‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Is Scorsese’s Movie Miracle
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There are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest.
We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape.
Lily Gladstone Is the Biggest Reason to See ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
See: Killers of the Flower Moon
Killers of the Flower Moon is a Scorsese epic more than worthy of its three-and-a-half-hour runtime. A haunting performance by Lily Gladstone guides the film across its rocky narrative terrain of murder, greed, and deathly sin. It’s a masterwork.
Here’s Esther Zuckerman’s take:
“Wealth and those who covet it has always been a subject of fascination for Martin Scorsese, whether he's making films about gangsters (Goodfellas, Casino) or adapting Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence). And that fascination is once again on display in his remarkable new film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Adapting the book from David Grann about the series of murders that plagued the Osage nation in the 1920s, Scorsese has made a towering movie about America's sins and the greedy men who perpetrate them.
It's anchored by performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro that both rank among their best, but the soul of the movie belongs to Lily Gladstone, who broke out in 2016's Certain Women. Yes, Killers of the Flower Moon is about stupid and selfish white men whose egos and love of money drive them to heinous crimes. And yet Gladstone, a Native actress, consistently centers the story to remind the audience whose voices have been erased from history. She gives life to both her character's pain and her spirit.”
See: Fellow Travelers
Fellow Travelers avoids the trappings of faux-prestige mush that so many similar limited series have fallen into, turning ’50s-era McCarthyism into a gripping tale of love, perseverance, deception, and the hottest sex scenes since the turn of the millennium.
Here’s Coleman Spilde’s take:
“Remember when the phrase ‘prestige TV’ meant something? It wasn’t all that long ago that we all turned into HBO and AMC each week to watch serial television at its highest form—less than a decade, if you think about it. The rise of the streamers briefly fooled us all with their instant gratification and wildly expensive series, suggesting that great new television would forevermore be only the touch of a button away.
What a crock of shit. Streamers played audiences like a fiddle, and our greed for more of the best, in turn, increased demand. Long story short: There are now countless series dressed up to look like prestige television—most with a few big names and little-to-no pizazz—and few actual examples of work worthy of the title. I haven’t seen a single series all year legitimately deserving of that moniker (though I’ve certainly seen a few that have been gussied up to fool viewers with a less discerning eye). That is, until now. Showtime’s Fellow Travelers—which begins streaming on Paramount+ Oct. 27 before airing on the network Oct. 29—heralds a new day, a bright sun rising over the wreckage of canceled and flailing television shows littering networks and streamers.”
See: FBoy Island
FBoy Island returns from its shallow grave littered with ready-to-drink cocktail cans better than ever, remarkably losing none of the silly fun that it forged its unique premise on, even if its new home on the CW demands a few extra bleeps and blurs.
Here’s Fletcher Peters’ take:
“If I were ever blessed with the power to convince the entire world to watch one television show, I would force everyone to watch FBoy Island. Raunchy, foolish, and totally entrancing, FBoy Island is nothing short of a masterpiece. All other reality programs should take notes from creator Elan Gale’s war of the fuckboys and the nice guys. The show is an accomplishment worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, primarily for solving womankind’s uphill battle against idiotic men, but also for introducing me to the phrase ‘FBoy, FBye.’
As it heads into Season 3 on The CW—moving from its original home, Max, where it was wrongfully canceled last year—FBoy Island hasn’t changed a bit. Premiering Oct, 16 on The CW, the show is as genius as it has always been. The three girls feel the same as year’s past: There’s the presumptive ‘main character,’ Katie Thurston of The Bachelorette, who’s flanked by her fellow daters and partners-in-crime, Daniella Grace and Hali Okeowo. All three have the same problem: They can’t stop dating emotionally unavailable ‘FBoys.’
Skip: Nyad
Nyad’s story of 64-year-old Diana Nyad’s swim from Cuba to Florida is ripe for the biopic treatment—if only its examination of Nyad’s life (and documented lies) was thoughtful and realistic enough to come off as anything other than an authorized puff piece.
Here’s Nick Schager’s take:
“Nyad is based on a true story, but given that Diana Nyad has a well-documented habit of lying about various aspects of her career, “true” is a relative term when it comes to this wannabe-inspirational sports biopic (in theaters Oct. 20 and on Netflix Nov. 3).
Based on its subject’s book—and therefore taking her accomplishments, and version of events, at face value—Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s narrative debut (following docs about incredible daredevil feats such as Free Solo and The Rescue) focuses on the 64-year-old Nyad’s efforts to complete an arduous 110-mile marathon swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida. Yet just as there’s no reference to the many falsehoods Diana has apparently told about her past, there’s zero overt mention of the controversy surrounding her signature triumph—thereby proving that the film cares more about rah-rah uplift than thorny inquiry or messy reality.”
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