Review
DULCIE PEARCE
Killers Of The Flower Moon review: Scorsese’s new masterpiece will keep you utterly compelled
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
(15) 206mins
★★★★★
THERE are some on-screen pairings you simply can’t look away from.
Take Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in Rain Man, or Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in The Silence Of The Lambs.
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These acting relationships have so much chemistry and spark, it’s hard to fathom that the words they speak are originally from a script.
This is what you get every time Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro share the screen in Martin Scorsese’s ambitious adaptation of David Grann’s non-fiction book of the same name.
Utterly compelled
The two are sent straight from the acting gods, and their scenes are so finely crafted you want to hold your breath in case of distractions.
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The epic three-hour, 26-minute film is the true story of the 1920s slaughter of the Native American Osage people, who lived on one of the richest oil deposits in the country.
They had been forced to move there by the US government, who thought the land was useless.
But when it turned out to have oil, it made the families multi-millionaires.
And where there is lashings of money, there’s also plenty of people who want to steal it.
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One of them is William Hale (De Niro), who realised that if white men married the Osage women, and those women then died, the money would come into the hands of the husband and their blood line.
And so starts his painfully cruel and vicious attack on the neighbours that trusted him, resulting in the murders of more than 60 of the tribe.
Hale, who likes to be called “King” by locals, brings in his easily manipulated nephew Ernest (DiCaprio).
Ernest has returned home from World War One, ready to be a good soldier for a new cause.
He meets Mollie (Lily Gladstone) — one of four daughters from one of the richest families on the land.
The two marry just before Mollie’s family — and other members of the Osage population — are killed one after another.
Mollie then starts to suffer from a “wasting disease”.
But her relationship with Ernest isn’t just one of victim and killer — it’s far more intriguing and layered than that.
Trying to understand the love between them keeps you utterly compelled during this Scorsese masterpiece.
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TROLLS BAND TOGETHER
(U) 91mins
★★☆☆☆
BRACE yourself for bad boyband gags galore and . . . little else from the latest installment of Trolls.
Branch (Justin Timberlake) is very grumpy. He was abandoned by his brothers after their family pop group BroZone disbanded 20 years earlier.
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They split after being unable to hit a “perfect family harmony” – a set of musical notes so powerful it can shatter diamonds.
Or as BroZone put it: “Having gone from Boyz II Men, we’ve only got One Direction. To go to the Backstreets.” Sigh.
Decades on, Branch is forced to get the band back together to save his brother Floyd after he is kidnapped by talentless, wannabe pop stars Velvet and Veneer.
The villains have Floyd trapped in a diamond perfume bottle, which extracts his talent but is also killing him.
Branch and his brothers must put aside their differences and get i-NSYNC, if they want to save Floyd.
Tiny Diamond’s wisecracks are amusing and the song covers are catchy, but the writers could have done with taking 5ive to come up with a New Edition of the script for Trolls 3.
ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED
(15) 105mins
★★★★☆
IN a magazine article in 1952 headed “Bachelor’s Bedlam”, photos showed actors Rock Hudson and Bob Preble living in a one-bedroom apartment, with Rock pictured “on the phone with girlfriends”.
Over the years, the secretly gay star, who died of Aids at the age of 59, had to marry his agent’s secretary to keep up appearances for fans in Hollywood.
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It now seems ridiculous that Rock would not live his true life, but then he could have been imprisoned his sexuality.
As this documentary reveals, the FBI were watching him, having suspicions that he was a homosexual and using rent boys.
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Director Stephen Kijak makes a sleek and revealing film, piecing together fascinating archive footage with interviews from those who knew the leading man best.
Private pictures and home movies from his early days in showbusiness to becoming one of the most desired men on the big screen, show Rock as a tortured soul, who was never truly allowed to be himself.
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