60/100

The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is a masterclass in portraying a sense of an untamed yet euphoric setting. Its grimy and increasingly mythical landscape contrast with serene Digital images, showcasing a vast environment with a conflicted aura of inhospitable wilderness and the tantalizing search for greed and power. With Emmanuel Lubezki at the helm as DP, and armed with the Arri Alexa 65, the result is a gigantic adventure with a scope as wide as its constant lens choice, but sadly miscalculated when it comes to core story components.

Its ultimately disappointing to think, after all the horror stories involved in production, that something so misguided can result from such obvious turmoil, but most of the issues…

I was going to just knock off a smart-ass little one liner … ‘Hiring Mr. Lubezki does not a Malick film make’ … but I’ve been writing too many of those lately, and Alejandro Iñárritu deserves more respect than that. Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel are all films I’ve seen, enjoyed, and respected. I was on the ‘loved’ side of the divisive Bird Man.

I do believe in the nut of that quip I was going to post. I think Iñárritu began to change with Birdman, and the biggest evidence of that change was saying goodbye to long time cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and striking a new relationship with Chivo.

Rodrigo Prieto is no slouch, but he’s a cinematographer that…

revenge is bad cuz God or sumthin' guys & trees don't give up so neither will leo cuz nature... is like... inherently violent but also not cuz it's so beautiful but ALSO UGLY ya idk here's some more trees lol.

iñárritu, already well known for mistaking ruthlessly punishing his characters for meaning/depth & explaining very simple, college-level sentiments in the most obvious way imaginable all under the guise of ~Great Important Artistry~, doubles down & winds up channelling more kurt sutter than malick/tarkovsky, reaching peak levels of senseless misery porn. like a first year film student was handed $100 million, essentially.

for a film being marketed as this brutal, messy "not-for-pussies" experience, this has got to be the cleanest anti-revenge revenge picture i've…

Extremely bleak, exceedingly brutal & exceptionally cold-blooded, The Revenant is that savage beast that charges at you with relentless aggression, mauls you from head to toe without mercy, and leaves you utterly bruised, broken & helpless in the middle of a harsh surrounding. Absolutely uncompromising with its content, unflinchingly raw in its depiction, and pushing its cast & crew to their limit, Alejandro G. Iñárritu's latest is one of the most harrowing films ever made.

Inspired by true events & based on the novel of the same name, the story of The Revenant takes place in the 1820s and follows Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who, during the expedition of the uncharted American wilderness, gets viciously attacked by a bear and is left for dead…

(It's) HARD TO BE A GO(o)D (Movie)
or
Days of Heavin'

Mostly entertaining spectacle, but good googly moogly could the movie draw any more attention to its own production? By the time Leo's breath fogs up the camera lens it was about time number 2073 that I noticed there was a camera. Seems at odds with the realism/naturalism for which the movie is going. It's also jarring every time there's a CGI animal on screen (the audience I saw it with laughed when the bear falls on Leo*). Lubezki's digital photography (though excellent) is so smooth, crisp, clean and sharp that it also seems at odds with the bloody, muddy, dirty, gritty raw aesthetic of the production. I kept waiting…

Another look allowed me to focus more on the alternate reading that's suggested by the title. (Spoilers ahead.)

You could make the case that Glass dies shortly after he lies down next to the body of his dead son. (There's a particularly potent cutaway shot to the sun piercing through the cloudy sky.) From that point on, Glass is a specter haunting this land and the people in it - he resists "letting go" and following his wife and son into the afterlife because he instead chooses revenge. And as long as he does so, as long as he ignores their calling to him in those visions, he's cursed to live in this in-between space (hence his ability to survive…

Unflinchingly brutal, relentless, beautiful, and challenging... there is so much to say and so much to praise about this near-masterpiece from Alejandro G. Iñárritu. 

While traveling back to their village after an attack on their camp — the attack being of course filmed in grand, sweeping takes by Emmanuel Lubezki who will most likely make history at this year's Academy Awards — Hugh Glass, an American fur-trapper and frontiersman in the early 1800s (played by a commandingly brilliant and definite-oscar-nominee Leonardo DiCaprio), wanders off from the rest of his men and finds himself alone in the woods when he’s brutally ripped to literal-shreds-of-flesh by a grizzly bear in one of the most abrasively horrifying man vs. nature scenes I’ve ever seen…

8.5/10

Ahhhhh beautiful Canada, where people freeze, betray each other and bleed.

I don't know why some people hate this movie story. Yes it goes for something more than it gets and has some weird holes but it still is compelling. The flashback scenes help show why Glass keeps going and shows his hurt. It's shot beautifully I want to take more pictures from this movie and put them on my wall than Blade Runner because it has beautiful nature. Especially in the first scene AGI shows his masterful blocking and direction. He gets a really good performance out of everyone, even the kid from Maze Runner. Leo I'm sure earned this Oscar for all the shit he clearly went…

This film is without a doubt, well produced and directed, amazingly shot, and near perfectly acted. Lubezki's cinematography is nothing short of incredible, with some of the most technically impressive shots I've seen in a cinema, drawing you in right into the action, sometimes even too close, while still looking like a fucking painting. Hardy and Leo put out jaw dropping performances, and Domhall Gleeson was a particular standout as well. But, even through all of this, I came out of the hall wanting a little more. Right down to Glass' visions of his tragic past and the surreal imagery that accompany them, they seem more like a display of Lubezki's technical chops and artsy film shit for the sake…