Undiscovered country

The Revenant

Crit

Oh, sure, you think you're having a hard time, 'cause you're nice and cozy in the horse carcass you've scooped the entrails out of when the dripping from the melting icicles on the tall pines above wakes you before the alarm goes off. But let me ask you: how many grizzly claw- and toothmarks can you count on your body? How recently have you seen your son stabbed to death by the guy who then proceeds to bury you alive? How many raw fish and bison organs have you had to eat just to stay (barely) alive? I'm guessing Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio, doing more and better acting per line of dialogue than he has ever done before) has you beat, and he still has a lot of abuse left to take after the equine sleeping bag scene.

About 14 months ago, I was being disappointed by Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, which, if memory serves, did pretty well on Oscar night. Well, I could happily see this take home a half-dozen or more statuettes--best pic, best adapted screenplay, best director, best actor, best supporting actor (Tom Hardy as the villainously pragmatic Fitzgerald), best cinematography, best sound . . . much as I hate the e-word, it's hard to talk about this film without calling it a revenge epic, a survival epic, an epic of the West. This is the film Tarantino might have made if he hadn't had to stop every couple of minutes to play with himself.

Had I seen it two weeks ago, my top ten list would look different at the top; the only question is whether it would have been at the very top, and there's something warped even having a discussion that includes both this and Inside Out. And speaking of top ten lists, my friend and colleague Tom Breen invited me to come on his excellent radio show Deep Focus, along with longtime Madison Art Cinema owner and curator (and long-ago manager of the late lamented York Square Theatre, until the idiot owners drove him away) Arnold Gorlick to share our thoughts on the best of 2015. Uh, I, uh, don't speak, uh, in public much, and it shows, but if you can stand my poor delivery, you can also listen to the much more articulate Tom and Arnold by clicking here.

Trailer

• Deadpool--A spoofier-than-most Marvel comic spinoff.