A man and his Osage wife are at the centre of a series of murders in 1920s Oklahoma in Killers of the Flower Moon. After oil was found on their Oklahoma reservation, the Osage people became wealthy from the development that happened in the county. After returning from the First World War, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo…
The true story of mob hitman Frank Sheeran is told in The Irishman. Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) is a World War II veteran, who worked as a driver of meat delivery trucks in 1950s Pennsylvania. This leads to Frank doing odd jobs for the mob and striking up a friendship with local crime boss…
An alternate history of the DC comics villain is told in Joker. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely man with mental health issues, who lives alone with his mother Penny (Frances Conroy) and dreams of being a popular standup comedian and appearance on a talk show hosted by Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). During…
The career of filmmaker Hal Ashby is revisited in Hal. Beginning his film career as film editor, which included winning an Oscar for his friend Norman Jewison’s 1967 film In the Heat of the Night, Hal Ashby began his directorial career with the racially charged drama The Landlord in 1970. He followed this up with the controversial cult romance Harold and Maude in…
A country priest has a crisis of faith in First Reformed. Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) is the pastor of the First Reformed parish, a historic yet poorly attended Dutch Reform church. Toller is approached by Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant parishioner, who asks Toller to talk to her husband, an environmentalist, whose despair about the environment…
A pilot turned CIA spy becomes a drug smuggler for the Columbia cartels in American Made. Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) is a TWA pilot, who is recruited by CIA agent Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson) to fly over Central America and photograph communist insurgents. However, after being detained in Columbia, Barry is subsequently recruited by Jorge Ochoa…
A country priest has a crisis of faith in First Reformed. Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) is the pastor of the First Reformed parish, a historic yet poorly attended Dutch Reform church. Toller is approached by Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant parishioner, who asks Toller to talk to her husband, an environmentalist, whose despair about the…
Two 17th century Jesuit priests find their faith tested as they search for their mentor in Japan in Silence. Jesuit priest Alessandro Valignano (Ciarán Hinds) receives word that the long lost missionary Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson) has apostatized his faith after being tortured by the anti-Christian Japanese inquisitor Inoue Masashige (Issey Ogata). Ferreira’s pupils Father Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew…
Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi directs this look back at the 50 year history of the New York Review of Books. In 1963, founders Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein, along with publisher A. Whitney Ellsworth and writer Elizabeth Hardwick, took advantage of the New York printers’ strike to establish the New York Review of…
It is time for my second Martin Scorsese blindspot of the year, as I watch his 1990 mafia drama Goodfellas. Based on true events, the film tells of the story of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), who has always idolized the mafia and he begins working for a local crime family as a teenager, being taken…
