me because there were remarks of this that are like, even though it's completely different from the things Scorsese has become famous for a lot of it's actually a little bit of a mob movie. Yeah, it is certainly. Or like a crime family. Crime family. Yeah, just just circa the Old West, but yeah, a lot of that

like, yeah, crime organization made man stuff, you know? Yeah, yeah. The way how he did Irishman, which was a mob movie that it felt very meditative, this is kind of like that with a more of a period of piece slant and kind of a dark, dramatic western flare to it.

Yeah, yeah, that neo-Western sort of noir kind of thing. Yeah, as it has that like percolating drum, bass beat throughout. Yeah, I really like the music in this. I thought it was nicely kind of a blend of things that would come after, but things that are also very rooted in native music. Yes, it shines a great light on the horrible atrocities that went down, and it is an important story to tell. You could feel how important the story is.

You could feel the fervor behind the filmmaking and the writing behind it as well. And while the dialogue does feel very true, at the same time, I could definitely feel the movie's runtime. And while I think the last half is way more engaging than the first half, I still was never quite as emotionally pulled in in a way that was beyond an observation piece. Yeah, there's certain fascination to be had in and certainly things to ruminate on when you're watching so many of the purveyors of these atrocities, both through greed and machination and also through dimwittedness. and the kind of painful mess that all of that represents. And the thing for me was, I really, really liked so much of the work

that was on display throughout the movie. Definitely. Beautifully shot, lots of great compositions, lots of great acting, like you said. The Molly character, Lily Gladstone's character, is the closest the movie brings you to having like an emotionally sympathetic eye line. But even with her, it kind of keeps you at an arm's length.

So yeah, I wish it was a little bit more from her perspective. I do too, yeah, because I feel like after a while, I can imagine certain viewers sort of feeling like maybe we are dipping into tragedy, suffering porn a little bit. The kind of thing, Cineophiles look. Sure. That's Cinema baby.

While it is an important story, it's also, you know, there are arguments to be had about how not to just make it a slog through trauma town, basically. Not to say that those things aren't legitimate, but yeah, there is a coldness that I can see certain people maybe not being able to latch on to. I'm still really glad that I watched it because I truly felt like it's rare. I watch a movie where I'm really, I really feel like I learned something from this movie. Yeah, and I want to one packet and I want to, like, research and I want to read about this. It's one of those movies.

It's clearly so much about its message. I actually want to learn more about the message. Yeah, totally. That's a good way to describe it, I think. Yeah, and that's not just me being kind. It was the feeling that I had, like, I had to look it up after it because I'm like, man, was this DeCabrio guy? It's such a dumbass in real life. I have to watch it does sort of remind it reminded me of like of the master in that kind of way where you have this protagonist who you're like is this guy going on an arc or a journey or is he just kind of bumbling his way and just being direct is he just a true pawn in this horrible horrible game that you know yeah has so many different touchstones in American history from a technical filmmaking standpoint I would give it like a like a nine out of ten from just a movie going experience I would probably honestly just give it like a seven out of ten yeah we're probably in agreement

Yeah. Like, there's so much to appreciate, but if you're really going to be swept up in the movie, that's kind of, that'll vary. Yeah, that definitely varies. I heard some people walking out who really loved it, and I heard some others who were like, eh. Yeah, and I'm more like, no, I got like two feelings about it, and those are my two feelings. Guys, leave your thoughts down below of what your favorite Scorsese film is. Thank you to IMAX again. We've got to get out of here. I've got to pull us out with the big long cane. Thank you, guys, for listening to us talk.