Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. After the Golden Globes Awards last night, we're going to end today with your favorite movies of 2023. Recommend one picture or TV series, since they do both on the Golden Globes, to all the other Brian Lehrer Show listeners/ 212-433-WNYC or recommend one actor in whatever role you think was especially great, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692.

Were you rooting for anyone at the Golden Globes last night, rooting for any actor or director or film or TV show, 212-433-9692. Also, your best films for this call-in do not have to have been nominated at the Golden Globes. They don't even have a documentary category anymore, they used to, the Oscars still do, but if your recommendation of a 2023 film is a documentary, feel free to shout out that one or any less noticed film that didn't get mentioned at the Golden Globes last night, or didn't have Hollywood money behind it or whatever.

Feel free to name any film or TV series or actor in a role that you would recommend for other listeners to go find on a streaming platform or in person, in a theater whatever, if it is in a theater, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Now while your calls are coming in, I'll give you a quick thought on two of the movies that were nominees last night that I've seen Maestro and Killers of the Flower Moon.

About Maestro, Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein biopic, this is just a tip for those of you who haven't seen the film yet. I know two different people who told me separately that they were disappointed because they expected it to be a musical biography of Leonard Bernstein, a film about his artistic development as a conductor and a composer and it wasn't that. It was mainly a movie about his marriage, and as much about his wife played by Carey Mulligan, and how they loved each other, but the marriage coexisted with Bernstein's extramarital affairs with men.

I'd say it was no accident that the end of the film in the credits, Carey Mulligan was listed first even before Bradley Cooper, but I was lucky enough to have read about the film before I saw it, so I knew it was more of a personal life than musical portrait. I was actually pleasantly surprised, delighted actually, by how much music there was in the film and how creatively they weaved it in.

I'll give you one thing to look for if you haven't seen Maestro yet, and this is not a spoiler of any kind, but there is an absolutely exhilarating several minutes scene of Bradley Cooper as Bernstein conducting a full orchestra and chorus for a stretch of a symphony by Gustav Mahler. I actually went back since I saw it at home on Netflix, I actually went back after watching the whole film and just rewatched that scene as a little concert because it was just so musically fabulous not to mention how Cooper channeled Bernstein in that conducting scene. That's one.

My other thought is about Killers of the Flower Moon. Highly recommend. I haven't seen all the movies, but I was rooting for it for best picture last night. Lily Gladstone did win Best Female Actor in a Drama for her lead role as an Osage woman married to Leonardo DiCaprio's white American character. Again like Maestro, a complicated marriage with a complicated context going on around it as a centerpiece of the film.

Here's why I bring it up. It's because in a weird way, this film about America 100 years ago, and how the Osage struck oil on what might've been thought to be pretty worthless land, and then White Americans stole it from them even resorting to murder, it's a well-told feature film version of that real history with the complicated intermarriage love story rolled in. David Grann's non-fiction book was the basis.

The reason I bring it up is that this film widely reviewed as a masterpiece was made by Martin Scorsese at age 81. It made me think of how much casual ageism there is about Joe Biden, age 81. This is not to endorse Biden for President. I don't make endorsements. You may love or hate or be ambivalent about Joe Biden, his record, his policies for the future, whatever, this is just to say don't write the guy off because he's 81 like you wouldn't write off Martin Scorsese after seeing a masterpiece movie that he made at 81.

Judge Biden or whoever at whatever age on their work. That's my two cents, okay, more like $1.50, related to two of the movies up for Golden Globes last night. How about you? Recommend one picture or a TV series from 2023 to all the other Brian Lehrer Show listeners, 212-433-WNYC and we'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: It's Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your 2023 movie picks and related things. We'll start with Aisatu in Manhattan, another Killers of the Flower Moon fan, right, Aisatu?

Aisatu: Yes, I am. I thought Martin Scorsese killed it, Leonardo, all of them, but I was really impressed with Lily Gladstone. I hail from the village of Harlem and I'll tell you, that film represented so many things for me and I appreciated it so much.

Brian Lehrer: Aisatu, thank you very much. Yes, Lily Gladstone was the one who actually won last night. William in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, William. William, are you there? William once, William twice. Okay, you only get two. Sheila in Princeton. Hi, Sheila.

Sheila: Hey, how are you doing, Brian? I just wanted to shout out Annette Bening in Nyad. She didn't show up anywhere and the work she did was phenomenal, swimming in that tank and training to swim, mind-blowing.

Brian Lehrer: She was nominated, I believe.

Sheila: Oh, was she? Okay, I apologize, but [unintelligible 00:07:08].

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I thought I saw that on the listing. Thank you very much. Lita in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lita.

Lita: Good morning, Brian. Love your show. I want to talk about American Symphony which is a documentary about Jon Batiste. Obviously, it does a lot about his music, but it also weaves in a whole story about his wife who during the time they were filming was very ill. She's a writer. Between the story of them and his music and her illness and she's better now, it just was a very moving and wonderful movie.

Brian Lehrer: I'll tell you a funny story. I know a couple in their 90s who you might not expect to be Jon Batiste fans and were disappointed in Maestro for exactly the reason I was saying, not enough music. They said, "What we really liked was American Symphony because there was so much about Jon Batiste's music." There you go. People know him from The Late Show, right? From Colbert.

Lita: Right. Stephen Colbert, right.

Brian Lehrer: Lita, thank you very much. Marianne in Bergen County. Somebody has to say Oppenheimer in this call-in. Hi, Marion.

Marion: Oh, hi. Hi, Brian. How are you doing? Yes, shout out to Oppenheimer. Couple of reasons. Chris Nolan is just a great director. That's my son's favorite. His wife works for Universal in the marketing department for-- and she was working with Chris Nolan and the teams and doing the marketing. There's just a lot of good stories about him. He's really nice, treated everybody well.

She even went to his house with the team. He treated everybody to lunch because Universal treated-- they treated each other good. I know Universal made a lot of money, which is good. My daughter-in-law didn't, but anyway, she got such good experience and it was a really great movie. I just think he's a very good director. It was a very good film even though it was three hours. It didn't seem that long and it was just because it was made so well.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Flower Moon was three and a half hours too by the way. I watched it at home in three sittings. That's just me.

Marion: I think it was a movie that [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: With our short attention spans these days, it's good to see that people are trying to make long things and that they're getting acclaim for. Also good to hear that anybody with fame and power and creativity like Christopher Nolan, obviously, might also be a nice employer.

Marion: Yes. You want to hear that. You want to hear people getting treated well because it's a very tough industry. Very, very tough. It's like who you know, and do you know anybody? I was very proud of her accomplishments.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Marion. Thank you very much. John in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi there, Brian. Nice to speak with you again. I don't know if it didn't have a category for this film, but there's a very, very powerful Ukrainian film called Klondike by Maryna Gorbach. It's basically a pregnant woman's perspective on war. It's not the present war now, it's the one that started with Russian aggression in 2014 in the eastern part of Ukraine, the part that was first taken over by the Russians in 2014. I'm not sure if it didn't have a category last night or not, but I hope people get to know about it and see it and has a lot of distribution.

Brian Lehrer: John, thank you very much. Klondike. James, in Wayne. Hi, James.

James: Hey, how are you doing? Listen, I love your show. I also love the movie, Leave the World Behind. The movies that really intrigued me are the ones that wait to make you wake up the next morning and say, what was that about? How was that supposed to impact my life? It doesn't leave you with necessarily all the resolutions you'd like to have, but it really makes you think.

Brian Lehrer: James, thank you very much. Ellen in Jackson Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ellen.

Ellen: Hi. I just want to make sure we shout out Holdovers. I just think Paul Giamatti never disappoints and Da'Vine Joy Randolph was amazing. I saw a lot of movies nominated and just leaving the theater after The Holdovers, my heart was full, I was smiling from ear to ear, and for TV shows, Beef hands down, deserved everything it got.

Brian Lehrer: Giamatti won last night for Holdovers. For people who don't know it, what's the premise? Draw people in.

Ellen: It's a boarding school and he is a washed-up teacher there who is stuck with the holiday holdover. Students whose parents somehow for some reason can't come collect them.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. James in Queens is going to shout out specific scenes from two movies, right, James?

James: Yes. Thanks for taking my call. This is personal preference, but I think the two most heart-pounding emotional moments of this movie season were the 10 or 22nd countdown before the bomb went off in Oppenheimer and just the crescendo, the cinematic, the way that just built up to that scene, personally felt like the movie fizzled off a little bit with all the courtroom scenes after that, but that was just a phenomenal scene.

Then of course, as you mentioned, the Bradley Cooper conducting that symphony in Maestro and I do think it's unfortunate because I really think he should win an Academy Award for that, but there are just so many great movies out there and I think he might have too much competition, but that was a phenomenal scene.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Can we get one more in here in 10 seconds? Mary Florence in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Elevator pitch. 10 seconds, go.

Mary Florence: Hi, Brian. I'm actually in Albany but from Brooklyn and I'm calling to recommend A Thousand and One. I think you can stream it on Amazon with Teyana Taylor. It was really brilliant. Really moving story about a mother and son in Harlem in the '90s.

Brian Lehrer: You did it, and we did it, and you all did it. Thank you for your movie and TV picks from 2023.

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