The Revenant Review

What does Leonardo DiCaprio have to do to win an Oscar? In The Revenant, there have been rumours that his character gets raped by a grizzly bear. That should probably do it. Leo plays Hugh Glass, an 1820s frontiersman who is on a hunting expedition in the wilderness along with his mixed race son, when his team are attacked by Native Americans. Glass is then savaged (but not raped) by  a bear, leaving him with horrendous injuries. Although two men (Tom Hardy’s Fitzgerald and Will Poulter’s Bridger) are left with Glass and his son to watch over him and give him a proper burial when the time comes, Fitzgerald betrays Glass and leaves him for dead and with a bitter taste for revenge. Glass must survive alone in the wilderness and find the men responsible for killing his son.

The Revenant is a story of rebirth and revenge, a howl for tolerance and a poetic, tragic look back at an America that has all but disappeared. It might seem like a deceptively simple story; man is mauled, must survive his injuries and being left to die, and man seeks revenge against those who wronged him, but there’s much more beneath the surface. It’s hero is a man who has embraced America and it’s native inhabitants, whereas Tom Hardy’s Fitzgerald is a ruthless, self-serving bastard whose intolerance and hatred seethes inside him. They aren’t particularly complex characters, but their eventual showdown becomes much more than a bloody brutal fight between two men.

The scale of the suffering of the characters (and the cast and crew) is all up on screen. The camera lens is constantly fogged up by the actors’ breath, reminding just how damn cold it is. The beards are pure icicles and the shivers rack through the actors’ bodies. By getting his team out into the untouched parts of Canada and Argentina’s harshest backwoods, Inarritu has pushed them to the limit and The Revenant’s ode to suffering feels more real than it could ever have felt if any of this had been faked. If Oscars were given out for effort, Inarritu and his crew and actors should be applauded for getting away from the green screens and California sunshine and making their movie in one of the most inhospitable environments imaginable.

Nature is the real star of The Revenant. It dwarves the characters. It’s the most vicious antagonist, but also the helper that aids Leo’s Glass most in his escape from other men. He uses waterfalls, cliffs and dead horses to survive. The landscapes are impossible to fake and The Revenant gets its real power from being filmed out in the incredible wilderness. One scene sees Leo crawl to the edge of a cliff. The sight of a massive river cutting through the earth far below the cliff is nothing short of breathtaking. DOP Emmanuel Lubezki savours it all, making this look like the bloodiest, but most beautiful Malick movie you’ve ever seen.

Filmmaking should be hard. But The Revenant takes the challenges of bringing a story to the screen to a new level. The struggle to make this film is reflected in every frame. It’s a brutal film, born out of brutal conditions. Don’t just give Leo his Oscar at last; everyone involved deserves an award for their commitment.

Watch the Trailer:

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Steven Knight Interview: Working with Tom Hardy on Locke

This was an interview I conducted for Filmoria with Steven Knight, the writer and director of Locke starring Tom Hardy. It was published in 2014 when Locke was being released on DVD and Blu-ray, but as Filmoria now longer exists, I am republishing it here.

Locke follows a pretty ordinary character as he travels down a motorway one night.  How hard was it to fund this film?

Well funnily enough, it wasn’t a problem. I’d just made a film with IM Global and I had the idea for this odd little way of making a film. I had a meeting with Tom Hardy about a different project and then told him that I was shooting an almost theatrical experience on screen. He was all for it. So I wrote it with him in mind. So then we approached IM Global with two things; very low budget and Tom Hardy. They liked the script and they just said ‘yes’. But I think the main thing is that it was very low budget and so it’s a very small gamble. I had the meeting with Tom in late October and we were shooting in early February so it all happened very quickly.

It seems to me that everything about Locke is a producers worst nightmare... a main character who is a pretty ordinary guy... a construction manager who cheats on his wife. No one in the film is in any danger, it has one setting, one character... did you think to yourself that you had to have a star to get this film made?

Yeah but not just a star, you need a really good actor. I always think that whoever is on the screen, people are looking at Tom anyway. It was great to get him to play the part. A lot of these decisions were not deliberately perverse but not what you’d normally do. The whole thing I set up as everyone can have a holiday from what they normally do and it will be fun. So we shot the whole thing from beginning to end. Every time I said ‘action’, we shot the whole thing, then took a break then shot the whole thing again which I then edited together. In terms of selling it, I think I wrote a paragraph about what is was about to IM Global and they said ‘fine’. 

But my thought was, I’m pretty sure that people are intelligent enough to come to a cinema and sit and look at the experience of an ordinary person and find the drama within it. Rather than have the imagination put on the screen for them with special effects and everything. One of the best comments I got from this was people saying that they forgot that they hadn’t seen the other characters because they’d invented those characters for themselves. And I think that’s a more old fashioned way of telling the story with people picturing things in their head. The whole thing was ‘would it be enough to do this?’ and we had no idea if it would be or not until we took it to Venice and the response was so amazing. It was almost like in every way doing the opposite of how you would normally make a film.

One of the most striking things to me was that you chose to have your main character Locke having a cold... was that in the script?

I’d love to say that it was a metaphor for something really important but Tom had a cold when he turned up on the first day of shooting. The normal response is make up on the nose, medication to dry him up and all that. Rather than do that, we thought it would be possible to have your marriage break up and have a cold at the same time and why not? So the medicine you see him taking is the medicine he is really taking.

I heard that Tom was reading off cue cards for the entire shoot. What was the thinking behind that?

Well because I wanted to shoot everything in one go and not do takes. I wanted to see if we could do it without constantly going back and doing it again because I think when you do that, you get something totally different from if you’re just doing it and knowing that you’re going to do it again tomorrow and it might be different. It would have been impossible for him to learn 90 minutes of dialogue. So we put autocue in two places on the low loader in front of him. We had it running in the rear view mirror so that he could look at the rear view mirror and see the script as well. Tom wanted it to be word for word. He didn’t want to improvise at all so what you see including the dot dot dot and the pauses is him following the script. I said at the beginning, ‘if you want to go off and improvise  in the conversation that that’s fine’ but he said he didn’t want to. Retrospectively he was right because it would have been chaos if he’d have done that. Because the other actors had the script on paper in a conference room where they were holed up. Tom had the script in front of him so the conversations he had were pretty much word for word which was great.

So you ran through the whole film each time without cutting and doing extra takes... how much directing did that allow you to do on location?

What we did is we spent five days with all of the actors including Tom sat around a table and reading the script over and over again. Any issues of character and motivation and all of that was dealt with in that room so that when we went out on the road, the only direction I ever gave  to any of them was ‘less, less, less, less’. Ivan is a character who controls things. He normally calms people down so he doesn’t ever get emotional. At least don’t get emotional on the phone, the sound of the voice. One of the great opportunities that you get with this sort of thing is that you can have someone talking very calmly on the phone while tears are running down their face. What you’re seeing is truth and what you’re hearing is not and it makes you know that you’re seeing into someone’s soul basically.

So you had three cameras all running at the same time for each run through of the script but I felt like I saw hundreds of camera angles in the film. Am I wrong? 

No you’re absolutely right. What we did is we set up three cameras and we started rolling. Every 28 minutes, we had to pull over to change the memory cards in the cameras. So we’d pull over into a lay-by and it would be like a pit stop in Formula One. Everyone knew what they had to do, they’d change the memory cards but also take the opportunity to change the lens and the angle. So in fact we had three different set ups within each pass at the film and then obviously we did 16 versions of the film. So in every take we had lots of options.

So where were you during filming... in the comfy hotel with the voice actors or out on the road with Tom?

I would love to have been in the hotel conference room but I wasn’t. I was on the back of a very cold and wet low loader, on a piece of canvas facing the car. The car was strapped to the low loader. I had contact with the conference room and the actors and contact with Tom. I would say action and we’d set off and that was it.

Were you watching monitors or just looking at Tom in the car?

I had a monitor with the three different camera angles on it but also looking at Tom. Mostly when you’re in that situation, once you know the set up you don’t need to keep looking at the monitor so it’s more looking at the performance in the car.

You’re working on Peaky Blinders and have a variety of upcoming film projects. How are you finding working in both TV and film?

I do see them as different things. My day job is writing and doing commissions and all of that. And then if there’s an idea I feel I can direct then I do that. TV is not something I thought I’d do but Peaky Blinders is the story of my Dad’s uncles and it’s a story I’ve wanted to tell for 20 years. I don’t think it could be told as a film. Well it could but it would be shorter whereas with telly, the way it’s going at the moment, you get a lot more opportunity and a lot more time and you get great actors wanting to play the parts. It just felt that that family saga was better suited to TV. TV’s great, as a writer it’s fantastic because you are pretty much in charge of that whole thing.

You have many upcoming projects... are you itching to get back in the directing chair?

I’m probably going to direct something in the middle of next year which is again going to be quite an odd way of shooting something. It doesn’t sound particularly entertaining but it’s about the last days of someone’s life who has Alzheimer’s. That sounds terribly depressing. But in the same way that ‘man who works in concrete drives down a motorway’ (laughs). I’ve got a plan to make it very almost like science fiction.

And you’re writing that as well? Will you only ever direct things that you write? 

Yeah absolutely. I can’t imagine even begin directing someone else’s thing.

Will you work with Tom Hardy again?

Yes I’m sure I will. We’re doing a project together already. I would imagine you will hear more about that quite soon. I’m not being mysterious on purpose. They like to announce these things in their own ways.

MORE INTERVIEWS AT I LOVE THAT FILM

The Revenant Teaser Trailer Reveals Leo Still Not Winning That Oscar

Goddamit I just know that The Revenant isn't going to get Leonardo DiCaprio his long overdue Oscar. Doesn't matter how bloody epic the film looks, somebody in some plain old, possibly very boring biopic is going to come along and snatch it away from him.

To be fair, judging from this teaser, Leo's going to be doing a lot of screaming his lungs out and running and fighting for his life, but this doesn't even look like it's his film.

Firstly he's joined by Tom Hardy, Will Poulter and Domnhall Gleeson so this could be just as much their time to shine as it is little old Leo's.

More importantly, from the look of this footage, this is another chance to see what director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki can come up with together after the wonderfully shot Birdman. You just know we're going to be immersed right in the middle of those stunningly harsh landscapes, as well as the bloodshed and chaos of all that fighting. If anyone is getting Oscars, it will be one of those two.

Even if it doesn't bag Leo Best Actor (and I pray that I'm wrong by the way), it's my most anticipated film of 2016, as I wrote here for The Daily Heckle. I think it looks absolutely brilliant, even if Leo does miss out AGAIN on taking home a golden baldie.

Best British Films of 2014

I've been dragging my feet about making this list because I wanted to write a little something about each film. It seems that I am just never going to have the time to do this properly though, so instead I'm just going to plunge in by posting this up as a quick list. It's February 2015 already and this list is long overdue.

Don't get me started on what makes a film 'British' because I could go on and on about this until we finally get rid of the Royal Family. I'm pretty sure it's fair to say that most of these are definitely British. Without further ado, here are my top 10 favourite British films of 2014:

10. Under the Skin

9. Belle 

8. Jimmy's Hall

7. The Double

6. What We Did On Our Holiday

5. Locke

4. Calvary

3. '71

2. Starred Up

1. Pride

Watch the trailer for Pride:



What were your favourite British films of 2014?

Upcoming screenings: The Zero Theorem, Starred Up, Locke

I've got three screenings lined up for this week and they are an exciting bunch; The Zero Theorem, Starred Up and Locke. First is Terry Gilliam's The Zero Theorem. This is dystopian sci-fi from the guy who brought us Brazil and 12 Monkeys so promises to be at the very least interesting. It also stars Christoph Waltz (which guarantees a little awesomeness), Matt Damon, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, David Thewlis and Rupert Friend. It looks from the trailer like it could be weird but potentially wonderful.



Next is British prison drama Starred Up from director David Mackenzie and starring Jack O'Connell who is destined to be a big star soon. I've been watching him since his minor role in This is England through to bigger roles in the likes of Tower Block, The Liability, Harry Brown and Eden Lake. Starred Up looks like a brutal story about a violent young offender who is moved in to big boys prison. It also stars Rupert Friend (again) and the excellent Ben Mendelsohn.



Last but not least is Locke starring Tom Hardy in a car making a series of phone calls. Sounds like this could be one of those really interesting minimalist bits of cinema where the star is stuck in one location and has to entertain us with the strength of their performance and clever little story. I have soft spot for things like 127 Hours, Phone Booth and Buried so I hope this will be tense and terrific.



Any of these trailers float your boat?

Batman Listens to Mortal Kombat

I hope that by now many of you will have seen this already but just in case anyone missed it, I felt it my duty to share the news with you that Batman listens to 90s techno when flying around Gotham City. The video below also reveals that Bane is obsessed with diet- hardly surprising considering the epic man boobs.

If you grow weary of Bane banging on about the dietary requirements of his henchman then skip forward to 2.25 through the video to see how Batman rolls when flying through the night sky. Even Bane can't believe it. It's also interesting to see that Bane is a big Mortal Kombat fan himself. Check out the fight scene where he declares Batman to be 'Toastie'!

I don't know who these Auralnauts are that made this parody video but I look forward to seeing what they come up with next!



Did this make you LOL? Or even ROTFL?

Dark Knight Rises Epic Featurette

No words of mine will do this justice.  This is 13 minutes of the cast and crew talking about why The Dark Knight Rises may very well be the greatest blockbuster of all time.  Nolan compares it to a silent film where the images are key to telling the story.  And after seeing some of the images here, you're not going to argue.

Bale, Hardy, Hathaway, Oldman, Caine, Freeman, both Nolan brothers and Christopher Nolan's producer partner wife Emma Thomas all get their time to talk and there's plenty of footage to feast your eyes on so tuck in!

If you've seen the trailers and TV spots and been reading about the film, there are no spoilers here.  If you want to go in cold, don't watch it but you're a stronger person than I if you can resist clicking play below.



What the hell do you think of THAT?