The Big Short: Hollywood is continuing its post-Great Recession assault on Wall Street with the 2008 mortgage crisis drama The Big Short. Writer/director Adam McKay (Anchorman, Step Brothers) uses his trademark balls-to-the wall energy to tell the story of how a group of outsiders in the financial industry (Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock) discovered that the supposedly rock-solid housing market was being propped up by high-risk loans and subsequently bet against it. How much you enjoy The Big Short entirely hedges on how interested you are in the subject matter. This is not a Wolf of Wall Street-like tale full of sex-and-drug fueled debauchery and excess, it simply tells the story of how the big banks rigged the housing market to make it look far more stable than it actually was and the small group of outsiders in the financial industry that discovered their shady practices and decided to call them out on their bluff. Personally, I admired the film for its overarching message and how it was able to make highly complex financial concepts and rhetoric easily understand for mass audiences, but my lack of interest in the inner workings of the financial industry and the mostly forgettable performances from its massive ensemble cast prevented me from truly loving it.
3.5/5 Stars
The Revenant: Director Alejandro G. Inarritu and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy have all described the making of The Revenant as a
"hellish experience". The hell that went into making The Revenant has nothing on the hell of watching it. Don't let the presence of A-list actors and heavy doses of CGI fool you, The Revenant is a pretentious, hollow arthouse film that is completely derivative of the Terrence Malick-worshipping indie films that flood cinemas every single year during awards season. Inarritu-who also co-wrote the script with Vacancy scribe Mark L. Smith-tries to compensate for how idiotic and simple the film's story (if you've seen the trailer, you know literately every detail of the plot) is by loading up the film's 155-minute runtime with extensive, repetitive nature shots, dream sequences that seem to be lifted straight from The Tree of Life and one-dimensional characters that only speak in grunts and whispers. The natural scenery is beautifully-shot by cinematographer Emanuel Lubezki (Birdman, Gravity), but after 45 minutes or so of looking at nothing but snow-covered trees and the permanently gray skies of the frontier, the striking beauty of the setting loses its charm and you begin to become frustrated with how uneventful this film is. The presence of two of the finest working actors on the planet right now can't even salvage The Revenant from. DiCaprio performance as the seemingly indestructible, revenge-thirsty fur trapper Hugh Glass is completely average. DiCaprio's dedication to showcasing the pain and suffering Glass went through without much dialogue is undeniably admirable, but it's not even close to a memorable performance, especially when you stack it up alongside his previous work. It's an absolute travesty that a performance this subpar is going to be the one that finally wins DiCaprio his long-overdue Academy Award. Hardy isn't much better as John Fitzgerald, the sleazeball Texan who kills Glass' teenage son directly in front of him. Hardy has the intensity and shadiness required to play this type of character, but his often over-the-top acting turns Fitzgerald into more of a comic book-esque villain than a human being.
2015's crop of awards bait was pretty underwhelming on the whole, but no other Best Picture nominee is anywhere close to being as poorly-written, meandering and idiotic as The Revenant is.
1.5/5 Stars
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