The Revenant

Revenant is undoubtedly a great movie. It has genius camera, brutally frozen locations, two absolutely perfect scenes and Leonardo DiCaprio, whose performance is an acting orgasm like never before. If not before, then for this performance he simply has to get the Oscar award. Personally, I think that his showing off is beyond the line. The less talking there is, the more action is happening on the screen. Leo is gutting a horse to hide in his internals or eating raw meat to survive. Plus, he survives a lot ofunbelievable stuff that no average citizen of the Czech Republic would be able to survive. All of that for the most classic reason of all – for revenge. It’s a shame that the creators stretched the story so much. They could’ve spared us some of the flashbacks. Two and a half hours is a lot of time for a story like that. Anyway, I admit that the first scene of the attack of the Native Americans and then the scene of the bear attacking Leo will stick in my memory as the best I’ve seen in a pretty long time. (19/01/2016)

Leo will finally get his Oscar. And not because he turned in a better performance than in The Wolf of Wall Street, but because of how much he had to suffer for it. Such a large-scale and, thanks to its locations and weather, true survival movie with a stellar cast and cinematography by Lubezki does not need a thicker plot. IT IS ENOUGH THAT IT EXISTS. Just like it is enough for the Eiffel Tower to just stand there. Because for several decades there will be no other filmmaking project of similar proportions. The funny thing is that The Revenant’s lack of a denser story is criticized by the same viewers who repeatedly went to see the over-filtered Mad Max: Fury Road, in which there is not a single real exterior and someone drives a car through the desert for two hours only to decide to turn around just before reaching their destination. The story of The Revenant is a continual struggle for survival. The betrayal of a friend, meeting a Native American with a bleeding heart, helping the defenseless innocent. And the consequences of all of this. Fate and our ability to influence it. Karma. And for us contemporaries, also the realization that while we hope to have a good time, people before us hoped to survive. Every day. The Revenant’s poetic passages are not pseudo-art; they are art for masses, similar to those of Ridley’s Gladiator, just less cheesy, because Iñárritu expects some development from the mass audience over a decade. Alejandro, it’s incredible what you’re willing to do (and risk) to shoot the hitherto unseen. Chivo, you are a god. Amazing sound and makeup. By comparison, Alive and The Edge become mere snowflakes in The Revenant, flying in the wind of Dances with Wolves. Thank you, cinematography, once again after a long time. This is what I live for. (17/01/2016)

I was waiting for something in the style of the Black Robe in combination with McCarthy's Bloody Meridian and in a way I got it. Sadly, there was a lot of kind of mystically symbolic insertions that were frequent, pointless and above all unintentionally stupid. It would have been even better if it had kept only in the department of inhospitable wilderness, pragmatic rough trappers, Indians on the warpath, survival, endless snowy distances, howling winds, slow pace. Although it undoubtedly has a few weak or unnecessary scenes, but when it's good (which is true for most of the footage), it's damn good. Largely thanks to the raw atmosphere, poor performance of lame Leo, amazing (however traditional) grumbling Hardy and even Gleeson is surprisingly a great fit. And we need to mention the camera since there has not been anything better since There Will Be Blood. Overall, I really enjoyed it, although I had considerable reservations. (13/01/2016)

Stunning cinematography, atmospheric music, a great Tom Hardy and some riveting scenes. But if the protagonist crawling through the woods for those 156 minutes had been someone I cared even a little bit about, I probably would have had a lot more fun. A good and in some ways exceptional film that I never want to see again in my life. (07/01/2016)

There aren't many of these realistically dirty, narratively unkempt films that feel like the filmmakers have actually gone back 200 years, and actually I can't remember any from the last few years. Raw action, where you can feel the blood and pain, physical contact fights taken in one long shot, and beautiful visual compositions of breathtaking nature; and snow and mud and filthy actors everywhere – the film crew must have had their fun too. The simple story doesn't hurt at all, because it goes to the heart of the characters and their physical and mental hardships. The complete opposite of the mannerist, self-absorbed Birdman, where I didn't care about the characters' fates at all. Together with Sicario, the best film of 2015. (02/01/2016)