October has been an exceptionally busy month for historical movies and historical tv shows and we have lots of exciting and interesting news and updates to share with you from the past few weeks.
It has been confirmed by showrunner Jeb Stuart that Vikings Valhalla will not be getting renewed for anymore season and that season 3 of the show which will be releasing to Netflix next year will be the final season of the show.
Jeb Stuart stated the following in an interview:
“Of course with real historical figures, there are always more aspects of their lives that could be explored, but it made sense story-wise for our Leif, Freydis and Harald's voyages to end with our third season. And we really cannot wait for the fans to see the conclusion of this chapter of history.”
At this point no reason has been provided either by Jeb Stuart or Netflix as to why they have decided to end the show after only 3 seasons but my opinion is that I think the show was cancelled due to poor viewing numbers and overall lacklustre performance and reception of Vikings Valhalla.
I delve deeper into the issues with the show and my reasoning into why Netflix may have cancelled this show after such a short run in this video here:
Oppenheimer is easily one of the best historical movies ever created and arguably one of the best movies of 2023 as well and that is evident from not only its strong critic and audience acclaim but also from its box office collection which is currently sitting at $942 million worldwide.
With such tremendous critical and commercial success it should come as no surprise that this Cillian Murphy led movie about the life of J Robert Oppenheimer and his work on the Manhattan project has broken some pretty hard to beat box office records.
Oppenheimer has become the highest grossing world war 2 movie ever created easily surpassing the $512 million record held by Dunkirk another world war 2 movie that was directed by Christopher Nolan.
Apart from this huge achievement Oppenheimer has also become the highest grossing biopic film in history as well, the record was previously held by Bohemian Rhapsody. The Freddie Mercury biopic was a huge box office success and pulled in $910 million at the box office but Oppenheimer was able to steal that accolade by grossing $942 million and adding one more feat to its growing list of accolades.
Apart from being a world war 2 and biographical juggernaut it is also the biggest box office success of Christopher Nolan’s career and the second hightest grossing R rated movie of all time as well.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON - MOVIE REVIEW (SPOILER FREE)
I was luckily able to watch Killers of the Flower Moon on the day of release and for some reason there were alot less screenings of this movie in the UK than I had expected, which I am hoping won’t effect its total box office collection. Nevertheless, after watching watch this 3 hr 30 min Martin Scorsese directed film, I have come with away the conclusion that this movie is a pretty mixed bag in my opinion.
Before delving into this review I thought it would be prudent to give a quick overview of the plot for Killers of the Flower Moon, which focuses around the Osage Native American tribes. These Natives are living in Oklahoma on what is considered Indian tribal land and to everyones astonishment the land they are living on has a tremendous amount of oil under the surface. This results in the Osage tribe becoming some of the wealthiest people in the land due to leases and income they can generate from their oil rich land. And the plot of the film focuses around the osage indian murders an event hat would later become known as the reign of terror where 60 wealthy osage with oil rights were dead but the actual figure is rumoured to potentially be in the 100s. And the killers of the flower moon does an excellent job of portraying the events leading upto these murders and the aftermath that would follow and it is great to see such a little known part of history getting brought to the big screen at such scale.
I would like to start off by highlighting that Killers of the Flower Moon did a fantastic job of recreating the historic backdrop of 1920s America and it truly felt like you were witnessing a very realistic and accurate depiction of the era. Martin Scorsese has nailed it in terms of set pieces, costume design and world building. Scorsese is the king of cinematography and his aptitude for creating visually engaging and enticing films is at the forefront here.
The plot focuses primarily on 3 main characters William King Hale portrayed by Robert De Niro who is a rich cattle herder who lives amongst the Osage tribe, his nephew Ernest Burkhart who is portrayed be Leonardo Di Caprio and Mollie Burkhart who is portrayed by Lilly Gladstone and is the wife of Ernest. All 3 of these actors are legends in Hollywood and I can confirm that these 3 stars bring their A game for this and and do an amazing job of bringing their characters to life. Each of them portrays a complex character and the 3 leads are able to nail every emotion and action required of them with finesse and realism and you really feel like you are sat their in the room witnessing two people have a genuine conversation and encounter. The only slight criticism I have in the acting department for this film is that Leonardi Di Caprio does mumble a lot of his lines which may make it difficult for people who don’t have English as their first language struggling to understand the dialogue at times. But overall that is my only small criticism of the killers of the flower moon from the acting category. The dialogue, soundtrack and screen play are all amazing and they do a good job of keeping the viewer gripped into the complex storyline of the film.
However, we now arrive to perhaps my biggest gripe with the film well second biggest actually I’ll explain my biggest complaint about the film a little bit later in this review. So the actual premise of the storyline is really interesting, Osage Indians are getting murdered for their wealth but no one is able to figure out whose behind it and the government and local police force could not care less that innocent Native Americans are frequently being murdered. But this film literally moves at a snails pace and I am usually okay with this but even by my standards there were so many scenes and conversations that could easily have been cut from the film and they would not have effected the flow of the movie in any way or form. There is literally just so much conversation and build up to an event that when it actually does occur the payoff isn’t always there because it just took too long to get to the point. I really think this movie could have been cutdown to 2 and a half hours and it would have been much better. There are just soo many characters getting introduced and removed from the film that it gets hard to keep track of all the names and the casual mentions of people during conversations. Truthfully, outside of the 3 main characters you really have no emotional bond or interest in any of the secondary characters and what happens to them throughout the movie. I really feel like this movie could have used a bit more time in post production and editing.
Lastly, I would like to highlight my biggest complaint with Killers of the Flower Moon which is the ending of the film. It is so poorly done that I was actually shocked that after 3 and a half hours THIS was what the pay off was and it was so abrupt and out of place. After what seems like an eternity we finally get to the climax of the film, we are anxious to see what is happening with our characters and what the future holds for them. Unforunately though, we get to actually witness none of that, everything happens off screen, the ending is a literally a flash forward and you kind of just get a montage at the end of explaining everything that happened to the characters and THE END. To say I was disappointed and slightly infuriated by the ending would be an understatement, I am sure everyone knows it never matters how you start its always about how you finish that matters and this movie just finished in such a lacklustre and bad way in my opinion.
So just to conclusively wrap up this review I would like to reemphasise that The killers of the flower moon is in no way or form a bad film it has many excellent aspects to it especially in terms of acting, world building and character development. However, it just struggles greatly with pacing and providing an interesting story with a satisfactory ending in my humble opinion.
So the big question is would I recommend you watch Killers of the Flower Moon? And my answer is Yes but I would say it is a movie that you would be better off watching at home when it becomes available to stream rather than one that I think is worth the price of a movie ticket. So overall I would give Killers of the Flower Moon a 6/10 because it just didn’t live upto the hype and the rushed ending of the film just left an overall sour taste in my mouth.
VERDICT - 6/10
HISTORICAL MOVIES & HISTORICAL TV SHOWS RELEASING IN NOVEMBER 2023
