Just released in American theaters yesterday. Just grabbed a ticket to see this tonight. Really looking forward to it as I've heard nothing but good things.
Yeah I have read a lot of good buzz on this as well. Post impressions!
Gonna have to evaluate the movie once I get a chance to watch it in a proper setting. Worst theater experience since the time I sat down in a puddle of piss back around '09. Pretty sure the rear speakers were disabled cause I could hear the HVAC and Taylor Swift songs in the next theater over better than I could hear the f#@!ing dialogue of the movie I was actually watching.
I have to tell you guys that there's nothing more viscerally uncomfortable than hearing Love Story muffled in the next room while Leo DiCaprio comes to terms with his complicity in the murder of his wife's family.
Edit - To elucidate my thoughts a bit - the movie as a whole was beautifully shot and constructed, and I'm a proponent of rewatching being the real watching, but somehow the first go just didn't really land for me. I can't help comparing it to Oppenheimer in terms of star-studded historical epic dramas from this year, and I think Cillian Murphy as Oppy was a much more immersive and dynamic experience than Leo as a rather pathetic Ernest Buckhart. Lilly Gladstone gave a powerhouse performance, but she barely had any screen time in the third act.
Overall I just felt Oppenheimer delivered with a momentum-fueled third act -- despite it basically being a dry legal drama -- with one of the most incredible and memorable finales and ending lines of recent memory.
"I believe we did" is an ending line up there with "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
But KOTFM just had kind of a clunky meta ending that was basically an artistic version of one of those "so and so went on to do this and died in 1946" endings, except it was notable because Marty Scorsese himself showed up in this weird meta ending that felt like a commentary on the limitations of the film itself, it being a piece of art told by white people about indigenous struggles. I feel like I'll warm up to it on a rewatch, but on first view it just felt heavy handed and ham fisted.
Oppenheimer retains my Movie of the Year status.
I can't really get past 'puddle of piss.'
I love a lot of Scorsese movies but as you mention they can be - not the smoothest as far as storytelling.
You have further reinforced my commitment to never go to a theater again.