The Revenant

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator

I love this time of year to watch all the year's best movies as they so typically are released before year end for Academy consideration. I have seen what I consider the top films of 2015 but I must admit that I have been waiting to see The Revenant for several months both for consideration of Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.

Having said this I have to admit that Eddye Redmayne's role in the Danish Girl has left me with the feeling that if anyone is to beat him the only one that I think is capable is Leo.

I saw the film this afternoon and it is a huge thumb's up and highly recommended.

It scores a big 78 from MRQE.com, an 8.3 from IMDB.com and an 80 from Rotten Tomatoes

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Rating: R
Running Time: 156 min.
Synopsis:
Inspired by true events, THE REVENANT is an immersive and visceral cinematic experience capturing one man's epic adventure of survival and the extraordinary power of the human spirit. In an expedition of the uncharted American wilderness, legendary explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally attacked by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team. In a quest to survive, Glass endures unimaginable grief as well as the betrayal of his confidant John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Guided by sheer will and the love of his family, Glass must navigate a vicious winter in a relentless pursuit to live and find redemption

This film at times is tough to watch but it is so well told and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu that i was glued to the screen for the entire 158 minutes. It is a slow moving story that frequently suddenly becomes quite wild and frequently gruesome

How they did the bear mauling seen with Leo is simply amazing as it was so absolutely terrifying to watch

This movie was filmed throughout Alberta, British Columbia, South Dakota and Montana in the dead of winter. How these actors and film makers survived the brutal cold defies all logic. leo was in and out of the frigid water countless times. Not sure how they avoided being frost bitten.

The movie is long but what I found so interesting about the film is that there is so little dialog that I bet the script to the entire movie was on but a handful of pages. IOW the film is all about acting in the harsh elements of winter. In fact I almost wondered if Leo spoke in Pawnee to his son more than he spoke English in the film.

The film should win for Best Cinematography and quite possibly film editing

I do see nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actor and Supporting Actor.

Will this be Leo's year? I see this clearly between Eddye Redmayne and Leo for Best Actor. Both roles were acted superbly and either is capable of winning

You're either going to love it or hate it but again the story is told with hardly any dialog. What is spoken at the beginning by Tom Hardy and others is all too often difficult to comprehend but the story is played out in the brutal cold and one has to give huge kudos for this as I would bet it was horrible to film in the frigid cold

I am likely going to see both films again before I can decide on Best Actor but this could be Leo's year
 

WLVCA

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Nov 2, 2012
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I saw Revenant today. Theatre was packed. Quite a movie and Leonardo's performance was outstanding.

The settings were beautiful and the story riveting. Very well done film.

Sometimes I fail to consider how rugged and difficult existence in the wilderness must have been back then. This movie clearly demonstrated that.
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I saw Revenant today. Theatre was packed. Quite a movie and Leonardo's performance was outstanding.

The settings were beautiful and the story riveting. Very well done film.

Sometimes I fail to consider how rugged and difficult existence in the wilderness must have been back then. This movie clearly demonstrated that.

I agree. I don't think it will win for Best Picture (but it could) but I believe this could be Leo's year, finally
 

NorthStar

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Feb 8, 2011
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I didn't see the movie...just trailers, interviews and lots of readings. ...And same for 'The Hateful Eight'.

Earlier this morning my lovely mother, Parise, asked me which one she should go see @ the theater.
From my extensive readings, and because she is my mother,,,I said 'The Faithful Eight' ... because the vistas, the horses, the wagon, the snow, the mountains, the over-the-top humor, Quentin's style of dialog, and the blood is more funny there than serious in 'The Revenant'. My mom loves blood!!! ...I guess she don't mind too much.

She said to me, Ok Robert. And then she added this: What About Ennio Morricone's music score? ...Because she really likes his music. She got me right there!
Then I said: Ennio is not young anymore, and didn't score for forty years. And from what I have read...there ain't much about it.

She said ok, 'The Faithful Eight' still.

I said to her: Mom, I am not too familiar with your style of movie preference, ...just see them both. :b

...Then we talked about classical orchestral music @ Salle Wilfrid Pelletier in Montreal, a $6 million hall with 3,000 seats where she'll be assisting @ a live performance of Le Sacre du Printemps (Stravinski) with the Japanese conductor Ken Nagano and the full enchilada...$111 tickets (each). ...Stuff like that and much more about meeting past International artists and with direct exchanges with them...some of he best. So we talked movies, classical music, live performances we both saw, artists we talked with, and all that jazz.

My mom by the way is the best. And that's why I told her to see them both...including 'The Revenant'.
 

WLVCA

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Nov 2, 2012
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Golden Globes were kind to Leo.

He obviously worked hard in this movie given the conditions.

However, he didn't have to memorize a lot of lines. :)

Just kidding...it was a powerful film and he was impactful in his role.
 

NorthStar

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Feb 8, 2011
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ACHiPo

Well-Known Member
Feb 22, 2015
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We saw it Saturday night. The most intense movie I've ever seen. I kept having flashbacks every time I saw a winter scene on TV yesterday. Cinematography was phenomenal, as was makeup and special effects (still trying to figure out how they did the bear mauling scene). Oh and acting was great as well. Highly recommended!
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator

TBone

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Nov 15, 2012
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still trying to figure out how they did the bear mauling scene

Gravity had great CGI, but yet, we knew it was CGI ... the bear scene was obviously CGI, but it made you wonder if it really was CGI.

I've met the acquaintance of a few black bears during my years yonder, thankfully nasty ole Griz doesn't reside near here ... yet next time I see any black, I'll try not think of Leo. Jaws had a similar effect, for a while there, when swimming I'd always peer just over the water top, looking in horror for that tell-tale fin ... even in lakes with only pike & trout.

BTW, I thought this was T.Hardy most defining role to date.
 

still-one

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BTW, I thought this was T.Hardy most defining role to date.

Hardy must be good if he is better than what he did in "Peaky Blinders", "The Drop" or "Legend"
 

Johnny Vinyl

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May 16, 2010
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Going to see it Thursday afternoon. Can't wait! :D
 

Johnny Vinyl

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andrew_stenhouse

New Member
Oct 26, 2015
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Sydney, Australia
God, my reaction to it is entirely different it seems to everyone else. I disliked it entirely.

This opinion piece, written in The Guardian, accurately captures my feelings about it.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/revenant-leonardo-dicaprio-violent-meaningless-glorification-pain

The Revenant is meaningless Pain Porn?

"Ritualised brutality. Vengeful blood lust. Vicious savagery justified by medieval notions of retribution. We all know how dark the world can be these days. A world where men are garrotted and impaled. Where they’re speared and disembowelled and have their necks slashed and their genitals sliced off. Where they’re killed for no other reason than revenge. This isn’t Raqqa, though, it’s The Revenant: the hottest blockbuster of the season, winner of three Golden Globes a week ago, nominated for 12 Oscars last Thursday and yours for around £10-£15 this weekend at your local multiplex.

It’s a tale of “revenge, retribution and primal violence”, according to the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, “as thrilling and painful as a sheet of ice held to the skin”. This is praise, by the way. It’s “unthinkingly, aggressively masculine,” says GQ. That’s praise too.

The film is based on a true story of the American frontier from 1823 and I’ll summarise the plot for you: man seeks revenge, man gets revenge. That’s it, basically, for two and a half hours, though there is a brief reprieve when you get to see Leonardo DiCaprio being mauled by a grizzly bear. Early reports suggested that he was raped. But no, that’s a fate reserved for one of the two women who appear fleetingly on screen. (The other one is slaughtered. But don’t worry, you have no idea who she is so you won’t actually care.)

The woman is not actually raped, of course. She’s faux raped. Because this is what we call acting. And because The Revenant is what we call entertainment. There’s a crucial difference between us and the people we are currently trying to blow to smithereens with million-pound missiles: we choose to pay to watch women being pretend raped rather than watching women being actually raped for free.

I wasn’t entertained. Can you tell? I saw it at a press screening two weeks before Christmas when the streets were filled with twinkly fairy lights and I tripped past a Salvation Army band playing Silent Night to spend what felt like several weeks in a dark room waiting – oh dear God, do you wait – for Leo to just get on and hack the other man to death so I could finally go home. A well-oiled publicity machine of the type that fuels an Academy Awards clean sweep has carefully leaked how gruelling the shoot was, how authentically the actors “suffered” in the making. (They got a bit cold, apparently.) And Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography – all shot in just a few hours of natural light each day – really is gorgeous.

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s idea was for it to look as real as possible. Which would have been magnificent if there was something in the way of a story or any meditation on the nature of retribution or anyone – anyone – that you could give one toss about, but there’s not. So the landscape is chilling and the violence is pointless and the whole thing is meaningless. A vacuous revenge tale that is simply pain as spectacle. The Revenant is pain porn.

And in all probability, it will win every Oscar going. Critics have lavishly praised its “visceral” imagery, its “authentic” feel; it is, they say, “immersive” film-making at its finest. Though, arguably, not as immersive as putting a camera in a cage and then setting a man on fire. Have you seen that one? Where the man is burned alive? It’s not by González Iñárritu, but Isis. It wasn’t nominated for anything but the pain is even more real, more visceral, more – what was the word, thrilling? – than DiCaprio’s.

But then, all of Isis’s video output is inspired by our own entertainments – in its subject matter, its soundtrack, its editing. Islamic State hasn’t invented new narrative tropes, it’s simply lifted them straight from Hollywood. All it’s done is to go one step further, trumped Hollywood at its own game. It has seen what we want, what we thrill to, and given it to us. If there were grizzly bears in the Syrian desert, there’s no doubt that they’d put one in a cage and let us see what it really looks like when one rips a man apart.

The Revenant isn’t responsible for this. It’s simply the kind of tedious, emotionally vacant film that has certain critics and Academy Award judges wetting their pants. Don’t pay £10-£15. You might as well wait for it to come out on Netflix and fall asleep on your own sofa. Or stay awake and enjoy the raping and somebody or other getting a machete in the head just for the hell of it. Or just wait for the next Isis offering.

Your choice, though perhaps we could all try and act a little less surprised by the Islamic State’s next video spectacular. Or ask ourselves why pain and suffering and brutalising women and pointless, fetishistic violence – when it’s done by Hollywood – wins awards. Or why we’re so keen for it to look “real”. What neurotransmitters are we releasing? What thirst are we slaking? Isis’s films are simply the next logical step of our films. Their culture is actually our culture too. Isis hasn’t invented any of this. It is just a bit more honest about it. More “authentic”. More “visceral”. More “real”."

Amen.
 

TBone

New Member
Nov 15, 2012
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^^^truly questionable, over-preachy rant, your comparative to Isis - is totally inappropriate.
 

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