The Italian 4Kult has released Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon on 4K UHD, having previously released the film on Blu-ray in 2024.

The release is remarkable in that the film, a co-production of Apple TV and Paramount, is the first and so far, only film controlled by the streaming giant to have been released to home video albeit not in the U.S. It is, however, available on Amazon.

The film looks absolutely stunning in 4K, its 3-hour and 26-minute runtime which completely rivets our attention despite its length.

Martin Scorsese’s film was the talk of the May 2023 Cannes Film Festival and the most highly anticipated film of the year prior to its September opening. It started out the big winner at end-of-the-year film awards with Best Picture wins from both the New Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review before losing momentum to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which along with Barbie, ruled the box-office from their late July openings on the same day.

Both Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer are based on true stories. The latter is about the physicist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb that brought an end to World War II. The former is about the systematic murders of the Osage people, an American Indian tribe that became rich when oil was discovered on their Oklahoma land in the 1920s. Both are epic films that were deserving of awards, but it was Oppenheimer that persevered as awards season wore on. In retrospect, however, Killers of the Flower Moon is the better film in my estimation.

Early talk centered on the performance of Lily Gladstone as the about-to-be-murdered last in a line of Osage family members in control of the oil money who is rescued by the FBI. Gladstone doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, but her performance is mesmerizing. The sadness in her eyes speaks volumes. The only question was whether she would be considered for the Oscar as lead or supporting. It was a difficult call as her role was not as big as that of Leonardo DiCaprio as her husband or even that of Robert DeNiro as her husband’s uncle and mastermind behind her potential murder and that of her relatives.

In the end, Gladstone was nominated for Best Actress and was considered the frontrunner for the award with Emma Stone in Poor Things eventually besting her at the Oscars.

In rewatching the film, Gladstone’s performance is still remarkable as is that of Robert De Niro as the treacherous villain. The big surprise, however, is how much Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance improves with age.

My initial reaction to DiCaprio was that he overdid the screwed up dumb face look but watching it now his character seems as genuinely confused as his look. It is one of his finest performances.

The actor plays a useful idiot in his uncle’s plans to gain control over the Osage nation’s money. Although he is complicit in De Niro’s plans, he is genuinely love with his wife and mother of his children and therein lies the naïve man’s tragedy.

Also outstanding in the cast are Jesse Plemons as the FBI agent who investigates the crimes, Tantoo Cardinal as Gladstone’s mother and Cara Jade Myers and Jillian Dion as two of her sisters.

The film was nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Actress (Gladstone), and Supporting Actor (De Niro), losing all ten. DiCaprio was not nominated but should have been.

DiCaprio has had a long love/hate relationship with Oscar. He has been nominated 6 times for acting and once for producing thus far and won once, albeit not necessarily for the film he should have won for.

His first nomination for acting was for 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape in which the then 19-year-old played Johnny Depp’s mentally handicapped younger brother. It was his only nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and the one that many of us, including me, thought he should have won for. He lost to Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.

Bypassed for Best Actor nominations he should have gotten for 1997’s Titanic and 2002’s Catch Me If You Can, DiCaprio’s first Best Actor nomination came for his portrayal of Howard Hughes in 2004’s The Aviator. He lost to Jamie Foxx in Ray. Two years later he was up against himself as an honest cop in The Departed and a drug smuggler in Blood Diamond. Although many of us thought he should have been nominated for the former, he was nominated for the latter, losing to Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.

Big hits followed including 2010’s Shutter Island and Deception and 2012’s Django Unchained but DiCaprio really wasn’t in the conversation for another Oscar nod until 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street in which he played Jordan Belfort, the real-life criminal stockbroker for which he received his fifth Oscar nomination. The film also earned him his first, and so far, only nomination for producing.

DiCaprio’s fifth acting nomination came as the 1820s frontiersman out to avenge his son’s murder in The Revenant for which he won.

At this point, I agreed with Oscar only on two of his acting nominations, those for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and The Aviator, while I thought he should have been nominated for Titanic, Catch Me If You Can and The Departed, not Blood Diamond, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Revenant.

I was fine with his nomination for 2019’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. his sixth for acting in which he played a 1960s TV actor with Brad Pitt winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as his stunt double.

While Killers of the Flower Moon failed to get him a seventh acting nomination, that may well happen with the newly released One Battle After Another, for which he could win a second Oscar.

Happy viewing.