The Revenant - Iñàrritu goes West

[Head Gardener]

it's got

Spoiler alert

double

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bear rape according to some rags

[Marv Orange]

cowboy forrest gump

[Glebe]

This is interesting (from IMDb):

[Noodle Lizard]

What a staggeringly useless image.  Nothing against you, Glebe, but this is literally meaningless.

[Glebe]

What a staggeringly useless image.  Nothing against you, Glebe, but this is literally meaningless.

No, it's fine, Noodle.

IT'S FINE.

[confettiinmyhair]

I'd be very very surprised if Leo won an Oscar for this. Arguably Tom Hardy, the man of a million undefinable accents, gave a better performance in this film.

[Steven]

I'd be very very surprised if Leo won an Oscar for this. Arguably Tom Hardy, the man of a million undefinable accents, gave a better performance in this film.

The best bit of Leo for me in this was all the wheezing and grunting as he was constantly dragging himself around completely fucked by his travails, in particular the bit where he's explaining to the Indian what happened to him and wheezes up the strangled word  "...grizzly..." before displaying his claw memento.

[Noodle Lizard]

I'd be very very surprised if Leo won an Oscar for this. Arguably Tom Hardy, the man of a million undefinable accents, gave a better performance in this film.

Now that it looks like Depp won't be nominated, I bet Leo wins and the internet goes insane for a few days.  But ultimately it'll be a pretty hollow victory, I think - like when Scorsese finally won Best Director for The Departed.  That Tom Hardy didn't receive a Supporting nom at the Globes (and therefore probably the Oscars) is absurd.

[Garam]

Not the Oscars matter, but DiCaprio was robbed last year. Dallas Cowboy Club is already looking irrelevant a year after its release, DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall St is a performance for the ages. He'll never be that good again.

[Milverton]

I struggled a bit with this for an hour, but it became quite engrossing afterwards. The cinematography was astonishing. Of the recent screener leaks I'd put it second only to the wonderfully daft Legend as my favourite.

[Head Gardener]

[Head Gardener]

I'm pleased he's won his Globe, but it is a remake of Man In The Wilderness starring The Exorcist himself

[non capisco]

Bloody remakes. Does Hollywood have no original ideas any more?

[Noodle Lizard]

I, for one, hope he wins an Oscar so that boring people may finally shut up about him not having won an Oscar.

[Steven]

Hardy or Dicaprio? Hardy's being in enough stuff now you assume some Hollywood coven of Jewish Frankist Satanist cabal of Gentile baby eaters like him a fair bit.

[non capisco]

I hope Leo wins an Oscar because he's a fucking amazing actor and was totally robbed for 'Wolf Of Wall Street'. Seeing The Revenant on Sunday with the same mate who's been texting me incessantly all this evening about how stunning he thought it was after he saw it tonight and can't wait to see it again so, y'know, high hopes. Me and Inarritu have had our differences (mostly me thinking the vast majority of his films are an overrated load of old plops) but I'm so bang up for this one now.

This weekend in the UK: The Revenant, Room and Creed. Mate.

[Steven]

I hope Leo wins an Oscar because he's a fucking amazing actor and was totally robbed for 'Wolf Of Wall Street'. Seeing The Revenant on Sunday with the same mate who's been texting me incessantly all this evening about how stunning he thought it was after he saw it tonight and can't wait to see it again so, y'know, high hopes. Me and Inarritu have had our differences (mostly me thinking the vast majority of his films are an overrated load of old plops) but I'm so bang up for this one now.

It's really good, man. I went in with no estimation though, like I thought was going to be like The Edge with Anthony Hopkins.

[Steven]

I'm pleased he's won his Globe, but it is a remake of Man In The Wilderness starring The Exorcist himself

bloody hell, yes! and called bass instead of glass, wouldnt they both be based on the same 'true' story, though?

[Steven]

Aye.

Hugh Glass (c. 1780 – 1833) was an American frontiersman, fur trapper, and explorer. Born in Pennsylvania to Scots-Irish parents, Glass became an explorer of the watershed of the Upper Missouri River in present-day Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the Platte River area of Nebraska.[not verified in body] Glass is most widely known for his story of survival and retribution after being left for dead by companions following his mauling by a grizzly bear, a story which has been retold repeatedly since its day, and which has been adapted for the feature length films Man in the Wilderness (1971) and The Revenant (2015). The retellings portray Glass, who in the best historical accounts made his way crawling and stumbling 200 miles (320 km) to Fort Kiowa in South Dakota, after being abandoned without supplies or weapons by fellow explorers and traders during General Ashley's expedition of 1823.

[chand]

I haven't seen this yet but I really hope the very handsome, successful and rich man Leonardo Di Caprio, shagger of dozens of impossibly beautiful woman, FINALLY wins his Oscar for it. Dude can't catch a break!

[Peru]

Didn't care for this much, I'm afraid. It seemed empty of any kind of content, really. I'm not saying that there has to be some heavy subtext, but despite a few attempts at suggesting some kind of social or religious/philosophical/historical context there seemed to be pretty much nothing at all going on for a very long time. It was striking to see Lubezki's very Malick-like nature cinematography not underpinned by any of the philosophical weight from those movies.

I think Birdman got by on sheer helter-skelter pace and humour, both of which are completely absent here. I've never been super convinced by Innaritu other than technically, and I kept thinking of what John Hillcoat would have made of this material.

[Sam]

Good feature on Chivo with interviews from fellow DPs, including The Deakins.

http://youtu.be/2Ahhpw4bNU8

[Head Gardener]

[Glebe]

Saw it tonight[nb]On my own. ON A SATURDAY NIGHT.[/nb]... wow. One of the most astonishingly beautiful films I've ever seen. Great cast, and quite emotional in places. Possibly Tom Hardy's best performance, IMHO (he apparently based his accent on Tom Berenger's character in Platoon, actually thought he looked and sounded like The Dude crossed with Jame Gumb). Between this and Fury Road, he's managed to appear in two of the most visceral and visually stunning films ever, really.

I'd read about the

Spoiler alert

supposed bear rape

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before seeing it... it kind of seems like

Spoiler alert

the bear has a go on his arse at one point

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, but it's hard to tell.

Anyway, loved it for the most part - agreed, it leans a little towards

Spoiler alert

run-of-the-mill 'big face-off' territory towards the end

[close]

, but it's forgivable. I wanna see it in IMAX now.

[Puce Moment]

I also saw this tonight, and am still digesting. Overall I would say that it is stunning to look at, never boring, and has some great performances, mainly from Di Caprio. I'm not much of a fan of Iñárritu's previous output, finding him overblown, pretentious and overly sentimental, although I do rather like Biutiful.

The cinematography is even better than I expected. Those opening shots with incredibly deep focus were amazing. The main problem with that is that the camerawork obviously reminded me of Malick - and The New World specifically. The issue I have with the film is that it has the same positives and negatives as The New World. An amazing sense of detail, beautiful cinematography, and an earthy, visceral quality. But both also romanticise Native Americans, with lots of breathy, dreamy scenes, and flashbacks. I could have done without any of the really intensely Malick moments (the abandoned church in particular). But after taking away the visuals and the performances you are left with a kind of episodic shaggy dog revenge story, with lots of deus ex machinas, and some truly bad dialogue.

I don't mean to be picky, but it was very close to being perfect, and so the problems were extra noticeable to me. The thought of how this would have looked if Chan-wook had done this with the very limited Samuel L. Jackson, or Hilcoat with Christian Bale, is sobering.

[CaledonianGonzo]

I'd read about the

Spoiler alert

supposed bear rape

[close]

before seeing it... it kind of seems like

Spoiler alert

the bear has a go on his arse at one point

[close]

, but it's hard to tell.

It's a female / mother bear.  I don't  think that they have willies.

Um.  Yeah.  A real mix of great and not so great.  Exciting at points, trite at others,  luvverly to look at and as waffer thin as the mint that does for Mr Creosote.  The lengthy runtime zips by and it's rarely boring given the sometimes repetitive nature of the story, but it's not as profound as it thinks it is.  Some amazing, audacious stunt photography / editing going on in that first attack sequence.

Chivo probably deserves his inevitable Oscar win, albeit that means that Roger Deakin has to suck it for yet another year.

Baffled by anyone thinking that Tom Hardy gave the better performance.

[Sam]

Has anyone won the best cinematography award three years running? Would be quite an achievement. As Deakins said in that clip above, his cinematography used to be quite different and his current style that other directors have been benefitting from is Malick to the max. I hope I don't find that too distracting

[CaledonianGonzo]

I tend to agree with the views I've read that while some of this movie is superficially reminiscent of Malick, the intent behind it is very much the inverse in terms of how he tends to view the natural world.

[Noodle Lizard]

Chivo probably deserves his inevitable Oscar win, albeit that means that Roger Deakin has to suck it for yet another year.

To be fair though, Sicario was nowhere near as well-shot as this was.  This would've been an absolute ballache to shoot as well, with only a couple of hours a day to achieve some of those hideously complicated set-ups.  He's excellent.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Aye, didn't mean to imply that this was the inferior work.