Author: Ross Miller

There’s no doubt that The Revenant is an impressive film. Shot entirely with natural light, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu put his cast and crew through hell, filming in difficult environments at trying hours and incorporating some extremely long shots. Actors had to wrangle with the environment on top of their characters, especially Leonardo DiCaprio, who gives his most physical performance to date.  Much has already been written about how he ate raw liver for one particular scene, and the Hollywood star and hearthrob deserves credit for committing 100% to a role that lacks any sort of vanity.

But despite the impressive craft that went into the creation of The Revenant, the film itself is a disappointment. If anything, the gorgeous digital cinematography  and painstakingly blocked long-takes of the film feels a bit at odds with its rough, dirty aesthetics.  A similar style was utilized in Birdman, but there the content fit the stylization, with the unblinking cinematography matching the intensity and mounting stress of directing a stage play. Although The Revenant does contain a handful of extremely tense moments, all empowered by the film’s formal choices, the majority of the film exists in the lull between action sequences.

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Spotlight is an understated film. It’s not flashy, it doesn’t have a constantly peaking score begging you to feel, and the actors aren’t trying to steal every scene they’re in. Instead, director Tom McCarthy created a film that shares the same journalistic spirit as its lead characters. For most of its runtime, it feels as impartial as it could possibly be, intent on getting to the bottom of things without manipulating the viewer emotionally. It lets the facts speak for themselves, and keeps us engaged with the thrill of the chase.

Visually, it’s all fairly old-school. It employs lots of wide shots and the takes are typically longer than your average 2015 release. But again, this is very appropriate for the film. Set in 2001, this particular story about the discovery of the Catholic church’s institutional child abuse centers around a method of journalism based on researching, building a story, and not publishing until it’s ready. It’s the kind of vital reporting that used to be the cornerstone of the profession and is sadly disappearing today, with the desire to be the first to break a story on the internet outweighing the need to research and fact-check. The film rarely outright decries the coming pitfall of journalistic integrity, but it does subtly hint that we are watching the end of the era.

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The Hateful Eight is Quentin Tarantino’s most indulgent film yet. Depending on how you feel about his past films and idiosyncrasies, such a statement can be read as either a strict warning or a raving endorsement. Personally, I really like Tarantino’s voice as a writer and his distinct directorial footprint. Despite jumping between genres with almost every picture, his presence is always notable in every aspect of his films, from the writing, to the performances, to the staging, cinematography, and even soundtrack. So if his indulgences are the key to making his films unique and enjoyable, The Hateful Eight should be a sure-fire success in my eyes.

And yet, Tarantino’s inclinations and his willingness to fly by the seat of his pants do get in the way of The Hateful Eight at times. There is A LOT of content in this film that, at 2 hours and 47 minutes, probably could have been trimmed down or cut altogether. Lots of plot and character backgrounds get repeated in different conversations throughout the movie, subplots are included with no bearing on the central conflict, and an entire chapter of the film is ultimately insignificant because the same information is passed on in a few lines of dialogue in the next chapter. Hell, an entire character exists solely because Quentin Tarantino had a killer monologue that he wanted Samuel L Jackson to deliver that necessitated his presence.

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