Michael Cieply: My Wish For ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’–A Bit of Real Oklahoma

With "Yellowstone" and its spinoffs dominating the small screen and Martin Scorsese’s "Killers of the Flower Moon" earning rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival, the Western genre is alive and well in entertainment. "Reports of the Western’s death are always greatly exaggerated," Andrew Nelson, film historian and chair of the Department of Film & Media Arts at the University of Utah, told Fox News Digital.

the Cannes premiere of his film “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorses met with Pope Francis in Rome, which inspired the acclaimed director to announce plans to make a new feature film about Jesus Christ. “I have responded to the Pope’s appeal to artists in the only way I know how: By imagining and writing a screenplay for a film about Jesus, and I’m about to start making it,” Scorsese told reporters at a Vatican press conference, according to The Guardian.If he follows through on these plans, it would be Scorsese’s first film about Jesus since his famously controversial 1988 film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which starred Willem Dafoe as the son of God as during his ministry and crucifixion, when he’s tempted with a vision of the life he could have had instead of dying for the world’s sins.Along with meeting the Pope, Scorsese was in Rome with his wife, Helen Morris, to attend a conference called “The Global Aesthetics of the Catholic Imagination.” The conference was co-organized by Antonio Spadoro, editor of Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica, who posted pictures of the 80-year-old director’s meeting with the pontiff on Twitter.

Fresh from his standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival for his latest film Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese has taken a tour of Italy, including a meeting with Pope Frances in the Vatican, where the Oscar winner also announced his plans to make a film about Jesus. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s RAI Cinema, which has four titles in this year’s Cannes selection, has closed a deal on Ron Howard’s next movie “Origin of Species,” a hot project at the Cannes market starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ana de Armas, Jude Law and Alicia Vikander. RAI Cinema chief Paolo Del Brocco said the company – which is the film arm of Italian state broadcaster RAI – has teamed up with Rome-based Lucisano Media Group to acquire Italian rights from CAA Media Finance on Howard’s survival thriller penned by Noah Pink (“Tetris”) about a a group of eclectics who turn their backs on civilization and head to the Galapagos. In Cannes, RAI Cinema also picked up Italian rights from Gaumont on family movie “Moon The Panda,” by French humans and animals adventures specialist Gilles de Maistre, known for “Mia and the White Lion”and “The Wolf and the Lion.” De Maistre’s latest, about the friendship between a boy and a panda, is set to shoot later this month in China’s Sichuan mountains.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s accent has caused some confusion following the first trailer for Killers Of The Flower Moon.Based on the book by David Grann, Martin Scorsese’s western crime drama follows the FBI investigation into a series of Oklahoma murders in the Osage Nation during the 1920s, after oil is discovered on their land.After the first trailer debuted on Thursday (May 18), some viewers raised eyebrows at the authenticity of DiCaprio’s southern accent.One viewer wrote: “Did Leo just invent a new accent, has anybody ever sounded like that?”“Love him but why does scorsese feel the need to inflict leo dicaprio doing a terrible accent on us every decade or so,” another added.You can check out more reactions below.Did Leo just invent a new accent, has anybody ever sounded like that? https://t.co/DaAngciJZQ— paul (@YNMIDK) May 18, 2023Someday, Leonardo DiCaprio will find an accent he can deliver. It may not be now, and it may not be soon, but when he does, I’ll be there waiting for him.— Christopher Hooks (@cd_hooks) May 18, 2023will watch and im sure it’s great but my tolerance for leo dicaprio accent work is wearing https://t.co/ZpyD1OlSvw— unidentified flying objet d’art (@konstantinlvn) May 18, 2023Killers of the flower moon looks real interesting, but my god Dicaprio's accent is in Benoit Blanc teritory— Jard (@JaredOfLondon) May 18, 2023It rocks that DiCaprio can’t do a southern accent without sounding like a goofball but keeps getting cast as a guy who is supposed to sound like Sam Elliott— bergs (@aseriousmang) May 18, 2023I can’t fucking wait to go around everywhere doing an impression of Leo’s fake Southern accent for the next 3 months after seeing this https://t.co/bSkgrruCbH— my life is a living hell.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Considered one of the greatest actors of his generation, Academy Award winner Leonardo DiCaprio continues his stronghold on Hollywood and modern-day cinema. With nearly three decades in cinema, he’s delivered some of the most memorable characters and performances, bringing in more than $6.5 billion in box office receipts, placing him in the top 10 highest-grossing leading actors of all time. Variety ranks DiCaprio’s 18 best film performances of his career so far.

Martin Scorsese got emotional after receiving a nine-minute standing ovation at the premiere of Killers Of The Flower Moon, taking place at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.At the end of the film, the legendary director walked into the Grande Theatre Lumiere at Cannes Film Festival to greet the audience. He appeared grateful and emotional as he reacted to the standing ovation, thanking the crowd over and over again.After nine-minutes of applause, Scorsese told the crowd: “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like this.”9-minute standing ovation for Martin Scorsese at the premiere of his next film Killers of the Flower Moon.

adapted from David Grann’s book of the same name — is set in Oklahoma during the 1920s and depicts the serial murders of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, which was later dubbed the Reign of Terror and led to the formation of the FBI. The Post reached out to Scorsese for comment.“It’s taken its time to come around, but Apple did so great by us, shooting out there … there was lots of grass — I’m a New Yorker,” said the “Goodfellas” director in a post-film speech.

didn’t do it. “We went after the screenplay almost from an anthropological perspective,” DiCaprio said. “Marty was there every day.

“Taking risk at this age, what else can I do?” beamed Martin Scorsese at the Cannes press conference for Killers of the Flower Moon.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Whether Lily Gladstone decides to campaign for lead actress or supporting (and there’s a case for either), a spot will be reserved for her in a lineup. That’s because her powerfully complex role in Apple Original Films’ “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on a rainy Saturday night, is too good to ignore. Gladstone delivers an uncompromising portrayal as Mollie, an Indigenous woman whose family and tribal community are being murdered at the hands of a sinister group of white men, driven by their thirst for greed and power. She’s a magnificent force. It became clear almost 10 minutes into Martin Scorsese’s epic adaptation of David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” that the audience of attendees were witnessing the birth of a star.

Martin Scorsese unveiled “Killers of the Flower Moon” at Cannes on Saturday, debuting a sweeping American epic about greed and exploitation on the bloody plains of an Osage Nation reservation in 1920s Oklahoma.

 got a boisterous 9-minute standing ovation after the three-hour epic premiered Saturday at the 76th annual Cannes Film Festival.Leonardo DiCaprio, director Martin Scorsese and the rest of the cast soaked up every second of the ovation displayed at Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France.  posted a snippet of the thunderous applause, and outlet's co-editor-in-chief, Ramin Setoodeh, reports that the nine-minute standing ovation is «the biggest and loudest» of the film festival so far.According to, Scorsese took the mic after the ovation and addressed the excited crowd.«Thank you to the Osages,» he said. «Everyone connected with the picture.

I am still searching for my words; my thoughts first ran dry in the opening minutes of the shattering and evocative “Killers of the Flower Moon.” It begins with the Osage tribal elders mourning the loss of their language and customs as they bury a sacred pipe. The scene breaks, next revealing these Indigenous folks — forcibly moved from Missouri to present-day Oklahoma (thought to be terrible, barren land) — discovering oil as psychedelic music erupts with the splash of the black liquid.

Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” premiered to the biggest and most thunderous standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival so far on Saturday night. The 3 hour and 26 minute epic look at greed, racism and a dark and largely unexplored chapter of American history, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. It kept the crowd so enraptured that they sprang to their feet and started applauding for 9 minutes after the credits ended and the lights came up. Cannes clearly loved what Scorsese, returning to the festival for the first time since 1985’s “After Hours,” had brought to the South of France. And that’s good news for Apple Original Films, which gave the auteur a reported $200 million budget to realize his vision, hoping he’d deliver one of his signature explorations of criminality. Many of those movies, however, unfolded on the mean streets of New York. This movie is set in northeastern Oklahoma as members of the Osage Nation are murdered in a systematic fashion.

Martin Scorsese’s anticipated epic Killers of the Flower Moon just had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where the audience gave the film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone a nine-minute standing ovation.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is vast and vital in its scale, purpose and emotional scope, a Western-thriller and ensemble piece that is every bit a Scorsese crime picture as one can dare to imagine.The impeccably researched book by Grann (also the author of “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon”) neither tells a customary frontier-era tale about this land’s indigenous people (which has been the more traditional avenue in cinema) nor features a stock white savior. Grann instead recounts a shockingly lesser known and shattering true-story from early 20th-century Oklahoma.

At 80, Martin Scorsese has finally made a Western, and it packs a wallop. The much anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon had its world premiere on Saturday night at the Cannes Film Festival, an epic set in the Osage Nation of Oklahoma largely in the early 1920s and telling a harrowing and highly complex tale that still resonates today, but seems incredible that it ever could have happened.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Taking a cue from the movie’s soon-to-be-infamous spanking scene between Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, someone ought to paddle whoever let Martin Scorsese take three and a half hours to retell “Killers of the Flower Moon.” You could read David Grann’s page-turner — about an audacious 1920s conspiracy to steal resources from the Osage people by marriage and murder — in less time, and you’d learn a whole lot more about how J. Edgar Hoover and the newly formed FBI used this case to establish their place in American law enforcement. Granted, this is cinema legend Martin Scorsese we’re talking about. For years, he fought studio execs telling him what to cut, going head-to-head with Harvey Weinstein on “Gangs of New York” (a movie that probably would’ve been better longer). Now he’s earned the right to tell stories as he sees fit. Trouble is, at 206 minutes (still four shorter than “The Irishman”), “Killers of the Flower Moon” isn’t an epic motion picture so much as a miniseries. Nothing wrong with that, except it’s intended for the big screen — where Apple has committed to release it this fall. Closer to two hours, “Killers” would make a killing, whereas longer than “The Longest Day,” most folks will wait to watch at home.

With the recent popularity of shows like “Rutherford Falls” and “Reservation Dogs,” television has quickly become a home for Indigenous stories onscreen. Even now, though, those and other media remain the exception and not the rule.