The Revenant

The Revenant has sold itself in trailers as a story of revenge, but to hear director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and screenwriter Mark L. Smith tell it, this is a movie about a “spiritual journey.” We’ll have to wait another week to see if that’s what audiences ultimately take from the film, but according to Smith, The Revenant wasn’t originally conceived as a revenge tale — it was something a little different, and a little more interesting.

By this time of year we usually know who our Oscars frontrunners are. Last year it was Birdman v. Boyhood, and before that 12 Years a Slave and Gravity made the tops of award pundits’ ballots. This year’s race is turning out to be the most unpredictable in years. Earlier this fall Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight slid into the frontrunner spot when it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival. But it’s looking like the praise has reached a plateau now that the Oscar spotlight is beginning to point in other directions. On one hand, it’s a great thing since 2015 has given us such a variety of great filmmaking that slapping labels on films before voting begins is becoming harder and harder. On the other, it makes this race anyone’s best guess.

How good does a movie have to look to offset its other deficiencies? The Revenant is as beautiful a movie as has ever been made. The photography by master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is inconceivably gorgeous; sweeping wide shots that juxtapose tiny, insignificant men against the overwhelming grandeur of nature, close-ups so intimate they seem like invasions of the actors’ privacy, and action sequences of shocking violence.

This Christmas we’re getting not one, but two violent films in brutally cold wintertime settings, because nothing says the holidays like blood splattered across snow — according to Quentin Tarantino and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, anyway. A new TV spot for Iñárritu’s The Revenant has arrived online, and just as the title suggests, it features a lot of Leonardo DiCaprio fighting (and fighting…and fighting…) to survive.

Last night, Alejandro González Iñárritu attended a gala thrown by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as the guest of honor alongside artist James Turrell. As part of his guest of honor duties, the director of such films as Biutiful, Birdman and the upcoming The Revenant took the podium to deliver a speech expressing his commitment to artistry and a few other topics pressing on his mind, one of which has made headlines for touching on some hot-button issues. Iñárritu, a Mexican-born filmmaker, took time in his speech to denounce the “constant and relentless xenophobic comments” that have been made against Latinos and Latinas in recent months.

If you’re already looking ahead and wondering what movies will wind up with Oscar nominations in early 2016, you should start paying close attention to The Revenant. The new trailer for the Leonardo DiCaprio wilderness revenge thriller has arrived and, wow, is it beautiful.

It was so cold when Leonardo DiCaprio filmed Alejandro G. Iñárittu’s upcoming explorer epic The Revenant that the below-zero temperatures have already created a load of controversy for the film. “I was cold basically every day, especially my hands,” DiCaprio told Entertainment Weekly, adding that an on-set warming machine was his “savior.”

Like last year’s Oscar-winning Birdman, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s latest effort is also rather ambitious. The director has been in production on The Revenant since last September, choosing to shoot the film using only natural light, which made the experience rather difficult for both the cast and crew. Following the release of the very impressive first trailer, Iñárritu and leading man Leonardo DiCaprio are opening up about what we can expect from the upcoming film — and what we shouldn’t expect.

So do you think this movie has any cuts?

Vigilantism takes the spooky route in the new comedic horror film 'The Revenant.' Check out this brand new clip in which we're introduced to our two protagonists and the mysterious meaning of the "dark gift" is pondered.