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10/27/2023 0 Comments killers of the flower moon Martin Scorsese’s filmography is far too diverse to attempt and slot it into some sort of reductive thematic box… but there’s no doubt a good number of his movies are fixated on how the American Dream has become inextricably entwined with the malignant influence of capitalism. In Goodfellas, Henry Hill sees his larger-than-life gangster fantasies (exemplified by the cars they drive, the wads of cash they brandish, and the power and influence they wield) disintegrate into a pathetic, coke-fueled paranoia nightmare. Casino uses Vegas as the backdrop for its sprawling rise-and-fall tragedy - a symbol of the Faustian allure of instant (and unearned) wealth (the true American Dream, some might say) - while The Wolf of Wall Street distorts the world of high finance through the most hilariously ghoulish lens imaginable, suggesting that economic excess is the most addictive and soul-destroying drug of all.
Joining the list is Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese’s long-awaited adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller, which was about, well… many things, but mostly cast a light on one of the more shameful racial transgressions in the history of a nation that’s had quite a few of them. Set in Oklahoma in the aftermath of World War I, the story reveals that the Osage Nation became the wealthiest people per capita on Earth after discovering oil on their reservation. Early scenes offer the surreal sight of the Osage impeccably clothed in the finest suits, furs and flapper fashions and chauffeured in the fanciest of automobiles, the obsequious white townsfolk flitting about them with naked, wolfish avarice. Independent of the tragedies that would ensue, Scorsese gently broaches the subject of whether this financial windfall was of genuine benefit, beyond superficial materialism. The character of Lizzie Q (whose family controls a large share of the oil headrights, and whose four daughters reside at the heart of the story) laments the erosion of cultural identity; her children assimilating via white husbands represents a literal and figurative diluting of their native bloodline. The sight of the Osage - at the crucial moment of discovery - staging a whooping, celebratory dance while bathed in black gold isn’t necessarily the moment of triumph it appears on the surface... one senses Scorsese’s queasiness with the image - and repercussions - of their bodies being tainted, literally, with this country's poisonous lifeblood. Eventually the Osage - the majority of them young and seemingly healthy - begin turning up dead at a virtually epidemic rate… each fatality punctuated with the same chilling refrain - “no investigation.” The story isn’t really framed as any sort of mystery; we grasp from the get-go that local ranching titan William “King” Hale (Robert De Niro) is orchestrating the murders… both to gain control of the oil wealth, and to correct the natural (racial) order he believes has been subverted. Much has been made of how the narrative was chosen to be framed - whether it might have been strengthened from the Osage perspective, while also acknowledging that this wasn’t necessarily Scorsese’s story to tell (further complicated by an understanding that, while indigenous filmmakers have made great strides in recent years, no studio or streamer is likely to hand one a 200-million budget just yet). Purely from a dramatic standpoint, it’s a tricky approach to navigate… particularly over a monolithic 206-minute runtime… not only because the perpetrators are singularly repellant, but also due to the fact that - aside from the Machiavellian Hale (played with a wicked, matter-of-fact menace by De Niro) - these are fundamentally dull, brutish, thoughtless characters who do little to engage the dramatic senses. The movie grips through sheer force of will, but it doesn’t necessarily captivate the same way that the pillars of Scorsese’s filmography do - like a drug that hits the cinematic bloodstream. There is a clear-cut narrative purpose at work here, however. Enter Hale’s nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), recently returned from the war (where he served as a cook - the film is quick to stress there was no heroism on his part). He begins courting - and eventually marries - Molly Kyle (Lily Gladstone), the key chess piece in Hale’s master plan (he begins eliminating her sisters one-by-one, ensuring her family’s headrights coalesce around her). The emotional reality of Ernest and Molly’s marriage remains elusive… but one gets the sense that there is both love and genuine conscience on Ernest’s part; he’s simply too weak-willed to make good on them, particularly when he’s instructed to start doping Molly with tainted insulin. This is a shuddering portrait of the banality of evil (to see Ernest as conscienceless is to let him off the hook) and DiCaprio - a movie star operating at the absolute peak of his powers - gives a performance completely shorn of any trace of vanity. Slouching and sallow-faced, his mouth twisted in a pout of consternation, he feels, by the end, as if the competing demands on his soul are forcing him into a paralyzed fetal position. It’s a truly pathetic showing, in the most complimentary way. Gladstone has an incredibly interesting countenance that holds the screen; she’s at her best when she’s at her most still, allowing you to lose yourself in the contours of her face, in the veiled intensity of her gaze. Where her career might go from here is exciting to contemplate. Grann’s book was as much about the rise of J. Edgar Hoover’s fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation (its subtitle is literally “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”), which comes to unravel the conspiracy - but lawman Tom White (played by the ever-dependable Jesse Plemons) isn’t really much of a character here. There’s a strong case to be made that this material would have been better served by a miniseries, which would have offered more elbow room. But Scorsese’s cinematic mojo appears in no danger of cresting. Killers of the Flower Moon isn’t as rapturously entertaining or stylistically intoxicating as his very best pictures, but it simmers and throbs with diamond-cut indignation. The final scene, expertly sprung by a director whose craft knows virtually no bounds, lands like a blow to the solar plexus. Some have argued that, like Jordan Peele did with Nope last summer, Scorsese is subversively condemning the very medium he’s operating within… and castigating the audience’s complicity in the process. That may or may not be true, but there’s little doubt that the ending casts the concept of justice in this country in a very stark and sobering light. After all… it’s easy to view the tragedy of the Osage through a 21st-century lens of moral outrage, but it doesn’t change the fact that the atrocities perpetrated against them were relegated to little more than historical footnote for decades. It’s not an easy truth to digest. It sits like gravel in your gut.
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10/17/2023 0 Comments the exorcist: believer I’ve made little secret of my dislike - if not outright contempt - for the exorcism subgenre over the years. William Friedkin’s 1973 classic The Exorcist may be an undisputed titan of cinematic horror, but its legacy is more akin to that viral Oppenheimer meme in which a stricken-looking Cillian Murphy leans forward with his fingertips pressed to his temple. The ensuing half-century - and the past twenty years in particular - has seen a parade of creatively… well, if “bankrupt” sounds too harsh, let’s at least say unadventurous imitators. Films such as The Conjuring trilogy, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Last Exorcism, Deliver Us From Evil, The Last Rite, The Devil Inside, Prey For the Devil and The Pope’s Exorcist, which mechanically recycle Friedkin’s playbook beat-by-beat, with almost no understanding of what made the original work in the first place (hint: it wasn’t heads rotating 360-degrees, beds levitating, basso growls emerging from children’s mouths, or crosses turning upside down on the wall). We’re basically just watching Xeroxes of Xeroxes (of Xeroxes) at this point.
It’s a strange yet undeniable quirk, however, that the actual follow-ups within the Exorcist series proper aren’t really amongst the offending parties. Say what you will about John Boorman’s infamously off-the-rails sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic, but it’s definitely committed to its own unique brand of locust-fueled fever dream lunacy. William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III - the only remotely palatable film of the bunch - was a flawed but fascinating supernatural police procedural with George C. Scott punching way above the movie’s weight, one legendary jump scare, and a studio-mandated exorcism tacked on at the end. And it’s hard to know what exactly Paul Schrader and Renny Harlin’s jousting Exorcist prequels Dominion and The Beginning were going for (they’re each lousy in their own way), but at least they went way off into the sun-baked dust of the East African desert to do it. The Exorcist may be a mediocre franchise, but each entry has made a passing effort to carve out its own niche. The Exorcist: Believer, on the other hand, is a legacy sequel cynically designed to replicate the iconography of the original in the sacred name of “fan service.” Set in small-town Georgia, the story follows 13-year-old friends Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O’Neill) - both of them fine, but neither in danger of taking Linda Blair’s crown - who head into the woods after school to attempt a seance (rarely a good idea)… three days later - following a frenzied manhunt - the two of them turn up in a barn over 30 miles away, disoriented and believing mere hours have passed. This opening act… while not exactly great, does have legitimate tonal texture and a firm tingle of emotional stakes. Unfortunately, it’s at this point that the movie inevitably shifts into standard exorcism territory and the air slowly bleeds from the narrative balloon. Having wrapped his Halloween trilogy barely 12 months ago, director David Gordon Green wasted precious little time in tackling another of the horror genre’s most sacrosanct properties. Many have had trouble getting a handle on the seemingly arbitrary twists and turns of his career; the closest parallel would be Soderbergh - another prolific onetime indie darling who’s taken to following whatever creative winds happen to catch his fancy. The difference, however, is that even when Soderbergh misfires, there’s a certain clarity and erudition to his filmmaking… I’m not sure the same could be said of Gordon Green. Halloween Ends, to its credit, showed tantalizing glimpses of the more innovative and ambitious horror film he likely aspired to make if given free rein… but The Exorcist: Believer is little more than glossy hackwork. It has no discernible personality, no visionary spark. Its most noteworthy gambit is its Doublemint approach to possession - which feels very much in the same spirit as The Lost World concluding that the best way to top a T-Rex attack is simply to add a second T-Rex. Leslie Odom Jr. does most of the heavy lifting as Angela’s single dad Victor - tasked with a devastating choice in the opening sequence that eventually comes full-circle… but the hype is understandably centered on 90-year-old Ellen Burstyn, who was somehow talked into reprising her role as Chris MacNeil from the original (no doubt she concluded the payday would be a tidy windfall for the great grandkids). The role is non-essential nostalgia bait with the corniest of payoffs, but Burstyn’s screen presence remains fiercely undiminished. The real standout is Ann Dowd, a fabulous character actress who deserves to be seen as more than the store-brand alternative to Margo Martindale. She plays Victor’s neighbor Ann, a nurse who nearly became a nun and, in one of the film’s more inspired flourishes, is tasked with leading the exorcism after the church completely wimps out (we should probably be thankful Father Merrin’s grandson doesn’t show up, with Lieutenant Kinderman’s nephew in tow). But why is the climax cluttered with so many rando characters? Katherine’s family pastor shrieks “Hallelujah,” then a Haitian Hoodoo woman chucks herbs into the fireplace - it’s an absolute circus. There’s nothing even remotely close to the sorrowful tenor of Jason Miller’s performance as Father Karras (which, to be clear, *was* the key to the original’s greatness). The Exorcist: Believer is committed to the first movie in a slavish yet irritatingly half-hearted fashion (if we’re doing this, you might as well be flogging those tubular bells every ten minutes). It’s supposedly the first entry in an all-new trilogy, but does virtually nothing to lay the groundwork for future installments. If cooler heads were to prevail and simply call the whole enterprise off, then I’d be the true believer. 10/6/2023 0 Comments saw x From 2004 through 2010, horror fans were literally greeted each October with a new Saw entry - as steadfast a harbinger as the leaves changing color or the start of football season when it came to the transition from summer to fall. In a strange way, given the gruesome subject matter, the series became almost like comfort food - reliable, rib-sticking torture porn. Even as the sequels increasingly devolved into a mess of grisly traps and overwrought mythology cluttered with ancillary characters no one particularly cared about, the appetite for these films seemed insatiable. It honestly felt like we’d get another dozen more.
Of course, the box office returns eventually began to taper off and Lionsgate elected to pull the handbrake after part VII (the obligatory 3D entry). In recent years, the studio has fitfully attempted to reignite the franchise with 2017’s Jigsaw and 2021’s Chris Rock-led spin-off Spiral, without much fanfare. Saw X, on the other hand, may be the tenth installment of the series, but it actually serves as a follow-up to the original… falling somewhere before the events of part II on the Saw spectrum, which allows for the much-needed return of fan favorites John Kramer (Tobin Bell) and his protege Amanda (Shawnee Smith). In retrospect, one could argue the decision to kill off Jigsaw at the end of part III was a miscalculation that the series has been paying for ever since… though the void likely would have been mitigated had the producers simply committed to Amanda instead. Smith always had a twitchy ferocity in the role… like a junkie who’d been raised by wolves. Her long-term potential was largely untapped; there’s little question she could have shouldered the franchise. At any rate, Saw X begins with another marvelously twisted contraption, as its would-be victim is forced to willingly allow his fingers to be splintered one-by-one, lest the vacuum tubes attached to his face suck out his eyeballs like pickled eggs. From there, however, the film shifts into uncharted emotional territory as Kramer seeks a miracle cure for his terminal brain cancer at a clinic outside Mexico City… only to discover he’s the victim of an elaborate con. The perpetrators - led by the poshly statuesque Norwegian Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund) - are systematically rounded up and placed in a warehouse-of-horrors to be “tested”… but this time the proceedings are charged with a raw and righteous fury we haven’t really seen before. It’s the rare instance in which we feel an emotional stake in the victims’ transgressions… in the graphic mutilations that ensue. Not all Saw fans will be onboard with the film’s surprisingly slow build in the first half… but it does afford Bell - whose Jigsaw tended to be more concept than character - a rare opportunity to explore Kramer’s more vulnerable, flesh-and-blood dimensions. The script brushes up against all sorts of juicy character potential… such as this earlier iteration of Amanda still wavering ever-so-slightly in her commitment, terrified of inheriting Kramer’s mantle, and experiencing a guilty spark of kinship with the troubled Gabriela (Renata Vaca), who - like her - has seen her life crippled by drug addiction. But it proves difficult to fully extract the marrow (to reference one of the film’s more fiendish traps, one involving a Gigli saw). It’s hard to explore such concerns with any appreciable depth (or breathing room) when people are busy fishing chunks of grey matter from their frontal lobes while strapped to a chair. Saw X nonetheless - more so, arguably, then any entry since part III - feels like a considered story, rather than a mechanical exercise in the grime-and-rust aesthetics of grunge torment. Still, the underlying emotional ethics are a bit tricky to parse. Celia, with her sculpted Scandinavian features and haughty smugness, is a prize antagonist… we’re practically slavering over the prospect of her receiving a richly deserved comeuppance by the end. But her accomplices - largely undeveloped as characters - are a different matter. Jigsaw, per his standard modus operandi, isn’t about retribution, but rather “teachable moments.” But are we rooting for them to be redeemed… or simply to suffer? It’s not entirely clear (neither is the question of whether we’re simply abandoning any remaining pretense of moral nebulousness and simply embracing Kramer as a lovable antihero). However, none of it really matters once the climactic reckoning is at hand and Charlie Clouser’s iconic “Hello Zepp” theme initiates like clockwork… a moment which blew the roof clean off the theater. It’s easy to be jaded, but experiences like that are still genuinely exciting. To the uninitiated, Saw X may seem like a bald-faced attempt to wring the last few remaining bucks from a depleted franchise… but it feels more like a second wind. I’m ready for a dozen more. |
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