The Revenant
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
There’s a natural poetry to Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s filmmaking. The Oscar-winning director behind last year’s Birdman seeks transcendence for his characters, finding the grace in human frailty regardless of the story unfolding. And The Revenant is quite a story.
Based loosely on the true tale of 19th Century American frontiersman Hugh Glass, the film treks behind Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio – who can take a beating) as he crawls across hundreds of the most formidable miles to avenge a mighty wrong.
With no more than 15 lines in English, DiCaprio manages to capture the essence of this grieving survivor brought to his most primal self. This is easily the most physical performance of his career. DiCaprio is alone for the majority of his time onscreen, and his commitment to this character guarantees that those scenes are riveting.
Tom Hardy is once again an utterly compelling presence as Glass’s nemesis John Fitzgerald. Other actors might have read this character as flatly backwoods evil, but Hardy never forgets Fitzgerald’s humanity, giving the villain depth, humor, even sympathy.
The balance of the cast manages to keep up with these two heavyweights. Particularly effective is Domhnall Gleeson, who’s having another solid year. He plays the commander of Glass and Fitzpatrick’s ill-fated expedition. He’s the memory of civilization in a film that quickly erases all traces of progress and comfort.
Of equal importance to these performances is the imagination Inarritu brings to bear. It guides Emmanuel Lubezki (another Oscar winner for Birdman), whose magical camera, like a careening ghost, weaves through carnage and nature before circling into the heavens.
The sound design is equally spellbinding, the score itself sometimes a blend of the music of snow crunch, whispered voices, and the haunting ring of the wind.
This is a lonesome, brutal journey often punctuated by a remarkable tumult of violence. The grizzly attack that sets off Glass’s downfall is likely the most visceral, jaw-dropping image we’ll see this year.
Outside these flashes of punishing action, The Revenant offers a slow build and asks for your patience. At 156 minutes, the film is long, but is there any other way to do justice to Glass’s ordeal?
After winning the Oscar last year, Innaritu takes that human journey toward redemption to the out of doors with a brutally gorgeous, punishingly brilliant film.
Carol
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Oh, Carol, what a mesmerizing, captivating, utterly beautiful web you weave.
Director Todd Haynes has crafted an insightful, exquisite love story full of bittersweet grace, propelled by two glorious performances.
Rooney Mara is Therese, a department store clerk in 1950s New York whose senses are awakened after Carol (Cate Blanchett) visits her counter at Christmastime. Though Carol is older, and married, the two fall for each other, stealing precious moments with the discretion their world demands.
Haynes, adapting Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt with screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, expands the themes he touched upon in 2002’s Far From Heaven, and infuses them with a profound and deeply felt humanity.
Though the period details are meticulous, Haynes bathes his film in an almost ethereal melancholy, transporting you to a world enveloped in the ache of those pretending to be something they are not.
Edward Lachman’s cinematography is an artful masterwork, and Haynes’s framing has a subtle but important impact. He often keeps Carol and Therese separated by rooms, windows, or other people, and each knowing glance carries enormous weight as two wonderful actors convey the costs of love in a way that settles in your bones.
As Therese begins to trust her feelings, Mara finds the touching nuance needed to bring authenticity to her character’s journey. She is the immaculate bookend to Blanchett, who serves up another reminder of the rarefied talent she possesses.
Carol seduces us just as confidently as she does Therese, with Blanchett gradually letting us glimpse the lessons learned from a life of hiding. Carol declares, “You seek resolution because you’re young,” with the voice of jaded experience, but when her husband Harge (Kyle Chandler) delivers an unexpected blow in the fight over their daughter, we feel her devastation like a punch to the gut.
Great films are able to make complex issues resonate through fully realized characters and intimate, thoughtful storytelling. Anchored in love and restrained longing, Carol is absolutely great, as moving as any film I’ve seen this past year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4z7Px68ywk
The Forest
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
I like a good twin movie as much as the next guy – probably more – but let’s be clear. The Forest is not a good twin movie. It’s not a good movie at all.
Through her freaky twin telepathy, Sara (Natalie Dormer: The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones) knows something’s wrong with her sister Jess, living in Japan. She knows she’s alive and in danger, although the authorities calling to verify Jess’s missing person status believe she is dead because she’s gone alone into the suicide forest on Mount Fuji.
Well, off to Japan Sara goes, to enter the forest alone, stray from the path, see ghosts, listen to the advice of creepy school girls who appear in the middle of the forest at night (because there’s nothing at all suspicious about that), and just generally make bad choices.
Every individual has specific buttons horror movies can push. Some people are afraid of clowns, some of enclosed spaces. Some of us have a pathological terror of the woods.
Some of the same of us have a twin sister. So, the idea of getting lost in the dark in a forest full of angry ghosts and ghouls as you hunt desperately for your twin sister – well, for some of us, these are buttons that should make it really easy for a movie to be scary.
Here’s what I’m saying – I am the audience for this movie, and it was as scary as an episode of Three’s Company.
Dormer’s performance is far more lifeless than those stiffs hanging from the trees, and director Jason Zada’s over-reliance on jump scares and dream sequences, plus his inability to develop atmosphere guarantee a tedious walk in the woods.
