Film

Bad news bear

The Revenant

For the second year in a row, director Alejandro González Iñárritu has delivered the year’s best film. The best movie of 2015 is The Revenant, an eye-popping Western thriller that gives Leonardo DiCaprio the role that should finally score him that first Oscar. The innovative Iñárritu was also responsible for last year’s Birdman. DiCaprio gives it everything he’s got as Hugh Glass, a scout working with some fur traders on the American frontier in the early nineteenth century. Glass, while doing his job, gets a little too close to a couple of bear cubs, and Mama Grizzly is not all too happy about such an occurrence. What follows is a lengthy and vicious bear attack where Glass tangles with the nasty mother not once, but twice. Iñárritu, DiCaprio and some amazing visual technicians put you in the middle of that bear attack, minus the searing pain of actually having a bear’s claws and teeth rip through your flesh. Trust me when I tell you it’s an unforgettably visceral moment when that bear steps on DiCaprio’s head. The attack happens early in the film, with Glass seemingly left at death’s door. The remaining party, including a conniving, paranoid trapper named John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), is left to decide what to do with him. Fitzgerald wants to put him out of his misery, much to the chagrin of Glass’s Native American son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) and the expedition’s leader, Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson). Henry decides to soldier on without Glass, leaving him behind to die with Fitzgerald, Hawk and young Jim Bridger (an excellent Will Poulter). Fitzgerald takes matters into his own hands, with Glass eventually buried alive and left for dead. This doesn’t sit well with Glass, who slowly recovers from his wounds and sets out to exact revenge on Fitzgerald.

So, yes, this is a revenge tale, and a rather simple one at that. Those looking for a spiritual and psychological examination of revenge containing long monologues need not attend. The Revenant is about the forces of nature, stunningly photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki. It’s about one man as he sets out on a killing mission. That mission, justified or not, by Bob Grimm is at the mercy of an uncaring wilderness that will throw everything it can at Glass to stop bgrimm@ him in his tracks. newsreview.com Some of what Iñárritu does here, the film’s few quieter, more meditative moments, 5 reminds me of Terrence Malick, and that’s a good thing. I could watch good Malick films for eternity. For the most part, the movie is less about beautiful running rivers and more about surviving gaping neck wounds while fending off attacking Native Americans and antsy fur trappers. What Iñárritu and company achieve during these attack sequences is monumental. No movie has ever looked or felt like this during these moments. Throw in that bear attack, and you have a movie that will forever dent your skull. DiCaprio doesn’t have much spoken dialogue. The majority of his performance consists of grunting, contorting his face and crawling on the ground (something he did memorably in The Wolf of Wall Street). His character has very few moments to smile, but when he does, it’s like having a warm blanket and whiskey-assisted hot cocoa poured down your throat after a week in sub zero temperatures. It’s a major relief from the torment. Hardy and Gleeson, who are magnificent in the film, are two of the hardest working men in Hollywood right now. They both appeared in four major 2015 films, with Hardy also appearing in Mad Max: Fury Road, Legend and Child 44 and Gleeson showing up prominently in Brooklyn, Ex Machina and a little thing called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Given the notoriously long and nasty shooting schedule they had to endure for The Revenant, I have no idea how they managed to appear in those other films. They have mastered the art of scheduling events and tasks on their iPhones. The Revenant is a masterpiece, and I suspect DiCaprio will get his Oscar. I also suspect camping numbers will take a plummet in the next year, while bear repellent sales will spike. Ω

Leo let his body hair grow out for six straight months for this movie.

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POOR

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FAIR

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GOOD

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VERY GOOD 5

4The Big Short Director Adam McKay, the master behind such broad comedy gems as Anchorman and Step Brothers, flexes his slightly more serious muscles for this one, a take on the housing bubble that nearly destroyed the global economy. An ensemble cast featuring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt make this a funny-yet-scary look at how big banks nearly sent us back to the stone ages. Carell is especially good as Mark Baum, a banker with a conscience who realizes a little too late that things are going bad, and his wealth is going to come at the expense of a many U.S. homeowners. Bale is typically good as Michael Burry, the man who saw the storm coming and made a boatload of money betting against the biggest monsters of modern finance. Pitt has fun as a financial guru who has taken to the hills in anticipation of the oncoming financial apocalypse, while Gosling gives the whole thing a nice Martin Scorsese vibe as a fast-talking banker/narrator. It’s a drama, but it’s often funny. (Margot Robbie in a bubble bath … brilliant!) McKay shows that his chops go well beyond directing Will Ferrell with a fireman’s mustache.

2Concussion This is an odd, misguided movie. Will Smith plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, a pathologist studying the cadavers of former football players dying in mysterious ways. His studies eventually lead to the discovery of CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), a brain disease resulting from repeated concussive hits to the head. Director Peter Landesman’s film makes the mistake of focusing on Smith’s character, and pushing the stories of the suffering football players into the background. Does anybody really care about Omalu’s love life when football players are killing themselves after retirement? For instance, the story of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster (played movingly by David Morse) only gets a few minutes of screen time, while Omalu’s television habits and dancing prowess get more than one scene. The film goes for a strange emotional payoff regarding Omalu’s triumphant discovery rather than really focusing on the treacherous cover-ups by the NFL when it came to CTE. Again, a movie that pushes the stories and fates of the NFL players into the background in favor of giving a big Hollywood star a beefed-up role to sink his teeth into feels mighty self-indulgent. This could’ve been the incisive, important film the subject calls for, rather than a melodramatic excuse for Will Smith to try out a new accent.

3Daddy’s Home The second pairing of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg isn’t as funny as their first offering, The Other Guys, but it’s still funny enough to warrant a look. Ferrell is in bumbling mode as Brad, stepfather to a couple of kids who hate him and the husband of Sarah (Linda Cardellini). Just when the kids are starting to only hate him a little, Sarah’s ex-husband Dusty (Wahlberg) comes back into the picture in a boorish bid to win back his ex’s love, reclaim his children and get Brad out of the house. This provides a setup that sees Ferrell’s Brad subjected to all forms of humiliation and injury, including a calamitous trek through his house on a motorcycle and a rendezvous with electrical wires after getting some impressive air off a half-pipe. Ferrell and Wahlberg are funny together, and the movie does a decent job of making them both likeable idiots. Thomas Haden Church steals scenes as Brad’s obnoxious boss at a smooth jazz radio station, as does Hannibal Buress as a handyman who winds up crashing on Brad’s couch. The film is nasty, but it’s neutered a bit by it’s PG-13 rating. It’s clear this is being marketed at families, but that’s a mistake right there. I’m sure there’s a nastier cut of this movie, and if I have a complaint it’s that the movie doesn’t go all the way with its sinister message. It pulls some punches, keeping it from being the dark comedy it deserves to be, and making it more of a feel-good film with some sinister undertones. Still, I laughed enough, and the film is recommended to fans of Ferrell and Wahlberg. 5 The Hateful Eight Quentin Tarantino returns to form after the just OK Django Unchained with yet another masterpiece, a grandiose Western potboiler that boasts his best dialogue in years and an Oscar caliber performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh. I didn’t dislike Django, but I thought there was something a little off and sluggish about it. It definitely left me wanting more from Tarantino on the Western front. I thought he had a better, grittier Western still in him, and this film proves that he did. Many of the Tarantino cast regulars return, including Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Kurt Russell. Russell, who delivered what I believe is his best career work in Tarantino’s Death Proof as Stuntman Mike, gets another chance to go to town with a Tarantino script and he embraces it with much enthusiasm. Russell plays John “The Hangman” Ruth, a bounty hunter renowned for bringing in his prisoners alive so that their necks meet the noose in the end. Riding in a stagecoach to Red Rock, with the notorious Daisy Domergue (Leigh), his latest bounty, chained to his arm, he comes across bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), and this is where the fun begins. The party rescues one more man, future Red Rock Sheriff Chris Mannix (an outstanding Walton Goggins), from an oncoming blizzard. The stagecoach heads for Minnie’s Haberdashery as a means of shelter, where they meet the rest of the cast and tensions soar. On top of being a terrific mystery containing one of the best screenplays Tarantino has ever turned out, this is also one of his very best-looking films. Do not miss it on the big screen.

3Joy This is a goofy, uneven, yet entertaining showcase for Jennifer Lawrence, who delivers a fun and strong performance as the title character. Joy has a tough life, with a mother (Virginia Madsen) addicted to TV and her divorced husband (Edgar Ramirez) and father (Robert De Niro) sharing her basement. She’s working crap jobs, but an idea for a revolutionary mop gets her on TV and eventually changes her life. Director and co-writer David O. Russell reunites with his Silver Linings Playbook star, and the results are a bit strange to say the least. Lawrence puts the proceedings over the top with the sort of commanding performance that has become routine for her. De Niro has fun in his standard dad role. His roles in O. Russell films are his best in years. Isabella Rossellini gets her best role since Blue Velvet as De Niro’s rich girlfriend who finds herself bankrolling Joy’s mop scheme. Bradley Cooper barely registers as the TV executive who gives Joy her break, although that has more to do with his lack of screen time than his performance. It’s a good ensemble in service of a movie that's a little beneath them, but it all comes together for something worth seeing.

5Star Wars: The Force Awakens With this seventh chapter in the Star Wars saga, J.J. Abrams and crew have done exactly what they did with Star Trek, and created a fun movie that not only respects the blessed canon of a beloved franchise, but stands on its own as a piece of supreme entertainment. It’s 2015’s most entertaining film, for sure, and a movie that stands up proudly in the realm of Star Wars movies. In many ways, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the best movie in the franchise. I won’t say it’s my personal, sentimental favorite. (I think The Empire Strikes Back still holds that post, but a little more time will tell.) The Force Awakens has solid storytelling, its special effects are first rate, and the performances are, undoubtedly, the best the franchise has ever seen. That’s due in part to Daisy Ridley, an incredible talent who becomes an instant star for the foreseeable future as Rey, a scrappy scavenger on a Tatooine-like desert planet. I don’t think I’m overdoing it by saying she delivers the alltime, all-around best dramatic performance in the Star Wars universe in this role. The film will leave you craving for more, and a good Star Wars craving is a nice thing to have.